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What is the Purpose of a Literature Review?

4-minute read

• 23rd October 2023

If you’re writing a research paper or dissertation , then you’ll most likely need to include a comprehensive literature review . In this post, we’ll review the purpose of literature reviews, why they are so significant, and the specific elements to include in one. Literature reviews can:

1. Provide a foundation for current research.

2. Define key concepts and theories.

3. Demonstrate critical evaluation.

4. Show how research and methodologies have evolved.

5. Identify gaps in existing research.

6. Support your argument.

Keep reading to enter the exciting world of literature reviews!

What is a Literature Review?

A literature review is a critical summary and evaluation of the existing research (e.g., academic journal articles and books) on a specific topic. It is typically included as a separate section or chapter of a research paper or dissertation, serving as a contextual framework for a study. Literature reviews can vary in length depending on the subject and nature of the study, with most being about equal length to other sections or chapters included in the paper. Essentially, the literature review highlights previous studies in the context of your research and summarizes your insights in a structured, organized format. Next, let’s look at the overall purpose of a literature review.

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Literature reviews are considered an integral part of research across most academic subjects and fields. The primary purpose of a literature review in your study is to:

Provide a Foundation for Current Research

Since the literature review provides a comprehensive evaluation of the existing research, it serves as a solid foundation for your current study. It’s a way to contextualize your work and show how your research fits into the broader landscape of your specific area of study.  

Define Key Concepts and Theories

The literature review highlights the central theories and concepts that have arisen from previous research on your chosen topic. It gives your readers a more thorough understanding of the background of your study and why your research is particularly significant .

Demonstrate Critical Evaluation 

A comprehensive literature review shows your ability to critically analyze and evaluate a broad range of source material. And since you’re considering and acknowledging the contribution of key scholars alongside your own, it establishes your own credibility and knowledge.

Show How Research and Methodologies Have Evolved

Another purpose of literature reviews is to provide a historical perspective and demonstrate how research and methodologies have changed over time, especially as data collection methods and technology have advanced. And studying past methodologies allows you, as the researcher, to understand what did and did not work and apply that knowledge to your own research.  

Identify Gaps in Existing Research

Besides discussing current research and methodologies, the literature review should also address areas that are lacking in the existing literature. This helps further demonstrate the relevance of your own research by explaining why your study is necessary to fill the gaps.

Support Your Argument

A good literature review should provide evidence that supports your research questions and hypothesis. For example, your study may show that your research supports existing theories or builds on them in some way. Referencing previous related studies shows your work is grounded in established research and will ultimately be a contribution to the field.  

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2 The Purpose of Literature

What is literature for.

One of the primary goals of this course is to develop an understanding of the importance of literature as a vital source of cultural knowledge in everyday life. Literature is often viewed as a collection of made-up stories, designed to entertain us, to amuse us, or to simply provide us with an escape from the “real” world.

Although literature does serve these purposes, in this course, one of the ways that we will answer the question “What is literature for?” is by showing that literature can provide us with valuable insights about the  world  in which we live and about our  relationships  to one another, as well as to  ourselves  . In this sense, literature may be considered a vehicle for the exploration and discovery of our world and the culture in which we live. It allows us to explore alternative realities, to view things from the perspective of someone completely different to us, and to reflect upon our own intellectual and emotional responses to the complex challenges of everyday life.

By studying literature, it is possible to develop an in-depth understanding of the ways that we use language to make sense of the world. According to the literary scholars, Andrew Bennett and Nicholas Royle, “Stories are everywhere,” and therefore, “Not only do we tell stories, but stories tell us: if stories are everywhere, we are also in stories.” From the moment each one of us is born, we are surrounded by stories — oftentimes these stories are told to us by parents, family members, or our community. Some of these stories are ones that we read for ourselves, and still others are stories that we tell to ourselves about who we are, what we desire, what we fear, and what we value. Not all of these stories are typically considered “literary” ones, but in this course, we will develop a more detailed understanding of how studying literature can enrich our knowledge about ourselves and the world in which we live.

If literature helps us to make sense of, or better yet question, the world and our place in it, then how does it do this? It may seem strange to suggest that literature performs a certain kind of work. However, when we think of other subjects, such as math or science, it is generally understood that the skills obtained from mastering these subjects equips us to solve practical problems. Can the same be said of literature?

To understand the kind of work that literature can do, it is important to understand the kind of knowledge that it provides. This is a very complex and widely debated question among literary scholars. But one way of understanding the kind of knowledge that can be gained from literature is by thinking about how we use language to make sense of the world each day.  (1)

What does literature do?

Every day we use  metaphors  to describe the world. What is a metaphor? According to  A Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory  , a metaphor is “a figure of speech in which one thing is described in terms of another.” You have probably heard the expressions, “Time is money” or “The administration is a train wreck.” These expressions are metaphors because they describe one less clearly defined idea, like time or the administration of an institution, in relation to a concept whose characteristics are easier to imagine.

A metaphor forms an implied comparison between two terms whereas a  simile  makes an explicit comparison between two terms using the words like or as — for example, in his poem, “A Red, Red Rose,” the Scottish poet Robert Burns famously announces, “O my Luve is like a red, red rose/That’s newly sprung in June.” The association of romantic love with red roses is so firmly established in our culture that one need only look at the imagery associated with Valentine’s Day to find evidence of its persistence. The knowledge we gain from literature can have a profound influence on our patterns of thought and behavior.

In their book  Metaphors We Live By  , George Lakoff and Mark Johnson outline a number of metaphors used so often in everyday conversation that we have forgotten that they are even metaphors, for example, the understanding that “Happy is up” or that “Sad is down.” Likewise, we might think “Darkness is death” or that “Life is light.” Here we can see that metaphors help us to recognize and make sense of a wide range of very complex ideas and even emotions. Metaphors are powerful, and as a result they can even be problematic.

The author Toni Morrison has argued that throughout history the language used by many white authors to describe black characters often expresses ideas of fear or dread — the color black and black people themselves come to represent feelings of loathing, mystery, or dread. Likewise, James Baldwin has observed that whiteness is often presented as a metaphor for safety.  (1)

Figure 1 is taken from a book published in 1857 entitled  Indigenous Races of the Earth  . It demonstrates how classical ideas of beauty and sophistication were associated with an idealized version of white European society whereas people of African descent were considered to be more closely related to apes. One of Morrison’s tasks as a writer is to rewrite the racist literary language that has been used to describe people of color and their lives.

By being able to identify and question the metaphors that we live by, it is possible to gain a better understanding of how we view our world, as well as our relationship to others and ourselves. It is important to critically examine these metaphors because they have very real consequences for our lives.  (1)

Literature for the Humanities Copyright © by Lumen Learning is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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• UConn Library
• Literature Review: The What, Why and How-to Guide
• Introduction

Literature Review: The What, Why and How-to Guide — Introduction

• Getting Started
• How to Pick a Topic
• Strategies to Find Sources
• Evaluating Sources & Lit. Reviews
• Tips for Writing Literature Reviews
• Writing Literature Review: Useful Sites
• Citation Resources
• Other Academic Writings

What are Literature Reviews?

So, what is a literature review? "A literature review is an account of what has been published on a topic by accredited scholars and researchers. In writing the literature review, your purpose is to convey to your reader what knowledge and ideas have been established on a topic, and what their strengths and weaknesses are. As a piece of writing, the literature review must be defined by a guiding concept (e.g., your research objective, the problem or issue you are discussing, or your argumentative thesis). It is not just a descriptive list of the material available, or a set of summaries." Taylor, D.  The literature review: A few tips on conducting it . University of Toronto Health Sciences Writing Centre.

Goals of Literature Reviews

What are the goals of creating a Literature Review?  A literature could be written to accomplish different aims:

• To develop a theory or evaluate an existing theory
• To summarize the historical or existing state of a research topic
• Identify a problem in a field of research 

Baumeister, R. F., & Leary, M. R. (1997). Writing narrative literature reviews .  Review of General Psychology , 1 (3), 311-320.

What kinds of sources require a Literature Review?

• A research paper assigned in a course
• A thesis or dissertation
• A grant proposal
• An article intended for publication in a journal

All these instances require you to collect what has been written about your research topic so that you can demonstrate how your own research sheds new light on the topic.

Types of Literature Reviews

What kinds of literature reviews are written?

Narrative review: The purpose of this type of review is to describe the current state of the research on a specific topic/research and to offer a critical analysis of the literature reviewed. Studies are grouped by research/theoretical categories, and themes and trends, strengths and weakness, and gaps are identified. The review ends with a conclusion section which summarizes the findings regarding the state of the research of the specific study, the gaps identify and if applicable, explains how the author's research will address gaps identify in the review and expand the knowledge on the topic reviewed.

• Example : Predictors and Outcomes of U.S. Quality Maternity Leave: A Review and Conceptual Framework:  10.1177/08948453211037398  

Systematic review : "The authors of a systematic review use a specific procedure to search the research literature, select the studies to include in their review, and critically evaluate the studies they find." (p. 139). Nelson, L. K. (2013). Research in Communication Sciences and Disorders . Plural Publishing.

• Example : The effect of leave policies on increasing fertility: a systematic review:  10.1057/s41599-022-01270-w

Meta-analysis : "Meta-analysis is a method of reviewing research findings in a quantitative fashion by transforming the data from individual studies into what is called an effect size and then pooling and analyzing this information. The basic goal in meta-analysis is to explain why different outcomes have occurred in different studies." (p. 197). Roberts, M. C., & Ilardi, S. S. (2003). Handbook of Research Methods in Clinical Psychology . Blackwell Publishing.

• Example : Employment Instability and Fertility in Europe: A Meta-Analysis:  10.1215/00703370-9164737

Meta-synthesis : "Qualitative meta-synthesis is a type of qualitative study that uses as data the findings from other qualitative studies linked by the same or related topic." (p.312). Zimmer, L. (2006). Qualitative meta-synthesis: A question of dialoguing with texts .  Journal of Advanced Nursing , 53 (3), 311-318.

• Example : Women’s perspectives on career successes and barriers: A qualitative meta-synthesis:  10.1177/05390184221113735

Literature Reviews in the Health Sciences

• UConn Health subject guide on systematic reviews Explanation of the different review types used in health sciences literature as well as tools to help you find the right review type
• << Previous: Getting Started
• Next: How to Pick a Topic >>
• Last Updated: Sep 21, 2022 2:16 PM
• URL: https://guides.lib.uconn.edu/literaturereview

• University of Texas Libraries

Literature Reviews

• What is a literature review?
• Steps in the Literature Review Process
• Define your research question
• Determine inclusion and exclusion criteria
• Choose databases and search
• Review Results
• Synthesize Results
• Analyze Results
• Librarian Support

What is a Literature Review?

A literature or narrative review is a comprehensive review and analysis of the published literature on a specific topic or research question. The literature that is reviewed contains: books, articles, academic articles, conference proceedings, association papers, and dissertations. It contains the most pertinent studies and points to important past and current research and practices. It provides background and context, and shows how your research will contribute to the field. 

A literature review should: 

• Provide a comprehensive and updated review of the literature;
• Explain why this review has taken place;
• Articulate a position or hypothesis;
• Acknowledge and account for conflicting and corroborating points of view

From  S age Research Methods

Purpose of a Literature Review

A literature review can be written as an introduction to a study to:

• Demonstrate how a study fills a gap in research
• Compare a study with other research that's been done

Or it can be a separate work (a research article on its own) which:

• Organizes or describes a topic
• Describes variables within a particular issue/problem

Limitations of a Literature Review

Some of the limitations of a literature review are:

• It's a snapshot in time. Unlike other reviews, this one has beginning, a middle and an end. There may be future developments that could make your work less relevant.
• It may be too focused. Some niche studies may miss the bigger picture.
• It can be difficult to be comprehensive. There is no way to make sure all the literature on a topic was considered.
• It is easy to be biased if you stick to top tier journals. There may be other places where people are publishing exemplary research. Look to open access publications and conferences to reflect a more inclusive collection. Also, make sure to include opposing views (and not just supporting evidence).

Source: Grant, Maria J., and Andrew Booth. “A Typology of Reviews: An Analysis of 14 Review Types and Associated Methodologies.” Health Information & Libraries Journal, vol. 26, no. 2, June 2009, pp. 91–108. Wiley Online Library, doi:10.1111/j.1471-1842.2009.00848.x.

Meryl Brodsky : Communication and Information Studies

Hannah Chapman Tripp : Biology, Neuroscience

Carolyn Cunningham : Human Development & Family Sciences, Psychology, Sociology

Larayne Dallas : Engineering

Janelle Hedstrom : Special Education, Curriculum & Instruction, Ed Leadership & Policy ​

Susan Macicak : Linguistics

Imelda Vetter : Dell Medical School

For help in other subject areas, please see the guide to library specialists by subject .

Periodically, UT Libraries runs a workshop covering the basics and library support for literature reviews. While we try to offer these once per academic year, we find providing the recording to be helpful to community members who have missed the session. Following is the most recent recording of the workshop, Conducting a Literature Review. To view the recording, a UT login is required.

• October 26, 2022 recording
• Last Updated: Oct 26, 2022 2:49 PM
• URL: https://guides.lib.utexas.edu/literaturereviews

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What is a Literature Review? How to Write It (with Examples)

A literature review is a critical analysis and synthesis of existing research on a particular topic. It provides an overview of the current state of knowledge, identifies gaps, and highlights key findings in the literature. 1 The purpose of a literature review is to situate your own research within the context of existing scholarship, demonstrating your understanding of the topic and showing how your work contributes to the ongoing conversation in the field. Learning how to write a literature review is a critical tool for successful research. Your ability to summarize and synthesize prior research pertaining to a certain topic demonstrates your grasp on the topic of study, and assists in the learning process. 

Table of Contents

• What is the purpose of literature review? 
• a. Habitat Loss and Species Extinction: 
• b. Range Shifts and Phenological Changes: 
• c. Ocean Acidification and Coral Reefs: 
• d. Adaptive Strategies and Conservation Efforts: 
• How to write a good literature review 
• Choose a Topic and Define the Research Question: 
• Decide on the Scope of Your Review: 
• Select Databases for Searches: 
• Conduct Searches and Keep Track: 
• Review the Literature: 
• Organize and Write Your Literature Review: 
• Frequently asked questions 

What is a literature review?

A well-conducted literature review demonstrates the researcher’s familiarity with the existing literature, establishes the context for their own research, and contributes to scholarly conversations on the topic. One of the purposes of a literature review is also to help researchers avoid duplicating previous work and ensure that their research is informed by and builds upon the existing body of knowledge.

What is the purpose of literature review?

A literature review serves several important purposes within academic and research contexts. Here are some key objectives and functions of a literature review: 2  

• Contextualizing the Research Problem: The literature review provides a background and context for the research problem under investigation. It helps to situate the study within the existing body of knowledge. 
• Identifying Gaps in Knowledge: By identifying gaps, contradictions, or areas requiring further research, the researcher can shape the research question and justify the significance of the study. This is crucial for ensuring that the new research contributes something novel to the field. 
• Understanding Theoretical and Conceptual Frameworks: Literature reviews help researchers gain an understanding of the theoretical and conceptual frameworks used in previous studies. This aids in the development of a theoretical framework for the current research. 
• Providing Methodological Insights: Another purpose of literature reviews is that it allows researchers to learn about the methodologies employed in previous studies. This can help in choosing appropriate research methods for the current study and avoiding pitfalls that others may have encountered. 
• Establishing Credibility: A well-conducted literature review demonstrates the researcher’s familiarity with existing scholarship, establishing their credibility and expertise in the field. It also helps in building a solid foundation for the new research. 
• Informing Hypotheses or Research Questions: The literature review guides the formulation of hypotheses or research questions by highlighting relevant findings and areas of uncertainty in existing literature. 

Literature review example

Let’s delve deeper with a literature review example: Let’s say your literature review is about the impact of climate change on biodiversity. You might format your literature review into sections such as the effects of climate change on habitat loss and species extinction, phenological changes, and marine biodiversity. Each section would then summarize and analyze relevant studies in those areas, highlighting key findings and identifying gaps in the research. The review would conclude by emphasizing the need for further research on specific aspects of the relationship between climate change and biodiversity. The following literature review template provides a glimpse into the recommended literature review structure and content, demonstrating how research findings are organized around specific themes within a broader topic. 

