ENGL 1100: Literary Interpretation Guide
Overview
The library has many resources that can help with your assignments for this and other classes. For a more complete list of resources, see the English Language and Literature subject guide.
Tutorial
Whether you are new to Western or new to using the University Libraries, the online tutorial ResearchPath introduces you to the resources and services for your research.
This newly revised interactive research skills tutorial covers the research process from start to finish. ResearchPath is divided into a series of video and audio modules and each ends with a quiz. Quiz results may be submitted to your instructor. Check with your instructor if the class or instructor's name is not listed.
Literary Criticism
A full-text database of more than 350,000 works of English and American poetry, drama and prose from the year 600 to modern times, and literary criticism from over 300 journals and various reference resources. Includes biographies, bibliographies, and links to websites. The "My Archive" feature allows you to save save articles. This database also has a citation export feature into Refworks, and Endnotes. This subscription is limited to four simultaneous users. Please logout when finished.
Full-text biographies, critical essays and reviews, poems, short stories and plays of more than 130,000 international authors. This database contains the full content of the Dictionary of Literary Biography, Contemporary Authors, and selections from Children's Literature Review, Drama Criticism, Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism, Poetry Criticism, Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism and 11 other literary criticism series. Database has export features for Refworks, Endotes and Procite.
This database represents a range of modern and historical views on authors and their works across regions, eras and genres including:
Contemporary Literary Criticism, Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism, Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism, Drama Criticism, Poetry Criticism and Children's Literature Review. This database has a personal folder option where you can save articles for future use. This database can be cross searched with the database Something About the Author here.
MLA International Bibliography (Modern Language Association)
Indexes periodicals and series, monographs, book collections, dissertation abstracts, Festschriften (books written to honor a particular scholar), and other sources. Areas covered include modern languages and literature, folklore, linguistics, literary themes, genres, and related topics across national literatures and other classified boundaries. Covers from 1963 to the present. Updated 9 times per year. Has citation tools for Refworks, Endotes and Procite. It also has a personal folder option to save articles and citations.
Z 7006 .M64 (Ref. Index Shelves) (1921-present)
Z 1224 .C6 (Ref)
Part of the Literature Resource Center, this directory provides brief biographical information about more than 120,000 authors from the US and elsewhere. Includes writers of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, drama, journalism, and many other fields.
Dictionary of Literary Biography
Now available online, the print consists of hundreds of volumes, each covering a distinct literary period, genre, or theme, with extensive essays, frequently illustrated with images of the author and his/her works, which link biography with interpretations of the literary work. Included are literary authors, journalists, historians, screenwriters, scholars, critics, and publishers. Though international is scope, emphasis is on those authors writing in English. Some authors appear in more than one volume.
PS 129 .D5x (Ref)1978-present
Use the online index or the index in the latest published volume to find all the previous volumes.
Finding Books
Use the Basic Search, searching for the author as a subject heading (last name first), otherwise use Advanced Search to find books on your topic.
If WMU Libraries do not have the book, you can borrow it from another library through Interlibrary Loan, though you must register first. Or borrow from a Michigan library through MeLCat.
Citing Sources
MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers.
LB 2369 .G53 2009 (Ref Desk Collection)
One of the frequently used style guides for writers of term papers and scholarly articles and books in the literary field. Includes sections on citing electronic publications, and provides guidance in footnote and bibliographic conventions, quotations, manuscript submission, thesis and dissertation writing, etc. Intended primarily for high school and undergraduate college students. For the most commonly cited materials see our MLA Style guide.
Links to guides to the MLA (Modern Languages Association) citation format, the most frequently used style in the humanities, especially when in writing about literature.