Comparative Literature Research Guide
Databases

Online databases and periodical indexes help you search for full-text articles or article citations in literature journals. Databases are open to all within the Libraries, and available off campus to UMass Amherst students, faculty, and staff with an OIT account.

Suggested Comparative Literature databases and periodical indexes. (See the Database Locator for the Library's full database list.)

Collections of Literary Texts

ARTFL
More than 2,000 texts ranging from classic works of French literature to various kinds of nonfiction prose and technical writing, from the twelfth  to the nineteenth centuries. 

Black Women Writers 
A growing collection of literary works by about 77 African, African American, and Afro-Caribbean women.

CHANT (Chinese Ancient Texts)
Chant is a project of the Institute of Chinese Studies which reprints all extant Chinese texts up until the sixth century AD.

Early English Books Online
Reproductions of the 125,000 earliest books published in English, from the titles in the Short Title Catalogs of Pollard & Redgrave (Ref Z 2002 P77) and Wing (Ref Z 2002 U587).

Eighteenth Century Collections Online
A comprehensive digital edition of The Eighteenth Century microfilm set, which has aimed to include every significant English-language and foreign-language title printed in the United Kingdom, along with thousands of important works from the Americas, between 1701 and 1800. Consists of books, pamphlets, broadsides, ephemera. Subject categories include history and geography; fine arts and social sciences; medicine, science, and technology; literature and language; religion and philosophy; law; general reference. Also included are significant collections of women writers of the eighteenth century, collections on the French Revolution, and numerous eighteenth-century editions of the works of Shakespeare. Where they add scholarly value or contain important differences, multiple editions of each individual work are offered.

FRANCIS
an index of primarily Francophone material. It covers a wide range of multilingual, multidisciplinary information in the humanities, social sciences, and economics, including religion, the history of art, psychology, and literature, with particular emphasis on current trends in European and world literature. The database consists of bibliographic records for serials, journal articles, books, book chapters, conference papers, French dissertations, exhibition catalogs, legislation, teaching materials, and reports.

Library of Latin Texts
Digital version of the majority of extant Latin texts, searchable by author, word(s) in text, period, and more.

Literature Online (LION)
About 350,000 literary works in English: British and American poetry, drama and prose, plus some journals and literature reference sources.

Teatro Espanol del Siglo de Oro
800 plays from Spain's golden age, the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries

Women Writers Project
Online versions of literary works by women writers, mainly from the nineteenth century.

Journal Collections

Academic Search Premier
Citations, abstracts and full-text articles from scholarly and general-interest periodicals relating to social sciences, humanities, education, physical, and biological sciences. 1975-

China Academic Journals
Full text scholarly journals from the People's Republic of China in the humanities and social sciences. Searchable in both Chinese and English; articles are in Chinese. To view full text articles, use pdf file or install and use the CAJ viewer. Viewer may be downloaded free of charge from CNKI search page. Be sure to install a GB font such as MS Hei or SimSun in the viewer.

JStor
The most important scholarly journals of many academic fields in full text, from their earliest issue to between two and five years prior to the present: in other words, the backfiles rather than current issues.

Lexis Nexis Academic
Full text articles from tens of thousands of periodicals, including business and medical periodicals; international, national and college newspapers; law reviews; state and federal case law; and statutory law. Date ranges vary for individual publications, but it mainly covers from the 1980's to present.

Project Muse
Full-text articles from scholarly journals in the humanities and social sciences published by Johns Hopkins University Press and others; searchable by journal issue, author, and keyword. 1996-

Indexes

MLA International Bibliography
Citations to journal articles, books, book chapters, and dissertations relating to literature, literary theory, film, and cultural studies. 1963-

Annee Philologique
L'Annee Philologique provides indexing and abstracts for articles and books in Classics. When searching for ancient authors, use the Latin form of the name.

Arts and Humanitites Citation Index
Covers archaeology, linguistics, architecture, literary reviews, art, literature, Asian studies, music, classics, philosophy, dance, poetry, folklore, radio, television and film, history, religion, language, and theater. 1984-

Bibliography of Asian Studies
Citations to western-language monographs, articles, and book chapters relating to Asia and Asian Studies, 1971 to present.

Book Review Digest
Citations, abstracts and excerpts of reviews of English-language books published in scholarly and popular periodicals. 1983- (Earlier coverage from 1906 is available in the print version, Ref Z1219 B72).

Communication and Mass Media Complete
Provides citations, abstracts and full text of articles from several hundred sources, including core journals in communication, interpersonal communication, mass media, and journalism journals, plus articles on communication published in the journals of other disciplines. 1920's-

Digital Dissertations
Bibliographic citations and abstracts of doctoral dissertations and some masters theses completed at primarily American and Canadian colleges and universities since 1861. Includes full text of the first 24 pages of most recent (1997- ) dissertations and full text of recent UMass Amherst dissertations. To borrow theses and dissertations from other institutions, place a request through Interlibrary Loan .

Expanded Academic ASAP
Citations, abstracts and full-text articles from scholarly and general-interest periodicals relating to the humanities, social sciences, and nontechnical general sciences. 1980-

Humanities International Complete
An index to about 1,500 scholarly journals in the humanities disciplines of archaeology, classical studies, cultural studies, art, performing arts, philosophy, history, music, linguistics, literature, as well as literary magazines of fiction, poetry and original artwork.

Index Islamicus 
Index Islamicus has provided indexing of the literature on Islam, the Middle East and the Muslim world since 1910. It covers books, book chapters, conference proceedings, and over 3,000 periodicals.

Index Translationum 
A project of the United Nations tracing books published in translation, worldwide.

International Index to the Performing Arts
Citations to articles in journals covering theater, dance, film, and puppetry. 1920-

Left Index
Citations to articles in scholarly and general periodicals with a leftist perspective covering areas such as labor movement, ecology & environment, race & ethnicity, social & cultural theory, sociology, art & aesthetics, philosophy, history, education, law, and globalization. 1982-

Middle East and Central Asian Studies
A bibliographic index of scholarly articles, books and book chapters constituting the policy and scholarly discourse on the countries and peoples of the Middle East, Central Asia and North Africa.

Reference Sources

Britannica Online
The classic general encyclopedia, a good starting point for all kinds of research. Also includes the Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary and Thesuarus, links to the BBC and New York Times for current news, a world atlas, and a quotation dictionary.

Contemporary Literary Criticism
Full-text critical essays reprinted from scholarly journals on the works of primarily English-language contemporary literary authors.

Literary Reference Center
Full text literary criticism and biography.

Lexicons of Early Modern English
A collection of dictionaries and other word lists printed in English before 1700. The etymologies by contemporary speakers of pre-1700 English are especially valuable.

Literature Resource Center
A large collection of literature reference material, including Contemporary Authors, Contemporary Literary Criticism and the Dictionaries of Literary Biography from Gale; the Twayne's Author series; MLA Bibliography; and the Scribners Writers series.

Oxford English Dictionary
Online version of the OED, irreplaceable for word definitions, usage, and etymologies.

Oxford Reference Online
Full text entries from over 100 Oxford University Press subject dictionaries, guides, and concise companions, including several foreign language dictionaries.

WorldCat
The combined catalogs of most U.S. libraries. Books not locally owned can often be borrowed through Interlibrary Loan.