Review of literature

1. Review of literature ENG 102 – 3/17/2014

2. purpose • Review of literature is a genre that summarizes and evaluates sources • Since much of this was addressed in your bibliographies, we will be incorporating a much shorter version in your papers

3. objectives • Condense • Summarize • Group • Introduce • State of the field • Scholarly conversation – justify your project

4. Approaches • Key words • Approaches • Similarities • Differences

5. Format • 1-3 paragraphs (1 – 1 ½ pages) • Exposition

6. examples • The difficulties of identity formation are presented as produced by the antebellum anxieties centered on slavery and abolition, and the resolution to these issues in the novel is the preservation of the status quo. As a result of years of inattention, there is little scholarship on Bird; however, what scholarship exists depicts the author has having a pro-slavery agenda. A number of scholars, such as Curtis Dahl, Nancy Buffington, and Patricia Roberts-Miller, discuss Bird and the politics of his time. For example, Roberts-Miller describes the “systematic persecution of abolitions” and Bird’s view of slavery as a “brutal practicality” (74), which factor largely in Sheppard Lee. Aside from Dahl’s 1963 biography or Bird, which briefly touches on the novel, there is very little or no scholarship on the novel written between Poe’s 1836 review of the novel and Christopher Looby’sdiscovery of Sheppard Lee. However, since Looby’s edition, published in 2008, a handful of scholars such as Justine Murison, Maurice S. Lee, and Samuel Otter have examined the novel. • Paragraph one: • Larger overview • Addresses scholars who address one point (the author)

7. Example cont’d • Sheppard Lee criticism tends to focus on the Tom episode and addresses Bird’s pro-slavery sentiments. It may seem that in allowing his white character to inhabit a black body in the same way he enters several white bodies Bird advances an argument in support of racial equality, but critics argue just the opposite. Murison draws the distinction between person and object and demonstrates that slavers were considered objects rather than human beings. Otter and Lee also focus on the Tom episode and address Tom’s status as an object, but they go further to examine the contentment that the narrator finds in that identity. Otter’s argument in particular exemplifies Castiglia’s concept of interiority by suggesting that Tom does not have any “interior life or social context” (Otter 103). This is significant because Otter begins to bring together concepts of race and interiority in the novel; by withholding interiority from Tom, Bird suggests that Tom and the rest of the black population are merely bodies or objects rather than identities. Many scholars have drawn attention to black identity—an identity defined by its absence—in the antebellum period as one riddle with violence, dehumanization, and disregard. In addition to Murison, critics such as James Jasinski and Colin Dayan highlight the fact that slaves are classified strictly as property. Dayan describes slaves as “chattel” (406) while Jasinski depicts dominant white representations of the black community in the antebellum period as either overly submissive or violent and brutish (30). • Paragraph two: • Focuses on a different point • Shows the conversation (how ideas build)

8. Example cont’d • Although Bird’s earliest reviewer, Poe, focused on metempsychosis and the identity of the narrator, this concept has been mostly ignored by recent scholars in their focus on the racial elements of the novel. However, Bird’s pro-slavery message is intrinsically linked to the search for identity that the novel represents: white identities attempt to maintain order through the suppression of black identities. Poe criticizes Bird’s use of metempsychosis and argues that a novel of this type should have a narrator who is changed only by events and not the bodies in which his soul resides (Poe 401); however, the fluid and unstable nature of Bird’s narrator is highly significant, for the instability of Lee’s identity reflects that of the nation. • Third paragraph • Justifies the argument – shows what’s missing from the scholarship (what is lacking and what is incorrect)

9. Note: • Few quotations • Many others named in a short span • Broad strokes • Culminates in a discussion of what is missing or incorrect • Justifies author’s argument • Key words: • Scholars, critics, experts • Proponents, opponents • Highlight, address, examine, suggest, argue, etc.

10. Tracking trends – group and arrange • Slavery: • - Jasinski (property) • - Dayan – white depictions of slavery • Interiority: • - Castiglia • - Otter • - Poe • (-me) • Metempsychosis: • - Poe • (-me) • Bird’s life: • - Dahl • - Buffington • - Roberts-Miller • Tom Episode: • - Murison (object) • - Otter (object, contentment) • - Lee (object, contentment) • (-me)