foreign literature in research brainly

• Harvard Library
• Research Guides
• Faculty of Arts & Sciences Libraries

Literary Research in Harvard Libraries

Foreign language literatures.

• Get Organized
• Find Background
• Where to Search
• Search Vocabulary
• Obscure/Recent Topics
• Literary Journalism Search (under construction!)
• Find Primary or Archival Material
• Literary Theory
• Distant Reading, Close Reading

Start with the MLA International Bibliography

• The MLA International Bibliography is both international and multilingual, making it a great general tool for research in literary scholarship. You can use the drop-down list to specify a Subject Literature by nation or region (Scottish, North African, etc.).
• Since the MLA is based in the U.S., though, there's a natural bias toward anglophone literature and toward works by American scholars. To find databases and bibliographies specific to your subject literature, please ask me (Odile) for recommendations. You're also welcome to explore Harvard's Databases list .

Think in Terms of Language Families and Geographical Region

Use multiple kinds of search terms, nouns and adjectives:.

• Pro tip: also add adjectival forms for languages: Lusophone, Sinophone
• East Asian, Pacific, Iberian, Latin America

Dialects and cultures

• Hwanghae, Latino, Chicano

Language families

• Romance, Slavic, Nilo-Saharan.

Pro tip : learn the MARC codes for your languages of interest , for catalog searching (e.g. in HOLLIS Advanced Search )

Find the Language Filter

• Language : most search interfaces allow you to filter by language, and/or have a "language" option on the Advanced Search page
• Place of publication : it is also often possible to filter or search by place of publication

For Non-Roman Scripts, Search Multiple Variations

Cataloging practices and system capabilities have changed significantly over time - you will need to try multiple search methods. Expect some hiccups in your searching no matter what you do.

• Get expert advice: if you're doing extensive searching in a vernacular script, a cataloging expert can alert you to tiny variations that make a big difference in your results.
• Search in the original script : many systems can now accept non-Latin character sets, and current best practice is for items to be cataloged by their original titles, in the original script. HOLLIS does accept non-Latin scripts.
• ALA-LC Romanization Tables  - these tables define current best practice in the U.S. Note that there are many different romanization schemes in use around the world.
• Tips for romanizing Arabic, Persian, and Hebrew (Harvard guide for Middle East and Islamic Studies Library Resources)
• Tips for romanizing Cyrillic script (Slavic and Eurasian Studies at Harvard: Library and Archival Resources Slavic Studies Research Guide)
• Try your search with and without diacritics: every search system is different. Some ignore diacritical marks, some require them. Remember that the same accented letters can be represented with different unicode blocks. HOLLIS generally ignores diacritics.

Contact an Expert

• There is likely a Harvard librarian who specializes in the language families and geographical regions of interest to you. (Write to Ask a Librarian to find out who!) Our library experts are available via email or by in-person consultations. They can recommend top databases and help you navigate Harvard's collections. Many also maintain online research guides like the one you're reading right now. Please get in touch!

Explore Harvard's Collections

There is non-Anglophone material throughout Harvard's library collections, but several libraries specialize in a particular cultural tradition or geographic area. Many of the collections below rank among the world's best.

In Cambridge:

• Harvard-Yenching Library - East Asian
• Slavic Collections (Widener)
• Fung Library - 20th-century social-science collections on Eurasia, Japan, and China
• Middle Eastern Collection (Widener)
• Judaica Collection (Widener)

Beyond Massachusetts:

• Center for Hellenic Studies - Greek and Byzantine
• Biblioteca Berenson - Medieval Italian

Explore Beyond Harvard's Collections

Pro Tip : use InterLibrary Loan to request material from outside of Harvard's Collections

Union Catalogs

• WorldCat - a global union catalog that aggregates library catalogs from across the country and the world
• Karlsruher Virtueller Katalog - a union catalog for European libraries that includes many records not found in WorldCat

National Libraries

• National library catalogs are usually open to search, no log-in required
• If you don't find a national library, try to find what other institutions might have the biggest libraries in the country, such as a prominent university, museum, cultural heritage center, or branch of government
• << Previous: Literary Theory
• Next: Distant Reading, Close Reading >>

Except where otherwise noted, this work is subject to a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , which allows anyone to share and adapt our material as long as proper attribution is given. For details and exceptions, see the Harvard Library Copyright Policy ©2021 Presidents and Fellows of Harvard College.

