In preparation for your Fall 2022 final paper, you will be writing an annotated bibliography on the topic of your choice. Be creative about the topic you choose. It should be something that genuinely interests you. Please feel free to speak to your professor about your topic ideas.
A bibliography is a list of book, book chapter, and article citations on a particular topic. An annotated bibliography is a bibliography in which each citation has an annotation, or note, which describes and evaluates the item.
The annotations are relatively brief, usually about 150 words, explaining how a source is relevant and valuable to your research. See the links below for a more detailed explanation.
Writing annotated bibliographies is an excellent way to...
Brockbank, J. P. “Myth and History in Shakespeare’s Rome.” Mythe et histoire. Ed. Marie-Therese Jones-Davies. Societe Frangaise Shakespeare, Actes du Congres, 1983. Paris: Jean Touzot, 1984, pp. 95-111.
Discusses the relationship between myth and history in Shakespeare’s Roman plays based on Plutarch. Notes that each of these plays “opens three perspectives of significance— into antiquity, into Shakespeare’s own time, and into our own state of awareness.” The theatrical experience of the Roman plays offers “truths about human consciousness and community, and about the relationship between them,” that can be expressed in no other way. Julius Caesar, which was probably the first play performed at the new Globe theater in 1599, marks a crucial moment in Shakespeare’s art, in theatrical history, and in the development of “our consciousness of Rome.” In both Julius Caesar and Coriolanus, instabilities of the state can be related to “persisting, if not perennial instabilities of human consciousness.”
(This examples comes from -- Lewis Walker. Shakespeare and the Classical Tradition: An Annotated Bibliography 1961–1991.)
