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The Handbook to Literary Research

Edited by Delia da Sousa Correa and W.R. Owens The Handbook to Literary Research is a practical guide for students embarking on postgraduate work in Literary Studies. It introduces and explains research techniques, methodologies and approaches to information resources, paying careful attention to the differences between countries and institutions, and providing a range of key examples. This fully updated second edition is divided into five sections which cover: • Tools of the trade-a brand new chapter outlining how to make the most of literary resources; • Textual scholarship and book history-explains key concepts and variations in editing, publishing and bibliography; • Issues and approaches in literary research-presents a critical overview of theoretical approaches essential to literary studies; • The dissertation-demonstrates how to approach, plan and write this important research exercise; • Glossary-provides comprehensive explanations of key terms, and a checklist of resources. Packed with useful tips and exercises and written by scholars with extensive experience as teachers and researchers in the field, this volume is the ideal handbook for those beginning postgraduate research in literature. Delia da Sousa Correa is Senior Lecturer in English at

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Emelia Samanhyia, 2021

Question: The Setting of a literary work contributes to the development of characters and themes, among other relevance. Examine this notion with reference to at least two of the texts studied in this course.

Drawing upon Hillway’s three types of research, this paper seeks to take a look at the nature and scope of literary research. It focuses on early works on the subject: Altick (1950, 1963), Sanders (1951), and Bateson (1972) – to demonstrate how some facts lying there can be uncovered through a slightly different reading of these texts. It highlights the similarities that make literary criticism, literary research, and literary scholarship synonymous, if not the same. It ends by mentioning briefly the approaches and methods of literary research.

Lesson 5 in a one-term course of academic writing. The course aims at providing students with basic instruction in essay writing, with a special emphasis on literary critical essays. The students are guided through all the stages involved in the process of writing, ranging from choosing the topic to compiling a bibliography. The course deals with a logical structure of the essay, its unity and coherence, with using secondary sources as well as with the issue of plagiarism. Other topics include the suitable language and style and formal requirements in academic writing.

CENTRAL ASIAN JOURNAL OF LITERATURE, PHILOSOPHY AND CULTURE, 2019

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Comparative Literature Studies

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Literature and Literary Research

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What's a good topic?

Choosing a topic can be one of the hardest parts of writing a paper. There are so many possible things to write about, and even if you have a general idea, it can be hard to know whether your topic is a good one. 

Writing a literature paper is different from writing many other kinds of papers. In literary analysis, it's not the ideas of other people that matter as much as your own interpretation of the texts you're reading. The bulk of your paper will be made up of your analysis of the text: the use of language, imagery, rhythm and repetition, word choice, the structure of the plot, or the representations of characters, emotions, events, or places. Your job is to analyze these elements of the text and through your analysis to assert an idea, or a claim, about the text, the author, or the context in which the text was written.

So what makes a good topic? A good topic is a theme that you think is represented in the text you're reading. But how do you get from a good topic to a good research question? 

What's a good research question?

Once you recognize a theme in a text or texts, your next step is to determine what you think the texts are saying about that theme. Read the text again, paying particular attention to your theme. What does your interpretation lead you think about the theme or idea? This is your claim, and your paper is structured around using analysis of the text or texts to support your claim. 

For example, you may be interested in looking at community or society in Thoreau's "Walden." You may have read the text and noticed a contradiction between Thoreau's claims of self-reliance and his interaction with society. You would then re-read the text, asking yourself as you read "What is the representation of society and Thoreau's relationship to it in 'Walden'?" After reading the text closely and paying special attention to these aspects of "Walden," you may be ready to make the claim that while Thoreau believed he was self-reliant, in truth he was still part of a network of people, and still part of his society and community. Or you may discover that your initial thought was wrong, and that Thoreau really did separate himself from his community in the way he wrote about. 

Types of Sources

There are a lot of different kinds of sources that you can use in your analysis. This guide will show you how to find and use these by type. 

Primary Sources  are the main pieces of evidence you will use to make your claim. The texts you are reading are a primary source; they are the most important primary source you're working with. Other examples are newspaper and magazine articles, diaries and letters, photographs, maps, and reviews written or created at the same time as your text. These sources can help you put your subject into context. 

Reference Sources  give you a broad overview of a person, place, event, or idea. They provide commonly known facts. Reference sources are not cited in your paper, but can be very useful for grounding you in your subject and ensuring that you have solid background information.  Literary biographies   are a form of reference material, and give you lots of information about authors, with an emphasis on how their lives are related to their writing. 

Secondary Sources  are also sometimes referred to as  criticism.  These are books and articles that scholars have written about a particular work of literature, movement, or author. Criticism can help you get a sense of the themes that other scholars read in a particular text. They may help inform your own understanding of a text, either because they reinforce your interpretation, or differ from it. Criticism is usually published in books or as articles in scholarly journals. 

So how do I use sources?

Primary sources are the evidence that we use to support our claims. They aren't the articles that other scholars and researchers have written, but original source material that we can use to better understand our topic. Primary sources in literary research include the text or texts that you're analyzing, but might also include additional material like letters written by the author, photographs, reviews written when the text was published, newspapers articles. Many different kinds of things can be used as primary sources, depending on your subject. 

For example, if you're studying Thoreau's relationships with others, you may want to find out more about Thoreau's role in his community by reading primary source material (letters that he wrote to friends and colleagues, newspaper articles about him or about his community) or by reading more about the context of his life in Massachusetts (the political and artistic movements of which he was part, the actual location of his cabin in relation to the town of Concord). These additional sources are used to support your interpretation of the text you're analyzing. 

You may want to use secondary sources to discuss other scholars' ideas and interpretations of the topic and text you're writing about, especially if you don't agree with their interpretations. Pay especially close attention to aspects of your topic that scholars don't agree about, and to different interpretations or ideas about a text. If there are major debates about the authors or texts you're studying, you'll want to reference them in the paper to help inform your reader and provide context to your own interpretation. 

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• Last Updated: Feb 2, 2024 12:45 PM
• URL: https://libguides.sonoma.edu/literature

Literary Research Strategy

Basic reference, reference plus, primary source databases.