Chapter Four: Theory, Methodologies, Methods, and Evidence

Research Methods

You are viewing the first edition of this textbook. a second edition is available – please visit the latest edition for updated information..

This page discusses the following topics:

Research Goals

Research method types.

Before discussing research   methods , we need to distinguish them from  methodologies  and  research skills . Methodologies, linked to literary theories, are tools and lines of investigation: sets of practices and propositions about texts and the world. Researchers using Marxist literary criticism will adopt methodologies that look to material forces like labor, ownership, and technology to understand literature and its relationship to the world. They will also seek to understand authors not as inspired geniuses but as people whose lives and work are shaped by social forces.

Example: Critical Race Theory Methodologies

Critical Race Theory may use a variety of methodologies, including

• Interest convergence: investigating whether marginalized groups only achieve progress when dominant groups benefit as well
• Intersectional theory: investigating how multiple factors of advantage and disadvantage around race, gender, ethnicity, religion, etc. operate together in complex ways
• Radical critique of the law: investigating how the law has historically been used to marginalize particular groups, such as black people, while recognizing that legal efforts are important to achieve emancipation and civil rights
• Social constructivism: investigating how race is socially constructed (rather than biologically grounded)
• Standpoint epistemology: investigating how knowledge relates to social position
• Structural determinism: investigating how structures of thought and of organizations determine social outcomes

To identify appropriate methodologies, you will need to research your chosen theory and gather what methodologies are associated with it. For the most part, we can’t assume that there are “one size fits all” methodologies.

Research skills are about how you handle materials such as library search engines, citation management programs, special collections materials, and so on.

Research methods  are about where and how you get answers to your research questions. Are you conducting interviews? Visiting archives? Doing close readings? Reviewing scholarship? You will need to choose which methods are most appropriate to use in your research and you need to gain some knowledge about how to use these methods. In other words, you need to do some research into research methods!

Your choice of research method depends on the kind of questions you are asking. For example, if you want to understand how an author progressed through several drafts to arrive at a final manuscript, you may need to do archival research. If you want to understand why a particular literary work became a bestseller, you may need to do audience research. If you want to know why a contemporary author wrote a particular work, you may need to do interviews. Usually literary research involves a combination of methods such as  archival research ,  discourse analysis , and  qualitative research  methods.

Literary research methods tend to differ from research methods in the hard sciences (such as physics and chemistry). Science research must present results that are reproducible, while literary research rarely does (though it must still present evidence for its claims). Literary research often deals with questions of meaning, social conventions, representations of lived experience, and aesthetic effects; these are questions that reward dialogue and different perspectives rather than one great experiment that settles the issue. In literary research, we might get many valuable answers even though they are quite different from one another. Also in literary research, we usually have some room to speculate about answers, but our claims have to be plausible (believable) and our argument comprehensive (meaning we don’t overlook evidence that would alter our argument significantly if it were known).

A literary researcher might select the following:

Theory: Critical Race Theory

Methodology: Social Constructivism

Method: Scholarly

Skills: Search engines, citation management

Wendy Belcher, in  Writing Your Journal Article in 12 Weeks , identifies two main approaches to understanding literary works: looking at a text by itself (associated with New Criticism ) and looking at texts as they connect to society (associated with Cultural Studies ). The goal of New Criticism is to bring the reader further into the text. The goal of Cultural Studies is to bring the reader into the network of discourses that surround and pass through the text. Other approaches, such as Ecocriticism, relate literary texts to the Sciences (as well as to the Humanities).