Literature Review on Climate Change Impacts on Biodiversity:

Climate change is a global phenomenon with far-reaching consequences, including significant impacts on biodiversity. This literature review synthesizes key findings from various studies: 

a. Habitat Loss and Species Extinction:

Climate change-induced alterations in temperature and precipitation patterns contribute to habitat loss, affecting numerous species (Thomas et al., 2004). The review discusses how these changes increase the risk of extinction, particularly for species with specific habitat requirements. 

b. Range Shifts and Phenological Changes:

Observations of range shifts and changes in the timing of biological events (phenology) are documented in response to changing climatic conditions (Parmesan & Yohe, 2003). These shifts affect ecosystems and may lead to mismatches between species and their resources. 

c. Ocean Acidification and Coral Reefs:

The review explores the impact of climate change on marine biodiversity, emphasizing ocean acidification’s threat to coral reefs (Hoegh-Guldberg et al., 2007). Changes in pH levels negatively affect coral calcification, disrupting the delicate balance of marine ecosystems. 

d. Adaptive Strategies and Conservation Efforts:

Recognizing the urgency of the situation, the literature review discusses various adaptive strategies adopted by species and conservation efforts aimed at mitigating the impacts of climate change on biodiversity (Hannah et al., 2007). It emphasizes the importance of interdisciplinary approaches for effective conservation planning. 

How to write a good literature review

Writing a literature review involves summarizing and synthesizing existing research on a particular topic. A good literature review format should include the following elements. 

Introduction: The introduction sets the stage for your literature review, providing context and introducing the main focus of your review. 

• Opening Statement: Begin with a general statement about the broader topic and its significance in the field. 
• Scope and Purpose: Clearly define the scope of your literature review. Explain the specific research question or objective you aim to address. 
• Organizational Framework: Briefly outline the structure of your literature review, indicating how you will categorize and discuss the existing research. 
• Significance of the Study: Highlight why your literature review is important and how it contributes to the understanding of the chosen topic. 
• Thesis Statement: Conclude the introduction with a concise thesis statement that outlines the main argument or perspective you will develop in the body of the literature review. 

Body: The body of the literature review is where you provide a comprehensive analysis of existing literature, grouping studies based on themes, methodologies, or other relevant criteria. 

• Organize by Theme or Concept: Group studies that share common themes, concepts, or methodologies. Discuss each theme or concept in detail, summarizing key findings and identifying gaps or areas of disagreement. 
• Critical Analysis: Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of each study. Discuss the methodologies used, the quality of evidence, and the overall contribution of each work to the understanding of the topic. 
• Synthesis of Findings: Synthesize the information from different studies to highlight trends, patterns, or areas of consensus in the literature. 
• Identification of Gaps: Discuss any gaps or limitations in the existing research and explain how your review contributes to filling these gaps. 
• Transition between Sections: Provide smooth transitions between different themes or concepts to maintain the flow of your literature review. 

Conclusion: The conclusion of your literature review should summarize the main findings, highlight the contributions of the review, and suggest avenues for future research. 

• Summary of Key Findings: Recap the main findings from the literature and restate how they contribute to your research question or objective. 
• Contributions to the Field: Discuss the overall contribution of your literature review to the existing knowledge in the field. 
• Implications and Applications: Explore the practical implications of the findings and suggest how they might impact future research or practice. 
• Recommendations for Future Research: Identify areas that require further investigation and propose potential directions for future research in the field. 
• Final Thoughts: Conclude with a final reflection on the importance of your literature review and its relevance to the broader academic community. 

Conducting a literature review

Conducting a literature review is an essential step in research that involves reviewing and analyzing existing literature on a specific topic. It’s important to know how to do a literature review effectively, so here are the steps to follow: 1  

Choose a Topic and Define the Research Question:

• Select a topic that is relevant to your field of study. 
• Clearly define your research question or objective. Determine what specific aspect of the topic do you want to explore? 

Decide on the Scope of Your Review:

• Determine the timeframe for your literature review. Are you focusing on recent developments, or do you want a historical overview? 
• Consider the geographical scope. Is your review global, or are you focusing on a specific region? 
• Define the inclusion and exclusion criteria. What types of sources will you include? Are there specific types of studies or publications you will exclude? 

Select Databases for Searches:

• Identify relevant databases for your field. Examples include PubMed, IEEE Xplore, Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar. 
• Consider searching in library catalogs, institutional repositories, and specialized databases related to your topic. 

Conduct Searches and Keep Track:

• Develop a systematic search strategy using keywords, Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT), and other search techniques. 
• Record and document your search strategy for transparency and replicability. 
• Keep track of the articles, including publication details, abstracts, and links. Use citation management tools like EndNote, Zotero, or Mendeley to organize your references. 

Review the Literature:

• Evaluate the relevance and quality of each source. Consider the methodology, sample size, and results of studies. 
• Organize the literature by themes or key concepts. Identify patterns, trends, and gaps in the existing research. 
• Summarize key findings and arguments from each source. Compare and contrast different perspectives. 
• Identify areas where there is a consensus in the literature and where there are conflicting opinions. 
• Provide critical analysis and synthesis of the literature. What are the strengths and weaknesses of existing research? 

Organize and Write Your Literature Review:

• Literature review outline should be based on themes, chronological order, or methodological approaches. 
• Write a clear and coherent narrative that synthesizes the information gathered. 
• Use proper citations for each source and ensure consistency in your citation style (APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.). 
• Conclude your literature review by summarizing key findings, identifying gaps, and suggesting areas for future research. 

The literature review sample and detailed advice on writing and conducting a review will help you produce a well-structured report. But remember that a literature review is an ongoing process, and it may be necessary to revisit and update it as your research progresses. 

Frequently asked questions

A literature review is a critical and comprehensive analysis of existing literature (published and unpublished works) on a specific topic or research question and provides a synthesis of the current state of knowledge in a particular field. A well-conducted literature review is crucial for researchers to build upon existing knowledge, avoid duplication of efforts, and contribute to the advancement of their field. It also helps researchers situate their work within a broader context and facilitates the development of a sound theoretical and conceptual framework for their studies.

Literature review is a crucial component of research writing, providing a solid background for a research paper’s investigation. The aim is to keep professionals up to date by providing an understanding of ongoing developments within a specific field, including research methods, and experimental techniques used in that field, and present that knowledge in the form of a written report. Also, the depth and breadth of the literature review emphasizes the credibility of the scholar in his or her field.  

Before writing a literature review, it’s essential to undertake several preparatory steps to ensure that your review is well-researched, organized, and focused. This includes choosing a topic of general interest to you and doing exploratory research on that topic, writing an annotated bibliography, and noting major points, especially those that relate to the position you have taken on the topic. 

Literature reviews and academic research papers are essential components of scholarly work but serve different purposes within the academic realm. 3 A literature review aims to provide a foundation for understanding the current state of research on a particular topic, identify gaps or controversies, and lay the groundwork for future research. Therefore, it draws heavily from existing academic sources, including books, journal articles, and other scholarly publications. In contrast, an academic research paper aims to present new knowledge, contribute to the academic discourse, and advance the understanding of a specific research question. Therefore, it involves a mix of existing literature (in the introduction and literature review sections) and original data or findings obtained through research methods. 

Literature reviews are essential components of academic and research papers, and various strategies can be employed to conduct them effectively. If you want to know how to write a literature review for a research paper, here are four common approaches that are often used by researchers.  Chronological Review: This strategy involves organizing the literature based on the chronological order of publication. It helps to trace the development of a topic over time, showing how ideas, theories, and research have evolved.  Thematic Review: Thematic reviews focus on identifying and analyzing themes or topics that cut across different studies. Instead of organizing the literature chronologically, it is grouped by key themes or concepts, allowing for a comprehensive exploration of various aspects of the topic.  Methodological Review: This strategy involves organizing the literature based on the research methods employed in different studies. It helps to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of various methodologies and allows the reader to evaluate the reliability and validity of the research findings.  Theoretical Review: A theoretical review examines the literature based on the theoretical frameworks used in different studies. This approach helps to identify the key theories that have been applied to the topic and assess their contributions to the understanding of the subject.  It’s important to note that these strategies are not mutually exclusive, and a literature review may combine elements of more than one approach. The choice of strategy depends on the research question, the nature of the literature available, and the goals of the review. Additionally, other strategies, such as integrative reviews or systematic reviews, may be employed depending on the specific requirements of the research.

The literature review format can vary depending on the specific publication guidelines. However, there are some common elements and structures that are often followed. Here is a general guideline for the format of a literature review:  Introduction:   Provide an overview of the topic.  Define the scope and purpose of the literature review.  State the research question or objective.  Body:   Organize the literature by themes, concepts, or chronology.  Critically analyze and evaluate each source.  Discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the studies.  Highlight any methodological limitations or biases.  Identify patterns, connections, or contradictions in the existing research.  Conclusion:   Summarize the key points discussed in the literature review.  Highlight the research gap.  Address the research question or objective stated in the introduction.  Highlight the contributions of the review and suggest directions for future research.

Both annotated bibliographies and literature reviews involve the examination of scholarly sources. While annotated bibliographies focus on individual sources with brief annotations, literature reviews provide a more in-depth, integrated, and comprehensive analysis of existing literature on a specific topic. The key differences are as follows: 

References 

• Denney, A. S., & Tewksbury, R. (2013). How to write a literature review.  Journal of criminal justice education ,  24 (2), 218-234. 
• Pan, M. L. (2016).  Preparing literature reviews: Qualitative and quantitative approaches . Taylor & Francis. 
• Cantero, C. (2019). How to write a literature review.  San José State University Writing Center . 

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Conducting a literature review: why do a literature review, why do a literature review.

• How To Find "The Literature"
• Found it -- Now What?

Besides the obvious reason for students -- because it is assigned! -- a literature review helps you explore the research that has come before you, to see how your research question has (or has not) already been addressed.

You identify:

• core research in the field
• experts in the subject area
• methodology you may want to use (or avoid)
• gaps in knowledge -- or where your research would fit in

It Also Helps You:

• Publish and share your findings
• Justify requests for grants and other funding
• Identify best practices to inform practice
• Set wider context for a program evaluation
• Compile information to support community organizing

Great brief overview, from NCSU

Want To Know More?

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• URL: https://guides.lib.berkeley.edu/litreview

Libraries | Research Guides

Literature reviews, what is a literature review, learning more about how to do a literature review.

• Planning the Review
• The Research Question
• Choosing Where to Search
• Organizing the Review
• Writing the Review

A literature review is a review and synthesis of existing research on a topic or research question. A literature review is meant to analyze the scholarly literature, make connections across writings and identify strengths, weaknesses, trends, and missing conversations. A literature review should address different aspects of a topic as it relates to your research question. A literature review goes beyond a description or summary of the literature you have read. 

• Sage Research Methods Core Collection This link opens in a new window SAGE Research Methods supports research at all levels by providing material to guide users through every step of the research process. SAGE Research Methods is the ultimate methods library with more than 1000 books, reference works, journal articles, and instructional videos by world-leading academics from across the social sciences, including the largest collection of qualitative methods books available online from any scholarly publisher. – Publisher

• Next: Planning the Review >>
• Last Updated: May 2, 2024 10:39 AM
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Literature Review: Purpose of a Literature Review

• Literature Review
• Purpose of a Literature Review
• Work in Progress
• Compiling & Writing
• Books, Articles, & Web Pages
• Types of Literature Reviews
• Departmental Differences
• Citation Styles & Plagiarism
• Know the Difference! Systematic Review vs. Literature Review

The purpose of a literature review is to:

• Provide a foundation of knowledge on a topic
• Identify areas of prior scholarship to prevent duplication and give credit to other researchers
• Identify inconstancies: gaps in research, conflicts in previous studies, open questions left from other research
• Identify the need for additional research (justifying your research)
• Identify the relationship of works in the context of their contribution to the topic and other works
• Place your own research within the context of existing literature, making a case for why further study is needed.

Videos & Tutorials

VIDEO: What is the role of a literature review in research? What's it mean to "review" the literature? Get the big picture of what to expect as part of the process. This video is published under a Creative Commons 3.0 BY-NC-SA US license. License, credits, and contact information can be found here: https://www.lib.ncsu.edu/tutorials/litreview/

Elements in a Literature Review

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What Is A Literature Review?

A plain-language explainer (with examples).

By:  Derek Jansen (MBA) & Kerryn Warren (PhD) | June 2020 (Updated May 2023)

If you’re faced with writing a dissertation or thesis, chances are you’ve encountered the term “literature review” . If you’re on this page, you’re probably not 100% what the literature review is all about. The good news is that you’ve come to the right place.

Literature Review 101

• What (exactly) is a literature review
• What’s the purpose of the literature review chapter
• How to find high-quality resources
• How to structure your literature review chapter
• Example of an actual literature review

What is a literature review?

The word “literature review” can refer to two related things that are part of the broader literature review process. The first is the task of  reviewing the literature  – i.e. sourcing and reading through the existing research relating to your research topic. The second is the  actual chapter  that you write up in your dissertation, thesis or research project. Let’s look at each of them:

Reviewing the literature

The first step of any literature review is to hunt down and  read through the existing research  that’s relevant to your research topic. To do this, you’ll use a combination of tools (we’ll discuss some of these later) to find journal articles, books, ebooks, research reports, dissertations, theses and any other credible sources of information that relate to your topic. You’ll then  summarise and catalogue these  for easy reference when you write up your literature review chapter. 

The literature review chapter

The second step of the literature review is to write the actual literature review chapter (this is usually the second chapter in a typical dissertation or thesis structure ). At the simplest level, the literature review chapter is an  overview of the key literature  that’s relevant to your research topic. This chapter should provide a smooth-flowing discussion of what research has already been done, what is known, what is unknown and what is contested in relation to your research topic. So, you can think of it as an  integrated review of the state of knowledge  around your research topic. 

What’s the purpose of a literature review?

The literature review chapter has a few important functions within your dissertation, thesis or research project. Let’s take a look at these:

Purpose #1 – Demonstrate your topic knowledge

The first function of the literature review chapter is, quite simply, to show the reader (or marker) that you  know what you’re talking about . In other words, a good literature review chapter demonstrates that you’ve read the relevant existing research and understand what’s going on – who’s said what, what’s agreed upon, disagreed upon and so on. This needs to be  more than just a summary  of who said what – it needs to integrate the existing research to  show how it all fits together  and what’s missing (which leads us to purpose #2, next). 

Purpose #2 – Reveal the research gap that you’ll fill

The second function of the literature review chapter is to  show what’s currently missing  from the existing research, to lay the foundation for your own research topic. In other words, your literature review chapter needs to show that there are currently “missing pieces” in terms of the bigger puzzle, and that  your study will fill one of those research gaps . By doing this, you are showing that your research topic is original and will help contribute to the body of knowledge. In other words, the literature review helps justify your research topic.  

Purpose #3 – Lay the foundation for your conceptual framework

The third function of the literature review is to form the  basis for a conceptual framework . Not every research topic will necessarily have a conceptual framework, but if your topic does require one, it needs to be rooted in your literature review. 

For example, let’s say your research aims to identify the drivers of a certain outcome – the factors which contribute to burnout in office workers. In this case, you’d likely develop a conceptual framework which details the potential factors (e.g. long hours, excessive stress, etc), as well as the outcome (burnout). Those factors would need to emerge from the literature review chapter – they can’t just come from your gut! 

So, in this case, the literature review chapter would uncover each of the potential factors (based on previous studies about burnout), which would then be modelled into a framework. 

Purpose #4 – To inform your methodology

The fourth function of the literature review is to  inform the choice of methodology  for your own research. As we’ve  discussed on the Grad Coach blog , your choice of methodology will be heavily influenced by your research aims, objectives and questions . Given that you’ll be reviewing studies covering a topic close to yours, it makes sense that you could learn a lot from their (well-considered) methodologies.

So, when you’re reviewing the literature, you’ll need to  pay close attention to the research design , methodology and methods used in similar studies, and use these to inform your methodology. Quite often, you’ll be able to  “borrow” from previous studies . This is especially true for quantitative studies , as you can use previously tried and tested measures and scales. 

How do I find articles for my literature review?

Finding quality journal articles is essential to crafting a rock-solid literature review. As you probably already know, not all research is created equally, and so you need to make sure that your literature review is  built on credible research . 

We could write an entire post on how to find quality literature (actually, we have ), but a good starting point is Google Scholar . Google Scholar is essentially the academic equivalent of Google, using Google’s powerful search capabilities to find relevant journal articles and reports. It certainly doesn’t cover every possible resource, but it’s a very useful way to get started on your literature review journey, as it will very quickly give you a good indication of what the  most popular pieces of research  are in your field.

One downside of Google Scholar is that it’s merely a search engine – that is, it lists the articles, but oftentimes  it doesn’t host the articles . So you’ll often hit a paywall when clicking through to journal websites. 

