English 430: Renaissance Literature
The books on reserve for this class will be helpful for your project. Be sure to take a look at Course Reserves in Search for Reserves in LUCIA
Bibliographies and General Guides To Research
Sources are listed in order by call number.
A Research Guide for Undergraduate Students: English and American Literature. Nancy L. Baker.
Ref. PR56 .B34 2000
A Reference Guide for English Studies. Michael J. Marcuse.
Ref. [q.] PR56 .M37 1990
Literary Research Guide: A Guide to Reference Sources in English Literary Studies. James L. Harner.
Ref. Z2011 .H34 2002
Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature.
1939- .
Ref. Z 2011 .M69
The New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature. George
Watson, ed. 5 vols.
Ref. Z 2011 .N45
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Introductory and Background Information
Sources are listed in order by call number.
Encyclopedia of the Renaissance. Paul F. Grendler, editor in chief. 6 vols.
Ref. [q.] CB361 .E52 1999
Chronology of World History. 4 vols. H.E.L. Mellersh.
Ref. D11 .M39 1999
Europe 1450 to 1789: Encyclopedia of the Early Modern World. Jonathan Dewald, editor in chief. 6 vols.
Ref. [q.] D209 .E97 2004
The Oxford Companion to British History. John Cannon, ed.
Ref. DA34 .O93 1997
Benét's Reader's Encyclopedia.
Ref. PN41 .B4 1996
A Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory.
Ref. PN41 .C83 1998
The Harper Handbook to Literature. Northrop Frye, Sheridan
Baker, George Perkins; with a chronology of literature and world events by
Barbara M. Perkins.
Ref. PN41 .F75 1985
A Glossary of Contemporary Literary Theory.
Ref. PN44.5 .H37 2000
The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory & Criticism. Michael
Groden and Martin Kreiswirth, eds.
Ref. PN81 .J554 2005
New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics.
Ref. PN 1021 .N39 1993
Critical Survey of Poetry: English Language Series. 8 vols.
Ref. PN1111 .C7
The Oxford Companion to English Literature. Margaret Drabble, ed.
Ref. PR19 .D73 1985
The Oxford Chronology of English Literature. 2 vols.
Ref. [q.] Z2011 .O98 2002
Guide to British Poetry Explication.
Ref. Z2014.P7 M34 1991
Online:
Britannica Online
The electronic version of the classic reference work. You can either search for terms or browse the alphabetical list of entries. View the entries from the Encyclopaedia Britannica rather than the Britannica Student Encyclopedia, as the latter is written for elementary and high school students.
Literature Resource Center.
Use the Author search or the Advanced search. The title search doesn't always find everything you might want to see. In addition to biographical information, includes material from Dictionary of Literary Biography series, Literature Criticism from 1400 to 1800, and more.
Oxford English Dictionary
The leading historical dictionary of the English language. For each meaning of a word provides a date and an example of the earliest textual evidence of the use of the word for the definition provided.
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Biographical Information
Dictionary of National Biography. Leslie Stephen and Sidney
Lee, eds. 22 vols. plus decennial supplements.
The essays in this dictionary are about deceased persons of
British or Irish origins who played major roles in British
history. Bibliographies are included in many of the entries. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography is the online version of the DNB, and provides multiple search options for nearly 50,000 biographies.
DA 28 .D4
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
To find biographical books about a certain person, search in LUCIA, for the person using Subject begins with. Browse through the subject headings to find the subheading which corresponds to your specific interests. Be alert when searching non-western names or names of rulers, as you may need to use varying forms of these names. Many times, LUCIA has cross-references for these.
For autobiographical books by and about a certain person, search in LUCIA for persons as Author. Be sure to consult the library's guide on Biographical Information for further ideas and information.
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Finding Books
To find items owned by the library, search LUCIA. Try a Subject begins with search, for example, english literature. LUCIA will list other subject headings (and subheadings) which may be of interest. LUCIA will also suggest related terms which can also be searched. For advanced research you should consult the Library of Congress Subject Headings, or LCSH, a multi-volume guide to the terms commonly used in catalogs like ours. The LCSH can be found on top of the Ready Reference shelves behind the reference desk on the first floor of the library.
Some subject headings of interest include:
- English literature
- English literature -- Early modern, 1500-1700
- English poetry
- English poetry -- Early modern, 1500-1700
- Great Britain -- History
- Religion in literature
- Women and literature
To combine terms for a different kind of search, try Keyword Anywhere. LUCIA will look for the terms you specify anywhere in the important areas of the cataloging records, and display a list of those records. Try a search for a phrase, like great expectations, by searching with quotation marks around the phrase, as in "faerie queene". You can search for individual terms connected by logical operators like AND or OR. You might want to try searching for some of the terms you find in the LCSH. You can also search for multiple forms of words by using an asterisk. Try a search like spenser and elizabeth*. The asterisk acts as a truncation symbol and tells LUCIA to search for all words starting with elizabeth: Elizabeth, Elizabethan, and so on. The connecting operator and then tells LUCIA to display all the records containing both the term spenser and any variation of the terms that start with elizabeth. You can target your search even more effectively by telling LUCIA to look for the terms in the subject area of the records; compare the Keyword Anywhere search with the Subject Keyword search. With the Guided Search you can combine Keyword Anywhere searches with Subject Keyword searches.
