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Literature Review Guidelines

Literature review (historiographic essay): making sense of what has been written on your topic., goals of a literature review:.

Before doing work in primary sources, historians must know what has been written on their topic.  They must be familiar with theories and arguments–as well as facts–that appear in secondary sources.

Before you proceed with your research project, you too must be familiar with the literature: you do not want to waste time on theories that others have disproved and you want to take full advantage of what others have argued.  You want to be able to discuss and analyze your topic.

Your literature review will demonstrate your familiarity with your topic’s secondary literature.

GUIDELINES FOR A LITERATURE REVIEW:

1) LENGTH:  8-10 pages of text for Senior Theses (485) (consult with your professor for other classes), with either footnotes or endnotes and with a works-consulted bibliography. [See also the  citation guide  on this site.]

2) NUMBER OF WORKS REVIEWED: Depends on the assignment, but for Senior Theses (485), at least ten is typical.

3) CHOOSING WORKS:

Your literature review must include enough works to provide evidence of both the breadth and the depth of the research on your topic or, at least, one important angle of it.  The number of works necessary to do this will depend on your topic. For most topics, AT LEAST TEN works (mostly books but also significant scholarly articles) are necessary, although you will not necessarily give all of them equal treatment in your paper (e.g., some might appear in notes rather than the essay). 4) ORGANIZING/ARRANGING THE LITERATURE:

As you uncover the literature (i.e., secondary writing) on your topic, you should determine how the various pieces relate to each other.  Your ability to do so will demonstrate your understanding of the evolution of literature.

You might determine that the literature makes sense when divided by time period, by methodology, by sources, by discipline, by thematic focus, by race, ethnicity, and/or gender of author, or by political ideology.  This list is not exhaustive.  You might also decide to subdivide categories based on other criteria.  There is no “rule” on divisions—historians wrote the literature without consulting each other and without regard to the goal of fitting into a neat, obvious organization useful to students.

The key step is to FIGURE OUT the most logical, clarifying angle.  Do not arbitrarily choose a categorization; use the one that the literature seems to fall into.  How do you do that?  For every source, you should note its thesis, date, author background, methodology, and sources.  Does a pattern appear when you consider such information from each of your sources?  If so, you have a possible thesis about the literature.  If not, you might still have a thesis.

Consider: Are there missing elements in the literature?  For example, no works published during a particular (usually fairly lengthy) time period?  Or do studies appear after long neglect of a topic?  Do interpretations change at some point?  Does the major methodology being used change?  Do interpretations vary based on sources used?

Follow these links for more help on analyzing  historiography  and  historical perspective .

5) CONTENTS OF LITERATURE REVIEW:

The literature review is a research paper with three ingredients:

a) A brief discussion of the issue (the person, event, idea). [While this section should be brief, it needs to set up the thesis and literature that follow.] b) Your thesis about the literature c) A clear argument, using the works on topic as evidence, i.e., you discuss the sources in relation to your thesis, not as a separate topic.

These ingredients must be presented in an essay with an introduction, body, and conclusion.

6) ARGUING YOUR THESIS:

The thesis of a literature review should not only describe how the literature has evolved, but also provide a clear evaluation of that literature.  You should assess the literature in terms of the quality of either individual works or categories of works.  For instance, you might argue that a certain approach (e.g. social history, cultural history, or another) is better because it deals with a more complex view of the issue or because they use a wider array of source materials more effectively. You should also ensure that you integrate that evaluation throughout your argument.  Doing so might include negative assessments of some works in order to reinforce your argument regarding the positive qualities of other works and approaches to the topic.

Within each group, you should provide essential information about each work: the author’s thesis, the work’s title and date, the author’s supporting arguments and major evidence.

In most cases, arranging the sources chronologically by publication date within each section makes the most sense because earlier works influenced later ones in one way or another.  Reference to publication date also indicates that you are aware of this significant historiographical element.

As you discuss each work, DO NOT FORGET WHY YOU ARE DISCUSSING IT.  YOU ARE PRESENTING AND SUPPORTING A THESIS ABOUT THE LITERATURE.

When discussing a particular work for the first time, you should refer to it by the author’s full name, the work’s title, and year of publication (either in parentheses after the title or worked into the sentence).

For example, “The field of slavery studies has recently been transformed by Ben Johnson’s The New Slave (2001)” and “Joe Doe argues in his 1997 study, Slavery in America, that . . . .”

Your paper should always note secondary sources’ relationship to each other, particularly in terms of your thesis about the literature (e.g., “Unlike Smith’s work, Mary Brown’s analysis reaches the conclusion that . . . .” and “Because of Anderson’s reliance on the president’s personal papers, his interpretation differs from Barry’s”). The various pieces of the literature are “related” to each other, so you need to indicate to the reader some of that relationship.  (It helps the reader follow your thesis, and it convinces the reader that you know what you are talking about.)

7) DOCUMENTATION:

Each source you discuss in your paper must be documented using footnotes/endnotes and a bibliography.  Providing author and title and date in the paper is not sufficient.  Use correct Turabian/Chicago Manual of Style form.  [See  Bibliography  and  Footnotes/Endnotes  pages.]

In addition, further supporting, but less significant, sources should be included in  content foot or endnotes .  (e.g., “For a similar argument to Ben Johnson’s, see John Terry, The Slave Who Was New (New York: W. W. Norton, 1985), 3-45.”)

8 ) CONCLUSION OF LITERATURE REVIEW:

Your conclusion should not only reiterate your argument (thesis), but also discuss questions that remain unanswered by the literature.  What has the literature accomplished?  What has not been studied?  What debates need to be settled?

Additional writing guidelines

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A Brief History of the Systematic Review

• First Online: 05 August 2020

Cite this chapter

• Edward Purssell   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-3748-0864 3 &
• Niall McCrae   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-9776-7694 4  

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History is important, because it takes a longer-term view of any human enterprise. The way that we do things today might seem quaint or perhaps ethically dubious in years to come. Knowledge of the past is not merely a retrospect, but shows a direction of travel: How can we see where we are going if we don’t know where we are coming from? So let us begin by exploring how the systematic literature review evolved. What is literature, what is the purpose of reviewing such literature, and what is distinct about a systematic review?

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Purssell, E., McCrae, N. (2020). A Brief History of the Systematic Review. In: How to Perform a Systematic Literature Review. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49672-2_2

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• Published: 07 March 2022

The cultural evolution of love in literary history

• Nicolas Baumard   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-1439-9150 1 ,
• Elise Huillery 2 ,
• Alexandre Hyafil   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-0566-651X 3 &
• Lou Safra   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-7618-6735 1 , 4  

Nature Human Behaviour volume  6 ,  pages 506–522 ( 2022 ) Cite this article

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• Human behaviour

Since the late nineteenth century, cultural historians have noted that the importance of love increased during the Medieval and Early Modern European period (a phenomenon that was once referred to as the emergence of ‘courtly love’). However, more recent works have shown a similar increase in Chinese, Arabic, Persian, Indian and Japanese cultures. Why such a convergent evolution in very different cultures? Using qualitative and quantitative approaches, we leverage literary history and build a database of ancient literary fiction for 19 geographical areas and 77 historical periods covering 3,800 years, from the Middle Bronze Age to the Early Modern period. We first confirm that romantic elements have increased in Eurasian literary fiction over the past millennium, and that similar increases also occurred earlier, in Ancient Greece, Rome and Classical India. We then explore the ecological determinants of this increase. Consistent with hypotheses from cultural history and behavioural ecology, we show that a higher level of economic development is strongly associated with a greater incidence of love in narrative fiction (our proxy for the importance of love in a culture). To further test the causal role of economic development, we used a difference-in-difference method that exploits exogenous regional variations in economic development resulting from the adoption of the heavy plough in medieval Europe. Finally, we used probabilistic generative models to reconstruct the latent evolution of love and to assess the respective role of cultural diffusion and economic development.

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Data availability.

The data, as well as the the Ancient Literary Fictions Values Survey and the Ancient World Values Survey ( Romantic Love and Attitudes toward Children ), are available on OSF ( https://osf.io/ud35x ).

Code availability

The code that supports the findings of this study is available on OSF ( https://osf.io/ud35x ). A detailed description of the model for study 4 as well as MATLAB code to fit and run such models can be found on https://github.com/ahyafil/Evoked_Transmitted_Culture .

