Resources
On Close Reading - English and Comparative Literary Studies
From University of Warwick. Targeted at reading poems but useful for brief prose passages as well.
Resources for Literary Study at the MIT Libraries
Link to databases for scholarly articles and other resources.
Citation Guidelines
MLA (Modern Language Association) style is most commonly used to write papers and cite sources within the liberal arts and humanities. This resource, updated to reflect the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers (7th ed.) and the MLA Style Manual and Guide to Scholarly Publishing (3rd ed.) offers examples for the general format of MLA research papers, in-text citations, endnotes/footnotes, and the Works Cited page.
MLA Documentation Guide
Linked from the MIT Writing and Communication Center.
Jenkins, Henry. “What Wikipedia Can Teach Us About The New Media Literacies (Part One)”.
Argument and Thesis
Ways to test your thesis statement. From Purdue OWL.
Grammar and Style
MIT Libraries Style Manuals and Guides
Resources for Writers.
Fowler, H. W. “The King’s English”.
Davidson, Willing. “Elements and Elegance: Fifty Years”. The New Yorker, April 16, 2009.
Corbett, Philip B. “Subject, Meet Verb”. The New York Times, August 4, 2009.
Frankenstein
Murphy, Brian T. “Frankenstein”.
Electronic Text of Frankenstein
1831 edition. From the University of Virginia database.
Myth of Prometheus (in Hesiod’s Theogony)
Start at Book II, lines 507-616.
Byron, Lord George Gordon. “Prometheus”.
Prometheus Bound
In Harvard classics, at Bartleby.
Volney’s The Ruins: Meditation on the Revolutions of Empires
John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book IX
Lines 743-45, the epigraph to Frankenstein. Not in book X, as the Norton note indicates.
Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther
Voice of the Shuttle Romantics Page
Romantic Circles
A scholarly site with many essays, links, and resources on Romantic poets, including a large selection of materials on Frankenstein.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of The Ancient Mariner
Wordsworth, William. “Lines … Tintern Abbey”.
Edmund Burke on the Sublime (excerpt)
From the Norton Anthology Of English Literature.
Wollstonecraft, Mary. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. New York, NY: Konemann, 1998. ISBN: 9783829008983.
Phillips, William D., Jr., and Carla R. Phillips. The Worlds of Christopher Columbus. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1993. ISBN: 9780521446525. [Preview with Google Books]
Benito Cereno
Full Text of 1855 The Piazza Tales
Edited by Robert Robbins for Electronic Scholarly Publishing.
Melville page at American Authors site
Edited by Donna Campbell at Gonzaga University.
Uncle Tom’s Cabin and American Culture
Edited by Stephen Railton, includes rich materials on sources for Stowe’s book, information on slave narratives.
Bushman, Jay. “The Good Captain”.
Gilder Lehrman Center page on the Amistad
Oscar Wilde
The Victorian Web
The Victoria Web Archive.
Wilde, Oscar. “The Decay of Lying”.
Craft, Christopher. “Alias Bunbury: Desire and Termination in The Importance of Being Earnest”.
Alison Bechdel
Chute, Hillary. “Gothic Revival”. The Village Voice, July 4, 2006.
Dykes to Watch Out For
Alison Bechdel’s Web site and blog.
Wilsey, Sean. “The Things They Buried”. The New York Times, June 18, 2006.