Thankfully, your university should provide you with access to their library, so you can find the article titles using Google Scholar and then search for them by name in your university’s online library. Your university may also provide you with access to  ResearchGate , which is another great source for existing research. 

Remember, the correct search keywords will be super important to get the right information from the start. So, pay close attention to the keywords used in the journal articles you read and use those keywords to search for more articles. If you can’t find a spoon in the kitchen, you haven’t looked in the right drawer. 

Need a helping hand?

How should I structure my literature review?

Unfortunately, there’s no generic universal answer for this one. The structure of your literature review will depend largely on your topic area and your research aims and objectives.

You could potentially structure your literature review chapter according to theme, group, variables , chronologically or per concepts in your field of research. We explain the main approaches to structuring your literature review here . You can also download a copy of our free literature review template to help you establish an initial structure.

In general, it’s also a good idea to start wide (i.e. the big-picture-level) and then narrow down, ending your literature review close to your research questions . However, there’s no universal one “right way” to structure your literature review. The most important thing is not to discuss your sources one after the other like a list – as we touched on earlier, your literature review needs to synthesise the research , not summarise it .

Ultimately, you need to craft your literature review so that it conveys the most important information effectively – it needs to tell a logical story in a digestible way. It’s no use starting off with highly technical terms and then only explaining what these terms mean later. Always assume your reader is not a subject matter expert and hold their hand through a journe y of the literature while keeping the functions of the literature review chapter (which we discussed earlier) front of mind.

Example of a literature review

In the video below, we walk you through a high-quality literature review from a dissertation that earned full distinction. This will give you a clearer view of what a strong literature review looks like in practice and hopefully provide some inspiration for your own. 

Wrapping Up

In this post, we’ve (hopefully) answered the question, “ what is a literature review? “. We’ve also considered the purpose and functions of the literature review, as well as how to find literature and how to structure the literature review chapter. If you’re keen to learn more, check out the literature review section of the Grad Coach blog , as well as our detailed video post covering how to write a literature review . 

Psst… there’s more!

This post is an extract from our bestselling short course, Literature Review Bootcamp . If you want to work smart, you don't want to miss this .

You Might Also Like:

16 Comments

Thanks for this review. It narrates what’s not been taught as tutors are always in a early to finish their classes.

Thanks for the kind words, Becky. Good luck with your literature review 🙂

This website is amazing, it really helps break everything down. Thank you, I would have been lost without it.

This is review is amazing. I benefited from it a lot and hope others visiting this website will benefit too.

Timothy T. Chol [email protected]

Thank you very much for the guiding in literature review I learn and benefited a lot this make my journey smooth I’ll recommend this site to my friends

This was so useful. Thank you so much.

Hi, Concept was explained nicely by both of you. Thanks a lot for sharing it. It will surely help research scholars to start their Research Journey.

The review is really helpful to me especially during this period of covid-19 pandemic when most universities in my country only offer online classes. Great stuff

Great Brief Explanation, thanks

So helpful to me as a student

GradCoach is a fantastic site with brilliant and modern minds behind it.. I spent weeks decoding the substantial academic Jargon and grounding my initial steps on the research process, which could be shortened to a couple of days through the Gradcoach. Thanks again!

This is an amazing talk. I paved way for myself as a researcher. Thank you GradCoach!

Well-presented overview of the literature!

This was brilliant. So clear. Thank you

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1.2: Why Read and Write About Literature?

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• Heather Ringo & Athena Kashyap
• City College of San Francisco via ASCCC Open Educational Resources Initiative

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Why Read Literature?

In the age of memes, Twitter, Youtube, and streaming television services, literature might seem like a relic of the past. Indeed, fewer people are reading literature than ever. According to an article published in the Washington Post, "in 2015, 43 percent of adults read at least one work of literature in the previous year. That's the lowest percentage in any year since NEA surveys began tracking r eading and arts participation in 1982 when the literature reading rate was 57 percent" (Ingraham). If the decline of literature-reading in adults isn't the death knoll of literature, the decline in teenagers might be. According to NPR, in a recently conducted poll, "nearly half of 17-year-olds say they read for pleasure no more than one or two times a year — if that" ( Ludden). How many books have you read this year? How many poems? Indeed, in a world of Netflix and TikTok, it is difficult for stinky old books to compete.

But this is hardly a new problem if it is even a problem at all.

Consider the words of master-of-clapbacks Sir Philip Sydney, #throwback to the late 1500s and early 1600s. After the invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg, many people saw the proliferation of novels and plays as morally poisonous. Talking heads of the time argued that poetry and literature were a waste of time, or "fake news" as some might call it today. They questioned the purpose of fictional works. Poet and diplomat Sir Philip Sydney responded with a scathing literary smack-down to the haters. He argued the poet has a special talent to create new, beautiful worlds that no other professional can claim, and that those who question the purpose of poetry have "earth-creeping" minds and are "momes" (AKA fools, blockheads). He further stated that he hopes these momes never get "favor" (love) because they don't know how to write sonnets to woo their love interests and that they don't get an epitaph on their graves, because that is the poet's job. Ouch, harsh.

In today's world, it seems that Sidney would probably consider most people momes. After all, very few of us read or appreciate poetry regularly. Most of our reading and writing is done on the internet: in the forms of Facebook posts, memes, tweets, snapchats, Tik Tok videos, and viral news. In response to this trend, many famous authors and literary critics have stated that literature is dead (Breuklander). Indeed, if we define literature as only printed novels and poetry, perhaps it is, for all intents and purposes, dead. But... what if we were to define literature as Sidney did--a creation made from the "zodiac of [the poet's] own wit," improving upon nature itself through invention? Might some of today's internet media fall into that definition?

What if literature isn't dead after all...but thriving more than ever? What if we radically reconsider the parameters of literature? What if literature has just evolved from sonnets and novels to tweets and memes? In this textbook, we will explore how technology has blurred the lines between Literature and literature. We will question and explore the "usefulness" of literature in a world that encourages split-second attention spans. We will see how literature has solved problems in the past, and explore how it can be used to solve problems in the future. Medicine, a threat to the status quo, entertainment, activism, or boring stinky old piles of pages: what is literature to you?

No matter the reader, no matter the writer, no matter the genre, literature is a cultural relic, a manifestation of the human experience. Thus, it can teach us things about our society and about ourselves we might not be able to learn from other types of media. It enables us to experience and discuss ideas from the safety of our armchairs, to project ourselves onto characters and environments, to explore worlds and lived experiences we otherwise would never have the opportunity to experience.

Additionally, data suggests reading literature benefits us in profound ways.

Benefits of Literature

Studies show reading literature may help

• promote empathy and social skills (Castano and Kidd)
• alleviate symptoms of depression (Billington et al.)
• business leaders succeed (Coleman)
• prevent dementia by stimulating the mind (Thorpe)

These are just a few of the studied benefits of literature. As we continue to gain increasing complexity in terms of measuring brain activity and developing other tools to measure brain function, scientists may find more benefits.

Why Write About Literature?

You might be asking yourself why you should bother writing about something you've read. After all, isn't creative writing more fun, journalistic writing more interesting, and technical writing more useful? Maybe, but consider this: writing about literature will let you exercise your critical thinking skills like no other style of writing will. Even if you don't want to pursue a career involving literature, you can use critical thinking and analysis in any field from philosophy to business to physics. More than being able to think critically, you need to be able to express those thoughts in a coherent fashion. Writing about literature will allow you to practice this invaluable communication skill.

“Okay,” you say, “that's all good and well. But hasn't anything I have to say about a story already been said? So what's the point, then?” When you write your paper, you might end up saying something that has been discussed, argued over, or proposed by literary critics and students alike. However, when you write something, you present a point of view through your unique voice. Even if something has been said about a book many times, you can add something new to that discussion. Perhaps you can state an idea in simpler terms, or you want to disagree with a popular viewpoint. Even if you're writing to an instructor's prompt, your voice will make the paper unique.

How Do I Start?

To many of us, writing a response to something we've had to read sounds more than a little daunting. There are so many things to examine and analyze in a book, play, or poem. But before you decide that writing about writing just isn't for you, think about this--you already have many of the skills you need to write a good response to literature.

How many times have you heard about someone who watched a horror movie and yelled, “Don't go into the basement!” at the potential victim. Or maybe you've listened to a song and thought about how the lyrics described your life almost perfectly. Perhaps you like to jump up and cheer for your favorite team even if you're watching the game from home. Each time you do one of these things, you are responding to something you've seen or heard. And when you read a book, you likely do the same thing. Have you ever read anything and sympathized with or hated a character? If so, you've already taken your first step in responding to literature.

However, the next steps are a little harder. You need to be able to put your response into writing so other people can understand why you believe one thing or another about a book, play, or poem. In addition, writing an essay based on how a story makes you think or feel is only one of many ways to respond to what you read. In order to write a strong paper, you will need to examine a text both subjectively and objectively . If you only write about your personal reaction to a book, there won't be much to support your argument except your word alone. Thus, you will need to use some facts from the text to support your argument. Rather than trying to evaluate every nuance of a text all at once, you should start with the basics: character and plot. From there, you can examine the theme of the work and then move on to the finer points such as the writing itself. For instance, when determining how you want to analyze a piece of literature, you might want to ask yourself the following series of questions:

• Who are the characters?
• What are they doing?
• Why and how are they doing it?
• Do their actions relate to any broader topics or issues?
• How does the author convey this through their writing?

Questions to consider when writing about literature

Of course, answering these questions will only start your analysis. However, if you can answer them, you will have a strong grasp of the basic elements of the story. From there, you can go on to more specific questions, such as, “How does symbolism help illustrate the theme?” or “What does the author say about the relationships between characters through the dialogue he gives them?” However, before you can start answering detailed questions like these, you should look at the basic elements of what you're reading. Some of the most common elements in a piece of literature include:

• Plot (story or play) or structure (poem)
• Symbolism and Figurative Language

As you work through each genre in this book, try to examine each of these elements in each piece of literature you read.

Optional, Supplemental Reading: Excerpt from Sir Philip Sidney's Defense of Poesy

"There is no art delivered unto mankind that has not the works of nature for his principal object, without which they could not consist, and on which they so depend as they become actors and players, as it were, of what nature will have set forth. So doth the astronomer look upon the stars, and, by that he sees, set down what order nature has taken therein. So do the geometrician and arithmetician in their divers sorts of quantities. So doth the musician in times tell you which by nature agree, which not. The natural philosopher thereon has his name, and the moral philosopher stands upon the natural virtues, vices, and passions of man; and “follow nature,” says he, “therein, and thou shalt not err.” The lawyer says what men have determined, the historian what men have done. The grammarian speaks only of the rules of speech, and the rhetorician and logician, considering what in nature will soonest prove and persuade, thereon give artificial rules, which still are compassed within the circle of a question, according to the proposed matter. The physician weighs the nature of man’s body, and the nature of things helpful or hurtful unto it. And the metaphysic, though it be in the second and abstract notions, and therefore be counted supernatural, yet doth he, indeed, build upon the depth of nature.

Only the poet, disdaining to be tied to any such subjection, lifted up with the vigor of his own invention, doth grow, in effect, into another nature, in making things either better than nature brings forth, or, quite anew, forms such as never were in nature, as the heroes, demi-gods, cyclops, chimeras, furies, and such like; so as he goes hand in hand with nature, not enclosed within the narrow warrant of her gifts, but freely ranging within the zodiac of his own wit. Nature never set forth the earth in so rich tapestry as divers poets have done; neither with pleasant rivers, fruitful trees, sweet-smelling flowers, nor whatsoever else may make the too-much-loved earth more lovely; her world is brazen, the poets only deliver a golden...

But if—fie of such a but!—you be born so near the dull-making cataract of Nilus, that you cannot hear the planet-like music of poetry; if you have so earth-creeping a mind that it cannot lift itself up to look to the sky of poetry, or rather, by a certain rustical disdain, will become such a mome [blockhead—ed.], as to be a Momus of poetry; then, though I will not wish unto you the ass’ ears of Midas, nor to be driven by a poet’s verses, as Bubonax was, to hang himself; nor to be rimed to death, as is said to be done in Ireland; yet thus much curse. I must send you in the behalf of all poets:—that while you live in love, and never get favor for lacking skill of a sonnet; and when you die, your memory die from the earth for want of an epitaph." -- Sir Philip Sydney

Works Cited

Billington, Josie, Dowrick, Christopher, Hamer, Andrew, Robinson, Jude and Clare Williams. An investigation into the therapeutic benefits of reading in relation to depression and well-being. Liverpool Health Inequalities Research Institute. University of Liverpool, Nov. 2010. https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/media/livacuk/iphs/web_version_therapeutic_benefits_of_reading_final_report_Mar.pdf

Breuklander, Joel. "Literature is Dead (According to Straight, White Guys at Least)." The Atlantic, 18 July 2013. Web. https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/07/literature-is-dead-according-to-straight-white-guys-at-least/277906/ Accessed 12 August 2018

Castano, Emanuele and David Kidd. "Reading Literary Fiction Improves Theory of Mind." Science. 18 Oct. 2013;342(6156):377-80.

Coleman, John. "The Benefits of Poetry for Professionals." Harvard Business Review, 2012. https://hbr.org/2012/11/the-benefits-of-poetry-for-pro

Ingraham, Christopher. "The long, steady decline of literary reading." The Washington Post, 7 Sep 2016. Web. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/09/07/the-long-steady-decline-of-literary-reading/?utm_term=.ad2fa9146ec0 Accessed 2 August 2018.

Ludden, Jennifer. "Why Aren't Teens Reading Like They Used To?" NPR. 12 May 2014. https://www.npr.org/2014/05/12/311111701/why-arent-teens-reading-like-they-used-to Accessed 02 August 2018.

Thorpe, J.R. "Why Reading Poetry Is Good For Your Brain." Bustle , 20 Apr. 2017. https://www.bustle.com/p/why-reading-poetry-is-good-for-your-brain-51884

Sidney, Sir Philip. The Defense of Poesy. The Poetry Foundation. 13 Oct. 2009. Web. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/69375/the-defence-of-poesy Accessed 2 August 2018.

Contributors and Attributions

• Why Write About Literature sections adapted from "Writing About Literature Basics" from Commonsense Composition by Crystle Bruno of San Jose State University licensed CC BY-NC 4.0

• Library Homepage

Literature Review: The What, Why and How-to Guide: Literature Reviews?

• Literature Reviews?
• Strategies to Finding Sources
• Keeping up with Research!
• Evaluating Sources & Literature Reviews
• Organizing for Writing
• Writing Literature Review
• Other Academic Writings

What is a Literature Review?

So, what is a literature review .

"A literature review is an account of what has been published on a topic by accredited scholars and researchers. In writing the literature review, your purpose is to convey to your reader what knowledge and ideas have been established on a topic, and what their strengths and weaknesses are. As a piece of writing, the literature review must be defined by a guiding concept (e.g., your research objective, the problem or issue you are discussing, or your argumentative thesis). It is not just a descriptive list of the material available or a set of summaries." - Quote from Taylor, D. (n.d)."The Literature Review: A Few Tips on Conducting it".

• Citation: "The Literature Review: A Few Tips on Conducting it"

What kinds of literature reviews are written?

Each field has a particular way to do reviews for academic research literature. In the social sciences and humanities the most common are:

• Narrative Reviews: The purpose of this type of review is to describe the current state of the research on a specific research topic and to offer a critical analysis of the literature reviewed. Studies are grouped by research/theoretical categories, and themes and trends, strengths and weaknesses, and gaps are identified. The review ends with a conclusion section that summarizes the findings regarding the state of the research of the specific study, the gaps identify and if applicable, explains how the author's research will address gaps identify in the review and expand the knowledge on the topic reviewed.
• Book review essays/ Historiographical review essays : A type of literature review typical in History and related fields, e.g., Latin American studies. For example, the Latin American Research Review explains that the purpose of this type of review is to “(1) to familiarize readers with the subject, approach, arguments, and conclusions found in a group of books whose common focus is a historical period; a country or region within Latin America; or a practice, development, or issue of interest to specialists and others; (2) to locate these books within current scholarship, critical methodologies, and approaches; and (3) to probe the relation of these new books to previous work on the subject, especially canonical texts. Unlike individual book reviews, the cluster reviews found in LARR seek to address the state of the field or discipline and not solely the works at issue.” - LARR

What are the Goals of Creating a Literature Review?

• To develop a theory or evaluate an existing theory
• To summarize the historical or existing state of a research topic
• Identify a problem in a field of research 
• Baumeister, R.F. & Leary, M.R. (1997). "Writing narrative literature reviews," Review of General Psychology , 1(3), 311-320.

When do you need to write a Literature Review?

