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What Makes a Literary Research Paper?

Writing literary research paper requires excellent writing skills, a quick eye and much perseverance. For writing A level paper based on literary piece you need to do much reading, writing and criticizing.

Literary papers are usually assigned for English class in educational setting – college, University or high school. These kind of academic task can be performed in different essay formats – comparative essays, critical or analytical essays – they are all meant for analyzing literary piece with various purposes. The assignment is defined by the teacher or instructor or sometimes by a student. All in all literary research is a format of critical analysis.

Widely used format for literary research paper is a comparative analysis when a student is required to compare two or more stories, books or characters from different pieces or works of the same author. That’s why writing literary research requires complete understanding of the task set by the instructor.

Literary research paper should not be confused with literature review or book review. Literature review is a part of almost any research format which summarizes the views and opinions of different scholars working on the same problem. It serves the basis for the further research on the topic. Book review is a summary of a book plot and expressing one’s impressions after its reading. Literary research is not about summarizing a book or views on it but critically reviewing its contents which involves a little bit of plot analysis, considering different opinions and expressing your on view on the problem.

Literary research comprises excellent knowledge of the literary piece idea, its characters and plot as well as understanding what an author aimed to tell in a book. It involves short review of the plot or character analysis with the only aim to highlight the main idea of the work through it. Retelling is not required. Moreover, plot retelling is not considered as a literary research paper.

Considering the views of critics is welcome but at the same time the view of the student on a book is a must. Sometimes a student must refer to different sources including historical events which the author of the literary piece witnessed, his background, views and life path. One may say that autobiographical information about the author helps in understanding its literary work. That’s why when writing literary research one must take into account far more different aspects than just a literary piece under analysis. So, the main components of research paper include plot and the main idea analysis, considering views of the critics and producing your own view on piece.

Sometimes literary work is so complicated and confusing that it is impossible to produce a decent literary research without referring to critical reviews of a story or novel. Reading about what other think of the piece is an important part of research. The views of critics or historians are going to make a different and more profound literary research paper. With a considerate approach literary research is a challenging task which can be overcome.