Q. How do I find criticism on short stories?

You can find literary criticism on short stories, poetry, novels, and other types of literature in the following databases: 

• Bloom's Literature
• Ebook Central 

• To find a criticism on a particular work of literature, search for the title of the work and/or the name of the author.  For example, "The Old Man and the Sea" or "Ernest Hemingway".  (Note: Look in the abstracts of results for words like "criticism", "analysis", "essay", or "discussion" to be sure that you have retrieved criticism about the short story and not the text of the short story itself.) 

• You can also try a search using the term "literary criticism" and the title of the short story or name of the author.  For example, "literary criticism" AND Hemingway.   

• But literary databases, such as Bloom's, let you limit your results to Criticism or Literature Criticism from a tab or sidebar.

1. On the Bloom's Literature homepage, click on the search box and type in your keyword(s), then click the navy button on the right with the magnifying glass icon.  For this example, my search term is "The Old Man and the Sea".
 

2. Next you will see a list of results.  If you want to narrow down the type of results, try clicking on one of the words across the top of the page.  For example, if you click on the link at the top for Criticism, the results will be narrowed down to just those analyzing or critiquing the work of literature you are researching.

3. Clicking on the title of an article will open the full text.  There is a citation icon at the top of the full article, just below the title, where you can get a citation in MLA (8th Edition) style. 

For more information on how to use a Literary database, please see the brief Bloom's Literature video below.