ENGL 2210 - Pullara - English - MRU Library Website at Mount Royal University

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Assignment overview
My plan for the day

Research Analysis

Your research essay requires the use of secondary sources.

You must find three (3) scholarly sources related to your primary text/author. These should be from academic journals or scholarly books.
For each source you will
- Provide a 200-word overview, in your own words, of the scholarly argument.
- Write a 300-word analysis of your primary text focusing on how that text reflects the scholarly argument.
Sources can be found using MRU Library resources or Google Scholar.
Follow MLA guidelines and citation rules.
Share any questions about the sources you find with the instructor or librarian.

See your assignment handout for full details.

During today's class we will:

Review assignment requirements
Discuss relevant types of sources
Introduce best resources for literary research
Have time for you to find sources
- Use this opportunity to look for research on your topic
- Consult with the librarian and course instructor as needed
Revisit the research supports available

Goal: By the end of this session you will learn about searching for scholarly sources on literary topics, practice using these resource to start your own research, and know where to get research support later.

Choosing and evaluating sources

Primary Sources

The main work(s) being studied and analyzed. In literary research, this is usually a novel, poem, story, play, essay, or a collection of these works.

Secondary Sources

Research and scholarship about the primary source, or about the author/creator of the primary source, or about the literary period when the primary source was created.

Articles and Books - your best option

includes in-depth analysis, criticism, and commentary
original research appears in peer reviewed journal articles, or scholarly books or individual book chapters
may explore a literary work or set of works, or an author's works as a whole, or a particular literary theme

Reference Works

usually introductory information and summary of a literary work, or of an author, theme, character, etc.
sometimes called background sources, appearing in encyclopedias, handbooks, or companion guides
may include some commentary, but is not considered comprehensive literary analysis or criticism

Book Reviews

generally written within two years of the time the work was published
often appear in journals, trade publications, and popular magazines
is not comprehensive literary analysis or criticism

	Scholarly (peer-reviewed, academic)	Non-scholarly (popular)
Author(s)	Subject matter expert; often with advanced education (e.g., PhD) or working at a university	Journalists, professional, or creative writers; may be crowd generated content
Verification	Reviewed by an editorial board or other subject matter experts (peers)	Reviewed by an editor (sometimes)
Audience & language	Researchers, scholars, students; language is academic or technical	General public; uses everyday, easy to understand language
Content	Reports original research; builds on previous knowledge	News, and practical information, creative works
Cites sources?	Always cites other research	Occasionally, but not required

How do you know if you have a credible, reliable, relevant source? Consider the following:

Is the author qualified to write about the topic?
Does the resource incorporate quality reports, research or other trustworthy information?
Is the language used objective, or emotional?
Is the information opinion-based, or can you identify some bias?
Does the resource address your research topic or problem?
Who is the intended audience?
Is the information recent, or does it speak to the time period of your research?

Your resource doesn't necessarily have to meet all of these criteria.

The following video has more information about ways to understand and evaluate the credibility of sources.

Search tips and possible resources

MLA International Bibliography
An index of journals, books and dissertations covering literature, language and linguistics, folklore, dramatic arts, printing and publishing, rhetoric, and composition.
Literature Criticism Online
Access to up to 10 acclaimed multidisciplinary series representing a range of modern and historical views on authors and their works across regions, eras and genres.
Literature Resource Center
A literary reference database which provides users with a broad spectrum of reference information from antiquity to the present day.
Access to this resource is funded by Alberta Advanced Education through the Lois Hole Campus Alberta Digital Library.
Project MUSE Premium Collection
Provides full text of a growing number of scholarly journals in the arts and humanities.
JSTOR Collection
A large digital library of academic journals, ebooks and primary sources. Includes content across the humanities, social sciences, and sciences.
Note: Use the JSTOR platform for access to Primary Source collections including 19th Century British Pamphlets, Struggles for Freedom: Southern Africa, World Heritage Sites: Africa, and Global Plants and are not available for inclusion in LibrarySearch.

Find out more about indexing of these resources: https://support-jstor-org.libproxy.mtroyal.ca/hc/en-us/articles/5322416293399-JSTOR-ProQuest-Ex-Libris-Discovery-Resources
International Medieval Bibliography
Multidisciplinary bibliography of Europe, North Africa, and the Near East (300-1500). Indexes 365,000 articles with subject, location, and date.
Shakespeare Collection (Gale)
Covers literary, textual, historical, and performance studies of Shakespeare, and the Arden editions of the complete works, adaptations, and other works published during Shakespeare's time.
Access to this resource is funded by Alberta Advanced Education through the Lois Hole Campus Alberta Digital Library.

