ULibraries Research Guides: English: Background Information

Using Background Resources

Background resources, such as encyclopedias and dictionaries, are a good place to start when doing research. Use them to:

Understand the history of your research topic
Become familiar with the language used to describe your research topic in order to search more effectively
Find important researchers and texts to read and further develop your topic and analysis

Background Sources

Encyclopedia of Modernism This link opens in a new window
The largest and most comprehensive resource available for all those involved in the study of modernism from students to academics. Interdisciplinary and global content about the Modernist period. The content is fully cross-referenced, allowing for greater discoverability between fields, and covers eight key subject areas: Literature, Architecture, Visual Arts, Music, Dance, Theatre, Film, and Intellectual Currents. Researchers can browse by subject, movement, or place in order to discover connections between key topics and fields
The largest and most comprehensive resource available for all those involved in the study of modernism from students to academics. Interdisciplinary and global content about the Modernist period. The content is fully cross-referenced, allowing for greater discoverability between fields, and covers eight key subject areas: Literature, Architecture, Visual Arts, Music, Dance, Theatre, Film, and Intellectual Currents. Researchers can browse by subject, movement, or place in order to discover connections between key topics and fields
Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism This link opens in a new window
This database contains over 240 alphabetically-arranged entries on individual critics and theorists, critical and theoretical schools and movements, and the critical and theoretical innovations of specific countries and historical periods. It also includes information on figures who did not explicitly deal with but still affected literature, literary theory, or literary criticism, as well as figures and forms of inquiry from other fields that have been shaped by or have themselves shaped lite…
This database contains over 240 alphabetically-arranged entries on individual critics and theorists, critical and theoretical schools and movements, and the critical and theoretical innovations of specific countries and historical periods. It also includes information on figures who did not explicitly deal with but still affected literature, literary theory, or literary criticism, as well as figures and forms of inquiry from other fields that have been shaped by or have themselves shaped literary theory and criticism.
Literature Resource Center (LRC) This link opens in a new window
The Literature Research Center contains biographies, bibliographies and critical analysis of authors from many time periods and literary disciplines. Coverage is provided for over 90,000 novelists, poets, essayists, journalists and other writers, with in-depth coverage of 2,000 of the most-studied authors.
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography This link opens in a new window
The Dictionary of National Biography is a reference work providing over 58,000 biographies about British historical figures. The database is updated every January, May, and September. January updates extend coverage into the 21st century; May and September updates add biographies across all historical periods.
Oxford English Dictionary (OED) This link opens in a new window
The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is a dictionary of the English language. It covers the meaning, history, and pronunciation of over 600,000 words drawn from over 1000 years of English in a variety of countries. The OED is structured as a historical dictionary in which the focus is both on present-day meanings as well as the history of individual words (and the language itself), traced through 3 million quotations from classic literature, specialist periodicals, films, scripts, and cookbook…
The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is a dictionary of the English language. It covers the meaning, history, and pronunciation of over 600,000 words drawn from over 1000 years of English in a variety of countries. The OED is structured as a historical dictionary in which the focus is both on present-day meanings as well as the history of individual words (and the language itself), traced through 3 million quotations from classic literature, specialist periodicals, films, scripts, and cookbooks. Updates revise and extend the OED at regular intervals.