Literary Criticism

Definitions

Here are a couple of definitions of literary criticism, taken from 42Explore.com

Easier- Literary criticism is a view or opinion on what a particular written work means. It is about the meanings that a reader finds in an author's literature.

Harder - Literary criticism is an attempt to evaluate and understand the creative writing, the literature of an author. Literature includes plays, essays, novels, poetry, and short stories. Literary criticism is a description, analysis, evaluation, or interpretation of a particular literary work or an author's writings as a whole. Literary criticism is usually expressed in the form of a critical essay. In-depth book reviews are also sometimes viewed as literary criticism.

Finding Literary Criticism

One of the best resources is through the Literary Reference Center, which is an online database avaialable through the Beverly Public Library. Follow the directions on the Accessing Databases page to go there.

You may also want to try some of these sites to find examples of literary criticism and reviews.

• Internet Public Library - Literary Criticism
• LitLinks - From Bedford St. Martin's Press. More biographical information in general, but sometimes has links to sites with Literary Criticism
  • Literary Resources – American - There is a lot here, but you may have to do some digging!
  • eNotes - Literature Criticism - some of the information here is only available to paid subscribers
  • Storybites: A Taste of the World's Best Short Stories - A site started by an amateur, but it's fairly good and well organized and (she claims) a number of academic and professional sites link to her.
  • Amazon Books - A source for more current reviews. Look in the section that says Editorial Reviews - sometimes there are more than shown on the first page, under "More Editorial Reviews" too.