Page 135 - Aldi Lukman Nurhakim_How to Write Critical Esays: A Guide for Students of Literature

134 How to write critical essays
All the conventions for presenting quotations do, of course,
apply just as much to extracts from critical or scholarly works
as to those from primary sources. So, where you are quoting a
critical book and your introductory sentence does name the
critic (‘X suggests that’; ‘Y argues:’), your bracketed reference
after the quotation only needs to give title and page number.
For fuller information your reader will look to your
bibliography.

Bibliography
After the last sentence of your essay and before the space which
you must leave for your tutor’s comments, add a bibliography.
This is a list of all the texts which you have found useful in
composing your essay.
There are only two ways in which you must get the
bibliography right. Firstly, make it complete. Include the edition
which you have been using to study each of the literary works
which your essay mentions. Without this information your
reader cannot use the references in the main body of your essay
to find each quotation in the original text. Page numbers of
works in prose—and often line numbers of those in verse—vary
from edition to edition.
Do not forget any work of criticism or scholarship which
you have consulted and found relevant. Even the briefest article
which supplied only one useful observation must be listed.
However, you must not rely upon your bibliography to prove
that you are innocent of plagiarism. Merely listing a book or
essay at the end cannot define precisely where, and how far,
your own argument is indebted to it. Spell that out clearly
within the main body of your essay at the precise point where
the borrowed material is being used.
The second necessity is that your bibliography should be
clear. The reader must be able to see precisely which books you
mean, and to understand in exactly what issue of what
periodical a given article can be found. Imagine your tutor
going to the library in search of some text which you have
listed. In the case of a book, have you made the author’s full
name and the work’s title so clear that it can be instantly
identified in the library catalogue? In the case of a review in