You may benefit from searching the following:
Book Reviews: At the time of publication, and sometimes again if something is translated or re-printed, books are reviewed in magazines, newspapers and journals. Authors may be staff on a publication, another writer, or a scholar offering an opinion of a work at the time of its release.
Literary Criticism: Published in journals, criticism analyzes a work and its themes, questions, significance. Typically written by scholars, who may be professors or researchers at a university who have studied an author or a work in depth and for some time.
Film reviews vs. Film Criticism, Music reviews (of albums, performances) vs. Music history or theory
Q: But...they call the folks writing the reviews, critics...so, is it criticism? Is it scholarly?
A: Not typically! Take a look at this criteria:
Review | Criticism |
Usually written at the time a work was made | Can be written at any time, but is usually written long after the fact when other sources can be contextualized into an analysis |
Written by a journalist or publication staff or the publication invites a guest writer to review. | Written by a scholar/academic who studies theory within the discipline |
Plot summary, overall consideration of style, performances, direction and production | May deal with a narrow aspect of the work, such as a scene/chapter/character or creative decision made by creator |
Critiques the work from a cultural or entertainment perspective at the time the work was made, and often in relation to the creator's body of work | Discusses the work in theoretical or historical context |
Usually quite short (less than one page in a publication) | Long, usually 10 or more pages in a journal |
For help searching the MLA International Bibliography, please see the MLA's video tutorials.
Features PDF content going back as far as 1865, with the majority of full text titles in native (searchable) PDF format. Searchable cited references are provided for 1,000 journals.
Members of the public can read online up to three articles for free every two weeks from a large subset of JSTOR journals via the Register & Read program. This program allows remote access. Non-UT students, faculty and staff who need more articles can contact library staff for other access options.
For more information on ebooks see the Ebook Guide
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 Generic License.