Literary criticism is defined as an analysis of works in literature (ex. novels, short stories, poems, plays, and films). It relies upon your reasoning followed by supporting evidence, but it is NOT a summary of the work.
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To find literary criticism on poetry, use any of the following databases:
To find contemporary sources (reviews or criticism of a literary work written around the same time that the work was published), explore:
Type the poem you want to find in the search bar and let autofill complete the suggestion.
Then, click on the Primary Sources & Literary Works tab to the far right. Here, you can find the actual poem itself.
If you are looking for literary criticism on a poem, click the Literature Criticism tab instead and browse until you find relevant sources. Similarly, if you are looking for biographical information on an author, click the Biographies tab.
Type the poem you want to find in quotation marks followed by the author's last name to ensure the right works are pulled.
While you may not be able to find the full poem, Salem Press has an abundance of literary criticism through their Critical Insights series that will help you find themes, craft arguments and gather sources for analyzing poetry.
Similar to Salem Press, type the poem you want to find in quotation marks followed by the author's last name.
If you're unable to find criticism on a poem, try finding journal articles about the author instead. For example, there are no works specifically analyzing "The Man He Killed" by Thomas Hardy, but there are plenty that chronicle Hardy's poetry in a general sense. These sources can give you background information about the author's career, common subjects they wrote about, and even biographical information.
Use the search function in The New York Times to find reviews and criticism of the poem you are writing about. These contemporary sources reveal how popular or influential a work was when it was written. It may be easier to filter search results by the year it was written to the next five years.
Some full-text news from the New York Times 1851 to present. To create an account or reactivate an inactive account, go to https://lib.pstcc.edu/nytimes and search for Pellissippi State Community College in the "Find School..." box. Then, follow the instructions. Existing active accounts can go directly to http://www.nytimes.com/ to log in.
