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Academic writing - Structure in a literature review

• Planning your thesis
• IMRAD-structure
• Strukture in a empirical thesis

Structure in a literature review

• Writing your thesis
• The writing process
• Finding sources
• Using and citing sources
• Tools for academic writing
• Glossary of terms

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Structure in a literature review.

Parts of an assignment:

Introduction

Methodology, conclusion or summary.

Requirements may vary from subject to subject, so you should always make sure to find out what is required in your subject area. The structure we describe on this page is based on the  IMRAD-model .

What is a literature review?

A literature review can be found in variations of formats. Traditionally there are two different directions, but there are mange different variations within the directions.

The main direction is what we call a narrative or traditional review. Their aim is to see the big picture, and you can often choose sources freely. You usually describe the results in a normal paragraph.

The other main direction is called systematic review, and here the aim is to find all the literature within an extremely limited area. In reality, it is often impossible to find all the literature, but your search and presentation of the results must be done in a completely transparent and systematic way so that the results can be reproduced.

Longer assignments, such as bachelor’s or master’s theses, need an abstract. An abstract is a summary of your text. It is important that the abstract is informative, given that not all potential readers are necessarily experts in the field. The abstract should be short, preferably no more than one standard A4 page, and give a short overview of the contents of your text. You should tell the reader:

• what you investigated
• how you did it
• what you found out

By reading the abstract, the reader should be able to determine whether or not they are interested in reading the rest of your paper.

In the introduction, you should place yourself within a research space, and demonstrate your knowledge of previous research. In other words, you should present what we already know, and what we do not know yet know about the subject. You do this by presenting:

• a problem or phenomenon you want to study
• the reasoning behind your choice of topic
• the research question or hypothesis you set out to investigate

Towards the end of the introduction, you should also say something about how your text is structured, as a short guide to the reader.

A useful tip is to begin writing your introduction early in the writing process. In so doing, you establish a clear direction for your paper, and how you are going to write it. You should then revisit your introduction towards the end of the writing process, complete it and make sure it corresponds well with the rest of the text.

In the background chapter, you must give a review of what has been done in that field or on the topic prior and present the situation as it is today. This contributes to “setting the scene” for the study and to help the reader understand your prerequisite for your study. As a rule of thumb, you may use many diverse types of sources in your background chapter to describe your field or your topic. Books, chapters, articles (both empirical and literature reviews), rapports, websites and official documents can be of use.

In this chapter, you present your methodological approach, explaining why and how your choices of method and design are suited to answer your problem statement. The chapter should answer the following questions:

• How did you collect the data?
• How did you interpret the data you collected?
• Why did you choose these methods?
• What are the strengths and weaknesses of these methods

By pointing out the strengths and weaknesses of your methods, you also invite discussion about ethical aspects of your project. In so doing, you show that you have generated your results in a valid and reliable manner, but also that you are able to critically reflect on your own work. Like in the theory chapter, it is important to only include methodology that is relevant to your research

Results/Analysis

You analyse your data by presenting, explaining and evaluating your findings. The analysis chapter is often referred to as your results, such as the IMROD model.

In quantitative research, it is common to present your findings not only in writing, but also by using figures and tables to give the reader an overview and better insight into what you did.

In empirically based studies, the analysis will be focused on describing and interpreting. Many scientists will often discuss specific findings in this chapter, and focus more on general patterns in the discussion chapter.

A good tip for finding out how to write your analysis, is to look at how it is done in other papers at the same level within your subject area.

In this chapter, you discuss your findings and what they implicate. Discussing your findings means that you:

• compare different views, arguments, factors and causes
• evaluate and compare your findings. Is there more than one possible way to interpret them?

This chapter should answer the following questions:

• How do the results answer your initial problem statement?
• What do these results mean?

It is a good idea to repeat your problem statement, in order to remind the reader of what it is.

You should also look back on your research and evaluate how valid and reliable it is

• What could you have done differently?
• What are its strengths and weaknesses?

Whether your final chapter should be a downright conclusion or a summary, depends on your problem statement. A conclusion should answer your problem statement, while a summary revisits the most important parts of your paper.

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Litteraturstudier - Literature review

Bøker i biblioteket om litteraturstudie som metode, litteratursøking.

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" A literature review is a descriptive and/or analytic summary of the existing material relating to some topic or area of study. The term also refers to the process of producing such a review" sitat fra Sageresearchmethods

Project planner Reviewing the Literature (from SageReserachMethods)

Søk i ORIA

Utvalg metodelitteratur fra SageResearchmethods

Welch Medical Library (2020). Overview of Searching techniques. YouTube. Filmen gjennomgår ulike søkestrategier, avhengig av ditt formål med søket. I eksempelet brukes PubMed, men er overførtbart til andre databaser 

Systematisk tilnærming til et søk (strukturert søk)

Planlagt og begrunnet og dokumentert på en slik måte at andre kan gjøre tilsvarende søk

• What- is your question? Identifiser hovedbegrepene i ditt spørsmål eller problemstilling. Hva slags litteratur trenger du?
• Were - to search (Velg database(r)). A-Å databaseliste UiA . Se også bibliotekets fagsider for hjelp til søk for ditt studieprogram
• Words - Finn søkeord for dine hovedbegreper (søke-elementer). De enkelte ordene kan trunkeres for treff på ulike endelser av ordet
• Hvert hovedbegrep /søke-element (konsept)     som du har valgt å bruke i søkestrategien er representert ved en blokk av søkeord (enkeltord/og eller fraser)
• En Søkeblokk   = alle mulige synonymer/fraser for et begrep både kontrollerte termer (databasens emneord)) og fritekstord (ord fra tittel, sammendrag, forfatters stikkord mm)
• De enkelte søketermene i samme blokk kombineres med OR – for treff på enten det ene eller andre ordet
• Søk hver blokk for seg
• Søkeblokkene kombineres med AND til et sluttresultat – slik at minst et av ordene fra hver søkeblokk er inkludert i sluttsummen
• Wow - Evauler søket: For mange irrelevante? Mangler relevante artikler. Fullstendighet (recall/sensitivty) - presisjon (precision/specificity)? Smal eller bred søking? Søk på nytt eventuelt
• Dokumenter søket

Follow up - Følg eventuelt opp med supplerende usystematiske søkestrategier

• Similar articles - basert på ord (tittel, sammendrag, emneord) fra allerede funnet artikkel
• Cited reference - finn nyere studier som siterer aktuell kilde, typisk bruk Google Scholar, se cited by, eller Scopus databasen
• Reference check - finn studier som denne artikkelen har brukt (se i referanselisten til artikkelen/kilden)

Merk at ikke alle databaser har like gode funksjoner for å utføre et mer planlagt søk, de mangler visse søkefunksjoner. Noen databaser egner seg bedre til orienterende utforskende søk. 

For noen fagfelt publiseres det mye litteatur i kapitler i bøker som kan være utfordrende å finne, Noen fagfelt publiserer mye grå litteratur, bruk Google og Google Scholar, og institusjoners nettsider i tillegg

Nettveiledninger - søking

• Søk & Skriv - Søking
• ORIA (om søk i bibliotekbasen (finn bøker og artikler, bestille dokumenter) søkeguide
• EBSCO host (Databaser som dekker mange emner, artikkelsøk, feks MEDLINE, CINAHL, Academic Search Complete, ERIC ...)  søkeguide
• WoS (Tverrfaglig dekning)
• Scopus (Tverrfaglig dekning)
• ​ PhD on track - searching

 "Grå litteratur"

- rapporter og tilsvarende som ikke er utgitt av forlag, bruk Google og Google scholar

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Universitetsbiblioteket er primært en informasjonsressurs for studenter og ansatte ved Universitetet i Agder. Biblioteket yter også tjenester til enkeltpersoner, nærings-, utdannings- og kulturlivet.

Systematic literature reviews

• Introduction
• What is a systematic literature review?

Types of reviews

Examples of literature review articles.

• Finding literature review articles
• Conducting a systematic literature review

Contact the library

If you're a student and need help, you can use the chat service, stop by the info desk, send us an e-mail or book a guidance session with a librarian. See more information on the student portal.

PhD candidates and researchers: check out information on this service on the intranet

Source : Grant, M. J., & Booth, A. (2009). A typology of reviews: An analysis of 14 review types and associated methodologies. Health Information & Libraries Journal, 26 (2), 91–108. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1471-1842.2009.00848.x

These are som expamples of review articles, and they present a systematic review of a defined research area. They also identify gaps in the research area that need to be filled: 

• Pittaway, Luke et al. 2004. " Networking and innovation: a systematic review of the evidence ." International Journal of Management Reviews, 5 (3-4): 137-168  
• Cohen, S. and D. E. Bailey. 1997. " What makes teams work : group effectiveness research from the shop floor to the executive suite ". Journal of Management, 23(3): 239-290  
• Metaxiotis, K., and K. Liagkouras. 2012. " Multiobjective Evolutionary Algorithms for Portfolio Management: A comprehensive literature review ." Expert Systems with Applications, 39 (14): 11685-11698
• Bang, H. 2008. " Effektivitet i lederteam - hva er det, og hvilke faktorer påvirker det ?". Tidsskrift for Norsk Psykologforening. 4, 272-286
• << Previous: What is a systematic literature review?
• Next: Finding literature review articles >>
• Last Updated: Feb 9, 2024 2:30 PM
• URL: https://libguides.bi.no/systematic_literature_reviews

Literature Review

Hovedinnhold

The main course goal is to introduce Phd students to the genre of literature review in academic writing, and show how to complete a traditional/narrative literature review for a doctoral thesis. Throughout the course the Phd students will develop their understanding of different types of literature reviews and what purposes these can have in their own research. In addition, the course aims to develop the Phd students’ abilities and knowledge for designing and completing their own literature review through familiarizing them with different kinds of research design, databases, search methods, analysis, and ways of presenting their findings.

After completing the course, the Phd students will have general knowledge about:

• Different types and purposes about literature review
• Relevant databases within social science research
• Search methods for database searches to locate and collect literature in a systematic and transparent way
• Methods for analysis and tools for organizing collected literature
• Ways of presenting findings

Rune Johan Krumsvik

Professor, Dr. philos.

Institutt for pedagogikk

• +47 55 58 48 07
• +47 959 31 739

[email protected]

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Literature review as a research methodology: An overview and guidelines

Snyder, hannah, journal article, peer reviewed, published version.

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Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Norwegian Literature (Almost)

A brief history of the "guest of honor" at this year's frankfurt bookfair.

