Literature and Libraries
LIS413
Brendan A. Rapple
Simmons College
9 July, 2009
Literature
• Imaginative works having some claim to artistic value, e.g.:
– poetry; legends and folk tales; drama; short stories;
novels.
• Certain non-fictional works of high artistic quality:
– Literary nonfiction may include almost any writing
except the strictly technical.
• Don’t Forget Oral Literature!
What is English?
• Is English the language or does it pertain to the country?
Literary Criticism
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Literary history: literature is viewed as part of a historical process.
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Literary theory: an attempt is made to describe the principles of literature, its
genres, and its techniques and functions.
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Evaluative criticism: concerns the study and analysis of specific works and
their authors.
Curricular Changes
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“Many of the most publicized changes in higher education in the past three decades
have been curricular. Critics inside and outside academe have wrung their hands
over a variety of course appearances, adjustments, and alleged "disappearings" (the
dirty work of "leftist" faculty hit squads). A major thrust of most of these curricular
reforms was to acknowledge the historical importance and cultural contributions of
groups, doers, and thinkers beyond the limited cast or "canon" of Western white
males featured in prevailing texts and syllabi. This, in turn, led to the inclusion of
women and other "minorities," an emphasis on conflict and pluralism, a
globalization of the curriculum in general, a questioning of the canonical criteria of
"greatness," and a rise in cross- and interdisciplinary studies. Simultaneously, an
influx of "postmodernist" theory from France and Germany threatened the
humanities and social sciences by overturning or seriously challenging virtually all
of their traditional ("modernist") assumptions and intellectual procedures. All of
these changes posed a major threat to the status quo and induced no little angst in
the halls of ivy.”
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James Axtell. Virginia Quarterly Review (2003)
Literary Criticism Now Less US/Eurocentric
“Literary criticism now investigates entire ranges of literary production
that do not share in Western culture. Critics treat the writings of poets,
playwrights, and novelists, from postcolonial regions in the Pacific,
Caribbean, and South Africa who use pidgin forms of English and
sometimes French to articulate their own social realities and histories.
They also give new attention to writings and songs from ‘fourth-world’
peoples, that is, from minorities marginalized in ghettos within firstworld cultures.”
Today English Depts. often Provide
courses and programs in
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literary theory
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rhetoric and composition
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technical writing
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creative writing
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cultural, TESOL, linguistics, children’s and adolescent literature
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language arts
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English education
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pedagogical theory
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Computerization of literature
English Studies/Literary Studies is Turning More and
More into Cultural Studies
Criticism of Cultural Studies:
“The downside of the equation between cultural studies and literary studies is
that, carried to its logical conclusion, cultural studies can dispense with the
literary altogether. Studies of consumerism, for example, can be based on the
analysis of shopping malls or Home Depot layouts; no literary texts are
required. Teen culture can be explored through music, film, and computer
games. Current social mores and cultural constraints can be profitably studied
by examining Internet discourse. And so on. Everything, after all, can be a text
and so why not a golf course? A skating rink? A theme park?”
Marjorie Perloff. Crisis in the Humanities
Differences in Collecting Between
• Public Libraries
• Academic and Research Libraries (here the acquisition of literary
scholarship, i.e. secondary material, is stressed)
Texts
• Scholars often concerned with distinguishing the literary work from the
(sometimes many) texts that embody it.
• A text may be considered a process as well as a finished product.
• Many aspects:
• Creation of the text
• Production
• Dissemination
• Reception
• Preservation
History of Books and Publishing
Many scholars are concerned “with the agents and process of the production of
texts: . . . progression from manuscript to serial or book; collaboration of author and
editor; distribution and dissemination over time and place; influence of bookseller,
librarian, and teacher; reception by readers who themselves are influenced in their
reading by their own personal histories.” (Day & Wortman, 2000)
“No published text, literary or otherwise, exists in isolation: rather, it is the
collaborative effort of many people -- authors and editors, papermakers and
printers, publishers and readers, among others” (Winship, 1995)
Reception and Reading
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Scholars may study how a book was received, reviewed etc.
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Many “book review” print and online indexes available
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However, it’s much harder to know what ordinary readers think
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Still sales figures may be indicative
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Reviews on Amazon.com
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Reading habits/interests of writers easier to locate:
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Personal libraries
Library borrowing records
Journal/diary entries
Published reviews
Teaching
Comments in letters
Etc.