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Acknowledgements

We thank P. Boyer, C. Chevallier, L. Cronk, H. Mercier, O. Morin and M. Singh for their comments and feedback on the draft. We thank S. Joye, M. White-Le Goff, M. Daumas, W. Reddy, K. Zakharia, E. Feuillebois-Pierunek, D. Struve and C. Svatek for their feedback on the design of the project, and S. Joye for her help in kickstarting the project. We thank T. Ansart for his help and advice in designing the figures. For their expertise in history of literature and their reading the Ancient Literary Fictions Values Survey, we thank M. Balda-Tillier, G. Barnes, B. Brosser, S. Brocquet, J.-B. Camps, N. Cattoni, M. Childs, C. Cleary, B. Cook, H. Cooper, M. Eggertsdóttir, W. Farris, E. Francis, H. Frangoulis, H. Fulton, G. Fussman, D. Goodall, I. Hassan, L. Haiyan, D. Hsieh, A. Inglis, C. Jouanno, R. Keller Kimbrough, J. D. Konstan, R. Lanselle, R. Luzi, M. Luo, R. Martin, D. Matringue, K. McMahon, G. Nagy, P. Nagy, H. Navratilova, D. Negers, P. Orsatti, F. Orsini, S. Ríkharðsdóttir, F. Schironi, S. Valeria, C. Starr, R. Torrella and S. Torres Pietro. Funding: This study was supported by the Institut d’Études Cognitives (ANR-17-EURE-0017 FrontCog and ANR-10-IDEX-0001-02 PSL) for N.B. and L.S., and by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (RYC-2017-2323) for A.H.

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Nicolas Baumard & Lou Safra

Laboratoire d’Economie de Dauphine, Université Paris Dauphine, PSL Research University, Paris, France

Elise Huillery

Centre de Recerca Matemàtica, Bellaterra, Spain

Alexandre Hyafil

Sciences Po, CEVIPOF, CNRS, Paris, France

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N.B. conceived the project, supervised the creation of the Ancient Literary Fictions Database and wrote the Ancient Literary Fictions Values Survey. L.S. and A.H. designed the analyses for study 1. L.S. designed the analyses for study 2. E.H. designed the difference-in-difference for study 3. A.H. designed the latent probabilistic generative models for study 4. All authors wrote the paper.

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Baumard, N., Huillery, E., Hyafil, A. et al. The cultural evolution of love in literary history. Nat Hum Behav 6 , 506–522 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-022-01292-z

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A literature review surveys prior research published in books, scholarly articles, and any other sources relevant to a particular issue, area of research, or theory, and by so doing, provides a description, summary, and critical evaluation of these works in relation to the research problem being investigated. Literature reviews are designed to provide an overview of sources you have used in researching a particular topic and to demonstrate to your readers how your research fits within existing scholarship about the topic.

Fink, Arlene. Conducting Research Literature Reviews: From the Internet to Paper . Fourth edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, 2014.

Importance of a Good Literature Review

A literature review may consist of simply a summary of key sources, but in the social sciences, a literature review usually has an organizational pattern and combines both summary and synthesis, often within specific conceptual categories . A summary is a recap of the important information of the source, but a synthesis is a re-organization, or a reshuffling, of that information in a way that informs how you are planning to investigate a research problem. The analytical features of a literature review might:

• Give a new interpretation of old material or combine new with old interpretations,
• Trace the intellectual progression of the field, including major debates,
• Depending on the situation, evaluate the sources and advise the reader on the most pertinent or relevant research, or
• Usually in the conclusion of a literature review, identify where gaps exist in how a problem has been researched to date.

Given this, the purpose of a literature review is to:

• Place each work in the context of its contribution to understanding the research problem being studied.
• Describe the relationship of each work to the others under consideration.
• Identify new ways to interpret prior research.
• Reveal any gaps that exist in the literature.
• Resolve conflicts amongst seemingly contradictory previous studies.
• Identify areas of prior scholarship to prevent duplication of effort.
• Point the way in fulfilling a need for additional research.
• Locate your own research within the context of existing literature [very important].

Fink, Arlene. Conducting Research Literature Reviews: From the Internet to Paper. 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005; Hart, Chris. Doing a Literature Review: Releasing the Social Science Research Imagination . Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1998; Jesson, Jill. Doing Your Literature Review: Traditional and Systematic Techniques . Los Angeles, CA: SAGE, 2011; Knopf, Jeffrey W. "Doing a Literature Review." PS: Political Science and Politics 39 (January 2006): 127-132; Ridley, Diana. The Literature Review: A Step-by-Step Guide for Students . 2nd ed. Los Angeles, CA: SAGE, 2012.

Types of Literature Reviews

It is important to think of knowledge in a given field as consisting of three layers. First, there are the primary studies that researchers conduct and publish. Second are the reviews of those studies that summarize and offer new interpretations built from and often extending beyond the primary studies. Third, there are the perceptions, conclusions, opinion, and interpretations that are shared informally among scholars that become part of the body of epistemological traditions within the field.

In composing a literature review, it is important to note that it is often this third layer of knowledge that is cited as "true" even though it often has only a loose relationship to the primary studies and secondary literature reviews. Given this, while literature reviews are designed to provide an overview and synthesis of pertinent sources you have explored, there are a number of approaches you could adopt depending upon the type of analysis underpinning your study.

Argumentative Review This form examines literature selectively in order to support or refute an argument, deeply embedded assumption, or philosophical problem already established in the literature. The purpose is to develop a body of literature that establishes a contrarian viewpoint. Given the value-laden nature of some social science research [e.g., educational reform; immigration control], argumentative approaches to analyzing the literature can be a legitimate and important form of discourse. However, note that they can also introduce problems of bias when they are used to make summary claims of the sort found in systematic reviews [see below].

Integrative Review Considered a form of research that reviews, critiques, and synthesizes representative literature on a topic in an integrated way such that new frameworks and perspectives on the topic are generated. The body of literature includes all studies that address related or identical hypotheses or research problems. A well-done integrative review meets the same standards as primary research in regard to clarity, rigor, and replication. This is the most common form of review in the social sciences.

Historical Review Few things rest in isolation from historical precedent. Historical literature reviews focus on examining research throughout a period of time, often starting with the first time an issue, concept, theory, phenomena emerged in the literature, then tracing its evolution within the scholarship of a discipline. The purpose is to place research in a historical context to show familiarity with state-of-the-art developments and to identify the likely directions for future research.

Methodological Review A review does not always focus on what someone said [findings], but how they came about saying what they say [method of analysis]. Reviewing methods of analysis provides a framework of understanding at different levels [i.e. those of theory, substantive fields, research approaches, and data collection and analysis techniques], how researchers draw upon a wide variety of knowledge ranging from the conceptual level to practical documents for use in fieldwork in the areas of ontological and epistemological consideration, quantitative and qualitative integration, sampling, interviewing, data collection, and data analysis. This approach helps highlight ethical issues which you should be aware of and consider as you go through your own study.

Systematic Review This form consists of an overview of existing evidence pertinent to a clearly formulated research question, which uses pre-specified and standardized methods to identify and critically appraise relevant research, and to collect, report, and analyze data from the studies that are included in the review. The goal is to deliberately document, critically evaluate, and summarize scientifically all of the research about a clearly defined research problem . Typically it focuses on a very specific empirical question, often posed in a cause-and-effect form, such as "To what extent does A contribute to B?" This type of literature review is primarily applied to examining prior research studies in clinical medicine and allied health fields, but it is increasingly being used in the social sciences.

Theoretical Review The purpose of this form is to examine the corpus of theory that has accumulated in regard to an issue, concept, theory, phenomena. The theoretical literature review helps to establish what theories already exist, the relationships between them, to what degree the existing theories have been investigated, and to develop new hypotheses to be tested. Often this form is used to help establish a lack of appropriate theories or reveal that current theories are inadequate for explaining new or emerging research problems. The unit of analysis can focus on a theoretical concept or a whole theory or framework.

NOTE : Most often the literature review will incorporate some combination of types. For example, a review that examines literature supporting or refuting an argument, assumption, or philosophical problem related to the research problem will also need to include writing supported by sources that establish the history of these arguments in the literature.

Baumeister, Roy F. and Mark R. Leary. "Writing Narrative Literature Reviews."  Review of General Psychology 1 (September 1997): 311-320; Mark R. Fink, Arlene. Conducting Research Literature Reviews: From the Internet to Paper . 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005; Hart, Chris. Doing a Literature Review: Releasing the Social Science Research Imagination . Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1998; Kennedy, Mary M. "Defining a Literature." Educational Researcher 36 (April 2007): 139-147; Petticrew, Mark and Helen Roberts. Systematic Reviews in the Social Sciences: A Practical Guide . Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2006; Torracro, Richard. "Writing Integrative Literature Reviews: Guidelines and Examples." Human Resource Development Review 4 (September 2005): 356-367; Rocco, Tonette S. and Maria S. Plakhotnik. "Literature Reviews, Conceptual Frameworks, and Theoretical Frameworks: Terms, Functions, and Distinctions." Human Ressource Development Review 8 (March 2008): 120-130; Sutton, Anthea. Systematic Approaches to a Successful Literature Review . Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications, 2016.

Structure and Writing Style

I.  Thinking About Your Literature Review

The structure of a literature review should include the following in support of understanding the research problem :

• An overview of the subject, issue, or theory under consideration, along with the objectives of the literature review,
• Division of works under review into themes or categories [e.g. works that support a particular position, those against, and those offering alternative approaches entirely],
• An explanation of how each work is similar to and how it varies from the others,
• Conclusions as to which pieces are best considered in their argument, are most convincing of their opinions, and make the greatest contribution to the understanding and development of their area of research.