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• Searching Catalogs and Databases

English Literature and Digital Humanities Librarian

Hesburgh Library 250C Navari Center for Digital Scholarship University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, IN 46556

(574) 631-3457 [email protected]

There are a multitude of resources and strategies for conducting literary research in the twenty-first century. In addition to outlining new and classic research tactics, this guide will provide links to literary resources with a broad scope. For links to resources designed for smaller fields of study, consult the following guides:

• Medieval English Studies PENDING
• Early-Modern Studies PENDING
• Eighteenth-Century Studies
• Nineteenth-Century Studies
• Twentieth-Century Studies PENDING
• Poetry Studies PENDING

These reference resources are grouped here based on their encyclopedic quality -- they give decent factual summaries and are useful for familiarizing oneself with literary subjects, like a more reliable Wikipedia. For the most part, they are not suitable for use as quotable scholarly sources.

• Johns Hopkins guide to literary theory & criticism This link opens in a new window 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.
• Literature online the home of English and American literature on the World Wide Web LION This link opens in a new window Literature Online actually extends beyond reference (and even includes a search interface for both ABELL and MLA), but it provides a good selection of reference material. Click "Browse reference works" on the right to scan the options.
• MagillOnLiterature This link opens in a new window Includes the complete contents of 31 sets of reference books, including nearly 20 Masterplots and Masterplots II titles, the Cyclopedia of world authors, the Cyclopedia of literary characters, as well as 10 years of Magill's literary annual and Magill book reviews.

These reference sources tend to provide more advanced information, and may in some cases (for example, in the Oxford entries) offer quotable material.

• English short title catalogue ESTC This link opens in a new window "... lists over 460,000 items published between 1473 and 1800, mainly in Britain and North America, mainly, but not exclusively, in English, from the collections of the British Library and over 2,000 other libraries."--Publisher's website.
• MLA Directory of Periodicals This link opens in a new window Searchable reference guide to journals in the field of English literature. NOTE: Once in the MLA site, user must click the "Choose Databases" link near the top, and select "MLA Directory of Periodicals."
• Oxford bibliographies online. British and Irish Literature This link opens in a new window Offers peer-reviewed annotated bibliographies on British and Irish literature, including perspectives from such fields as history, cultural studies, political science, and philosophy. Bibliographies are browseable by subject area and keyword searchable.
• Oxford dictionary of national biography This link opens in a new window The classic, authoritative biographical source for British history. Usage info: Licensed for 3 simultaneous users.
• Oxford English Dictionary This link opens in a new window A complete text of the second edition of the Oxford English dictionary with quarterly updates, including revisions not available in any other form. Contains the complete text of the 20-volume second edition together with its 3-volume additions series.
• Gale Primary Sources This link opens in a new window A collection of twenty primary-source databases, from the 16th through 21st centuries.
• Oxford scholarly editions online This link opens in a new window Currently includes writers active between 1485 and 1837, plus Classical Latin poets. Provides full-text access to hundreds of editions straight to your desktop, showcasing their authoritative editorial notes directly alongside the text and enabling advanced search within and between editions.
• Past masters This link opens in a new window Scholarly editions of classic works, primarily from the 16th through 19th centuries, complete with referenceable page numbers.
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• Last Updated: Oct 24, 2023 10:28 AM
• URL: https://libguides.library.nd.edu/literary-research

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Our new titles catalog for the 2024–25 academic year is now available!

MLA Guide to Undergraduate Research in Literature

Second edition.

• Authors: Elizabeth Brookbank, H. Faye Christenberry
• Published: 2023
• ISBN: 9781603296298 (Paperback)

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• Description

What makes a good research topic in a literature class? What does your professor mean by “peer-reviewed” sources? What should you do if you can’t find enough material? This approachable guide walks students through the process of research in literary studies, providing them with tools for responding successfully to course assignments.

Written by two experienced librarians, the guide introduces the resources available through college and university libraries and explains how to access the ones a student needs. It focuses on research in literature, identifying relevant databases and research guides and explaining different types of sources and the role each plays in researching and writing about a literary text. But it also contains helpful information for any student researcher, describing strategies for searching the web to find the most useful material and offering guidance on organizing research and documenting sources with MLA style.

Extensively updated and revised, the second edition emphasizes digital resources that can be accessed remotely, offers critical thinking strategies for evaluating sources, and includes more information on writing about audiovisual as well as written works.

• Digital Pedagogy
• Writing and Research Guides

Introduction (1)

1. Starting the Research Process (5)

Understanding Your Research Paper Assignment (6)

Developing a Topic (11)

Developing a Search Strategy (13)

The Research Process: Five Top Tips for Doing Better Research (19)

2. Searching Your Library Discovery System or Catalog (25)

Is This like Google ? Your Library’s Discovery System (27)

The Library’s Special Language: Library of Congress Subject Headings (32)

Moving beyond the Basics (33)

Using Materials from Other Libraries (39)

Choosing the Right Library Sources for Your Assignment (41)

3. Searching Subject-Specific Databases (43)

How to Select the Right Database (44)

Subject-Specific Databases (47)

Advanced Searching in the MLA International Bibliography (50)

Interdisciplinary Databases (52)

4. Searching the Internet (59)

Finding Scholarship on the Internet (60)

Accessing Scholarship Online (63)

Searching Smarter: Search Engine Advanced Tools (65)

Evaluating Internet Sources (67)

Evaluating Library Sources (71)

5. Finding Reviews (75)

6. Using Contextual Primary Sources (83)

What Is a Primary Source? (83)

Periodicals as Primary Sources (85)

Audiovisual Media as a Primary Source (86)

Using Primary Sources in Literary Research (86)

Finding Primary Sources Using a Library Database or Catalog (89)

Finding Primary Sources Using the Internet (91)

7. Finding Background Information (95)

Library Sources for Biographical and Historical Information (96)

Internet Sources for Biographical and Historical Information (101)

Finding a Definition or the Source of a Quotation (106)

8. Managing Sources and Creating Your Bibliography (111)

Creating In-Text Citations and a Works-Cited List (112)

Organizing Your Research (116)

9. Guides to Research in Literature Written in English (121)

Harner’s Literary Research Guide (122)

Series on Literary Research from Scarecrow Press (123)

Appendix. A Selected Bibliography of Research Sources for Literature and Literary Studies in English (125)

Glossary (143)

Index (149)

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• How to write a literary analysis essay | A step-by-step guide

How to Write a Literary Analysis Essay | A Step-by-Step Guide

Published on January 30, 2020 by Jack Caulfield . Revised on August 14, 2023.

