Languages & literatures

The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory & Criticism offers an introduction to critical analysis of literary and cultural productions in over 240 entries by 270 contributors. You can view a list of entries (e.g. aesthetics, linguistics and language, Russian formalism,  Adrienne Rich), an index of topics (e.g. ancients/moderns, iconology, moral science), or search in text or bibliography.

Contact Jim Kelly, Humanities Bibliographer at 413-545-3981 with questions or for assistance with this new resource.

After a brief hiatus, Teatro Espanol del Siglo de Oro has returned. Here you may search and read from among 800 plays from Spain’s golden age, the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Contact Peter Stern, 413-545-3967, for assistance using this resource.

The Literature Criticism Online database includes content from 10 distinct sources:

• Children’s Literarure Review
• Classical and Medieval Literature Criticism
• Contemporary Literary Criticism
• Drama Criticism
• Literature Criticism from 1400 to 1800
• Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism
• Poetry Criticism
• Shakespearean Criticism
• Short Story Criticism
• Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism

You can search for your keywords or author name across all these titles or within each one. You can also browse the contents of each title or the names of authors.

If you would like assistance using this new reference source, contact a librarian.

The Book Review Digest Retrospective includes citations, abstracts and some excerpts of book reviews published in English language periodicals between 1908-1982. The reviews are of adult and juvenile fiction and non-fiction. You can browse or search by author or review author, subject, publication year, title, etc.

A search for the title Charlotte’s Web retrieves 15 citations from publications such as The Horn Book, New Statesman and Nation, Springfield Republican, the New York Times, etc. A search for the author, “White, Elwyn Brooks” produces 13 records for the books The Fox of Peapack, and other poems, Stuart Little, A Subtreasury of American Humor, The Wild Flag, and others. A search for the author “White, E.B.” produces a different set of titles, including the book Elements of Style for which White wrote a chapter on writing for the second edition.

Whether meandering or drilling, the Book Review Digest Retrospective provides a fascinating path to commentary on literature at the time of its publication. About Stuart Little, R.C. Benet says in the Saturday Review of Literature (Dec. 8th, 1945), “The humorous, wise quality found in E. B. White’s other work is reflected here in miniature.” Words that portend a classic in the making?