English: Finding Literary Criticisms

What is Literary Criticism?

Literary criticism is the evaluation of literary works such as poems, short stories, novels, and plays. Literary criticism goes beyond a summary of a literary work, it discusses the merit of the work, what may have influenced the author, how the work may have influenced others, and its continued value. 

Research Challenges 

• There are typically fewer articles on contemporary authors
• There are typically fewer articles on women and minority authors
• Some works just don't have much

Search Tips

• Put quotation marks (") around the titles of the author's work to get more relevant results. For example "Of Mice and Men"
• Search in multiple databases to find a variety of articles - even though there will be some overlap each database will have unique articles 
• If you can't find articles about your specific title, expand your search for criticism about the author's other literary works
• Don't use the words "criticism" or"review", etc in your search in the literary databases. Just search the author's name and/or title with a theme
• Search the catalog for print or ebook literary criticism of authors 

Crafting Your Search

Finding literary criticisms requires you to have at least two search terms (sometimes even three) because you have to narrow your search to a literary work and a key theme.  My example: "The presence of loneliness in John Steinbeck's novel "Of Mice and Men".

Adding to your search is like a math equation, but instead of using plus or minus, you use and,or, not to complete your search.

• AND - Returns results that include both search terms in the same record
• OR - Returns results that include either search term in a record (both search terms can be present, but they don't have to be)
• NOT - Returns results that do not include the search term

For literary criticism, you rely on the AND function and use the OR function to enhance your search. To craft a simple search for my example above you should use the AND function. Your search should look similar to this: "of mice and men" AND loneliness.

If you are getting lots of results back you can add another AND to your search ("of mice and men" AND loneliness AND Southern California)

If you are getting a few results back you can add an OR to your search to expand your search results ("of mice and men" AND (loneliness OR solitude))

Search these databases to find literary criticisms. Remember each database holds a unique group of articles, so you may need to search multiple databases to find relevant results

Literature Databases

General Databases 

To search for literary criticisms in DOAJ, select the search drop down and change it from journals to articles. Complete the search tips in the left box.

To search academic search complete for review, use the sidebar to narrow down your search to "reviews" only.