Home
Home | Image Source

Northwestern University Library|
Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences

© Copyright 2005
Northwestern University Library
WWW Disclaimer & Policy Statements


Resources in Comparative Literature and Critical Theory
Part I: Compiling Your Online Reference Library—and Knowing Where to Go for the Rest
Part II: Results of a Search for Articles on “Critical Theory” in xreferplus and Oxford Reference 
Part III: Websites for Locating Other Resources on Critical Theory (& For That Matter Anything Else)
Part IV: Foreign Language Reference Sources Online
Part V: Full-text Resources in Foreign Languages
Part VI. Finally . . . two reminders

Part I: Compiling Your Online Reference Library—and Knowing Where to Go for the Rest

When you’re working on a project, it’s often a good practice to have large general reference sets like xreferplus, Oxford Reference Online, the Gale Virtual Reference Library, Britannica Online, and/or the Oxford English Dictionary open or within easy reach on your computer desktop. (My favorite is xreferplus because it also includes the best bilingual dictionaries.) ebrary (23,000 titles) and NetLibrary (17,541 titles) also have numerous useful reference works for specific topic areas, e.g. The Encyclopedia of American War Literature from ebrary. And of course, there are now hundreds of online reference books for specific areas that are not part of any larger set, e.g. The Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages (Oxford).  

Create shortcuts on your desktop for specific titles—or whole reference libraries—to make your own virtual reference bookshelf. How? Display the work’s main search page on your browser, pull down the “File” menu, select “Send,” and choose “Shortcut to Desktop.”
A good way to find online reference works is through the Library’s catalog NUcat (limit to “Electronic Resources” and search by subject keywords), the metasearch engine Einstein (login required!), or the ER (Electronic Resources Finder)—all accessible from the NUL homepage.
  • Assignment: From NUcat, do a title search on “concise oxford dictionary,” just to see how much is there! 
From home, you can get authenticated access to individual resources either through EZProxy (no installation required—the prompt pops up), or failing that, through VPN (must install). Note that EZproxy follows you wherever you are in the world: you can take Northwestern’s electronic library with you. Just remember to enter electronic resources through the Library’s own site—otherwise the EZproxy prompt will not appear.
  • Assignment: Install VPN on your home computer!  

So far we’ve just talked about books (“monographs”). There are numerous indexing and abstracting resources that provide access to articles and chapters—not just entire books—e.g. MLA International Bibliography, Francis, Repère Fulltext, and Bibliographie der deutschen Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaft (BDSL-Online); and bibliographic utilities, e.g. national library catalogs and bibliographies. Go to the ER to obtain more information about these resources—and connect to them. Or consult WESSweb, which is an excellent source of information on Western European resources of all kinds, especially library catalogs and newspapers in other countries.  

Below are some books to consider for your virtual reference bookshelf—emphasizing resources for students of literature and philosophy. If part of a larger online package, the name of the package is provided in square brackets (e.g., “ebrary”). For lookups, you may prefer to search the whole “package” rather than a particular reference work—one never knows what might turn up in an as yet unfamiliar work.

  • Audi, Robert. The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy. 2nd ed. Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. [xreferplus]  
  • Baldick, Chris. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. 2nd ed. [Oxford]: Oxford University Press, 2001. [Oxford Reference Online]  
    This work is also available as part of the “Literary Theory” database from Chadwyck-Healey (for further information, see Part V below), though that is the now somewhat obsolete 1996 edition. (The word “hypertext” does not occur in the 1996 ed., for example.) 
  • Blackburn, Simon. The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy. [Oxford]: Oxford University Press, 1996. [Oxford Reference Online]  
  • Craig, Edward, ed. Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. [London]: Taylor & Francis, 2000.   Aka “REP Online.” This is the full ten-volume work online, constantly updated. 90 articles have been added since 2000. 
  • Concise Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. London ; New York: Routledge, 2000. [ebrary]  An abridged version of Craig, ed., above—corresponds to the 1000-page print edition.
  • Flew, Antony, and Stephen Priest. A Dictionary of Philosophy. Updated ed. London: Pan, 2002. Orig. publ. in 1979. [xreferplus] Dated but still useful.
  •  Green, Keith, and Jill LeBihan. Critical Theory and Practice: A Coursebook. London; New York: Routledge, 1997. [ebrary] A complete introduction to Critical Theory. Each chapter has a glossary defining basic terms. 
  • Zalta, Edward N., ed. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. A huge volunteer undertaking still very much in progress. (E.g., there is no article yet on “Critical Theory,” though one has been announced.)