Literary analysis means closely studying a text, interpreting its meanings, and exploring why the author made certain choices. It can be applied to novels, short stories, plays, poems, or any other form of literary writing.

A literary analysis essay is not a rhetorical analysis , nor is it just a summary of the plot or a book review. Instead, it is a type of argumentative essay where you need to analyze elements such as the language, perspective, and structure of the text, and explain how the author uses literary devices to create effects and convey ideas.

Before beginning a literary analysis essay, it’s essential to carefully read the text and c ome up with a thesis statement to keep your essay focused. As you write, follow the standard structure of an academic essay :

• An introduction that tells the reader what your essay will focus on.
• A main body, divided into paragraphs , that builds an argument using evidence from the text.
• A conclusion that clearly states the main point that you have shown with your analysis.

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Table of contents

Step 1: reading the text and identifying literary devices, step 2: coming up with a thesis, step 3: writing a title and introduction, step 4: writing the body of the essay, step 5: writing a conclusion, other interesting articles.

The first step is to carefully read the text(s) and take initial notes. As you read, pay attention to the things that are most intriguing, surprising, or even confusing in the writing—these are things you can dig into in your analysis.

Your goal in literary analysis is not simply to explain the events described in the text, but to analyze the writing itself and discuss how the text works on a deeper level. Primarily, you’re looking out for literary devices —textual elements that writers use to convey meaning and create effects. If you’re comparing and contrasting multiple texts, you can also look for connections between different texts.

To get started with your analysis, there are several key areas that you can focus on. As you analyze each aspect of the text, try to think about how they all relate to each other. You can use highlights or notes to keep track of important passages and quotes.

Language choices

Consider what style of language the author uses. Are the sentences short and simple or more complex and poetic?

What word choices stand out as interesting or unusual? Are words used figuratively to mean something other than their literal definition? Figurative language includes things like metaphor (e.g. “her eyes were oceans”) and simile (e.g. “her eyes were like oceans”).

Also keep an eye out for imagery in the text—recurring images that create a certain atmosphere or symbolize something important. Remember that language is used in literary texts to say more than it means on the surface.

Narrative voice

Ask yourself:

• Who is telling the story?
• How are they telling it?

Is it a first-person narrator (“I”) who is personally involved in the story, or a third-person narrator who tells us about the characters from a distance?

Consider the narrator’s perspective . Is the narrator omniscient (where they know everything about all the characters and events), or do they only have partial knowledge? Are they an unreliable narrator who we are not supposed to take at face value? Authors often hint that their narrator might be giving us a distorted or dishonest version of events.

The tone of the text is also worth considering. Is the story intended to be comic, tragic, or something else? Are usually serious topics treated as funny, or vice versa ? Is the story realistic or fantastical (or somewhere in between)?

Consider how the text is structured, and how the structure relates to the story being told.

• Novels are often divided into chapters and parts.
• Poems are divided into lines, stanzas, and sometime cantos.
• Plays are divided into scenes and acts.

Think about why the author chose to divide the different parts of the text in the way they did.

There are also less formal structural elements to take into account. Does the story unfold in chronological order, or does it jump back and forth in time? Does it begin in medias res —in the middle of the action? Does the plot advance towards a clearly defined climax?

With poetry, consider how the rhyme and meter shape your understanding of the text and your impression of the tone. Try reading the poem aloud to get a sense of this.

In a play, you might consider how relationships between characters are built up through different scenes, and how the setting relates to the action. Watch out for  dramatic irony , where the audience knows some detail that the characters don’t, creating a double meaning in their words, thoughts, or actions.

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Your thesis in a literary analysis essay is the point you want to make about the text. It’s the core argument that gives your essay direction and prevents it from just being a collection of random observations about a text.

If you’re given a prompt for your essay, your thesis must answer or relate to the prompt. For example:

Essay question example

Is Franz Kafka’s “Before the Law” a religious parable?

Your thesis statement should be an answer to this question—not a simple yes or no, but a statement of why this is or isn’t the case:

Thesis statement example

Franz Kafka’s “Before the Law” is not a religious parable, but a story about bureaucratic alienation.

Sometimes you’ll be given freedom to choose your own topic; in this case, you’ll have to come up with an original thesis. Consider what stood out to you in the text; ask yourself questions about the elements that interested you, and consider how you might answer them.

Your thesis should be something arguable—that is, something that you think is true about the text, but which is not a simple matter of fact. It must be complex enough to develop through evidence and arguments across the course of your essay.

Say you’re analyzing the novel Frankenstein . You could start by asking yourself:

Your initial answer might be a surface-level description:

The character Frankenstein is portrayed negatively in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein .

However, this statement is too simple to be an interesting thesis. After reading the text and analyzing its narrative voice and structure, you can develop the answer into a more nuanced and arguable thesis statement:

Mary Shelley uses shifting narrative perspectives to portray Frankenstein in an increasingly negative light as the novel goes on. While he initially appears to be a naive but sympathetic idealist, after the creature’s narrative Frankenstein begins to resemble—even in his own telling—the thoughtlessly cruel figure the creature represents him as.

Remember that you can revise your thesis statement throughout the writing process , so it doesn’t need to be perfectly formulated at this stage. The aim is to keep you focused as you analyze the text.

Finding textual evidence

To support your thesis statement, your essay will build an argument using textual evidence —specific parts of the text that demonstrate your point. This evidence is quoted and analyzed throughout your essay to explain your argument to the reader.

