LibGuides: LIT 165: Literary Analysis Research Paper

Step 1: Wikipedia

You won't cite Wikipedia in your paper, but it can still be very useful for getting your search for sources started.

Use it to identify what you want to explore in the body of your paper. Wikipedia articles about literature are usually strong in discussing the context, themes, and arguments of particular authors and/or works.
Check out the footnotes and bibliography for potential sources. Sometimes, even scholarly sources will be listed.

Step 2: Literature Resource Center

This library database is a great place to find non-scholarly, but reliable resources. Look especially for:

Short author biographies (useful for your introduction)
overview essays
book reviews and author interviews (for more modern works and authors)

Also, everything you find in this database will be full text.

Literature Resource Center
Biographical, bibliographical and critical content for literature from all time periods and genres. Includes content from Gale's Contemporary Authors, Contemporary Literary Criticism Select, and Dictionary of Literary Biography.
Cross-search multiple literary source databases in Gale Literary Sources
(Gale Cengage)

Step 3: MLA International Bibliography

This is our main library database for literary analysis. In it you will be able to find both scholarly journal articles and scholarly book chapters (plus even full scholarly books).

MLA International Bibliography
Provides access to scholarly research in the areas of language, literature, linguistics, and folklore from journal articles, books, essays, proceedings, dissertations, bibliographies & working papers.
For more help, watch the library's MLA tutorials on:
Author/work Searching
Advanced Searches
Using Limiters
Getting Full Text.
(EBSCOhost)