The New Critics, starting in the 1940s,  focused on meaning within the text itself, using a method they called “ close reading .” The text itself becomes e vidence for a particular reading. Using this approach, you should summarize the literary work briefly and q uote particularly meaningful passages, being sure to introduce quotes and then interpret them (never let them stand alone). Make connections within the work; a sk  “why” and “how” the various parts of the text relate to each other.

Cultural Studies critics see all texts  as connected to society; the critic  therefore has to connect a text to at least one political or social issue. How and why does  the text reproduce particular knowledge systems (known as discourses) and how do these knowledge systems relate to issues of power within the society? Who speaks and when? Answering these questions helps your reader understand the text in context. Cultural contexts can include the treatment of gender (Feminist, Queer), class (Marxist), nationality, race, religion, or any other area of human society.

Other approaches, such as psychoanalytic literary criticism , look at literary texts to better understand human psychology. A psychoanalytic reading can focus on a character, the author, the reader, or on society in general. Ecocriticism  look at human understandings of nature in literary texts.

We select our research methods based on the kinds of things we want to know. For example, we may be studying the relationship between literature and society, between author and text, or the status of a work in the literary canon. We may want to know about a work’s form, genre, or thematics. We may want to know about the audience’s reading and reception, or about methods for teaching literature in schools.

Below are a few research methods and their descriptions. You may need to consult with your instructor about which ones are most appropriate for your project. The first list covers methods most students use in their work. The second list covers methods more commonly used by advanced researchers. Even if you will not be using methods from this second list in your research project, you may read about these research methods in the scholarship you find.

Most commonly used undergraduate research methods:

• Scholarship Methods:  Studies the body of scholarship written about a particular author, literary work, historical period, literary movement, genre, theme, theory, or method.
• Textual Analysis Methods:  Used for close readings of literary texts, these methods also rely on literary theory and background information to support the reading.
• Biographical Methods:  Used to study the life of the author to better understand their work and times, these methods involve reading biographies and autobiographies about the author, and may also include research into private papers, correspondence, and interviews.
• Discourse Analysis Methods:  Studies language patterns to reveal ideology and social relations of power. This research involves the study of institutions, social groups, and social movements to understand how people in various settings use language to represent the world to themselves and others. Literary works may present complex mixtures of discourses which the characters (and readers) have to navigate.
• Creative Writing Methods:  A literary re-working of another literary text, creative writing research is used to better understand a literary work by investigating its language, formal structures, composition methods, themes, and so on. For instance, a creative research project may retell a story from a minor character’s perspective to reveal an alternative reading of events. To qualify as research, a creative research project is usually combined with a piece of theoretical writing that explains and justifies the work.

Methods used more often by advanced researchers:

• Archival Methods: Usually involves trips to special collections where original papers are kept. In these archives are many unpublished materials such as diaries, letters, photographs, ledgers, and so on. These materials can offer us invaluable insight into the life of an author, the development of a literary work, or the society in which the author lived. There are at least three major archives of James Baldwin’s papers: The Smithsonian , Yale , and The New York Public Library . Descriptions of such materials are often available online, but the materials themselves are typically stored in boxes at the archive.
• Computational Methods:  Used for statistical analysis of texts such as studies of the popularity and meaning of particular words in literature over time.
• Ethnographic Methods:  Studies groups of people and their interactions with literary works, for instance in educational institutions, in reading groups (such as book clubs), and in fan networks. This approach may involve interviews and visits to places (including online communities) where people interact with literary works. Note: before you begin such work, you must have  Institutional Review Board (IRB)  approval “to protect the rights and welfare of human participants involved in research.”
• Visual Methods:  Studies the visual qualities of literary works. Some literary works, such as illuminated manuscripts, children’s literature, and graphic novels, present a complex interplay of text and image. Even works without illustrations can be studied for their use of typography, layout, and other visual features.

