Research guides: Shakespeare: Finding Journal Articles

Finding Journal Articles

To find articles in scholarly journals, magazines, newspapers, anthologies, collections and conference proceedings, the best place to go is an article database. Go to www.library.utoronto.ca/, click the By Subjects A to Z link, scroll down to your subject area—i.e. Literature—and click GO. You’ll find a list of online databases containing relevant articles, as well as other online resources such as encyclopedias, dictionaries and research guides.

The Shakespeare Collection.
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Gale Thomson Corporation, 2006.
Start with this collection’s advanced search screen for scholarly criticism on Shakespeare’s work. For more information, see the entry for this title under Brief Reference.
Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature (ABELL).
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This index, spanning 1892-2004, should be your next stop. Packed with more than 840,000 records, ABELL refers you to journal articles, books, essay collections, book reviews, and doctoral dissertations. Another advantage is scope. Covering American, British and Commonwealth literature, as well as some material in languages besides English, ABELL is one of the two major indexes for English students—the other is the MLA International Bibliography.
MLA International Bibliography.
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This index, along with ABELL, is a key English literature source. It covers criticism related to literature, linguistics and folklore from 1921 to the present, and contains more than 1-million citations to journal articles, series, books, working papers and conference proceedings. Most of the materials indexed before 1963 are American.
ITER: Gateway to the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.
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ITER is great for finding criticism on Shakespeare’s works and other literature written during the Middle Ages and Renaissance (from 400 to 1700). Using an interface similar to the U of T Catalogue, you can search for articles, as well as books, essays, catalogues, abstracts, bibliographies and reviews.
Shakespeare Index: An Annotated Bibliography of Critical Articles on the Plays 1959-1983.
Edited by Bruce T. Sajdak.
Millwood, N.Y.: Kraus International, 1992. 2 volumes.
What this excellent print index gives you is quick references to specific subjects in Shakespeare. Unlike an online index, where you might end up searching for hours, this 2-volume set allows you to find citations to articles on such focused subjects as: alchemy in Act 2, Scene 7 of Antony and Cleopatra, Caliban and allegory in The Tempest, and jealousy and transformation in Othello. The Shakespeare Index actually consists of a wide variety of indexes—that’s why it’s so helpful. You can look up articles by theme (e.g. Political, Economic, Social and Cultural Background), play, author, character, scene and subject. The only tricky part is getting used to the reference abbreviations (such as M, T, HH and YY) the index uses—but these are all listed in the Contents pages in volume 1.