The critical evaluation of each work should consider :

• Provenance -- what are the author's credentials? Are the author's arguments supported by evidence [e.g. primary historical material, case studies, narratives, statistics, recent scientific findings]?
• Methodology -- were the techniques used to identify, gather, and analyze the data appropriate to addressing the research problem? Was the sample size appropriate? Were the results effectively interpreted and reported?
• Objectivity -- is the author's perspective even-handed or prejudicial? Is contrary data considered or is certain pertinent information ignored to prove the author's point?
• Persuasiveness -- which of the author's theses are most convincing or least convincing?
• Validity -- are the author's arguments and conclusions convincing? Does the work ultimately contribute in any significant way to an understanding of the subject?

II.  Development of the Literature Review

Four Basic Stages of Writing 1.  Problem formulation -- which topic or field is being examined and what are its component issues? 2.  Literature search -- finding materials relevant to the subject being explored. 3.  Data evaluation -- determining which literature makes a significant contribution to the understanding of the topic. 4.  Analysis and interpretation -- discussing the findings and conclusions of pertinent literature.

Consider the following issues before writing the literature review: Clarify If your assignment is not specific about what form your literature review should take, seek clarification from your professor by asking these questions: 1.  Roughly how many sources would be appropriate to include? 2.  What types of sources should I review (books, journal articles, websites; scholarly versus popular sources)? 3.  Should I summarize, synthesize, or critique sources by discussing a common theme or issue? 4.  Should I evaluate the sources in any way beyond evaluating how they relate to understanding the research problem? 5.  Should I provide subheadings and other background information, such as definitions and/or a history? Find Models Use the exercise of reviewing the literature to examine how authors in your discipline or area of interest have composed their literature review sections. Read them to get a sense of the types of themes you might want to look for in your own research or to identify ways to organize your final review. The bibliography or reference section of sources you've already read, such as required readings in the course syllabus, are also excellent entry points into your own research. Narrow the Topic The narrower your topic, the easier it will be to limit the number of sources you need to read in order to obtain a good survey of relevant resources. Your professor will probably not expect you to read everything that's available about the topic, but you'll make the act of reviewing easier if you first limit scope of the research problem. A good strategy is to begin by searching the USC Libraries Catalog for recent books about the topic and review the table of contents for chapters that focuses on specific issues. You can also review the indexes of books to find references to specific issues that can serve as the focus of your research. For example, a book surveying the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict may include a chapter on the role Egypt has played in mediating the conflict, or look in the index for the pages where Egypt is mentioned in the text. Consider Whether Your Sources are Current Some disciplines require that you use information that is as current as possible. This is particularly true in disciplines in medicine and the sciences where research conducted becomes obsolete very quickly as new discoveries are made. However, when writing a review in the social sciences, a survey of the history of the literature may be required. In other words, a complete understanding the research problem requires you to deliberately examine how knowledge and perspectives have changed over time. Sort through other current bibliographies or literature reviews in the field to get a sense of what your discipline expects. You can also use this method to explore what is considered by scholars to be a "hot topic" and what is not.

III.  Ways to Organize Your Literature Review

Chronology of Events If your review follows the chronological method, you could write about the materials according to when they were published. This approach should only be followed if a clear path of research building on previous research can be identified and that these trends follow a clear chronological order of development. For example, a literature review that focuses on continuing research about the emergence of German economic power after the fall of the Soviet Union. By Publication Order your sources by publication chronology, then, only if the order demonstrates a more important trend. For instance, you could order a review of literature on environmental studies of brown fields if the progression revealed, for example, a change in the soil collection practices of the researchers who wrote and/or conducted the studies. Thematic [“conceptual categories”] A thematic literature review is the most common approach to summarizing prior research in the social and behavioral sciences. Thematic reviews are organized around a topic or issue, rather than the progression of time, although the progression of time may still be incorporated into a thematic review. For example, a review of the Internet’s impact on American presidential politics could focus on the development of online political satire. While the study focuses on one topic, the Internet’s impact on American presidential politics, it would still be organized chronologically reflecting technological developments in media. The difference in this example between a "chronological" and a "thematic" approach is what is emphasized the most: themes related to the role of the Internet in presidential politics. Note that more authentic thematic reviews tend to break away from chronological order. A review organized in this manner would shift between time periods within each section according to the point being made. Methodological A methodological approach focuses on the methods utilized by the researcher. For the Internet in American presidential politics project, one methodological approach would be to look at cultural differences between the portrayal of American presidents on American, British, and French websites. Or the review might focus on the fundraising impact of the Internet on a particular political party. A methodological scope will influence either the types of documents in the review or the way in which these documents are discussed.

Other Sections of Your Literature Review Once you've decided on the organizational method for your literature review, the sections you need to include in the paper should be easy to figure out because they arise from your organizational strategy. In other words, a chronological review would have subsections for each vital time period; a thematic review would have subtopics based upon factors that relate to the theme or issue. However, sometimes you may need to add additional sections that are necessary for your study, but do not fit in the organizational strategy of the body. What other sections you include in the body is up to you. However, only include what is necessary for the reader to locate your study within the larger scholarship about the research problem.

Here are examples of other sections, usually in the form of a single paragraph, you may need to include depending on the type of review you write:

• Current Situation : Information necessary to understand the current topic or focus of the literature review.
• Sources Used : Describes the methods and resources [e.g., databases] you used to identify the literature you reviewed.
• History : The chronological progression of the field, the research literature, or an idea that is necessary to understand the literature review, if the body of the literature review is not already a chronology.
• Selection Methods : Criteria you used to select (and perhaps exclude) sources in your literature review. For instance, you might explain that your review includes only peer-reviewed [i.e., scholarly] sources.
• Standards : Description of the way in which you present your information.
• Questions for Further Research : What questions about the field has the review sparked? How will you further your research as a result of the review?

IV.  Writing Your Literature Review

Once you've settled on how to organize your literature review, you're ready to write each section. When writing your review, keep in mind these issues.

Use Evidence A literature review section is, in this sense, just like any other academic research paper. Your interpretation of the available sources must be backed up with evidence [citations] that demonstrates that what you are saying is valid. Be Selective Select only the most important points in each source to highlight in the review. The type of information you choose to mention should relate directly to the research problem, whether it is thematic, methodological, or chronological. Related items that provide additional information, but that are not key to understanding the research problem, can be included in a list of further readings . Use Quotes Sparingly Some short quotes are appropriate if you want to emphasize a point, or if what an author stated cannot be easily paraphrased. Sometimes you may need to quote certain terminology that was coined by the author, is not common knowledge, or taken directly from the study. Do not use extensive quotes as a substitute for using your own words in reviewing the literature. Summarize and Synthesize Remember to summarize and synthesize your sources within each thematic paragraph as well as throughout the review. Recapitulate important features of a research study, but then synthesize it by rephrasing the study's significance and relating it to your own work and the work of others. Keep Your Own Voice While the literature review presents others' ideas, your voice [the writer's] should remain front and center. For example, weave references to other sources into what you are writing but maintain your own voice by starting and ending the paragraph with your own ideas and wording. Use Caution When Paraphrasing When paraphrasing a source that is not your own, be sure to represent the author's information or opinions accurately and in your own words. Even when paraphrasing an author’s work, you still must provide a citation to that work.

V.  Common Mistakes to Avoid

These are the most common mistakes made in reviewing social science research literature.

• Sources in your literature review do not clearly relate to the research problem;
• You do not take sufficient time to define and identify the most relevant sources to use in the literature review related to the research problem;
• Relies exclusively on secondary analytical sources rather than including relevant primary research studies or data;
• Uncritically accepts another researcher's findings and interpretations as valid, rather than examining critically all aspects of the research design and analysis;
• Does not describe the search procedures that were used in identifying the literature to review;
• Reports isolated statistical results rather than synthesizing them in chi-squared or meta-analytic methods; and,
• Only includes research that validates assumptions and does not consider contrary findings and alternative interpretations found in the literature.

Cook, Kathleen E. and Elise Murowchick. “Do Literature Review Skills Transfer from One Course to Another?” Psychology Learning and Teaching 13 (March 2014): 3-11; Fink, Arlene. Conducting Research Literature Reviews: From the Internet to Paper . 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005; Hart, Chris. Doing a Literature Review: Releasing the Social Science Research Imagination . Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1998; Jesson, Jill. Doing Your Literature Review: Traditional and Systematic Techniques . London: SAGE, 2011; Literature Review Handout. Online Writing Center. Liberty University; Literature Reviews. The Writing Center. University of North Carolina; Onwuegbuzie, Anthony J. and Rebecca Frels. Seven Steps to a Comprehensive Literature Review: A Multimodal and Cultural Approach . Los Angeles, CA: SAGE, 2016; Ridley, Diana. The Literature Review: A Step-by-Step Guide for Students . 2nd ed. Los Angeles, CA: SAGE, 2012; Randolph, Justus J. “A Guide to Writing the Dissertation Literature Review." Practical Assessment, Research, and Evaluation. vol. 14, June 2009; Sutton, Anthea. Systematic Approaches to a Successful Literature Review . Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications, 2016; Taylor, Dena. The Literature Review: A Few Tips On Conducting It. University College Writing Centre. University of Toronto; Writing a Literature Review. Academic Skills Centre. University of Canberra.