It can be useful to comb through the text in search of relevant quotations before you start writing. You might not end up using everything you find, and you may have to return to the text for more evidence as you write, but collecting textual evidence from the beginning will help you to structure your arguments and assess whether they’re convincing.

To start your literary analysis paper, you’ll need two things: a good title, and an introduction.

Your title should clearly indicate what your analysis will focus on. It usually contains the name of the author and text(s) you’re analyzing. Keep it as concise and engaging as possible.

A common approach to the title is to use a relevant quote from the text, followed by a colon and then the rest of your title.

If you struggle to come up with a good title at first, don’t worry—this will be easier once you’ve begun writing the essay and have a better sense of your arguments.

“Fearful symmetry” : The violence of creation in William Blake’s “The Tyger”

The introduction

The essay introduction provides a quick overview of where your argument is going. It should include your thesis statement and a summary of the essay’s structure.

A typical structure for an introduction is to begin with a general statement about the text and author, using this to lead into your thesis statement. You might refer to a commonly held idea about the text and show how your thesis will contradict it, or zoom in on a particular device you intend to focus on.

Then you can end with a brief indication of what’s coming up in the main body of the essay. This is called signposting. It will be more elaborate in longer essays, but in a short five-paragraph essay structure, it shouldn’t be more than one sentence.

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is often read as a crude cautionary tale about the dangers of scientific advancement unrestrained by ethical considerations. In this reading, protagonist Victor Frankenstein is a stable representation of the callous ambition of modern science throughout the novel. This essay, however, argues that far from providing a stable image of the character, Shelley uses shifting narrative perspectives to portray Frankenstein in an increasingly negative light as the novel goes on. While he initially appears to be a naive but sympathetic idealist, after the creature’s narrative Frankenstein begins to resemble—even in his own telling—the thoughtlessly cruel figure the creature represents him as. This essay begins by exploring the positive portrayal of Frankenstein in the first volume, then moves on to the creature’s perception of him, and finally discusses the third volume’s narrative shift toward viewing Frankenstein as the creature views him.

Some students prefer to write the introduction later in the process, and it’s not a bad idea. After all, you’ll have a clearer idea of the overall shape of your arguments once you’ve begun writing them!

If you do write the introduction first, you should still return to it later to make sure it lines up with what you ended up writing, and edit as necessary.

The body of your essay is everything between the introduction and conclusion. It contains your arguments and the textual evidence that supports them.

Paragraph structure

A typical structure for a high school literary analysis essay consists of five paragraphs : the three paragraphs of the body, plus the introduction and conclusion.

Each paragraph in the main body should focus on one topic. In the five-paragraph model, try to divide your argument into three main areas of analysis, all linked to your thesis. Don’t try to include everything you can think of to say about the text—only analysis that drives your argument.

In longer essays, the same principle applies on a broader scale. For example, you might have two or three sections in your main body, each with multiple paragraphs. Within these sections, you still want to begin new paragraphs at logical moments—a turn in the argument or the introduction of a new idea.

Robert’s first encounter with Gil-Martin suggests something of his sinister power. Robert feels “a sort of invisible power that drew me towards him.” He identifies the moment of their meeting as “the beginning of a series of adventures which has puzzled myself, and will puzzle the world when I am no more in it” (p. 89). Gil-Martin’s “invisible power” seems to be at work even at this distance from the moment described; before continuing the story, Robert feels compelled to anticipate at length what readers will make of his narrative after his approaching death. With this interjection, Hogg emphasizes the fatal influence Gil-Martin exercises from his first appearance.

Topic sentences

To keep your points focused, it’s important to use a topic sentence at the beginning of each paragraph.

A good topic sentence allows a reader to see at a glance what the paragraph is about. It can introduce a new line of argument and connect or contrast it with the previous paragraph. Transition words like “however” or “moreover” are useful for creating smooth transitions:

… The story’s focus, therefore, is not upon the divine revelation that may be waiting beyond the door, but upon the mundane process of aging undergone by the man as he waits.

Nevertheless, the “radiance” that appears to stream from the door is typically treated as religious symbolism.

This topic sentence signals that the paragraph will address the question of religious symbolism, while the linking word “nevertheless” points out a contrast with the previous paragraph’s conclusion.

Using textual evidence

A key part of literary analysis is backing up your arguments with relevant evidence from the text. This involves introducing quotes from the text and explaining their significance to your point.

It’s important to contextualize quotes and explain why you’re using them; they should be properly introduced and analyzed, not treated as self-explanatory:

It isn’t always necessary to use a quote. Quoting is useful when you’re discussing the author’s language, but sometimes you’ll have to refer to plot points or structural elements that can’t be captured in a short quote.

In these cases, it’s more appropriate to paraphrase or summarize parts of the text—that is, to describe the relevant part in your own words:

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The conclusion of your analysis shouldn’t introduce any new quotations or arguments. Instead, it’s about wrapping up the essay. Here, you summarize your key points and try to emphasize their significance to the reader.

A good way to approach this is to briefly summarize your key arguments, and then stress the conclusion they’ve led you to, highlighting the new perspective your thesis provides on the text as a whole:

If you want to know more about AI tools , college essays , or fallacies make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

• Ad hominem fallacy
• Post hoc fallacy
• Appeal to authority fallacy
• False cause fallacy
• Sunk cost fallacy

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By tracing the depiction of Frankenstein through the novel’s three volumes, I have demonstrated how the narrative structure shifts our perception of the character. While the Frankenstein of the first volume is depicted as having innocent intentions, the second and third volumes—first in the creature’s accusatory voice, and then in his own voice—increasingly undermine him, causing him to appear alternately ridiculous and vindictive. Far from the one-dimensional villain he is often taken to be, the character of Frankenstein is compelling because of the dynamic narrative frame in which he is placed. In this frame, Frankenstein’s narrative self-presentation responds to the images of him we see from others’ perspectives. This conclusion sheds new light on the novel, foregrounding Shelley’s unique layering of narrative perspectives and its importance for the depiction of character.

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• Research Guides
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Literary Research in Harvard Libraries

Literary theory.

