Databases
- Gale Literary Sources This link opens in a new windowOne cross-searchable database for the following individual literary databases: Literature Resource Center, Twayne's Author's Online, Literature Criticism Online (Contemporary Literary Criticism, Short Story Criticism)
- Gale eBooks This link opens in a new windowCollection of encyclopedias and reference materials (ebooks)
- Gale U.S. History in Context This link opens in a new windowInformation on people, places, events, and topics in U.S. History
- Gale in Context This link opens in a new windowInformation on a broad range of topics, people, places, and events
Helpful Website Articles
- The Great Gatsby and the American DreamAn article from The Guardian
- The Great Gatsby DelusionAn article from The Telegraph
- The Road to West EggVanity Fair Article
What is Literary Criticism?
The Oxford English Dictionary defines literary criticism as "the art or practice of judging and commenting on the qualities and character of a literary work; consideration or analysis of a text (cf. text n.1 1, text n.1 Additions) in relation to language, structure, biography, history, etc., or (in later use, freq. with modifying word) by a particular philosophical, political, or linguistic method; (also) an instance of this, esp. in a written form; a school or method of criticizing literature."
Search Tips
CREATING A SEARCH STATEMENT The most difficult part of conducting a good search is usually not figuring out which buttons to push, but rather in figuring out which terms to use and how to combine them to find literature that is “on topic.” This requires a strategy that will optimize the number of relevant titles that you can find. One component of this strategy is the search statement. A search statement is a query that identifies the information you are searching for in a bibliographic database in a way that can be utilized by the databases search engine for retrieval of records. Many times a topic can be described in many different ways.
As there are over 500,000 words in the English language, there are undoubtedly numerous words that could be used to describe the topic. Where to begin?
• Break your search (AKA search) statement/question into concepts and keywords.
• Note other possible natural vocabulary keywords and applicable concept terms while doing background research.
• Identify synonyms of those keywords.
• Create concepts of 1-3 words.
*Borrowed from: http://www.library.illinois.edu/bix/pdf/genguide/searchtips.pdf
Books
Understanding the Great Gatsby by Call Number: 813.52 FITISBN: 0313300976Publication Date: 1998-10-30
Class Conflict in F. Scott Fitzgerald's the Great Gatsby by ISBN: 0737738995Publication Date: 2007-12-13
