These Library databases are the best bet for finding scholarly, peer-reviewed journal articles.
JSTOR provides page images of back issues of the core scholarly journals in the humanities and social sciences from the earliest issues to within a few years of current publication. Users may browse by journal title or discipline, or may search the full-text or citations/abstracts. Subjects covered include: African American studies, anthropology, Asian studies, ecology, economics, education, feminist studies, film studies, finance, history, literature, mathematics, philosophy, political science, population studies, science, Slavic studies, sociology, and statistics.
A collection of over 400 electronic scholarly journals in the humanities and social sciences from nearly 100 not-for-profit publishers. Back issue archives are available, with some titles beginning with volumes as early as 1993.
MLA International Bibliography is an index to books and articles published on modern languages, literatures, folklore, and linguistics. Coverage includes literature from all over the world. Folklore is represented by folk literature, music, art, rituals, and belief systems. Linguistics and language materials range from history and theory of linguistics, comparative linguistics, semantics, stylistics, and syntax to translation. Other topics include literary theory and criticism, dramatic arts (film, radio, television, theater), and history of printing and publishing. The MLA Directory of Periodicals and the Association's proprietary thesaurus used to assign descriptors to each record in the bibliography are also included.
Academic Search Premier is a multi-disciplinary database designed for academic institutions. The database offers information in nearly every area of academic study, including arts, biology, chemistry, computer sciences, ethnic studies, engineering, language and linguistics, literature, medical sciences, philosophy, physics, psychology, religion, social sciences, and more.
In addition to finding literary criticism, you may need to find reference sources that provide more information about the historical and social context of the text you're examining. The below resources can help you to find that information.
For example, perhaps you want to find out more about an unusual word, or the etymological history of a word that is used frequently in a novel. The Oxford English Dictionary provides in-depth information about the meaning and history of words. Or, perhaps you need to know more about the life of an author or the specific history of a location. The biographical resources and Oxford reference works listed here are the best bets for finding that information.
Oxford English Dictionary is the accepted authority on the evolution of the English language over the last millennium. It is a guide to the meaning, history, and pronunciation of over half a million words, both present and past. It traces the usage of words through 2.5 million quotations from a wide range of international English language sources, from classic literature and specialist periodicals to film scripts and cookery books.
The OED covers words from across the English-speaking world, from North America to South Africa, from Australia and New Zealand to the Caribbean. It also offers the best in etymological analysis, listings of variant spellings, and shows pronunciation using the International Phonetic Alphabet.
Includes PoemFinder, EssayFinder, PlayFinder, SpeechFinder, and ShortStoryFinder. Indexes poetry, essays, stories, etc., from 1,800 anthologies, 2,600 single-author works, and over 4,000 periodicals. Searching for word or word combinations in titles, first and last lines in poems, book title, author, and thousands of designated subjects. International in scope and includes poetry from antiquity to the present.
The Dictionary of Literary Biography is the online version of the print reference series with the same name. The DLB provides nearly 10,000 biographical and critical essays on the lives, works, and careers of authors from all eras and genres.