• Get Organized
• Find Background
• Where to Search
• Search Vocabulary
• Obscure/Recent Topics
• Literary Journalism Search (under construction!)
• Find Primary or Archival Material
• Foreign Language Literatures
• Distant Reading, Close Reading

Don't Rely on Search Alone

Several of the terms used to describe literary theory---"criticism," "theory," "literature"---are used in many other contexts as well, clogging up your search results. Plus, the kinds of abstract concepts discussed in literary theory can be hard to pin down with a search term. D ictionaries, encyclopedias , and critical companions help you jumpstart your research by giving you an overview of the critical discussion around various points of theory and guiding you to the most relevant scholarship.

Start with Online Reference Sources

• Oxford Bibliographies Online is particularly good for new and emerging theory. Be flexible in your searching, or browse the Literary & Critical Theory category to get a sense of what's there. If you don't find a good match, move on to a different resource.
• LION : use the general search box and refine your results by content type "Reference" to explore material from several important literary encyclopedias as well as student guides and Penguin Classics introductions.
• The Johns Hopkins Guide to Theory and Criticism : the online edition of a classic reference source for literary theory. Pro tip: don't rely on search alone! Browse the contents and topic list to get a better sense of which articles will be most helpful.
• The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy : a free online encyclopedia whose content is produced by scholars in the field and rigorously peer-reviewed. A great resource for gaining a broader perspective, as there is often significant overlap between literary theory and various topics in philosophy.

Supplement with Print Reference Sources

Some of the best guides aren't available online.

Loker Reading Room

On the 2nd floor of Widener Library, you'll find shelves full of indispensable encyclopedias, handbooks and guides. Most of what you'll need is along the long wall opposite the main entrance: start at RR 3100. Here are some titles to keep an eye out for: 

• Twentieth-Century Literary Movements Index
• A Glossary of Contemporary Literary Theory
• Dictionary of Concepts in Literary Criticism and Theory
• Reader's Guide to Literature in English

Elsewhere in the libraries: 

• Literary  Theory: A Very Short Introduction   (Jonathan Culler ). Part of Oxford's Very Short Introductions series . Available online!
• The Cambridge Companion to...  check out various titles in the "literature" and "philosophy" series:  feminist literary theory ,  Deleuze ,  Adorno , etc. Also available online!
• Literary Theory: A Guide for the Perplexed
• The Blackwell Guide to Literary Theory

Find literary theory in HOLLIS: search terms and strategies

• Criticism: an official term for literary theory. But a simple search for "criticism" will also pick up material with subheadings such as "criticism and interpretation" or "history and criticism." The best way to access material that has the main subject heading "Criticism" is via a HOLLIS browse . After executing the browse you can click on "criticism" to turn it into a search, and then use filters to drill down into your results.
• "Theory, etc. " a common subheading: try adding this phrase to your other search terms in an  Advanced Search . Other theory-related subheadings include rhetoric  and  criticism.  If you've found a search formula for your topic that works well in HOLLIS and you want to narrow your results down to theoretical treatments, try adding  AND ("theory, etc." OR rhetoric OR criticism) .
• Name as subject: Another good strategy is to search for a theorist's name in the subject field: this will turn up subsequent discussions of his or her theory. (If you get too many results, try adding AND "criticism and interpretation".)
• << Previous: Find Primary or Archival Material
• Next: Foreign Language Literatures >>

Except where otherwise noted, this work is subject to a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , which allows anyone to share and adapt our material as long as proper attribution is given. For details and exceptions, see the Harvard Library Copyright Policy ©2021 Presidents and Fellows of Harvard College.

2nd Edition

The Handbook to Literary Research

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Description

The Handbook to Literary Research is a practical guide for students embarking on postgraduate work in Literary Studies. It introduces and explains research techniques, methodologies and approaches to information resources, paying careful attention to the differences between countries and institutions, and providing a range of key examples. This fully updated second edition is divided into five sections which cover: tools of the trade – a brand new chapter outlining how to make the most of literary resources textual scholarship and book history – explains key concepts and variations in editing, publishing and bibliography issues and approaches in literary research – presents a critical overview of theoretical approaches essential to literary studies the dissertation – demonstrates how to approach, plan and write this important research exercise glossary – provides comprehensive explanations of key terms, and a checklist of resources. Packed with useful tips and exercises and written by scholars with extensive experience as teachers and researchers in the field, this volume is the ideal Handbook for those beginning postgraduate research in literature.

Table of Contents

Delia da Sousa Correa, W. R. Owens

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Methodologies

Barry Mauer and John Venecek

We discuss the following topics on this page:

Example [Marxist Theory Methodologies]

Example [critical race theory methodologies].

We also provide the following activity on this page:

Exercises [Discussion]

Methodologies (not to be confused with methods, which we discuss on the next page)   are linked to literary theories. Methodologies are necessary to working with theories. They serve as the interfaces between theory (purely conceptual) and praxis (practical application). Methodologies consist of tools and lines of investigation: sets of practices and propositions about texts and the world. Researchers using Marxist literary criticism adopt methodologies that seek to understand literature and its relationship to the world by looking to material forces like labor, ownership, and technology. These researchers also seek to understand authors not as inspired geniuses but as people whose lives and work are shaped by social, economic, and historical forces. Daniel Hartley, in his “Marxist Literary Criticism: An Introductory Reading Guide” (2018) describes some areas of inquiry and methodologies used by Marxist literary critics.

Areas of inquiry:

• Anthropological:  investigates the social functions of art
• Political:  investigates the link between literature and the political fortunes of classes and political systems such as capitalism and socialism
• Ideological:  investigates the link between literature and identity

Methodologies:

• Genetic Structuralism:  “Lucien Goldmann . . . examined the structure of literary texts to discover the degree to which it embodied the ‘world vision’ of the class to which the writer belonged. For Goldmann literary works are the product, not of individuals, but of the ‘transindividual mental structures’ of specific social groups. These ‘mental structures’ or ‘world visions’ are themselves understood as ideological constructions produced by specific historical conjunctures.”
• Dialectical criticism:  Emphasizes “reflexivity and totality: it stresses the way in which ‘the [critic’s] mind must deal with its own thought process just as much as with the material it works on’ (Fredric Jameson); it holds that literary works internalise social forms, situations and structures, yet simultaneously refuse them (thereby generating a critical negativity that resists vulgar economic or political reductionism); and it takes the mediated (not external or abstract) social totality as its ultimate critical purview.”

