LITTRANS 275: Literature in Translation: The Tales of Hans Christian Andersen (Fall 2023) : Research Approach & Keywords

There are some special challenges in finding secondary sources for this course.

• First, depending on your text, it may be difficult to find criticism specifically about text, especially in English.

• Second, you may not find all your sources online; you may need to use sources that may only be available in print in the library.

• Third, you will need to think creatively and look for sources about the following:

  • Genre or kind of text (e.g., folktales)

  • Themes in the text (e.g., religion, Christianity, women, gender, etc.)

  • Eras or time period (i.e., the time the text was written, time depicted in text)

  • Movements that the text fits into (e.g, Romanticism)

  • Locations (e.g., Denmark, Northern Europe)

  • Compare/Contrast (author’s other texts or other works)

• Analyzing your text by the categories above will provide you with keywords or search terms to search library resources
• The list of literary terms on this page may be a source of additional keywords. Some of these may represent themes or movements that relate to your text.
• When brainstorming keywords, think of nouns and noun phrases.  Also think of synonyms as authors and databases use different words to describe the same topics. 

Below is a book for finding literary terms and definitions. See Find Background Information for additional books with literary terms and concepts..

It may be helpful to think about literary concepts and movements and find books and articles related to them. It also may be helpful to look at books and articles about other texts by your author. The following are some terms that may be useful to use as keywords in finding books and articles related to your chosen text . These are suggestions; the list is not complete.​

• Scandinavian Folktales
• Lutheranism in Scandinavia
• Captivity Narrative
• Age of Reason/Enlightenment
• Deism
• Scandinavian Romanticism
• Literary Realism
• Literary Naturalism