Writing Tip

Break Out of Your Disciplinary Box!

Thinking interdisciplinarily about a research problem can be a rewarding exercise in applying new ideas, theories, or concepts to an old problem. For example, what might cultural anthropologists say about the continuing conflict in the Middle East? In what ways might geographers view the need for better distribution of social service agencies in large cities than how social workers might study the issue? You don’t want to substitute a thorough review of core research literature in your discipline for studies conducted in other fields of study. However, particularly in the social sciences, thinking about research problems from multiple vectors is a key strategy for finding new solutions to a problem or gaining a new perspective. Consult with a librarian about identifying research databases in other disciplines; almost every field of study has at least one comprehensive database devoted to indexing its research literature.

Frodeman, Robert. The Oxford Handbook of Interdisciplinarity . New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.

Another Writing Tip

Don't Just Review for Content!

While conducting a review of the literature, maximize the time you devote to writing this part of your paper by thinking broadly about what you should be looking for and evaluating. Review not just what scholars are saying, but how are they saying it. Some questions to ask:

• How are they organizing their ideas?
• What methods have they used to study the problem?
• What theories have been used to explain, predict, or understand their research problem?
• What sources have they cited to support their conclusions?
• How have they used non-textual elements [e.g., charts, graphs, figures, etc.] to illustrate key points?

When you begin to write your literature review section, you'll be glad you dug deeper into how the research was designed and constructed because it establishes a means for developing more substantial analysis and interpretation of the research problem.

Hart, Chris. Doing a Literature Review: Releasing the Social Science Research Imagination . Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1 998.

Yet Another Writing Tip

When Do I Know I Can Stop Looking and Move On?

Here are several strategies you can utilize to assess whether you've thoroughly reviewed the literature:

• Look for repeating patterns in the research findings . If the same thing is being said, just by different people, then this likely demonstrates that the research problem has hit a conceptual dead end. At this point consider: Does your study extend current research?  Does it forge a new path? Or, does is merely add more of the same thing being said?
• Look at sources the authors cite to in their work . If you begin to see the same researchers cited again and again, then this is often an indication that no new ideas have been generated to address the research problem.
• Search Google Scholar to identify who has subsequently cited leading scholars already identified in your literature review [see next sub-tab]. This is called citation tracking and there are a number of sources that can help you identify who has cited whom, particularly scholars from outside of your discipline. Here again, if the same authors are being cited again and again, this may indicate no new literature has been written on the topic.

Onwuegbuzie, Anthony J. and Rebecca Frels. Seven Steps to a Comprehensive Literature Review: A Multimodal and Cultural Approach . Los Angeles, CA: Sage, 2016; Sutton, Anthea. Systematic Approaches to a Successful Literature Review . Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications, 2016.

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Writing a Literature Review

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A literature review is a document or section of a document that collects key sources on a topic and discusses those sources in conversation with each other (also called synthesis ). The lit review is an important genre in many disciplines, not just literature (i.e., the study of works of literature such as novels and plays). When we say “literature review” or refer to “the literature,” we are talking about the research ( scholarship ) in a given field. You will often see the terms “the research,” “the scholarship,” and “the literature” used mostly interchangeably.

Where, when, and why would I write a lit review?

There are a number of different situations where you might write a literature review, each with slightly different expectations; different disciplines, too, have field-specific expectations for what a literature review is and does. For instance, in the humanities, authors might include more overt argumentation and interpretation of source material in their literature reviews, whereas in the sciences, authors are more likely to report study designs and results in their literature reviews; these differences reflect these disciplines’ purposes and conventions in scholarship. You should always look at examples from your own discipline and talk to professors or mentors in your field to be sure you understand your discipline’s conventions, for literature reviews as well as for any other genre.

A literature review can be a part of a research paper or scholarly article, usually falling after the introduction and before the research methods sections. In these cases, the lit review just needs to cover scholarship that is important to the issue you are writing about; sometimes it will also cover key sources that informed your research methodology.

Lit reviews can also be standalone pieces, either as assignments in a class or as publications. In a class, a lit review may be assigned to help students familiarize themselves with a topic and with scholarship in their field, get an idea of the other researchers working on the topic they’re interested in, find gaps in existing research in order to propose new projects, and/or develop a theoretical framework and methodology for later research. As a publication, a lit review usually is meant to help make other scholars’ lives easier by collecting and summarizing, synthesizing, and analyzing existing research on a topic. This can be especially helpful for students or scholars getting into a new research area, or for directing an entire community of scholars toward questions that have not yet been answered.

What are the parts of a lit review?

Most lit reviews use a basic introduction-body-conclusion structure; if your lit review is part of a larger paper, the introduction and conclusion pieces may be just a few sentences while you focus most of your attention on the body. If your lit review is a standalone piece, the introduction and conclusion take up more space and give you a place to discuss your goals, research methods, and conclusions separately from where you discuss the literature itself.

Introduction:

• An introductory paragraph that explains what your working topic and thesis is
• A forecast of key topics or texts that will appear in the review
• Potentially, a description of how you found sources and how you analyzed them for inclusion and discussion in the review (more often found in published, standalone literature reviews than in lit review sections in an article or research paper)
• Summarize and synthesize: Give an overview of the main points of each source and combine them into a coherent whole
• Analyze and interpret: Don’t just paraphrase other researchers – add your own interpretations where possible, discussing the significance of findings in relation to the literature as a whole
• Critically Evaluate: Mention the strengths and weaknesses of your sources
• Write in well-structured paragraphs: Use transition words and topic sentence to draw connections, comparisons, and contrasts.

Conclusion:

• Summarize the key findings you have taken from the literature and emphasize their significance
• Connect it back to your primary research question

How should I organize my lit review?

Lit reviews can take many different organizational patterns depending on what you are trying to accomplish with the review. Here are some examples:

• Chronological : The simplest approach is to trace the development of the topic over time, which helps familiarize the audience with the topic (for instance if you are introducing something that is not commonly known in your field). If you choose this strategy, be careful to avoid simply listing and summarizing sources in order. Try to analyze the patterns, turning points, and key debates that have shaped the direction of the field. Give your interpretation of how and why certain developments occurred (as mentioned previously, this may not be appropriate in your discipline — check with a teacher or mentor if you’re unsure).
• Thematic : If you have found some recurring central themes that you will continue working with throughout your piece, you can organize your literature review into subsections that address different aspects of the topic. For example, if you are reviewing literature about women and religion, key themes can include the role of women in churches and the religious attitude towards women.
• Qualitative versus quantitative research
• Empirical versus theoretical scholarship
• Divide the research by sociological, historical, or cultural sources
• Theoretical : In many humanities articles, the literature review is the foundation for the theoretical framework. You can use it to discuss various theories, models, and definitions of key concepts. You can argue for the relevance of a specific theoretical approach or combine various theorical concepts to create a framework for your research.

What are some strategies or tips I can use while writing my lit review?

Any lit review is only as good as the research it discusses; make sure your sources are well-chosen and your research is thorough. Don’t be afraid to do more research if you discover a new thread as you’re writing. More info on the research process is available in our "Conducting Research" resources .

As you’re doing your research, create an annotated bibliography ( see our page on the this type of document ). Much of the information used in an annotated bibliography can be used also in a literature review, so you’ll be not only partially drafting your lit review as you research, but also developing your sense of the larger conversation going on among scholars, professionals, and any other stakeholders in your topic.

Usually you will need to synthesize research rather than just summarizing it. This means drawing connections between sources to create a picture of the scholarly conversation on a topic over time. Many student writers struggle to synthesize because they feel they don’t have anything to add to the scholars they are citing; here are some strategies to help you:

• It often helps to remember that the point of these kinds of syntheses is to show your readers how you understand your research, to help them read the rest of your paper.
• Writing teachers often say synthesis is like hosting a dinner party: imagine all your sources are together in a room, discussing your topic. What are they saying to each other?
• Look at the in-text citations in each paragraph. Are you citing just one source for each paragraph? This usually indicates summary only. When you have multiple sources cited in a paragraph, you are more likely to be synthesizing them (not always, but often
• Read more about synthesis here.

The most interesting literature reviews are often written as arguments (again, as mentioned at the beginning of the page, this is discipline-specific and doesn’t work for all situations). Often, the literature review is where you can establish your research as filling a particular gap or as relevant in a particular way. You have some chance to do this in your introduction in an article, but the literature review section gives a more extended opportunity to establish the conversation in the way you would like your readers to see it. You can choose the intellectual lineage you would like to be part of and whose definitions matter most to your thinking (mostly humanities-specific, but this goes for sciences as well). In addressing these points, you argue for your place in the conversation, which tends to make the lit review more compelling than a simple reporting of other sources.

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100 Best Literature Research Paper Topics For Students

Literary research paper topics are among the most interesting to write about. Books are the best teachers for most learners. And, students love reading interesting literature books. But, when asked to write research papers, most students have difficulties choosing their topics. That’s because many issues can be investigated and written about.

