Umberfox

brilliant websites!!

sparknotes aka the king of literary analysis sites

litcharts - my fav!!!

shmoop - the funniest one ever honestly

gradesaver

cliffsnotes

novelguide

bbc bitesize

thugnotes

crash course

english 101 (english literature)

english 102 (american literature)

tip: google ’[your text name] analysis’ and you’ll find a lot of helpful sites!

billy shakes yo B)

shakespeare plays in easy everyday language!

how to shakespeare!

interactive globe theatre!

thou/thee/thy/thine ft. swearing

all about poems

approaching poetry analysis in an exam

rhythm and meter terms

tons of poems!!

understanding and explicating poetry

how to read a poem

literary history

key literary periods + defining characteristics

british literary periods

elizabethan literature characteristics

cute insp!

these notes are really pretty

the best character flashcards ever imo!!

rad macbeth mind map

this gorg mind map + how to make one

BOMBASS CORNELL NOTES

i <3 annotations

how i annotate :)

hella helpful guide on annotating

how to annotate

how to annotate #2

how to annotate #3

annotating tips

3 annotating methods

detailed post

studyign’s rad annotations masterpost

cute colour coding scheme

using multiple highlighters

colours and post-its + tips

this is cool idk

this is really neat

lots of colours

flag your strategy!

neat poetry annotations

highlighters + post-its

loads of highlighting + post-its

general tips?

my tips for studying lit

how to study for lit

really useful tips

summarising books!!

lit help from teatimestudies

reading complex texts

books!

a list of recommended books!

tons of FREE classics yaaaaaaas

please message me for any other masterpost requests or broken links!!

This started out as a Google Doc for personal use, but I might as well share it with you since the internet is awesome and chances are there are other lit freaks like me out there! + Masterposts are the best

Beginners (old but gold tbh)

Sparknotes

Cliffnotes

ThugNotes

CrashCourse

Novel Guide

Shmoop

Grade Saver (I’ve found some rare XVIII century plays explained here!)

English 101 (English lit)

English 102 (American lit)

Tips to Analyze, Write, Interpret literature (College level):

English 103: Analyzing and Interpreting Lit.

Literary Analysis Guide - Goshen College

Literary Analysis: Using Elements of Literature

HOW TO WRITE A LITERARY ANALYSIS ESSAY

How to Write an Analysis of Theme — Teaching College English

Analyzing and Interpreting Literature | CLEP

How I Plan and Write Literature Papers by notaperfectstudent​

Very Useful (misc.)

CRITICAL THEORY: Introduction to Literature

Literary Theory Links

Voice of the Shuttle (great humanities research page)

Warwick English Page (bunch of links, exams, essays, etc…)

Consciousness, Literature and the Arts Archive: Articles and Essays

Online Lectures

Terry Eagleton: “The Death of Criticism?” - UC Berkeley Events

Modernism Undone: T.S. Eliot’s Literary Revolution

A Reader’s Guide to T.S. Eliot’s “Four Quartets” (Lecture by Thomas Howard, Professor Emeritus, Gordon College)

Arts One Open: on The Wasteland by T.S. Eliot (Lecture by Kevin McNeilly for the “Monster in the Mirror” theme)

Introduction to Literary Theory - Yale

Harold Bloom on Shakespeare - Yale

Harold Bloom on Walt Whitman

Noam Chomsky on Linguistics

Keio Linguistic Colloquium SYNTAX SESSION Professor Noam Chomsky (MIT)

Open Courses

ENGL 291: THE AMERICAN NOVEL SINCE 1945 - Yale

ENGL 220: MILTON - Yale

AMST 246: HEMINGWAY, FITZGERALD, FAULKNER - Yale

Fantasy and Science Fiction: The Human Mind, Our Modern World - U- of Michigan (took this, it’s great! Course starts October 2015)

MODERN POETRY - Yale

The Fiction of Relationship - Brown (no open sessions rn but I took this and it is also great, so stay tune for when the course re-opens)

Victorian Era

Literary Genre, Mode, and Style during the Victorian Era (so many sources, essays and papers!! <3)

Nostalgia and the Victorian Novel

Getting On C.19th Lit

Landscape

Tess and Wuthering Heights

Female Relationships

Foreign Spaces

Romanticism

The Romanticism Blog (posts concerning scholars and students, here you will find great ideas for essays!)

