Engl 2207 - Dykstal

Great Books - Applying Historical Context to Literature

Example 1

The relationship between the gods and fate (or destiny) in ancient Greek theology.

Where to Begin?

AUBIECat (the AU Libraries Catalog) is never a bad place to start when looking for a historical context in which to place your literary topic because there are usually many books concerning different facets of world history.

1. In this instance I would begin with a keyword search for greek gods.
2. I then would isolate a few titles to find important authors and subject headings. I found the author Vernant, Jean Pierre and the subject heading Greece-Religion.
3. I would then go and investigate these sources to see if they could be my non-electronic sources and also see which other authors and works are listed in the pertinent chapters of the books. 
4. I would then search these other authors and titles in AUBIECat to see if the library owns them.

Example 2

Athenian democracy, especially the judicial system of Athens.

What Next?

Try to find other journal articles that may be specific to your topic.

• I started with Infotrac (but you could also use Academic Search Elite or other general databases on our Indexes and Databases by Subject Page) and searched in the title, citation, abstract of refereed publications for greece judicial.
• This led me to 24 articles dealing with Ancient Greek Law. Look at Infotrac's subject headings as well for other ideas of what to search.
• This led me to the Journal of Hellenic Studies.
• This article is not in full-text in Infotrac so I would then check AUBIECat to see whether the library owns a copy of the Journal of Hellenic Studies. We do and it looks like several of the articles in this journal would help with this topic. However, I would still go and look for a book in AUBIECat on this topic. (See Example 1)

Other Works of Interest:

Ancient Greek authors (Dictionary of Literary Biography v 176)

The Athenian democracy in the age of Demosthenes

Encyclopedia of the ancient Greek world