What is an Annotated Bibliography?
An annotated bibliography is essentially a list of citations to books, articles, and other documents, e-resources--(websites, for example), and media (film, music, television.) Following the citation is a brief (usually about 150 words) descriptive and evaluative paragraph of the work. These paragraphs are the annotations. The purpose of the annotation is to help you manage your research and also to inform your professor of the relevance, accuracy, and quality of the sources cited.
Example Annotated Bibliographies in MLA Style
Example of an MLA Style Book Citation with Annotation
Calhoon, Kenneth Scott. Fatherland: Novalis, Freud, and the discipline of Romance. Wayne State University Press, 1992.
This book analyzes the origins of German Romanticism and the works of Novalis. The author examines how Romanticism and psychoanalysis use the idea of a shared economy of longing and disappointment and the role of mourning therein. Through a psychoanalytical approach, he argues that Romanticism challenges the primacy of reason within the Enlightenment by recovering repressed aspects of the social order.
Example of an MLA Style Journal Article Citation with Annotation
Van den Broek, Claire Y. “How the Panther Stole the Poem: The Search for Alterity in Rilke’s Dinggedichte.” Monatshefte 105.2 (2013): 225-246.
This article explores Rilke’s letters and diaries of the early Paris years to explore how they reflect Rilke’s preoccupation with mankind’s ability to come to terms with the knowledge of their own mortality. Examining the influence of Rodin’s sculptural work and Lessing’s theory of art on Rilke’s poetry, the author argues that Rilke attempted to produce a poetic process that models a liberation from the limitations of humanity through a surrender to alterity and an artistic elevation of the reader.
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