Parameters of Texts
• Can a text be more than words?
• e.g.
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Sound
Video
Computer graphics
Web content
• BeeHive Hypertext /Hypermedia Journal:
http://beehive.temporalimage.com/departments/
• Electronic Literature Collection:
http://collection.eliterature.org
What is Hamlet?
• There are three versions of Hamlet probably written by Shakespeare.
• There are countless scholarly and popular versions
• How many professional (and amateur) dramatic versions for stage, screen,
radio, television, and classroom? Multitudes!
Manga Shakespeare
How Important is the Medium?
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"The context cannot but condition the process. Screen and book may exhibit
the same string of words, but the assumptions that underlie their
significance are entirely different depending on whether we are staring at a
book or a circuit-generated text.”
Sven Birkerts
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“. . . the possibilities offered by digitization increase the number of
collections accessible from a distance but also reinforce the idea that there
is an equivalence between media and that a text is still the same regardless
of its form: printed, microfilmed, or digital. That notion is fundamentally
wrong because the processes through which a reader attributes meaning to
a text depend, consciously or not, not only on the semantic content of the
text, but also on the material forms through which the text was published,
distributed, and received.”
Roger Chartier, Languages, Books, and Reading from the Printed Word to the Digital Text
The Evolving Book
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The book, that paper medium, product of a dated technique, has become a reductive
matrix that we have to reform; to let go of the linearity and the fixity of its pages, to
allow text to reveal itself by other means, in other contexts with other possibilities
of expression”
Jean-Pierre Balpe, 2004
Any Reactions To . . . ?
• Minority of authors specify how their words will appear on the page.
• Reading the text for content, and not an examination of the physical nature
of the artifact, is why most scholars consult books.
• For most a facsimile of the printed book is a perfectly acceptable
alternative to the original copy.
• Different ways to access authored content:
– Read
– Hear
Kinds of Texts
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Manuscripts: handwritten, typed, or word-processed texts that precede printed, published texts
-- often drafts.
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Original Editions: first and other eds. (in author’s lifetime) whose form of publication is
authorized by author.
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Subsequent Editions: many types.
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Scholarly Editions: texts of works that have been determined by editor(s) to have some degree
of authority (based on manuscript, original, and subsequent editions).
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Student Editions: usually have a sound text; an introduction to the historical and literary
contexts; content annotations; might also have a selection of critical articles or author’s letters
etc.
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Anthologies
Electronic Texts
• Some are quite basic – just the text.
• Some e-texts are typed, some are scanned.
• OCR (optical character recognition) is often used.
• Increasingly PDF is used.
• Sometimes HTML markup language is used.
Added Value to Texts
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Scholarly essays
Biographical materials
Annotations
Timelines
Bibliographies
Images
Sound
Video etc.
Hypertext Fiction
• Disappearing Rain by Deena Larsen
• Reach, a fiction, The Iowa Review Online, Spring 2000.
http://www.uiowa.edu/~iareview/tirweb/hypermedia/michael_joyce/ReachTitle.html
Online Novels
• Free Online Novels
http://www.free-online-novels.com/
Types of Literary Scholarship
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Descriptive Bibliography
Editing
Historical Studies
Criticism
Theory
MLA. Introduction to Scholarship in Modern Languages and Literatures (1992)
Descriptive Bibliography
• “Descriptive bibliography may be defined as the close physical description
of books and other printed objects: a systematic report concerning their
type, paper, printing, illustrations, and binding, and how the circumstances
of their publication and distribution may have affected their physical
appearance. . . . The description typically concludes with relevant details
of the book's authorship, publication and distribution.”
Terry Belanger and Richard Noble
http://www.virginia.edu/oldbooks/reading/desbib00.html
Challenges for Descriptive Bibliography of
Digital Texts?
Editing
• This is generally concerned with producing “reliable” or “authoritative”
versions of a text
• Some scholars focus on the texts themselves
• Some try to produce a single text out of the multiplicity:
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What was the author’s final intention
What are “false starts”?
What are publisher’s intrusions?
What are printer’s errors?
• Other scholars are more concerned with displaying the multiplicity itself, e.g.
