Library Resources: ENH285: Contemporary Women Writers (Williams): Recommended Literature Databases

Recommended Literature Databases

The databases below are specific to literature topics. Search by author's name or title of work to find general overviews, plot summaries, literary criticism, author biographies, and more.

To access off-campus, simply input your MEID and password when prompted.

Literature Resource Center (Gale) This link opens in a new window
Provides literary overviews, biographies, and criticism for more the 128,000 writers; includes index to extensive Gale literary series.
Literary Reference Center This link opens in a new window
Provides information on thousands of authors and their works across literary disciplines and time frames. Includes biographies, criticisms, summaries, and more.
Gale Reference -- Literature This link opens in a new window
This collection brings together a large collection of reference works in literary criticism and literature form the database Gale Virtual Reference Library.
Humanities Source This link opens in a new window
Developed through a merger of EBSCO & H.W. Wilson databases, it contains more than 1520 full text journals pertaining to literary, scholarly, and creative thought. Includes 591 unique titles (40.8% of its collection), as compared to current GCC Library databases.

Featured Articles

Is It Ridiculous for me to Say I Want to Write?": Domestic Humor and Redefining the 1950s Housewife Writer in Fan Mail to Shirley Jackson
Letters to author Shirley Jackson from fans of her domestic-humor literature offer important new evidence about the complexities and contradictions of gender norms in the post-World War II era. They bolster scholarship that acknowledges the power of postwar domestic and gender ideology.
"Interested in Big Things, and Happy in Small Ways": Curiosity in Edith Wharton
Though written at the height of her powers, French Ways and Their Meaning (1919) occupies a relatively marginal place in Edith Wharton's oeuvre. Composed of articles written during the war years, while Wharton was preoccupied with humanitarian relief efforts.
Damming the Stream: Willa Cather
In the following essay, Levy examines Cather’s fiction in relation to the theme of the “home place,” giving considerable attention to the complex and evolving female characters in Cather’s fiction.
Celebrity, Femininity, Lingerie: Dorothy Parker's Autobiographical Monologues
In the following essay, Helal illustrates the influence of Parker's public notoriety on her composition of "But the One on the Right" and "The Garter."
Flannery O'Connor and the Manichean Spirit of Modernism
In the following essay, Klug maintains that O'Connor's negative attitude towards modernism and the modern writer "sets her at odds with the whole tradition of American fiction in this century and with the type of spiritual hero which that tradition has produced."
'This Holocaust I Walk In:' Consuming Violence in Sylvia Plath's Poetry
In the following essay, Murphy attempts to locate sources for the imagery of violence and destruction in Plath's poetry
The Achievement of Anne Sexton
In this essay, the author asserts that Sexton's poetry, as a record of her own struggle toward wholeness, possesses a special relevance in an increasingly chaotic, disjointed society.