LITERATURE

Section Index:
Book Reviews on the Web
Criticism Guides
Criticism/Analysis on the Web
Full-text
Guides and Handbooks
Interviews

Guide to Book Reviews on the Web

• Book Reviews - "This page links primarily to actively maintained sites done by experienced reviewers or subject experts. We try not to link to pages that are primarily promotions of print book reviews, with little substance on their Web site."

Guides to Criticisms/Commentary

• Gale Net and Gale's Literature Resource Center (LRC) are two parts of a whole - each has its advantages.
  • Gale Net - indexes the complete contents of their literary series which includes such titles as: Short Story Criticism(over 30+ vols); Drama Criticism (10+ vols); Poetry Criticism (25+ vols); and, over 250 volumes covering literature from its earliest times to last year. The index refers the user to the specific volume and page for the full-text of the article. Click here to locate the Gale titles on the Queens Campus, St. John's University NY.
  • Gale's Literature Resource Center - covers a small portion of that total but includes, online, the full-text of what it does cover. So, if you don't find what you want in the LRC you still have the full resource of the Gale Publications in print via the Gale Net.
• The Internet Public Library - the Internet Public Library Online Literary Criticism Collection.

The Gale site mentioned above is an excellent source of criticisms. But... not all criticisms are there. Below are guides for finding additional criticisms in the St. John's University Library.

• Drama
• Novels
• Poetry
• Short-stories

Criticisms and Analysis on the Web

• Modern American Poetry - Criticisms and information on over 100 modern American poets.
• NovelGuide - From their webpage, "Novelguide.com is the premier free source for literary analysis on the web. We provide an educational supplement for better understanding of classic and contemporary Literature Profiles, Metaphor Analysis, Theme Analyses, and Author Biographies."
• Shakespeares-sonnets.com - "All the sonnets are provided here, with descriptive commentary attached to each one, giving explanations of difficult and unfamiliar words and phrases, and with a full analysis of any special problems of interpretation which arise."
• Sparknotes - From their webpage, "Unlike other study guides written by disgruntled academics and stodgy old professors, SparkNotes are written exclusively by students and recent graduates." - - Pop-up advertisments mar the pages but the information may be useful to you.

Handbooks, Dictionaries, Encyclopedias and Guides

• Literary Dictionary - A Glossary of Literary Terms from Gale Publications.
• Literary Dictionary - A Glossary of Literary Terms and A Handbook of Rhetorical Devices from Cambridge University.
• Literary Dictionary - A Glossary of Literary Terms and A Handbook of Rhetorical Devices.
• Virtual Salt - A glossary of literary terms.
• Outline of American Literature - Developed by the United States Information Agency as "an overview of the entire span of American literature.
• Timeline of American Literature - This timeline covers the period from pre-1620 to the 1920. Included are links to some wonderful author sites on the web. The author of the site appears to be D. Campbell of the English Department at Gonzaga University.
• Xrefer - The Web's reference engine - This is the free portion of their site. Excellent for searching definitions of literary terms.

Full-text editions online: Novels, Plays, Short-stories, Poems, Ephemera, etc

• Full-text Books - The Carnegie Library of Pittsburg's guide to full-text books online.
• Library of American Civilization - SJU has the microfiche collection of this library of significant 19th Americana. Terry Ballard, a former adjunct professor in the SJU library, now at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut, has compiled a list of the LAC materials available online.
• Shakespeares-Sonnets.com - "All the sonnets are provided here, with descriptive commentary attached to each one, giving explanations of difficult and unfamiliar words and phrases, and with a full analysis of any special problems of interpretation which arise."
• "4Literature.net" - "Read any one of thousands of classic books free at 4Literature.net. The 4Literature archives include such things as the works of Shakespeare, religious and historical documents, children's fairy tales, Greek and Roman classics, and books by famous American authors of the 19th century.
• Full-Text from Carnegie Mellon University - "The EServer at Carnegie Mellon has been online for ten years; today we offer 27,241 works online. Browse or search our collections, talk on our mailing lists and live chat line, or join our teams of volunteers publishing to Internet readers."
• American Time Capsule. - From the webpage, "The Printed Ephemera Collection at the Library of Congress is a rich repository of Americana. In total, the Collection comprises 28,000 primary source items dating from the seventeenth century to the present and encompasses key events and eras in American history."
• European Literature - Full-text - From the Association of College and Research Libraries: "This page lists Internet sources for literary texts in the western European languages other than English."

Recorded interviews with famous authors.

• Interviews - From the website, "For many years, most of the best writers of the English language found their way to Don Swaim's CBS Radio studio in New York. Listen in on these classic behind-the-scene conversations here in RealAudio."

 

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