How to Write About Literature

Many volumes in Harold Bloom's series, How to Write About Literature, are available in our EBSCO eBooks collection. Major authors are covered, among them: Geoffrey Chaucer, Joseph Conrad, William Faulkner, Robert Frost, Homer, James Joyce, Langston Hughes, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, George Orwell, Amy Tan, Oscar Wilde, and more.

Each volume begins with a chapter on how to write a good literary essay--selecting a thesis, drafting an outline, writing an introduction, etc. Each following chapter will cover issues involved in writing about a specific author. Then chapters follow, each covering each of the author's major works.

Take How to Write About Geoffrey Chaucer as an example. A chapter is devoted to the Canterbury Tales as a work, and chapters are also included for each Tale as an individual work. Chapters on works cover themes, characters, history and context, form and genre, language, symbols and imagery, philosophy and ideas--with suggestions for topics throughout. Useful bibliographies of articles about the work are included, as well as lists of relevant online sources.

The easiest way to find works in the series is to search the phrase bloom's how to write about literature in the EBSCO eBooks database. You'll see all available titles in the results list. Remember, as with all EBSCO eBooks, these books can be downloaded and read offline for up to seven days if you have a personal EBSCO account (free with registration) and Adobe Digital Editions on your computer.