Jerome McGann’s Rossetti Archive
Examples of Electronic “Editions”
• Hypertext edition of Percy Bysshe Shelley's The Devil's Walk
• William Blake Archive
• Dickinson Electronic Archives
• British Library Online Gallery
• Diary of Samuel Pepys
http://www.pepysdiary.com/
• Early Stuart Libels
http://www.earlystuartlibels.net/htdocs/index.html
Historical Studies
– Major emphasis on primary sources, e.g. manuscripts, first editions.
– Often a broader range of sources studied, e.g. non “literature” related.
– Often utilizes special collections.
Criticism
• Particular focus on the creative work itself.
• Often more stress on Text than Context.
Theory
• Literary theory “is the theory (or the philosophy) of the interpretation of
literature and literary criticism. Its history begins with classical Greek
poetics and rhetoric and includes, since the 18th century, aesthetics and
hermeneutics. In the 20th century, "theory" has become an umbrella term
for a variety of scholarly approaches to reading texts, most of which are
informed by various strands of Continental philosophy.”
• “Broad schools of theory that have historically been important include the
New Criticism, formalism, Russian formalism, and structuralism, poststructuralism, Marxism, feminism and French feminism, new historicism,
deconstruction, reader-response criticism, and psychoanalytic criticism.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literary_theory
Biographical Studies
In addition to life facts and context
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Chronologies
Specialized studies in writer’s non-literary interest in, e.g. theater or film
Editions of diaries, journals, autobiographies, memoirs
Editions of memoirs of contemporaries/acquaintances
Catalogs of authors’ libraries, collections of photographs etc
General Bibliographies
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Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland, and Ireland and of
English Books Printed Abroad 1475-1640 (STC) (Pollard & Redgrave)
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Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales and
British America, and of English Books Printed in Other Countries 1641-1700
(Wing)
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Together they form major part of the online database Early English Books Online
(EEBO)
General Bibliographies
• Pen is ours: a listing of writings by and about african american women
before 1910 with secondary bibliography to the present. (Schomburg Library of
Nineteenth-Century Black Women Writers; by Jean Fagan Yellin, Cynthia D. Bond (1991)
Primary Bibliographies
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Very related to Descriptive Bibliography mentioned earlier
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“Emphasis is on identifying, by means of description of the actual physical
pieces, the works that constitute the canon of a period, genre, author, subject,
or other limited area. Typical features include facsimiles or transcriptions of
the title and copyright pages and substantial details about a work's format
pagination, contents, typography, paper, binding, dust jacket, and printing and
publishing history, including data about the size of its press run, the price of a
copy, and the like. Locations of the copies upon which the descriptions are
based may be provided.”
Primary Bibliographies
Classic Examples:
• A Bibliography of the English Printed Drama to the Restoration
(1939) -- Greg
• American Bibliography -- Evans
• W. H. Auden: A Bibliography, 1924-1969 -- Bloombield& Edward
Mendelson
Bibliography of American Literature (Jacob Blanck) (9 vols. in print)
provides nearly 40,000 records of the literary works of approximately 300
American writers from the period of the Revolution to 1930. Coverage: 17751930
Other Primary Bibliographies
• Lyle Henry Wright. American Fiction, 1774-1850 (rev. ed, 1978)
• Preston M. Yancy. The Afro-American Short Story: A Comprehensive
Annotated Index with Selected Commentaries (1976)
Secondary Bibliographies
• Scarecrow Press. Scarecrow Author Bibliographies
• Kent State University Press. The Serif Series: Bibliographies and
Checklists
• Northern Illinois University Press. (and now Garland.) Annotated
Secondary Bibliography Series on English Literature in Transition,
1880-1920
• Borgo Press. Bibliographies of Modern Authors
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and many others
General Research Guides
Examples:
• Richard D. Altick. The Art of Literary Research (1993) 4th ed.
• James L. Harner. Literary Research Guide: An Annotated Listing of
Reference Sources in English Literary Studies (2008) 5h ed.
• Dorothea Kehler’s Problems in Literary Research: A Guide to Selected
Reference Works (1997) 4th ed.