• When writing a prospectus or a thesis/dissertation
• When writing a research paper
• When writing a grant proposal

In all these cases you need to dedicate a chapter in these works to showcase what has been written about your research topic and to point out how your own research will shed new light into a body of scholarship.

Where I can find examples of Literature Reviews?

Note:  In the humanities, even if they don't use the term "literature review", they may have a dedicated  chapter that reviewed the "critical bibliography" or they incorporated that review in the introduction or first chapter of the dissertation, book, or article.

• UCSB electronic theses and dissertations In partnership with the Graduate Division, the UC Santa Barbara Library is making available theses and dissertations produced by UCSB students. Currently included in ADRL are theses and dissertations that were originally filed electronically, starting in 2011. In future phases of ADRL, all theses and dissertations created by UCSB students may be digitized and made available.

Where to Find Standalone Literature Reviews

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Literature, the Humanities, and Humanity

(12 reviews)

Theodore L. Steinberg, SUNY Fredonia

Copyright Year: 2014

ISBN 13: 9781942341031

Publisher: Open SUNY

Language: English

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Reviewed by Danielle DeRise, Lecturer, James Madison University on 11/21/21

As other reviewers have noted, this category is hard to evaluate for this text. Steinberg sets out to accomplish a specific purpose—to encourage appreciation of literature—and does so with a finite set of texts that he has personally curated as... read more

Comprehensiveness rating: 4 see less

As other reviewers have noted, this category is hard to evaluate for this text. Steinberg sets out to accomplish a specific purpose—to encourage appreciation of literature—and does so with a finite set of texts that he has personally curated as examples of great works that deserve our cultural attention. In this way, the text is successful in achieving the author’s vision: presenting his unique interpretations of canonical works. However, it is not “comprehensive,” though the definition of that term is highly subjective in the humanities. It’s not even unanimous that “comprehensiveness” would be a valued trait for a text in this discipline. However, I do think the book would have benefited from clearly articulated rationale for why these works were chosen over others (something more concrete than being the author’s personal favorites). It might have helped, even, had the author been a bit more explicit about connections among the texts; in that way, then, he could have achieved a certain comprehensiveness in his presentation of literature dealing with some theme still relevant in today’s society.

Content Accuracy rating: 5

The author has considerable knowledge about a wide range of literary and historical periods; as such, the content is accurate and rich with detail. I wondered about his tendency to avoid citing other literary criticism. Occasionally, a theorist (e.g. Weil) was mentioned, but usually only so the author could dispel that scholar’s interpretation and offer his own. It’s obvious Steinberg has the expertise to propose his own analysis or challenge that of other scholars, but the way in which he did so was a bit didactic, at times, rather than inclusive.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 3

The chosen primary texts are timeless, as is the need for students to appreciate great works of literature within a larger context of the human experience. Therefore, much of this content is unlikely to go out of date in any problematic manner. The occasional anecdote—such as visiting a bookstore in an indoor mall—may be somewhat mysterious to students born after a certain date, though even those might retain charming appeal as artifacts of a human’s experience at the time of writing this book. However, in the micro-focus on close reading, an opportunity to make larger connections seems to have been missed. Students who don’t know why they’re supposed to love literature but who are ultimately open to the possibility would benefit from concrete examples: how does Virgil’s veiled critique of the empire resemble political discontent today? What about those “rebellious, rock-throwing mobs?” Does that remind students of anything they are seeing now? How might the struggles of George Eliot to be recognized as a reputable female author be similar to (or different from) the challenges faced by women in the corporate world today?

Clarity rating: 5

The prose is accessible, but probably more to an audience of literature professors than to undergraduate students. I see this text having been written for an audience of novice literature instructors open to hearing how they might cultivate approaches or design their syllabi. Some reviewers mentioned, and I agree, that the text might also be appreciated by adult students, i.e. learners who might have “missed” or underappreciated these classics the first time around. It’s harder to imagine this prose style “landing” with traditional undergraduate students, particularly those who might be enrolled in a humanities course to fulfill a general education requirement.

Consistency rating: 5

Late in the introduction, the author identifies his purpose: to demystify some of his favorite literary works. It is clear in every chapter that this is the spirit with which his prose is written and the primary texts are treated. Additionally, Steinberg relies on his considerable expertise to augment the literary interpretations with tidbits of biography or cultural context that would be useful additions to a humanities course. Thanks to his abundant knowledge, he successfully accomplishes these enhancements for every literary work and author in about equal measure.

Modularity rating: 4

This text seems most useful for its parts, so in one way, it is portable. An instructor could assign one chapter (or part of a chapter) in companion with the relevant primary text. On the other hand, Steinberg is self-referential—with many nods to “I’ll cover this later,” or “as we will see” (e.g. in the Austen chapter but without a hyperlink to the Eliot chapter). Consequently, aligning specific sections to one’s own course might require considerable effort in terms of explanation and presentation to students. Also, since the chapters are long, it seems they would be most appropriate broken into sections—to clarify a particularly opaque passage of The Iliad, for example. Otherwise, it’s hard to imagine today’s student managing the workload of a demanding primary text, Steinberg’s supplement, and any scholarly criticism necessary to situate the work in contemporary discussions of race, gender, class, or other relevant theoretical frameworks.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 3

From chapter to chapter, there is a logical and clear flow. However, headings, titles, and more concise transitions would have helped with readability in the chapters. A paragraph forecasting the chapter’s goals and its arrangement would have allowed readers to better anticipate the flow of content. In its current presentation, the chapters seem to loosely bounce from biography to summary to interpretation. One specific example is the Austen chapter, which would have benefited from a short paragraph—set apart from the biographical or historical content—indicating that two novels would be explicated. More information about why those were the two novels selected, and what the subsequent interpretations would cover, would have been illuminating.

Interface rating: 4

Although readers can easily navigate back and forth between chapters with no distractions or broken links, the presentation feels a bit plain. Some readers will appreciate the lack of bells and whistles, as the straightforward presentation is reminiscent of print books. On the other hand, I anticipate students—particularly first-year undergraduates—benefiting from more “clickability,” such as a division of the long chapters into shorter modules with headings, bolded titles, larger font, and other small formatting changes to enhance the visual presentation.

Grammatical Errors rating: 5

The text is polished and mostly free of grammatical, punctuation, or other mechanical errors. Apart from a few parenthetical asides that might have been removed for brevity, the book is nicely edited.

Cultural Relevance rating: 3

I share the view of some previous reviewers, of this book serving as a supplement to one or more primary texts taught in the class. If used in this way, then the lack of non-Western/non-white/non-male authors would not be as noticeable. However, if it was going to be used from cover to cover, it would benefit from an update to include more diversity of authors.

When I was teaching in an adult continuing education program, I would have found this text useful. Those students would have enjoyed Steinberg’s passion for the literature and his anecdotal style of close reading. However, I don’t know that I’d use it with traditional, 100 or 200-level undergraduates, who would likely find it cumbersome to read these lengthy chapters in addition to the primary texts. Moreover, since I emphasize theoretical frameworks that delve into conversations about culture, race, gender, and class, I’d have a hard time fitting in another lengthy assignment, especially one this focused on close reading.

Reviewed by Jessica Hall, Adjunct Instructor , East Tennessee State University on 4/21/19

This text isn't comprehensive in the sense we usually apply to textbooks for literature courses, but as the author notes in his introduction, that isn't the point. It's a very specific overview of selected texts that are commonly taught in various... read more

Comprehensiveness rating: 3 see less

This text isn't comprehensive in the sense we usually apply to textbooks for literature courses, but as the author notes in his introduction, that isn't the point. It's a very specific overview of selected texts that are commonly taught in various survey courses, and as a result would be better in a supplementary reading function. The subjects that are covered, however, are covered with an appropriate level of detail for undergrad courses.

There is no index or glossary.

The content is accurate, error-free, and unbiased.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 5

The texts that the author has chosen to cover are timeless and he has approached them from a relevant twenty-first century perspective. Literary analysis is forever evolving, so relevance is always a tricky question in our discipline, but I would have no problem giving these essays to my students without many caveats (as I am sometimes obliged to do with supplementary analysis).

This textbook is extremely clear and approachable for students (another point in its favor over much critical analysis).

The text does what the author's introduction states it will do, and all of the chapters are consistently on theme and about the same length.

Because the text deals with ten specific texts mostly separately (the Odyssey and the Aeneid are combined) in addition to a general introduction, it would be very easy to pick and choose selections to assign to students. Because it seems designed to be used as supplementary reading, the chapters are probably a bit longer than I would expect students to read with regularity in addition to the primary texts they are assigned, however.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 5

The chapters are clearly organized by chronology (date of primary text).

Interface rating: 5

The interface is clean and easy to navigate -- organized very much liked a traditional textbook.

There were no errors that I noticed.

The text is certainly not offensive in any way, but falters on the point of diversity. Of the nine authors considered, only two are women, and George Eliot is the most recent. There are no authors of color and all the authors are Western.

I would use this textbook as supplementary critical reading in survey courses, but I would be much more likely to do so if the works considered in the text were ones I assigned frequently. Unfortunately novels like Middlemarch or Bleak House aren't an option in survey courses. I do, however, particularly like the introduction to the textbook (especially the sections on the enjoyment of literature and the misconceptions about it) and would consider assigned portion of it independent of the rest of the textbook in my intro to literature course.

Reviewed by Catherine Pritchard Childress, Adjunct Professor , East Tennessee State University on 4/15/19

While this text has much to offer when considering specific pieces of literature, I wouldn't label it comprehensive. Further, apart from a Works Cited page, the author offers no glossary, index, or notes section. read more

Comprehensiveness rating: 2 see less

While this text has much to offer when considering specific pieces of literature, I wouldn't label it comprehensive. Further, apart from a Works Cited page, the author offers no glossary, index, or notes section.

Content Accuracy rating: 4

The author's treatment of his chosen novels, plays, and poems is accurate, error-free, and unbiased.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 4

The approaches to reading, understanding, and engaging with literature that are presented in this text are timeless, in my opinion. The author provides students with ways of understanding difficult text that are different from traditional approaches.

Absolutely--the text is casual and accessible in its approach--a style that I imagine would be very appealing to students.

Each chapter is uniform in style and approach.

Modularity rating: 5

This text can only be used if assigned in smaller sections as it only covers a few novels, plays, and poems.

The relevant text is clearly stated in each chapter's title. The organization is logical, clear, and direct.

I have no problem navigating through this book. It is relatively free of non-textual material, so that isn't an issue here.

I did not discover any glaring grammatical errors.

Cultural Relevance rating: 1

This book is very limited in scope. Of the ten chapters (and their corresponding authors) only two are female. No contemporary authors (of color or otherwise) are included in this book. Since this text isn't specific to a certain time period, I think this is a shortcoming on the author's part. A textbook with this wide scope could easily include a more representative group.

While I might find this text useful as supplemental reading for students, or even a secondary source for instructors, I don't find it practical for the survey courses I teach. In fact, in my experience, many of the novels are only taught at the graduate level. I can't know the author's intent, but the authors and works he includes don't lend themselves to use in any specific course. The stated goal is achieved--he does present a variety of ways for students to think about literature, but having this as the single text for any particular course seems unlikely. I would like to have seen works that most often appear in traditional anthologies, or on traditional reading list. For example, students might be better served by a discussion of Dickens' Great Expectations rather than Bleak House. Definitely a book to which I will return for my own planning, though.

Reviewed by John Brinegar, Assistant Professor, Virginia Commonwealth University on 12/5/16

Steinberg's book is comprehensive in the sense that it articulates an approach toward reading and interpreting literature and then provides several examples of that approach in action; in other words, it sets out a project and then fulfills it. No... read more

Steinberg's book is comprehensive in the sense that it articulates an approach toward reading and interpreting literature and then provides several examples of that approach in action; in other words, it sets out a project and then fulfills it. No English literature textbook with as broad an aim as this one can be comprehensive in the sense that it discusses all aspects of its subject matter. A textbook can provide an appropriate representative sample of its subject matter, however, and this is where Steinberg's book can be criticized. As other reviewers have noted, the texts that Steinberg discusses are either classical literature (the Iliad, Odyssey, and Aeneid) or British and all written before the twentieth century, and Jane Austen and George Eliot are the only female authors included. Even granting Steinberg's desire to discuss only time-tested works, the book seems poorer for including neither any American literature (and some canonical writer like Melville or Hawthorne would surely fit Steinberg's project) nor any work by an author of color. Nonetheless, Steinberg covers his chosen ground quite thoroughly.

In a field such as literary studies, it is somewhat difficult to define "accuracy"; literary interpretation is, after all, always in some degree subjective. Steinberg is as accurate as a literary critic can be expected to be: I found no incorrect quotations of literature or of critics in his book, and he hews close to prevailing strands of literary interpretation.

Steinberg's readings of individual texts, and especially his introduction on how to read and to teach literature, will remain relevant for a long time. As time passes, they will move in and out of agreement with the shifting currents of academic theories of literary interpretation, but they will be of some value as long as the texts they discuss are still read. Steinberg's introduction, emphasizing as it does close reading and attention to the words on the page, would be of value even if no one read the texts he discusses; the skills he champions are necessary prolegomena to any more specific theoretical approach. The book is most relevant to students beginning college-level study of literature, whether they are English majors or not, as it clearly and engagingly presents a theory of how to read and enjoy literature. The content is general enough (and the writing style encouraging enough) not to put off students for whom interpreting literature is not a prime interest, yet still contains enough specifics to be of use to students encountering the texts for the first time. As other reviewers have noted, the book would also be of great relevance to adult learners seeking a helpful guide to classic literature. Students encountering these texts for a second time, or in a more intensive setting (say, a seminar on Jane Austen) would likely find the book less relevant to their interpretive needs.

Steinberg writes with refreshing clarity: his prose is accessible and engaging, and he makes no attempt to sound dauntingly intellectual.

The book is certainly internally consistent; as I have already noted, it sets out a general method of reading which it then applies to various specific works. In all cases, the specific interpretations follow the general method. To the extent that Steinberg uses specific literary terminology, he is consistent in its use; however, the book is fairly free of jargon.

This book is highly modular; in fact, it is much more likely that an instructor would use part of it in a course than all of it. The introduction could be used with profit in any introduction to literary analysis: I will use it in my Introduction to the English Major course, and it would even be of use as introductory reading for a general education literature course. The chapters on individual works would be useful auxiliary readings for anyone encountering these texts for the first time, and they are self-contained enough that they can easily be read and understood in isolation.

As I have already noted, the book moves from general method to specific application. The discussions of specific works are arranged in chronological order, and when more than one text is discussed in a chapter (as in Chapter Three, which discusses the Odyssey and the Aeneid) there are clear links of subject and themes which bind the texts together. Even though the book is quite modular, the chapters flow easily from one into the next, and reading the book straight through is a pleasant experience.

This book is freer of typographical errors than many printed books are. There are no interface issues with the PDF, which I have read all of; a quick look at the ePub text does not reveal any issues either.

As with the typography, the grammar is excellent.

Cultural Relevance rating: 2

The cultural relevance of Steinberg's text is problematic. While his overall premise (that reading literature should be enjoyable, and that close reading techniques can help make it so) is neither insensitive nor offensive, his choice of literary examples could be considered so. As mentioned earlier, the texts discussed are all either classical or British and all written before 1873. In addition, only two female writers are included, and no writers of color are included at all: this gives a narrower view of English literature than is necessary or, perhaps, justified. The chief problem, in my view, is that the selection of texts implies that, while reading literature should yield enjoyment, only the works of white British authors are really capable of doing so. Steinberg certainly does not say this, and I am sure he does not think it either; however, a wider variety of authors would help to show the breadth of enjoyment that literature can offer.

This is a well-written and engaging book that will be of real use to students embarking on the project of reading and interpreting literature. While not suited (nor intended) for use as a course textbook, it presents a valuable introduction to close reading and enlightening readings of various canonical literary texts.

Reviewed by Catherine Loomis, Professor of English and Women's Studies, University of New Orleans on 12/5/16

The author does not claim the book is comprehensive, and in fact he draws attention to the limits of its chapter topics. The book is comprehensive in the sense that it marshals many reasons to study literature, but the author chooses to focus on... read more

The author does not claim the book is comprehensive, and in fact he draws attention to the limits of its chapter topics. The book is comprehensive in the sense that it marshals many reasons to study literature, but the author chooses to focus on a few favorite works to illustrate those reasons. There is evidence that the author's knowledge of the field is comprehensive, but the book itself encourages readers to make their own efforts to garner comprehensive knowledge of English literature.

