This guide identifies basic resources for Irish literature and culture studies. The materials are located in the Reference Department on Level 1 of Pius XII Memorial Library or are available via the Web. The guide is not comprehensive; rather, it should be used as a starting point for research for undergraduate students at Saint Louis University.
 

Reference Sources || Finding Books Using the SLU Libraries Catalog || Finding Articles Using Databases
Book, Film, and Theater Reviews || Web Sites || Citing Sources

LITERATURE

Connor, Lester I. A Yeats Dictionary: Persons and Places in the Poetry of William Butler Yeats. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1998.
     Ref. PR5906 .A23 1998

Fargnoli, A. Nicholas, ed. James Joyce: A Documentary Volume. Detroit: Gale Group, 2001.
     Ref. PR6019.O9 Z633565 2001

Fargnoli, A. Nicholas, and Michael Patrick Gillespie. A Critical Companion to James Joyce: A Literary Reference to His Life and Work. New York: Facts on File, 2006.
     Ref. PR6019.O9 Z533376 2006

Hogan, Robert, ed. Dictionary of Irish Literature. 2 vols. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996.
     Ref. PR8706 .D5 1996

McCready, Sam. A William Butler Yeats Encyclopedia. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1997.
     Ref. PR5906 .M44 1997

Molino, Michael R., ed. Twenty-First-Century British and Irish Novelists. Detroit: Gale Group, 2003.
     Ref. PR889 .T86 2003

Welch, Robert, ed. The Oxford Companion to Irish Literature. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996.
     Ref. PR8706 .O88 1996

See also Literary Criticism Resource Guide.

HISTORY & CULTURE

Brady, Ciaran, ed. Encyclopedia of Ireland : An A-Z Guide to its People, Places, History, and Culture. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.
     Ref. DA906 .E53 2000

Connolly, S. J., ed. The Oxford Companion to Irish History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
     Ref. DA912 .O94 2002

Elliott, Sydney, and W.D. Flackes. Conflict in Northern Ireland : An Encyclopedia. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 1999.
     Ref. DA990.U46 E44 1999

Lalor, Brian, ed. The Encyclopedia of Ireland. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003.
     Ref. DA906 .E539 2003

McCormack, W.J., ed. The Blackwell Companion to Modern Irish Culture. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1999.
     Ref. DA925 .B47 1999

Thomas, Colin, and Avril Thomas. Historical Dictionary of Ireland. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 1997.
     Ref. DA910 .T39 1997

BIOGRAPHY - GENERAL

Boylan, Henry. A Dictionary of Irish Biography. 3rd ed. Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1998.
     Ref. CT862 .B69 1998

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
Collection of 50,000 biographies of persons of note associated with the British Isles from the fourth century BC to 2000. Remote access is available only to SLU students, faculty, and staff.

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Search the SLU Libraries Catalog to find books on Irish literature and culture. If you are unable to find what you need, search MOBIUS, a library catalog that contains the holdings of over fifty college and university libraries in Missouri.

To find criticism on an author's works, perform a subject search in the SLU Libraries Catalog on the author's name (last name, first name) and then select the subject heading that ends in "criticism and interpretation". For example, search for "Joyce, James" and select the subject heading that says "Joyce James - 1882-1941 - Criticism And Interpretation."

You can also use a keyword search to find literary criticism. For example, if you were looking for criticism on the works of Elizabeth Bowen, you could perform a keyword search for "Bowen and criticism."

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Remote access to article databases is available only to SLU students, faculty, and staff.

LITERATURE

MLA International Bibliography - 1926-present
Indexes books, book chapters, dissertations and articles from over 4,400 journals in language, linguistics, literature, and folklore.

HUMANITIES (Use to find literary criticism as well as cultural and historical information.)

Humanities Full Text - 1984-present
Indexes and/or abstracts over 600 humanities periodicals. Full text is available from approximately 230 journals.