For instance, literary topics can be about characters’ personalities in certain works. They can also be about particular characteristics of specific literary genres. Learners can also choose literary analysis topics that focus on the life story of famous writers or poets. But, regardless of what a learner opts to write about, they should choose interesting topics.

What are Interesting Literary Research Paper Topics?

Several factors make a topic interesting to write about. A topic for a research paper or a graduate thesis should generally be definite, specific, and innovative. Also, it should be interesting to research and write about. Here’s how to select interesting literature topics:

Think about something. Explore the idea to select a topic for which you can find sufficient research data from credible sources. Narrow down your subject if you find it too broad.

English literature topics can be classified into different categories. Here some of these categories and topics can be considered in each category.

Great World Literature Research Topics

Perhaps, you’ve been asked to write a literature research paper with a global perspective. Here are some of the literary analysis research paper topics that you can consider.

• Explain how the supernatural and spirituality help in furthering the development of the plot in the Latin American literature of the early 20th century.
• What themes are common in the Japanese poems of the early 20th century? How do they differ from those of the early 19th century?
• Compare the early Chinese literary works and European literary works of the middle ages. How different or alike are they?
• How were European literary works in the early 20th century shaped by the revolutionary works of Engels and Marx? What examples can demonstrate this influence?
• Explain how the Muslim philosophers’ work of the 15th century led to new ideas and inventions across the globe.
• Compare and contrast different anti-British works that originated in India in the 19th century with pro-colonialist works that came from England at the same time.
• How did the nightmarish utopian future ideas of Aldous Huxley influence modern-day science fiction writers across the world?
• Explain how the Antigone play by Sophocles deals with the conflict between the central characters while relating to the state laws and individual conscience.
• How are the sentiments of the authors reflected in Animal Farm by George Orwell and concerns about the October Revolution?
• Explain some of the examples of literary fiction pieces that have shaped cultures in the world. Have historic, societal, and cultural factors played some roles in shaping these literature pieces?
• Being a prolific writer in the early and mid-19th century, Charles Dickens’s works were published in serialized forms. How and why has this approach become less fashionable?
• Compare and contrast the early Japanese literature works and the early Chinese literature works. How do they differ in terms of values and culture?
• Explain how comedy differs in literature across cultures. What comedy appeared in the early theatrical performances and it’s still present in modern literature?
• Analyze chivalry and honor critically in the Green Knight and Sir Gawain. What are the qualities of these works from a similar period?
• Compare and contrast the Odyssey and Iliad by Homer the Ancient Greek. Explain how cultures across the world have adapted the themes presented in the poem.

Top Literary topics for Research Paper

Some topics for literary analysis stand out among students. These are topics that educators recommend for students across the study levels.

• How is literature an aspect of modern culture?
• Explain how feminism has influenced modern literature
• How is psychology utilized in literature?
• Explain the major social issues that have been exposed by literary works
• Explain the philosophical tradition of Daoism in the Chinese literature
• Explain the roles played by death and honor in Japanese literature in the 20th century
• Explain how the European culture influences the Mid-West literature
• How has European culture affected modern literature?
• Analyze the personality of Don Quixote
• Explain how literature differs between countries.
• Discuss poetry in the innovative ear of the 21st century
• Examine racism in the novels of the 1960s and 1970s
• Explain the exile’s perception in literature
• Literature and culture? Which one affects the other?
• How has literature addressed homosexuality?

These can also be great literary debate topics. That’s because learners can have varying opinions about them.

British Literature Research Paper Topics

Students have many topics to choose from when it comes to British literature essay topics. Here are some of the best literature topics from the works of British authors.

• Discuss Victorian England’s picture with the works of Charles Dickens in mind
• Discuss the theme of Orphans with the Oliver Twist character in mind
• Explain how British Literature has influenced different cultures
• Explain how British literature has addressed gender issues
• Explain how King Lear highlights the differences between anti-heroes and villains
• Explain William Shakespeare’s personality- Highlight facts and myths
• Choose two famous British novels and then compare the characters in them
• Explain the viewpoint of different writers about the Utopian civilization idea
• With Harry Potter books in mind, explain why some literature books are considered classics
• Explain how love and romantic love are presented in Charlotte Bronte’s works
• Explain how modern literary works have been affected by the Victorian period works
• Discuss the adultery theme in Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
• Who are the main characters in Lake Poets’ works?
• Explain how violent imagery was used in World War I poetry
• Explain talent as a theme in Milton’s on His Blindness
• Explain innocence loss in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies
• Explain the theme of individualism versus collectivism in Oliver Twist
• Explain why the popularity of detective novels increased in the XIX century
• What role did the supernatural play in Macbeth: a case study of three witches
• Class demarcation in XVII century- The vengeance theme

American Literature Topics

Some teachers ask students to choose American literature research topics for certain reasons. If asked to write on such topics, here are some of the American literature research paper topics to consider.

• Analyze key aspects of American ideology, particularly in the literature written before the 20th century.
• Determine thematic concerns and literary styles of the major historical period of American literature between the colonial period and post-modernism.
• Show the American identity uniqueness of texts
• Propose connections between the American literature concerns and themes in the larger historical development and social issues that face the present world
• Examine major concerns and themes that reappear across the American literature
• Highlight the major themes in Absalom, Absalom by William Faulkner
• Explain the African American Experience with female authors like Alice Walker, Zora Neal Hurston, and Toni Morrison
• Explain the predominant theme in The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
• Explain how Jonathan Edwards epitomizes Puritan definitions in his sermons
• Explain the use of historical personalities and events by Washington Irving as the background for his works
• The Crucible demonstrates how a community can be torn apart by hysteria. Explain
• Explain how Sylvia Plath demonstrates the social pressure faced by women in the 1960s in the Bell Jar.
• Explain how John Knowles demonstrates the impact of war on everyone
• Explain the strong belief in the education power by Maya Angelou as depicted in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
• Explain how Thornton Wilder conveys life as a gift in Our Town
• Discuss the themes of anger and pity in the Grapes of Wrath
• Explain how Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck portrays the Great Depression struggles
• Discuss the portrayal of the unconquerable spirit in Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway.
• Plays by Eugene O’Neil are tragically realistic. Explain
• God is humanized in The Creation poem by James Weldon Johnson. Explain

Some of the ideas here are great poetry topics. Nevertheless, they require careful research and analysis to write about.

High School Literary Essay Topics

Some topics in literature are ideal for high school essays. Here are examples of literary analysis paper topics for high school students.

• Compare and contrast the major characters in your preferred book
• Choose your favorite character in a book and explain your reasons for liking it
• Please explain why the quality of a literature book is not determined by its length
• Highlight the similarities of your favorite books
• Discuss the top 4 authors in horror books
• Explain why reading some books is more difficult than reading others
• Explain what it takes to write a high-quality poem
• Who is your favorite poet and why?
• Explain what makes your favorite book interesting
• Who is your favorite character in literary works and why?
• What makes some literature books difficult to read?
• Who are your favorite top 5 authors and why?
• Should the age of readers be restricted to some books?
• What is your favorite literary genre?
• Explain why the author determines the quality of a book more than the story
• Discuss the literary works of your favorite authors
• Why is it important to captivate readers with the introductory chapter of a book?
• Which book genre makes great movies?
• Why is the work of Harry Potter so popular?
• Explain why your favorite horror book is scary

Unique Research Topics in English Literature

Some literature research topics are unique and can be written about by learners at different study levels. Here are examples of such topics.

• Analyze the use of literary devices in novels
• Discuss the author’s autobiography
• Analyze literary genres and the role played by an artist in them
• Compare the works of a similar genre
• Highlight the gender roles of characters in literary works
• Social stratification and Harry Potter- Discuss
• With Charles Dickens’ work in mind, explain the peculiarity of the bildungsroman genre.
• Explain how The Lord of the Rings uses artificial language
• Explain how the Sherlock Holmes image influences the world of detective fiction
• Explain the war theme in the world literature

These are also great literary journalism topics. Nevertheless, they require extensive research to write about.

In a nutshell, students have many literary argument topics to consider. The most important thing is to choose an interesting topic that you can find sufficient data to write about. Also, don’t hesitate to check our history topics .

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History And Literature Research Paper

Sample History And Literature Research Paper. Browse other research paper examples and check the list of research paper topics for more inspiration. If you need a research paper written according to all the academic standards, you can always turn to our experienced writers for help. This is how your paper can get an A! Feel free to contact our custom research paper writing service for professional assistance. We offer high-quality assignments for reasonable rates.

Literature and history have many things in common, and one of them is the aesthetic form of narration. The many contemporary experiments not withstanding, modern historiography and the modern novel still share the common feature of narration. In narratology, some theoreticians have differentiated between the narrative modes in the two fields; others have shown how they conflate and that they can hardly be distinguished. This research paper wants to show what narration in literature and history has in common and in what respect the two modes differ from each other.

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For Aristotle (see Chapter 9 of his Poetics) the matter of the division of labor between historiographer and poet was easily decided: the historiographer relates ‘what has happened’ and the poet ‘what might happen’. In contrast to Plato’s devastating criticism of literature, Aristotle considered poetry to be of high value. In his eyes, literature dealt with problems of a more general and thus more significant nature, while the historian had to report about specific, and thus, less important matters.