The author is direct and clear about his biases toward certain periods, genres, and authors, and justifies those biases. There are several typos in the book, some of them problematic. I found the plot summaries and analyses to be accurate and error-free. You might want to be a little kinder to shepherds on page 67 (Shakespeare's Corin is actually a very wise man). You might want to give bibliomancy a name on page 68.

The author discusses several canonical works that we will continue to teach for several hundred years, but his anecdotes and analogies will become obsolete more quickly. The dated material will be easy to identify and replace; the surveys of critical responses to the works can be easily supplemented as new critical studies become available.

The text seems aimed at advanced placement high school students, college students who are not majoring in English but are taking a literature class, and adult learners who would like to know more about English literature. This audience will have no trouble understanding the author's clear and logical prose. Definitions are deftly and consistently offered, and there is no lit-crit jargon used.

The book's purpose is clear from the introduction forward, and the author's argument about the value of literature develops clearly and logically with each chapter. There is a consistent habit of using well-chosen examples, and a sensible and repeated structure in each chapter, making it possible for students to read the chapters over the course of the semester without losing sight of the pattern.

The chapters can easily be read individually and in any order, but there is a welcome tendency to recall earlier chapters in brief, relevant ways.

The works are organized chronologically, and the author draws attention to artistic and technical developments that demonstrate how the later works evolve from the earlier ones.

No noticeable distractions. The layout, in fact, is quite nicely done.

Grammatical Errors rating: 3

There are errors, although they seem inadvertent. On page 20, in line 11 of the quoted poem, "wen" should be "went." On page 82, the number of Shakespeare's sonnets is incorrect: it's 154. On page 84, ste-dame should be step-dame, and three-no should be three-note. There is a lay/lie error on page 95. On page 119, beards should not be capitalized. On page 131, elast should be least. One page 132, I'the storm should be i' the storm (lower case i). The opening sentence of Chapter 6 should end with a question mark. On page 150 in the last paragraph, I think "to" should be "too," but I may be misreading the sentence. On page 157, appear should be appeal. On page 193, paragraph 2, should "there" be "these"? In the chapter on _Middlemarch_, George Eliot's real name should be spelled correctly throughout: it's Mary Ann Evans. On page 224, the title of _The Iliad_ is inconsistently italicized.

Cultural Relevance rating: 4

This book is of relevance to students of the humanities. It covers a period of western history when most writers were male and white, but the author takes the time to explain why this is so and to offer ways in to these poems, plays, and novels for all readers.

The anecdotes become a bit wearing by the middle of the text. The analogies are good, and the gentle, positive tone will reassure readers who are new to literature. The frequent demonstrations of how to do a close reading provide a valuable model for readers, and the thoughtful efforts to link the works through cross-references make the book a coherent study. The conversational tone and the author's obvious love of the material make this an accessible, readable text for non-specialist audiences.

Reviewed by Peter Olson, Lecturer, UW-Stout on 8/21/16

Theodore L. Steinberg’s /Literature, the Humanities, and Humanity/ (Open SUNY Textbooks 2013), attempts to synthesize a discourse on the humanities and survey of well-known Western literary examples from Homer’s /The Iliad/ to George Eliot’s... read more

Theodore L. Steinberg’s /Literature, the Humanities, and Humanity/ (Open SUNY Textbooks 2013), attempts to synthesize a discourse on the humanities and survey of well-known Western literary examples from Homer’s /The Iliad/ to George Eliot’s /Middlemarch/. There are ten chapters in all, with nine devoted to literary discussions of specific literary works. Except for chapter 3, which contrasts Homer’s /The Odyssey/ and Virgil’s /The Aeneid/; due to the historical relatedness of the two works, each chapter discusses a single author in chronological order. Following two chapters on Homer and Virgil, Steinberg offers two chapters on English Renaissance literary works by Sir Philip Sidney (/Astrophel/ and /Stella/) and Shakespeare (/As You Like It/ and /Antony and Cleopatra/), and two chapters on Augustan authors, Alexander Pope (“The Rape of the Lock”) and Henry Fielding (/Joseph Andrews/). The last three chapters offer discussions of Jane Austen (/Sense and Sensibility/ and /Pride and Prejudice/), Charles Dickens (/Bleak House/), and George Eliot’s /Middlemarch/.

Steinberg’s “Introduction” (chapter 1) situates his study of these specific authors by foregrounding his concern for teaching literature within the purview of the humanities, which he recognizes as challenged by the emphasis in education on STEM and socioeconomics that are increasingly instrumental in character. He traces the humanities to classical beginnings, to the Renaissance, and to the Enlightenment. He briefly reminds readers that part of the task of the humanities is to recognize the ironic lack of inclusiveness in historical concepts of the Enlightenment. He recognizes that the critique of the Enlightenment is implicit in the inherently skeptical nature of literature. The reading of literature then, Steinberg suggests, becomes a central act of gaining a measure of critical autonomy. Steinberg is aware, of course, that the place of reading literature in society has changed, though he doesn’t delve into the cultural reasons for this issue deeply. A few of the reasons for a decline in literary interest, he offers, ironically involve commercial and technological changes that are themselves part of the impetus for open textbooks. The open text seems to provide a space for a renewal of literary study for the contemporary reader. In this case, one finds a text that demonstrates an interdisciplinary survey of literature that makes a case for humanistic study.

In his chapter on Shakespeare (chapter 5), for example, Steinberg questions how and why Shakespeare is taught, how Shakespeare might be seen as an interdisciplinary study across various departments in order to rethink the way Shakespeare’s poems and dramatic plays have been institutionalized. This cross-disciplinary concern brings in historical data about political history, poetics, linguistics and dialect, dramatic theory, and staging design. In Steinberg’s discussion of Alexander Pope’s “The Rape of the Lock” the frame of the discussion seeks to contextualize the text by close reading Pope’s discourse in Augustan rhetoric. In the chapter on Fielding, Steinberg shows how the emergence of the genre of the novel can be seen in the context of an emerging bourgeois literacy allusively familiar with a wide range of literature. Steinberg reminds us that the genre of the novel must be understood in the aesthetic context that is marked by literary distinctions between “romance” and the novel, and further in terms of the various perspectives of comedy that date to classical texts.

Steinberg gives a note on citations. Citations of verse are marked by line number. Less convenient, prose citations refer to chapter number. Readers of primary texts, say of Dickens or Austen, will need to flip pages. The Selected Bibliography lists recommended translations of Homer and Virgil. Readers will have to decide upon editions of the other authors collected in Literature, the Humanities, and Humanity. Steinberg stresses the interpretive flexibility of literary study and the need for well-supported critical readings.

Steinberg’s key point is that he sees literature as essential to an understanding of the humanities. Since his subject matter in chapters 2-10 pertains to literary efforts spanning two millennia it would appear that this material has survived the intellectual history throughout the development of the liberal arts. Readers should bear in mind that Steinberg’s literary discussions demonstrate his thesis about the value of literature for the humanities, and that he refers to primary texts that readers will acquire separately. One might interpret that question of relevance and longevity, a question related to the survival of canonical literature, in terms of the literary-critical field. The book tangentially or indirectly implies developments in literary criticism, but the text is situated in the appreciation of canonical literature rather than in opening questions of ideology and a metacritique of the canon itself.

The text is lucid and perspicuous. Steinberg’s prose is a pleasure to read and the book seems to be targeted to undergraduates, teachers, and adult life-long learners. Steinberg write that “authors want to communicate to their readers, so they are not likely to hide or disguise what they are saying, but reading literature also requires some training and some practice. Good writers use language very carefully, and readers must learn how to be sensitive to that language…” (6-7). This point represents Steinberg’s own values for writing and shows his assumption that reading is interactive and requires a transaction. If writing must be clear, which this book is, there is also a need for readers to meet the writing in the space of the text.

Consistency rating: 4

Steinberg’s title alludes to the binary nature of his purpose: to rhetorically appeal to readers about the value of literature and to exemplify his approach to literary study. Teachers considering this text will notice that Steinberg’s mode of literary explication and exegesis may be at once consistent with his philosophy of the humanities and at the same time divergent from literary-critical foci they wish to foreground.

Steinberg’s text seems most interesting as a unified demonstration of his approach to literary study as part of an overall view of teaching in the humanities. On the other hand, the parts of the text—the introduction on the value and aesthetics of literature, for example, or the various chapters on particular authors and works—may conceivably be used separately as modules in readings courses, or as supporting articles in literary surveys. Again, the reading level is clear enough for undergraduate general education courses.

Following the front matter and the table of contents, the book is divided between an introduction that presents a thesis advocating literary study as central to the humanities, and situates the analytical chapters, which comprise 90% of the book, such that overall the text demonstrates an approach to literary analysis workable for general readers.

The text I have reviewed is offered as a PDF file or and ePub file.

The text’s language and presentation is immaculate.

The text’s central claim that literary study is culturally relevant to the humanities in general (or the liberal arts) could be qualified by reminding readers that the texts under discussion are canonical texts of Western literature. In the Introduction Steinberg reminds us that interpretation is perspectival and the history of Western literary development traces an increasing recognition of class, gender, and ethnic differences. Some of these issues reappear in individual chapters on specific authors and texts, especially chapters on Pope, Austen, and Eliot, which consider the gender roles of readers of literature. Steinberg also delves into aspects of social class in several chapters: the role of theater in Shakespeare’s London, for example, or the provincial social world of Eliot’s /Middlemarch/.

Steinberg’s larger purpose is to offer a model for teaching and learning literature by grounding the centrality of literary study in a contemporary sense of the (potential loss of) value of the humanities. Part of Steinberg’s effort is to reconnect readers with “Literature” and “Poetry.” Much of what motivates his book is that a public disconnected from literature and poetry becomes disconnected with humanity and the attendant interests in human rights, ethics, and civics. Part of his solution lies in the way we can rethink reading by stressing aesthetic enjoyment of texts, demystifying literature, allowing for a more openness to interpretation, and by conveying a deeper interest in literary language.

Reviewed by Zara Torlone, Professor of Classics, Miami University of Ohio on 8/21/16

At the time when study of the Humanities in general and literature in particular is under constant attack, this book pursues a noble goal of insisting that reading of literature is an important and necessary component of education. Since... read more

At the time when study of the Humanities in general and literature in particular is under constant attack, this book pursues a noble goal of insisting that reading of literature is an important and necessary component of education. Since Steinberg’s book argues that reader’s enjoyment is the main purpose of the study of literature, the concept of “comprehensiveness” does not seem to be an applicable criterion in evaluation of this book. Rather, from the onset of the book Steinberg aims to establish the artificiality of the long standing distinction between literature and fiction and to explain that, while literature always stands in need of interpretation, there are no hidden meanings in most works of literature so that anybody can enjoy reading. His primary audience seems to be readers beyond their college years, but even so, some chapters of the book can be used to introduce the inexperienced reader at college level to such complicated poetic works as the "Iliad" and the "Aeneid", teaching of which always presents a challenge in the classroom. Although in his theoretical part of the book Steinberg dwells very little on theoretical approaches to literature such as formalism or post-structuralism, he offers comprehensive and helpful readings of important canonical texts of the Western canon ranging from Homer to many examples taken from British literature. The choice of these texts for case studies is never fully explained and it can be argued that it is not broad enough (for example no American, French, German, or Russian texts are included, texts that are considered influential for the formation of the Western canon if one indeed accepts the existence of it). Instead, this textbook draws heavily on the examples from English literature of the 18th and 19th centuries. However, the nature and the challenge of this kind of textbooks is that none of them can claim exhaustive approach: they are supposed only to whet the appetite of the reader and Steinberg’s book accomplishes that.

This book adequately addresses existing interpretations of the literary works chosen as its case studies. One might agree or disagree with certain close readings provided by Steinberg, but overall each case study covers the main questions arising in the classroom discussions for every literary work chosen. Steinberg does not reference any other secondary sources and because of that the reader does not see any other perspective but his. While it obviously limits his arguments, Steinberg provides convincing textual evidence from the primary sources which give the reader a taste of the literary work under discussion.

This book can be used as a valuable introductory textbook for students not majoring in humanities or for adult learners. Most similar commercial textbooks outlive their usefulness by trying to address the most prevalent theoretical approaches. This book aims to offer more inclusive and coherent introduction to the study of literature.

Clarity rating: 4

The writing of Steinberg’s book is transparent, crisp, and engaging. Since it targets a non-specialist reader, it avoids the obscure terms of literary criticism and it explains and unfolds definitions that a non-specialist reader might find difficult. I think, however, that some key terms of literary criticism can be introduced and used without confusing the reader.

Consistency rating: 3

The book is consistent when analyzing every work of literature chosen as a case study. At the center of every analysis is reader’s engagement and enjoyment as well as an accessible explanation of why this particular work of literature continues to attract readers’ interest and enjoys longevity. The book, however, avoids drawing any intertextual or philosophical conclusions thus making the discussions at times superficial and oversimplified. Some discussions also do not provide enough of a political context which in case, for example, of Vergil’s Aeneid is absolutely crucial for understanding the literary agenda of the author.

Modularity rating: 3

This book would be difficult to use in its entirety for any particular class, but the parts of it might be relevant to the contents of a specific syllabus, especially in foundation literature courses that aim to provide an understanding of literature in the form of a survey rather than address specific details.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 4

The book does not follow a particular line of argument or theoretical framework adhering instead to explaining to the readers why a particular work of literature has value and provides pleasure. While this rather broad approach can be seen as a shortcoming of the book, it also provides easy transitions from chapter to chapter and engaging discussions free of tediousness.

The interface works fine. The chapter divisions are clear and helpful.

The text is well edited.

As I stated at the beginning of this review, this book is extremely timely because it insists that there is a reason why certain books of literature must be read even at the time when the attention of audiences is so thinly spread and targeted by numerous other distractions. The book makes a convincing argument that the aesthetic value of literary works that for hundreds of years constituted Western literary canon remains unchanged and that cultural literacy is not a thing of the past. While I always opt for diversity in choosing literary works in my own classes, I can see that Steinberg’s own choices of including certain works into this study and excluding others stem from his scholarly interests as much as from establishing cultural continuity.

In conclusion I wan to emphasize that I read Steinberg’s book with pleasure. I can also see how it can be used in the foundation classes which introduce students to conventions of literary criticism and basic concepts of writing a coherent literary analysis.

Reviewed by Scott Dionne, Instructor, Portland Community College on 8/21/16

For what it is, this book provides an excellent overview of literary studies as a discipline within the humanities. You can't fault the book for what it strives to do--to give students a kind of traditional sense of literary studies as a... read more

For what it is, this book provides an excellent overview of literary studies as a discipline within the humanities. You can't fault the book for what it strives to do--to give students a kind of traditional sense of literary studies as a humanistic profession. But as an American educator I find the omission of American authors a bit puzzling. (Doubly puzzling when the factor in that the author teaches at an American university!) The author surveys drama, poetry, and fiction--all either British or ancient Greek. But no American literature! The addition of at least work by an American--Saul Bellow, say, or Walt Whitman--would go far to offset the way in which literature is classified as essentially a British art.

The joyful explications of the literature are infectious. The author clearly enjoys critiquing literature, and it shows in every summary, paraphrase, and explication. There are a few problems with accuracy, though. One problem is the missing translation information for Homer's "The Iliad" and "The Odyssey" when these works are cited. Both Robert Fagles's and Richard Lattimore's transltions appear on his bibliography for both "The Illiad" and "The Odyssey," but the in-text citations do not specify which translation is being cited. I would also like to see a footnoted book. I'm not accustomed to reading scholarly books on Homer, Shakespeare, Dickens et al sans footnotes. Most of this discussion is strictly focused on textual commentary, so no footnotes are needed. But it wouldn't have hurt to tether certain references to outside works via footnotes. On page 59, for example, the author cites a phrase of James Joyce's "Ulysses" : "mystery of paternity." The absence of a specific footnote doesn't do much harm, but the reader might be helped along by knowing that the reference to show actually appears in Chapter I of "Ulysses" titled Telemachus" and is, I think, found in Stephen's Ballad of the Joking Jesus scene.

This book explores the world of great literature, which is found in each and every century and does not have the same shelf life as the social sciences or the health fields. The author does a very good job, however, of occasionally reminding the reader of how these great literary works intersect our own lives in the 21st century. He mentions, for instance, the problems of film adaptation of Dickens's "Great Expectations." And he addresses the online Shakespeare deniers who contend that Shakespeare did not author the plays (although to be honest I would have preferred that this unsubstantiated argument not receive any stage time whatsoever in the book!). I also enjoyed how the author made the work accessible to a broad range of contemporary students.