Norwegian literature—one could argue—begins with a shield.

Not really a shield, but a poem about a shield given to the 9th century skald, or bard of sorts, Bragi Boddasson, by Ragnar Lothbrok, the Swedish king (whose name means “hairy breeches”). 

Bragi loved this shield, so he sang its praises, and in turn gives us—12 centuries later—a glimpse of the myths that 9th century readers would have known. 

The god Odin makes an appearance, as does Thor, hammer swinging. In this case Thor goes to war with a sea-snake, as they scythe through the water:

And the ugly ring of the side-oared ship’s road stared up spightfully at Hrungnir’s skull-splitter. 

It’s sort of an action film in verse, as many of the Norse myths are, and you can find this particular one in the Prose Edda , the lake from which most of what we know about all the Norse myths flows. It was written down by Snorri Sturluson, the 13th century Icelandic politician, author and historian who rose from being the son of an upstart chieftain to the richest man in all of Iceland. 

A poem, a piece of text, or a Sapphic-sized sliver is far more durable than any kingdom.

And quite a writer, too. The Prose Edda is a 3D blockbuster full of dwarves, kings, battles, and some serious supernatural weaponry. If you’re sad Game of Thrones is over, this book is for you. Borges fell so in love with it that he wanted to translate it and did, his last major translation. 

What survives from twelve centuries and the five-card shuffle of Nordic wars? Apparently, a poem, a piece of text, or a Sapphic-sized sliver is far more durable than any kingdom, let alone the shield that occasioned these utterances. 

Harald Fairhair knew this. As the first Norwegian king, he’s given credit for uniting Norway as one kingdom around 870 AD, though he probably only ruled the western coast. Fairhair was the longest reigning monarch in Norwegian history, though he was also at home on a ship, which we know because the Sagas recorded it. And it’s memorialized because:

Of all his warriors Harald Fairhair treasured his skalds the most: They were seated opposite him in the high seat.

The work of all these court poets was collected by Snorri Sturlason in King Harald’s Sagas , comprising a piece of the much larger Heimskringla , which covers all the tales beyond the battle highlights—the ones where Harald’s hair flowed like silk. 

And then, for 400 years—or “twice two-hundred,” as Ibsen put it, a little pedantically—there was darkness, as Denmark ruled Norway. Very little survives and what does isn’t worth printing. Then, in 1814, thanks to the Napoleonic Wars, Norway was finally ceded to Sweden; Norwegian nationalism flowered immediately in resistance, fueling the creation and adoption of the Norwegian constitution. While this nationalist itch was pushed down, it never went away.

And it was led by writers.

Henrik Wergeland was key among them. His father, a pastor, had been at Norway’s constitutional assembly, which was not unlike the Constitutional Congress of 1776. Henrik grew up patriotic, God-fearing, and a bit of a wild child, in spite of some seriously unironic lamb chops. Wergeland rocketed to early fame as a new college graduate in 1829 by leading the fight —as an orator and poet—to celebrate the creation of the constitution on May 17th in a so-called “battle of the square.” Since then, May 17 has been Norwegian Constitution Day.

He wasn’t the only writer in the family, though, his younger sister Camilla Collett was a diarist and later a novelist, one of the country’s first social realists. Today, she’s often called the first Norwegian feminist writer. She came to Christiana, now Oslo, and fell in love with Henrik’s literary nemesis, Johan Sebastian Welhaven, causing tension in the family. In 1854, she anonymously published the first of a two-part novel The District Governor’s Daughter , a tale about the hardships of being a woman in society, particularly in regards to forced marriage. 

She wanted to keep her identity so badly that she took out an ad in the newspaper Morgenbladet , declaiming the “false rumor” that she had written the book. Fake news!

Towards the end of Collett’s life, her views became increasingly polemic, and she was often alone. But she made a later generation of feminists possible. Meanwhile, students decorate the grave and statues of her brother every May, as do Jewish residents, in recognition of Wergeland’s work to undo a constitutional clause—one written by his own father, no less—barring Jews from “access to the kingdom.” It was finally removed in 1851, six years after Wergeland died.

Simultaneously, all kinds of literary forms of nationalism were merging into what has been called Norwegian romantic nationalism, which attempted to coalesce and spread the aesthetics of Norwegian national identity. 

Folklore was being rounded up and traded; poems about the pure peasant life were being written; and folk songs were being sought out and written down. Two people doing this work were Magnus Brostrup Landstad and Olea Crøger, the latter of whom was the daughter of a preacher a music teacher in upper Telemark and fanatical, diligent collector of folk ballads. Together they published the first collection of Norwegian folk ballads, though only Landstand’s name appeared on the original printing. 

Another person doing gathering and sifting on the level of language was Ivar Aasen, a farm boy so bright he opened his own school at age 18. He picked up Latin like it was a hat someone had left on a couch, and in his thirties he began a comprehensive study of dialect spoken in Sunmore, his home district. The result was a collection of folk songs, his first book.

It’s worth pausing here to point out that across Norway there are hundreds of dialects—one for every 20 kilometers, someone joked to me once. So amid the flowering of nationalism, Norwegian culture faced two tasks: to figure out which language to use to speak to each other, and which artifacts of culture, which myths, to call their own. 

On that front, at the same time as Aasen had begun his linguistic work, another enterprising, God-fearing soul named Jørgen Moe began to travel through the south of Norway, collecting folk tales and fairy tales from people living in the mountains. Together with an old school friend , Peter Asbjørnsen, they began to assemble Norway’s rich and varied folklore, eventually compiling them into a compendium that had as enormous an impact on Norway as the Brothers Grimm did in Germany.  

Meantime, Aasen caught the traveling bug, too—he left Sunmore behind and crossed all of Norway, talking and listening to the people he met, not unlike the way Alan Lomax criss-crossed America in the 1930s. This was Norway in the 1840s, not easy terrain, and Aasen made it all over the developing nation, emerging with Grammar of the Norwegian Dialects (1843). By 1850 he had a Dictionary of the Norwegian Dialects. Aasen wasn’t just listening, though—he was constructing a whole new popular language, a kind of folk language. He even wrote plays to show how it would be used. (None of them are any good.) This language eventually, through additions, norms, and policy, became what is now called Nynorsk. 

One quarter of Norwegian municipalities have Nynorsk as their official language, all of them in the west of the country. While radio and newspapers outside of the west tend to use what is called bokmål (or “book language”)—and NRK tries to show 25 percent of its programs in Nynorsk—Nynorsk is used many other places, in schools, and of course some writing. 

Most of the rest of the country speaks and uses bokmål, which the linguist called Knut Knudsen helped to develop, essentially Norwegianizing and formalizing the version of Danish that was being spoken in the country. So here’s one curious contradiction of Norwegian literature, among many: that two of its best known writers, Henrik Ibsen and Knut Hamsun, wrote in Danish, not Norwegian. 

It was all they had available to them. 

The first writer to use Nynorsk in a book of high quality was Aasmund Olavsson Vinje, who essentially invented the Norwegian essay. His first book—called basically Travel Stories— also channels (and makes fun of) some romantic feelings that attended these incipient national urges in Emersonian fashion, such as oneness with nature and the purity of peasant life. Out of his work a thread of irony about this national idea flowed, and it appeared to in the pages of his newspaper, Dølen .

The best known of the Nynorsk writers is the 20th-century novelist Tarjei Vesaas, the son of a farmer from the Telemark region and who never quite got over his guilt over not taking over the family farm. Vesaas’ novels are told in a stripped down, sober, symbolic style, and his best known novel might be The Ice Palace , a tragic tale of friendship between two young girls in a rural village, which won the Nordic Prize. It has been translated by Peter Owen and is available in French, Spanish and many other languages. Spring Night , a tale of two siblings who spend the night alone without their parents for the first time, is also notable, as well as The Birds , which orbits the inner world of a man with mental disability living with his sister. Vesaas was nominated numerous times for the Nobel. 

He never got the big prize, but now there’s a debut prize with his name, the Tarjei Vesaas Debutante Prize, which Kjersti Annesdatter Skomsvold has won. She incidentally has an intimate new book, The Child , a lyrical, powerful tale told to her second baby, which has already sold in eight languages. 

Norway’s perennial leading candidate for the Nobel, the pioneering playwright, novelist and poet Jon Fosse, writes in Nynorsk, as does Gunnhild Øyehaug , whose Knots , was published in English in 2016 with an introduction by Lydia Davis, a writer to whom James Wood compared her. “Like Davis,” he wrote, “she can produce stabs of emotion, unexpected ghost notes of feeling, from pieces so short and offbeat that they seem at first like aborted arias.” Her novel Wait, Blink , was made into a film and her latest, Present Tense Machine , is wild and fantastic.

Most books translated into Norwegian are translated into bokmål, though, with the exception of Elena Ferrante, herself a heavy user of Neapolitan dialect. She is translated into Nynorsk, as is also Anna Gavalda. They’re both huge successes for Norwegian publisher Det Norske Samlaget, which only publishes books in Nynorsk.

All societies enter modernity at different times. Foucault’s defines this evolution as rejecting tradition, embracing rationalization, and moving away from feudalism and agrarianism and toward the nation state. This happened in Norway with a group of writers who have since been called the great four: Henrik Ibsen, who brought realism to Norwegian theatre; Jonas Lie, the novelist and playwright who conjured the folk life of the new nation; Alexander Kielland, the novelist, short story writer and satirist; and Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, a novelist and playwright, as well as Norway’s first Nobel laureate.

In Dag Solstad’s hilarious novel Shyness and Dignity, a dutiful school teacher has a meltdown trying to teach his insights in Ibsen’s play The Wild Duck to largely indifferent teenagers and winds up beating his umbrella to death in front of his pupils. Ibsen was from Skien, a port town in the Telemark region known for timber shipping. He would later describe its people thusly:

[People in Skien] appear sanguine but are often melancholic. They analyse and pass judgement on themselves…proud and stiff, combative when anyone threatens their interest; they dislike being told. They are reserved and cautious, do not easily accept their friendship, and are not very forthcoming to their own kin…afraid openly to surrender to a mood, or to let themselves be carried away; they suffer from shyness of the soul.

You can see why this would give a writer much material, but also why he or she would have to get the hell away.

Ibsen was equally influenced by Wergeland (and Camille Collett) as well as the folk tales collected by Asbjørsen and Moe. He was a prolific playwright, but a successful one not until he was in his thirties. In his twenties, he moved to Bergen, where he put on dozens of performances and watched play after play tank. Finally in 1865, two plays about will and consequence, both pointing a finger at clergy à la Wergeland, received rave critical support. And Ibsen promptly moved to Sorrento, Italy.