Jada, in her research about James Baldwin’s story, “Sonny’s Blues,” uses both Marxist theory and Critical Race Theory (CRT). Below are some of the methodologies that CRT researchers use.

Critical Race Theorists use a variety of methodologies, including

• Interest convergence: investigates whether marginalized groups only achieve progress when dominant groups benefit as well
• Intersectional theory: investigates how multiple factors of advantage and disadvantage around race, gender, ethnicity, religion, etc. operate together in complex ways
• Radical critique of the law: investigates how the law has historically been used to marginalize particular groups, such as black people, while recognizing that legal efforts are important to achieve emancipation and civil rights
• Social constructivism: investigates how race is socially constructed (rather than biologically grounded)
• Standpoint epistemology: investigates how knowledge relates to individual experience and social position
• Structural determinism: investigates how structures of thought and of organizations determine social outcomes

Wikipedia can help with finding methodologies. For instance, the page about Cultural Studies notes that the primary areas of study are about power , which consists of many other things (such as ideology, social relations, etc.) and discourse (the languages and world views found in and around texts). You can follow the citation links in wikipedia to research each methodology. Better still, use your library. Cultural Studies has subdivisions, which include New Historicism, Multiculturalism, and Postcolonialism. One methodology of Cultural Studies is radical contextualism, which “rejects universal accounts of cultural practices, meanings, and identities.”

Some psychological theories, such as Freudian and Lacanian, use a set of methodologies referred to as “symptomatic.” The analogy is to medicine and the ways in which doctors seek to diagnose a patient’s condition based on their presenting symptoms. Since many medical conditions can produce similar symptoms (for instance, chest congestion can be caused by a cold, the flu, COVID, and many other conditions), a doctor has to look closely at a set of symptoms, use their knowledge of various medical conditions and how they present, and reason abductively (from effects to causes) to figure out what the underlying condition is. Similarly, a Freudian or Lacanian reading of a literary text will look for clues related to the characters, narrator, author, or audience to determine what underlying conditions are present. These conditions may be cognitive (beliefs), affective (feelings), or interpersonal (relationships). They also can be a combination of these things.

Theorists don’t always label their methodologies as such. You need to look into each theory to see what positions the theorists take, what they study, and why. The “methods” part is about how they study. Not every methodology will work with every theory. You will need to do some research to discover which methodologies are most appropriate for your project.

• What methodologies will you be using for your paper? Why did you make this selection over others? If you haven’t made a selection yet, which methodologies are you considering?
• What specific concepts from the methodologies are you most interested in exploring in relation to your chosen literary work?
• What is your plan for researching your methodologies?
• When you do your assignments for this week about theory and methodology, you should refer to your earlier work – the literature you chose, the problem, etc. We are in building mode. Recall that the methodology relates directly to the theory. You may need to do some additional reading to identify methodologies and theories.
• If there are any elements of your assignment that need clarification, please list them.
• What was the most important lesson you learned from this page? What point was confusing or difficult to understand?

Methodologies Copyright © 2021 by Barry Mauer and John Venecek is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Literature Topics and Research

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What kinds of topics are good ones?

The best topics are ones that originate out of your own reading of a work of literature, but here are some common approaches to consider:

• A discussion of a work's characters: are they realistic, symbolic, historically-based?
• A comparison/contrast of the choices different authors or characters make in a work
• A reading of a work based on an outside philosophical perspective (Ex. how would a Freudian read Hamlet ?)
• A study of the sources or historical events that occasioned a particular work (Ex. comparing G.B. Shaw's Pygmalion with the original Greek myth of Pygmalion)
• An analysis of a specific image occurring in several works (Ex. the use of moon imagery in certain plays, poems, novels)
• A "deconstruction" of a particular work (Ex. unfolding an underlying racist worldview in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness )
• A reading from a political perspective (Ex. how would a Marxist read William Blake's "London"?)
• A study of the social, political, or economic context in which a work was written — how does the context influence the work?

How do I start research?

Once you have decided on an interesting topic and work (or works), the best place to start is probably the Internet. Here you can usually find basic biographical data on authors, brief summaries of works, possibly some rudimentary analyses, and even bibliographies of sources related to your topic.

The Internet, however, rarely offers serious direct scholarship; you will have to use sources found in the library, sources like journal articles and scholarly books, to get information that you can use to build your own scholarship-your literary paper. Consult the library's on-line catalog and the MLA Periodical Index. Avoid citing dictionary or encyclopedic sources in your final paper.

How do I use the information I find?

The secondary sources you find are only to be used as an aid. Your thoughts should make up most of the essay. As you develop your thesis, you will bring in the ideas of the scholars to back up what you have already said.

For example, say you are arguing that Huck Finn is a Christ figure ; that's your basic thesis. You give evidence from the novel that allows this reading, and then, at the right place, you might say the following, a paraphrase:

According to Susan Thomas, Huck sacrifices himself because he wants to set Jim free (129).

If the scholar states an important idea in a memorable way, use a direct quote.

"Huck's altruism and feelings of compassion for Jim force him to surrender to the danger" (Thomas 129).

Either way, you will then link that idea to your thesis.

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What Is Literature Research?

Literature research refers to the scholarly, critical study of literature, generally for analysis purposes. It is often done as part of a degree program, such as a degree in English, but some people simply choose to study literature on their own as part of a hobby. Basic literature research may also take place in high school, but most students don't really begin diving into true literary analysis until college. For professors of literature, this type of research will generally continue throughout their careers, as they publish scholarly papers on their topics of choice. Many universities require this of their professors.