The book is excellently written. I have no qualms in recommending the book on this point alone. Very readable. Even though I teach some of these works and am already quite familiar with the spectrum of critical approaches to them, I still found myself pulled into the book. The chapter on Philip Sidney's "Astrophel and Stella" is worth the price of admission. And I also enjoyed the chapter on Jane Austen,

The chapters do not have as strong of a parallelism as they could. Some of the chapters are on specific literary works, such as Chapter IX, which is on Dickens's "Bleak House." But two of the chapters--V & VIII--are on authors (Shakespeare and Jane Austen). We learn eventually that the Shakespeare chapter is actually on "as You Like It" and "Antony and Cleopatra." And the chapter titled "Jane Austen" is actually a comprehensive critical survey of all her fiction. Otherwise, the book is well thought out.

Each chapter is a stand alone work and can be used on its own. I will probably be using the chapters on Shakespeare, Dickens, and Austen in future literature classes. The author uses sub-headings in some chapters (quite a few in the opening chapters) and not in other chapters. Personally, I don't view modularity as being all that important in a work of literary studies, especially if the chapters are not overly long.

The book succeeds as a text meant for a student readership while being intellectually engaging for the teacher as well. It is easy to read, makes sense in most places, and subject matter is logically sequenced in chronological order. Perhaps one suggestion would be to include more textual citations. The analyses tend to be a bit anemic in textual citations. But then again, it's a matter of taste. I like literary criticism spiced up with a lot of quotations that serve to illustrate and substantiate the claims being made in the work.

The book is probably more "old school" than some open source books. But I like it this way.. What matters here is the lliterature, the analysis, the language style, the arguments, etc.

The book is well written. It could be published by a reputable literary press. I like the style, the voice, the diction, No problems here.

The book never slights anybody, As mentioned earlier, though, it is heavily weighted towards a British view of literature. Maybe a second edition of this book could include a couple chapters that could offset this a little bit. But then again, users of this book could just add their own chapters to it, I guess.

This book isn't so much a "textbook" that students work out of; it's a book meant to be read. I give the author a lot of credit for doing this. I will probably be using this book for this reason: it's a useful and engaging book to read rather than to use.

Reviewed by Zachary Hutchins, Assistant Professor of English, Colorado State University on 1/7/16

Theodore Steinberg has written a book that rejects “comprehensiveness” as a goal of introductory courses in literature or the humanities, so I’m not sure it’s fair to evaluate him using this particular criterion. What I mean to say is: whereas... read more

Theodore Steinberg has written a book that rejects “comprehensiveness” as a goal of introductory courses in literature or the humanities, so I’m not sure it’s fair to evaluate him using this particular criterion. What I mean to say is: whereas most “introduction to literature” textbooks will review a wide variety of approaches to literature without privileging one over another, Literature, the Humanities, and Humanity is a work of polemic that insists on the reader’s pleasure as the primary purpose of literary study and approaches the question of how to read from that perspective—subordinating the philosophical and political questions undergirding much of contemporary literary study and theory. Steinberg has no interest, it would seem, in approaching the question of how to read literature in a comprehensive fashion, systematically, and his audience seems to be “adult learners” in search of continuing education rather than a college freshman preparing for an introductory course offered by the English department or college teachers (the three different audiences he acknowledges in a prefatory note). But even if Steinberg has no interest in introducing students to formalism, post structuralism, or any of the other ideological lenses through which literature is so often read in the academy, his study is unnecessarily narrow in at least one other respect: after his opening chapter offers a theory of reading, Steinberg provides nine chapters delving into case studies of specific texts. He offers excellent close readings of canonical texts from The Iliad and The Odyssey to Bleak House and Middlemarch, but the vast majority of his examples are drawn from British literature. It would have been natural—and would have broadened the range of his readers’ conception of literary development and scope—if a few American texts (such as Moby-Dick and Uncle Tom’s Cabin) or, perhaps, other foundational pieces of world literature (the Divine Comedy, Don Quixote, and Faustus, for example) had been the focus of chapters rather than so many examples from eighteenth- and nineteenth-century England. He references a wide array of texts but chooses to focus on a relatively narrow selection of books. To his credit, those books include a fair amount of generic diversity: works of poetry, novels, and drama.

Literary studies is not a field in which questions of accuracy often arise, but Steinberg’s work is certainly accurate in its presentation of facts and prevailing interpretive opinions.

Because Steinberg’s book seems aimed primarily at adult learners continuing their education after the formal opportunities of high school and college have passed, this book will continue to be a valuable learning resource long after the modish textbooks geared more pointedly toward college freshmen and sophomores entering a new disciplinary world have been replaced by newer offerings espousing the latest and greatest in literary theory. His readings of these classic texts will always be useful introductions for the general interest reader; they are accessible and insightful without aiming for anything like an exhaustive approach, jargon-free and well-written.

As noted immediately above, the writing is excellent and accessible. Because Steinberg writes for a non-specialist reader, he avoids technical terms and, when language unfamiliar to a general audience does crop up, a definition is sure to follow.

The book is certainly internally consistent; as noted above, it differs from other textbooks aimed primarily at college students, in that it eschews literary theory and takes the reader’s experience, his or her joy in the journey of reading, as the primary aim and purpose of study. Most other comparable textbooks emphasize the philosophical or political aims of literature, and so this volume may not be regarded as “consistent” with others in its class.

While I would not use this text in its entirety to teach a class introducing literary study to college students, each of the case studies is a valuable gateway for students approaching the text for the first time. The book’s modularity is, for that reason, one of its greatest strengths, allowing teachers to assign a relatively brief essay foregrounding significant themes without giving away the book’s ending.

Although I would have preferred (as noted above) a more varied selection of texts, the logic by which Steinberg selected his texts is completely understandable. Indeed, the transition from Iliad to Odyssey to Aeneid seems fairly inevitable and sets the stage for his later discussino of Alexander Pope’s “Rape of the Lock” and Henry Fielding’s Joseph Andrews. Transitions from chapter to chapter are well managed, and reading the book feels more like indulging in conversation with a well-read friend than following a particular line of argumentation.

No errors: the text is well edited.

At a time when the canon is being discarded as a relic of patriarchal values and Western cultural imperialism, Steinberg’s book—simply by virtue of the titles it chooses to focus on—offers an impassioned defense of the aesthetic value of books commonly identified as classics. His volume defends cultural literacy as a common good and implicitly asks readers in the academy to reconsider their relatively recent turn to texts defined by the diverse identities of their authors. I personally would have appreciated a chapter focusing on the Narrative of Frederick Douglass or a novel by Salman Rushdie, but Steinberg’s work is certainly a contribution to our ongoing debate over what (and who) is read in literature classrooms.

I want to stress that Steinberg's book is excellent at what it does--introducing canonical texts to adult learners. I'm simply not convinced that it should be thought of as a text for college freshmen and sophomores being introduced to disciplinary conventions and history.

Reviewed by Catherine Ratliff, Instructor, Colorado State University on 1/7/16

Steinberg's text offers students and teachers a specific range of material on key classic literary authors and texts with chapters focused on Homer, Sir Philip Sydney, William Shakespeare, Alexander Pope, Henry Fielding, Jane Austen, Charles... read more

Steinberg's text offers students and teachers a specific range of material on key classic literary authors and texts with chapters focused on Homer, Sir Philip Sydney, William Shakespeare, Alexander Pope, Henry Fielding, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, and George Eliot. The Introduction makes a convincing argument for the value of studying literature as a human endeavor, as well as lays out what readers might expect from the textbook in terms of language, culture, and the enjoyment of canonically significant literary texts. Each chapter offers significant contextual information on the authors and texts of focus. Steinberg is also able to make literary texts that are often quite daunting for students, such as The Iliad, approachable and understandable. The chapter on Shakespeare, which Steinberg acknowledges was the cause of some trepidation for him as an author, provides an overview of The Bard’s oeuvre and dominant writing themes, which would be useful in a survey course or humanities based class; however, the chapter’s limitations are that it only goes into great detail on As You Like It and Antony and Cleopatra. Each chapter does include multiple and thorough textual examples, although Steinberg does suggest that the text is most useful as a supplement to readings of the full-texts in his analysis and not a replacement. This should be kept in mind when considering teaching plans, especially considering that Steinberg’s textbook is over two-hundred pages long and many of the works he examines are also lengthy. The most significant limitations of Literature, the Humanities, and Humanity are that female literary voices are under-represented (only two of the ten chapters directly examine women authors) and more contemporary texts are excluded (as George Eliot’s 1870s Middlemarch concludes the textbook). With this said though, Steinberg’s defines his scope as classic literature within the Introduction so the texts he selects for analysis are not unexpected and definitely fit his intended purpose.

The textbook provides accurate information in terms of literary analysis from Steinberg’s perspective and theoretical standpoint. Steinberg does not reference outside sources, other than to cite the primary texts he is working with, so all material in the textbook is solely from one perspective, which can present certain limitations in terms of teaching diverse readings. There are also some spots where more contextual information on the authors or texts included would be useful, especially for humanities based courses where students may not be familiar with less well-known authors such as Sidney or Eliot. Steinberg does, however, seem to consistently back up his arguments and analyses with convincing textual evidence and conscientious appraisals.

The textbook examines classic texts and authors, so its longevity and relevance are almost certainly assured for years to come. The relevance of this textbook is especially keenly geared toward introductory courses in literature or the humanities because it clearly assists students in grasping key elements of the included works through straightforward explanations. Also, Steinberg’s argument for the enjoyment of literature as a way to read history, cultures, and humanity in general is one that many in education will appreciate.

The text is written in crisp and clear language, which makes it particularly accessible for students that are not literature majors. Steinberg breaks down complex texts in easily understandable thematic and topical ways. He also provides clear character examinations to help guide readers. Each chapter is approximately twenty to thirty pages, which allow for steady pacing in reading assignments and teaching preparation. If students have read the texts included in this textbook they should have little to no problems following Steinberg’s chapters. Potential negatives in terms of clarity are that the chapter lengths might present some difficulties for 100-level students; however, the text’s readability is high and should help combat this issue. Also, more defined sections within each chapter would likely help with student accessibility of the concepts presented.

The book is consistent in its presentation of information, chapter arrangements, conceptual frameworks, and in pursuing the author’s goals of teaching the delights of classic literature.

The textbook is organized into chapters that focus on one specific author and related text. Assigning individual chapters seems most logical approach. The most useful modular aspect of this text is that individual chapters may be assigned without the need for students to read the entire book, thus making the textbook a helpful resource for specific needs of instructors that are not teaching all of the literary texts included.

There are clear chapter distinctions according to specific authors and chronology. The arrangement of information in each chapter is logical and well-progressed.

There are no interface issues to note.

The textbook seems free of grammar errors.

The texts and authors included in this textbook are considered to be classics of the literary canon, which work to ensure the cultural relevance of the book as a whole. There broad range of texts included in the book also allows instructors to teach a wide variety of literary periods from the Greeks to the nineteenth century. The cultural limitations of the textbook lie in the fact that a lack of more recent authors or literature might dissuade some students. In addition, the limited discussions of current literary studies “hot topics,” such as gender, race, economics, materiality, or cultural studies might also create difficulties in teaching this textbook in a course where these concepts are key components of the class.

Steinberg does important work here in examining classic literary texts and moving to make them enjoyable and accessible for today’s student. This book offers great potential in helping to bring conversations about the importance and pleasure of literature into discourse within humanities classes.

Reviewed by David Mount, Full-Time Instructor, Clackamas Community College on 1/7/16

The book is not at all comprehensive and doesn't set out to be. That's what makes it wonderful. It's a guided tour through some of Professor Steinberg's favorite works of literature, making the case along the way for the enjoyment of literature,... read more

The book is not at all comprehensive and doesn't set out to be. That's what makes it wonderful. It's a guided tour through some of Professor Steinberg's favorite works of literature, making the case along the way for the enjoyment of literature, for the value of reading, and the importance of the humanities: "I have chosen these particular works not because they are 'important' but because they are among my favorites and because I want to share my enjoyment of them with readers who might feel that one has to be a specialist to read them."

The works he chooses are discussed chronologically, starting with some classics--The Illiad, The Odyssey, The Aeneid--and then settling down in England for the rest of the book. It could be seen as arbitrary and/or too influenced by and outdated idea of the canon, but I say if that's what he knows and loves, then more power to him. It also happens to be, mostly, what I know and love.

There is an unintentionally humorous page after the classics section called "The Middle Ages," saying, essentially, sorry there's nothing on the Middle Ages, but see my other book. Since the whole premise of the book is that it's a personal selection, this seems unnecessary.

The book is, however, a fairly comprehensive guide to how (and why) we read, think, talk, and write about literature, and it's in that spirit that I will be offering it to my students.

The historical and biographical information that was in my area seemed accurate. None of it is credited directly in the text, probably because he's thinking of it as common knowledge. There are general references at the end of the book.

Like "comprehensiveness," the idea of "bias" is a bit tricky with a book like this since, again, it is unabashedly personal and based on his tastes. But he explains those wonderfully, often at the beginnings of chapters, talking about the mysterious reasons we're drawn to things in a way that I found very refreshing. It would be suspect to some in a professional context, but since it's written for students, he's allowed to talk about things like appreciation and emotion, that are such taboos in modern critical discourse. And yet he never talks down. To me this book is a welcome throwback to an earlier era of criticism.

He does very occasionally get carried away by an odd hobbyhorse, as in the quote below, which he admits is a digression. This may be seen as a kind of bias. To my mind, this example is comically hairsplitting. When people say a narrative viewpoint is cinematic they mean, obviously, that it's LIKE modern cinema, not that cinema actually inspired it: "If I may digress for a moment, let me note that contemporary critics are fond of pointing out that earlier writers use cinematic techniques. What we see here, however, is not that Eliot is using a cinematic technique, in which the camera moves closer to the subjects it is recording. Eliot preceded cinema. If cinema is using a technique that is similar to Eliot’s, then cinema is being novelistic, not the other way round."

As I say above, this book is deliberately and gloriously old-fashioned and as such can never go out of date.

I very much like the way it's written. It's not insulting to peers, and yet it would be perfectly clear, even engaging for a good undergrad student. Here's just one example where he very concisely and uncontentiously explains something that's always hard for me to get across to my students: "When we read literature, our focus has to be on what the words say, not on what the author intended. One reason that we have to take this stance is that an author’s words, even an author who is totally in control of those words, inevitably say more than the author intended. It even happens that the words may mean something that the author did not intend. "

The only instance I noticed where you could possibly accuse him of not explaining a term is when, in the Sir Philip Sidney chapter, he describes how a "Romantic poet" might have approached the same subject, without explaining what Romanticism is. But that might be asking too much--and might also have been insulting to readers who already know.

Yes, he brings similar emphases and methods to every text. Every chapter has most of the following: reading hints and what to expect, what's hard about the text for a modern reader, historical and biographical backgrounds, close readings of individual passages, attention to why and how it's enjoyable, a moral/character dimension, and much more. But it's not schematic. There are no headings, thank goodness. It's discursive and free ranging, not repetitive. He deals with issues as they come up--gender politics in the Jane Austen chapter, social inequality in the Dickens chapter.

Yes, while he does carry similar themes through the chapters, as I mention above, it could easily be assigned in pieces. His themes are so commonsense and human that they don't require one to read the introduction.

For myself, I plan on assigning the introduction, in which he deals with misconceptions about symbols, messages, and "what the author meant," in every literature class I teach from now on. In my upcoming online Survey of British Lit class, I'll definitely use the chapters on "Astrophil and Stella" and "Rape of the Lock." Anyone who happens to be teaching any of the texts he covers should have no hesitation in assigning that chapter by itself.

The flow is simply chronological. It doesn't continuously build an argument. But that's what makes it so useful as an OER. The organization within chapters is very logical, and I've touched on that a bit above, in the "Consistency" category.

No problems, although I did find myself thinking more than once that the paragraphs sometimes get awfully long, for a text that will most likely be read online, not in hardcopy. I know the intention was to make it look like a "real book," but I wonder if it might have been better to acknowledge the way it will actually be used and lightly apply some principles of visual design for online reading.

I did not notice any grammatical errors--and I was looking.

Within the limitations of the texts chosen--all firmly canonical and European--the text does a fair job of bringing out issues of social power, when relevant. I mentioned above the Jane Austen and Dickens chapters. There is an assumption that great literature is universal and anyone should be able to read it and respond, but I didn't notice much questioning of that idea. He doesn't attempt to address how students from non-white-European backgrounds, or even non-privileged backgrounds, might respond to these texts. But that might be another book.

I thank Professor Steinberg for the book, and applaud him for taking a stand that the enjoyment of literature matters, and that it's worth paying attention to our heart's response to it, not just our head's. It shouldn't be a controversial idea, but it is.

