ENG 320 Course Guide

Research guide for English 320: Literature of the English Renaissance.

Books
Background Information
Articles
Full Text
MLA Style

Prof. Nancy Foasberg

Nancy Foasberg Bibliographer for English

Books

Browse the subject headings in the CUNY Catalog to find reference works on Shakespeare, or use the “Subject Heading Keyword” search to find books on specific Shakespeare topics.

You can search Queens College only, any other CUNY library, or all of them together. Use the “Title Request” feature to send them here.

Background Information

Biographical Reference books on your author can be found through the CUNY Catalog. The following resources are available through the library's database page:

Literature Resource Center: Good source for biographical articles and more general background information.
Twayne's Author Series: Provides good overviews of the work and lives of many important authors, and includes good bibliographies up to 1997.
Gale Virtual Reference Library: This is a great way to search over multiple subject specific encyclopedias. Beware, however: Not all of the encyclopedias will be what you are looking for. Make sure to check the “source” line.

Articles

The MLA International Bibliography is the most comprehensive database of quality scholarly articles in literature and related fields, and easier to search than many others. Make sure you search MLA Bibliography and not the Literature Resource Center—they share an interface.

Supports searching fields such as “Author as Subject” and “Literary Theme” in addition to standard fields like author and title.
Use the Find It button to access full text, electronically or in print.
Example: (justice OR law) AND (tempest OR measure)
Set the first set of terms to search anywhere and the second set to “Title of work.”

Project Muse indexes a large amount of unique material, and unlike MLA it includes abstracts. Most works and authors are subject headings.

JSTOR provides archival access to older issues of journals in all disciplines so select appropriate areas to search before you begin! There is considerable overlap with MLA International Bibliography. Searches are full text, but don't use subject headings.

Full Text

In MLA and some other databases, click Find It for journal articles. This will take you straight to electronic or direct you to print.

Find It doesn't work with book articles, and some databases don't support it, so you have to check the CUNY Catalog in those cases.

If we don't have an item, you can use interlibrary loan (ILL).

If it's a book and CUNY holds a copy, use “request title” from that record instead.

MLA Style

MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, 6^th ed.

Stacks (Call # A-L Level 4; Call # P-Z Level 5) - LB2369 .G53 2003
Desk Reference Level 3 - LB2369 .G53 2003
Online MLA Formatting and Style Guide from the OWL at Purdue