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Reference Guide to Literature
This guide is designed to help you find the reference works available in Magill Library for research in literature. It highlights the sources you might use first, places you can go to start reading about a topic that interests you. These can help you assemble a selective bibliography about it even before you start using Tripod and indexes. Using good subject-specific reference sources can save you lots of time--so can asking a librarian for help. Don't wait, and don't be shy--you can do both!
The Basics:
Foreign and English Language Dictionaries
Oxford English Dictionary
Unsurpassed as a scholarly dictionary of the English language, the OED is based on historical principles, that is, it shows not only etymologies but charts changes of meaning over time. It does so by making extensive use of illustrative quotations. Refer to the OED for questions regarding an author's probable intended use of a word or about a word's derivation.
How to cite OED Online
Here's a link from OED on how to cite their site (say that five times fast).
Collins French Dictionary Plus
This edition has been revised and updated to offer extensive and relevant coverage of today's English and French, with thousands of phrases and examples guiding the user to the most appropriate translation.
The Oxford Spanish dictionary
Publisher: Oxford ; Oxford University Press, 2003.
"This dictionary offers the richest coverage of the 24 principal regional varieties of Spanish, with special emphasis on modern idioms and colloquial usage. Words and phrases are clearly marked to show the Spanish-speaking region where they are used, from Spain to Chile or Mexico, from Central America to the River Plate. In addition, variant pronunciations and the degree of formality of words, from formal through to taboo, are marked wherever necessary."--BOOK JACKET.
Collins German dictionary
Contains more than 900,000 entries and translations including thousands of contemporary technical business and political terms.
Dictionaries of Literary Terms
A glossary of literary terms
Publisher: Fort Worth : Harcourt Brace College Publishers, c1999.
Every student of literature should own this volume or C. Hugh Holman's A Handbook to Literature. Abrams includes short bibliographies for major entries and a series of articles on the major contemporary literary theories. Holman covers much the same ground as Abrams but includes more entries as well as bibliographies, an outline of the history of British and U.S. literature, and lists of the recipients of literary prizes.
A glossary of contemporary literary theory
Publisher: London : Arnold ; 2000.
Hawthorn addresses the vocabulary that has grown up around the literary theory boom. He includes terms from literature studies and rhetoric as well as terms that have come over into literature studies, often with particular nuances or emphasis, from other humanities fields, particularly philosophy, and from the social sciences. Since so much of this technical vocabulary is itself the subject of debate, he is shooting at a moving target in his definitions, but he does a good job of clarifying the often difficult locutions used in today's critical writing. See also Julian Wolfreys' Key Concepts in Literary Theory.
The new Princeton encyclopedia of poetry and poetics
Publisher: Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, 1993.
The Princeton Encyclopedia includes entries for poetic genres and movements and for the theoretical and critical terms used in the study of poetry. It has no entries for poets or individual poems. Unlike its predecessors, this edition pays a good deal of attention to recent developments in literary and aesthetic theory.
Handbooks and Encyclopedias on Topics Related to Literature
BeneĢt's reader's encyclopedia
Publisher: New York : HarperCollinsPublishers, c1996.
Benét offers brief articles about authors, characters, allusions, and literary forms and movements.
Brewer's dictionary of modern phrase & fable
Use Brewer for identifying proverbial expressions, literary allusions, mythological and other figures mentioned in literary works, etc. Also available in print.
Oxford dictionary of phrase and fable
Publisher: Oxford ; Oxford University Press, 2005.
Like Brewer's, but with slightly different content and bent.
A Dictionary of cultural and critical theory
Publisher: Oxford [England] ; Blackwell, 1996.
Payne's work charts the social science influences that have become central to literary study in the last couple of decades. Compare the works listed at item "h" immediately below. See also The Blackwell Dictionary of Twentieth-Century Social Thought; Peter Brooker’s Cultural Theory: A Glossary; The Icon Critical Dictionary of Postmodern Thought; Bill Ashcroft et. al. Key Concepts in Post-Colonial Studies; and Tim O'Sullivan et al. Key Concepts in Communication and Cultural Studies.
The New Oxford companion to literature in French
Publisher: Oxford [England] : Clarendon Press ; 1995.
The Library also has Oxford's companions to German, Spanish, African-American, Irish, Canadian and Australian literature. Use them for quick factual information or for summary overviews with some critical comment.
Johns Hopkins guide to literary theory & criticism
A full-text searchable database of articles on individual critics and theorists, critical and theoretical schools and movements, and the critical and theoretical innovations of specific countries and historical periods. It also treats related persons and fields that have been shaped by or have themselves shaped literary theory and criticism. Each entry includes a selective primary and secondary bibliography.
Encyclopedia of contemporary literary theory
Publisher: Toronto : University of Toronto Press, 1993.
Divided into the three sections noted by its subtitle, Makaryk offers entries on 49 critical schools and methods, biographical/critical articles on important theorists associated with them, and a treatment of those technical terms that the compilers find to be the most complex or troublesome for readers. Both this work and Encyclopedia of Literature and Criticism (below) have good bibliographies.
Encyclopedia of feminist literary theory
Publisher: New York : Garland, 1997.
This work specializes in the writers, topics, and issues that constitute feminism's literary wing. See also the more general A Glossary of Feminist Theory and Encyclopedia of Feminist Theories, the more specific Feminist Encyclopedia of Spanish Literature and Feminist Encyclopedia of French Literature.
The Oxford encyclopedia of theatre and performance
Publisher: Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2003.
See also Phyllis Hartnoll's classic The Oxford Companion to the Theatre, which is similar to the other Oxford Companions listed in this bibliography in offering short articles on all aspects of world drama and theatre and
The Oxford history of world cinema
Publisher: Oxford ; Oxford University Press, 1996.
Chronologically arranged to cover periods, topics, and national cinemas, with side bars for important individuals. See also Ephraim Katz, The Film Encyclopedia for short treatment of individual people and The Oxford Companion to Film, which needs an update but is nonetheless useful for short treatment of films, people, and topics.
Writing: Style Manuals, Grammar Reviews, Guides to Usage:
Whatever each of us may think about our command of the language, few of us can afford to do without advice from time to time on matters of grammar, syntax, and usage, not to mention spelling and punctuation. The following works will help you with the writing and formal presentation of English prose. Given the range of informed judgment that exists on issues like these, expect to find some differences of opinion among these volumes.
The Chicago manual of style.
Publisher: Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2003.
The Chicago Manual is a comprehensive style manual used throughout the U.S. publishing world, perhaps more comprehensive than most college students need, but containing much useful advice on matters of punctuation, capitalization, and word choice as well as on the documentation of sources.
The Random House handbook
Publisher: New York : McGraw-Hill, c1992.
Crews is a comprehensive, well-indexed, easily used review of points of grammar. Every student should own and habitually consult this volume or one like it. For exhaustive treatment of points of grammar, see The Oxford English Grammar or Rodney D. Huddleston et al. The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language.
MLA Handbook for writers of research papers
Publisher: New York : Modern Language Association of America, 2003.
The MLA's Handbook is a standard source for advice on formatting and documenting research in literature studies; it contains useful information on all matters pertaining to writing papers.
The elements of style
Publisher: Boston : Allyn and Bacon, c2000.
Strunk and White is a standard work favored for its common-sensical, plain-spoken, down-to-earth, traditionally Anglo-U.S. approach to clear, efficient prose writing.
Citation Builder, an NCSU Libraries web tool
Use this tool to help you format your bibliographic citations according to MLA, APA, or CBE styles.