This is a research guide created by College of San Mateo Library librarians to help students with research in the area of English and English Literature. It provides tools, resources, and tips for getting started researching this topic.
The most authoritative source on the English language, with a focus on etymology and historical usage.
Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary
Newly Revised & Updated! The Eleventh Edition of America's Best-Selling Dictionary defines the current, active vocabulary of American English and is updated on an ongoing basis. Features more than 225,000 definitions and over 42,000 usage examples. Includes newly added words and meanings across a variety of fields including technology, entertainment, health, science, and society. Special sections include: A Handbook of Style, Foreign Words and Phrases, Biographical Names, and Geographical Names. New words include: bestie, truther, Bitcoin, listicle, binge-watch, ransomware, takeaway, woke, hack, clickbait, immersive. *BOOK COVER DESIGNS MAY VARY: We recently redesigned our Collegiate Dictionary cover so some customers may receive the original design and others may receive the new cover design.
Call Number: REF/PE1628.M36 2011
ISBN: 9780877798095
Publication Date: 2019-08-01
English Grammar Demystified
by
Phyllis Dutwin
Decode the mystery of English grammar to add polish to your papers, emails, business letters, and more English Grammar. With help from this book, you will understand the parts of speech, learn to use punctuation correctly, master verb tenses, spot and avoid common grammatical errors, and improve your overall sentence structures.
Call Number: PE1112.D88 2010
ISBN: 9780071600804
Publication Date: 2009-12-09
Grammar Troublespots
by
Ann Raimes
Ideal for student writers, this compact grammar reference guide contains many challenging and useful practice activities. This text provides a guide to the 20 most common errors students make in writing, such as subject-verb agreement, verb tense choice, and article usage. Each unit contains a straightforward description of the troublespot and practice activities. An answer key enables students to use the book as a self-study reference guide.
Call Number: PE1128.R2326 2004
ISBN: 9780521532860
Publication Date: 2004-04-05
The Literary Theory Handbook
by
Gregory Castle
The Literary Theory Handbook introduces students to the history and scope of literary theory, showing them how to perform literary analysis, and providing a greater understanding of the historical contexts for different theories. A new edition of this highly successful text, which includes updated and refined chapters, and new sections on contemporary theories. Far reaching in its inclusion of a detailed history of theory and in-depth discussions of major theories and movements.
Call Number: Available Online
ISBN: 1118331583
Publication Date: 2013-05-21
Criticism
by
Catherine Belsey
Ideas in Profile: Small Introductions to Big Topics At the heart of criticism lies one question: What do you think of it? Every time we comment on an artefact, whether a poem, a play, a painting, a novel or a piano concerto, we are acting as critics, making our own judgements and interpretations. Among the most fundamental of human intellectual activities, criticism offers a starting point for many of our journeys towards understanding. Focusing particularly on stories, plays and poems, Criticism traces the central concepts and controversies in criticism, from Plato to Derrida, and from Romanticism to the death of the author. In the process, it reflects on criticism itself, the possibilities and options that confront casual readers, as well as reviewers, members of reading groups, students and teachers of English. How far do we make conscious choices about how and what we read (or view)? What do we conventionally look for in fiction? And what might we look for if we went beyond the conventional?
Call Number: PN83 .B39 2016
ISBN: 9781781254509
Publication Date: 2016-12-27
Literary Transnationalism(s)
by
Dagmar Vandebosch, Theo D'haen
Goethe in 1827 famously claimed that national literatures did not mean very much anymore, and that the epoch of world literature was at hand. Since the turn of the twenty-first century, in the so-called "transnational turn" in literary studies, interest in world literature, and in how texts move beyond national or linguistic boundaries, has peaked. The authors of the 18 articles making up Literary Transnationalism(s) reflect on how literary texts move between cultures via translation, adaptation, and intertextual referencing, thus entering the field of world literature. The texts and subjects treated range from Caribbean, American, and Latin American literature to European migrant literatures, from the uses of pseudo-translations to the organizing principles of world histories of literature, from the dissemination of knowledge in the middle ages to circulation of literary journals and series in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Contributors include, amongst others, Jean Bessi re, Johan Callens, Reindert Dhondt, C sar Dom nguez, Erica Durante, Ottmar Ette, Kathleen Gyssels, Reine Meylaerts, and Djelal Kadir. Authors discussed comprise, amongst others, Carlos Fuentes, Ernest Hemingway, Edouard Glissant.