He didn’t return for 27 years, living for some of that period in Dresden and Munich, unleashing a three-decade assault on the role of mores and social control. In Ghosts , a woman’s pastor convinces her to return to her philandering husband; she does and winds up passing syphilis on to their son. In The Wild Duck , a family marriage is ripped open to reveal all its dirty secrets. 

You can see how Skien fed him.

Ibsen’s effect on theatre is enormous—putting issues of societal discourse into drama, in fact making that a key part of the dramatic experience, had not quite happened in a realistic way, let alone a modernist way. He made Chekhov possible.

Even while he was living abroad, Ibsen’s plays had an immediate impact upon Norwegian culture. When Ghosts was published on Dec. 13, 1881, one person remembers:

The play was distributed to the booksellers in the evening. The keenest buyers ran out in the dark to get it… the debate had already started by next morning. An extraordinary number of people seemed to read the play that night.

One of the explosive elements of Ibsen’s play was that it landed around the time that it was still presumed that syphilis could only be inherited from a mother, not from a father. The 1875 census showed 30,000 men in Christiana above the ages of 15, 14,000 of them married, and there were nearly 3,000 cases of venereal disease. One of the people who almost certainly read the play that night was a young Edvard Munch, who had fallen in with an absinthe-drinking Karl Johan Gate crowd of bohemians in Oslo who were discussing such things. 

In the midst of this period was a large and growing Norwegian feminism. Munch, who was not well-off, hung out with a libertine crowd of men and women who discussed Darwin and dandy politics. He had powerful mentors, including the libertine Hans Jæger, who wrote up all the true stories of what was unfolding among their in Oslo as a roman à clef, From the Christiana Bohemians . Most copies were confiscated and Jæger was fined for offending public morals and he lost his job as stenographer of the Parliament.

It was a moment for freedom of speech, and Jæger lived for it. He had, with his friends, come up with a nine-point credo of freedom and bohemianism, the first of which stated, Thou shalt write thy life . The others included:

2) Thou shalt sever family roots. 3) There is no limit to how badly thou shalt treat thy family and all elders and betters. 4) Never borrow less than five kronor. 5) Thou shalt hate and despise all peasants such as Bjornstjerne Bjørnson, Kristofer Kristofersen, and Kolbenveldt. 6) Thou shalt never wear celluloid cuffs. 7) Thou shalt never fail to make a scandal in the Kristiana Theatre. 8) Thou shalt never show remorse. 9) Thou shalt kill thyself.

This is how Jaeger’s novel ended: with a suicide.

One writer whose life and work spans these periods—of nationalization, of re-exploring folk lore and sagas, and of the discovery of modernism—is Knut Hamsun. 

Norway’s second winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature was born Knud Pedersen, the fourth of seven sons in Lom. They were so poor Knut was sent to an uncle who beat and starved him. Hamsun escaped at age 15 and returned to Lom, where he was everything from a peddler and shoemaker’s assistant to an elementary schoolteacher. He never entirely recovered from the trauma of his upbringing. 

He wrote these experiences into his first novel, Enigmatic Man (1877), and took inspiration from Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson for his second, trying to imitate a saga of Icelandic proportions. He didn’t achieve the style for which he is known until 1890 when he published Hunger , a short Kafkaesque novel about a writer’s descent into madness from starvation and poverty in Christiania. 

His finest books aside from Hunger —like Pan , Mysteries , and his late auto fiction On Overgrown Paths, which he wrote to prove he was still sane when he was tried for treason in 1948 for Nazi sympathies—are about wanderers and outsiders, using the modernist technique of stream of consciousness to highlight the juxtaposition of mind and society. 

In the 1880s he moved to America at the encouragement of Bjørnson and wrote a book about it, largely critically. He had a terrible time. In Chicago, where he had a job operating a street car, it was so cold he stuffed his pants with newsprint; in Minnesota, he tended to pigs. When he could, he gave lectures on European literature. 

Bjørnson had thought Hamsun could become the voice of the active Norwegian-American community. Indeed, between 1825 and 1925, 800,000 Norwegians, one-third of the population, left the country, and most of them went to America. According to the 2000 US Census, there were as many people of Norwegian descent in America at that point—about 4.5 million —as there were people in Norway.

Aside from economic migration, this was also a period when Norwegian explorers were everywhere. Not long after Hamsun’s trip to America, a Norwegian descended from ship captains named Roald Amundsen signed on to a Belgian exploration Antarctic exploration as first mate. He was inspired by another Norwegian explorer, Fridtjof Nansen, who led the first interior crossing of Greenland—on skis. 

In time, Amundsen would surpass his hero, leading the first successful expedition to traverse the Canadian northwest passage. He was also the first to reach the South Pole in 1911, a journey he immortalized in his book, The South Pole , and later, My Life as an Explorer , giving birth to a kind of wilderness writing that persists today. That literary legacy extends in spirit to Norway’s reporters Åsne Seierstad—who has reported from Iraq, Chechnya, and Afghanistan—and Erika Fatland, who traveled all over the former USSR to write Sovietstan , which was just published in English by MacLehose. 

By contrast, Hamsun was far less hardy, and his reputation as a writer must always be balanced with our knowledge of his political activities. He wrote a eulogy for Hitler. He sent his Nobel Prize to Nazi leader Joseph Goebbels in 1943 out of appreciation for his work. But he did do one tremendous thing: in 1925, with his financial backing, he helped Norway bring back the rights to his own work and that of Ibsen’s, essentially starting Norway’s publishing culture, and the house Gyldendal, one of the most powerful in the nation today.

Norway’s last Nobel winner, Sigrid Undset, who died in Lillehammer, was far less ethically compromised. Born in Denmark in 1882, around the time Munch was drinking his absinthe, she grew up in Oslo, one of the first major writers to do so. Her father died young and so she gave up her education and worked as a secretary, for 10 years studying at night. After a failed start, she began her literary career at the age of 25 with a then-shocking sentence, “I have been unfaithful to my husband.” Thus begins Fru Marta Oulie , which caused a stir and made it possible to write several more novels about life in contemporary Oslo, largely from women’s perspectives. This novel has not been translated into English. 

Jenny and Spring are notable novels from this realistic period, the former dealing with a woman who moves to Rome and discovers she has in fact been wasting her life.

Undset’s own travels to Rome were much more fruitful; she met the painter Anders Castus Svarstad, with whom she fell in love, although he had a wife and three children back in Norway. Eventually, the two of them married, had two children, and took on Svarstad’s three, all while she continued to write and participate in the women’s emancipation movement. 

In 1919 she moved back to Lillehammer, and in 1920, around the birth of her third child, her marriage ended. She launched into an ambitious new series of novels set in the Middle Ages about one woman, Kristin Lavransdatter. The three books, comprising 1,400 pages, all written and published in three years, stoked by black coffee and cigarettes— The Wreath , The Wife , The Cross —portray her life and the times of a 14th-century town in the Gudbrand Valley. 

Although set seven centuries ago, the issues the book revolves around—freedom, and sexual safety, agency—feel incredibly modern. In The Wreath , after an attempted rape, Kristin is sent to an Abbey. Later, she falls in love with a man who has been ex-communicated from the church. Hardly the dreary story of rural life, Undset’s trilogy moves from powerful moral drama to drama.

She would go on to write another quartet set in the same period, The Master of Hestviken , but it was on the basis of Kristin Lavransdatter that she won the Nobel in 1928. She donated the money she received to women raising children with disabilities. 

Immediately after the war a golden age of children’s literature started with Thorbjørn Egner, who broke into view with Karius and Bactus.

In the 1930s Undset continued to write fiction, but she also wrote polemical essays about the rise of fascism. When Germany invaded Norway, she fled to Sweden with her son. Her other son was killed in action that same month. Her daughter had died before the war. In 1940, she left Sweden for the United States, settling in Brooklyn Heights. In 1945, after the war, she returned, but she did not write another book.

Within days of the end of World War II, 28,750 people were arrested in Norway for collaboration crimes, in part to prevent lynching and other extrajudicial killing, but also to thoroughly prosecute crimes. In the end, some 5,000 people were held for more than a year and in the end, 40 people were executed, including the Vidkun Qusling, the Prime Minister the Nazis had installed during the occupation.

Although this was a brutal period, it was a necessary break with what had come before, and the government began designing a new ethical state from the ground up. Universal access to education was one of the very first policies decided upon in unoccupied Norway. The institution that guarantees this—the State Bank for student loans—was founded in 1947. And you can see the effects of this enlarging on Norwegian culture. 

Immediately after the war a golden age of children’s literature started with Thorbjørn Egner, who broke into view with Karius and Bactus , about a tooth troll living inside the mouth of a boy named Jens. Later on, Anne-Cath. Vestly would twist gender roles with a 12-part series about a family where the mother works as a lawyer and the father stays home and takes care of the kids. More recently, Jostein Gaarder—author of Sophie’s World , a novel about philosophy which sold 40 million copies worldwide—has published numerous successful children’s books.

Whereas in 1950s America a whole heyday of boom writers emerged, from Kurt Vonnegut and John Updike to Philip Roth, James Baldwin, Flannery O’Connor and Sylvia Plath, there was no such generation in Norway. By the 1960s, though, a group of writers gathered around the magazine Profile and began to call attention to this fact, criticizing in essence the lack of a post-war literary culture. 

They were a small but diverse group of writers, from the poet, translator and sometime musical performer Jan Erik Vold, who has brought Tomas Tranströmer and Gary Snyder and even Chet Baker into Norwegian, to Dag Solstad. The author of 30 books and a former communist whose oeuvre spans postmodernism and football literature, he’s the only living writer to win the Norwegian Literary Critics Prize three times. 

He has a new novel out this fall called The third, and final book about Bjørn Hansen . He first appeared in Solstad’s scintillatingly named Novel 11, Book 18 , one of about six classics Solstad has written in his lifetime. As the book begins Hansen is now 50, living a quiet life as a town treasurer, the fires of an affair that wrenched open his marriage are behind him. Yet he has the sinking feeling that his entire life has been a giant accident. As the book accelerates, with the help of a drug-addicted doctor, he decides to set out a course of his life and live it to the bitter end. Then his annoying, lecturing son turns up to study optics at a local school, and this plan is briefly scrapped for a sudden burst of unexpected warmth. 