Regardless of the method(s) you choose, you will need to learn how to apply them to your work and how to carry them out successfully. For example, you should know that many archives do not allow you to bring pens (you can use pencils) and you may not be allowed to bring bags into the archives. You will need to keep a record of which documents you consult and their location (box number, etc.) in the archives. If you are unsure how to use a particular method, please consult a book about it. [1] Also, ask for the advice of trained researchers such as your instructor or a research librarian.

• What research method(s) will you be using for your paper? Why did you make this method selection over other methods? If you haven’t made a selection yet, which methods are you considering?
• What specific methodological approaches are you most interested in exploring in relation to the chosen literary work?
• What is your plan for researching your method(s) and its major approaches?
• What was the most important lesson you learned from this page? What point was confusing or difficult to understand?

Write your answers in a webcourse discussion page.

• Introduction to Research Methods: A Practical Guide for Anyone Undertaking a Research Project  by Catherine, Dr. Dawson
• Practical Research Methods: A User-Friendly Guide to Mastering Research Techniques and Projects  by Catherine Dawson
• Qualitative Inquiry and Research Design: Choosing Among Five Approaches  by John W. Creswell  Cheryl N. Poth
• Qualitative Research Evaluation Methods: Integrating Theory and Practice  by Michael Quinn Patton
• Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Approaches  by John W. Creswell  J. David Creswell
• Research Methodology: A Step-by-Step Guide for Beginners  by Ranjit Kumar
• Research Methodology: Methods and Techniques  by C.R. Kothari

Strategies for Conducting Literary Research Copyright © 2021 by Barry Mauer & John Venecek is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Foreign Literatures in America (FLA) is a project devoted to the recovery and understanding of the significance of foreign authored literary works, as well as immigrant authored literary works, in the U.S. throughout U.S. history. Our principal mission is to challenge conceptions of “American literature” that turn upon the American citizenship of an author—when historically it is clear that foreign authored works, as well as works by immigrant authors who wrote in many languages and were not citizens of the United States, have long profoundly constituted an important part of the literatures and cultures of the U.S. This project thus seeks to offer many fresh opportunities to globalize the terms through which we understand American literature and American culture, both of these domains rediscovered as richly constituted and interpenetrated by global texts, concerns, contexts, voices. FLA pursues these goals by offering various means of studying the reception of foreign and immigrant authored literary works in the U.S., in interdisciplinary terms that encompass literature, culture, politics, history, and international relations. **Archival resources: **The project offers extensive archival resources of primary reception materials (i.e., accounts of “foreign” authors and works in newspapers, magazines, images, rarer archives, etc.) accessible in themselves, browsable in useful arrays, and searchable and subject to certain forms of quantitative analysis by nuanced means. Laboratories: The project develops laboratories based on cutting edge tools of machine learning drawn from recent digital humanities innovations in the areas of topics modeling and sentiment analysis; these laboratories allow users to mine large databases of “big data” already assembled for meaningful patterns and insights of literary reception. Book review pages: The project assembles its own smaller databases of book review pages from various U.S. newspapers and periodicals over time (beginning with the New York Times, The New Republic, and The Crisis), subject not only to the kind of searching and quantitative techniques of analysis found in the archival and laboratory sections, but also to comparative quantification of the most frequently mentioned authors in user-determined time frames and periodical ranges—(these book review pages thus become a powerful means of recovering forgotten literary and cultural history). Collective Forum: FLA is a committedly and internationally a collective forum for research, innovation, discussion, and collaboration, one in which blogging and various forms of collective interchange, suggestion, and crowd-sourced cooperation are facilitated—both as concerns all the research functions described above, and also toward innovation of further functions FLA could undertake. Beyond the general aims and specific outcomes noted above, there are two specific aims of this project that should be emphasized. First, in the shorter term, rather than do full comprehensive justice to any one of the functions described above, we are really trying to “open the door” with respect to them all, encouraging different teams of faculty and student researches both at the University of Maryland and around the country and world to develop dynamic possibilities for this project. Anyone interested in the kind of scholarly and analytic priorities foregrounded by the project is most warmly encouraged to contact us with your ideas and to join our project. The second point is more long term: though this project does aim to offer the means for a wholesale remapping of American literary studies (what this domain consists of, which voices and texts, why they are important), it is also a project of significance not only among university and academic research communities but also in larger social domains of education as well—including not only secondary schools and undergraduate pedagogy and also those interested in non-traditional education forms in our culture and society generally. This general goal of making a productive globalizing contribution to American education in the broadest possible terms is an ultimate aspiration for this project. The technological infrastructure for this project has been supported in part by a generous grant from  Amazon Web Services .