Specialized Research Guides
• John H. Fisher. The Medieval Literature of Western Europe: A Review
of Research (1966)
• David J. DeLaura. Victorian Prose: A Guide to Research (1973)
• Richard J. Finneran. Anglo-lrish Literature: A Review of Research
(1976)
• Joel Myerson. The Transcendentalists: A Review of Research and
Criticism (1984)
One Volume Reference Works
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Margaret Drabble. The Oxford Companion to English Literature (2006) Revised 6th ed.
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Michael Dobson. Oxford Companion to Shakespeare (2001).
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Sandra Kemp. Oxford Companion to Edwardian Fiction (2002).
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Rolf Loeber and Magda Loeber. A Guide to Irish fiction, 1650-1900 (2006)
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Nicolás Kanellos. Hispanic Literature of the United States: A Comprehensive Reference (2003)
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Encyclopedia of British Writers (2003).
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Lisa O. Paddock. The Brontës A to Z: the essential reference to their lives and work (2003).
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Rolf Loeber. A Guide to Irish Fiction, 1650-1900 (2006).
Multivolume Encyclopedic Surveys
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A. H. Ward and A. R. Waller. Cambridge History of English Literature (1907-1933) 15 vols.
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William Porterfield Trent et al. Cambridge History of American Literature (1917-1921) 8 vols.
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The Oxford History of English Literature (usually referred to as the OHEL) 15 vols.
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Albert C. Baugh. A Literary History of England (2nd ed. 1997) 4 vols.
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Eugene Benson and L.W. Conolly. Encyclopedia of Post-Colonial Literatures in English (2nd ed.
2005) 3 vols.
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Jay Parini. The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature (2004) 4 vols.
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Encyclopedia of Post-colonial literatures in English (2005) 3 vols.
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Encyclopedia of Literature and Politics: Censorship, Revolution, and Writing (2005) 3 vols.
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Cyclopedia of Literary Places (2003) 3 vols.
Chronologies
• These are useful in literary research for putting authors and their works in
the perspectives of the concurrent political, social, religious, artistic, and
scientific activities.
– E.G.:
• Daniel S. Burt. The Chronology of American Literature. (2004)
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Richard M. Ludwig and Clifford A. Nault, Jr. Annals of American
Literature, 1602-1983 (1986)
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Samuel Rogal. A Chronological Outline of American Literature
(1987)
Examples of DICTIONARIES
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C.Hugh Holman and William Hammon. A Handbook to Literature (1996)
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A. M. H. Abram. A Glossary of Literary Terms (1993)
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Wendell V. Harris. Dictionary of Concepts in Literary Criticism and Theory (1992)
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Roger Fowler. A Dictionary of Modern Critical Terms (1987)
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Shari Dorantes Hatch and Michael R. Stricklan. African-American Writers: A Dictionary
(2000).
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A Dictionary of Literary Symbols. (2007)
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African-American Writers: A Dictionary. (2000)
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American Naturalistic and Realistic Novelists: a Biographical Dictionary. (2002)
Examples of DIRECTORIES
• The Writers Directory (1971- )
• The International Directory of Little Magazines and Small Presses
(1965-)
Examples of CONCORDANCES
• Young. Analytical Concordance to the Bible (1989)
• John S. P. Tatlock and Arthur G. Kennedy. A Concordance to the
Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer (1927; reprint, 1963)
• Marvin Spevack. A Complete and Systematic Concordance to the Works
of Shakespeare (1968-1980)
• Jess B. Bessinger, Jr. A Concordance to the Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records
(1978)
• And many online concordances
Journals Devoted to Individual Authors
• Shakespeare Quarterly (1950- )
• Thomas Hardy Annual (1983- )
• James Joyce Quarterly (1963- )
• Keats-Shelley Journal (1952- )
• Poe Studies (1967- )
• The Thomas Wolfe Review (1977- )
»
And many others
Retrospective Bibliographies of English
Studies
e.g.: The New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature (1987)
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5 Volumes.
Updates The Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature (CBEL) (four
volumes in 1941)
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A selective bibliography of primary and secondary sources in
English literature, from 600 A.D. to 1950.
Volumes are divided by time period, and then further
subdivided by subject, form, genre, and author.
"An indispensable reference source and often the best place for
beginning research."
