English 231: The Elizabethan Age

Primary Sources

Early English Books Online (EEBO)
Contains digital facsimile page images of virtually every work printed in English from 1473 to 1700.

Editions and Adaptations of Shakespeare
The complete text of eleven major editions of Shakespeare's works from the First Folio to the Cambridge edition of 1863-6, twenty-four separate contemporary printings of individual plays, selected apocrypha and related works and more than 100 adaptations, sequels and burlesques from the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Women Writers Online
Published by the Women Writers Project at Brown University, this database offers full-text access to early modern writings by women (1400-1850).

English Poetry, 600-1900
Contains more than 175,000 poems by over 1,400 poets from British Commonwealth and ex-colonial countries.

English Prose Drama, 1280-1915
Based on plays listed in the New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature that were written or intended for the stage and are wholly or primarily in prose.

English Verse Drama, 13th-19th Centuries
Contains the full text of over 2200 plays by more than 500 named authors and 300 anonymous works, from the Shrewsbury Fragments of the late 13th century through the end of the 19th century.

Books

Use CONSORT, the shared catalog of Kenyon, Denison, Ohio Wesleyan, and Wooster, to find relevant books.

An author search will locate books, poems, plays, etc. by a particular author: lanyer, aemilia

A title search will locate a specific work by an author: faerie queene

Keyword searches:

When searching for literary criticism, consider using subject headings for more precise results. If a keyword search leads to a book that seems promising, click on the subject heading links at the bottom of the record to see similar items. You can also select "subject heading" in the "search by" box and try the following:

You can also search the OhioLINK catalog, which contains the holdings of 85 academic and public libraries across Ohio.

Journal Articles

The CONSORT and OhioLINK catalogs do not contain information about individual articles published in journals. However, if you have a citation to a journal article--the author's name, the title of the article, the title of the journal, and the date or volume/issue number--you can search by journal title in CONSORT to determine if the library has the journal in print, electronically, or in microfilm.

To search for articles on your topic, use an index or database. In many cases, you can get the full text of the article by following a link from the database. If you're searching in an index without links to full-text articles, you'll need to search by journal title in CONSORT as described above.

The search process will vary for each resource, but here are a few tips to keep in mind:

 

Come up with good keywords.

Consider synonyms, alternate spellings, and other ways to approach your topic. For example, if you're interested in the role of gender in Shakespeare's works, you might want to search for a combination of the following:

  • shakespeare, gender, sex/sexual/sexuality, women, misogyny, masculine/masculinity, feminine/femininity/feminism

 

Look for subject headings.

Most databases will include their own subject headings. When you find a relevant article, click on a subject heading, or refine your search to include both a subject heading and keywords, to find similar articles.

 

Set reasonable limits.

Some databases will let you limit your search--examples of limits include choosing to search just peer-reviewed (scholarly) journals, or just book reviews, or just articles published in English. Sometimes limits are helpful; if you don't want book reviews or articles written in a language you don't read, it doesn't hurt to limit your search accordingly. But be careful not to impose too many limits, especially if you're just beginning your research--extremely narrow searches will rarely lead you to "the perfect article."

 

Use bibliographies.

If you do happen to find the perfect article (or a great essay in a reference work, or a relevant book on your topic), check out the bibliography, and then search for some of these sources.

 

MLA International Bibliography
Citations to scholarly work in literature, linguistics, and folklore worldwide. Sources include journal and book articles, dissertations, monographs, and series.

JSTOR
Provides access to the full content of a variety of scholarly journals. Coverage generally begins with volume one of a journal, and ends 2-5 years from the present.

OhioLINK Electronic Journal Center: Arts and Humanities Journals
Includes the full text of approximately 40 arts and humanities journals.

ABELL-- Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature
ABELL provides citations to monographs, periodical articles, critical editions of literary works, book reviews, collections of essays and doctoral dissertations published anywhere in the world.

Iter (Medieval and Renaissance Studies)
ITER is a bibliography drawn from over 400 medieval and renaissance journal titles.

Humanities International Complete
Covers 1700 journals, as well as books and reference sources in the humanities. Provides citation information for articles, essays, and reviews, plus original creative works including poems and fiction. Photographs, paintings and illustrations are also referenced.

Selected Reference Works

Helpful reference works for the Elizabethan Age include bibliographies, dictionaries, concordances, and encyclopedias. These resources are shelved in the reference collection on the second floor.

Biographies, Bibliographies, and Criticism

Crowell's Handbook of Elizabethan and Stuart Literature [REF PR19 .R8 1975]

Elizabethan Dramatists [REF PR651 .E48 1987]

Sixteenth-Century British Nondramatic Writers (2nd series) [REF PR411 .S582 1994]

Sixteenth-Century British Nondramatic Writers (3rd series) [REF PR411 .S583 1996]

Sixteenth-Century British Nondramatic Writers (4th series) [REF PR411 .S584 1996]

British Rhetoricians and Logicians, 1500-1660 [REF P301.3.G7 B6 2001]

Seventeenth-Century British Nondramatic Poets [REF PR541 .S47 1992]

Resources for Individual Authors

A Ben Jonson Companion [REF PR2630 .B7 1983]

A Concordance to the Poems of Ben Jonson [REF PR2645 .B3 1978]


A Concordance to the Poems of Edmund Spenser [REF PR2362 .O7 1963]

The Spenser Encyclopedia [REF PR2362 .S67 1990]


Shakespearean Criticism [REF PR2965 .S44]

The Shakespeare Name and Place Dictionary [REF PR2892 .D33 1995b]

William Shakespeare: A Textual Companion [REF PR3071 .W44 1987]

The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare [REF PR2892 .O94 2001]

All Things Shakespeare: An Encyclopedia of Shakespeare's World [REF PR2892 .O56 2002]

The Greenwood Companion to Shakespeare [REF PR2976 .G739 2005]

William Shakespeare: A Documentary Volume [REF PR2893 .W55 2002]

Historical Background

Historical Dictionary of the Elizabethan World [REF DA357 .W34 1999]

Columbia Companion to British History [REF DA34 .H64 1997]

Reader's Guide to British History [REF DA34 .R43 2003]

Selected Internet Sites

When using the internet for research, it is important to think critically about the authority and validity of your sources, and to use sites that are appropriately scholarly in nature.

Voice of the Shuttle: Renaissance and 17th Century Literature
Early Modern Literary Studies (peer-reviewed electronic journal)
Renaissance Literary Resources
 Mr. William Shakespeare and the Internet