Reviewed by Katherine Scheil, Professor, University of Minnesota on 6/10/15

This book covers a wide range of material, from Homer to George Eliot, from Shakespeare to Jane Austen. Other chapters focus on Sidney, Pope, Fielding, and Dickens. read more

This book covers a wide range of material, from Homer to George Eliot, from Shakespeare to Jane Austen. Other chapters focus on Sidney, Pope, Fielding, and Dickens.

This book offers an argument for the "the value and delight of reading literature," without watering it down, and for the power of the written word. Content is accurate and unbiased, and the argument of the book is stated upfront in the Introduction.

Unfortunately, challenges to the Humanities don't seem to be going away, so this book will likely have a long shelf life. The texts it deals with are timeless--Shakespeare, Homer, Jane Austen, etc.--and show no signs of becoming obsolete. The argument, that literature can delight and instruct, is an old argument, but needs to be articulated in fresh and new ways. This book makes an original contribution to the latter need.

This book is written in clear prose. with a straightforward argument about the value of literature and of the humanities. Very little jargon is used, which helps make the point that the Humanities "are among the things that make us human," and thus should be accessible to a broad audience.

This book offers a consistent introduction to the inexhaustibility of several representative texts from the canon of important works of literature. The author consistently returns to the question of why literature matters in each chapter. The book is written with an overt acknowledgment of the author's personal opinion of the value of these texts, and the author is clear about stating those views upfront.

This book is ideally designed to be read in sections, since each chapter deals with a major author and/or text. One could only read/assign the chapter on Shakespeare without much adjustment needed.

The book is clearly structured, with an introduction that sets out the principles and aims of the book, followed by individual chapters organized by author and text. The organization is straightforward and logical, and the argument is easy to follow through each chapter.

There were no issues of interface.

I did not notice any grammatical errors.

Cultural Relevance rating: 5

This book deals with works of literature that have endured for numerous centuries, while making the case that these works will continue to be relevant into the future. Examples range from ancient texts to nineteenth-century texts, including a close focus on two women authors--Jane Austen and George Eliot.

I hope that this book will have a significant impact on the value of the Humanities in contemporary culture and discourse.

Table of Contents

• Chapter 1: Introduction
• Chapter 2: Homer, The Iliad
• Chapter 3: Homer, The Odyssey and Virgil, The Aeneid
• Chapter 4: Sir Philip Sidney, Astrophel and Stella
• Chapter 5: Shakespeare
• Chapter 6: Pope, “The Rape of the Lock”
• Chapter 7: Henry Fielding, Joseph Andrews
• Chapter 8: Jane Austen
• Chapter 9: Charles Dickens, Bleak House
• Chapter 10: George Eliot, Middlemarch

Ancillary Material

About the book.

Literature, the Humanities, and Humanity attempts to make the study of literature more than simply another school subject that students have to take. At a time when all subjects seem to be valued only for their testability, this book tries to show the value of reading and studying literature, even earlier literature. It shows students, some of whom will themselves become teachers, that literature actually has something to say to them. Furthermore, it shows that literature is meant to be enjoyed, that, as the Roman poet Horace (and his Renaissance disciple Sir Philip Sidney) said, the functions of literature are to teach and to delight. The book will also be useful to teachers who want to convey their passion for literature to their students. After an introductory chapter that offers advice on how to read (and teach) literature, the book consists of a series of chapters that examine individual literary works ranging from The Iliad to Charles Dickens' Bleak House. These chapters can not substitute for reading the actual works. Rather they are intended to help students read those works. They are attempts to demystify the act of reading and to show that these works, whether they are nearly three thousand or less than two hundred years old, still have important things to say to contemporary readers.

About the Contributors

Dr. Theodore L. Steinberg serves as Distinguished Teaching Professor in the English Department at SUNY Fredonia, where he specializes in medieval and Renaissance literatures, though he teaches in a wide variety of areas. His publications include studies of medieval and Renaissance English literature, medieval Judaica, modern epic, and Yiddish literature. He encourages students to see the contemporary relevance of older literatures and the importance of the humanities, particularly literature, in the development of civilized life.

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1 What Is Literature and Why Do We Study It?

In this book created for my English 211 Literary Analysis introductory course for English literature and creative writing majors at the College of Western Idaho, I’ll introduce several different critical approaches that literary scholars may use to answer these questions.  The critical method we apply to a text can provide us with different perspectives as we learn to interpret a text and appreciate its meaning and beauty.

The existence of literature, however we define it, implies that we study literature. While people have been “studying” literature as long as literature has existed, the formal study of literature as we know it in college English literature courses began in the 1940s with the advent of New Criticism. The New Critics were formalists with a vested interest in defining literature–they were, after all, both creating and teaching about literary works. For them, literary criticism was, in fact, as John Crowe Ransom wrote in his 1942 essay “ Criticism, Inc., ” nothing less than “the business of literature.”

Responding to the concern that the study of literature at the university level was often more concerned with the history and life of the author than with the text itself, Ransom responded, “the students of the future must be permitted to study literature, and not merely about literature. But I think this is what the good students have always wanted to do. The wonder is that they have allowed themselves so long to be denied.”

We’ll learn more about New Criticism in Section Three. For now, let’s return to the two questions I posed earlier.

What is literature?

First, what is literature ? I know your high school teacher told you never to look up things on Wikipedia, but for the purposes of literary studies, Wikipedia can actually be an effective resource. You’ll notice that I link to Wikipedia articles occasionally in this book. Here’s how Wikipedia defines literature :

“ Literature  is any collection of  written  work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an  art  form, especially  prose   fiction ,  drama , and  poetry . [1]  In recent centuries, the definition has expanded to include  oral literature , much of which has been transcribed. [2] Literature is a method of recording, preserving, and transmitting knowledge and entertainment, and can also have a social, psychological, spiritual, or political role.”

This definition is well-suited for our purposes here because throughout this course, we will be considering several types of literary texts in a variety of contexts.

I’m a Classicist—a student of Greece and Rome and everything they touched—so I am always interested in words with Latin roots. The Latin root of our modern word literature  is  litera , or “letter.” Literature, then, is inextricably intertwined with the act of writing. But what kind of writing?

Who decides which texts are “literature”?

The second question is at least as important as the first one. If we agree that literature is somehow special and different from ordinary writing, then who decides which writings count as literature? Are English professors the only people who get to decide? What qualifications and training does someone need to determine whether or not a text is literature? What role do you as the reader play in this decision about a text?

Let’s consider a few examples of things that we would all probably classify as literature. I think we can all (probably) agree that the works of William Shakespeare are literature. We can look at Toni Morrison’s outstanding ouvre of work and conclude, along with the Nobel Prize Committee, that books such as Beloved   and  Song of Solomon   are literature. And if you’re taking a creative writing course and have been assigned the short stories of Raymond Carver or the poems of Joy Harjo , you’re probably convinced that these texts are literature too.

In each of these three cases, a different “deciding” mechanism is at play. First, with Shakespeare, there’s history and tradition. These plays that were written 500 years ago are still performed around the world and taught in high school and college English classes today. It seems we have consensus about the tragedies, histories, comedies, and sonnets of the Bard of Avon (or whoever wrote the plays).

In the second case, if you haven’t heard of Toni Morrison (and I am very sorry if you haven’t), you probably have heard of the Nobel Prize. This is one of the most prestigious awards given in literature, and since she’s a winner, we can safely assume that Toni Morrison’s works are literature.

Finally, your creative writing professor is an expert in their field. You know they have an MFA (and worked hard for it), so when they share their favorite short stories or poems with you, you trust that they are sharing works considered to be literature, even if you haven’t heard of Raymond Carver or Joy Harjo before taking their class.

(Aside: What about fanfiction? Is fanfiction literature?)

We may have to save the debate about fan fiction for another day, though I introduced it because there’s some fascinating and even literary award-winning fan fiction out there.

Returning to our question, what role do we as readers play in deciding whether something is literature? Like John Crowe Ransom quoted above, I think that the definition of literature should depend on more than the opinions of literary critics and literature professors.

I also want to note that contrary to some opinions, plenty of so-called genre fiction can also be classified as literature. The Nobel Prize winning author Kazuo Ishiguro has written both science fiction and historical fiction. Iain Banks , the British author of the critically acclaimed novel The Wasp Factory , published popular science fiction novels under the name Iain M. Banks. In other words, genre alone can’t tell us whether something is literature or not.

In this book, I want to give you the tools to decide for yourself. We’ll do this by exploring several different critical approaches that we can take to determine how a text functions and whether it is literature. These lenses can reveal different truths about the text, about our culture, and about ourselves as readers and scholars.

“Turf Wars”: Literary criticism vs. authors

It’s important to keep in mind that literature and literary theory have existed in conversation with each other since Aristotle used Sophocles’s play Oedipus Rex to define tragedy. We’ll look at how critical theory and literature complement and disagree with each other throughout this book. For most of literary history, the conversation was largely a friendly one.

But in the twenty-first century, there’s a rising tension between literature and criticism. In his 2016 book Literature Against Criticism: University English and Contemporary Fiction in Conflict, literary scholar Martin Paul Eve argues that twenty-first century authors have developed

a series of novelistic techniques that, whether deliberate or not on the part of the author, function to outmanoeuvre, contain, and determine academic reading practices. This desire to discipline university English through the manipulation and restriction of possible hermeneutic paths is, I contend, a result firstly of the fact that the metafictional paradigm of the high-postmodern era has pitched critical and creative discourses into a type of productive competition with one another. Such tensions and overlaps (or ‘turf wars’) have only increased in light of the ongoing breakdown of coherent theoretical definitions of ‘literature’ as distinct from ‘criticism’ (15).

One of Eve’s points is that by narrowly and rigidly defining the boundaries of literature, university English professors have inadvertently created a situation where the market increasingly defines what “literature” is, despite the protestations of the academy. In other words, the gatekeeper role that literary criticism once played is no longer as important to authors. For example, (almost) no one would call 50 Shades of Grey literature—but the salacious E.L James novel was the bestselling book of the decade from 2010-2019, with more than 35 million copies sold worldwide.

If anyone with a blog can get a six-figure publishing deal , does it still matter that students know how to recognize and analyze literature? I think so, for a few reasons.

• First, the practice of reading critically helps you to become a better reader and writer, which will help you to succeed not only in college English courses but throughout your academic and professional career.
• Second, analysis is a highly sought after and transferable skill. By learning to analyze literature, you’ll practice the same skills you would use to analyze anything important. “Data analyst” is one of the most sought after job positions in the New Economy—and if you can analyze Shakespeare, you can analyze data. Indeed.com’s list of top 10 transferable skills includes analytical skills , which they define as “the traits and abilities that allow you to observe, research and interpret a subject in order to develop complex ideas and solutions.”
• Finally, and for me personally, most importantly, reading and understanding literature makes life make sense. As we read literature, we expand our sense of what is possible for ourselves and for humanity. In the challenges we collectively face today, understanding the world and our place in it will be important for imagining new futures.

A note about using generative artificial intelligence

As I was working on creating this textbook, ChatGPT exploded into academic consciousness. Excited about the possibilities of this new tool, I immediately began incorporating it into my classroom teaching. In this book, I have used ChatGPT to help me with outlining content in chapters. I also used ChatGPT to create sample essays for each critical lens we will study in the course. These essays are dry and rather soulless, but they do a good job of modeling how to apply a specific theory to a literary text. I chose John Donne’s poem “The Canonization” as the text for these essays so that you can see how the different theories illuminate different aspects of the text.

I encourage students in my courses to use ChatGPT in the following ways:

• To generate ideas about an approach to a text.
• To better understand basic concepts.
• To assist with outlining an essay.
• To check grammar, punctuation, spelling, paragraphing, and other grammar/syntax issues.

If you choose to use Chat GPT, please include a brief acknowledgment statement as an appendix to your paper after your Works Cited page explaining how you have used the tool in your work. Here is an example of how to do this from Monash University’s “ Acknowledging the Use of Generative Artificial Intelligence .”

I acknowledge the use of [insert AI system(s) and link] to [specific use of generative artificial intelligence]. The prompts used include [list of prompts]. The output from these prompts was used to [explain use].

Here is more information about how to cite the use of generative AI like ChatGPT in your work. The information below was adapted from “Acknowledging and Citing Generative AI in Academic Work” by Liza Long (CC BY 4.0).

The Modern Language Association (MLA) uses a template of core elements to create citations for a Works Cited page. MLA  asks students to apply this approach when citing any type of generative AI in their work. They provide the following guidelines:

Cite a generative AI tool whenever you paraphrase, quote, or incorporate into your own work any content (whether text, image, data, or other) that was created by it. Acknowledge all functional uses of the tool (like editing your prose or translating words) in a note, your text, or another suitable location. Take care to vet the secondary sources it cites. (MLA)

Here are some examples of how to use and cite generative AI with MLA style:

Example One: Paraphrasing Text

Let’s say that I am trying to generate ideas for a paper on Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper.” I ask ChatGPT to provide me with a summary and identify the story’s main themes. Here’s a  link to the chat . I decide that I will explore the problem of identity and self-expression in my paper.

My Paraphrase of ChatGPT with In-Text Citation

The problem of identity and self expression, especially for nineteenth-century women, is a major theme in “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (“Summarize the short story”).

Works Cited Entry

“Summarize the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Include a breakdown of the main themes” prompt.  ChatGPT.  24 May Version, OpenAI, 20 Jul. 2023,  https://chat.openai.com/share/d1526b95-920c-48fc-a9be-83cd7dfa4be5 

Example Two: Quoting Text

In the same chat, I continue to ask ChatGPT about the theme of identity and self expression. Here’s an example of how I could quote the response in the body of my paper:

When I asked  ChatGPT  to describe the theme of identity and self expression, it noted that the eponymous yellow wallpaper acts as a symbol of the narrator’s self-repression. However, when prompted to share the scholarly sources that formed the basis of this observation,  ChatGPT  responded, “As an AI language model, I don’t have access to my training data, but I was trained on a mixture of licensed data, data created by human trainers, and publicly available data. OpenAI, the organization behind my development, has not publicly disclosed the specifics of the individual datasets used, including whether scholarly sources were specifically used” (“Summarize the short story”).

It’s worth noting here that ChatGPT can “ hallucinate ” fake sources. As a Microsoft training manual notes, these chatbots are “built to be persuasive, not truthful” (Weiss &Metz, 2023). The May 24, 2023 version will no longer respond to direct requests for references; however, I was able to get around this restriction fairly easily by asking for “resources” instead.

When I ask for resources to learn more about “The Yellow Wallpaper,” here is one source it recommends:

“Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper: A Symptomatic Reading” by Elaine R. Hedges: This scholarly article delves into the psychological and feminist themes of the story, analyzing the narrator’s experience and the implications of the yellow wallpaper on her mental state. It’s available in the journal “Studies in Short Fiction.” (“Summarize the short story”).

Using Google Scholar, I look up this source to see if it’s real. Unsurprisingly, this source is not a real one, but it does lead me to another (real) source: Kasmer, Lisa. “Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s’ The Yellow Wallpaper’: A Symptomatic Reading.”  Literature and Psychology  36.3 (1990): 1.

Note: ALWAYS check any sources that ChatGPT or other generative AI tools recommend.

For more information about integrating and citing generative artificial intelligence tools such as ChatGPT, please see this section of  Write What Matters.

I acknowledge that ChatGPT does not respect the individual rights of authors and artists and ignores concerns over copyright and intellectual property in its training; additionally, I acknowledge that the system was trained in part through the exploitation of precarious workers in the global south. In this work I specifically used ChatGPT to assist with outlining chapters, providing background information about critical lenses, and creating “model” essays for the critical lenses we will learn about together. I have included links to my chats in an appendix to this book.

Critical theories: A targeted approach to writing about literature

Ultimately, there’s not one “right” way to read a text. In this book. we will explore a variety of critical theories that scholars use to analyze literature. The book is organized around different targets that are associated with the approach introduced in each chapter. In the introduction, for example, our target is literature. In future chapters you’ll explore these targeted analysis techniques:

• Author: Biographical Criticism
• Text: New Criticism
• Reader: Reader Response Criticism
• Gap: Deconstruction (Post-Structuralism)
• Context: New Historicism and Cultural Studies
• Power: Marxist and Postcolonial Criticism
• Mind: Psychological Criticism
• Gender: Feminist, Post Feminist, and Queer Theory
• Nature: Ecocriticism

Each chapter will feature the target image with the central approach in the center. You’ll read a brief introduction about the theory, explore some primary texts (both critical and literary), watch a video, and apply the theory to a primary text. Each one of these theories could be the subject of its own entire course, so keep in mind that our goal in this book is to introduce these theories and give you a basic familiarity with these tools for literary analysis. For more information and practice, I recommend Steven Lynn’s excellent Texts and Contexts: Writing about Literature with Critical Theory , which provides a similar introductory framework.