Index to Periodical Literature
(W. F. Poole)
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A retrospective subject index to the contents of 479 British and
American periodicals between 1802 and 1906 (originally in print)
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Incorporated into the database Nineteenth Century Masterfile
Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals
l824-I900
• Identifies authors of articles in the major nineteenth century quarterly
and monthly periodicals.
(print, CD-ROM, and online)
Current Bibliographies of English Studies
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Year's Work in English Studies (192-)
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Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature (1921-) – Print & Online -contains over 783,000 records covering monographs, periodical articles, critical editions
of literary works, book reviews, collections of essays and doctoral dissertations published
anywhere in the world from 1920 onwards.
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MLA International Bibliography (1921+ Print; 1963+ Online)
contains over 1.6 million citations from more than 4,400 periodicals (including peerreviewed e-journals) and 1,000 book publishers. The coverage is international and is
represented by literature from Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, and North and South
America. While the majority of records are from English-language publications, at least
sixty other languages are represented including French, Spanish, German, Russian,
Portuguese, Norwegian, and Swedish.
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Literature Online
Literature Online (LION) is a fully searchable library of more than 350,000 works of
English and American poetry, drama and prose, 150 full-text literature journals, and
other key criticism and reference resources.
Literature Resource Center
• Provides access to biographies, bibliographies, and critical analyses of
authors from every age and literary discipline.
• Covers more than 120,000 novelists, poets, essayists, journalists, and
other writers, with in-depth coverage of 2,500 of the most-studied
authors.
Contemporary Literary Criticism Select
Description: Contemporary Literary Criticism Select presents significant
published criticism on the life and works of novelists, poets, playwrights,
short story writers, and other creative writers now living or who died after
December 31, 1959.
Other Indexes
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Essay & General Literature Index
Access to nearly 65,000 essays contained in some 5,300 anthologies and collections. Each
year more than 300 single and multi-author collections are indexed as well as more than 20
selected annuals and serials. Coverage includes all of the humanities and social sciences,
including literary works, art history, drama, and film. Online coverage is 1985 to present.
1900 - 1984 is available in print
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British Humanities Index
BHI indexes over 320 internationally respected humanities journals and weekly magazines
published in the UK and other English speaking countries, as well as quality newspapers
published in the UK.
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Play Index
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Short Story Index
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Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry
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International Bibliography of Theatre (1985- )
20th Century
• American Humanities Index (1975- ) – Print and Online
Textbook 19
• Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature (print and Online) - provides
comprehensive indexing of the most popular general-interest periodicals
published in the United States and reflects the history of 20th century
America.
• Arts and Humanities Citation Index (Web of Science) (print and
Online) -- provides access to the bibliographic information and cited
references of all items published in more than 1,100 of the world's leading
arts and humanities journals.
Textbook 20
Examples of BIOGRAPHIES
• American National Biography(ANB)
• Oxford Dictionary of National Biography DNB
• Dictionary of Literary Biography (DLB)
• Biography Resource Center
• Wilson Biographies Plus Illustrated
• Contemporary Authors
Eighteenth Century Journals
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Full-text of prominent 18th century newspapers and periodicals.
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Many are ephemeral, lasting only for a handful of issues, others run for several
years.
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Invaluable for the study of all aspects of the eighteenth century, including
– crime
– sport
– advertising
– the theatre
– fashion
– politics
– revolution
– agriculture
– social issues
– society life.
Archive of Celtic-Latin Literature-fulltext
(CD)
Dates: (400-1200 A.D.)
Description: Celtic-Latin literature from 400-1200 A.D.
Other Online Databases
English & American Language and Literature
African-American Poetry (1750-1900)
Description: Nearly 3,000 poems written by African-American poets in the
late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
English Poetry 600-1900
English Poetry 2nd Edition
•
1st edition is essentially the complete English poetic canon from 600 to 1900. Over
165,000 poems by more than 1,250 poets drawn from nearly 4,500 printed sources.
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2nd edition builds on the 1st with enhanced functionality and the addition of more
than 20,000 poems from several new categories.
– Containing more than 183,000 poems by over 2,700 poets, English Poetry, 2 nd edition
now provides good representation both of the literary heritages of Commonwealth and
ex-colonial countries and of the poetic legacies of English writers who have only been
brought back to scholarly attention during the last thirty years.
