Early English Books Online: English Literature Guide
Whether one is searching for Classical references in Renaissance philosophy or gender roles in Restoration theatre, the Early English Books Online (EEBO) and Early English Books Online – Text Creation Partnership (EEBO-TCP) provide an unprecedented research tool for novices and advanced scholars alike. English Literature itself is a wide ranging field covering a numerous array of titles including (but not limited to) plays, poems, sermons, chronicles, and pamphlets. With this collection of materials, a researcher is not limited by hitherto artificial categorizations of titles, allowing the maximum potential for new discoveries and innovations in literary research.
For example, one can search in EEBO for the works of Francis Bacon. More advanced searches can uncover his works specifically on coffee and its Turkish origins. If one adds a keyword search using EEBO-TCP, one can find the anonymous broadsides and authored pamphlets attacking coffee as an instrument of debauchery. If one is interested in the influences of authors like Shakespeare, Chaucer, or even Socrates on the works of the Renaissance, one can simply type in the author’s name and thousands of references will appear.
If one is researching theatre, it is now possible with the help of a collection like EEBO to search the names of individual actors, like Michael Mohun (a well known actor of the Restoration) and find dramatis personae listing the parts he played as well as accounts of his acting ability, references to him in works about the theatre, and even Medical treatises detailing his “manly” figure. For those interested in linguistic analysis, one can type in words or phrases found in the text and trace their use over two hundred years of English literature.
Universities around the country will be able to use EEBO and EEBO-TCP in research and teaching, allowing new ways of accessing both well known literary resources like Paradise Lost and Macbeth as well as rarer Renaissance conduct books and anonymously published essays. The richness of this collection will allow all students of Renaissance English literature to search widely and both recognize and interpret the many connections among sources in new and unique ways.
Aesop The morall fabillis of Esope the phrygian Aphra Behn The Rover John Bunyan The pilgrim's progress George Etherege The Man of the Mode John Foxe Actes and monuments Richard Hakluyt. Principal nauigations Raphael Holinshed Chronicles William Laud A manual of private devotions Christopher Marlowe Tamburlaine John Milton Paradise lost |
Thomas Nash The anatomie of absurditie Katherine Philips Collected Poems William Shakespeare Macbeth John Skelton Colyn Cloute Thomas Smith De republica Anglorum Edmund Spenser The Faerie Queene John Stow A suruay of London Philip Sydney Arcadia John Webster Duchess of Malfi Hannah Woolley The cook's guide |
Thomas Hariot A briefe and true report of the new found land of Virginia John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester A satyr against mankind |
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