I am so excited to share these tools with you and see you grow as a literary scholar. As we explore each of these critical worlds, you’ll likely find that some critical theories feel more natural or logical to you than others. I find myself much more comfortable with deconstruction than with psychological criticism, for example. Pay attention to how these theories work for you because this will help you to expand your approaches to texts and prepare you for more advanced courses in literature.

P.S. If you want to know what my favorite book is, I usually tell people it’s Herman Melville’s Moby Dick . And I do love that book! But I really have no idea what my “favorite” book of all time is, let alone what my favorite book was last year. Every new book that I read is a window into another world and a template for me to make sense out of my own experience and better empathize with others. That’s why I love literature. I hope you’ll love this experience too.

writings in prose or verse, especially :  writings having excellence of form or expression and expressing ideas of permanent or universal interest (Merriam Webster)

Critical Worlds Copyright © 2024 by Liza Long is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Introduction to Literature: What? Why? How?

When is the last time you read a book or a story simply because it interested you? If you were to classify that book, would you call it fiction or literature? This is an interesting separation, with many possible reasons for it. One is that “fiction” and “literature” are regarded as quite different things. “Fiction,” for example, is what people read for enjoyment. “Literature” is what they read for school. Or “fiction” is what living people write and is about the present. “Literature” was written by people (often white males) who have since died and is about times and places that have nothing to do with us. Or “fiction” offers everyday pleasures, but “literature” is to be honored and respected, even though it is boring. Of course, when we put anything on a pedestal, we remove it from everyday life, so the corollary is that literature is to be honored and respected, but it is not to be read, certainly not by any normal person with normal interests.

Sadly, it is the guardians of literature, that is, of the classics, who have done so much to take the life out of literature, to put it on a pedestal and thereby to make it an irrelevant aspect of American life. People study literature because they love literature. They certainly don’t do it for the money. But what happens too often, especially in colleges, is that teachers forget what it was that first interested them in the study of literature. They forget the joy that they first felt (and perhaps still feel) as they read a new novel or a poem or as they reread a work and saw something new in it. Instead, they erect formidable walls around these literary works, giving the impression that the only access to a work is through deep learning and years of study. Such study is clearly important for scholars, but this kind of scholarship is not the only way, or even necessarily the best way, for most people to approach literature. Instead it makes the literature seem inaccessible. It makes the literature seem like the province of scholars. “Oh, you have to be smart to read that,” as though Shakespeare or Dickens or Woolf wrote only for English teachers, not for general readers.

What is Literature?

In short, literature evokes imaginative worlds through the conscious arrangement of words that tell a story. These stories are told through different genres, or types of literature, like novels, short stories, poetry, drama, and the essay. Each genre is associated with certain conventions. In this course, we will study poetry, short fiction, and drama (in the form of movies).

Some Misconceptions about Literature

Of course, there are a number of misconceptions about literature that have to be gotten out of the way before anyone can enjoy it. One misconception is that literature is full of  hidden meanings . There are certainly occasional works that contain hidden meanings. The biblical book of  Revelation , for example, was written in a kind of code, using images that had specific meanings for its early audience but that we can only recover with a great deal of difficulty. Most literary works, however, are not at all like that. Perhaps an analogy will illustrate this point. When I take my car to my mechanic because something is not working properly, he opens the hood and we both stand there looking at the engine. But after we have looked for a few minutes, he is likely to have seen what the problem is, while I could look for hours and never see it. We are looking at the same thing. The problem is not hidden, nor is it in some secret code. It is right there in the open, accessible to anyone who knows how to “read” it, which my mechanic does and I do not. He has been taught how to “read” automobile engines and he has practiced “reading” them. He is a good “close reader,” which is why I continue to take my car to him.

The same thing is true for readers of literature. Generally authors want to communicate with their readers, so they are not likely to hide or disguise what they are saying, but reading literature also requires some training and some practice. Good writers use language very carefully, and readers must learn how to be sensitive to that language, just as the mechanic must learn to be sensitive to the appearances and sounds of the engine. Everything that the writer wants to say, and much that the writer may not be aware of, is there in the words. We simply have to learn how to read them.

Another popular misconception is that a literary work has a  single “meaning”  (and that only English teachers know how to find that meaning). There is an easy way to dispel this misconception. Just go to a college library and find the section that holds books on Shakespeare. Choose one play,  Hamlet , for example, and see how many books there are about it, all by scholars who are educated, perceptive readers. Can it be the case that one of these books is correct and all the others are mistaken? And if the correct one has already been written, why would anyone need to write another book about the play? The answer is this:

Key Takeaways

There is no single correct way to read any piece of literature. 

Again, let me use an analogy to illustrate this point. Suppose that everyone at a meeting were asked to describe a person who was standing in the middle of the room. Imagine how many different descriptions there would be, depending on where the viewer sat in relation to the person. For example, an optometrist in the crowd might focus on the person’s glasses; a hair stylist might focus on the person’s haircut; someone who sells clothing might focus on the style of dress; a podiatrist might focus on the person’s feet. Would any of these descriptions be incorrect? Not necessarily, but they would be determined by the viewers’ perspectives. They might also be determined by such factors as the viewers’ ages, genders, or ability to move around the person being viewed, or by their previous acquaintance with the subject. So whose descriptions would be correct? Conceivably all of them, and if we put all of these correct descriptions together, we would be closer to having a full description of the person.

This is most emphatically NOT to say, however, that all descriptions are correct simply because each person is entitled to his or her opinion

If the podiatrist is of the opinion that the person is five feet, nine inches tall, the podiatrist could be mistaken. And even if the podiatrist actually measures the person, the measurement could be mistaken. Everyone who describes this person, therefore, must offer not only an opinion but also a basis for that opinion. “My feeling is that this person is a teacher” is not enough. “My feeling is that this person is a teacher because the person’s clothing is covered with chalk dust and because the person is carrying a stack of papers that look like they need grading” is far better, though even that statement might be mistaken.

So it is with literature. As we read, as we try to understand and interpret, we must deal with the text that is in front of us ; but we must also recognize (1) that language is slippery and (2) that each of us individually deals with it from a different set of perspectives. Not all of these perspectives are necessarily legitimate, and it is always possible that we might misread or misinterpret what we see. Furthermore, it is possible that contradictory readings of a single work will both be legitimate, because literary works can be as complex and multi-faceted as human beings. It is vital, therefore, that in reading literature we abandon both the idea that any individual’s reading of a work is the “correct” one and the idea that there is one simple way to read any work. Our interpretations may, and probably should, change according to the way we approach the work. If we read The Chronicles of Narnia as teenagers, then in middle age, and then in old age, we might be said to have read three different books. Thus, multiple interpretations, even contradictory interpretations, can work together to give us a fuller and possibly more interesting understanding of a work.

Why Reading Literature is Important

Reading literature can teach us new ways to read, think, imagine, feel, and make sense of our own experiences. Literature forces readers to confront the complexities of the world, to confront what it means to be a human being in this difficult and uncertain world, to confront other people who may be unlike them, and ultimately to confront themselves.

The relationship between the reader and the world of a work of literature is complex and fascinating. Frequently when we read a work, we become so involved in it that we may feel that we have become part of it. “I was really into that movie,” we might say, and in one sense that statement can be accurate. But in another sense it is clearly inaccurate, for actually we do not enter the movie or the story as IT enters US; the words enter our eyes in the form of squiggles on a page which are transformed into words, sentences, paragraphs, and meaningful concepts in our brains, in our imaginations, where scenes and characters are given “a local habitation and a name.” Thus, when we “get into” a book, we are actually “getting into” our own mental conceptions that have been produced by the book, which, incidentally, explains why so often readers are dissatisfied with cinematic or television adaptations of literary works.

In fact, though it may seem a trite thing to say, writers are close observers of the world who are capable of communicating their visions, and the more perspectives we have to draw on, the better able we should be to make sense of our lives. In these terms, it makes no difference whether we are reading a Homeric epic poem like The Odysse y, a twelfth-century Japanese novel like  The Tale of Genji , or a Victorian novel by Dickens, or even, in a sense, watching someone’s TikTok video (a video or movie is also a kind of text that can be “read” or analyzed for multiple meanings). The more different perspectives we get, the better. And it must be emphasized that we read such works not only to be well-rounded (whatever that means) or to be “educated” or for antiquarian interest. We read them because they have something to do with us, with our lives. Whatever culture produced them, whatever the gender or race or religion of their authors, they relate to us as human beings; and all of us can use as many insights into being human as we can get. Reading is itself a kind of experience, and while we may not have the time or the opportunity or  or physical possibility  to experience certain things in the world, we can experience them through reading. So literature allows us to broaden our experiences.

Reading also forces us to focus our thoughts. The world around us is so full of stimuli that we are easily distracted. Unless we are involved in a crisis that demands our full attention, we flit from subject to subject. But when we read a book, even a book that has a large number of characters and covers many years, the story and the writing help us to focus, to think about what they show us in a concentrated manner. When I hold a book, I often feel that I have in my hand another world that I can enter and that will help me to understand the everyday world that I inhabit.

Literature invites us to  meet interesting characters and to visit interesting places, to use our imagination and to think about things that might otherwise escape our notice, to see the world from perspectives that we would otherwise not have.

Watch this video for a discussion of why reading fiction matters.

How to Read Literature: The Basics

• Read with a pen in hand! Yes, even if you’re reading an electronic text, in which case you may want to open a new document in which you can take notes. Jot down questions, highlight things you find significant, mark confusing passages, look up unfamiliar words/references, and record first impressions.
• Think critically to form a response. Here are some things to be aware of and look for in the story that may help you form an idea of meaning.
• Repetitions . You probably know from watching movies that if something is repeated, that means something. Stories are similar—if something occurs more than once, the story is calling attention to it, so notice it and consider why it is repeated. The repeated element can be a word or a phrase, an action, even a piece of clothing or gear.
• Not Quite Right : If something that happens that seems Not Quite Right to you, that may also have some particular meaning. So, for example, if a violent act is committed against someone who’s done nothing wrong, that is unusual, unexpected, that is, Not Quite Right. And therefore, that act means something.
• Address your own biases and compare your own experiences with those expressed in the piece.
• Test your positions and thoughts about the piece with what others think (we’ll do some of this in class discussions).

While you will have your own individual connection to a piece based on your life experiences, interpreting literature is not a willy-nilly process. Each piece of writing has purpose, usually more than one purpose–you, as the reader, are meant to uncover purpose in the text. As the speaker notes in  the video you watched about how to read literature, you, as a reader, also have a role to play. Sometimes you may see something in the text that speaks to you; whether or not the author intended that piece to be there, it still matters to you.

For example, I’ve had a student who had life experiences that she was reminded of when reading “Chonguita, the Monkey Bride” and another student whose experience was mirrored in part of “The Frog King or Iron Heinrich.” I encourage you to honor these perceptions if they occur to you and possibly even to use them in your writing assignments. I can suggest ways to do this if you’re interested.

But remember that when we write about literature, our observations must also be supported by the text itself. Make sure you aren’t reading into the text something that isn’t there. Value the text for what is and appreciate the experience it provides, all while you attempt to create a connection with your experiences.

Attributions:

• Content written by Dr. Karen Palmer and licensed  CC BY NC SA .
• Content adapted from  Literature, the Humanities, and Humanity  by Theodore L. Steinberg and licensed under a  Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

The Worry Free Writer  by Dr. Karen Palmer is licensed under a  Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Introduction to Literature Copyright © by Judy Young is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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What Literature Can Teach Us

Communication and research skills—and how to be a better human being

• Authors & Texts
• Top Picks Lists
• Study Guides
• Best Sellers
• Plays & Drama
• Shakespeare
• Short Stories
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• M.A., English Literature, California State University - Sacramento
• B.A., English, California State University - Sacramento

Literature is a term used to describe written and sometimes spoken material. Derived from the Latin word  literature  meaning "writing formed with letters," literature most commonly refers to works of the creative imagination, including poetry, drama , fiction , nonfiction , and in some instances, journalism , and song. 

What Is Literature?

Simply put, literature represents the culture and tradition of a language or a people. The concept is difficult to precisely define, though many have tried; it's clear that the accepted definition of literature is constantly changing and evolving.

For many, the word literature suggests a higher art form; merely putting words on a page doesn't necessarily equate to creating literature. A canon is the accepted body of works for a given author. Some works of literature are considered canonical, that is, culturally representative of a particular genre (poetry, prose, or drama).

Literary Fiction vs. Genre Fiction

Some definitions also separate literary fiction from so-called "genre fiction," which includes types such as mystery, science fiction, western, romance, thriller, and horror. Think mass-market paperback.

Genre fiction typically does not have as much character development as literary fiction and is read for entertainment, escapism, and plot, whereas literary fiction explores themes common to the human condition and uses symbolism and other literary devices to convey the author's viewpoint on his or her chosen themes. Literary fiction involves getting into the minds of the characters (or at least the protagonist) and experiencing their relationships with others. The protagonist typically comes to a realization or changes in some way during the course of a literary novel.

(The difference in type does not mean that literary writers are better than genre fiction writers, just that they operate differently.)

Why Is Literature Important?

Works of literature, at their best, provide a kind of blueprint of human society. From the writings of ancient civilizations such as Egypt and China to Greek philosophy and poetry, from the epics of Homer to the plays of William Shakespeare, from Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte to Maya Angelou , works of literature give insight and context to all the world's societies. In this way, literature is more than just a historical or cultural artifact; it can serve as an introduction to a new world of experience.

But what we consider to be literature can vary from one generation to the next. For instance, Herman Melville's 1851 novel " Moby Dick "   was considered a failure by contemporary reviewers. However, it has since been recognized as a masterpiece and is frequently cited as one of the best works of Western literature for its thematic complexity and use of symbolism. By reading "Moby Dick" in the present day, we can gain a fuller understanding of literary traditions in Melville's time. 

Debating Literature 

Ultimately, we may discover meaning in literature by looking at what the author writes or says and how he or she says it. We may interpret and debate an author's message by examining the words he or she chooses in a given novel or work or observing which character or voice serves as the connection to the reader.

In academia, this decoding of the text is often carried out through the use of  literary theory using a mythological, sociological, psychological, historical, or other approaches to better understand the context and depth of a work.

Whatever critical paradigm we use to discuss and analyze it, literature is important to us because it speaks to us, it is universal, and it affects us on a deeply personal level. 

School Skills

Students who study literature and read for pleasure have a higher vocabulary, better reading comprehension, and better communication skills, such as writing ability. Communication skills affect people in every area of their lives, from navigating interpersonal relationships to participating in meetings in the workplace to drafting intraoffice memos or reports.

When students analyze literature, they learn to identify cause and effect and are applying critical thinking skills. Without realizing it, they examine the characters psychologically or sociologically. They identify the characters' motivations for their actions and see through those actions to any ulterior motives.

When planning an essay on a work of literature, students use problem-solving skills to come up with a thesis and follow through on compiling their paper. It takes research skills to dig up evidence for their thesis from the text and scholarly criticism, and it takes organizational skills to present their argument in a coherent, cohesive manner.

Empathy and Other Emotions

Some studies say that people who read literature have more empathy for others, as literature puts the reader into another person's shoes. Having empathy for others leads people to socialize more effectively, solve conflicts peacefully, collaborate better in the workplace, behave morally, and possibly even become involved in making their community a better place.

Other studies note a correlation between readers and empathy but do not find causation . Either way, studies back the need for strong English programs in schools, especially as people spend more and more time looking at screens rather than books.

Along with empathy for others, readers can feel a greater connection to humanity and less isolated. Students who read literature can find solace as they realize that others have gone through the same things that they are experiencing or have experienced. This can be a catharsis and relief to them if they feel burdened or alone in their troubles.

Quotes About Literature

Here are some quotes about literature from literature giants themselves.

• Robert Louis Stevenson : "The difficulty of literature is not to write, but to write what you mean; not to affect your reader, but to affect him precisely as you wish."
• Jane Austen, "Northanger Abbey" : "The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid."
• William Shakespeare, "Henry VI" : “I’ll call for pen and ink and write my mind.”
• Are Literature and Fiction the Same?
• Literature Quotes and Sayings
• What Is the Canon in Literature?
• Stylistics and Elements of Style in Literature
• Every Character in Moby Dick
• Literature Definitions: What Makes a Book a Classic?
• literary present (verbs)
• 5 Classic Novels Everyone Should Read
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