Research Guides: ENGL 390: The Celtic Fringe: Irish, Scots and Welsh Poetry 1747-2009 (HC): Getting Started

Literary Encyclopedias and Companions

Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature
- This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
The Encyclopedia provides comprehensive coverage of literature from the Abbey Theatre to Israel Zangwill, covering the entire history of literature in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland in the major literary languages (Anglo-Saxon, English, Welsh, Scots, Irish, and Latin). It includes substantial accounts of individual authors (e.g., Spenser, Pope, Austen) and detailed histories of particular themes, movements, genres, and institutions, whose impact upon the writing or the reading of literature was significant (e.g., The Stationers' Company, the sonnet, the School of Night, or the Sublime).
Literature Resource Center
- This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
Provides biographies, bibliographies and scholarly articles on novelists, poets, essayists, and other writers, with in-depth coverage of highly-studied authors.

The Cambridge Companion to Scottish Literature
- This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
Scotland's rich literary tradition is a product of its unique culture and landscape, as well as of its long history of inclusion and resistance to the United Kingdom. Scottish literature includes masterpieces in three languages - English, Scots and Gaelic - and global perspectives from the diaspora of Scots all over the world. This Companion offers a unique introduction, guide and reference work for students and readers of Scottish literature from the pre-medieval period to the post-devolution present. Essays focus on key periods and movements (the Scottish Enlightenment, Scottish Romanticism, the Scottish Renaissance), genres (the historical novel, Scottish Gothic, 'Tartan Noir') and major authors (Burns, Scott, Stevenson, MacDiarmid and Spark). A chronology and guides to further reading in each chapter make this an ideal overview of a national literature that continues to develop its own distinctive style.
The Cambridge Companion to Contemporary Irish Poetry
- This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
In the last fifty years Irish poets have produced some of the most exciting poetry in contemporary literature, writing about love and sexuality, violence and history, country and city. This book, first published in 2003, provides an introduction to major figures such as Seamus Heaney, and also introduces the reader to significant precursors like Louis MacNeice or Patrick Kavanagh, and vital contemporaries and successors: among others, Thomas Kinsella, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill and Paul Muldoon. Readers will find discussions of Irish poetry from the traditional to the modernist, written in Irish as well as English, from both North and South. This Companion provides cultural and historical background to contemporary Irish poetry in the contexts of modern Ireland but also in the broad currents of modern world literature. It includes a chronology and guide to further reading and will prove invaluable to students and teachers alike.
The Cambridge Companion to Modern Irish Culture
- This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
This Companion provides an authoritative introduction to the historical, social and stylistic complexities of modern Irish culture. Readers will be introduced to Irish culture in its widest sense and helped to find their way through the cultural and theoretical debates that inform our understanding of modern Ireland. The volume combines cultural breadth and historical depth, supported by a chronology of Irish history and arts. A wide selection of essays on a rich variety of Irish cultural forms and practices are complemented by a series of in-depth analyses of key themes in Irish cultural politics. The range of topics covered will enable a comprehensive understanding of Irish culture, while the authors gathered here - all acknowledged experts in their fields - provide stimulating essays that together amount to an invaluable guide to the shaping of modern Ireland.

Literary Theory

Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory & Criticism
- This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
A full-text searchable database of articles on individual critics and theorists, critical and theoretical schools and movements, and the critical and theoretical innovations of specific countries and historical periods. It also treats related persons and fields that have been shaped by or have themselves shaped literary theory and criticism. Each entry includes a selective primary and secondary bibliography.
New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
- This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
"Provides a comprehensive reference for those interested in the history of poetry or in any aspect of the technique or criticism of poetry. Provides surveys of national poetries; descriptions of poetic forms and genres; detailed explanations of the devices of prosody and rhetoric; and overviews of all major schools of poetry ancient and modern, Western and Eastern."

General Encyclopedias & Companions

The Oxford Companion to Irish History by S. J. Connolly (Editor)
ISBN: 0192116959
Publication Date: 1998-04-02
The Oxford Companion to Irish History offers a radically new and eminently readable introduction to all aspects of the history of this fascinating and complex land. Written by a team of 87 specialists, its 1,800 entries explore Irish history from earliest times to the recent past. Key figures and events are re-evaluated in the light of recent research, while emerging areas of scholarship, such as women's history and public health, are discussed in depth. Many entries focus on enduring themes of Irish history, including nationalism, unionism, and Catholicism, breaking away from a purely chronological approach to examine the contexts and traditions that underpin Irish identity. In a field bedeviled by controversy, The Oxford Companion to Irish History offers a reference that is both authoritative and innovative.
The Oxford Companion to Scottish History by Michael Lynch (Editor)
ISBN: 0192116967
Publication Date: 2001-12-06
The Oxford Companion to Scottish History has more than 170 expert contributors. It interprets history broadly, including archaeology, architecture, climate, culture, folk belief, geology, and the langauages of Scotland. It covers more than 20 centuries of history, including immigrants,migrants, and emigrants. It extends from Orkney and Shetland to Galloway, the Western Isles to the Borders. It deals extensively with Scots abroad, from Canada to Russia to New Zealand. More than 500,000 words in length, it is comprehensive. It includes entries on historical figures from Columba, Macbeth, and William Wallace to James (Paraffin) Young. It covers Burns Clubs, curling, and shinty. It ranges from clans to Clearances and Covenanters. It aims to explain as well as describe. It is more than a historical dictionary or an encyclopedia. Multi-authored entries analyse key themes such as kingship, national identity, women and society, urban and rural life, the economy, housing, living standards, and religious belief across thecentruies in an authoritative but approachable way. The Oxford Companion to Scottish History has a broader range of topics and approches, and a more much more authoritative list of contributors than any of its competitors. It also stands alone in providing analysis of issues such as national identity and living standards.

The Welsh Academy Encyclopedia of Wales
- This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
Everything is contained within the covers of this magnificent book: Snowdonia to the pampas of Patagonia, the ancient bards to the super-modern Super Furry Animals, folk heroes to Welsh Olympians, and the men and women of Wales who have excelled in art, culture, commerce and politics.