Search Methods
There are many databases that could help you with searches on this topic!
- Directory of Open Access Books
The primary aim of DOAB is to increase discoverability of Open Access books. It supports the OAI protocol for metadata harvesting.
- Gale Literature Resource Center
Full-text of biographies, bibliographies, and literary criticism of authors from all time periods covering novelists, poets, essayists, journalists, and other writers from antiquity-present.
- JSTOR
Digital library of full-text scholarly journals, books, and primary sources. Discover content across a wide range of subjects, including African American studies, anthropology, art, criminal justice, economics, history, literature, political science, psychology, sociology, and women's, gender, and sexuality studies. JSTOR is good for finding and accessing specific articles and books.
- LION (Literature Online)
LION is a fully searchable library of more than 350,000 full-text works of English and American prose, poetry, and drama along with thousands of literary articles, essays, biographies, and encyclopedia entries. It also contains the "Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature" (ABELL), with links to full-text articles from over 200 literature journals. MLA & ABELL provides the most complete scholarly coverage of English language and literature since 1921. LION covers the 8th to the 21st century.
Search Tips
By using these databases and keywords (located on the left) you will be able to find sources related to the life and works of Dante Alighieri.
Since some of these terms are very general such as Florence, or poetry, you will want to make sure you are searching in a way that will combine the terms.
A boolean search could aid with this, and the "and" function in an advanced search allows you to combine search phrases. Also look to see if the databases' search tool has a filtered option to only show results with both (or as many terms) listed rather than showing results that just contain the word.
Another search tip to keep in mind is the use of quotation marks. An example of this is instead of searching Dante and exile, try to search "Dante and exile". This search method will treat the two terms as a phrase, searching documents with both terms.
Another helpful tip is to look at the bibliography of sources you have already chosen to use! Here you are able to look at your sources, sources, providing a more in depth look at a particular section of a source.
Many articles and books that are found on a database contain keywords on the side, or somewhere else on the page, keep a lookout for those keywords as you might find some you didn't think about using.
Other Relevant Sources
The Vertical Readings take a new approach at analyzing Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy. Thirty-four scholars take aim to look at the poem differently. Each scholar gets a canto and uses that same number in each cantica, and attempts a vertical reading of the poem. They do this to see if there is a correlation between each numbered canto.