American Drama
Dates: (1600-present)
Description: When complete, this collection will contain more than 2,000 plays by
American dramatists that chronicle the history and culture of America through its
dramatic writing. At present, American Drama includes 711 plays by dramatists
such as Thomas Paine, Edward Hitchcock, and James Lawson.
American Poetry (1600-1900)
Description: Over 40,000 poems by more than 200 American poets from
the Colonial Period to the early twentieth century.
Eighteenth-Century Fiction, 1700-1780
Description: 96 complete works in English prose from the period
1700-1780, by writers from the British Isles. Includes a scanned
version of Sterne's Tristram Shandy, and two different editions of
Richardson's Clarissa and Pamela and of Swift's Gulliver's Travels.
Faber Poetry Library
• A collection of some of the most influential poets of the twentieth
century. The Faber list spans the seventy-year history of this major
publishing house, and includes the poetry of James Joyce, Siegfried
Sassoon, T.S. Eliot, Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath and Seamus Heaney.
• In total the Faber Poetry Library contains 140 volumes by 50 poets.
Bible in English, 990-1970
Description: 20 different versions of the English Bible from the tenth to the
twentieth century.
Canadian Poetry
• Contains the full text of more than 12,000 poems by 142 poets including
Bliss Carman, Isabella Valancy Crawford and Archibald Lampman.
Early American Fiction
Dates: (1789-1850)
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Provides both images and text for a well-defined and comprehensive collection
of early American fiction.
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Presently includes 440 titles by 80 authors, including first printings of works by
James Fenimore Cooper, Edgar Allan Poe, Robert Montgomery Bird,
Washington Irving, Catharine Sedgwick, and Nathaniel Hawthorne.
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A list of the authors with brief biographical details is included.
Nineteenth Century Fiction
Description: 250 novels from the period 1782 to 1903, including
works by all the major Victorian novelists such as Dickens, Thackeray,
the Brontës, Eliot and Hardy, as well as the landmarks of Gothic and
other fiction from the Romantic period.
English Drama 1280-1915
• 4,000 plays by 1,200 authors from the late thirteenth century to the
early twentieth century.
Early English Prose Fiction
Dates: (1500-1700)
Description: Early English Prose Fiction contains 211 works in English
prose by writers from the British Isles from the period 1500-1700.
20th Century African-American Poetry
Dates: (20th century)
Description: A database of modern and contemporary African-American poetry
from the early twentieth century to the present. Features 10,000 poems by
around 70 of the most important African-American poets of the last century.
20th Century American Poetry
Dates: (20th century)
Description: This collection includes 52,000 poems drawn from 750
volumes by over 300 poets, including Adrienne Rich, Andrei Codrescu,
Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, Denise Levertov, Wallace Stevens,
Langston Hughes, Lucille Clifton, and Cathy Song.
20th Century English Poetry
Dates: (20th century)
Description: A collection of 594 volumes of poetry by 282 poets from
1900 to the present day, including W. B. Yeats, Rudyard Kipling, Robert
Graves, A. E. Housman, John Betjeman, Fleur Adcock, Tony Harrison,
Benjamin Zephaniah and Carol Ann Duffy, and incorporating the poets
in The Faber Poetry Library.
W.B. Yeats Collection (1885-1995)
Dates: (1885-1995)
Description: The major works of W.B. Yeats in all genres, including
poetry, plays, criticism and fiction, published between 1885 and 1995.
Editions and Adaptations of Shakespeare,
1591-1911
Contains eleven major editions from the First Folio of 1623 to the
Cambridge edition of 1863-6, twenty-eight separate contemporary
printings of individual plays and poems, selected apocrypha and related
works. In addition it contains more than one hundred adaptations,
sequels and burlesques from the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries, including the whole of Bell's Acting Edition of Shakespeare's
Plays (1774). In the great majority of cases texts have been captured
entire, with all introductions, prefaces, appendices, indices, notes
editorial and authorial, essays, tables, figures, illustrations etc.
reproduced in full. Half title pages, publisher's advertisements and
decorations have not been captured. Hypertext links have been created
to connect editorial matter to the texts whenever possible. Where
omissions have been made they are noted in the relevant bibliographic
entry.
