Finding Interesting Literary Analysis Essay Topics


If you are writing a literature review, be it for a thesis or dissertation, you must ensure that the final product is written in a formal and academic style. You want your writing to remain clear and concise the entire way through. Be careful to avoid personal language or any colloquialisms. Your aim needs to be respectful of other author’s opinions. This is not where you make a strong personal objection. Do not tell the readers that you thought the argument of another author to be “garbage”. Instead, if you did find this to be the case, use polite language such as “inconsistent”, or “based on false assumptions”.

  • When you introduce the opinion of another author, avoid opening with “says” and instead use a verb that accurately reflects the author’s purpose such as “states”, “claims”, “or argues”.
  • When you refer to general theories, use the present tense.
  • When you are referring to a previous experiment or specific piece of research use the past tense

Remember that you need to avoid plagiarism at all times. Your hypothesis needs to be separate from your source opinions. You need to make sure your reference included literature consistently so that the reader knows you are referring to it. Do this in your notes as well to keep things clear.

**Tip: use different colored highlighters or pens to separate your ideas from the ideas of others in your notes. This will make it easier to avoid accidental plagiarism.

Finally, you should use the checklist below to make sure you have done everything in your review correctly:

Source Checklist:

  • Did you indicate the purpose of your review?
  • Are the parameters reasonable?
  • Did you include some literature while excluding others?
  • What years did you cover?
  • Did you emphasize any recent developments?
  • Did you focus on primary sources with only a smattering of secondary sources?
  • Is the literature you used relevant?
  • Did you complete your bibliography?

Critically evaluate your content as per the following checklist:

  • Did you organize your material based on the issues at hand?
  • Is your organization logical?
  • Did you include detail based on important?
  • Were you critical of design issues or method issues?
  • Did you indicate where some results were inconclusive or conflicting and discuss reasons why this might have been?
  • Did you indicate why each piece of literature was relevant to your research?
#