Books are arranged on the library's shelves by Library of Congress Classification. This is a system which organizes materials by general subjects. Once you have a call number from searching LUCIA, see this guide to call number locations at Mudd and the library floor maps to find out where a book might be on the shelves.
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Finding E-Texts
Early English Books Online (EEBO)
Contains searchable online full text of about 100,000 titles, from "the first book published in English through the age of Spenser and Shakespeare." Provides images of pages, not just transcriptions of texts. An incredibly rich resource, it does take some time and effort to use, but it pays off. See the library's Guide to Early English Books Online for tips on how to use EEBO quickly and well.
Renaissance Women Online
A special sub-collection of Women Writers Online. Renaissance Women Online includes 100 Renaissance texts presented with topical essays and introductions to the individual works.
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Finding Articles
The best index to use will depend on your topic. Be sure to check the Electronic Resources page for other options, as only a few are listed below. Two of our resources, JSTOR and Project MUSE provide complete full text. In addition to the titles listed here, see also the list of databases for Humanities available from the library.
Literary Studies: include indexing and abstracts for books, chapters of books, articles and reviews. Some full text is included in the MLA.
Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature. 1939- .
Ref. Z 2011 .M69
MLA International Bibliography. 1963-
A leading source for the field of literary studies. Wide ranging index to just about anything of a scholarly nature related to literature and language.
General and Multidisciplinary Indexes: include citations and some full text of materials from a broad variety of fields including literature and history. Some include current reviews and news articles.
Academic OneFile
A one-stop source for news and periodical articles on a wide range of topics. Includes full-text articles, many with images. 1980 - present; updated daily.
EBSCOhost.
Follow the link for EBSCOhost Web. EBSCOhost provides a single Web source for multiple databases; you might want to select the Academic Search Elite. Contains broad and specialized coverage of academic and general periodicals.
Citation searching: this database lets you look for either the bibliography of an item that interests you or bibliographies that cite a work.
Arts and Humanities Citation Index
A citation index to articles in the arts and humanities. Citation indexes allow you to trace the number of times a particular source has been cited. Covers 1980 to the present.
Once you have a citation for an article on your topic, try the 
button to see if that particular article is available. If you don't find it, you can confirm that we don't own it by searching in LUCIA for the title of the journal or newspaper. You should also search BESS, an automated search of the library's full text databases, for electronic copies of articles.
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Journals
Some journals of interest:
English Literary Renaissance. 1971-2002 (online}; 2002- (paper)
Renaissance Quarterly. 1967-2003 (online}; 2003- (paper)
Sixteenth Century Journal. 1972-2000 (online}; 2000- (paper)
Studies in English literature, 1500-1900. 1961- (online)
Finding out about journals
Magazines for Libraries. 12th ed.
Reviews of magazines and journals, with notes about the audience level, circulation, and more. Magazines for Libraries is organized by broad subject area, so it's usually quicker to use the title index.
Ref. Z6941 q.M23 2007
Ulrich's Periodicals Directory
Thorough information about periodicals, including publisher information and reviews.
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Web Resources
Internet Resources for English
Selected by the librarians here at Lawrence.
Internet Resources for Gender Studies
Another list of sources selected by the librarians.
Voice of the Shuttle
One of the leading web pages for research in the humanities.
Web Wise Guide to Searching
From the library. In addition to advanced information about the workings of different search engines, provides links to tutorials and more.
Of course, there are many more web resources available that might be useful in your research. You might want to try looking at sources that select the best of the Web, like these:
It's important to think carefully about any information you find in any format, and to evaluate resources for their accuracy, applicability, and so forth. Evaluation of web resources is especially important. You may want to consult this guide to Evaluating Internet Resources, or this bibliography on Evaluation of Information Sources. You can often learn a lot about a page (and a site) by parsing the URL.Top
Style Manuals
Academic Citation and Writing
Style manuals of the humanities, physical sciences, and the social sciences in the Seeley G. Mudd Library.
Citing Electronic Documents
This page provides guidance on citing electronic documents and links to other guides, some on specific styles of documentation.
MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers.
The guide for any academic papers written in the literatures and languages.
RRef. LB2369 .G53 2003
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About Research on Renaissance Literature
While you will find material on your topic in resources for English literary studies, you may also want to consider searching for material from other fields, like history, gender studies, history of philosophy, and more. In addition to consulting catalogs and indexes, be sure to look at bibliographies supplied at the end of relevant articles, chapters, and books, and to search library catalogs for book-length bibliographies.
Remember that in any written work you produce your sources must be fully documented. It may help to look at the information on style before you start your research, so that you will have all the details required for documentation at hand when you need them. Then as you write, go back to the resources on style for details on the exact format of your citations.
Evaluating the resources you find is an essential part of the research process. See this guide to hints on evaluation of books and articles and this guide to evaluating Internet resources.
If you need help, be sure to ask a Reference Librarian
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Definitions of terms and abbreviations:
Ref. = Reference collection, first floor
RRef.= Ready reference, shelves behind the reference desk
Periodicals = Level A
Reference Indexes = Alphabetically arranged at the end of the reference collection
q. = Oversized books: interfiled in reference and M class scores; at end of classes in other collections
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