Part II: Results of a Search for Articles on “Critical Theory” in xreferplus and Oxford Reference: 

Note: Don’t try these at home! Well, that is unless you’ve loaded VPN first: The article links provided in this section are not EZproxy-enabled, i.e. if you are off campus you will need to use VPN or enter through the main site for the service, or through the ER (which automatically invokes EZproxy) to get in!

Part III: Websites for Locating Other Resources on Critical Theory (& For That Matter Anything Else)

Part IV: Foreign Language Reference Sources Online

French

ARTFL’s Reference Collection (University of Chicago—enter through ARTFL’s main site from off campus for EZproxy access—or use VPN) has numerous dictionaries and encyclopedias from several centuries, above all access to Le Trésor de la Langue Française informatisé from CNRS and Diderot’s Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers (1751–72).

German

Northwestern University Library subscribes to the xipolis service, which allows you to search several basic German reference works simultaneously or one at a time. Among these works are the following: Brockhaus in 15 Bänden, Duden Großes Fremdwörterbuch, Duden Großes Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, Duden Szenesprachen, and Brockhaus Biografien. Der große Wahrig is online via wissen.de and the famous German dictionary of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm (Deutsches Wörterbuch) is now available from the Universität Trier. Kindlers Neues Literaturlexikon is currently unavailable, but we’re hoping to restore access soon.

Spanish & Portuguese
 
See the Iberian Studies Web, part of WESSweb, the resources site of the Western European Studies Section of the Association of College and Research Libraries

Part V: Full-text Resources in Foreign Languages

French  
The largest online collection of historical texts in French is available through the ARTFL Project at the University of Chicago using the very powerful and flexible Philologic interface. These include the following (not EZproxy-enabled, so go through main ARTFL site or use VPN): 
In addition to the extensive access provided through ARTFL, a number of other sources provide full-text access to works in French: 
  • “Gallica propose un accès à 70 000 ouvrages numérisés, à plus de 80 000 images et à plusieurs dizaines d'heures de ressources sonores. Cet ensemble constitue l'une des plus importantes bibliothèques numériques accessibles gratuitement sur l'Internet.” [from the Bibliothèque Nationale]
  • A number of works editions of other important French writers, e.g. Descartes, Voltaire, are available: search by author in NUcat and limit to “electronic resources”.
  • See Northwestern University Library’s Guide to French literature and also WESS’s French Studies Web for further online resources in French
German
Northwestern subscribes to the Digitale Bibliothek deutscher Klassiker, with authoritative works editions for many prominent writers in German, from Wolfram von Eschenbach and Meister Eckhart to Theodor Storm. Additionally, we provide online access to complete original German-language editions of prominent writers and philosophers, among them Goethe, Kant, Hegel, and Nietzsche: search NUcat and restrict your search to “electronic resources.” Deutsche Lyrik is a full-text database of German poetry, covering the works of over 500 poets of the last five centuries.
 
There is also an excellent set of CD-ROM based full-text editions published by Directmedia in Berlin, e.g. Deutsche Literatur von Lessing bis Kafka - Studienbibliothek. These you can check out from the Circulation Desk and take home like a regular book. We will soon be purchasing the entire set of over 100 works on CD-ROM, much of it, e.g. the works editions of Theodor Fontane and Max Weber, unobtainable in any other electronic format.

Part VI. Finally . . . two reminders

 Remember Literary Theory, a database which contains the full text of over 800 works on literary theory by more than 350 writers, from Aristophanes to Paul de Man, all in English translation. Among these: 
  • Aristotles’ Poetics
  • “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte” by Karl Marx
  • “Introduction: Secular Criticism” in The World, the Text, and the Critic by Edward W. Said  
And remember that Eighteenth Century Collections Online, or ECCO, contains numerous 18th century editions of important literary, critical, and philosophical works by writers such as Cervantes, Voltaire, Montesquieu, Goethe, and others—in English (Goethe’s Werther, for example, in over 25 different English-language editions), in the original language, and even in other languages (e.g. Montesquieu in Italian). These are searchable as full-text or readable as facsimile pages.