Comparative and International Literature

This guide is intended to assist Library users studying comparative literature as well as those wishing to access and read literatures from their home countries, or from literary cultures other than their own. It shows how to use the Library of Congress Subject Headings to discover literature (prose, poetry and drama) according to various language groups, nations or cultures.

For research into literatures of the official languages of Canada, please see the English Literature and French Studies library guides.  . 

For research regarding the literatures of the Indigenous peoples of North America, please refer to the Indigenous Literature library guide. 

See also: German Studies; Spanish Studies, East Asian Languages and Cultures and Modern Languages and Literature.

Generally, the Library of Congress Subject Headings (su:) will index international literature both by using the country as an adjective describing the literature, and by the form of literature by country. E.g., 

su: Hungarian poetry

su: Poetry, Hungarian

The default language in the WorldCat Library Catalogue is English, but users can switch to other languages of preference; see the bottom left of the results screen or the drop-down menu in an Advanced Search.

You may also use operators to search for language (In) and material types (mt). For example, 

(ln: ger) AND (mt:fic)

...would search for fiction in German.