Until approximately 1750, historiography was considered a branch of literature. Since the eighteenth century (when Aristotle’s distinctions were rediscovered), the differences between the two disciplines have been stressed, and it was only then that the term ‘literature’ became synonymous with ‘poetry’ and ‘fiction.’ Gottsched and Lessing still shared Aristotle’s prejudice against history. For them the field of history was merely a quarry from which they mined some of the raw material they used to build their preconceived literary plots. Of real importance to them was a moralistic story, and examples were taken from the repertoires in the areas of history, legend, and mythology. However, the late eighteenth century is an important turning point. As Koselleck has demonstrated, it is the time of the development of a genuinely new philosophical awareness about history (Koselleck 1976). The concept of a continuously progressing history as such replaces both the religious concept of a Christian teleology as well as the idea of history as a chaotic conglomerate of countless individual stories of an exemplary nature. Through this philosophical development, literature is seen as part of history, and thus it loses its Aristotelian superiority.

Today the relationship between fiction and historiography poses a number of hermeneutic questions, and there is no modern Aristotle who might offer a simple and acceptable solution fitting for our time. Narration can be viewed as one of the primary tools of knowledge, and it determines the structure and aesthetic form in the presentation of a real or a fictional event. Narration discloses the dimension of historical reality as well as the sphere of poetic fiction. The logic of narration provides access to the logic of historiography and fiction; it makes the structure of both historical consciousness and fantasy tangible. In every narrative, real or fictional events are supported by a structure through which happenings are accentuated, selected, or eliminated according to the law of relevance. Neither in historiographical nor in fictional narration are we dealing with a reproduction or duplication of events, but with a certain organization of actual or imaginary occurrences or experiences.

1. Narration In Historiography

Perhaps because it is so difficult to liberate it from its established forms, narration is constantly under attack. In the discussion of modern historiography from 1970–2000, it looked as if ‘narration’ would be replaced by ‘description’ and ‘explanation.’ ‘Historiography,’ Szondi argued, must ‘divest itself increasingly of its narrative character’; narrative historiography must ‘turn into description if a new concept of history is to do justice to our knowledge of history as an anonymous process, as a sequence of events and changing systems’ (Szondi 1973). The arguments of the antinarrativists can be summarized in the following way: the narrative recording of events in historicism was based on the belief that history was made by individuals. However, this categorization did not adequately take into account the development of social processes. Processes and structures can only be described, not narrated. Thus the old ‘histoire e enementielle’ has to be replaced by the new ‘histoire structurale.’ ‘The nouvelle histoire’ of French historians in particular, with their descriptions of structures underlying long periods of time, and their quantifying methods, forced the old paradigm of writing history by narrating events into a defensive position (Furet 1982, LeGoff and Nora 1974).

However, according to some historiographers, history as a narration of events and history as a description of structures are not mutually exclusive. These historiographers concede that history as a narration of events is no longer the center of the historiographer’s work and that it no longer provides the obvious support of historical writing. Nevertheless, they also concede that narration is allowed to stand as a possibility alongside the writing of history as a structural analysis of processes (Borst 1976). Other scholars will have nothing to do with a strict separation of the two methods and point out that narration and description are intertwined. The argument is that the fact that modern history is a series of processes, it can only be understood through the alternate explanation of events through structures and vice versa (Koselleck 1976 and Kocka 1984). Although the structures become more accessible through description and events through narration, nevertheless in practice it would be impossible to maintain a demarcation between the two methods. The complementary characters of description and narration are increasingly emphasized (Stone 1979).

The defenders of the descriptive method like to confront the narrators among the historiographers with their lack of theory. They assert that the historiographer must not only narrate but also explain, and that this is only possible by means of a theoretical concept of the realities, as it has long been practiced by social scientists. The proponents of the narrative method in writing history defend themselves vehemently against the charge of being anti-theoretical. From their initially defensive position, they have turned to attack. Danto has asserted that narration is vital for description and explanation; that the form of narration is at the same time a form of explanation. The narrative form always surpasses the given, and categorically uses all-encompassing concepts. Narrative structures influence our historical thinking in the same way theories do in the case of the sciences (Danto 1965). Ricoeur expresses the same idea in his phrase ‘to tell a story means to explain it’ (Ricoeur 1983). Rusen agrees that narration is part of the logical structure of historiography and that consequently ‘description and explanation have a function subordinate to the narrative scheme’ (Baumgartner and Rusen 1982).

2. Narration In Literature

In connection with Gottfried Benn’s poetics, Grimm described a type of novel from which the narrator had disappeared. It was called ‘the novel of the phenotype’ or ‘the inward directed novel,’ labels indicating a tendency toward lack of action and lack of characters (Grimm 1963). The world and its events are banned here. The reduction of the ‘I,’ the isolated subject, is significant for this novel: the ‘I’ speaks only of itself. Consequently, one reads in Rilke’s Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge from 1910: ‘It must have been before my time that stories were narrated, really narrated. I have never heard a person narrate a story.’ Benjamin’s discussion of the decline of storytelling in his essay Der Erzahler about the Russian writer Nikolai Lesskow echoes Rilke’s statement (Benjamin 1972).

The aesthetic designation of the phenotype novel— exemplified in the novels of Virginia Woolf, Benn, and Rilke—is also appropriate for the writing of some contemporary authors; the authors of the French ‘nou eau roman’ (like Alain Robbe-Grillet) as well as postmodern American writers (like William Gass) and contemporary German authors (like Peter Handke) come to mind. In the novel of the avant-garde (Joyce, Dos Passos, Gide, Doblin, Musil, Broch), narration was either complemented or largely replaced by montage techniques and cognitive means, by reflection or essayistic writing. Here it was not so much a matter of narration of events, action, and mimesis as one of the presentation of ideas and the provision of knowledge (Hinck 1995).

However, the best-known postwar novelists (like Garcia-Marquez, Vargas Llosa, Philip Roth, Bellow, or Grass) uphold traditional established narrative models. One can write purely narrative novels. However, nonnarrative epic fiction is nonexistent. Like historiography, the novel obviously cannot dispense entirely with narration, and thus it makes sense, now as ever, to adhere to the science of narrative technique (Lutzeler 1986). In the field of narrative technique, literary scholars are far ahead of the narratologists in the camp of the historiographers. Historians could learn from reader theories as developed by such literary theorists as Jonathan Culler (‘the competent reader’), Umberto Eco (‘the model reader’), Stanley Fish (‘the informed reader’), Wolfgang Iser (‘the implied reader’), Michel Riffaterre (‘the superreader’), and Gerald Prince (‘the narratee’) (Culler 1975, Eco 1979, Fish 1970, Iser 1974, Riffaterre 1971, and Prince 1982).

3. The Conflation Of Historiography And Fiction

In Metahistory, Hayden White draws interesting parallels between historiography and fiction. He strives for a poetics of historiography and attempts to describe the forms of historical presentation in order to compare them with literary forms (White 1973). White starts with the premise that no sequence of events—by itself—is a story; it is the task of the historiographer to transfer the events, the facts, to the narrative framework of a story. The connections between happenings do not occur spontaneously; they are the result of the historiographer’s reflection. In each historiographical text, White distinguishes between the ‘what’ (the narrated events) and the ‘how’ (the type of narration, the ‘emplotment’). He was not the only scholar to see that historiographical and fictional narration are related, but he was the first to make a systematic attempt to study the structure of historical consciousness—to show the fictional elements and their formal manifestations in historiography.

The situation in nineteenth century historiography and philosophy of history serves as an example. White could have given his book the title The Rhetoric of Historiography as a parallel to Wayne C. Booth’s 1961 study The Rhetoric of Fiction. In Metahistory he concludes that the writing of history has little to do with such qualities as true or false, correct or incorrect, and that ultimately historical writing cannot be distinguished from fiction. The historian’s style, White argues, depends on the combination of the following elements: first, there are three different strategies; he calls them ‘explanation by formal argument,’ ‘explanation by ideological implication,’ and ‘explanation by emplotment.’ Specific modes of articulation correspond to each strategy. In this context we are only interested in the strategy of ‘emplotment’ (narration) with its four corresponding ‘poetic’ modes of ‘romance,’ ‘comedy,’ ‘tragedy,’ and ‘satire.’

White’s references to certain structural similarities between the unfolding of tragedies or comedies and that of historical representations are interesting, but these similarities should by no means be construed as an actual fictionalization of history. Demandt has shown how thought-structures were mirrored in the poetic metaphors used by historiographers, and how, in turn, the ideologies of the historiographers influenced their use of rhetorical figures (Demandt 1978). However, the use of metaphors does not signify a fictionalization of history. There exist basic narrative concepts that are equally valid for historical and for fictional narration. Without action, images, and metaphors, narration per se is unimaginable.

