Definition
A collection of textual or spoken works that share a common subject matter. Though the term traditionally refers to a humanities context and includes belles-lettres, prose, verse, fiction, or nonfiction with a recognized artistic value, the concept is appropriately applied to the social sciences realm as well.
In general, literature is considered to be something worthy of and important to record and preserve as a cultural marker.
Literature. (2009). In The SAGE glossary of the social and behavioral sciences. Retrieved from http://proxy.devry.edu/login?qurl=http%3A%2F%2Fsearch.credoreference.com.proxy.devry.edu%2Fcontent%2Fentry%2Fsagegsbs%2Fliterature%2F0
Terms to Search
adult literature, American literature, analysis, authors, authorship, bibliography, biography, books & reading, censorship, characters, characteristics of literature, children's literature, comedy, criticism, dedication, drama, education, errata, essay, fiction, film adaptation, forward, literary criticism, literary style, literature, literature-history & criticism, literature review, noir, nonfiction, novel, novella, picture books for children, plot, poetry, poetry critique, preface, psychology of characters, short story, tales, tragedy, women in literature, world literature, young adult literature
Search by author’s name as follows: Poe, Edgar Allan.
Recommneded Databases
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- Academic Search Complete This link opens in a new window Access to over 13,000 multi-disciplinary periodicals (more than 8,500 in full-text), including monographs, conference proceedings, reports, etc.
- eBooks by EBSCOhost This link opens in a new window Provides access to over 20,000 eBooks on a wide variety of topics
- EBSCOhost This link opens in a new window After logging into EBSCOhost, you may click on the Literary Reference Center PLUS link or you may click on the Advanced Search link. Academic Search Complete is already selected. This would be a good database to use for your search.
- Literary Reference Center PLUS This link opens in a new window Combines information from over 1,200 reference works, 200 literary journals, study guides and videos.
Recommended Websites
- Literature Search Engine This will search all of the websites listed below simultaneously or you may choose to select specific search site(s) to search.
- Alex Catalogue of Electronic Texts "This is a collection of public domain and open access documents with a focus on American and English literature as well as Western philosophy. Its purpose is to help facilitate a person’s liberal arts education."
- Bibliography of Literary Theory, Criticism and Philology "This is a bibliography of literary studies, criticism and philology. The current edition consists of 7,678 text files (c. 400 Mb of text, the equivalent of more than 50 medium-size print volumes) listing over 300,000 items (books, book chapters, articles, films, websites, etc.), with a main focus on English-speaking authors and criticism or literary theory written in English—although there are many listings on linguistics, cultural studies, discourse analysis, and other philological subjects as well. It includes basic bibliographical information on several thousand authors, critical schools, literary and linguistic concepts, genres, periods, motifs, and other subjects."
- Bibliomania "Free Online Literature with more than 2000 Classic Texts."
- Digital Library of the Commons "The Digital Library of the Commons (DLC) is a gateway to the international literature on the commons. The DLC provides free and open access to full-text articles, papers, and dissertations. This site contains an author-submission portal; an Image Database; the Comprehensive Bibliography of the Commons; a Keyword Thesaurus, and links to relevant reference sources on the study of the commons."
- Literature Project "Literature Project is a collection of free classic books, poems, speeches, and plays. For each piece of literature, we offer a free online eBook that can be easily read and searched. In addition, each online book includes links to a downloadable eBook version. We also offer Text-to-Speech software that can be downloaded from our site."
- LiTgloss "Litgloss is a collection of texts of literary or cultural interest, written in languages other than English, and expertly annotated so as to facilitate comprehension by English-speaking readers."
- Logos Library "The LOGOS LIBRARY is a powerful interface with a massive database (currently 707.737.941 words) containing multilingual novels, technical literature and translated texts."
- Luminarium: Anthology of English Literature This site contains texts of English Literature from the Medieval, Renaissance and restoration periods as well as the 17th century.
- manybooks.net "Browse through the most popular titles, recommendations, or recent reviews from our visitors. Perhaps you'll find something interesting in the special collections. There are more than 29,000 eBooks available for Kindle, Nook, iPad and most other eReaders, and they're all free! If you still can't decide what to read you might want to browse through some covers to see what strikes your fancy. Or try the Recent Additions to the library, with genre filter."
- Page by Page Books "We have hundreds of classic books you can read right now, all absolutely free! It is an ideal way to expand your horizons, catch up on your reading list, or read books that it seems like everyone else has already read."
- Planet eBook "Welcome to Planet eBook, the home of high-quality — FREE — classic literature. All our works are entirely free to download, read and share."
- Project Gutenberg "Project Gutenberg offers over 46,000 free ebooks: choose among free epub books, free kindle books, download them or read them online. "We carry high quality ebooks: All our ebooks were previously published by bona fide publishers. We digitized and diligently proofread them with the help of thousands of volunteers.
