Oxford LibGuides: French Language and Literature: Home

Finding books for French studies

Oxford has a wide range of ebooks and printed books for French studies, including the main language and literature collections in the Taylor Institution Library. For more detailed info about our book collections visit the Books page of this guide.

SOLO
Search SOLO, the University's resource discovery tool, for print and ebooks at Oxford. You can search by author, title or subject and limit to a specific library or online resources.
SOLO user guide
If you need help with SOLO, take a look at this guide for tips on searching, managing results and using your SOLO account.

Key journals

A lot of journals, as well as being available in print, are available online and can be searched via SOLO or eJournals A-Z. Below are a few of the top journals for French studies, but more can be found on the full A-Z and via SOLO.

French Studies
Published on behalf of the Society for French Studies. The journal publishes articles and reviews spanning all areas of the subject, including language and linguistics (historical and contemporary), all periods and aspects of literature in France and the French-speaking world, thought and the history of ideas, cultural studies, film, and critical theory.
French Studies Bulletin
French Studies Bulletin is the sister journal to French Studies and publishes short articles, reports of selected conferences, and information on activities of the Society. There is also a dedicated Postgraduate Bulletin Board.
Yale French Studies
Yale French Studies is the oldest English-language journal in the United States devoted to French and Francophone literature and culture. Each volume is conceived and organized by a guest editor or editors around a particular theme or author. Interdisciplinary approaches are particularly welcome, as are contributions from scholars and writers from around the world. Recent volumes have been devoted to a wide variety of subjects, among them: Crime Fiction; Surrealism; Contemporary Writing for the Stage; and Memory in Postwar French and Francophone Culture.
Journal search
Search here for journals.
SOLO
Search SOLO, the University's resource discovery tool, for print and ebooks at Oxford. You can search by author, title or subject and limit to a specific library or online resources.

Key databases

Oxford subscribes to many bibliographic databases. They can be used to locate journal articles, conference proceedings, books, images, data and more. You can find some of the key databases for French studies below.

International Medieval Bibliography
Comprises records deriving from articles published in periodicals (journals) published world-wide. All subjects relating to the Middle Ages are included, within the date range 300-1500 AD. Geographical areas covered are Europe, the Middle East and North Africa.
Alternative name: IMB

The International Medieval Bibliograpy (IMB) database comprises records deriving from articles published in periodicals (journals) and in miscellany volumes (conference proceedings, collected essays, Festschriften and exhibition catalogues) published world-wide. It can be searched as part of Brepolis Medieval and Early Modern Bibliographies.
All subjects relating to the Middle Ages are included, within the date range 300-1500 AD. Geographical areas covered are Europe, the Middle East and North Africa.
Please note that we only have a three user licence for this title so please exit when you have finished!
JSTOR
Offers full-text access to good range of English-language journals in the field of French studies. There is often a gap of 1-5 years between most recently published journal and the back-issues available to JSTOR.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization with a dual mission to create and maintain a trusted archive of important scholarly journals, and to provide access to these journals as widely as possible. JSTOR offers researchers the ability to retrieve high-resolution, scanned images of journal issues and pages as they were originally designed, printed, and illustrated. The journals archived in JSTOR span many disciplines.
Originally conceived as a project at The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, JSTOR began as an effort to ease the increasing problems faced by libraries seeking to provide adequate shelf space for the long runs of backfiles of scholarly journals. JSTOR is not a current issues database. Because of JSTOR's archival mission, there is a gap, typically from 1 to 5 years, between the most recently published journal issue and the back issues available in JSTOR.
MLA International Bibliography (EBSCO)
Provides over one million citations for items from journals and series published worldwide. Indexes books, essay collections, working papers, proceedings, dissertations, and bibliographies. Coverage 1926 to present, updated nine times per year.
Produced by the Modern Language Association (MLA), the MLA International Bibliography is the definitive index for the study of language, literature, linguistics, rhetoric and composition, folklore, and film, covering scholarly publications from the early 20th century to the present. International in scope, it includes citations to journal articles, books, articles in books, series, translations, scholarly editions, websites, and dissertations. It has more than 3 million records and is constantly updated by scholars in the field. The database also includes the MLA Directory of Periodicals and the MLA Thesaurus, a proprietary, searchable collection of thousands of subject terms, and personal names used in indexing the bibliography.

Databases A-Z
A full, browsable list of Oxford's online databases.
SOLO
Search SOLO, the University's resource discovery tool, for print and ebooks at Oxford. You can search by author, title or subject and limit to a specific library or online resources.

Slavonic and French Subject Librarian

Nick Hearn

Email Me

Contact:

Taylor Institution Library
(Voltaire Room Office)
St Giles
Oxford
OX1 3NA
Mon - Wed 9.00-5.00
Thu - Fri 9.00-5.00 (working from home)

Tel: 01865 (2)78159

Related guides

French Special Collections
by Nick Hearn Last Updated Mar 27, 2021 382 views this year
French and Francophone newspapers
by Nick Hearn Last Updated Jul 18, 2024 3924 views this year

Modern Languages
by Frank Egerton Last Updated Oct 4, 2024 146 views this year
Modern Languages for Continuing Education
by Angela Carritt Last Updated Feb 22, 2023 174 views this year

Key libraries

Taylor Institution Library
The Taylor Institution Library (commonly known as the Taylorian) is the University's centre for the study of Modern European languages and literatures, other than English.

French Language and Literature: Home

Purpose of this guide