Solstad’s novels all contain this peculiar braiding of existential questioning and bleak humor with a realization that it is in relationships that we are briefly rescued from the darkness of our unknowing. They are never sentimental, which makes the emotional contact they make all the more hard won. No writer alive in Norway interrogates the universe quite so deeply while also, still, making you feel something. 

Reading Solstad can feel not unlike going back in time to a point when modernism loomed nearer, which is not surprising. One of the central tenets of the Profile group was that modernism had never entirely happened in Norway before, well, themselves . And poets and fiction writers and essayists, they both introduced both modernism and criticized it in one fell swoop, moving forward. They were big supporters of the poet Olav H. Hauge, whose elegant verse represented to them the possibility of modernism. He, too, writes in Nynorsk. 

Vold and Solstad have gone on to become the dominant writers of their time, and the seriousness of their approach—even if didn’t form a unified idea of Norwegian culture—led to a stronger generation behind them, including Jon Fosse, Jan Kjærstad, and Roy Jacobsen.

Fosse developed an entirely new kind of play in Norway—like Beckett or Pinter, but more abstract, filled with dialogue that had been stripped to silences and missed queues. Anyone still hoping for social realism will be deeply allergic to them, but in their best moments they conjure a liturgical mysteriousness and mysticism. 

He’s gone on to write novels— Trilogy won the Nordic Council Prize—and is now writing a seven-book series of slow prose, the Septology not unlike his student, Karl Ove Knausgård, who wrote about him in book four of My Struggle . Books one and two of the Septology were just published as one volume by Fitzcarraldo in English. Fosse is also a rare Christian believer within Norwegian literature, and has described his writing as a religious process. 

Kjærstad was also a theology student, and is best known for his novels about the TV personality Jonas Wergeland— The Seducer , The Discoverer and The Conqueror , the last of which won the Nordic Council Prize.

The nation has come a long way from the deprivations that sent a third of its population fleeing to America.

Roy Jacobsen has traveled one of the farthest journeys by way of class, having grown up in the working class community of Arvoll, and by way of the island of Donna, populated by just 1,200 souls, eventually winding up in one of the finest neighborhoods in Oslo. His short stories won the Tarjei Vesaas prize. One of his best known novels depicts the amazing class journey of one man and his family across 80 years, from agrarian life to today. His novel The Unseen , which takes place a tiny northern island and tells of a family’s life there, was a finalist for the International Man Booker in 2017. 

And now we’re zooming to today: shields left far behind, independence, nationalism, the romantic feelings and the consolidation of a language; World War II and its scars, and the creation of one of the most generous nation states, drawn out of idealism, Labor politics, and later expanded with the help of oil and natural gas that was discovered in the North Sea on the continental shelf in 1969. In 1990, Norway established the Government Pension Fund, known as the Oil Fund. Today it has over 1 trillion in assets—or around $190,000 per citizen. Four percent of the fund’s income per year can be withdrawn and used by the government. It is the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world. 

The nation has come a long way from the deprivations that sent a third of its population fleeing to America. In this time, very few of Norway’s best writers were translated. The people I haven’t mentioned include Kjell Askildsen, the minimalist short story writer, and Kjartan Fløgstad, who hails from Sauda and worked for a time as a sailor and industrial worker. He’s translated Neruda, won the Nordic Council Prize for Dollar Road , and written numerous sweeping books that draw from the Latin American tradition. 

Herbjorg Wassmo emerged in this same period as Fløgstad, publishing numerous bestselling novels, including Dina’s Book, winner of the Nordic Prize and made into a movie with Gerard Depardieu.

Two of the novels of Lars Saabye Christensen have been translated, including The Beatles , a tale of four friends growing up in love with music, and The Half Brother , a brutal novel about a boy conceived through rape growing up as a boxer. The first in a planned trilogy called Echoes of the City , it was published by MacLehose and in five other countries.

In the 1990s a number of Norwegian writers made debuts and burst into literary prominence, including Linn Ullmann, whose noir-like and deeply perceptive novels about family life culminated last year with The Unquiet , which won the National Critic’s Prize. Per Petterson, formerly a book clerk at Oslo’s Tronsmo Bookshop, took a lot of the world by storm with his elegant and mournful masterpiece, Out Stealing Horses , and this fall the English speaking world finally got to more of Vigdis Hjorth, who has been described as the Dorothy Parker of Norway. Her recent novel, Wills and Testament , caused endless amounts of debate about the ethics of using real people in fiction. It is just out in the UK and US, where it was longlisted for the National Book Award for translated nonfiction. 

Writers who we haven’t seen much outside Norway include Hanne Ørstavik, whose beautiful, short and shard-like novel, Love , has finally been translated into English, as well as Italian and Spanish; Tomas Espedal, who moves seamlessly between fiction and a dreamy kind of psycho-geographist nonfiction, including Bergeners , a book that travels between New York and Berlin via memories of his hometown Bergen; and Merethe Lindstrom, whose Days in the History of Silence , a novel about an elderly couple trying to unlock the silences of the past, won the Nordic Prize in 2012.

The most consistently published Norwegian writers outside some of the classics I mention are of course the mega-star crime writers Karin Fossum, Jo Nesbø, and Anne Holt. But not all bestselling Norwegian writers are crime writers. Knausgård’s My Struggle , his anti-Proustian exorcism of the past, supercharging the already ongoing conversation about truth in fiction, earned him some of the most rapturous reviews of any writer in years. On a smaller scale, Erland Loe’s Naive Super was a kind of Nick Hornby moment for Norway, and more recently Maja Lunde, whose cli-fi novel History of Bees has been a phenomenon everywhere, followed it up with   The End of the Ocean , coming in January 2020.

There are of course many writers beyond these I’ve mentioned here, and they are not just starting, some of them are four, five, six books into notable careers. The maximalist and eminently playful Johan Harstad has the comedic delivery of Stephen Wright and the linguistic dexterity and social novel ambition of David Foster Wallace; Trude Marstein has won the Vesaas Prize for her stories and is widely admired for her novels’ perception and poise; Ingvild Rishøi has written two children’s books and stories of peculiar and eerie power; Helga Flatland—not to be confused with Erika Fatland, a writer of tremendous nonfiction—also writes for children and was admired for her debut novel. 

Zeehan Shakar’s debut novel Our Street has been a big break through, selling over 100,000 copies since 2017 and winning the Tarjei Vesaas Debut Prize. Roskva Koritzinsky has written two collections of sparkling, Chekhovian stories that take the form forward from Askildsen. 

And I haven’t even gotten to nonfiction or poetry. Jan Grue’s I Live a Life Like Yours is the first nonfiction book ever to be nominated for the Nordic Council Award from Norway. It’s a subjective memoir/essay, formally inspired by Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts but unique in its deep-rooted existential, political, philosophical, and sociological takes on what it is like to be born with a disabled body. It is a really brilliant subjective essay with a strong personal voice. 

As for poetry, I also recommend checking out Inger Elisabeth Hansen, Tone Hødnebø, Niels Fredrik Dahl, Steinar Opstad, and Gro Dahle.

So there we have it: 12 centuries of this country’s noble but also very, very recent literary history, and why even, if it began on or with a shield, it cannot fit there today.

John Freeman

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Norwegian Literature Resources

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Reference Materials give you a general overview of Norwegian literatures, language, history and culture.

• Norsk Biografisk Leksikon by ed. by Edvard Bull, ... [et al.]. Call Number: Ref. CT 1293 .N6 (93 vols.; incomplete) Publication Date: 1923–

Selections below are in English, but you can search for works in Norwegian by using the  Advanced Search  and choosing "Norwegian" from the list of languages.

Online sources for Norwegian literature.

• Project Runeberg Norwegian language electronic texts.

Films in Norwegian

There are a number of Norwegian language films in the library's collection. The DVD's are on the third floor   of the library and  can be checked out with your student ID  just like books! (Make sure to check out the popular releases when you're there, too!). 

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Literature reviews, what is a literature review, learning more about how to do a literature review.

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A literature review is a review and synthesis of existing research on a topic or research question. A literature review is meant to analyze the scholarly literature, make connections across writings and identify strengths, weaknesses, trends, and missing conversations. A literature review should address different aspects of a topic as it relates to your research question. A literature review goes beyond a description or summary of the literature you have read. 

• Sage Research Methods Core Collection This link opens in a new window SAGE Research Methods supports research at all levels by providing material to guide users through every step of the research process. SAGE Research Methods is the ultimate methods library with more than 1000 books, reference works, journal articles, and instructional videos by world-leading academics from across the social sciences, including the largest collection of qualitative methods books available online from any scholarly publisher. – Publisher

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Writing a Literature Review

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A literature review is a document or section of a document that collects key sources on a topic and discusses those sources in conversation with each other (also called synthesis ). The lit review is an important genre in many disciplines, not just literature (i.e., the study of works of literature such as novels and plays). When we say “literature review” or refer to “the literature,” we are talking about the research ( scholarship ) in a given field. You will often see the terms “the research,” “the scholarship,” and “the literature” used mostly interchangeably.

Where, when, and why would I write a lit review?

There are a number of different situations where you might write a literature review, each with slightly different expectations; different disciplines, too, have field-specific expectations for what a literature review is and does. For instance, in the humanities, authors might include more overt argumentation and interpretation of source material in their literature reviews, whereas in the sciences, authors are more likely to report study designs and results in their literature reviews; these differences reflect these disciplines’ purposes and conventions in scholarship. You should always look at examples from your own discipline and talk to professors or mentors in your field to be sure you understand your discipline’s conventions, for literature reviews as well as for any other genre.

A literature review can be a part of a research paper or scholarly article, usually falling after the introduction and before the research methods sections. In these cases, the lit review just needs to cover scholarship that is important to the issue you are writing about; sometimes it will also cover key sources that informed your research methodology.

Lit reviews can also be standalone pieces, either as assignments in a class or as publications. In a class, a lit review may be assigned to help students familiarize themselves with a topic and with scholarship in their field, get an idea of the other researchers working on the topic they’re interested in, find gaps in existing research in order to propose new projects, and/or develop a theoretical framework and methodology for later research. As a publication, a lit review usually is meant to help make other scholars’ lives easier by collecting and summarizing, synthesizing, and analyzing existing research on a topic. This can be especially helpful for students or scholars getting into a new research area, or for directing an entire community of scholars toward questions that have not yet been answered.

What are the parts of a lit review?

Most lit reviews use a basic introduction-body-conclusion structure; if your lit review is part of a larger paper, the introduction and conclusion pieces may be just a few sentences while you focus most of your attention on the body. If your lit review is a standalone piece, the introduction and conclusion take up more space and give you a place to discuss your goals, research methods, and conclusions separately from where you discuss the literature itself.