Call Number: Available Online
ISBN: 9789004370852
Publication Date: 2018-10-25
The Norton Anthology of World Literature
by
Martin Puchner (General Editor)
The Fourth Edition of the most trusted and widely used brief anthology of world literature retains and expands the most popular works from the last edition while offering exciting new selections and new translations of major works. As always, the Norton Anthology also provides helpful apparatus, beautiful illustrations, and a robust suite of digital resources--all at an affordable price. The ebook reflects the contents of the Shorter Fourth Edition and includes corresponding page numbers to each of the edition's two volumes.
ISBN: 9780393656022
Publication Date: 2018-10-19
The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism
by
John McGowan; T. Denean Sharpley-whitin; Vincent B. Leitch; William E. Cain; Laurie A. Finke
The gold standard anthology for anyone who wants to understand the development and current state of literary theory. Offering 191 pieces by 157 authors, The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, Third Edition, is more comprehensive and more varied in its selection than any other anthology. Forty-eight NEW selections--concentrated mostly on the twentieth and twenty-first centuries--make the book not only the best overview of the history of theory, but also a remarkably up-to-date portrait of the state of theory today.
The Routledge Concise History of World Literature
by
Theo D'haen
This remarkably broad and informative book offers an introduction to and overview of World Literature. Tracing the term from its earliest roots and situating it within a number of relevant contexts from postcolonialism to postmodernism, Theo D'haen examines: the return of the term "world literature" and its changing meaning Goethe's concept of Weltliteratur and how this relates to current debates theories and theorists who have had an impact on world literature non-canonical and less-known literatures from around the globe the possibility and implications of a definition of world literature. This book is the ideal guide to an increasingly popular and important term in literary studies. It is accessible and engaging and will be invaluable to students of world literature, comparative literature, translation and postcolonial studies and anyone with an interest in these or related topics.
Call Number: Available Online
ISBN: 9780415495899
Publication Date: 2011-12-07
The Age of the Image
by
Stephen Apkon
An urgent, erudite, and practical book that redefines literacy to embrace how we think and communicate nowWe live in a world that is awash in visual storytelling. The recent technological revolutions in video recording, editing, and distribution are more akin to the development of movable type than any other such revolution in the last five hundred years. And yet we are not popularly cognizant of or conversant with visual storytelling's grammar, the coded messages of its style, and the practical components of its production. We are largely, in a word, illiterate.But this is not a gloomy diagnosis of the collapse of civilization; rather, it is a celebration of the progress we've made and an exhortation and a plan to seize the potential we're poised to enjoy. The rules that define effective visual storytelling - much like the rules that define written language - do in fact exist, and Stephen Apkon has long experience in deploying them, teaching them, and witnessing their power in the classroom and beyond. In The Age of the Image, drawing on the history of literacy - from scroll to codex, scribes to printing presses, SMS to social media - on the science of how various forms of storytelling work on the human brain, and on the practical value of literacy in real-world situations, Apkon convincingly argues that now is the time to transform the way we teach, create, and communicate so that we can all step forward together into a rich and stimulating future.
Call Number: LB1068.A75 2013
ISBN: 9780374102432
Publication Date: 2013-04-16
The Oxford English Dictionary
by
John Simpson; Edmund Weiner
Eighty years ago, the "greatest work in dictionary-making ever undertaken" was completed. And with its enormous range, unparalleled historical depth, detailed etymologies, and inexhaustible supply of illustrative quotations, it has enriched the lives of writers, readers, and word-lovers of all stripes ever since. Begun in 1857, published in ten volumes in 1928, subsequently revised and expanded to 20 volumes in 1989, and now adopted to the electronic age, the OED has become the most venerated and most beloved English-language reference ever compiled. The key feature of the OED, of course, is its unique historical focus. Accompanying each definition is a chronologically arranged group of quotations that illustrate the evolution of meaning from the word's first recorded usage and show the contexts in which it can be used. The quotations are drawn from a huge variety of sources--literary, scholarly, technical, popular-and represent authors as disparate as Geoffrey Chaucer and Erica Jong, William Shakespeare and Raymond Chandler, Charles Darwin and John Le Carre. In all, nearly 2.5 million quotations--illustrating over a half-million words--can be found in the OED. Other features distinguishing the entries in the dictionary are the most authoritative definitions, detailed information on pronunciation, variant spellings throughout each word's history, extensive treatment of etymology, and details of area of usage and of any regional characteristics (including geographical origins). A dictionary like no other in the world, the OED has been described as "among the wonders of the world of scholarship." Reflecting upon the Dictionary's 80 years, that statement is today more apt than it ever has been. Also available online at: www.oed.com