The methods for literature research are generally fairly similar across the board. An individual wanting to study a certain aspect of a piece of literature, such as a certain theme, piece of imagery, type of characterization, etc., will generally form a question about this idea. It is necessary that the question be debatable in order to produce a truly interesting, worthwhile paper. Then, the individual will begin examining the research that already exists in this topic from other scholarly researchers.

In most cases, the researcher will make sure to study and respond to all sides of a debatable issue when writing his or her own literature research. Of course, it is entirely possible that no one else has written about one specific idea for one specific piece of literature before; in this case, the researcher will need to find related examples for similar ideas or other similar pieces of literature. It is also common practice for literature researchers to compare a few different works to each other; this can be different works by the same author or by different authors.

The process of literary review, critique, and analysis can be lengthy and challenging. It is necessary in literature research for the researcher to add his or her own ideas in addition to the primary and secondary sources she collects for the research. If the research will eventually be published in a scholarly journal, it will be necessary for the piece to go through a lengthy peer review process as well. In this process, the researcher's colleagues will review the piece and offer critical feedback on it to ensure that the piece is the best it can be. Students completing this type of research that will not be published will not need to go through the peer review process, though some instructors will encourage peer reviews in the classroom to get students in practice of critiquing others' work.

Editors' Picks

International Comparative Literature Association

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Recherche littéraire / Literary Research

About the journal.

As the annual publication of the International Comparative Literature Association (ICLA), the bilingual journal Recherche littéraire / Literary Research is an Open Access journal published by Peter Lang. Its mission is to inform comparative literature scholars worldwide of recent contributions to the field. To that end, it publishes reviews of noteworthy books on comparative topics as well as review essays discussing recent research developments in particular sub-fields of the discipline. As of its 2023 issue, RL/LR will publish unsolicited research essays, which will be submitted to a double-blind peer review. Research by early-career comparative literature scholars will be particularly welcome.

To propose book reviews and review essays, and for inquiries about back copies, please contact the Editor.

Inquiries and submissions: Marc Maufort, Editor, RL/LR Email: mmaufort@ulb.ac.be ISSN: 0849–0570

Current Volume

Volume 39 (2023)

Download volume 39 (open access) or purchase a hard copy of this issue from our publisher,  Peter Lang .

Previous Volumes

Hard copies of this issue can be purchased from the website of the

publisher, Peter Lang

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Follow the author

Literary Research Guide Paperback – January 1, 2008

James L. Harner's Literary Research Guide, which Choice calls "the standard guide in the field," evaluates important reference materials in English studies. Since the publication of the first edition in 1989, tens of thousands of students and educators have used the Guide as an aid to scholarly research.

In the new edition Harner has added entries describing resources published since May 2001 and has revised nearly half the entries from the fourth edition. The fifth edition contains more than 1,000 entries, which discuss an additional 1,555 books, articles, and electronic resources and cite 723 reviews. Readers of earlier editions will notice the inclusion of substantially more electronic resources, particularly reliable sites sponsored by academic institutions and learned societies, to account for the proliferation of bibliographic databases, text archives, and other online resources. This edition also features a new section on cultural studies.

• Print length 826 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Modern Language Association of America
• Publication date January 1, 2008
• Dimensions 6 x 2.25 x 9 inches
• ISBN-10 0873528085
• ISBN-13 978-0873528085
• See all details

Editorial Reviews

About the author, product details.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Modern Language Association of America; fifth edition (January 1, 2008)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 826 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0873528085
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0873528085
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.4 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 2.25 x 9 inches
• #248 in Literary Bibliographies & Indexes
• #1,050 in Literary History & Criticism Reference
• #1,466 in Scientific Research

About the author

James l. harner.

Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read book recommendations and more.

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Scholar of African American literature named Africana Research Center director

Sherita l. johnson is focused on growing liberal arts research center’s visibility and forging community partnerships.

Sherita L. Johnson is the new director of the Africana Research Center in Penn State’s College of the Liberal Arts.   Credit: Kate Kenealy . All Rights Reserved .

October 10, 2024

By Josh McAuliffe

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. —  Sherita L. Johnson spent more than a decade advancing scholarship and cultivating enduring community connections through her role as director of the University of Southern Mississippi’s Center for Black Studies.

Those experiences, Johnson said she believes, will serve her well in her new role as director of the Africana Research Center (ARC) in Penn State’s College of the Liberal Arts .

Since starting in the position, Johnson, an associate professor of English, has committed herself to expanding the reach of ARC, which is dedicated to advancing scholarship on the history, life and culture of the African diaspora — the worldwide community of people of African descent.

Among other duties, Johnson will coordinate the center’s two primary events: the Nelson Mandela Lecture Series in the fall and the Barbara Jordan Lecture Series in the spring. She’ll also collaborate closely with the center’s post-docs on research initiatives, and she has plans to forge interdisciplinary partnerships with other centers, institutes and departments, both within the college and across the University.

“Everything about the center seems to line up with my interests as a scholar,” Johnson said. “I’m now in the process of learning more about what ARC has stood for in the past to fulfill its mission going forward. At this point, I plan to concentrate on ways of making ARC more visible by placing more emphasis on our research initiatives, and also looking back on the past to see how we’ve supported post-docs and where they have gone in their careers. The challenge is finding those connections and making that network more visible.”

Johnson is also committed to making more inroads with the local community, having learned that Bellefonte has a rich African American history that extends back to the Civil War era, when it played a prominent role on the Underground Railroad.

Johnson was highly engaged in public-facing work during her time at Southern Mississippi. In 2015, she formed the Freedom50 Research Group , a collaborative focused on the life of Clyde Kennard, the first African American to attempt to enroll at the university when it was still the segregated Mississippi Southern College. The group’s initiatives include the annual Clyde Kennard Lecture, the short documentary, “Measure of Progress: The Clyde Kennard Story,” and a soon-to-be-completed edited volume on Kennard’s legacy in higher education.

In addition, Johnson created community partnerships in Hattiesburg’s Sixth Street Museum District and developed programming to commemorate the Freedom Summer 1964 activism during the Civil Rights Movement and African American women’s roles in the suffrage movement. She also served as a committee member consulting the Hattiesburg Convention Commission on creating a public monument celebrating prominent African Americans from the city.

