To help focus your topic idea, this assignment requires sources that could work for various critical approaches. Find at least one source for each of the categories below:
- Biographical Information about the Author A source with information about the author’s life, such as an encyclopedia article
- Historical Relevance This can be a source relevant to the time period the story is set or when it was written.
- A Social Issue relevant to the story or poem This source needs to focus on any social issue (such as class, race, gender, ageism, or cultural identity).
- A work of literary criticism This is a source written by a literary scholar that evaluates or interprets a literary work. The library databases are the best place to find literary criticism.
Feel free to include more than one source that fits any of the above categories, especially if you already decided on a topic idea for your literature research essay.
Source Details
- Start by selecting the sources that you will be using for your research. Make sure that they are relevant, credible, and reliable.
- Sources must be valid for college level writing. Journal articles from the library databases should be included.
- Additional sources can be any type (website, documentary, personal interview, etc.) as long as they are relevant and credible. Do NOT use Wikipedia, Ask.com, About.com, Sparknotes.com, etc.
Annotations
- Below each source citation, you will write an annotation.
- Include:
- a 3 to 5 sentence summary of the work (in third person, referring to the work in the present tense),
- a one sentence critique of the work (in third person, referring to the work in the present tense),
- and a one to two sentence evaluation of the work’s usefulness to your research (in first person) here as one paragraph.
- The paragraph should have a first line indent, but the citations should have a hanging indent.
- Repeat the above steps for each source/citation.