The Romantics: Nature (bbc doc)

The Romantics: Eternity (bbc doc)

The Romantics: Liberty (bbc doc)

Lord Byron (bbc doc)

Romantic Circles

Romantic Chronology http://www.english.ucsb.edu:591/rchrono/ The Voice of the Shuttle, Romanticism pages  http://vos.ucsb.edu/  –> literature (in English)–> Romantics–>  a wealth of links to many resources

The XVIII Century

Skin as Surface in Swift and Pope

Public Opinion in Swift and Gay

The Female Body in Swift and Pope

Bawdiness in Cleland and Sterne

Voyeurism in Cleland

Narrative and Progress in Tristram Shandy

Shakespeare

Reading Shakespeare’s Play

Introduction to Shakespeare’s life and works

Featured Essays and Book Excerpts on Shakespeare’s Plays

Shakespeare Mag: Education and resources

Introduction to Shakespeare (so many links!):

Humanist Grammar School

Comedy

Problems with Shakespeare’s Texts

Shakespearean Verse and Prose

Dramatic Plot Structure

Figurative Language and Rhetorical Devices

The Histories

Tragedy

Revenge Tragedy

Establishing the Text of Hamlet

The Romances

Blackfriars Theater and Audience Expectations

Hamlet performed by BATHS (for me this is a great representation tbh!)

Synopses of Shakespeare’s Plays

Shakespeare Resource Center

The Shakespeare Authorship Page

Internet Shakespeare Editions

Robert Teeter’s Shakespeare Links

Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre Virtual Tour

Interactive Globe Theatre

Shakespeare Timeline

The Folger Shakespeare Library

Shakespeare Illustrated (Emory University)

Steven Marx’s “Triangulating Shakespeare”

“But I have that within that passes show”: Hamlet’s Soliloquies as an Expression of Shakespeare’s Loss and Transformation (essay)

Medieval

Medieval English Studies A GUIDE TO MIDDLE ENGLISH

Translatio studii et imperii

Medieval Attitudes toward Vernacular Literature

Courtly Love

Medieval Allegory

The Alliterative Revival

The Three Medieval Estates

Arthurian literature

Arthurian Studies Links & Essays

Arthurian Resources (Thomas Green)

Arthurian Links (Thomas Green)

Labyrinth Arthurian Links

The Camelot Project (Medieval to modern texts and images)

King Arthur links (Medieval History site)

Britannia Arthurian Links

Holy Grail  links (Mary Weidenhaft)

Women of the Arthurian Legend (Camelot Project–modern)

Arthuriana (International Arthurian Society journal)

Arthurnet (Listserve)

A scholarly discussion list for King Arthur

Arthuriana/Camelot Project Bibliographies

Princeton Charrette Project (Manuscript images of Chrétien de Troyes’s Lancelot romance)

Yale MS 229, Prose Lancelot (Illuminated manuscript images)

The Camelot Project Artists Menu (modern)

Poetry

Essay writing tips for poetry

Poetry Foundation: Lectures

Essays on Poetic Theory

British Poetry 1780-1910: a Hypertext Archive of Scholarly Editions

The American Poetry Full-Text Database

English Verse Drama: the Full-Text Database

The English Poetry Full-Text Database

Online Exams

Romantics Exam

Eighteenth Century Literature Final here

Medieval to Renaissance English Literature Examen (Warwick)

I recently got an ask about how to write an introductory paragraph for an essay so I thought I’d do a post about how to write a good essay.

** Important Points ** For essays in high school, use third person unless the teacher specifically tells you not too. It’s more academic and professional while first person sounds really informal. I’ve heard that in college it’s different but again, it depends on the class. Stay on the safe side and use third person unless otherwise specified. Also, try to be as sophisticated and mature as you can. This makes the essay sound smarter and makes it easier to read.

1) INTRODUCTION

Try to think of an upside down pyramid here. You start off broad and end off tapered to a point (specific). The formula for writing a good intro is this: hook, background info, introduce topic of discussion, and thesis. In the pyramid example, the hook is the broad and the thesis is the narrow. The intro is usually around 8 sentences long.

Hook: Unlike what you’ve probably been told through out high school, the hook is not necessarily a wow statement. It’s typically a broad idea that relates to the topic of discussion. I usually use historical facts or common wisdom and go from there. I then follow it up with a sentence that elaborates on my hook and a sentence that connects my hook with the background info.

Background Info: Here you give the reader some context as to what you will be discussing in your essay. It sets the scene for the topic you’re discussing. Try to be concise.

Introduce the Topic of Discussion: Here you give a brief summary of the points you’re arguing/discussing. It should be one sentence per body paragraph and again, be clear and concise and avoid merely summarizing the plot. This part should cover the gist of your ideas.

Thesis: This should be a longer complex sentence that summarizes your point of view and ideas. This is one of the most important parts of the essay so crafting a good thesis is crucial.

I did a more detailed post about the introduction with an example introduction paragraph HERE.

