Medieval literature research guide

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This guide has been designed as a starting point for research involving the Medieval time period.

If you need help, please contact Ivana Niseteo, Liaison Librarian for English, French, French Programs (FASS), Global Humanities, Linguistics, and World Languages & Literatures at 778.782.6838 or iniseteo@sfu.ca or Ask a librarian

Reference sources

  • Oxford Reference Online. Online versions of 100 general reference works plus material in language, science and medicine, humanities and social sciences, business, and professional areas.
  • Encyclopedia Britannica. An all-purpose online encyclopedia, including an online atlas, dictionary, and select journal articles.

Reference sources are designed to help you find specific types of information quickly. For further tips and resources, see our Background reference sources page.

Encyclopedias and companions

  • Encyclopedia of medieval literature [print]
  • Cambridge companion to medieval women’s writing [print or online]
  • A companion to medieval English literature and culture, c. 1350- c.1500 [print]
  • A companion to Malory [print]
  • A concise companion to Chaucer [print]
  • Literary Encyclopedia. An expanding global literary reference work written by over 2000 specialists from universities around the world, and currently provides more than 5100 authoritative profiles of authors, works and literary and historical topics.

Search for more by including the words encyclopedia OR dictionary OR handbook OR companion OR manual in your KEYWORD search (e.g. Chaucer AND companion)

Dictionaries and literary terms

  • Oxford English Dictionary. Covers words from across the English-speaking world. It also gives etymological analysis, variant spellings, and pronunciation using IPA.
  • Dictionary of Old English: A to I. Contains some 1319 headwords, as well as revised versions of the seven previously published versions
  • LEME: Lexicons of Early Modern English. Searches and displays word-entries from monolingual English dictionaries, bilingual lexicons, technical vocabularies, and other encyclopedic-lexical works, 1480-1702
  • Dictionary of Old English Web Corpus. Defines the vocabulary of the first centuries (600-1150 A.D.) of the English language.
  • The Oxford dictionary of literary terms. Concise Oxford dictionary of literary terms [print or online]
  • The Penguin dictionary of literary terms and literary theory [print].
  • The Bedford glossary of critical and literary terms [print].
  • A glossary of contemporary literary theory [print]
  • Classical myths and legends in the Middle Ages and Renaissance: a dictionary of allegorical meanings [print]

 

Biographical information

  • Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. An illustrated collection of 50,000 specially written biographies of the men and women who shaped all aspects of Britain's past, from the fourth century BC to the year 2000.
  • Dictionary of Literary Biography Complete Online. Biographical and critical essays on the lives, works, and careers of the world's most influential literary figures from all eras and genres.
  • Orlando: Women's Writing in the British Isles. Biographical and writing career entries on over a thousand writers, more than eight hundred and fifty of them British women. It also includes selected non-British or international women writers, and British and international men, whose writing was an important, sometimes a shaping, element in a particular writing climate.

Quotations

  • Oxford Dictionary of Quotations [online]
  • Roget's Thesaurus of the Bible [print]
  • The Figurative language of the tragedies of Shakespeare's chief 16th-century contemporaries [print]

Literary criticism

  • MLA International Bibliography. Contains scholarly articles on English literature, linguistics, language and folklore.
  • Literature Online. A searchable library of more than 350,000 works of English and American poetry, drama and prose, full-text literature journals, and other key criticism and reference resources.
  • Iter: Gateway to the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Index to Medieval and Renaissance journals and books.
  • Oxford Bibliographies Online. Online index to bibliographies in Renaissance and Reformation with a bibliographical essay on sources.
  • Literature Criticism Online. Full-text access to six major Gale literary criticism series, covering literature from 1400 to the present.
  • Project MUSE Search. Full-text access to the back files of Humanities and Social Science Journals; Good English Literature content.
  • JSTOR. Full-text access to the back files of Humanities and Social Science Journals; Good English Literature content. Note content in JSTOR is 3-5 years old.

Primary sources

Images and film

For sound recordings and performances available on video/DVD at the library, search the SFU Catalogue for the title of the work, and limit to the appropriate material type using the drop-down menu to the right of the search box.

Related topics

Theatre

History

Religion

  • The Bible in English. A collection of 20 different versions of the English Bible from the tenth to the twentieth century, including 12 full Bibles, 5 New Testament texts, 2 versions of the Gospels only, and William Tyndale's translations of the Pentateuch, Jonah and the New Testament.
  • ATLA Religion Database. Indexes journal articles on all aspects of religion and theology, including church and religious history.

Additional sources