Participants

• FLA Project Website
• Faculty Fellowships Open Up New Avenues for Research Collaboration August 29, 2011 MITH
• Beginnings… December 7, 2011 Peter Mallios
• Searching for the Quantum Dimension of Foreign Literature December 21, 2011 Rebecca Borden
• Reinventing the Boundaries of American Literature January 9, 2012 Nicholas Slaughter
• Telling the Story of Foreign Literatures in America January 23, 2012 Jennifer Wellman
• Extremely Visible and Incredibly Close Reading of Logos February 7, 2012 Amanda Visconti
• Open Water February 20, 2012 Peter Mallios
• My Dissertation in the Year 2112 March 6, 2012 Rebecca Borden
• Archive of Emotion April 2, 2012 Katherine Stanutz
• Names of the Game April 16, 2012 Nicholas Slaughter
• Progress Update on the Modern British Archive May 9, 2012 Jennifer Wellman
• On Fish, FLA, and the Digital Humanities May 23, 2012 Peter Mallios
• An Undergraduate View of Data Mining with WEKA November 5, 2012 Peter Mallios
• Asking Questions of Lots of Text with Weka December 18, 2012 Peter Mallios
• Amazon Web Services

• Foreign Language and Literature
• East Tennessee State University
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Search Research Methods

SAGE Research Methods contains research methods, cases, datasets, and videos. All of these interfaces can be individually searched:

• SAGE Research Methods This link opens in a new window Research methodology at all levels, step by step more... less... SAGE Research Methods (SRM) has a wide array of tools for every step of the research process plus hundreds of qualitative and quantitative methods, including interactive tools such as the Methods Map and Project Planner.
• SAGE Research Methods Cases This link opens in a new window Case studies showing how methods are applied in real research projects. more... less... SAGE Research Methods Cases include hundreds of case studies showing how methods are applied in real research projects in various disciplines.
• SAGE Research Methods Datasets This link opens in a new window Collection of datasets that can be used to support the teaching and learning of quantitative and qualitative analytical methods used in the social sciences. more... less... These are datasets taken from real research projects, but edited and cleaned for teaching purposes. Each dataset will be accompanied by a short clear narrative description of the data and easy-to-follow instructions on how to apply the research method.
• SAGE Research Methods Videos This link opens in a new window 480+ videos covering the research process and hundreds of qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods. more... less... SAGE Research Methods Video includes hours of tutorials, interviews, video case studies, and mini-documentaries covering the entire research process.
• << Previous: Reference Tools
• Next: Research Tutorials >>

Methods Map

Need to find a Method? Explore the Methods Map!

ETSU Research Resources

• REDCap DB/Survey Tool
• Qualtrics Survey Software
• Institutional Review Board (IRB)
• Office of Research and Sponsored Programs

Quick Links

• SAGE Research Methods
• Little Green Books  (Quantitative Methods)
• Little Blue Books  (Qualitative Methods)
• Dictionaries and Encyclopedias  
• Case studies of real research projects
• Sample datasets for hands-on practice
• Streaming video--see methods come to life
• Methodspace- -a community for researchers
• SAGE Research Methods Course Mapping

Most Popular Methods

• Action Research
• Ethnography
• Internet Research
• Literature Review
• Mixed Methods
• Narrative Research
• Observational Research
• Questionnaires
• Last Updated: Oct 5, 2023 9:21 AM
• URL: https://libraries.etsu.edu/research/guides/languageandliterature