Committed to preserving and promoting the history of the Bay Springs School, one of the few remaining Rosenwald Schools designed to educate African Americans in rural Mississippi during segregation, Johnson worked with service-learning students, Bay Springs School alumni and the site’s caretakers to catalogue, archive and contextualize the school’s artifacts for community engagement programming. And she received Southern Mississippi’s 2023-24 Conville Endowment Award for Community Engagement and Service Learning in recognition of her work on behalf of the project.

“Outreach to the broader community is one of the things I’m most proud of from my previous job,” Johnson said. “Central Pennsylvania is certainly different from Mississippi, but there’s a rich, rich history here that’s worth promoting.”

A specialist in 19th century African American literature and print culture, Johnson is the author of the book, “Black Women in New South Literature and Culture,” published by Routledge in 2010; and a contributor to “African American Literature in Transition, 1865-1880," published by Cambridge University Press in 2021, and “Remediating Region: New Media and the U.S. South,” published by LSU Press this year.

Johnson’s research seeks to shine a light on unsung writers of that era, among them Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, who in addition to being one of the first African American women to have her work published was a prominent abolitionist and suffragist who traveled in the same circles as Frederick Douglass.

“One of the first classes I took in graduate school was a 19th century African American literature course, and it changed my life,” Johnson said. “Taking that class is where I met Frances Harper and a whole generation of writers beyond those credited for the slave narratives. At the time, not a lot of people were thinking of 19th century African American writers. It wasn’t as valued — but it fascinated me.”

In observance of the bicentennial of Harper’s birth next year, Penn State’s Center for Black Digital Research (CBDR) will host a symposium led by Johnson, who is serving as a 2024-25 Just Transformations Commonwealth Faculty Fellow in collaboration with the CBDR.

Johnson first started collaborating with CBDR about a year ago through its Colored Conventions Project .

"[That work] excited me about the possibility of working at Penn State,” said Johnson, a member of the American Antiquarian Society and the former president of the Society for the Study of Southern Literature. “As a public humanities scholar, I enjoy the fact that I can take what I do in the institution to the public and talk to them in layman’s terms about the important work we do. ... Learning as much as I have over the last six months, I really feel Penn State is the right place for me at this stage of my career.”

Josh McAuliffe

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What is a literature review?

What is a systematic review, helpful guides, books and articles.

• Referencing

A literature review is a critical assessment of the literature pertaining to a particular topic or subject.  It is a 'systematic, explicit, and reproducible method for identifying, evaluating and synthesising the existing body of completed and recorded work produced by researchers, scholars, and practitioners'  Fink, (2005).

What's its purpose?

• justify your research
• provide context for your research
• identify new ways, to interpret and highlight gaps in previous research
• ensure that the research has not been done before
• signpost a way forward for further research
• show where the research fits into the existing literature
• highlight flaws in previous research

"Systematic reviews aim to identify, evaluate and summarise the findings of all relevant individual studies, thereby making the available evidence more accessible to decisionmakers. When appropriate, combining the results of several studies gives a more reliable and precise estimate of an intervention’s effectiveness than one study alone." 

Centre for Reviews and Dissemination 2009, Systematic Reviews: CRD's guidance for undertaking reviews in health care , Centre for Reviews and Dissemination, York.

  The key characteristics of a systematic review are:

• a clearly stated set of objectives with pre-defined eligibility criteria for studies;
• an explicit, reproducible methodology;
• a systematic search that attempts to identify all studies that would meet the eligibility criteria; learn more about how to conduct a thorough systematic search ;
• an assessment of the validity of the findings of the included studies, for example through the assessment of risk of bias; and
• a systematic presentation, and synthesis, of the characteristics and findings of the included studies.

Higgins JPT, Green S (editors). Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions Version 5.1.0 [updated March 2011]. The Cochrane Collaboration, 2011. Available from  http://handbook-5-1.cochrane.org/ 

• Literature reviews library guide
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• Using NVivo software in systematic reviews
• UQ Student Support - writing a literature review A guide to the process of planning and writing a literature review.
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• Health sciences literature review made easy: The matrix method
• The literature review: A step-by-step guide for students
• The literature review: Six steps to success
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Three Receive Nobel in Economics for Research on Global Inequality

Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James Robinson shared the award for their work on explaining the gaps in prosperity between nations.

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Nobel Economics Prize Shared Among Three

Daron acemoglu, simon johnson and james robinson received the prize for their work on explaining inequality between countries..

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award Sveriges Riksbank Prize in economic sciences in memory of Alfred Nobel for 2024 to Daron Acemoglu, MIT, Cambridge, USA. Simon Johnson, MIT, Cambridge, USA. And James Robinson, University of Chicago, USA. For studies of how institutions are formed and affect prosperity.

By Jeanna Smialek

Jeanna Smialek is an economics journalist reporting from Washington.

The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences was awarded on Monday to Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson, both of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and to James Robinson of the University of Chicago.

They received the prize for their research into how institutions shape which countries become wealthy and prosperous — and how those structures came to exist in the first place.

The laureates delved into the world’s colonial past to trace how gaps emerged between nations, arguing that countries that started out with more inclusive institutions during the colonial period tended to become more prosperous. Their pioneering use of theory and data has helped to better explain the reasons for persistent inequality between nations, according to the Nobel committee.

“Reducing the huge differences in income between countries is one of our times’ greatest challenges,” Jakob Svensson, chairman of the economics prize committee, said while announcing the award. Thanks to the economists’ “groundbreaking research,” he said, “we have a much deeper understanding of the root causes of why countries fail or succeed.”

According to the researchers, prosperity today is partly a legacy of how a nation’s institutions evolved over time — which they studied by looking at what happened to countries during European colonization.

Countries with “inclusive” institutions that protected personal property rights and allowed for widespread economic participation tended to end up on a pathway to longer-term prosperity. Those that had what the researchers called “extractive” institutions — ones that helped elites to maintain control, but which gave workers little hope of sharing in the wealth — merely provided short-term gains for the people in power.

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