JSTOR
This archival journal resource provides access to the full-text of over 500 journal titles. Note that the last 1 to 7 years of each journal are not available in this resource.

For reviews: Click on Advanced Search. Type the title in the Exact Phrase search box and narrow your search to reviews.

Project Muse
Search for full-text literary criticism articles in Project Muse. This electronic journal collection provides full-text access to over 250 scholarly journals.

For reviews: Click on Advanced Search. Search for the title by Title Reviewed.

Periodicals Index Online - 1665-1995 
Indexes the articles in over 4,000 periodicals in the humanities and social sciences from their first issues to 1995. As of December 2005, over 500 journal titles are at least partially available in full text in the complementary database, Periodicals Archive Online. The focus is on 20th century periodicals. However, periodicals in the 20th century that extend back into the 17th, 18th, & 19th centuries are indexed from their earliest volumes. The scope is worldwide and includes journals in English, German, Italian, French, Spanish, and other Western languages.

For reviews: Click on Article Search. Type the title in the Article Title Keyword box. Select Book Reviews in the Search Options section of the page. Deselect All Content and Articles. This is a good source for finding historic book reviews.

Arts and Humanities Citation Index - 1995-present
This database provides author and subject indexing of articles published worldwide in arts and humanities journals. It also supports citation indexing, which establishes links between cited articles and the most recent publications in which they are cited.

WORLD HISTORY

Historical Abstracts - 1964-present
Covers the world's scholarly literature on the history of the world, except the United States and Canada, from 1450 to the present.

CURRENT EVENTS

LexisNexis Academic
Provides online access to full-text national and international newspapers.

For reviews: Click on the Guided News Search tab. Step 1: Arts and Sports News. Step 2: Book, movie, music and play reviews. Step 3: Type the title in the first line and other appropriate keywords (for example author's name if you're looking for book reviews, director's name if you're looking for film reviews) in lines 2 and 3. Step 4: Choose the dates you'd like to search.

Academic Search Premier - 1975-present
This multidisciplinary database provides indexing and abstracting for 8,040 journals. Use to find find information on current events in Ireland.

For reviews: Type the title in the search box and search Reviews & Products. Limit by document type to Book Review or Entertainment Review.

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Book Review Index Online - 1965-present
Search over 5 million book review references in one place.

Book Review Digest. Bronx, NY: H.W. Wilson Co., 1906-.
     Ref. Z1219 .C95 (East Index Shelves)
This source includes book review citations and excerpts of the reviews. Consult the front of the volume to decode the citation. Tip! Look in several volumes to find review citations. Look in the volume that covers the year the book was published and the next few volumes.

Use library databases to find book, film, and theater reviews. Some databases include full-text reviews; others only include citations and you must find the reviews in another database or in print in the Library.

See also Book Review Resource Guide and Film Resource Guide.

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CELT: Corpus of Electronic Texts
Online resource for Irish history, literature, and politics.

Irish History on the Web
Links to primary documents, essays, bibliographies and informational Irish history sites.

Irish Literature, Mythology, Folklore, and Drama
Collection of links to Irish language, literature, history, mythology, folklore, and drama sites.

Irish Newspapers - Google Directory
Google Directory's collection of links to Irish newspaper sites. Use to find current articles.

Irish Newspapers Online
Links to Irish newspaper web sites. Use to find current articles.

Irish Resources in the Humanities
Collection of links to Irish humanities resources. Includes literature, history, biographical, and newspaper sections.

James Joyce: The Brazen Head
Includes criticism, reviews, biographical information, quotes, and images.

Northern Ireland: The Troubles
BBC exploration of the Northern Ireland conflict.

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Citations Styles Handbook: MLA

MLA Formatting and Style Guide

Using MLA Style to Cite and Document Internet Sources

Gibaldi, Joseph. MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. 6th ed. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2003.
     Ref. LB2369 .G53 2003 (ask at Reference Desk)

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