2) BODY PARAGRAPHS

The meat of your essay. Here is where you state your arguments and defend them with supporting evidence from literature, articles, or even your personal experience. I would generally limit one argument per body paragraph. Which reminds me, most likely you have been taught the canned five paragraph essay. Some people write all their essays in five paragraph format because they thing that is the only way to go. Really, you can do four+ body paragraphs with the common numbers being four and six. It depends on the essay. When writing your body paragraph you need this structure: topic sentence, three points, three examples of supporting evidence, conclusion. Body paragraphs typically fall between 8 -15 sentences.

Topic Sentence: This is similar to a thesis. Here you’re stating the argument that you are proving in a clear and concise sentence.

Three Points: There’s a rule of thumb that you generally want to have three points about each argument and have a piece of supporting evidence for each point. I’m going to start with the three points first. Basically, you want three ideas about your argument that show why it’s valid. For example if you’re trying to argue that cheese is dairy, your three points are it’s made of milk, it’s featured in the dairy section of the grocery store, and the FDA labels it as dairy.

Three Examples of Supporting Evidence: These are usually quotes from other sources or the piece of literature you’re analyzing that support the three points of your argument. To use the really bad cheese example from above, for the milk point you’d use an ingredients label from a package of cheese, for the grocery store point you’d get a sheet with the department labels and the produce in those departments, and for the FDA point you’d find a quote from their website.

Conclusion: This is a sentence or two that wraps up your body paragraph. It should briefly summarize the points you discussed or the topic sentence and help transition into the next paragraph.

2) a. COUNTER ARGUMENT PARAGRAPHS 

This paragraph is NOT necessary for most essays. However, some do require them so it’s important to know how to approach them. Depending on whom you ask, they’ll either tell you that the counter argument paragraph goes in the middle of your body paragraphs, or at the end. Personally I prefer the end but the middle is more correct. Placing it in the middle allows you to end on a strong note but I think it’s a matter of personal preference. The counter argument is used to present an opposing view point and say why it’s wrong. This can strengthen your argument if it’s done properly but ruin it if it’s done wrong so tread carefully. The only thing different from the body paragraph structure is the topic sentence.

Topic Sentence: Here you need a specific template to start the paragraph properly. I usually use: It may be argued that _______________ but there is sufficient evidence to show that _______________. The first blank is filled with the opposing argument and the last blank is your argument. There are different ways to structure this sentence but this is the one I use.

The rest of the paragraph is the same as the body paragraph: you get three points as to why the counter argument is wrong and three points to support it. Then you end with a typical concluding sentence.

3) CONCLUSION

This is where you wrap up your arguments and finish strong. It has three components: a restatement of your thesis, summary of your arguments, and general statement to wrap it up. Think of the right side up pyramid this time. The pointy end is the thesis and the bottom is the general statement that closes your essay. A conclusion is typically 5 sentences long.

Restatement of Thesis: This is pretty self explanatory; you restate the thesis using different language than you used in your intro.

Summary of Arguments: Here you briefly touch upon the arguments you covered in your essay. Again, clear and concise, and whatever you do, DO NOT introduce new information. It can ruin the amazing essay you worked so hard on.

General Statement: A general statement is a broad idea that you use to tie your entire essay together. It’s kind of like the hook but should be more relevant to your essay.

Eric Thomas  (via wordsnquotes)

Hi everyone, it’s finally happening: I will be making an entire series of posts that will be entirely dedicated to studying and studying effectively. So, to start off with, here are some actual working tips on how to make sure that what you read out of your textbook will stick with you!

For every paragraph/section that you read, formulate a question to which what you read will be the answer

Use flashcards by writing your previously formulated question on one side, and a shortened, summarised version of the answer (so the text that you just read) on the other

Highlight important terms, explanations of terms, and key sentences in you textbook; but don’t overdo it, because that may lead to you only reading the highlighted parts of the text, and not the other parts that may be equally important as well

Find patterns within different sections: could the two be combined and/or related to each other, and if so, how?

Use sticky notes to write down important processes, use them as tabs or provide your texts of further information provided by your teachers/professors (or yourself) that might be relevant

Make a mindmap for every chapter that you read: start off with one guiding principle and then work out the rest of your chapter’s sections around your guiding principle in your own words; this will help you visualise what you just read

Interpret what you read an develop your own opnion on the material (especially in the social sciences) so that you can understand the texts you’re studying from your own perspective

Discuss your interpretations and opinions with your teacher/professor; not only does it show to them you studies the material well, but it also helps you to see things from yet another perspective (in this case it would be your teacher’s) and therefore be beneficial to what you’re studying

Take your time to read; if you’re like me and you find textbooks to often state the obvious or not seem as very in-depth, you might still want to read it carefully and take your time on reading, asking yourself the following questions: what did I just read? and how does it relate to what I’m studying?