Internet Medieval Sourcebook - Fordham University
Contains public-domain and copyright-permitted texts and primary sources for use covering all disciplines and periods of the Middle Ages. This source is part of the Internet History Sourcebooks Project at Fordham University.
Middle English Compendium - University of Michigan
The Middle English Compendium contains three Middle English electronic resources: an ME dictionary, a bibliography of ME prose and verse, and a searchable library of ME quotations.
The National Archives (UK)
The official archive and publisher for the UK Government, and for England and Wales. Guardians of over 1,000 years of iconic national documents and collections.

Power up your searching with these tips.

Phrase searches: Put quotation marks around ideas made of multiple words (very useful for titles)

"Sir Gawain and the Green Knight"
"restoration period"

Truncation: Use an asterisk * to find different endings to your keywords

religio* = religion, religions, religious
critic* = criticism, critical, critics

Synonyms: Use different keywords to describe the same/similar ideas to find results using any any of those terms. Note that synonyms are most effective in brackets with the word OR between them.

(church OR religion OR spiritual*)
(criticism OR analysis OR commentary)

You can combine these techniques in a single search:

Milton "Paradise Lost" (church OR religio*) satire

Background sources often provide an introduction to a topic, as well as list of additional readings.The following are example of the types of titles that might prove useful. You'll find many more like this using LibrarySearch. Also visit the Background Sources tab of for more options.

