Reference materials are an excellent way to gather background information on your subject areas and to acquaint yourself with a particular topic. Click on the links below to discover some of the reference materials available relating to American, Canadian, and First Nations Literature
Language dictionaries and encyclopedias are a great resource to use in order to familiarize yourself with general subject terms or to gain a better understanding of a term's meaning and proper use.
Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory
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Includes bibliographical references and index.
The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language
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Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
Handbook is just another name for guide. Each of these handbooks serves as a brief and easy-to-use guide to various literatures, containing entries on writers, literary theories, literary movements and more.
The titles below represent a selection of the American, Canadian, and First Nations Literature-related handbooks in the Library. You can search for more in the Library Catalogue.
Asian Pacific American Heritage
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Online resource. Includes bibliographical references and index.
The Cambridge Companion to American Fiction After 1945
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Each generation revises literary history and this is nowhere more evident than in the post-Second World War period. This Companion offers a comprehensive, authoritative and accessible overview of the diversity of American fiction since the Second World War. Essays by nineteen distinguished scholars provide critical insights into the significant genres, historical contexts, cultural diversity and major authors during a period of enormous American global political and cultural power. This power is overshadowed, nevertheless, by national anxieties growing out of events ranging from the Civil Rights Movement to the rise of feminism; from the Cold War and its fear of Communism and nuclear warfare to the Age of Terror and its different yet related fears of the 'Other'. American fiction since 1945 has faithfully chronicled these anxieties. An essential reference guide, this Companion provides a chronology of the period, as well as guides to further reading.
The Concise Oxford Companion to African American Literature
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Online resource. Includes bibliographical references and index.
Dictionary of American Literary Characters
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Includes index.
Jewish American Literature
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Online resource. Includes bibliographical references and index.
The Oxford Companion to African American Literature
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Includes bibliographical references and index.
The Oxford Companion to American Literature
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Includes index.
The Oxford Companion to Women's Writing in the United States
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Includes bibliographical references (p. 970-977) and index.
The Penguin Companion to American Literature
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Includes bibliographical references.
The Cambridge Companion to Canadian Literature
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Includes bibliographical references and index.
The Cambridge History of Canadian Literature
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Includes bibliographical references (p. 652-705) and index.
The Concise Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature
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An abridged ed. of: The Oxford companion to Canadian literature.
The Concise Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature
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Abridged ed. of: The Oxford companion to Canadian literature.
Encyclopedia of Literature in Canada
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Includes index.
Encyclopedia of Literature in Canada
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Includes index.
The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature
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Includes bibliographical references.
The Routledge Concise History of Canadian Literature
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The Routledge Concise History of Canadian Literature introduces the fiction, poetry and drama of Canada in its historical, political and cultural contexts. In this clear and structured volume, Richard Lane outlines: the history of Canadian literature from colonial times to the present; key texts for Canadian First Peoples and the literature of Quebec; the impact of English translation, regional literatures, and the Canadian immigrant experience; critical themes such as landscape, ethnicity, orality, textuality, war and nationhood; contemporary debate on the canon, feminism, postcoloniality, queer theory, and cultural and ethnic diversity; the work of canonical and lesser-known writers from Catherine Parr and Susan Moodie to Robert Service, Maria Campbell and Douglas Copeland. Written in an engaging and accessible style and offering a glossary, maps and annotated further reading sections, this guidebook is a crucial resource for students working in the field of Canadian Literature
The Cambridge Companion to Native American Literature
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Includes bibliographical references (p. 311-328) and index.
Dictionary of Native American Literature
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Includes bibliographical references and index.
Dictionary of Native American Literature
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Includes bibliographical references and index.
Encyclopedia of American Indian Literature
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Includes bibliographical references (p. 417-436) and index.
Handbook of Native American Literature
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Includes bibliographical references and index.
Native American Literatures : an encyclopedia of works, characters, authors, and themes
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An encyclopedia of Native American literatures featuring articles on individual authors, on individual works, on important characters in works, and on terms and events of historical significance that figure in many of the works.
Native Literature in Canada : from the oral tradition to the present
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Includes bibliographical references (p. 185-196) and index.