Returning to White’s example of the different depictions and interpretations of the French Revolution, it is evident that this is not a case of fictionalization because the historical process is not depicted as an ‘as if,’ but as something that actually did occur. No one will deny that the depiction of history is a creative process. However, its qualitative difference from fictional narration remains, despite the use of literary interpretation patterns and flowery metaphors. While fiction has as its basis the so-called ‘as-if’ structure, and thus proves to be pretense, illusion, and unreality, historiography always relates to actual events. Hamburger clarified the difference through the example of a historical report about Napoleon and a novel about the French emperor. The historiographer cannot see Napoleon ‘in the subjectivity, the ego-originality of his inner thoughts, of his very ‘‘existence.’’’ If he does so, however, we ‘find ourselves in a novel about Napoleon, a piece of fiction’ (Hamburger 1968).

The narrative techniques with which novelists depict the psyches of their characters have been analyzed by Dorrit Cohn. She differentiates between psycho-narration, quoted monologue, and narrated monologue (Cohn 1978). These are narrative techniques reserved for fictional narration, which cannot occur in historical writing. Just as the use of a literary (tragic or comic, for example) interpretive category cannot turn a historical narrative into a fictional one, a historical novel does not become a piece of historiography simply by including historical reality in the fictional field. Kate Hamburger validly defines the line between fiction and reality, ‘where there is no crossing over from one category to the other,’ when she discusses the different perceptions of mimesis in novel and historiography. According to her, there is a definite relationship between the narrating process and the narrated material in historiography, while characters created by novelists are simply narrated persons. In fiction, there is no relationship, only functional context, between the narrating process and the narrated material. In other words, the fictionalization of the persons described consists in the fact that the characters are not presented as objects but as subjects, as ‘ego-origines’ (Hamburger 1968).

This difference between historiography and fiction also becomes evident when we look at the results of more recent studies of the theory of functionality. Assmann has shown that scholars in the fields of analytic language philosophy and of pragmatic communication theory insist on this distinction (Assmann 1980). In the analytic philosophy of language the point is made that fiction has a very peculiar status as far as its logic of statements is concerned: the authors of fiction are not obliged to come up with any proof; their judgments are quasi, pseudo, or as-if statements. In communication theory, fictionality is studied with respect to its reception effects: it involves the elimination of the normal connection that exists between the participants of an act of communication. Dealing with fiction leads to a temporary liberation from thinking in terms of fixed institutions; it means the absence of social sanctions and a lack of verification.

4. The Concepts Of Truth

Historia vero testis temporum, lux veritas, vita memoriae, magistra vitae, nuntia etustatis: Cicero’s classic definition of the function of historical writing is still valid today—with a few deviations and reservations. The modern formulations are somewhat less pretentious, but given such terms as ‘demand for truth,’ ‘imparting of meaning,’ ‘provision of identity,’ and ‘memory,’ the function of historiography is not defined so differently from Cicero’s wording. Only the postulate ‘magistra vitae’ is viewed more skeptically. Authors of novels are equally concerned with the pursuit of truth, the imparting of meaning, the provision of identity, and memory. Friedrich Schlegel wrote in his introduction to the Wissenschaft der europaischen Literatur: ‘As history aims at recognition and truth it approaches science, but as it is also representation (…) it is related to art.’ Here the double- faced aspect of historiography has been precisely formulated.

No historiographer would be so arrogant as to assume that his or her report could encompass the whole truth of a historical event. Historiography can claim with justification that its statements are ‘truthful’ insofar as they have been gained ‘scientifically,’ that is in so far as they can be proven. And they can be proven because they can be proven wrong: the truth capacity of the narrative statements of historical writing is based on the fact that they can be falsified. In this respect, one can imagine no greater difference between historical writing and fiction.

Since the statements of a novel are fictional to begin with, they cannot be falsified. While writers of fiction may embellish an event from the past with fantasy, historiographers must check the sources, which dictate what they cannot say. The truth of a poetic statement is not achieved by fiction imitating the principles of historiography. The propensity for truth and truthfulness itself are presented differently in the two narrative modes. The intent to provide the truth does exist in both literature and historical writing, but it is aimed in different directions. Historiographers at-tempt to achieve the most exact comprehension and representation of actual historical events; novelists have no such ambition. On the contrary, their strength lies not in the realm of facts but in that of possibilities.

The aesthetics of the modern as well as of the postmodern novel are focused on the opening up of possibilities. Modernist literature aims to distance itself from the mimetic-realistic principle that dominated the novel of the second half of the nineteenth century. Musil, for example, in Der Mann vohne Eigenschaften, plays with several types of utopias and arrives at the category of ‘possibility,’ in opposition to confidence in the power of history. The same is true in the postmodern novels of Thomas Pynchon.

5. The Concept Of Totality

In examining the truth postulate in literature and historiography, one must consider the premises on which historical and novelistic narration are based. In traditional narration the novelist, like the historiographer, is guided by ideas of totality as we know them, on the one hand from the aesthetics of Hegel to Lukacs, and on the other hand from Hegel’s and Marx’s substantialist philosophy of history. In both cases, the attempt is made to see events in such a way that they make sense within the context of a totality. Here the historical and artistic totalities are structurally identical. Danto has criticized as outdated the substantialist philosophy of history, with its concept of a teleological, continuous development. He states that this philosophy acts as if it knew of a ‘divine plan’ of history, as if one could determine past and present from the perspective of the future. Danto wants to replace the speculative and dogmatic substantialist philosophy of history with an analytical (descriptive and coordinating) theory of history. In this theory, the vantage point would not be from a postulated future goal back to the present and past, but rather from the past to the present, with no certainties about the future (Danto 1965). The ancient trust, reaffirmed by Nietzsche, in the continuity of history is questioned, as are the Christian and Marxist tenets of the eschatological or utopian direction of history.

Such beliefs once formed the foundation for the concept of continuity in history. Many contemporary historians shun these labels and are consequently faced with two choices: giving up the concept of continuity altogether, or adopting it from the tradition of historiography and perhaps developing it in their own fashion. Historians at present are more aware than ever of the heuristic character of the concept of continuity; they see it merely as a ‘regulative idea’ in historical narration (Rusen 1982). Today the focus is more on discontinuity. In this respect the impact of Foucault as an outright anti-Hegelian thinker (especially with his 1969 study L’archeology du sa oir) is not to be underrated.

The dismissal of the concepts of continuity and totality has also had an impact on the writing of the novel. The idea of the ‘self-contained’ work of art that provides totality by way of typical characters is dead. Its place has been taken by the ‘open’ novel with its open-endedness, as first envisioned by the early German Romantics. In his Theorie des Romans (1916), Georg Lukacs declared that the modern novelist could outdo the historiographer if, after the loss of totality of meaning and being, he or she would counter the partial insights into the course of history with concern for a new, homogeneous cosmology. In contrast, however, the modern novel plays an important role as an instrument of cognition because such concepts of systems are now distrusted. Not a new cosmology of being, but a view of the disparity of what is to be, of the diversity of possibilities, is what this medium can provide.

In twentieth-century philosophy, a similar discussion to the one between Plato and Aristotle about the truth-value of fiction took place. Adorno was convinced that, due to its autonomy, art ‘as a creative, nonalienated work’ was the last vestige of freedom. According to him, art and literature alone can unveil what is hidden in reality and can destroy ideology and lies (Adorno 1970). What Adorno criticized as a web of ideological deceptions is close to what Roland Barthes calls the ‘mythicizing’ of everyday life. Like Adorno, Barthes affirms that poetic language maintains direct contact with reality and, unlike historiography, escapes mystification (Barthes 1957). In contrast to Adorno and Barthes, Eagleton and Jameson argue that the writing of literature is just another form of ideological production (Eagleton 1976). Jameson maintains the following position: ‘Ideology is not something which informs or invests symbolic production; rather the aesthetic act is itself ideological, and the production of aesthetic or narrative form is to be seen as an ideological act in its own right’ (Jameson 1981).

All four authors make extremely one-sided statements. The common ground of historiography and literature is narration. And when narration, through the eyes of Jameson, is seen as an ideological act per se, we cannot expect much truth in either historiography or fiction. But if, on the other hand, literature is able to destroy ideology and deception—to cite Adorno—this virtue should also be attributed to historiography. Narration can lead in both directions: it can help to approach truth, or it can produce ideological veils. Neither literature nor historiography is immune to the virus of error or the distortion of truth, but both are capable of making reality be seen more clearly.

6. Meaning, Memory, And Identity

Among the functions of historiography and the novel are, along with the search for truth, the imparting of meaning and the provision of identity. The imparting of meaning (Sinnbildung) is far from the creation of meaning (Sinnstiftung) (Rusen 1982). Surely there were, and still are, historiographers and novelists who have declared themselves ideological creators of meaning, but neither modern novelists nor critical historiographers are interested in such ambitious goals. In historical narration, the imparting of meaning is achieved through memory alone. And although novelistic narration cannot be reduced to memory, it plays an important role here as well. This is especially evident when historians fail to bring to mind certain aspects of historical experience through memory; then it is often the novelist who must assume this task. The 1950s in West Germany provide a clear example of this phenomenon. With regard to the National Socialist past, repression rather than grief was prevalent. It was a novel that broke this taboo: Die Blechtrommel, by Gunter Grass (1959). This literary breakthrough was fallowed by the works of the historiographers. George Steiner listed a number of examples of this function of the ‘writer as remembrancer’ (Steiner 1973). It is particularly in cases of the conscious falsification of history by historians that the writer steps in.

