Foreign Languages, Literatures, & Cultures
German Literature Resources
Reference Information | Books | Journal Articles
Biographies | Primary Sources | Book Reviews
Reference books such as encyclopedias, chronologies, dictionaries, and bibliographies provide valuable information for literary research. These sources tend to provide background information that contextualizes a topic or provide suggestions for further reading on a topic.
Garland, Henry B., and Mary Garland. The Oxford Companion to German Literature. Oxford; New York: Oxford UP, 1997.
Watanabe-O’Kelly, Helen, ed. The Cambridge History of German Literature. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge UP, 1997.
Konzett, Matthias, ed. Encyclopedia of German Literature. 2 vols. Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2000.
Furness, Raymond, and Malcolm Humble. A Companion to Twentieth-Century German Literature. London; New York: Routledge, 1997.
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Blackwell Reference Online:A collection of full-text reference books in the humanities and social sciences. |
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Cambridge Histories Online: Provides full text online access to the complete 250-plus volumes of Cambridge Histories reference series. Provides political, economic and social history, philosophy and literature of selected countries and subjects. |
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Dictionary of Literary Biography Complete Online: Contains essays outlining the lives and careers of authors from all eras and genres, and summarizes the critical response to their work. |
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Gale Virtual Reference Library: Offers more than 800 references sources on topics that range from the arts to zoology. |
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Literature Resource Center: Provides selected biographical, critical, and bibliographical information on various literary figures. |
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Oxford Reference Online: Database of full-text scholarly reference books on all subjects. A good source for background information. |
In literary studies, books are still highly valued resources and tend to offer more in-depth discussions of a particular topic, text, author, or movement. Use LEO, the library catalog, to find books owned by the JMU Libraries, and WorldCat to find books not owned by JMU Libraries. If you need a book the Libraries don't own, you may request it through Interlibrary Loan (ILL).
Books may be located by browsing the appropriate area in the stacks or by searching in an online library catalog.
Browsing Area: PT 1-7000 – German literature
Library Catalogs:
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LEO Library Catalog: The JMU Libraries' online catalog includes information about books, films and videos, government documents, music and spoken recordings (CDs, LPs, cassettes), computer software, music scores, special collections, maps and atlases, and online resources. |
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WorldCat: A union catalog of more than 110 million titles from 69,000 libraries worldwide. This resource includes manuscripts written as early as the 1000 BC, books, audio visual media, and Internet sources. |
When researching literature in a library catalog, subject headings are often the most efficient way of searching the library catalog. There are several types of headings that you should consider as you conduct your searches: authors as subjects, national literatures, and literary themes.
Subject Heading Type |
Form/Examples |
Typical search results |
Author as subject |
Last name, first name Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von |
Books about the author, his writings, life, and influences. Use for researching authors as well as their works. |
National literature |
Nationality + literature German Literature Austrian Literature |
Books that broadly discuss the literature of a particular nation. |
Literary themes |
Theme + in literature Psychoanalysis in literature Literature + theme Literature – psychology Theme + and literature Psychoanalysis and literature |
Books of that address a particular theme from a literary perspective. |
Journal articles are a good source for finding the most current scholarship on your research topic. While recent journal literature is important to consider, in the humanities older scholarship is still considered a valuable source of information. To learn more about scholarly journals vs. popular magazines and for an explanation of peer-reviewed or refereed journals, see the link for Peer-Reviewed Journals in the "Learn More..." box in the right hand column.
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MLA International Bibliography: Indexes critical materials on literature, languages, linguistics, and folklore. |
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Literature Criticism Online: Provides access to a range of modern and historical views on authors and their works across regions, eras, and genres. |
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Literature Resource Center: Provides selected biographical, critical, and bibliographical information on various literary figures. |
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Humanities International Complete: Search through hundreds of full text journals, books, and other published resources from around the world. Provides information on literary, scholarly, and creative thought. |
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Academic Search Complete: Contains current literary criticism and peer-reviewed journal articles from more than 400 journals in literature and literary criticism as well as more than 200 journals in linguistics. |
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Humanities & Social Sciences Retrospective: Indexes articles in a variety of disciplines, including history, international relations, law, linguistics, literary & social criticism, literature, minority studies, music, performing arts, philosophy, political science, psychology, religion and theology, sociology, and urban studies from 1907-1984. |
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JSTOR: Full online text and images for back issues of selected scholarly journals in history, economics, political science, demography, mathematics, anthropology, sociology, education, literature, sciences and other fields. |
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Project Muse: An index of journals in the humanities, social sciences, and mathematics, published by the Johns Hopkins University Press and other university presses. |
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Periodicals Archive Online: Full text for journals published in the arts, humanities and social sciences. |
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Electronic Journal Library: The Elektronische Zeitschriftenbibliothek EZB (Electronic Journals Library) is a service to facilitate the use of scholarly journals on the internet. Journals cover all subject areas in a variety of languages and may be either searched or browsed by subject or title. |
Biographies provide detailed information about an author's life and often situate an author's works within the context of their life. Like reference information (see above), biographies are valuable sources for background information and for listings of further readings both by and about the author.
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Dictionary of Literary Biography Complete Online: Contains essays outlining the lives and careers of authors from all eras and genres, and summarizes the critical response to their work. |
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Literature Resource Center: Provides selected biographical, critical, and bibliographical information on various literary figures. |
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Biography and Geneaology Master Index: Indexes more than 15 million biographical sketches from reference books. Find a citation and then look in LEO to see if JMU Libraries owns the reference book the biography is in. |
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Biography Resource Center: Contains biographical information on over 340,000 people from throughout history, around the world, and across all disciplines and subject areas. |
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LEO Library Catalog: Search the JMU Libraries' online catalog for biographies by doing a subject search for the name of the person you are researching. |
The definition of primary source varies widely from discipline to discipline. In literature, primary sources are the original, creative work of an author, including poetry, plays, nonfiction prose, novels, and short stories. An author's correspondence or journals are also considered primary sources. For a more detailed discussion of primary sources, see the Primary v. Secondary Sources page linked from the "Learn More..." box in the right hand column.
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ArchiveGrid: Search through historical documents, personal papers, and family histories held in archives around the world. Thousands of libraries, museums, and archives have contributed nearly a million collection descriptions to ArchiveGrid. |
Book reviews are excellent sources for discovering how a book was received immediately following its publication. Typically book reviews are published in the year of a book's publication and the three years immediately following. Keep this in mind as you search print sources for reviews of a particular book.
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Book Review Index: Includes reviews for more titles than Book Review Digest Plus but does not include summaries or excerpts of reviews. Tells you about reviews in magazines, journals, and newspapers. Carrier Library has 1965 to the present in print. |
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Book Review Digest Plus: Indexes and abstracts reviews of English language adult and juvenile fiction and non-fiction titles. Reviews are selected from journals in the humanities, sciences, social sciences and library review media. Covers from 1905 to the present. |
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Index to Book Reviews in the Humanities: An excellent source for reviews of books published in the humanities. Carrier Library has 1960 to 1990 of this index. |
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Academic Search Complete: Index and full-text source for scholarly journals and magazines. Contains nearly 10,400 publications, including more than 5,030 peer-reviewed publications. Frequently contains book reviews. |
For more book review sources, visit http://www.lib.jmu.edu/resources/reviews.aspx. |
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This page last reviewed by M. Van Vuuren on 8/06/2009.