- Victorian Women Writers Project "The Victorian Women Writers Project (VWWP) began in 1995 at Indiana University and is primarily concerned with the exposure of lesser-known British women writers of the 19th century. The collection represents an array of genres - poetry, novels, children's books, political pamphlets, religious tracts, histories, and more. VWWP contains scores of authors, both prolific and rare."
eJournals
- Atlantis "The Journal of the Spanish Association for Anglo-American Studies (AEDEAN) is a peer-reviewed scholarly journal founded in 1979 and published twice a year in June and December. It publishes original research articles on linguistic, literary and cultural topics, past and present, of English-speaking communities, including pertinent cross-cultural comparative analyses."
- Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) "DOAJ is an online directory that indexes and provides access to quality open access, peer-reviewed journals."
eBooks
These are a sampling of eBooks available from the library.
Women in Science Fiction and Fantasy by
Works of science fiction and fantasy increasingly explore gender issues, feature women as central characters, and are written by women writers. This book examines women's contributions to science fiction and fantasy across a range of media and genres, such as fiction, nonfiction, film, television, art, comics, graphic novels, and music. The first volume offers survey essays on major topics, such as sexual identities, fandom, women's writing groups, and feminist spirituality; the second provides alphabetically arranged entries on more specific subjects, such as Hindu mythology, Toni Morrison, magical realism, and Margaret Atwood. Entries are written by expert contributors and cite works for further reading, and the set closes with a selected, general bibliography. Students and general readers love science fiction and fantasy. And science fiction and fantasy works increasingly explore gender issues, feature women as central characters, and are written by women writers. Older works demonstrate attitudes toward women in times past, while more recent works grapple with contemporary social issues. This book helps students use science fiction and fantasy to understand the contributions of women writers, the representation of women in the media, and the experiences of women in society.
Call Number: eBooks by EBSCOHostISBN: 9780313335891Publication Date: 2008-12-30
Africanism and Authenticity in African-American Women's Novels by Call Number: eBooks by EBSCOhostISBN: 9780813031347''A groundbreaking work that links the lives and culture of African-American women to those of their African sisters. . . . Levin completes the circle of these women's lives and histories by tracing their experiences from Africa to America and back.
The Bitch Is Back by Call Number: eBooks by EBSCOhostISBN: 9780585457499Publication Date: 2001-01-01
Republic of Readers? by
What is the proper role for literature in political thought and analysis? Can reading novels make us better citizens of a liberal democratic society? What is the status of argument and reason in an academy dominated by readings and redescriptions? Simon Stow identifies a potentially detrimental literary turn in the contemporary academy, arguing that the study of literature and the study of politics have become somewhat indistinguishable enterprises. Drawing on the work of Judith Butler, Terry Eagleton, Martha Nussbaum, and Richard Rorty, he examines the problematic claims, circular reasoning, and misplaced assumptions that underpin this disciplinary merging, and seeks to defend political philosophy and social science against the rival claims of literature and literary criticism as sources of political insight and construction.
Call Number: eBooks by EBSCOhostISBN: 9781429498227Publication Date: 2007-01-01
Twentieth-century American Fiction on Screen by
The essays in this collection analyse major film adaptations of twentieth-century American fiction, from F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Last Tycoon to Toni Morrison's Beloved. During the century, films based on American literature came to play a central role in the history of the American cinema. Combining cinematic and literary approaches, this volume explores the adaptation process from conception through production and reception. The contributors explore the ways political and historical contexts have shaped the transfer from book to screen, and the new perspectives that films bring to literary works. In particular, they examine how the twentieth-century literary modes of realism, modernism, and postmodernism have influenced the forms of modern cinema. Written in a lively and accessible style, the book includes production stills and full filmographies. Together with its companion volume on nineteenth-century fiction, the volume offers a comprehensive account of the rich tradition of American literature on screen.
Call Number: eBooks by EBSCOhostISBN: 9780511275074Publication Date: 2006-01-01
Late Postmodernism by
Does the novel have a future? Questions of this kind, which are as old as the novel itself, acquired a fresh urgency at the end of the twentieth-century with the rise of new media and the relegation of literature to the margins of American culture. As a result, anxieties about readership, cultural authority and literary value have come to preoccupy a second generation of postmodern novelists. Through close analysis of several major novels of the past decade, including works by Don DeLillo, Philip Roth, Kathryn Davis, Jonathan Franzen and Richard Powers, Late Postmodernism examines the forces shaping contemporary literature and the remarkable strategies American writers have adopted to make sense of their place in culture.
Call Number: eBooks by EBSCOhostISBN: 9781403980403Publication Date: 2005-01-01
At Home in Diaspora by
In At Home in Diaspora, Wendy W. Walters investigates the work of Chester Himes, Michelle Cliff, and other twentieth-century black international writers who have lived in and written from countries they do not call home. Walters suggests that in the absence of a recoverable land of origin, the idea of diaspora comes to represent a home that is not singular or exclusionary.
Call Number: eBooks by EBSCOhostISBN: 9780816696802Publication Date: 2005-01-01
Other Resources
- Credo Reference This link opens in a new window An eBook collection of 600+ high-quality, constantly updated reference books, dictionaries, encyclopedias and atlases.
- RefWorks This link opens in a new window A comprehensive reference management service for preparing bibliographies in APA and other citation styles. Use RefWorks to import and create citations, build lists of references, and integrate citations into your papers using the Write-n-Cite app.
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