Collecting the material
The first task is to get the material together. The material comes in two kinds: primary and secondary sources. Primary sources in this case are literary texts: the actual material that you work on. Secondary sources are works of criticism. Here is your Second Important Message:
(ii) It is always better to read an original text and refer to it than to read and refer to a critic.
The more literary texts you read and can refer to the better. You can't possibly read too many. Remember, the key to your essay is the number and quality of your ideas about literary texts. If you casually refer, from at least an apparent position of familiarity, to some obscure literary text, you will win the admiration of your marker. If you refer to a critic, particularly an obscure one, the chances are his or her eye will glaze over. There are exceptions to this rule, which I will mention later, but the basic principle is extremely important: original texts are better than critics, and you can't know too many. Whereas it is possible to get a first class degree and never to have read any critics at all.
3.1 What are critics for?
The short answer: to be disagreed with. A longer answer: reading critics can give you an idea of what the state of critical opinion is about a literary text, to save you re-inventing the wheel and coming up with some brilliant original perception that William Empson thought of ninety years ago. Reading critics means that you can start at the coal face rather than have to dig your own mine. Secondly, they can stimulate your ideas. But the thing to remember is: only your ideas obtain merit. Therefore, never, ever, quote a critic just to agree with him or her. Always, under all circumstances, quote a critic in the following form: Leavis says x, but I disagree as follows. Or: Leavis says x, and this is very true, but I would develop his thought as follows. Never, NEVER: as Leavis says, followed by a quote, followed by nothing. This is very common in undergraduate essays, and it is simply a waste of space.
3.2 Books and articles
A secondary point about critics. They publish in two forms, books and articles. You should be familiar with the library electronic catalogue and the ways of searching it, in order to find books: it's not difficult, and if you don't know how to do it by now go immediately and find out. If you have a problem, ask a librarian, they'd be happy to help. Just spend half an hour simply playing with the library computer, finding out what it can do. But: books are not usually much use. They're usually out, as you will surely have discovered by now. And you gain no special merit points for having read them, because so has everyone else.
Articles are a different matter. Articles in academic journals are (a) not normally read by undergraduates, and therefore (b) normally on the shelves. They are more work to track down, but success will be rewarded by the admiration of your examiner, because undergraduates aren't expected to know about such things. And they are full of interesting, original, and up-to-date ideas about literary texts, that, maybe, your examiner won't even have heard of (but don't count on this: stealing ideas is heavily penalised). Also of dross and garbage, of course. But this is good too, because you'll have plenty to disagree with.
The way to get hold of articles is to go to the library and play with the CD ROM workstation. There's one on every main floor. I can't tell you here how to work it: find out, it's not difficult, and, as before, a librarian will be glad to help you; also there are copious instructions. Spend some time playing with it: the database you want is called the MLA Index. You will come up with a lot of titles that aren't in the library, which is very frustrating, but from every search you will find at least a few relevant articles, and some of these will be valuable. This is almost guaranteed.
Note: this information is now out of date. There is a wonderful database called BIDS that lists articles published since 1981. It's on the Web; it's easy to search, very user-friendly, and it emails you the list of articles you are interested in. Remarkable. You need to go to the equally friendly Information Desk in the Main Library to get an Athens login and password first.
Another note: this information too is now (June 2001) out of date. Everything has become vastly, amazingly, easier. You can now get the full texts of articles on line: that is, you can access them from the computer you are using to read this. And you can search them easily: effortlessly, in fact. These collections of essays are available at any time, day or night, and are never out on loan to someone else. You simply must avail yourselves of this fantastic opportunity. It is called Literature OnLine (aka LION). This is primarily a collection of literary texts, a vast collection in fact. This is an amazing resource in itself. But they also have full text articles. A detailed account of how to access and use this goldmine is here.
Another note: now (April 2003) there is another, truly remarkable resource. The online articles in Lion are nice, but there are not enough of them. Questia is an entirely different matter. It is the world's largest online library, with over 45,000 complete books, and 400,000 titles in all. It is a substantial humanities library, open at all times and with the books always available. It's not the easiest way to read a book, but otherwise the advantages are extraordinary. The disadvantage is that it costs money, but not much; and you can subscribe for say a month for about £10.00. I recommend it.
3.3 Using the World Wide Web
The Web is has now become a fantastic resource: easily available, full of material, and with an an answer to every question. However, there are problems, and you should use the Web carefully. You can find out how to do so
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