Introduction:

• An introductory paragraph that explains what your working topic and thesis is
• A forecast of key topics or texts that will appear in the review
• Potentially, a description of how you found sources and how you analyzed them for inclusion and discussion in the review (more often found in published, standalone literature reviews than in lit review sections in an article or research paper)
• Summarize and synthesize: Give an overview of the main points of each source and combine them into a coherent whole
• Analyze and interpret: Don’t just paraphrase other researchers – add your own interpretations where possible, discussing the significance of findings in relation to the literature as a whole
• Critically Evaluate: Mention the strengths and weaknesses of your sources
• Write in well-structured paragraphs: Use transition words and topic sentence to draw connections, comparisons, and contrasts.

Conclusion:

• Summarize the key findings you have taken from the literature and emphasize their significance
• Connect it back to your primary research question

How should I organize my lit review?

Lit reviews can take many different organizational patterns depending on what you are trying to accomplish with the review. Here are some examples:

• Chronological : The simplest approach is to trace the development of the topic over time, which helps familiarize the audience with the topic (for instance if you are introducing something that is not commonly known in your field). If you choose this strategy, be careful to avoid simply listing and summarizing sources in order. Try to analyze the patterns, turning points, and key debates that have shaped the direction of the field. Give your interpretation of how and why certain developments occurred (as mentioned previously, this may not be appropriate in your discipline — check with a teacher or mentor if you’re unsure).
• Thematic : If you have found some recurring central themes that you will continue working with throughout your piece, you can organize your literature review into subsections that address different aspects of the topic. For example, if you are reviewing literature about women and religion, key themes can include the role of women in churches and the religious attitude towards women.
• Qualitative versus quantitative research
• Empirical versus theoretical scholarship
• Divide the research by sociological, historical, or cultural sources
• Theoretical : In many humanities articles, the literature review is the foundation for the theoretical framework. You can use it to discuss various theories, models, and definitions of key concepts. You can argue for the relevance of a specific theoretical approach or combine various theorical concepts to create a framework for your research.

What are some strategies or tips I can use while writing my lit review?

Any lit review is only as good as the research it discusses; make sure your sources are well-chosen and your research is thorough. Don’t be afraid to do more research if you discover a new thread as you’re writing. More info on the research process is available in our "Conducting Research" resources .

As you’re doing your research, create an annotated bibliography ( see our page on the this type of document ). Much of the information used in an annotated bibliography can be used also in a literature review, so you’ll be not only partially drafting your lit review as you research, but also developing your sense of the larger conversation going on among scholars, professionals, and any other stakeholders in your topic.

Usually you will need to synthesize research rather than just summarizing it. This means drawing connections between sources to create a picture of the scholarly conversation on a topic over time. Many student writers struggle to synthesize because they feel they don’t have anything to add to the scholars they are citing; here are some strategies to help you:

• It often helps to remember that the point of these kinds of syntheses is to show your readers how you understand your research, to help them read the rest of your paper.
• Writing teachers often say synthesis is like hosting a dinner party: imagine all your sources are together in a room, discussing your topic. What are they saying to each other?
• Look at the in-text citations in each paragraph. Are you citing just one source for each paragraph? This usually indicates summary only. When you have multiple sources cited in a paragraph, you are more likely to be synthesizing them (not always, but often
• Read more about synthesis here.

The most interesting literature reviews are often written as arguments (again, as mentioned at the beginning of the page, this is discipline-specific and doesn’t work for all situations). Often, the literature review is where you can establish your research as filling a particular gap or as relevant in a particular way. You have some chance to do this in your introduction in an article, but the literature review section gives a more extended opportunity to establish the conversation in the way you would like your readers to see it. You can choose the intellectual lineage you would like to be part of and whose definitions matter most to your thinking (mostly humanities-specific, but this goes for sciences as well). In addressing these points, you argue for your place in the conversation, which tends to make the lit review more compelling than a simple reporting of other sources.

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Ten Simple Rules for Writing a Literature Review

Marco pautasso.

1 Centre for Functional and Evolutionary Ecology (CEFE), CNRS, Montpellier, France

2 Centre for Biodiversity Synthesis and Analysis (CESAB), FRB, Aix-en-Provence, France

Literature reviews are in great demand in most scientific fields. Their need stems from the ever-increasing output of scientific publications [1] . For example, compared to 1991, in 2008 three, eight, and forty times more papers were indexed in Web of Science on malaria, obesity, and biodiversity, respectively [2] . Given such mountains of papers, scientists cannot be expected to examine in detail every single new paper relevant to their interests [3] . Thus, it is both advantageous and necessary to rely on regular summaries of the recent literature. Although recognition for scientists mainly comes from primary research, timely literature reviews can lead to new synthetic insights and are often widely read [4] . For such summaries to be useful, however, they need to be compiled in a professional way [5] .

When starting from scratch, reviewing the literature can require a titanic amount of work. That is why researchers who have spent their career working on a certain research issue are in a perfect position to review that literature. Some graduate schools are now offering courses in reviewing the literature, given that most research students start their project by producing an overview of what has already been done on their research issue [6] . However, it is likely that most scientists have not thought in detail about how to approach and carry out a literature review.

Reviewing the literature requires the ability to juggle multiple tasks, from finding and evaluating relevant material to synthesising information from various sources, from critical thinking to paraphrasing, evaluating, and citation skills [7] . In this contribution, I share ten simple rules I learned working on about 25 literature reviews as a PhD and postdoctoral student. Ideas and insights also come from discussions with coauthors and colleagues, as well as feedback from reviewers and editors.

Rule 1: Define a Topic and Audience

How to choose which topic to review? There are so many issues in contemporary science that you could spend a lifetime of attending conferences and reading the literature just pondering what to review. On the one hand, if you take several years to choose, several other people may have had the same idea in the meantime. On the other hand, only a well-considered topic is likely to lead to a brilliant literature review [8] . The topic must at least be:

• interesting to you (ideally, you should have come across a series of recent papers related to your line of work that call for a critical summary),
• an important aspect of the field (so that many readers will be interested in the review and there will be enough material to write it), and
• a well-defined issue (otherwise you could potentially include thousands of publications, which would make the review unhelpful).

Ideas for potential reviews may come from papers providing lists of key research questions to be answered [9] , but also from serendipitous moments during desultory reading and discussions. In addition to choosing your topic, you should also select a target audience. In many cases, the topic (e.g., web services in computational biology) will automatically define an audience (e.g., computational biologists), but that same topic may also be of interest to neighbouring fields (e.g., computer science, biology, etc.).

Rule 2: Search and Re-search the Literature

After having chosen your topic and audience, start by checking the literature and downloading relevant papers. Five pieces of advice here:

• keep track of the search items you use (so that your search can be replicated [10] ),
• keep a list of papers whose pdfs you cannot access immediately (so as to retrieve them later with alternative strategies),
• use a paper management system (e.g., Mendeley, Papers, Qiqqa, Sente),
• define early in the process some criteria for exclusion of irrelevant papers (these criteria can then be described in the review to help define its scope), and
• do not just look for research papers in the area you wish to review, but also seek previous reviews.

The chances are high that someone will already have published a literature review ( Figure 1 ), if not exactly on the issue you are planning to tackle, at least on a related topic. If there are already a few or several reviews of the literature on your issue, my advice is not to give up, but to carry on with your own literature review,

The bottom-right situation (many literature reviews but few research papers) is not just a theoretical situation; it applies, for example, to the study of the impacts of climate change on plant diseases, where there appear to be more literature reviews than research studies [33] .

• discussing in your review the approaches, limitations, and conclusions of past reviews,
• trying to find a new angle that has not been covered adequately in the previous reviews, and
• incorporating new material that has inevitably accumulated since their appearance.

When searching the literature for pertinent papers and reviews, the usual rules apply:

• be thorough,
• use different keywords and database sources (e.g., DBLP, Google Scholar, ISI Proceedings, JSTOR Search, Medline, Scopus, Web of Science), and
• look at who has cited past relevant papers and book chapters.

Rule 3: Take Notes While Reading

If you read the papers first, and only afterwards start writing the review, you will need a very good memory to remember who wrote what, and what your impressions and associations were while reading each single paper. My advice is, while reading, to start writing down interesting pieces of information, insights about how to organize the review, and thoughts on what to write. This way, by the time you have read the literature you selected, you will already have a rough draft of the review.

Of course, this draft will still need much rewriting, restructuring, and rethinking to obtain a text with a coherent argument [11] , but you will have avoided the danger posed by staring at a blank document. Be careful when taking notes to use quotation marks if you are provisionally copying verbatim from the literature. It is advisable then to reformulate such quotes with your own words in the final draft. It is important to be careful in noting the references already at this stage, so as to avoid misattributions. Using referencing software from the very beginning of your endeavour will save you time.

Rule 4: Choose the Type of Review You Wish to Write

After having taken notes while reading the literature, you will have a rough idea of the amount of material available for the review. This is probably a good time to decide whether to go for a mini- or a full review. Some journals are now favouring the publication of rather short reviews focusing on the last few years, with a limit on the number of words and citations. A mini-review is not necessarily a minor review: it may well attract more attention from busy readers, although it will inevitably simplify some issues and leave out some relevant material due to space limitations. A full review will have the advantage of more freedom to cover in detail the complexities of a particular scientific development, but may then be left in the pile of the very important papers “to be read” by readers with little time to spare for major monographs.

There is probably a continuum between mini- and full reviews. The same point applies to the dichotomy of descriptive vs. integrative reviews. While descriptive reviews focus on the methodology, findings, and interpretation of each reviewed study, integrative reviews attempt to find common ideas and concepts from the reviewed material [12] . A similar distinction exists between narrative and systematic reviews: while narrative reviews are qualitative, systematic reviews attempt to test a hypothesis based on the published evidence, which is gathered using a predefined protocol to reduce bias [13] , [14] . When systematic reviews analyse quantitative results in a quantitative way, they become meta-analyses. The choice between different review types will have to be made on a case-by-case basis, depending not just on the nature of the material found and the preferences of the target journal(s), but also on the time available to write the review and the number of coauthors [15] .

