Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1774
Anonymous engraving after a portrait by Georg Friedrich Schmoll
Gumberg Library offers access to many databases providing citations to journal articles, and, in many cases, the full text of articles dealing with authors and their works. See below for tips on searching these databases. All of these resources can be accessed from off-campus, but you will need to enter your Multipass username and password in order to use them.
1. In searching Quick Search and the article databases, putting a phrase (or title of a work) in double quotation marks will force the search engine to search for your exact phrase (or title).
2. If you are searching for a work of literature with a unique title, like Dylan Thomas' sonnet sequence "Altarwise by Owl Light," just entering the title in a keyword search will be enough to bring up all articles containing that title. The articles will not necessarily all be on that work of literature, but the title will be contained in each one.
3. In the case of a work of literature with a common title, like William Blake's poem "The Lamb," adding the author's name to the search will be necessary to limit your search to articles on Blake's poem.
4. Sometimes a search using just the title of a work, say Arthur Miller's play Death of a Salesman, will bring up an overwhelming number of articles. In this case, you should add to your search other key words or phrases describing the particular theme, or themes, of the work you want to explore. If you were interested, for example, in the treatment of the theme of the "American Dream" in Miller's play, you might enter a search like "death of a salesman" AND "american dream" to narrow the number of results to only those on the theme you are interested in.
