LibGuides: Literary Research: Finding Articles

Biographical and Critical Essays

Look up individual authors and works in these databases for biographical and critical information. Fuller versions of these entries are available in print; look them up in the catalog by title.

Contemporary Authors This link opens in a new window
Select Contemporary Authors Online from the list of Infotrac databases.

This database contains biographical and bibliographical information on authors who are either still living or died after 1960.
Dictionary of Literary Biography This link opens in a new window
Select Dictionary of Literary Biography Complete Online from the displayed list of Gale databases.

In this database you will find biographical essays with some critical analysis, along with further reading. Volumes are dedicated to specific subjects and time periods.
Contemporary Literary Criticism This link opens in a new window
Contemporary Literary Criticism, part of the Literature Criticism Online database group, covers more than 3,000 authors currently active or active during the later part of the 20th century. Each entry contains a biographical/critical introduction, a list of principal works, critical essays, and sources for further study.

Google Scholar

Google Scholar This link opens in a new window
Google Scholar contains theses, books, abstracts and court opinions from scholarly sources, including academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities and other web sites. Using Google search techniques, users can find and download articles directly from selected Bentley Library article databases and other websites. Google Scholar also provides links to related articles, enabling users to easily broaden a search.

Scholarly Articles

Look up articles about any literary topic (including individual authors and works) in these databases.

Gale Literary Sources This link opens in a new window
Gale Literary Sources integrates full-text literary content with metadata and subject indexing and provides workflow tools to analyze information. You can research authors and their works, literary movements and genres. Search across your library's Literature databases to find full text of literary works, journal articles, literature criticism, reviews, biographical information and overviews.
Literature Resource Center This link opens in a new window
Includes scholarly and popular articles, literary magazines, multimedia, biographical information, and primary sources and literary works.
Project MUSE This link opens in a new window
Project MUSE provides full-text access to current content from over 400 titles representing nearly 100 not-for-profit publishers. MUSE offers articles in full text (HTML and PDF formats), in a variety of subject areas including economics, education, film, history, literature, philosophy, politics, religion, women's studies and more. Journals can be searched by title, discipline, or collection. Users can also search within the full text of articles or by subject, author, or title.
JSTOR This link opens in a new window
Take advantage of the Advanced Search, where you can limit your search by discipline (including Folklore, Language & Literature, and Linguistics).
Academic Search Complete (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window
A good general database to start with for any topic. After you've done a search, use the subjects on the left-hand side to make your results list smaller and more relevant.
ProQuest Research Library This link opens in a new window
After you've done a search, use the "suggested subjects" on the top of the screen to make your results list smaller and more relevant.
Dissertations and Theses Global This link opens in a new window
A comprehensive collection of doctoral dissertations and theses in the humanities and social sciences, going back to 1861, with full text for most works since 1991.

Citation Databases

These databases are focused on citation information (rather than full text) - to books and dissertations as well as articles. Bentley may have access to the works indexed in these databases. Click here to look up a book in the library catalog. To find where we have access to journals, go to the library's home page and click the Journal Finder tab above the search box.

MLA International Bibliography (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window
Includes books and dissertations.
Web of Science (Core Collection) This link opens in a new window
You will need to choose the More Settings link in the middle of the screen, then select Arts & Humanities Index using the checkboxes at the bottom of the screen.

The database contains thousands of citations from scholarly journals for topics, authors, sources titles, author address, cited author, cited work and cited year.

Search Tips

1. Always choose the Advanced Search option if there is one available. This will give you results more targeted to your topic.

2. Use AND between terms or between search boxes to make your search smaller if you're retrieving too many results. For example: Vietnam AND poetry

Use OR between terms or between search boxes to make your search larger if you're retrieving too few results. For example: fiction OR novel

3. Use quotation marks to search for two or more words in the exact order they're entered. For example: "pride and prejudice"