Subject Expert
Ielleen Miller
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Find Journal Articles
These three databases are your best bets for literary criticism. I would search them in this order, with ProQuest first and MLA last. (MLA is the most frustrating one to use, so I'd save that for last.)
If you scroll down this page, I have search hints for each database.
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JSTORFull text articles from around 450 important literary criticism journals (and another 1800 journals on other topics), from the first issue up to usually 3-5 years ago.
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Project MUSEFor spring quarter, many publishers are offering their articles and books for free. Keyword search the full text of journal articles and scholarly books, similar to searching JSTOR.
If the article is not available full text, we may have it in a different database. Note the citation information and see the tab "Find an Article with the Citation."
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MLA International Bibliography (EBSCOhost) -- 1923-presentComprehensive database for literature and languages, plus folklore, drama and rhetoric. Indexes over 5,000 journals, plus books and dissertations.
Searching JSTOR
JSTOR is different from the others in that it is automatically searching the entire text of the journal articles. If you have specific search terms, this is great. But if you have more general terms, you'll get too many results. And there aren't that many useful limiters to narrow the results.
Ways to Narrow
- In the Advanced Search, under NARROW BY: and ITEM TYPE, click Articles -- this will eliminate book reviews
- Narrow to a particular date range, but only if you desire. Remember, these articles can go back to the 19th century. Useful if you want to see how a work was received closer to the time it was originally written, rather than recent analysis.
- Scroll down and you'll see JOURNAL FILTER - NARROW BY DISCIPLINE AND/OR JOURNAL -- you can limit to just the 400+ Language & Literature journals.