The Oxford Handbook of Indigenous American Literature
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Over the course of the last twenty years, Native American and Indigenous American literary studies has experienced a dramatic shift from a critical focus on identity and authenticity to the intellectual, cultural, political, historical, and tribal nation contexts from which these Indigenous literatures emerge. The Oxford Handbook of Indigenous American Literature reflects on these changes and provides a complete overview of the current state of the field. The Handbook's forty-three essays, organized into four sections, cover oral traditions, poetry, drama, non-fiction, fiction, and other forms of Indigenous American writing from the seventeenth through the twenty-first century. Part I attends to literary histories across a range of communities, providing, for example, analyses of Inuit, Chicana/o, Anishinaabe, and Métis literary practices. Part II draws on earlier disciplinary and historical contexts to focus on specific genres, as authors discuss Indigenous non-fiction, emergent trans-Indigenous autobiography, Mexicanoh and Spanish poetry, Native drama in the U.S. and Canada, and even a new Indigenous children's literature canon. The third section delves into contemporary modes of critical inquiry to expound on politics of place, comparative Indigenism, trans-Indigenism, Native rhetoric, and the power of Indigenous writing to communities of readers. A final section thoroughly explores the geographical breadth and expanded definition of Indigenous American through detailed accounts of literature from Indian Territory, the Red Atlantic, the far North, Yucatán, Amerika Samoa, and Francophone Quebec.
The Routledge companion to Native American literature
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The Routledge Companion to Native American Literature engages the multiple scenes of tension — historical, political, cultural, and aesthetic — that constitutes a problematic legacy in terms of community identity, ethnicity, gender and sexuality, language, and sovereignty in the study of Native American literature. This important and timely addition to the field provides context for issues that enter into Native American literary texts through allusions, references, and language use. The volume presents over forty essays by leading and emerging international scholars and analyses: regional, cultural, racial and sexual identities in Native American literature key historical moments from the earliest period of colonial contact to the present worldviews in relation to issues such as health, spirituality, animals, and physical environments traditions of cultural creation that are key to understanding the styles, allusions, and language of Native American Literature the impact of differing literary forms of Native American literature. This collection provides a map of the critical issues central to the discipline, as well as uncovering new perspectives and new directions for the development of the field. It supports academic study and also assists general readers who require a comprehensive yet manageable introduction to the contexts essential to approaching Native American Literature. It is essential reading for anyone interested in the past, present and future of this literary culture.
Literary theory can be challenging to grasp, but there are many guides to theory available in the Library. The books listed below are a selection of works that can give you a general overview of literary theory; for more theory guides, and for in-depth works on specific literary theory areas (Feminist theory, Marxist theory, Postmodernism, etc.), please visit the Library catalog.
Key Concepts in Literary Theory
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Includes bibliographical references.
Literary Theory
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Includes bibliographical references (p. 237-246) and index
Literary Theory and Criticism
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Includes bibliographical references and index.
For more in-depth information on American, Canadian, and First Nations authors, check out these guides. We also have many guides, handbooks and companions to specific authors, as well as many author biographies. To find these resources, search the library catalog for the author you would like to learn more about.
The Cambridge Companion to American Novelists
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This Companion examines the full range and vigor of the American novel. From the American exceptionalism of James Fenimore Cooper to the apocalyptic post-Americanism of Cormac McCarthy, these newly commissioned essays from leading scholars and critics chronicle the major aesthetic innovations that have shaped the American novel over the past two centuries. The essays evaluate the work, life and legacy of influential American novelists including Melville, Twain, James, Wharton, Cather, Faulkner, Ellison, Pynchon and Morrison, while situating them within the context of their literary predecessors and successors. The volume also highlights less familiar, though equally significant writers such as Theodore Dreiser and Djuna Barnes, providing a balanced and wide-ranging survey of use to students, teachers and general readers of American literature
The Cambridge Companion to American Women Playwrights
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Includes bibliographical references (p. 254-272) and index.
Contemporary Canadian Authors
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Annotation A new Canadian version of the highly successful and award-winning Contemporary Authors Series, this publication provides biographical information on 203 Canadian contemporary novelists, playwrights, journalists and scriptwriters. More than 25 of the entries do not appear in any other Gale publication.The remaining authors are derived from Gale's comprehensive Contemporary Authors literary database. These bio-bibliographical profiles have been researched, revised and updated to provide your patrons and students convenient, single-volume access to the most current information available on Canada's leading writers. Among the details included, you'll find: -- Personal information -- where to get in touch with the author, career histories, writings, works in progress, biographical/critical sources-- Author's comments and/or informative essays about their lives and works-- English and French-speaking authors-- Award-winning authors such as Carol Shields, Margaret Laurence, Northrop Frye and Margaret Atwood
A Dictionary of British and American Women Writers, 1660-1800
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Includes index.
Native American Literatures
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An encyclopedia of Native American literatures featuring articles on individual authors, on individual works, on important characters in works, and on terms and events of historical significance that figure in many of the works.
Native American Writers of the United States
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Includes bibliographical references (p. 337-341) and index.
A Reader's Guide to Twentieth-Century Writers
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