Research Guides: Theater Arts: Background and Overviews

Selected Encyclopedias

Use these sources to find background information and overviews of topics.

Cambridge Companions to Theater
These online reference books provide in-depth overviews of major topics, themes, and research in different areas of theater scholarship, including African American theater, Greek and Roman theater, British theater, and specific playwrights.
Cambridge Histories: British and American Theater
These online reference books provide in-depth overviews of British and American theater from their origins to the present day.

The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism
Call Number: e-book

A full-text searchable database of articles on individual critics and theorists, critical and theoretical schools and movements, and the critical and theoretical innovations of specific countries and historical periods. It also treats related persons and fields that have been shaped by or have themselves shaped literary theory and criticism. Each entry includes a selective primary and secondary bibliography.

Cambridge Companions to Literature and Classics
Scholarly overviews of authors, movements, genres, periods, and national literatures.
Oxford English Dictionary
Useful resource for dramaturgy.
Oxford Reference
Includes full-text, searchable versions of the Oxford Companion to American Theatre, Oxford Dictionary of Dance, International Oxford Encyclopedia of Theatre and Performance, Concise Oxford Companion to Theatre, among other resources in many disciplines.