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English & Literature: Literary Criticism & Reviews

This guide will help you find articles in databases, track new additions to the English and Literature collection, find books and ebooks, and find helpful guides for your research needs. Need help? Ask!

Using this page

This section of the guide will help with your critical analyses of literary works. Whether by helping you define literary terms and concepts, or by helping you find and explore critical approaches to literature, we hope the resources and tools in this section enhance your critical thinking and research skills.

Literary Criticism vs. Reviews vs. Literature Reviews

Description

Rather than rating the quality of an author's work as a whole, literary criticism, or critical analysis, typically focuses on how an author treats a topic or topics. Through interpretation, summarizing, or comparing the work to others, the critic's purpose (in most cases) is to increase the reader's understanding of the literary work.

There are quite a few types or schools of literary criticism/analysis. Here are 11 traditional approaches:

  • HIstorical-biographical criticism - examines a work through the perspective of an author's historical context.
  • Moral-philosophical criticism - evaluates a work based on the moral statements and judgements expressed by characters and the author within the text.
  • Sociological criticism - examines the author’s status in their society as well as the effect that the literary work had on its audience within the society (Marxist criticism falls into this category).
  • Psychoanalytic criticism - examines literature based on the psychological desires and neuroses of the characters within a particular piece of literature. Psychoanalytic critics believe that an author’s unconscious thoughts are expressed through their work.
  • Practical criticism - encourages readers to examine the text without regard to any outside context.
  • Formalism - encourages readers to judge the artistic merit of literature by examining its formal elements, like language and technical skill.
  • Reader-response criticism - believes that a reader's reaction to or interpretation of a text is as valuable a source of critical study as the text itself.
  • New criticism - focuses on examining the formal and structural elements of literature, as opposed to the emotional or moral elements.
  • Post-structuralism - questions any assumed universal truths as reliant on the social structure that influenced them.
  • Deconstruction - picks apart a text’s ideas or arguments, looking for contradictions that render any singular reading of a text impossible.
  • Feminist criticism - as it's name suggests, examines literature through a feminist lens.

(Descriptions taken from MasterClass, https://www.masterclass.com/articles/literary-criticism).

Why is literary criticism useful?

As mentioned above, literary criticism can enhance your understanding of a work. In order to write your own critical essay, it can be very useful to find examples of other criticism that will help inform your position or perspective.

The many approaches to critical analysis provide a wide variety of ways to examine literary works, expanding your appreciation and understanding of literature in general.

How can I find literary criticism?

Critical essays are usually found in scholarly journals, and many such journals can be explored from the Databases & Journals page in this guide. Here are some additional approaches to finding literary criticism:

For example, here is a search for "edgar allen poe" that also looks for "criticism" in the Subjects. Another approach is to expand the Subjects filter when viewing a list of results, then look for the subject terms "literary criticism," "criticism and interpretation," or "history and criticism" (see screenshot below). Select those checkboxes and click Apply Filters to further narrow your results.

Subject filters for literary criticism

Description

Among the forms discussed on this page, reviews are likely the format you're most familiar with. Reviews are usually relatively short pieces that provide a qualitative assessment of a work (think "5-star review"). Often, reviewers also offer a recommendation (e.g., worth reading; if you like X, you'll like this, etc.) and express personal opinions (e.g., "I felt the author could have..." or 'I was surprised to find...'). Unlike critical analyses, which focus on a specific theme or topic within the work, reviews typically examine the work as a whole.

You are probably most familiar with book reviews, but there can also evaluative reviews written on scholarly articles.

Why are reviews useful?

Because they are usually written by experts in the same field as the work being evaluated, reviews can be incredibly useful during the research process. In addition to providing a summary of the work, reviews can identify factual inaccuracies, structural issues, whether the work adds to the field of research or simply repeats territory that has already been covered, and identify potential author bias.

You may be able to identify some of these things yourself, but getting the reviewer's perspective can be quite helpful in determining whether you want to use the book or article as a source for your own research.

How do I find reviews?

Reviews can sometimes be tricky to identify, but SuperSearch does provide a method you can use. After searching for your work, author, or topic, look for "Reviews" in the Material Type filter on the left side of the screen:

 

Description

A literature review, also called a review article or review of literature, surveys the existing research on a topic. The term "literature" in this context refers to published research or scholarship in a particular discipline, rather than "fiction" (like American Literature) or an individual work of literature. In general, literature reviews are more common in the sciences and social sciences, but they are written occasionally in the humanities.

Literature reviews may be written as standalone works, or as part of a scholarly article or research paper. In either case, the purpose of the review is to summarize and synthesize the key scholarly work that has already been done on the topic at hand. The literature review may also include some analysis and interpretation. A literature review is not a summary of every piece of scholarly research on a topic.

Why are literature reviews useful?

Literature reviews can be very helpful for newer researchers or those unfamiliar with a field by synthesizing the existing research on a given topic, providing the reader with connections and relationships among previous scholarship. Reviews can also be useful to veteran researchers by identifying potentials gaps in the research or steering future research questions toward unexplored areas. If a literature review is part of a scholarly article, it should include an explanation of how the current article adds to the conversation.

How do I find literature reviews?

Reviews of literature are published in scholarly journals. In SuperSearch and most databases, select the Advanced Search mode and include "literature review" or "review of the literature" in addition to your other search terms. In the search results, some articles may include the phrase "systematic review," "review of literature," or "literature review" in the title or subtitle.

The library also subscribes to Annual Reviews, a database of publications dedicated to literature reviews in a variety of disciplines.