ENGL 300 Brownson, Fall, 2009

Due Date: Thursday, September 30, 2009

Length: 20 entries plus annotations

Format: See below

A bibliography (literally, "description of books) is a list of works. An annotated bibliography is a list of works followed by notes which describe and/or evaluate the works in the entries. Your annotated bibliography will be a list of 20 secondary works for your text for the semester followed by 5 sentence notes that describe and evaluate the

works.

1. Format of document– adopt the formats in section 4.3, figure 7; section 5.3.1; and section 5.3.2, figure 12 of the MLA Handbook. The entire document should be double spaced. The title of your document should be Annotated Bibliography, centered on the page, no caps, no boldface, no italics. Alphabetize entries by author’s last name – no numbering system is used to organize entries in bibliographies or works cited pages. Follow formats throughout the MLA Handbook for entries – first line is flush with the left margin, subsequent lines are indented by one tab. Follow each entry by the note.

2. Format of entries – make sure you clearly understand what type of source each work is. Once you know the type of source, look up the relevant model in chapter 5 of the MLA Handbook and follow that model slavishly. Remember that an article found in a book is different from an article found in a hard copy journal is different from an article found in a database is different from an article found in an electronic journal.

3. Notes – notes should be at least 5 COMPLETE AND MATURE sentences and should both describe and evaluate your source. First, describe your source – Is it an introduction to an edition of your work? A journal article? Is it recent? Is it a "classic" source to which many other sources refer or respond? Most important, what kind of literary/critical approach does the author take? How do you know? Secondly, evaluate your source – How clear is the thesis? How cogent is the development of the argument? How accessible is the language of the source? Secondary questions might include: Is the index useful? How complete is the source’s own bibliography? Your goal in each note is purposive communication. Your audience should glean useful information from each note. Avoid brief sentences by combining short descriptive statements into one sentence.

4. Other considerations

a. Begin to develop your bibliography as soon as possible. Obtain sources unavailable from Dacus via interlibrary loan, but act quickly. ILL can take 2 weeks or longer. Ideally, you should directly examine all 20 of your sources. However, if necessary, you can rely on abstracts or summaries of your sources found in databases. Just remember that notes based on abstracts will not be complete. Therefore, keep such notes to a minimum.

b. Use the bibliographies in the Dictionary of Literary Biography as a starting point. However, remember that articles in the DLB are biographical, not critical.

c. Use the bibliographies of all your sources to find other relevant material. Smart scholars use work that has preceded them and the compilers of those bibliographies expect their work to be used in just such a manner.

d. Introductions to editions of your work might or might not be critical. Evaluate these sources carefully.

e. Collections of critical essays are not considered one source. Each essay is considered a separate source.

f. Review the section in the MLA Handbook on "Titles of Works in the Research Paper" to make sure you correctly punctuate titles.

g.. Make every effort to find a range of critical approaches from the last forty years.

h. Articles and book chapters should be substantive and a minimum of 10 pages in length.

i. The following is a list of sources that may not be used for any of the assignments in this course:

1) Excerpts from books and articles in reference works such as Nineteenth Century Literature (NCLC) and Twentieth Century Literature (TCLC) are not considered secondary sources. However, you can use NCLC and TCLC to track down authors and titles of sources, and then use that information to locate the original complete source.

2) Letters, essays, and other works by your author are primary works. Do not use them in your bibliography. In addition, biographies of your author and bibliographies of your author’s works are not appropriate critical sources for this assignment.

3) Casebooks may not be used to fulfill any of the assignments for this course.

4) Textual criticism.

5) Articles from The Explicator or any journal with the word "notes" in the title, i.e., Notes and Queries.

6) Book reviews

j. Avoid depending only on sources retrieved from databases. Learn to use hard copies of books and journals – in other words, learn to use your library.