Researchers into English and Comparative Literature undertake their work in a number of different ways, but there are a few common paths most scholars take. This guide will orient you to the following:
- Building up your knowledge: (Books tab, Background tab)
- Finding books about research, research methods, and academic writing.
- Finding books written by or about an author; finding books on key themes or subjects related to your topic.
- Finding background information on an author or topic.
- Surveying the Field: Getting an overview of the issues and scholarship on your topic: (Databases tab)
- Finding articles that point you to the "critical conversations" surrounding an author or topic.
- Finding articles from other disciplines that might also examine or consider to your topic.
- Tracing the scholarly discussion/critical conversations through citation tracking (Cited Reference Searching tab)
- Exploring theory: Using critical frameworks to develop new readings of texts: (Theory tab)
- Literary theory comprises that body of theoretical frameworks used by critics to discover and give meanings in and to texts. It is the collection of a priori critical constructs applied to texts by critics. There are many different "schools" of literary theory and the resources on this page can help orient you to those schools and the theories and theorists that belong to them.
Additionally, there is a tab for formatting and managing citations and a tab listing mobile databases that can help you do your research on the go.
