Dante, 1495
Portrait by Botticelli. Public Domain. Source: Wikimedia Commons
Use the DUQSearch Advanced Search to limit your results to precisely what you are looking for.
To get to the DUQSearch Advanced Search screen, go to the Gumberg Library homepage. Under the search box in the middle of the screen, look for the "Advanced" link and click on this to do an Advanced Search.
In dealing with literary topics there are two different types of searches you need to know about to search efficiently: Author and Subject searches
Author: If you want to find all works written by a particular poet (primary sources), change the menu to the right of the search box in which you enter the author's name to "AU Author."
Subject: If you want to find all books about the author and their work (secondary sources), change the menu to the right of the search box in which you enter the author's name to "SU Subject Terms."
Let's say you wanted to find books about the theme of "religion" in the work of Emily Dickinson. In the first search box, type her name and change the menu to the right of the box to "SU Subject Terms." In the second box type "religion" and change the menu to the right of the box to "SU Subject Terms" also.
If this search does not retrieve much, you might change the menu to the right of the second search box back to "Select a Field (optional)" (You would now be doing a search where the word "religion" would be searched as a keyword) and then rerun the search.
If you wanted books on the theme of "the sublime" in the works of the Romantic poets, you could type the word "sublime" in the first search box and then change the menu to the right of that box to "SU Subject Terms". In the second box you would type "romantic*" and change the menu to the right of that box to "SU Subject Terms." We put the asterisk (*) at the end of the word "romantic" so we search for the words "romantic," "romantics," and "romanticism" all in one search.
On one of the other Find Books tabs are links that search DUQSearch for books about poetry from a particular place. But what if there is no link there to search for the country or area you are looking for? Go to the DUQSearch Advanced Search screen. In the first search box, type the name of the place, country, or continent you are interested in, then change the menu to the right of that search box to "SU Subject Terms". In the second box, type "poetry" then change the menu to the right of that box to "SU Subject Terms" as well. Then run your search.
Let's say you wanted to find books of "war poetry" or books on the theme of "war" in poetry. In the first search box type "war" and change the menu to the right of that box to "SU Subject Terms." In the second box type "poetry" then change the menu to the right of that box to "SU Subject Terms." Then click the Search button.