Rule 5: Keep the Review Focused, but Make It of Broad Interest

Whether your plan is to write a mini- or a full review, it is good advice to keep it focused 16 , 17 . Including material just for the sake of it can easily lead to reviews that are trying to do too many things at once. The need to keep a review focused can be problematic for interdisciplinary reviews, where the aim is to bridge the gap between fields [18] . If you are writing a review on, for example, how epidemiological approaches are used in modelling the spread of ideas, you may be inclined to include material from both parent fields, epidemiology and the study of cultural diffusion. This may be necessary to some extent, but in this case a focused review would only deal in detail with those studies at the interface between epidemiology and the spread of ideas.

While focus is an important feature of a successful review, this requirement has to be balanced with the need to make the review relevant to a broad audience. This square may be circled by discussing the wider implications of the reviewed topic for other disciplines.

Rule 6: Be Critical and Consistent

Reviewing the literature is not stamp collecting. A good review does not just summarize the literature, but discusses it critically, identifies methodological problems, and points out research gaps [19] . After having read a review of the literature, a reader should have a rough idea of:

• the major achievements in the reviewed field,
• the main areas of debate, and
• the outstanding research questions.

It is challenging to achieve a successful review on all these fronts. A solution can be to involve a set of complementary coauthors: some people are excellent at mapping what has been achieved, some others are very good at identifying dark clouds on the horizon, and some have instead a knack at predicting where solutions are going to come from. If your journal club has exactly this sort of team, then you should definitely write a review of the literature! In addition to critical thinking, a literature review needs consistency, for example in the choice of passive vs. active voice and present vs. past tense.

Rule 7: Find a Logical Structure

Like a well-baked cake, a good review has a number of telling features: it is worth the reader's time, timely, systematic, well written, focused, and critical. It also needs a good structure. With reviews, the usual subdivision of research papers into introduction, methods, results, and discussion does not work or is rarely used. However, a general introduction of the context and, toward the end, a recapitulation of the main points covered and take-home messages make sense also in the case of reviews. For systematic reviews, there is a trend towards including information about how the literature was searched (database, keywords, time limits) [20] .

How can you organize the flow of the main body of the review so that the reader will be drawn into and guided through it? It is generally helpful to draw a conceptual scheme of the review, e.g., with mind-mapping techniques. Such diagrams can help recognize a logical way to order and link the various sections of a review [21] . This is the case not just at the writing stage, but also for readers if the diagram is included in the review as a figure. A careful selection of diagrams and figures relevant to the reviewed topic can be very helpful to structure the text too [22] .

Rule 8: Make Use of Feedback

Reviews of the literature are normally peer-reviewed in the same way as research papers, and rightly so [23] . As a rule, incorporating feedback from reviewers greatly helps improve a review draft. Having read the review with a fresh mind, reviewers may spot inaccuracies, inconsistencies, and ambiguities that had not been noticed by the writers due to rereading the typescript too many times. It is however advisable to reread the draft one more time before submission, as a last-minute correction of typos, leaps, and muddled sentences may enable the reviewers to focus on providing advice on the content rather than the form.

Feedback is vital to writing a good review, and should be sought from a variety of colleagues, so as to obtain a diversity of views on the draft. This may lead in some cases to conflicting views on the merits of the paper, and on how to improve it, but such a situation is better than the absence of feedback. A diversity of feedback perspectives on a literature review can help identify where the consensus view stands in the landscape of the current scientific understanding of an issue [24] .

Rule 9: Include Your Own Relevant Research, but Be Objective

In many cases, reviewers of the literature will have published studies relevant to the review they are writing. This could create a conflict of interest: how can reviewers report objectively on their own work [25] ? Some scientists may be overly enthusiastic about what they have published, and thus risk giving too much importance to their own findings in the review. However, bias could also occur in the other direction: some scientists may be unduly dismissive of their own achievements, so that they will tend to downplay their contribution (if any) to a field when reviewing it.

In general, a review of the literature should neither be a public relations brochure nor an exercise in competitive self-denial. If a reviewer is up to the job of producing a well-organized and methodical review, which flows well and provides a service to the readership, then it should be possible to be objective in reviewing one's own relevant findings. In reviews written by multiple authors, this may be achieved by assigning the review of the results of a coauthor to different coauthors.

Rule 10: Be Up-to-Date, but Do Not Forget Older Studies

Given the progressive acceleration in the publication of scientific papers, today's reviews of the literature need awareness not just of the overall direction and achievements of a field of inquiry, but also of the latest studies, so as not to become out-of-date before they have been published. Ideally, a literature review should not identify as a major research gap an issue that has just been addressed in a series of papers in press (the same applies, of course, to older, overlooked studies (“sleeping beauties” [26] )). This implies that literature reviewers would do well to keep an eye on electronic lists of papers in press, given that it can take months before these appear in scientific databases. Some reviews declare that they have scanned the literature up to a certain point in time, but given that peer review can be a rather lengthy process, a full search for newly appeared literature at the revision stage may be worthwhile. Assessing the contribution of papers that have just appeared is particularly challenging, because there is little perspective with which to gauge their significance and impact on further research and society.

Inevitably, new papers on the reviewed topic (including independently written literature reviews) will appear from all quarters after the review has been published, so that there may soon be the need for an updated review. But this is the nature of science [27] – [32] . I wish everybody good luck with writing a review of the literature.

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to M. Barbosa, K. Dehnen-Schmutz, T. Döring, D. Fontaneto, M. Garbelotto, O. Holdenrieder, M. Jeger, D. Lonsdale, A. MacLeod, P. Mills, M. Moslonka-Lefebvre, G. Stancanelli, P. Weisberg, and X. Xu for insights and discussions, and to P. Bourne, T. Matoni, and D. Smith for helpful comments on a previous draft.

Funding Statement

This work was funded by the French Foundation for Research on Biodiversity (FRB) through its Centre for Synthesis and Analysis of Biodiversity data (CESAB), as part of the NETSEED research project. The funders had no role in the preparation of the manuscript.

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What is a Literature Review? How to Write It (with Examples)

A literature review is a critical analysis and synthesis of existing research on a particular topic. It provides an overview of the current state of knowledge, identifies gaps, and highlights key findings in the literature. 1 The purpose of a literature review is to situate your own research within the context of existing scholarship, demonstrating your understanding of the topic and showing how your work contributes to the ongoing conversation in the field. Learning how to write a literature review is a critical tool for successful research. Your ability to summarize and synthesize prior research pertaining to a certain topic demonstrates your grasp on the topic of study, and assists in the learning process. 

Table of Contents

• What is the purpose of literature review? 
• a. Habitat Loss and Species Extinction: 
• b. Range Shifts and Phenological Changes: 
• c. Ocean Acidification and Coral Reefs: 
• d. Adaptive Strategies and Conservation Efforts: 
• How to write a good literature review 
• Choose a Topic and Define the Research Question: 
• Decide on the Scope of Your Review: 
• Select Databases for Searches: 
• Conduct Searches and Keep Track: 
• Review the Literature: 
• Organize and Write Your Literature Review: 
• Frequently asked questions 

What is a literature review?

A well-conducted literature review demonstrates the researcher’s familiarity with the existing literature, establishes the context for their own research, and contributes to scholarly conversations on the topic. One of the purposes of a literature review is also to help researchers avoid duplicating previous work and ensure that their research is informed by and builds upon the existing body of knowledge.

What is the purpose of literature review?

A literature review serves several important purposes within academic and research contexts. Here are some key objectives and functions of a literature review: 2  

• Contextualizing the Research Problem: The literature review provides a background and context for the research problem under investigation. It helps to situate the study within the existing body of knowledge. 
• Identifying Gaps in Knowledge: By identifying gaps, contradictions, or areas requiring further research, the researcher can shape the research question and justify the significance of the study. This is crucial for ensuring that the new research contributes something novel to the field. 
• Understanding Theoretical and Conceptual Frameworks: Literature reviews help researchers gain an understanding of the theoretical and conceptual frameworks used in previous studies. This aids in the development of a theoretical framework for the current research. 
• Providing Methodological Insights: Another purpose of literature reviews is that it allows researchers to learn about the methodologies employed in previous studies. This can help in choosing appropriate research methods for the current study and avoiding pitfalls that others may have encountered. 
• Establishing Credibility: A well-conducted literature review demonstrates the researcher’s familiarity with existing scholarship, establishing their credibility and expertise in the field. It also helps in building a solid foundation for the new research. 
• Informing Hypotheses or Research Questions: The literature review guides the formulation of hypotheses or research questions by highlighting relevant findings and areas of uncertainty in existing literature. 

Literature review example

Let’s delve deeper with a literature review example: Let’s say your literature review is about the impact of climate change on biodiversity. You might format your literature review into sections such as the effects of climate change on habitat loss and species extinction, phenological changes, and marine biodiversity. Each section would then summarize and analyze relevant studies in those areas, highlighting key findings and identifying gaps in the research. The review would conclude by emphasizing the need for further research on specific aspects of the relationship between climate change and biodiversity. The following literature review template provides a glimpse into the recommended literature review structure and content, demonstrating how research findings are organized around specific themes within a broader topic. 

Literature Review on Climate Change Impacts on Biodiversity:

Climate change is a global phenomenon with far-reaching consequences, including significant impacts on biodiversity. This literature review synthesizes key findings from various studies: 

a. Habitat Loss and Species Extinction:

Climate change-induced alterations in temperature and precipitation patterns contribute to habitat loss, affecting numerous species (Thomas et al., 2004). The review discusses how these changes increase the risk of extinction, particularly for species with specific habitat requirements. 

b. Range Shifts and Phenological Changes:

Observations of range shifts and changes in the timing of biological events (phenology) are documented in response to changing climatic conditions (Parmesan & Yohe, 2003). These shifts affect ecosystems and may lead to mismatches between species and their resources. 

c. Ocean Acidification and Coral Reefs:

The review explores the impact of climate change on marine biodiversity, emphasizing ocean acidification’s threat to coral reefs (Hoegh-Guldberg et al., 2007). Changes in pH levels negatively affect coral calcification, disrupting the delicate balance of marine ecosystems. 

d. Adaptive Strategies and Conservation Efforts:

Recognizing the urgency of the situation, the literature review discusses various adaptive strategies adopted by species and conservation efforts aimed at mitigating the impacts of climate change on biodiversity (Hannah et al., 2007). It emphasizes the importance of interdisciplinary approaches for effective conservation planning. 

How to write a good literature review

Writing a literature review involves summarizing and synthesizing existing research on a particular topic. A good literature review format should include the following elements. 

Introduction: The introduction sets the stage for your literature review, providing context and introducing the main focus of your review. 

