Literary Studies Research Guide
Background information
Background information can help you learn more about your topic and develop your research question, and is often found in reference works, such as dictionaries, encyclopedias, or bibliographies.
Seeking out background information is often an important early step in the research process.
Reference works can be general in nature, such as the Oxford English Dictionary, but there also may be reference works that are specific to your research area or topic. For example, if you are researching a major work such as James Joyce's Ulysses, you will find several reference works, such as Don Gifford's Ulysses Annotated, that may point you toward other critical sources and provide you with important background knowledge.
To discover whether there are reference works on your topic, try searching the name of the work you're researching in the library's catalog, with the name of the work as a subject, rather than title.
Types of Reference Works Common in Literary Studies
Important Reference Works for Literary Studies
Find many other reference works in the library's catalog.
- Cambridge Companions Complete Collection This link opens in a new windowAddressing topics and figures as diverse as Gothic Fiction and Arabic Philosophy, WB Yeats and Martin Luther, the online collection contains over 4000 downloadable essays, taken from 485 Cambridge Companions to Literature and Classics (263 volumes), Philosophy, Religion and Culture (165 volumes) and Music (57 volumes).
- Oxford Dictionary of National Biography This link opens in a new windowBiographies of more than 58,000 men and women who have impacted British history and culture worldwide from the Romans to the 21st Century. Includes over 11,000 portraits.
- Oxford English Dictionary This link opens in a new windowThe Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is widely regarded as the accepted authority on the English language. It is an unsurpassed guide to the meaning, history, and pronunciation of 600,000 words— past and present—from across the English-speaking world.
- Oxford Reference Online This link opens in a new windowTwo million digitized entries across Oxford’s Dictionaries, Companions and Encyclopedias, spanning 25 different subject areas
- The Elements of English: a glossary of basic terms byCall Number: Available onlineISBN: 1442241969Publication Date: 2014This online book provides definitions of key literary terms.