Use field searching and subject searching to improve your results in MLA International Bibliography, the main article database for Literature research. See below for details.
Explore fields to focus your results. For example, you can focus on sources about a particular author by using PRIMARY SUBJECT AUTHOR or a specific work with PRIMARY SUBJECT WORK. Consider other limiters like GENRE, and SUBJECT LANGUAGE to focus your search.
REMEMBER: Subject Headings use controlled vocabulary. If you're not sure what the official heading is for a particular topic, it's best to use the thesaurus to find out, rather than entering random keywords into the Subject Heading search field.
MLA Subject Headings are specific terms assigned to topics to ensure that every topic is described by the database in the same way (for example, do we use "woman" or "female" as an official subject heading? Do we use "WWII" or "Second World War"?
At the top of the database you can search the MLA THESAURUS to see if the terms you're using are actually official MLA Subject Headings, and if they're not, the thesaurus will hopefully lead you to terms that are official subject headings within the database.