The Anglo Saxon Literature Handbook by Mark C. Amodio The Anglo-Saxon Literature Handbook  presents an accessible introduction to the surviving works of prose and poetry produced in Anglo-Saxon England, from AD 410-1066. Makes Anglo-Saxon literature accessible to modern readers Helps readers to overcome the linguistic, aesthetic and cultural barriers to understanding and appreciating Anglo-Saxon verse and prose Introduces readers to the language, politics, and religion of the Anglo-Saxon literary world Presents original readings of such works as Beowulf, The Battle of Maldon, The Wanderer, The Seafarer, and The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
ISBN: 9781118286517
Publication Date: 2013-04-01
The Cambridge History of Early Modern English Literature by David Loewenstein; Janel M. Mueller This is a comprehensive history of English literature written in Britain between the Reformation and the Restoration. While it focuses on England, literary effort in Scotland and Ireland is also covered, with occasional references to Wales and Ireland. This literary history by an international team of scholars is essential reading for students and scholars of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English literature, culture, and history.
ISBN: 0511066120
Publication Date: 2002-01-01
A Companion to Medieval English Literature and Culture C. 1350 - C. 1500 by Peter Brown (Editor) "A Companion to Medieval English Literature and Culture, c.1350-c.1500" challenges readers to think beyond a narrowly defined canon and conventional disciplinary boundaries. A ground-breaking collection of newly-commissioned essays on medieval literature and culture.Encourages students to think beyond a narrowly defined canon and conventional disciplinary boundaries.Reflects the erosion of the traditional, rigid boundary between medieval and early modern literature.Stresses the importance of constructing contexts for reading literature.Explores the extent to which medieval literature is in dialogue with other cultural products, including the literature of other countries, manuscripts and religion.Includes close readings of frequently-studied texts, including texts by Chaucer, Langland, the Gawain poet, and Hoccleve.Confronts some of the controversies that exercise students of medieval literature, such as those connected with literary theory, love, and chivalry and war.
ISBN: 1280742682
Publication Date: 2008-01-01
A Companion to Medieval Poetry by Corinne Saunders (Editor) MEDIEVAL POETRY In a series of original essays from leading literary scholars, this Companion offers a chronological sweep of medieval poetry from Old English to the great genres of romance, narrative, and alliterative poetry of the 15th century. Beginning in the Anglo-Saxon period, the volume explores the Old English language and its alliterative tradition, before moving on to examine the genres of heroic, devotional, wisdom and epic poetry, culminating in a discussion of arguably the founding text of the English literary canon, the great epic Beowulf. In part two, the Companion moves on to discuss the linguistic and social changes brought about as a result of the Norman Conquest, exploring how this influenced the development of literary genres. Essays probe the shifts and continuities in genres such as lyric, chronicle and dream vision, and the emergence of new genres such as popular and courtly romance, and drama. A particular focus is the continuation of the alliterative tradition from the Anglo-Saxon period to the fifteenth century. A series of chapters on major authors, including Chaucer, Gower, and Langland, provide fresh approaches to reading and studying key texts, such as The Canterbury Tales, Piers Plowman and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Finally, the collection examines cultural change at the close of the medieval period and the variety of literature produced in the 'long fifteenth century', including writing by and for women, Scots poetry, clerical and courtly works, and secular and sacred drama.
ISBN: 9781444319101
Publication Date: 2010-02-12
A Companion to Old and Middle English Literature by Laura Cooner Lambdin (Editor); Robert Thomas Lambdin (Editor) Fills a gap in existing literature by providing a resource that categorizes primary texts in old and middle English literature into specific genres.
ISBN: 9786610637133
Publication Date: 2002-06-30
The Oxford Handbook of Chaucer by Suzanne Conklin Akbari (Editor); James Simpson (Editor) As the "father" of the English literary canon, one of a very few writers to appear in every "great books" syllabus, Chaucer is seen as an author whose works are fundamentally timeless: an author who, like Shakespeare, exemplifies the almost magical power of poetry to appeal to each generationof readers. Every age remakes its own Chaucer, developing new understandings of how his poetry intersects with contemporary ways of seeing the world, and the place of the subject who lives in it. This Handbook comprises a series of essays by established scholars and emerging voices that addressChaucer's poetry in the context of several disciplines, including late medieval philosophy and science, Mediterranean Studies, comparative literature, vernacular theology, and popular devotion.The volume paints the field in broad strokes and sections include Biography and Circumstances of Daily Life; Chaucer in the European Frame; Philosophy and Science in the Universities; Christian Doctrine and Religious Heterodoxy; and the Chaucerian Afterlife. Taken as a whole, The Oxford Handbook ofChaucer offers a snapshot of the current state of the field, and a bold suggestion of the trajectories along which Chaucer studies are likely to develop in the future.
ISBN: 0199582653
Publication Date: 2020-11-09
The Oxford Handbook of Shakespearean Comedy by Heather Hirschfeld (Editor) The Oxford Handbook of Shakespearean Comedy offers critical and contemporary resources for studying Shakespeare's comic enterprises. It engages with perennial, yet still urgent questions raised by the comedies and looks at them from a range of new perspectives that represent the most recentmethodological approaches to Shakespeare, genre, and early modern drama.Several chapters take up firmly established topics of inquiry such Shakespeare's source materials, gender and sexuality, hetero- and homoerotic desire, race, and religion, and they reformulate these topics in the materialist, formalist, phenomenological, or revisionist terms of current scholarshipand critical debate. Others explore subjects that have only relatively recently become pressing concerns for sustained scholarly interrogation, such as ecology, cross-species interaction, and humoral theory. Some contributions, informed by increasingly sophisticated approaches to the materialconditions and embodied experience of theatrical practice, speak to a resurgence of interest in performance, from Shakespeare's period through the first decades of the twenty-first century. Others still investigate distinct sets of plays from unexpected and often polemical angles, noting connectionsbetween the comedies under inventive, unpredicted banners such as the theology of adultery, early modern pedagogy, global exploration, or monarchical rule. The Handbook situates these approaches against the long history of criticism and provides a valuable overview of the most up-to-date work in thefield.
ISBN: 0198727682
Publication Date: 2018-11-13
Renaissance and Reformations: An Introduction to Early Modern English Literature by Michael Hattaway This volume offers a description of early modern habits of writing and reading, of publication and stage performance, and of political and religious writing. An introduction to early modern English literature for students and general readers. Considers the ways in which early modern writers construct the past, recover and adapt classical genres, write about people and places, and tackle religious and secular controversies. Illustrated with a profusion of excerpts from early modern texts. Writers represented include More, Erasmus, Spenser, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Donne, and Milton, as well as less well known authors.
ISBN: 1281310913
Publication Date: 2008-08-01
The Seventeenth-Century Literature Handbook by Marshall Grossman
ISBN: 1282914200
Publication Date: 2010-01-01

Librarian

Richard Hayman

Contact:

Email: rhayman@mtroyal.ca
Phone: 403.440.8518
Office: EL4441K

Literature podcasts

Podcasts, English Language and Literature - University of Oxford
A selection of podcast lectures from educators at the University of Oxford's Faculty of English Language and Literature.
Podcasts by Literary Period - English Studies, Durham University
Features lectures, interviews and readings by researchers at the Department of English Studies' Research in English At Durham (READ) program.
The History of Literature - Jacke Wilson (host)
Popular and approachable podcast on a wide variety of literary works from classics to the contemporary. Includes expert guests.

Citation Resources from Student Learning Services

Cite Sources: Learn the correct way to cite sources by using these guides, tutorials, and videos.
Referencing Webinars: APA & MLA. Referencing Webinars are 75 minutes long. Registration is required.
Online Appointments: Personalized online 30-minute appointments with a Learning Strategist.

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English | ENGL 2210 - Pullara