As you advance in your research (both in this class and also further in your college career and beyond), it will grow in complexity. You may eventually have to find several sources (larger projects can require 10 or 20+ sources) and it will be important that you have a method for organizing your research.

Annotated bibs are exactly what they sound like. It is a bibliography or works cited entry that you have annotated, or made notes about. The great thing about an annotated bib is that it is solely for your benefit. It is so you can go back over your sources and research and look through organized notes written by you, to you and for you.

Later in the semester, you will craft an an annotated bibliography over your research project. This week we will practice for that. Look over the following materials to get familiar with the format and purpose of an annotated bibliography.

is week you read “Young Goodman Brown”. I’ve provided an article by Paul Hurley that does a really good job of laying out his argument: YOUNG GOODMAN BROWN’S HEART OF DARKNESS-1.pdf

Respond:

This is how a scholarly article is often formatted. When you are reading, you want to pay attention to the opening pages. This is where the author’s argument is going to be and how they set up that argument is important. They will lay the foundation by presenting the ongoing conversation about the text. The issue being presented and who is saying what and why.

Read the article and do an “active reading”. This is the act of underlining or highlighting important concepts, marking the thesis and topic sentences, circling any unfamiliar words and defining them in the margin, etc., that you think are interesting, or that make good points. It’s okay if you don’t understand everything in the entire article – literary criticism can be challenging to read! Focus on the points that you do understand.
Find the author’s point, or thesis, in the article. What are they saying about the topic? How are they contributing to the overall discussion?
Write an Annotated Bibliography entry (see e