Literary Theory
Dates: (Ancient Greece to the present)
Description: Literary Theory traces the history of literary theory and
criticism from Plato to Judith Butler. It contains over 1,000 works by
more than 350 writers, including: formal treatises on criticism, essays
and manifestos, literary prefaces, theories of imagination, taste and
aesthetics, and major examples of contemporary theory.
Early American imprints. Series I, Evans, 1639-1800
Early American Imprints, Series II - Shaw-Shoemaker, 1801-1819
Vast full-text resource of information about every aspect of life in 17th - and
18th-century America as well as the first couple of decades of the 19th.
Subjects covered range from agriculture and auctions through foreign
affairs, diplomacy, literature, music, religion, the Revolutionary War,
slavery, temperance, witchcraft and just about any other topic imaginable.
Early English Books Online
• EEBO brings nearly every English language book published from the
invention of printing in 1475 to 1700 to the Internet.
• Works by Shakespeare, Spenser, Bacon, More, Erasmus, Boyle, Newton,
Galileo; musical exercises by Henry Purcell and novels by Aphra Behn;
prayer books, pamphlets, and proclamations; almanacs, calendars, and
other primary resources are all in full facsimile.
Eighteenth Century Collections Online
•
When complete, this database will deliver every significant English-language and
foreign-language title printed in Great Britain between 1701 and 1800, along with
thousands of important works from the Americas.
•
It will comprise nearly 150,000 titles and editions and will allow full-text searching
of more than 33 million pages of material.
•
Includes a variety of materials - from books and directories, Bibles, sheet music and
sermons to advertisements - and works by many well-known and lesser-known
authors, all providing a diverse collection of material for the researcher of the
eighteenth century.
•
Variant editions of each individual work are frequently offered to enable scholars to
make textual comparisons of the works.
•
The database is divided into seven subject areas: History and Geography; Fine Arts
and Social Sciences; Medicine, Science and Technology; Literature and Language;
Religion and Philosophy; Law; General.
Asian American Drama
• Asian American Drama contains more than 250 plays by over 40
playwrights, together with detailed, fielded information on related
productions, theaters, production companies, and more. Many of the plays
have never been published before. The collection begins with the works of
Sadakichi Hartmann in the late nineteenth century and includes such
contemporary playwrights as Philip Kan Gotanda, Elizabeth Wong, and
Jeannie Barroga. The database also includes selected playbills, production
photographs
Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts
Dates: 1973-present
• Covers a wide range of areas related to the nature and use of
language.
• Major topics include phonetics, phonology, syntax and semantics.
• Complete coverage is also given to various fields of linguistics
including descriptive, historical, comparative, theoretical and
geographical linguistics.
Black Drama
• Contains the full text of about 1,200 full text plays from the mid-1800s to
the present by over 150 playwrights from North America, English-speaking
Africa, the Caribbean, and other African diaspora countries.
• Many of the works are rare, hard to find, or out of print.
• Includes previously unpublished plays by writers such as Langston Hughes,
Ed Bullins, Willis Richardson, Amiri Baraka, Randolph Edmonds, and Zora
Neale Hurston.
Middle English Compendium
• The Middle English Compendium is composed of three major Middle
English electronic resources:
– an electronic version of the Middle English Dictionary
– a HyperBibliography of Middle English prose and verse, based on the MED
bibliographies
– an associated network of electronic resources, including a large collection of
Middle English texts.
North American Theatre Online
• Contains tens of thousands of records for people, places, theatres,
productions, production companies, and more.
• Also includes more than 40,000 pages of full-text reference works and
content from hundreds of top theatre Web resources.
• The database will continue to grow quarterly, aiming to cover everything
related to the North American stage from the 1600s to the present.
Past Masters
• Includes three collections of full text databases:
– (1) philosophy and theology from Plato to Wittgenstein
– (2) English letters: correspondence, diaries, memoirs and notebooks from
distinguished British writers, statesmen, scientists, churchmen, explorers and
philosophers in British history
– (3) women writers: letters, journals, and notebooks from important women
writers in the English language.
• Past Masters uses authoritative editions from established, scholarly
publishers.
Scottish Women Poets of the Romantic Period
• This is an electronic collection of over 60 volumes of lyric poetry by about
fifty Scottish women, written between 1789 and 1832. The database also
contains critical reviews, essays and associated bibliographical and
biographical material. There are also selected pertinent web sites.
