The Oxford Encyclopedia of Literary Theory Online is available through subscription and perpetual access, however a great number of articles are also available for free. Based on my observations, I would say around 40% of the articles are public access. The chief editor of this site is Paula Rabinowitz. Articles are published year-round in non-specified intervals; subject to a peer review process with multiple steps before publication to the site. Furthermore, each of the articles are written by different scholars and reviewed for quality control.
The articles presented explore literary theory from cultures around the world and from multiple disciplines. The article Africa in the World: History and Historiographyby Esperanza Brizuela-Garcia details the theoretical breath of what this journal seeks to accomplish. The author discusses how Africa became recognized culturally by the west, and how the misconceptions of the early western scholars damaged the continent’s reputation. The article then goes into debunking the myths and postulating the importance of Africa culturally. The other articles associated with African history serve to explicate the ideas presented in this original article. Furthermore, this is a popular trend with most subject matter on the site; seeking to disprove misconceptions and promote a better viewpoint for literary theory to be presented.
Navigation of the site is fairly straight forward. The IRL is equipped with a search bar located in the upper right quadrant, and a list of topics discussed in the encyclopedia runs across the top of the page. For example, I accessed African history from the displayed directory, and was presented with a descending list of articles. Articles not available to the public were displayed with a padlock, however free articles displayed a green circle with the word free written inside it. I selected the first article I deemed interesting and the article was presented vertically with citations following the document. This format is used throughout, and presents an efficient way of navigating data.
Works Cited
“The Oxford Encyclopedia of Literary Theory.” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature, https://oxfordre.com/literature/page/literary-theory/the-oxford-encyclopedia-of-literary- theory.
English Research Sources 