• Opening Statement: Begin with a general statement about the broader topic and its significance in the field. 
• Scope and Purpose: Clearly define the scope of your literature review. Explain the specific research question or objective you aim to address. 
• Organizational Framework: Briefly outline the structure of your literature review, indicating how you will categorize and discuss the existing research. 
• Significance of the Study: Highlight why your literature review is important and how it contributes to the understanding of the chosen topic. 
• Thesis Statement: Conclude the introduction with a concise thesis statement that outlines the main argument or perspective you will develop in the body of the literature review. 

Body: The body of the literature review is where you provide a comprehensive analysis of existing literature, grouping studies based on themes, methodologies, or other relevant criteria. 

• Organize by Theme or Concept: Group studies that share common themes, concepts, or methodologies. Discuss each theme or concept in detail, summarizing key findings and identifying gaps or areas of disagreement. 
• Critical Analysis: Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of each study. Discuss the methodologies used, the quality of evidence, and the overall contribution of each work to the understanding of the topic. 
• Synthesis of Findings: Synthesize the information from different studies to highlight trends, patterns, or areas of consensus in the literature. 
• Identification of Gaps: Discuss any gaps or limitations in the existing research and explain how your review contributes to filling these gaps. 
• Transition between Sections: Provide smooth transitions between different themes or concepts to maintain the flow of your literature review. 

Conclusion: The conclusion of your literature review should summarize the main findings, highlight the contributions of the review, and suggest avenues for future research. 

• Summary of Key Findings: Recap the main findings from the literature and restate how they contribute to your research question or objective. 
• Contributions to the Field: Discuss the overall contribution of your literature review to the existing knowledge in the field. 
• Implications and Applications: Explore the practical implications of the findings and suggest how they might impact future research or practice. 
• Recommendations for Future Research: Identify areas that require further investigation and propose potential directions for future research in the field. 
• Final Thoughts: Conclude with a final reflection on the importance of your literature review and its relevance to the broader academic community. 

Conducting a literature review

Conducting a literature review is an essential step in research that involves reviewing and analyzing existing literature on a specific topic. It’s important to know how to do a literature review effectively, so here are the steps to follow: 1  

Choose a Topic and Define the Research Question:

• Select a topic that is relevant to your field of study. 
• Clearly define your research question or objective. Determine what specific aspect of the topic do you want to explore? 

Decide on the Scope of Your Review:

• Determine the timeframe for your literature review. Are you focusing on recent developments, or do you want a historical overview? 
• Consider the geographical scope. Is your review global, or are you focusing on a specific region? 
• Define the inclusion and exclusion criteria. What types of sources will you include? Are there specific types of studies or publications you will exclude? 

Select Databases for Searches:

• Identify relevant databases for your field. Examples include PubMed, IEEE Xplore, Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar. 
• Consider searching in library catalogs, institutional repositories, and specialized databases related to your topic. 

Conduct Searches and Keep Track:

• Develop a systematic search strategy using keywords, Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT), and other search techniques. 
• Record and document your search strategy for transparency and replicability. 
• Keep track of the articles, including publication details, abstracts, and links. Use citation management tools like EndNote, Zotero, or Mendeley to organize your references. 

Review the Literature:

• Evaluate the relevance and quality of each source. Consider the methodology, sample size, and results of studies. 
• Organize the literature by themes or key concepts. Identify patterns, trends, and gaps in the existing research. 
• Summarize key findings and arguments from each source. Compare and contrast different perspectives. 
• Identify areas where there is a consensus in the literature and where there are conflicting opinions. 
• Provide critical analysis and synthesis of the literature. What are the strengths and weaknesses of existing research? 

Organize and Write Your Literature Review:

• Literature review outline should be based on themes, chronological order, or methodological approaches. 
• Write a clear and coherent narrative that synthesizes the information gathered. 
• Use proper citations for each source and ensure consistency in your citation style (APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.). 
• Conclude your literature review by summarizing key findings, identifying gaps, and suggesting areas for future research. 

The literature review sample and detailed advice on writing and conducting a review will help you produce a well-structured report. But remember that a literature review is an ongoing process, and it may be necessary to revisit and update it as your research progresses. 

Frequently asked questions

A literature review is a critical and comprehensive analysis of existing literature (published and unpublished works) on a specific topic or research question and provides a synthesis of the current state of knowledge in a particular field. A well-conducted literature review is crucial for researchers to build upon existing knowledge, avoid duplication of efforts, and contribute to the advancement of their field. It also helps researchers situate their work within a broader context and facilitates the development of a sound theoretical and conceptual framework for their studies.

Literature review is a crucial component of research writing, providing a solid background for a research paper’s investigation. The aim is to keep professionals up to date by providing an understanding of ongoing developments within a specific field, including research methods, and experimental techniques used in that field, and present that knowledge in the form of a written report. Also, the depth and breadth of the literature review emphasizes the credibility of the scholar in his or her field.  

Before writing a literature review, it’s essential to undertake several preparatory steps to ensure that your review is well-researched, organized, and focused. This includes choosing a topic of general interest to you and doing exploratory research on that topic, writing an annotated bibliography, and noting major points, especially those that relate to the position you have taken on the topic. 

Literature reviews and academic research papers are essential components of scholarly work but serve different purposes within the academic realm. 3 A literature review aims to provide a foundation for understanding the current state of research on a particular topic, identify gaps or controversies, and lay the groundwork for future research. Therefore, it draws heavily from existing academic sources, including books, journal articles, and other scholarly publications. In contrast, an academic research paper aims to present new knowledge, contribute to the academic discourse, and advance the understanding of a specific research question. Therefore, it involves a mix of existing literature (in the introduction and literature review sections) and original data or findings obtained through research methods. 

Literature reviews are essential components of academic and research papers, and various strategies can be employed to conduct them effectively. If you want to know how to write a literature review for a research paper, here are four common approaches that are often used by researchers.  Chronological Review: This strategy involves organizing the literature based on the chronological order of publication. It helps to trace the development of a topic over time, showing how ideas, theories, and research have evolved.  Thematic Review: Thematic reviews focus on identifying and analyzing themes or topics that cut across different studies. Instead of organizing the literature chronologically, it is grouped by key themes or concepts, allowing for a comprehensive exploration of various aspects of the topic.  Methodological Review: This strategy involves organizing the literature based on the research methods employed in different studies. It helps to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of various methodologies and allows the reader to evaluate the reliability and validity of the research findings.  Theoretical Review: A theoretical review examines the literature based on the theoretical frameworks used in different studies. This approach helps to identify the key theories that have been applied to the topic and assess their contributions to the understanding of the subject.  It’s important to note that these strategies are not mutually exclusive, and a literature review may combine elements of more than one approach. The choice of strategy depends on the research question, the nature of the literature available, and the goals of the review. Additionally, other strategies, such as integrative reviews or systematic reviews, may be employed depending on the specific requirements of the research.

The literature review format can vary depending on the specific publication guidelines. However, there are some common elements and structures that are often followed. Here is a general guideline for the format of a literature review:  Introduction:   Provide an overview of the topic.  Define the scope and purpose of the literature review.  State the research question or objective.  Body:   Organize the literature by themes, concepts, or chronology.  Critically analyze and evaluate each source.  Discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the studies.  Highlight any methodological limitations or biases.  Identify patterns, connections, or contradictions in the existing research.  Conclusion:   Summarize the key points discussed in the literature review.  Highlight the research gap.  Address the research question or objective stated in the introduction.  Highlight the contributions of the review and suggest directions for future research.

Both annotated bibliographies and literature reviews involve the examination of scholarly sources. While annotated bibliographies focus on individual sources with brief annotations, literature reviews provide a more in-depth, integrated, and comprehensive analysis of existing literature on a specific topic. The key differences are as follows: 

References 

• Denney, A. S., & Tewksbury, R. (2013). How to write a literature review.  Journal of criminal justice education ,  24 (2), 218-234. 
• Pan, M. L. (2016).  Preparing literature reviews: Qualitative and quantitative approaches . Taylor & Francis. 
• Cantero, C. (2019). How to write a literature review.  San José State University Writing Center . 

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Intervisuality: new approaches to Greek literature

Ava shirazi , haverford college. [email protected].

[Authors and titles are listed at the end of review]

This collection of essays offers the compelling suggestion of intervisuality as a prismatic term through which to encounter Greek literature. As the term itself suggests, intervisuality is an elaboration of intertextuality, a now canonical approach to the study of ancient texts (e.g. Conte 1986, Hinds 1998). Intervisuality, we learn, is a term first established in studies of visual culture that gets at the interrelation and interaction between various modes of visuality across media. The term finds several harmonious definitions throughout the volume, some explicitly stated and others more implicitly applied, so as to evoke a practice that is at once firmly planted in the genealogy of semiotics but that we are encouraged to imagine as capacious—as a practice ever-evolving and relating to a broader interest in the interplay of the visual as a sense that is not bound to media but which finds signification through its interplay.

Scholars of Greek literature will accept with ease Capra and Floridi’s assertation that visual systems are continuously in collaboration with “and integral to the very process of producing and consuming ‘Greek literature’” (3). In this context, the term intervisuality broadly encompasses the overlapping interrelation between Greek textual practices and the visual. Collectively, the volume applies intervisuality (or often, more implicitly, its general principles of verbal and visual bidirectionality) across the range of genres from archaic, classical, hellenistic, and imperial literature, with the contributions of Prioux and Cadario even fluidly “Pointing to Rome” (to use a turn of phrase from the table of contents). While this review cannot go in depth into all thirteen exhaustive chapters, it is important to acknowledge, even if briefly, that each one re-emphasizes and presents anew the deep visual imaginary and schema that made up the scaffolding of Greek literary practices, and the extent to which visuality was “inscribed both into texts and in the reader’s lived experiences” (Pizzone, 30). The various contributions, moreover, extend intervisuality towards the broader social, civic, and artistic imaginary, encouraging us to think, for example, about intervisuality as an aesthetic (e.g. Höschele, Floridi) or as a means to conceive of the body and the polis across time and space (e.g. Catenacci, Nobili).

The question that emerges from the volume as a whole and in light of the meticulous readings in the chapters is how intervisuality as a practice stands apart from, or perhaps elaborates on, the numerous studies on the interconnectivity of text and image and on the visual dimensions of ancient literature that have already become so foundational to the field such as Squire 2009 and Morales 2004, respectively, just to name two of many (and the editors also make note of this expansive and decades old topic, e.g. p. 4, fn. 10). And while attempting to pivot from intertextuality, one could emphasize that the volume is deeply text based (likely intentionally so in its interest in Greek literature), highlighting the paradox of what it means— to paraphrase Pizzone on the topic— to apply a term that art history has borrowed from literary studies (by way of intertextuality), only to then bring the visually based practice so firmly back to the study of texts (17).