Oxford English Dictionary
Dates: (latest edition)
Description: The Second Edition provides a comprehensive history of
the English language and illustrates its development by quotations from
both scholarly and popular works. In total the second edition of the
OED contains nearly two and a half million quotations.
Times Literary Supplement Centenary Archive
Dates: (1902-1990)
Description: An index to the TLS together with images of the
publication. Many of the previously anonymous contributors have been
identified. Full-text searching will be available by the end of 2000.
Dictionary of Old English: A to G Online
Dates: (600-1150 A.D.)
Description: The Dictionary of Old English: A to G online includes the first
release of the letter G, containing some 1319 headwords, as well as revised
versions of the seven previously published fascicles (1986-2003). Both simple
and Boolean searches are accommodated. Links provide full bibliographic
references for each of the texts cited within an entry. The DOE is now linked to
the online Oxford English Dictionary 2 and Oxford English Dictionary 3 to
facilitate linguistic research.
Other Online Databases
Language & Literature
Languages Other than English: A Brief Selection
Théâtre du Grand Siècle
Dates: (1600-1699)
Description: Théâtre du Grand Siécle includes the full text of seventyseven plays by Corneille, Molière and Racine. This constitutes the
complete works of Corneille, Molière and Racine.
Teatro Español del Siglo de Oro
Dates: (1998)
Description: The Teatro Español del Siglo de Oro full text database
contains more than 800 plays written by 16 dramatists during the
sixteenth and seventeenth century in Spain. These important dramatic
works are either edited by the playwrights themselves or by an editor
"endorsed" by the playwright. The entire text of each play is included
and searchable.
ARTFL - Textual Database of French literature
Dates: (1200-present)
Description: Includes nearly 2,000 French texts ranging from classic works of
French literature to various kinds of non-fiction prose and technical writing
covering the 13th-20th Centuries. Database includes literature, philosophy, arts,
sciences. The eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries are about equally
represented, with a smaller selection of seventeenth century texts as well as some
medieval and Renaissance texts.
Bertolt Brechts Werke im WWW
Dates: (1999)
Description: The first authorized electronic edition is based on Bertolt
Brecht, Ausgewählte Werke in sechs Bänden, Jubiläumsausgabe um 100.
Geburtstag. Published in cooperation with Suhrkamp Verlag.and encoded in
SGML.
La Critique Littéraire de Laharpe à Proust
Dates: (1800-1899)
Description: Contains 115 works of twenty-nine French writers from
Alexis and Baudelaire to Saint-Beuve, Schlegel and Zola. In addition,
works by literary critical specialists to explore the rapid development
of literary theory between 1788 and 1925.
Autour du Romantisme : Le Roman, 1792-1886
Dates: (1792-1886)
Description: Contains the works of Arlincourt, Borel, Chateaubriand, Dumas,
Feydeau, Hugo, Karr, Lamartine, Maistre, Nerval, Sade, Souza, Staël, and Vigny, as
well as many other French authors of the 19th century.
Goethes Werke im WWW
Dates: (1997)
Description: Electronic version of Goethes Werke, Weimar: H. Böhlau,
1887-1919; Goethes Gespräche. Leipzig: Biedermann, 1889-1896;
Goethes Werke, Nachträge zur Weimarer Ausgabe, München: Deutscher
Taschenbuch Verlag, 1990.
Kafkas Werke im WWW
Dates: (1992)
Description: The Kritische Kafka-Ausgabe des S. Fischer Verlages bei
Chadwyck-Healey is the complete critical edition published by S.
Fischer Verlag digitized and encoded in SGML The web site text has
German and English versions.
Les Romanciers Réalistes et Naturalistes
1820-1910
Dates: (1820-1910)
Description: Complete prose works of Balzac, Daudet, Flaubert, Les
Goncourt, Huysmans, Maupassant, Stendhal, Vallès and Zola plus a
selection of authors such as Les Familiers de Médan and Le Manifeste
des Cinq.
Schillers Werke im WWW
Dates: (1998)
Description: The electronic edition of the Nationalausgabe of
Schiller's works, established in 1940 as the definitive edition of his
works, letters and conversations.