Library Research Guides: ITALIAN: Find Context & Overviews

Reference Collections (Encyclopedias, handbooks, & more)

Specialized encyclopedias, handbooks, and other reference sources can be very helpful for exploring a topic. They can summarize knowledge around a topic, synthesize scholarly discussions, and define key concepts. They often include bibliographies as well, making them a good resource for identifying key books and articles on a topic. The following databases enable you to search multiple reference sources at once.

Literature Resource Center This link opens in a new window
Biographies, topic overviews, reviews, and scholarly analysis of authors and works from all genres, eras, and regions of the world.
Oxford Bibliographies Online This link opens in a new window
Annotated bibliographies for a variety of subject areas.
Oxford Reference Online This link opens in a new window
Over 400 full-text academic encyclopedias, language dictionaries, books of quotations, and other sources. Includes subject-specific titles from art, classics, history, law, linguistics, literature, media studies, medicine, performing arts, philosophy, religion, science and technology, politics, and more.
Credo Reference This link opens in a new window
Search 500+ reference works in all disciplines.
Gale eBooks This link opens in a new window
Search across full-text encyclopedias, dictionaries, and other reference books in a variety of subject areas.

Selected Reference Books

The Oxford Companion to Italian Literature
Publication Date: 2002
Entries cover Italian literature from the early thirteenth century on. Contextual entries place writers and works in their wider social, historical, artistic, and political circumstances
Encyclopedia of Contemporary Italian Culture
Call Number: Clapp Reference DG450 .E53 2000
900 entries related to post-WWII Italian culture, covering all social activities and institutions and communicative and symbolic practices that may be construed to form a distinctive "way of life." Food, religion, sports, politics, and high and low culture are all topics included. Many of the entries are short biographies of notable figures, while others describe institutions, events, and concepts.
The Dante Encyclopedia [e-book]
Call Number: e-book and Clapp Reference PQ4333 .D36 2000
A one-volume reference on the life and work of Italian poet Dante Alighieri (1265-1321). Combines information and critical opinion; covers both the full corpus of the poet's literary and expository efforts and the cultural and intellectual context in which they are set.
The Feminist Encyclopedia of Italian Literature
Call Number: Clapp Reference PQ4063 .F45 1997
Entries for authors, works, themes, and other topics trace the feminist response to Italian literature from the Middle Ages to the present.
Medieval Italy: an encyclopedia
Call Number: Clapp Reference DG443 .M43 2004
Over 1,000 entries cover the late Roman period to the beginning of the 15th century. Entries include very specific topics, such as a work or biography, or much longer entries on broad themes, such as medicine, education, the papacy, the papal states, and the Byzantine Empire.
Dizionario del cinema italiano [multiple vols.]
Call Number: Clapp Reference PN1993.5.I88 D592

Why Use Reference Materials?

for a quick overview of a topic

to develop vocabulary or keywords for searching

for suggestions for further sources

Subject Librarian

Karen Storz

she, her, hers

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Subjects: Africana Studies, American Studies, Cinema & Media Studies, Cognitive & Linguistic Sciences, Comparative Literature, East Asian Languages & Cultures, East Asian Studies, English, German & German Cultural Studies, Italian Studies, Latin American Studies, Portuguese, Russian & Russian Area Studies, Spanish

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