English Resources

Here are some resources on literature you might want to use from PN to PZ. These resources are either works of literature or literary commentary: 

• PN 1009 .A1 L46 1985: Trailing Clouds of Glory: Spiritual Values in Children's Literature by Madeleine L'Engle and Avery Brooke. 

• PR 4034 .P7 2004: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

• PS 1305 .A1 2014: Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain 

• PS 8061 .C36 2004: The Cambridge Companion to Canadian Literature, edited by Eva-Marie Kröller.

Each literature section has a specific subsection about poetry. Here are some poetry resources you may want to check out. These resources are either collections of poems or commentary on poetry: 

• PN 1035 .E47 1986: Plato and Aristotle on Poetry by Gerald F. Else

• PR 502 .E8 1964: Tradition and romanticism, studies in English poetry from Chaucer to W. B. Yeats. by B. Ifor Evans.

• PS 303 .S67 1974: A short history of American poetry by Donald Barlow Stauffer.

• PS 8141 .M374 1962: Masks of poetry: Canadian critics on Canadian verse by Arthur James Marshall Smith. 

Here are the subsections on poetry in our collection: 

PN 1010-1525: General Poetry

PR 500-614: English Poetry

PS 301-326: American Poetry

PS 8139-8159: Canadian Poetry

Each literature section has a specific subsection about drama. Here are some drama resources you may want to check out. These resources are either plays or commentary on drama: 

• PN 1621 .G3 1992: Theatre and drama in the making: from antiquity to the Renaissance by John Gassner. 

• PR 2755 .B48 2008: The Complete Works of Shakespeare by William Shakespeare, ed. David M. Bevington. 

• PS 351 .B483 1982: A Critical Introduction to Twentieth-Century American Drama by C. W. E. Bigsby.

• PS 8165 .C73 1972: Dramatists in Canada, Selected Essays by W. H. New. 

Here are the subsections on drama in our collection: 

PN 1600-3307: General Drama

PR 1260-1272: English Drama

PS 330-353: American Drama

PS 8161-8165: Canadian Drama

Here are some databases to search if you're looking for secondary sources for an English paper. 

• Canadian Literary Centre (full text, EBSCO): Canadian Literary Centre focuses on Canadian writers. It contains mostly academic articles, along with some reviews and periodicals. 
• Humanities International Complete (some full text, EBSCO): Humanities International Complete's goal is to collect Open Access journals about the Humanities from all over the world, and to index them and make them easily searchable. It also contains mostly academic articles. It will yield broader search results than the Canadian Literary Centre because it is international rather than Canadian and focused on all Humanities, not just literature.
• MLA International Bibliography (some full text, EBSCO): MLA International Biography has content from all Humanities disciplines. However, it has fewer full-text sources because its goal is to include as many citations as possible, not necessarily to provide full-text access. If your topic is obscure and you're having a hard time finding sources, you may want to search here for citations and then look for the full text elsewhere.
  • Through Ambrose, you have access to the SAIL Consortium (Ambrose belongs to a local consortium of academic libraries (SAIL) that includes the University of Calgary, St. Mary’s University, and Bow Valley College. Ambrose students and employees may use their ID cards to borrow from SAIL libraries. Please contact the libraries directly for more information about borrowing privileges.) You can also fill out a request form for any source you're looking for through Ambrose's InterLibrary Loan Service. 

• eBook Academic Collection (EBSCO): If you're looking specifically for eBooks, you can check out the eBook Academic Collection. This collection contains full-text eBooks on many different subjects. On their home page, you can select the category Literature & Criticism to get you started on your research.
• JSTOR (full text): JSTOR gives you access to many historical documents and primary sources. It also has a large amount of secondary sources on all humanities topics. It has Open Source and non-Open Source content, articles, books, and all other kinds of media as well, in all subjects, not just the Humanities. The databases presented above all operate through EBSCO, so there might be some overlap between them, but JSTOR is not part of EBSCO so it will typically yield different results. 

Here are some databases to search if you are looking for Reference sources for an English paper:

• Literary Reference Plus (full text, EBSCO): Literary Reference Center has some primary sources, like poems, short stories, and classic novels. It also contains helpful resources like plot summaries, author biographies, reference books, and literary analysis and study guides. There are some secondary sources here as well, but less than in other databases that are focused primarily on secondary sources. 
• Literature Resource Center (full text, Gale): Literature Resource Center is similar to Literary Reference Center in terms of types of sources. Like JSTOR, it is separate from EBSCO, so searching it might yield different results than the EBSCO databases. Additionally, Literature Resource Center is committed to interdisciplinary approaches, so it would be a good place to search if your topic combines disciplines.
• Oxford English Dictionary: Through Ambrose, you have access to the complete online Oxford English Dictionary. Like any other dictionary, the OED will give you current definitions of words so that you can ensure you are using them properly. Beyond that, the OED will also give you the history of the word from the 11th century to the present. It traces the origin, meaning, and (formal and informal) historical use of each word. If you need to discuss a definition in a paper, you can cite the OED because it is a more trustworthy source than just looking up a word on Google. You can also look for definitions in encyclopedias on your topic, both through our catalogue and in our Reference section (ex. Encyclopedia of Literature in Canada). 
• Shakespeare Collection

Here are some databases to search if you are looking for primary sources for an English paper:

• Gale Primary Sources are online databases full of historical sources. Many of these may be relevant to literary research. Click the link above to see a full list of the Gale Primary Source collections with summaries or keep reading to see which collections are most relevant for English research. 
  • American Fiction 1774-1920: Prose fiction written by Americans from the political beginnings of the United States through World War I. 
  • British Literary Manuscripts Online: Presents facsimile images of literary manuscripts, including letters and diaries, and drafts of poems, plays, novels, and other literary works. The manuscripts range from medieval texts to the works of Oscar Wilde.
  • Listener Historical Archive 1929-1991: The Listener was a weekly magazine established by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in 1929. It is one of the few means of accessing the content of many early broadcasts and it also previewed major literary and musical shows and regularly reviewed new books.
  • Nineteenth Century Collections Online: This archive contains the collections below. Click on the title link to search the whole archive or click a collection link to search within a specific collection. 
    • British Theatre, Music, and Literature: High and Popular Culture
    • Children's Literature and Childhood
    • European Literature, 1790-1840: The Corvey Collection