Writers and historiographers can help define the identity of a generation, a nation, or a culture. Since the Enlightenment and secularization, historiography and fiction have been burdened increasingly with the function of providing an identity. By dealing with memories, the experiences of the present attain a coherent perspective that provides the reader with an orientation for the future. Repeatedly correlating experiences of the present with those of the past can bring about the dissolution of stagnant patterns of identity, with a critical view of ideological prejudices (Lutzeler 1998). The factual orientation of the historiographer as well as the novelist’s interest in what is possible are part of the provision of identity. By means of memory, a potential of historical and literary meaning is activated that, along with the demonstration of actual limits and the allusion to yet untested possibilities, makes the provision of identity possible. Historical and literary consciousness is a complex construct in which memory is the prerequisite for interpretation and expectation. To structure an identity means, first, to identify with stories. During an identity crisis, society may show greater interest in historical remembering (as was the case in Europe in the nineteenth century), or demand a fictional provision of identity (as is presently the case in Latin America). The weaker the link with the historical past and the more suspect it appears, the stronger will be the desire for fictional patterns of identity.

Bibliography:

• Adorno T W 1970 Asthetische Theorie. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt, Germany
• Assmann A 1980 Die Legitimitat der Fiktion. Fink, Munich, Germany
• Barthes R 1957 Mythologies. Editions du Seuil, Paris
• Baumgartner H M, Rusen J 1982 Ertrage der Diskussion. In: Lammert E (ed.) Erzahlforschung. Ein Symposium. Metzler, Stuttgart, Germany
• Benjamin W 1972 Gesammelte Schriften 2. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt, Germany
• Borst A 1976 Das historische Ereignis. In: Baumgartner H M, Rusen J (eds.) Seminar: Geschichte und Theorie: Umrisse Historik. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt, Germany
• Cohn D 1978 Transparent Minds: Narrative Modes for Presenting Consciousness in Fiction. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ
• Culler J 1975 Structuralist Poetics. Structuralism, Linguistics and the Study of Literature. Routledge and Kegan Paul, London
• Danto A C 1965 Analytical Philosophy of History. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK
• Demandt A 1978 Metaphern fur Geschichte. Beck, Munich, Germany
• Eagleton T 1976 Criticism and Ideology. A Study in Marxist Literary Theory. Humanities Press, Atlantic Highlands, NJ
• Eco U 1979 The Role of the Reader. Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN
• Fish S 1970 Literature in the reader: Affective stylistics. New Literary History 2: 123–62
• Furet F 1982 L’atelier de l’histoire. Flammarion, Paris
• Grimm R 1963 Strukturen; Essays zur Deutschen Literatur. Sachse und Pohl, Gottingen, Germany
• Hamburger K 1968 Die Logik der Dichtung. E Klett, Stuttgart, Germany
• Hinck W 1995 Geschichtsdichtung. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Gottingen, Germany
• Iser W 1974 The Implied Reader; Patterns of Communication in Prose Fiction from Bunyan to Beckett. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD
• Jameson F 1981 The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY
• Kocka J 1984 Zuruck zur Erzahlung? Pladoyer fur historische Argumentation. Geschichte und Gesellschaft 10: 395–408
• Koselleck R 1976 Wozu noch Historie? In: Baumgartner H M, Rusen J (eds.) Seminar: Geschichte und Theorie. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt, Germany
• LeGoff J, Nora P 1974 Faire de l’histoire. Gallimard, Paris
• Lutzeler P M 1986 Zeitgeschichte in Geschichten der Zeit. Bouvier, Bonn, Germany
• Lutzeler P M 1998 Nomadentum und Arbeitslosigkeit. Identitat in der Postmoderne. Merkur 52: 908–18
• Prince G 1982 Narratology: the Form and Functioning of Narrative. Mouton, Berlin, Germany
• Ricoeur P 1983 Temps et recit. Seuil, Paris
• Riffaterre M 1971 Essais de stylistique structurale. Spanish, Seix Barral, Barcelona
• Rusen J 1982 Die vier Typen des historischen Erzahlens. In: Koselleck R (ed.) Formen der Geschichtsschreibung. Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich, Germany
• Steiner G 1973 The writer as remembrancer: A note on poetics 9. Yearbook of Comparative and General Literature 22: 51–7
• Stone L 1979 The revival of narrative reflections on a new old history. Past and Present 85: 3–24
• Szondi P 1973 Fur eine nicht mehr narrative Historie. In: Koselleck R, Stempel W D (eds.) Geschichte—Ereignis und Erzahlung. Fink, Munich, Germany
• White H 1973 Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-century Europe. The Johns Hopkin University Press, Baltimore, MD

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HIST 212: History and Geopolitics of Energy in Eurasia

• Introduction
• In This Session (4/25/24)
• Getting Started
• Consider: Is this a book, article, or chapter level topic?
• Not Sure Where to Start?
• Searching Secondary Source Databases
• Policy Papers, Reports, and Grey Literature
• Advanced Searching
• Highlighted databases
• Stuck or need help? No problem!

Grey Literature

"Grey Literature" are scholarly or technical studies that are produced by experts or agencies but are outside of academic publications, and thus not captured in most databases. These are vital to understanding policies and politics, but are extremely difficult to find. Below are a few options on how t proceed.

• Policy Commons This link opens in a new window Policy Commons is a one-stop community platform for objective, fact-based research from the worlds leading policy experts, nonpartisan think tanks, IGOs and NGOs. The database provides users access to a variety of curated, high quality policy reports, briefs, analyses, working papers, and datasets from thousands of policy organizations covering disciplines such as agriculture, energy, pharmaceuticals, diversity, crime, and librarianship, among others.
• CIAO (Columbia International Affairs Online) This link opens in a new window International affairs. Working papers from universities, occasional papers from NGOs, foundation-funded research projects, conference proceedings, books, journals, policy briefs, case studies by international affairs experts, course packs for history and political science classes. Coverage: 1991-present.
• OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development): Economic, Environmental, and Social Statistics
• United Nations Digital LIbrary Search for documents, speeches, resolutions, and voting records.
• World Resources Institute Environmental and climatic (green house gas emission) statistics and reports.

Identifying Organizations

If you find an NGO or organization that publishes studies on your topic, search them as an Author in our databases.

Example: european atomic energy community in Worldcat  or Euratom in Worldcat

The Organization's official website is also a good place to find reports. Ex

Other examples:

Provides world energy statistics. Covers energy supply and consumption for over 100 countries and regions.

Provided by The World Bank Group, Energydata.info is an open data platform that provides access to datasets and data analytics relevant to the energy sector. It was developed in support of the United Nations' sustainable development goal of ensuring "access to affordable, reliable, and sustainable modern energy for all" ( https://sdgs.un.org/goals ).

The world's first major carbon market, the EU ETS is "a cornerstone of the EU's policy to combat climate change and its key tool for reducing greenhouse gas emissions cost-effectively."

The World Bank Group provides the Global Solar Atlas, with data layers and maps, to support solar power in its client countries. Funded by the Energy Sector Management Assistance Program, it supports a global initiative on renewable energy resource mapping that includes biomass, small hydro, solar, and wind.

The IAEA is an intergovernmental organization for cooperation in the nuclear field. It provides information on nuclear applications and technology, nuclear safety and security, and related issues.

The International Energy Agency is comprised of 30 member countries (including the U.S.). It provides energy data and statistics on topics including coal, efficiency, electricity, emissions, prices, renewables, and more.

Provides information on development challenges, solutions, and strategic initiatives. Provides access to UNDP publications including the Human Development Report.

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change has 197 members and works on supporting the global response to climate change through treaty agreements, including the Paris agreement and the Kyoto Protocol.

Provides reports and data on the U.S. government's international development and disaster assistance efforts.

Provides information on the World Bank's development projects, data by country and indicator, and research and publications.

An international organization that represents the global nuclear industry. It provides global trends reports, policy papers, and data on nuclear power, energy, and the environment.

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Computer Science > Computation and Language

Title: automated text mining of experimental methodologies from biomedical literature.

Abstract: Biomedical literature is a rapidly expanding field of science and technology. Classification of biomedical texts is an essential part of biomedicine research, especially in the field of biology. This work proposes the fine-tuned DistilBERT, a methodology-specific, pre-trained generative classification language model for mining biomedicine texts. The model has proven its effectiveness in linguistic understanding capabilities and has reduced the size of BERT models by 40\% but by 60\% faster. The main objective of this project is to improve the model and assess the performance of the model compared to the non-fine-tuned model. We used DistilBert as a support model and pre-trained on a corpus of 32,000 abstracts and complete text articles; our results were impressive and surpassed those of traditional literature classification methods by using RNN or LSTM. Our aim is to integrate this highly specialised and specific model into different research industries.

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