Literary Research

Syllabus

Overview

This course introduces students to methods of finding information on literary topics and to the major branches of literary scholarship. So we will spend our time learning about library tools, reference works, and the Internet; and we will read and discuss material pertaining to scholarly editing, writing biography, finding literary sources and analogues, and other like topics -- especially the crucial ways in which the electronic age has changed the way in which we perceive reading and writing. Students will participate a good deal in the course, giving reports and sharing findings. We will hear from guest speakers and visit manuscript archives in Charleston.  The course will also feature multimedia instruction.

Texts

Altick, Richard D., and John J. Fenstermaker. The Art of Literary Research.
Harner, James L. Literary Research Guide.
Achtert, Walter S., and Joseph Gibaldi. The MLA Handbook for Writers of Research 
       Papers (most recent edition)
 

Reserve readings: those articles and parts of books not found above are either on electronic reserve in the Daniel Library at The Citadel (you will need Adobe Acrobat Reader to see and print the articles) and/or available in e-texts through hyperlinks embedded in the schedule, below.

 

Requirements

10%     Library questions (weekly)
10%     Journal report (13 Oct)
10%     Outside reading report (varies from week to week)
25%     Editing project and oral presentation (10 or 17 Nov)
30%     Bibliography project (1 Dec)
15%     Comprehensive final examination (8 December)

Attendance is required at each class meeting unless there are extenuating circumstances. Please talk to me about those in advance.

Editing Project

Each student will produce an original critical edition of a letter (supplied by the professor) by a world-class author. 

The letter will be edited as a "public" text in an informational manner. Through footnotes, each topic, theme, person, place, title, or concept will be glossed, with the source for the information noted.

The student will then write a 4-5 page "introduction" to the letter, explaining the contexts and circumstances under which the letter was written and setting forth its importance to study of the period, author, or topic that it considers. A bibliography should accompany the introduction, listing sources consulted that are not already identified in the footnotes. At the end of the term, we'll hear about your projects in an oral report. Click here for a sample.

For your consideration:  will personal letters in hardcopy be a thing of the past, given the dominance of e-mail? Probably so -- so think about that as you work on your editing project. And maybe read this New York Times article for a recent perspective. 

Bibliographical Project

Bibliographical essay on a topic or period: an introduction to study of the field. The major project for the term. Each student will become an authority on a field of literary study and present a survey of the scholarship in the field in a 20-25 page paper, cross-referenced to an enumerative bibliography of 100-125 items. The purpose of the paper is to provide an introduction to the resources available for scholarly study of the topic. Click here for additional guidelines.

Some possible topics include:

· Anglo-Saxon Poetry  The Harlem Renaissance · Arthurian Literature  The Little Magazines · · Britain's "Angry Young Men"· Anglo-Catholic Writers · American Writers in Hollywood (1920-1950)  · The Revolt from the Village in American Literature (1880-1930) · The American Business Novel · American Writers in Paris (1915-1935) · The Age of Sail in Literature (1700-1900) · Contemporary Canadian Novelists · The Writers of the Algonquin Round Table · Avant-Garde Dramatists of the Early Twentieth Century · Literary London · Literary Florence · Elizabethan Culture · Literary Paris · Poets of World War I · The New Journalists · Science Fiction · American Literary Magazines· The Literature of Empire · Victorian People and Ideas | Pre-Raphaelite Poets

Click here for a sample project on: The Bloomsbury Group

Other Assignments

Journal analysis

Each student will locate and review back numbers of a current scholarly journal. In an oral report, the contents, scope, critical orientation/methodologies, and intended audiences of the journal will be analyzed. Students will also present findings on the methods of manuscript review employed by the journal and any publication data relating to its history. All of the choices below are available in the Daniel Library (check the computer to see which are available at the CofC library as well.) Many are also available in full text via JSTOR, ProjectMuse, and other databases.

Click here for further instructions on the journal report.

· Journal of English and Germanic Philology (JEGP) · Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America (PBSA) · English Literary History (ELH) · Nineteenth-Century Literature (NCL) · American Literature (AL) · Texas Studies in Language and Literature (TSLL) · Studies in Romanticism (SR) · Southern Literary Journal (SLJ) · Dickens Studies Annual (DSA) · Southern Review · Dreiser Studies · James Joyce Quarterly · Calalloo · American Literary Realism (ALR) · Resources for the Study of American Literature (RALS) · Review of Contemporary Fiction

Outside Reading

You will read a book pertaining to one of the course topics and give a brief report on it to the class (about 20-30 minutes), tying it into class discussion. The point of the presentation is not to give a "book report" about what's good or bad about the text and whether or not you enjoyed reading it, but to describe and amplify on the issues it raises.

A handout should accompany the presentation. This handout should be fairly detailed and thorough, presenting a guide or outline of the book. Remember, you don't want to cover every item on the handout in your presentation. The handout will be a reference for fellow students in studying for the final exam.

Choices are embedded in the weekly schedule, below. 

Library Questions

Due each week. You will write a one to one-and-a-half page (double spaced) explanation to the question (usually in three or four parts), and at the end list the sources you used to find the answer. Each question scored on a ten-point scale (10 or 9=excellent; 8-7=average; 6 and below= poor or unacceptable).

Final Exam

This will consist mainly of short answer and identification questions, drawn from class lecture/discussions and from the Altick book. Note that not everything on the exam may be covered orally by me in lectures or discussions. Students are also responsible for information presented by their classmates on outside reading reports and journal reports. Click here for a review and study guide.

Home | Information | Books | Literary Research

Realism and Naturalism | Poe| Lowcountry Literature| Porgy and Bess

Masterpieces of American Literature | English Department Home Page

Rare Book and Manuscript Archives

The Humanities Research Center at Austin The Van Pelt-Dietrich Library at Penn The Houghton Library at Harvard The Huntington Library The Newberry Library

Scholarly Resources

• The SHARP Web, home of a scholarly society devoted to book history
      there are many excellent links, especially to online exhibits, on this page
• Three superb electronic text libraries
  • Project Bartleby
  • Project Gutenberg
  • The Electronic Text Center at the University of Virginia
• Some ongoing electronic scholarly editions with hypertext
  • A hypertext Pride and Prejudice
• Some University Presses
  • Penn State Press
  • University Press of Mississippi
  • University of Georgia Press
• Book restoration,conservation, and collecting
  • The Rare Book School at University of Virginia
• Other scholarly organizations
  • The Modern Language Association, the main professional organization for English academics

Schedule of Work

* This schedule is subject to change *