Research guides: ENG352 Canadian Drama: Starting your research

Welcome!

Welcome! This Library Guide was developed in collaboration with Dr. Daniela Janes. It is designed to introduce students studying Canadian Drama to some of the extraordinary resources available through the UofT Libraries.

Need a Dictionary, Encyclopedia, or Guide?

Oxford English Dictionary This link opens in a new window
The definitive record of the English language. Providing the meaning, history, and pronunciation of over 600,000 words.
Oxford Reference Library This link opens in a new window
Bringing together 2 million digitized entries across Oxford’s Dictionaries, Companions and Encyclopedias, Oxford Reference is the premier online reference product, spanning 25 different subject areas.

Canadian Theatre Encyclopedia
General information on plays, playwrights, and theatre practitioners.

Oxford Bibliographies Online This link opens in a new window
Provides introductions and lists of key books and articles for the study of many different topics.

Defining Terms

A Glossary of Literary Terms by M. H. Abrams; Geoffrey Harpham First published fifty years ago, A GLOSSARY OF LITERARY TERMS remains an essential text for all serious students of literature. Now fully updated to reflect the latest scholarship on recent and rapidly evolving critical theories, the tenth edition contains a complete glossary of essential literary terms presented as a series of engaging essays that explore the terms, place them in context, and suggest related entries and additional reading. This indispensable, authoritative, and highly affordable reference covers terms useful in discussing literature and literary history, theory, and criticism. Perfect as a core text for introductory literary theory or as a supplement to any literature course, this classic work is an invaluable reference that students can continue to use throughout their academic and professional careers.
Call Number: PN44.5 .A2 2012 UTM Stacks
ISBN: 9780495898023
Publication Date: 2011-01-10
Dictionary of the Theatre by Patrice Pavis; Christine Shantz (Translator); Marvin Carlson (Preface by) Patrice Pavis is one of France's most brilliant academics and a leading expert internationally in the theory of theatre. Dictionary of the Theatre is an English translation of Pavis's acclaimed Dictionnaire du théâtre, now in its second printing in France. This encyclopedic dictionary includes theoretical, technical, and semiotic terms and concepts. Alphabetical entries range from 'absurd' to 'word scenery' and treat the reader to a vast panoply of theatre and theory. The extended discussions are supported by useful examples drawn from the international repertoire of plays and playwrights, both classic and contemporary. The Foreword is by Marvin Carlson. This dictionary is remarkably well integrated, partly because of its excellent system of cross-referencing, but also because it represents the vision and scholarship of a single, recognized authority. There is no other source like it available and it will be warmly welcomed by the English-language theatre world.
Call Number: eBook
ISBN: 0802081630
Publication Date: 1999-02-05

A Sample of Digital Reference Sources

North American Theatre Online This link opens in a new window
North American Theatre Online is a reference work covering all aspects of the Canadian and American Theatre. It includes some 40,000 pages of major reference materials, together with records to approximately 30,000 plays, 57,000 people, 5,400 theatres, 22,000 productions, and 2,500 production companies. Each year the aim to add more than 20,000 new records. The collection also includes approximately 10,500 images, playbills, postcards, scrapbooks and other resources.
North American Women's Drama This link opens in a new window
This edition of North American Women's Drama contains 1021 plays by 247 playwrights, together with detailed, fielded information on related productions, theaters, production companies, and more. When complete North American Women's Drama will bring together more than 1,500 plays, along with related biographical, production, and theatrical information. The collection begins with the works of Mercy Otis Warren and Susanna Haswell Rowson in colonial times and will span the 19th and 20th centuries to the present. It is planned to include contemporary playwrights, such as Tina Howe, Beth Henley, Marsha Norman, Maria Irene Fornes, Megan Terry, and Paula Vogel.
Twentieth Century North American Drama This link opens in a new window
This edition of Twentieth Century North American Drama contains 834 plays by 124 playwrights, together with detailed, fielded information on related productions, theaters, production companies, and more. The database also includes selected playbills, production photographs and other ephemera related to the plays. More than 100 of the plays are published here for the first time, including a number by major authors.
Literature Online (LION) This link opens in a new window
Literature online is a fully searchable library of more than 350,000 works of English and American poetry, drama and prose plus biographies, bibliographies and key secondary sources.

The Concise Oxford Companion to the Theatre by Phyllis Hartnoll (Editor); Peter Found (Editor)
ISBN: 9780192825742
Publication Date: 1993-09-02
This new edition of an extremely popular reference work has been completely revised both to widen its coverage of the theater and to bring existing entries up to date. Based on the highly acclaimed fourth edition of The Oxford Companion to the Theatre, it offers theater-goers an indispensable handbook to all aspects of the stage. The range of the book is international and it places a wealth of information right at the reader's fingertips. There are entries on dramatists, from Plautus and Ibsen to August Wilson and Václav Havel; actors and actresses, from Sarah Bernhardt to Laurence Olivier and Anthony Hopkins; directors, such as Peter Brook, Peter Hall, and Mike Nichols; theaters, from Shakespeare's Globe to the Palais Royal in Paris and the Lunt-Fontanne in New York; and critics, such as Kenneth Tynan and Clive Barnes. In addition, there are entries on theater styles, drama festivals, and fascinating details about everything from theater companies, designers, and producers to winners of the Pulitzer Prize. The more technical aspects of theater are also covered, for example lighting, sound, method acting, and the different parts of a stage, and a complete system of cross-referencing makes it particularly easy for readers to find what they are looking for. Broad in scope and delightfully written, The Concise Oxford Companion to the Theatre is a must for theater enthusiasts everywhere.

ENG352 Canadian Drama

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Welcome!

Need a Dictionary, Encyclopedia, or Guide?

Defining Terms

A Sample of Digital Reference Sources