The answers are perhaps found in the editors’ commitment to keeping “the complexity and bidirectionally of the interactions between verbal and visual codes [but] with an eye to the specificity of Greek visual culture” (7). The introduction, in conjunction with Pizzone’s excellent theoretical second chapter, offers four ways of understanding and practicing intervisuality, which also loosely group the various chapters— though it becomes clear that no one category can be practiced without merging with another. First, intervisuality is akin to “interfigurativity”, noting “the allusion made by a literary work to an image, be that to a specific iconographic referent or, more generally, a schema ” (5-6). Second, and building off the first, are “intervisual patterns,” which describes a process where images, or schema , “generate a multifaceted and ever-shifting meaning” (6)—or, as Pizzone explains, where “meanings and image-signs are never in a one-to-one correspondence” (17). The Greek term schema is often defined by the volume as the iconographic repertoire and mental images of classical antiquity (18), or, put differently, it emerges as a term that captures the visual structures and arrangements that propose interpretative bounds for intervisual practice. Schema (along with “surplus” discussed below) becomes a through line in examples of intervisual practice presented in the first two chapters and an important operating term in the more theoretically and methodologically oriented moments of the volume. ( Schema , for example, is especially important for the contributions of Gazis and Acosta-Hughes, amongst others.)

Third, intervisuality is interperformativity, working through “a succession of images” characteristic of performance (6). Bowie’s chapter on declamation and sung poetry is one example. And finally, is the category of “intervisual reading,” i.e. the reading of the intersection of image and text that we see in medieval manuscripts (21-22), on Greek painted pottery, and in ekphrastic writing (7). Numerous chapters deploy intervisual reading. In particular, Palmisciano’s contribution is an instantiation of how the editors also identify “intervisual reading” as akin to “intermediality” (7). The connection between intervisuality and intermediality is also presented earlier through Parks’s (2002: 285) definition of the former as “the practice of thinking and analyzing across and between media rather than focusing upon the unique properties of each medium” (1 n.3). [1]

As the various contributions enact precisely this fluid movement across media, each in their own way, two things emerge: i) the inevitable excess of media that is the product of creating and that the Greek term poiēsis in its conceptual, verbal, and tactile meanings captures. And ii) that “every art or media thus seems to find its means [and meanings] in other media, unsettling the borders between them” (Méchoulan 2015:3). In fact, the sooner we recognize the instability of the categorizations of media ( ibid ), the better equipped we become to note the sensory (in this case visual) arrangements that thread them together. And since intervisuality is not interested in isolating media but rather in creating bidirectional conversations between them, then perhaps this instability is important to an approach that thrives on the excess of ancient artistic practices. Moreover, if we allow ourselves to conceptualize text as a sort of matter, then it’s worthwhile to think about the meaning and sensation embedded in its thickness, instead of the bidirectional dialogue with media it evokes, since text itself is capable of re-arranging media in new visual configurations. Athanassaki reminds us early on in her contribution of the connection between intertext and the Latin ‘ texere’, to weave, (171-172) that not only implies dialogue but thickness in the verbal arts, and the various ways media can be woven into the fabric of another.

Pizzone’s indispensable chapter approaches this excess in her discussion and introduction of the term “surplus.” Drawing on Michael Camille’s work (1991), Pizzone identifies “surplus” as an object of intervisuality, the excess of the image-signs/ schemata that “[creates] a space in which meaning can move, thus generating multiple connections” (18). It is within this surplus , or because of it, that the readerly imagination works and where cognition and sensation merge, “overcoming purely visual and bidimensional readings” (22-23). This “surplus” arises in numerous other contributions, notably Bierl’s thorough reading of the visual excess of the Oresteia . The same metaphors he identifies as the core of myths are also the core of the surplus, moving us through a series of fixed and moving images, to visualizations and imaginings in the mind’s eyes.

Overall, intervisuality and the volume as a whole live and thrive in this surplus. Because there’s no single approach for the term, no one way to imagine its practice, intervisuality emerges through the thirteen chapters not as a specific method but as a prism through which to convey the dynamism of allowing the experience of a world of free forming media to inform our practice of reading Greek literature.

Works Cited

Conte, M. 1986. The Rhetoric of Imitation: Genre and Poetic Memory in Virgil and Other Latin Poets . Cornell University Press.

Hinds, S. 1998. Allusion and Intertext: Dynamics of Appropriation in Roman Poetry . Cambridge University Press.

Parks, L. 2002. “Satellite and Cyber Visualities” in The Visual Culture Reader 2 nd Edition. Ed. N. Mirzoeff. Routledge.

Mechoulan, E. 2015 “Intermediality: An Introduction to the Arts of Transmission.” SubStance 44.3: 3–18.

Morales, H. 2004 Vision and Narrative in Achilles Tatius’ Leucippe and Clitophon . Cambridge, UK; Cambridge University Press.

Squire, M. 2009 Image and Text in Graeco-Roman Antiquity . Cambridge, UK; Cambridge University Press.

Authors and Titles

Introduction (Andrea Capra and Lucia Floridi)

PART I: IN LIMINE

• À rebours: intervisuality from the Middle Ages to classical antiquity (Aglae Pizzone)
• From image to theatrical play in Aeschylus’ Oresteia: Iconicity, intervisuality, the image act, and the dramatic performance act (Anton Bierl)

PART II: ARCHAIC AND CLASSICAL AGE

• Homer and the art of cinematic warfare (George Alexander Gazis)
• Intervisuality in the Greek symposium (Riccardo Palmisciano)
• The protohistory of portraits in words and images (sixth–fifth century BCE): tyrants, poets, and artists (Carmine Catenacci)
• Looking at Athens through the lyric lens (Cecilia Nobili)
• The politics of intervisuality: Euripides’ Erechtheus, the West Pediment of the Parthenon, the Erechtheion, and the temple of Athena Nike (Lucia Athanassaki)

PART III: HELLENISTIC AND IMPERIAL AGE

• The goddess playing with gold: On the cult of Arsinoe-Aphrodite in image and text (Benjamin Acosta-Hughes)
• Intervisuality in declamation and sung poetry in imperial Greek cities (Ewen L. Bowie)
• Intervisual allusions in Lucian, Dialogues of the Sea Gods (Lucia Floridi)
• Was Philostratus the Elder an admirer of Ovidian enargeia? (Évelyne Prioux)
• ἐκ τῶν πινάκων. Aristaenetus’ intervisual allusions to Philostratus’ art gallery (Regina Höschele)

PART IV: POINTING TO ROME

• Ordering the res gestae: observations on the relationship between texts and images in Roman ‘historical’ representations (Matteo Cadario)

[1] Though the editors in a footnote make a distinction between intervisuality and intermediality where the latter is defined more strictly as an explicit intersection of media while intervisuality is a more implicit interaction of text and image (7 n.13).

Book Review: Emily Henry is still the modern-day rom-com queen with 'Funny Story'

“Funny Story” isn’t a funny story at all, but it is a good one

“Funny Story” isn’t a funny story at all. But it is a good one.

Emily Henry's new romance novel starts with dueling breakups that have rocked the two main characters’ worlds — and forced them to bond over their shared broken hearts.

Daphne is a planner who is always on time. She’s a buttoned-up librarian who hosts a lively children’s reading hour and keeps her personal life closed off from her colleagues.

Miles is more subdued. He’s nice, thoughtful and able to win over anyone he’s talking to, especially the regulars he sees on his weekend trips to the farmers market. He doesn’t have much of a relationship with his parents, for myriad reasons, but he’s very close to his younger sister.

Daphne and Miles’ story starts as they navigate their newly single lives now that their exes are dating ... each other.

They go through the throes of grieving together, with a soundtrack of love songs accompanying each phase. It's practically begging for a movie version, to go along with the several other Henry books already in various stages of production.

Early on, they decide to pretend they’re dating to make their exes jealous. But as time goes on, they discover that they see each other as more than friends, that they really are falling for each other.

“Funny Story” is Henry’s latest romance — and her steamiest one so far. It’s a mixture of will-they-won’t-they in a way that makes you really want them to. They’re the protagonists in separate love stories who are brought together by heartbreak. Daphne and Miles are characters you can empathize with and root for.

And “Funny Story” is classic Henry. It’s a meet-cute in a non-patronizing way. It’s a modern love story, and one that you won’t be mad is slightly predictable — because it makes you feel good and makes you believe in a thing called love.

“So many of the most beautiful things in life are unexpected,” Henry writes.

It’s funny how life and love are both that way.

AP book reviews: https://apnews.com/hub/book-reviews

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Book Review: Emily Henry is still the modern-day rom-com queen with ‘Funny Story’

This cover image released by Berkley shows “Funny Story” by Emily Henry. (Berkley via AP)

• Copy Link copied

“Funny Story” isn’t a funny story at all. But it is a good one.

Emily Henry’s new romance novel starts with dueling breakups that have rocked the two main characters’ worlds — and forced them to bond over their shared broken hearts.

Daphne is a planner who is always on time. She’s a buttoned-up librarian who hosts a lively children’s reading hour and keeps her personal life closed off from her colleagues.

Miles is more subdued. He’s nice, thoughtful and able to win over anyone he’s talking to, especially the regulars he sees on his weekend trips to the farmers market. He doesn’t have much of a relationship with his parents, for myriad reasons, but he’s very close to his younger sister.

Daphne and Miles’ story starts as they navigate their newly single lives now that their exes are dating ... each other.

They go through the throes of grieving together, with a soundtrack of love songs accompanying each phase. It’s practically begging for a movie version, to go along with the several other Henry books already in various stages of production.

Early on, they decide to pretend they’re dating to make their exes jealous. But as time goes on, they discover that they see each other as more than friends, that they really are falling for each other.

“Funny Story” is Henry’s latest romance — and her steamiest one so far. It’s a mixture of will-they-won’t-they in a way that makes you really want them to. They’re the protagonists in separate love stories who are brought together by heartbreak. Daphne and Miles are characters you can empathize with and root for.

And “Funny Story” is classic Henry. It’s a meet-cute in a non-patronizing way. It’s a modern love story, and one that you won’t be mad is slightly predictable — because it makes you feel good and makes you believe in a thing called love.

“So many of the most beautiful things in life are unexpected,” Henry writes.

It’s funny how life and love are both that way.

AP book reviews: https://apnews.com/hub/book-reviews