Chaucer: Library Resources

Contents:

• Reference Sources
• Finding Books in the Pace Library
• Finding Journal Articles
• Finding and Evaluating Web Sites
• Citing Your Sources

Reference Sources

The following sources are useful for research topics relating to Chaucer and the Medieval world.  For general literary criticism sources, see the Pace Library's guide to Researching an Author.

Batsford Companion to Medieval England    Ref DA175.S38 1983

Compendium of information on the English middle ages.

British Writers    Ref PR85.B688 (v.1-4)

Lengthy articles on significant British authors include bibliographies.

Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature    Ref PR255.C35 1999

A detailed history of medieval English literature.  Includes a chronology and full bibliography.

Chaucer Glossary    Ref PR1941.C5 1979

Explains the meaning of unfamiliar words and phrases in Chaucer.

Chaucer bibliographies

Use these to find criticism of Chaucer's work.  Specific titles include:

• Bibliography of Chaucer, 1908-1953    Ref Z8164.G85 1955
• Bibliography of Chaucer, 1954-1963    Ref Z8164.C79
• Bibliography of Chaucer, 1964-1973    Ref Z8164.B27
• Chaucer's Miller's, Reeve's, and Cook's tales    Ref Z8164.C37 1997
• Chaucer    Ref Z8164.B33 1977
  
  

Chronology of the Medieval World 800-1491    Ref D188.S855

Year-by-year guide to events around the world.

Dictionary of the Middle Ages    Ref D114.D5 1982 (v.1-13)

Scholarly articles covering various aspects of life in the middle ages.

Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages    Ref D114.E53 1999

Short illustrated articles covering the middle ages in Europe and elsewhere.

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Finding Books in the Pace Library

You can find other books on your topic by searching the online Pace Library Catalog.  If you want to find books about an author, try entering that author's name as a Subject search.  Subject searches target the specific Library of Congress Subject Headings that have been assigned to the books that the Pace Library owns.  These subject headings follow a specific format.  Personal names are entered last name first (e.g. Chaucer Geoffrey D 1400).

You can also search the catalog by Title or Author, but unless you are looking for a specific book, you will most likely want to begin with a Keyword search.  This option allows you to enter words or phrases and retrieve books whose descriptions match those words or phrases.  Once you have found a source that you find useful, look at the Library of Congress Subject Headings towards the bottom of the catalog record to determine the best terms to use in a Subject search for further materials.  Some examples of useful subject headings might include:

• Literature, Medieval
• Civilization, Medieval
• Middle Ages
• Women in Literature

If you find a book that you are interested in, note the Location (i.e. specific campus library) and Call Number (this gives you the shelf location) of the book so that you will be able to find it in the Library.  For more information on finding books, please see the Library's guide to Using the Pace Library Catalog.

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Finding Journal Articles

To find journal articles on Chaucer and Medieval history, start with the library databases.  To access the databases, go to the library home page and click on "Databases."  Use the pull-down menus provided to choose a database to search.  The following databases may prove useful:

Academic Search Premier

Provides full text for more than 3,430 scholarly publications covering academic areas of study including social sciences, humanities, education, computer sciences, engineering, language and linguistics, arts & literature, medical sciences, and ethnic studies.

Historical Abstracts

Annotated references to historical writings (journals, dissertations & books) covering the years 1450 to the present.

JSTOR

Contains back issues of scholarly journals.  To find mythology articles, search in Language and Literature journals.

Literature Resource Center

Contains information on the lives and writings of nearly 100,000 authors along with critical reaction to their works.

Magill on Authors

Comprehensive reference database comprising information on over 1,500 notable authors.

Magill on Literature

Contains editorially reviewed critical analyses and brief plot summaries of the most studied works in the history of literature.

MLA Bibliography

Modern Language Association International Bibliography for literature in modern languages. Indexes articles from 1963 to the present.

Some library databases include full-text articles, while others -- including MLA -- provide only citations and abstracts.  To find full-text articles, perform a Journal Title search in the Library Catalog using the name of the journal.  For more information, see "I have an article citation, now what do I do?"

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Finding and Evaluating Web Sites

The Pace Library maintains a directory of Websites that we have looked at and judged to be appropriate for academic research.  To access this directory, visit the Library's Internet Resources by Subject page.  Use the pull-down menu provided to select the Literature category (see the Medieval subcategory).  Also try the following literature sites:

IPL Online Literary Criticism Collection    http://www.ipl.org/ref/litcrit/

The Internet Public Library's collection of "4745 critical and biographical websites about authors and their works that can be browsed by author, by title, or by nationality and literary period".  Other Useful IPL resources include an Online Literary Criticism Guide.

Literary Resources on the Net    http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Lit/

Search or browse this extensive directory of literary web sites created and maintained by Jack Lynch of Rutgers University.

VoS - Voice of the Shuttle    http://vos.ucsb.edu/index-netscape.asp

A well-organized guide to scholarly Web resources in the Humanities.  Developed and maintained by Alan Liu and others in the English Department of the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Other useful directories of scholarly Web resources in various subject areas include:

INFOMINE    http://infomine.ucr.edu/

A collection of scholarly Internet resources, arranged by subject.  INFOMINE was developed by the University of California, Riverside.

 Librarians' Index to the Internet    http://lii.org/

Though specifically intended for users of public libraries, this annotated subject directory links to more than 9,000 high-quality Web resources.

The Scout Report Archives    http://scout.cs.wisc.edu/archives/

Search for critical evaluations of Websites that have appeared in previous editions of the Scout Report.

Regardless of the method that you use to locate Web resources, you will need to ask yourself evaluative questions about those resources.  Specifically, you should think about whether your sources are accurate, authoritative, objective, current, and appropriate to the topic under consideration.  For more information on evaluating Websites, please see the library's page on Evaluating Resources.

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Citing Your Sources

To avoid the appearance of plagiarism, you will need to cite all of your information sources using a standard citation format, such as MLA.  For information on MLA citation format, see the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers (Ref. Reserve LB2369 .G53 1999).

Additional information about citing resources is available on the Library's How to Cite Resources page.  If you are unsure of which citation format to use, please ask your instructor.  For more information on plagiarism, see the "Student Resources" on the Library's Plagiarism Facts for Faculty and Students page.

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