4. Find Literature Criticism

Once you find your history source, you will also need to find 2-3 literary criticism sources that actually analyze the short story itself. For this you'll search our literature databases or look for books/ebooks at the library.

Search Tips / Keywords

Before you start searching, let's talk about a little bit about how to search for literary criticism for your story.

Basic Search: a good first search is just the name of the short story in quotation marks, followed by the word 'and' and the author's last name.

"A Rose for Emily" and Faulkner

This general search will show you everything we have on a certain short story (sometimes there is more than others). If there are only 5 articles, you can browse through them. If there are 100, you may want to narrow your search a bit by using keywords from your topic.

Narrowed Search: "A Rose for Emily" and Faulkner and Death [Remember to search many times with different keywords!]

Remember, though, not to count on keywords too much. If your keywords aren't working, ask a librarian for help!

Literature Databases and Book Sources

These first 3 databases are the best place to start when looking for literary criticism.

Gale Literature Resource Center
This database contains information on authors, their works, criticisms of their works, and various other aspects of literature.
Bloom's Literature
Writings of Harold Bloom as well as other critics. Features author biographies, overviews, synopses, analyses and literary criticism of thousands of works from novels to poetry to plays, video segments, in-depth full-text entries on literary topics and themes and a literary timeline. Proxy Bypass
JSTOR Archival Journals and Primary Sources Collection
This archival collection includes more than 2,000 journals and 14,000 eBooks in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences subjects including health science, history, religion, law, education, literary reviews, art, business, psychology, and many more subjects.

Other Literature Criticism Resources

After searching the first 3 databases above, if you'd like additional resources to search for information about your short story, try these resources.

Gale Literature Criticism
Gale Literature Criticism contains large amounts of literature criticism essays from these series: Short Story Criticism, Drama Criticism, Poetry Criticism, and Shakespearean Criticism.
EBSCO Literature Databases
Search 2 EBSCO literary databases at once: Literary Reference Source and Academic Search Premier. Proxy Bypass

All Literature Databases

Search for Books

Search for Books & eBooks

Use the search box below to search the SCC Library Catalog for physical books (in one of our library locations) and eBooks. You can also open the Library Catalog or use the Advanced Search for more search options.