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Ensayo de Crítica Literaria sobre "La Muñeca Menor" de Rosario Ferre

Literary criticism is the evaluation, comparison, analysis, or interpretation of literary works. Criticism may examine the themes in the work, look at the author's writings as a collection, analyze a work through a particular lens or school of thought, or compare works of the same theme, genre, time period, etc.). 

NOTE: A book review is different from literary criticism. Book reviews summarize the book and give the reviewer's opinion on whether the book is worth reading. Authors of book reviews can intend them for a general or an academic audience.

Searching for Scholarly Sources

For this assignment, you will need scholarly secondary sources to support your literary criticism of  "La Muñeca Menor" by Rosario Ferre. To locate these sources, there are a few tips to keep in mind:

  • you are not looking for a source that makes your exact argument; you are looking for sources that inform your argument
  • because search systems are computer programs, the search terms and how you present them will influence the results you get
  • depending on the argument you are making, you will utilize the search systems that contain those types of arguments

Locating Scholarly Sources

Library Resources (for this assingment)

Tips for searching

  • start with an Advanced Search whenever possible
  • utilize unique functionality of the database
    • utilize Subjects to focus your results
    • consider further narrowing using filters or additional keywords
      • source type
      • dates
      • language
  • learn from your search results (change your search terms accordingly) 
  • allow a source to lead you to another source through the recommendations in the record or bibliography

Reading Scholarly Sources

Scholarly articles are often the resources your professors want you to use to inform and support your own writing. It helps to understand why that is the case. It also helps to normalize how difficult they can be to navigate.

  • Who are they written by? 
  • Who are they written for? 
  • What if they are hard to understand?
  • When are they meant to be used?
  • Why are they written? 
  • How are they meant to be used?

Reading Scholarly Articles in the Arts and Humanities

Scholarly articles in the Arts and Humanities are set up differently than in the Sciences. Articles may read more like essays, rather than reports on scientific experiments. 

In the Humanities, scholars are not conducting experiments on participants but rather are making logical arguments based on the evidence they have researched and analyzed.

In literature, for example, a scholar may be studying a particular novel of an author. In history, a scholar may look at the primary source documents from the time period they are studying.

The following sections are generally included in humanities scholarly articles, although they may not be clearly marked or labeled. 

Abstract A summary of the research provided at the beginning of the article, although sometimes articles do not have an abstract. 
Introduction Provides background information for the topic being studied. The article's thesis will be found in the introduction, and may also include a brief literature review.
Discussion/Conclusion The discussion likely runs through the entire article and is the main component of the article providing analysis, criticism, etc. The conclusion wraps up the article; both sections usually are not labeled. 
Works Cited List of sources cited in the article by the author(s).

Reading Scholarly Articles in the Arts and Humanities by UC Merced Library under license CC BY-NC 4.0 .