ENG L357 Southern Gothic Literature
General Searches
- IUCAT - Indiana University Library System's Online Catalog
In IUCAT, you can conduct searches for books, articles, films, sound recordings, etc. and limit your results on the lefthand side of the screen. - OneSearch@IU
Primarily used in the first part of a search when you're still working the narrow your topic down, OneSearch@IU will do a quick search of the catalog and databases to which IU has access.
Book Suggestions
Make sure to check out the Information icon to see why these titles might pertain to your search!
Critical Insights by
This provides contextual information regarding a number of various authors, and the themes they explore in their literature. If you're still having problems narrowing down a topic, taking a look at this might lend a hand.
Call Number: PS374.G68 S78 2013ISBN: 9781429838238Publication Date: 2013-04-01
Gothic Subjects by
This book offers both history and criticism of the Southern Gothic Literary tradition. Check it out for background and thematic elements! Both electronic and print versions are available.
Call Number: PS374.G68 S57 2014 and OnlineISBN: 9780812246131Publication Date: 2014-04-24
History of the Gothic by
For a history on the South Gothic tradition, this is a useful resource.
Call Number: PS374.G68 C76 2009ISBN: 9780708320082Publication Date: 2009-09-15
Always Cite Your Sources!
Why cite your sources in the first place? Well, citing is a way of giving credit where credit is due and ensures that you won't get blamed for claiming another person's work as your own.
For proper citation guidelines for MLA style, check out the library's MLA style guide cheat sheet. The Purdue Owl Online Writing Lab also has a fantastic breakdown of all the variables that come into play when citing using this format. Check out their section on MLA Formatting for more information.
Literary Databases
After you've conducted various general searches and dabbled through some of the resources IU has to offer, it's time to get down to some heavy-duty searching. These resources offer literary criticism, including the exploration of various thematic elements, and will surely amplify your knowledge of your topic.
- MLA International Bibliography
The MLA Bibliography indexes material in modern languages, literature, linguistics and folklore. It contains references to scholarly research in more than 3000 journals and series, in monographs, chapters of books, working papers, dissertations, proceedings, Festschriften and bibliographies.
This resource covers a breadth of subject areas from across the world, and given its inclusion of a variety of subject as well as format types, yields a number of useful returns for a student looking for more information on the Southern Gothic. It is an index, so not all full-text versions will be available online, but you can place an InterLibrary Loan (ILL) request to have the item delivered to you from within each entry.
- Literature Criticism Online
The 10 individual, award-winning Gale series that comprise Literature Criticism Online represent a range of modern and historical views on authors and their works across regions, eras and genres.
Highly useful for providing not only biographies about specific authors, but literary criticism, reviews, and even topic and work overviews. Definitely take a look at the Subject option on the left-hand side of the screen to make sure your resources are limited to what you want, and to look for new nuances of your subject.
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Academic Search Premier
Provides full-text coverage of magazine, newspaper, and scholarly journal articles for most academic disciplines. This multi-disciplinary database provides full text for more than 4,500 journals, including full text for more than 3,700 peer-reviewed titles. PDF backfiles to 1975 or further are available for well over one hundred journals, and searchable cited references are provided for more than 1,000 titles.
This is a fantastic resource that will provide full-text options, and allows you to limit results by source type (review, newspaper, journal, etc.) as well as choose specific topics under the "Subject: Thesaurus Term" on the left-hand side of the page (as shown below). Make sure to select the "Show More" option in this section to see the full list. I would highly recommend entering your search terms in and then looking under this subject section to find more keywords.
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JSTOR
Provides searchable full-text of historical runs of important scholarly journals in the humanities, arts, sciences, ecology, and business.
JSTOR is a great resource for finding particular details in a broader subject area like literature. You can limit results by journals, books, and pamphlets (using the tabs at the top of the search page), and either read online or download all the texts you find. - Literature Resource Center
Biographies, bibliographies, and critical analysis of authors from all time periods in many genres. Search by author, title, genre, literary movement or literary themes. Biographies, bibliographies, and critical analysis of authors from all time periods in many genres. Search by author, title, genre, literary movement or literary themes. Covers more than 124,000 writers and includes more than 11,700 academic essays on the authors and their works.
This resource is especially helpful, because it provides not only literature criticism, but biographies of particular authors, reviews, and primary sources as shown below. Further, it gives a useful breakdown of the keywords of various resources (as seen on the left-hand side of the image) to grant further specificity to your search.
- Literature Compass
Literature Compass is a collection of peer-reviewed survey articles covering a broad range of topics within literary scholarship. The database works much like a journal, is updated regularly, and offers multiple and differing viewpoints on key issues within the field. It also includes citations and abstracts for some of the major journals within the field. The database is searchable and browseable by time period, and all time periods are included.
Although this database won't provide as wide a breadth of information as some of the other resources here included, it is worth looking through, because those pieces that are available may be especially pertinent.