What is a background source?
Background sources are written for a general audience and are intended to give an overview of a topic, fill gaps in the reader’s knowledge, and provide context for deeper understanding. Examples include Wikipedia, introductory textbooks, and reference works such as encyclopedias, dictionaries, and handbooks.
When working on a new research topic, it is often helpful to begin with these three questions,
· What research question you want to answer in this paper?
· How to narrow down to specific topic?
· What are the available USEFUL resources for your topic?
Beginning with reading a basic overview of the subject is often a good start.
Encyclopedias and dictionaries provide such overviews to help you familiarize with relevant vocabulary and to provide useful suggestions for further readings.
Encyclopedias, Dictionaries and References
Old Stories Retold by ISBN: 9780739123621Publication Date: 2010-04-30Old Stories Retold explores the ways modern Chinese narratives dramatize and embody the historical sense that links them to the past and to the Chinese literary tradition. Largely guided by Walter Benjamin's discussions of history, G. Andrew Stuckey looks at the ways Chinese narrative engages a historical process that pieces together fragments of the past into new configurations to better serve present needs. By examining intertextual connections between separate texts, Stuckey seeks to discover traces of an "original," whether it be thought of as the past, history, or tradition, when it has been rewritten in modern and contemporary Chinese fiction.
The Last of the Whampoa Breed by ISBN: 0231130023Publication Date: 2003-12-10Whampoa Military Academy was China's first modern military institution. For decades the "Spirit of Whampoa" was invoked as the highest praise to all Chinese soldiers who guarded their nation heroically. But of all the battles these soldiers have fought, the most challenging one was the civil war that resulted in the "great divide" of China in the mid-twentieth century. In 1949 the Communists exiled a million soldiers and their families to compounds in Taiwan and cut off communication with mainland China for forty years.- An Anthology of contemporary Chinese literature : Taiwan, 1949-1974 byPublication Date: 1975v. 1. Poems and essays.--v. 2. Short stories
Subject related:
Chinese literature -- Translations into English
English literature
Chinese literature -- Taiwan 
The Columbia Companion to Modern East Asian Literature by ISBN: 9780231113144Publication Date: 2003-07-10This extraordinary one-volume guide to the modern literatures of China, Japan, and Korea is the definitive reference work on the subject in the English language.
The Columbia Companion to Modern Chinese Literature by ISBN: 9780231541145Publication Date: 2016-04-05The Columbia Companion to Modern Chinese Literature features more than fifty short essays on specific writers and literary trends from the Qing period (1895-1911) to the present. The volume opens with thematic essays on the politics and ethics of writing literary history, the formation of the canon, the relationship between language and form, the role of literary institutions and communities, the effects of censorship, the representation of the Chinese diaspora, the rise and meaning of Sinophone literature, and the role of different media in the development of literature.
Subject Search
Related Subject Search on Library of Congress Subject Heading
- Popular culture -- Taiwan
- Mass media and culture – Taiwan
- Chinese literature -- Taiwan
- Chinese literature -- 20th century -- History and criticism
- Chinese literature -- 20th century -- Taiwan
- Chinese literature -- Translations into English
- Chinese literature -- 20th century -- Western influences
- Chinese literature -- 20th century -- Women authors
- East Asian literature -- 20th century -- Encyclopedias
CJK Romanization System
OBIS DOES NOT support the search CJK language material using Chinese/Japanese/Korean characters.
- Romanization for CJK languages (Chinese/Japanese/Korean)
- Libraries use China’s pinyin system but have significant variations. Please refer to the Library of Congress New Chinese Romanization Guideline 2011 for a quick reference. The guideline also provides reference to Wade-Giles and Pinyin conversion.
- For Japanese Romanization system (2012).
- For Korean Romanization system (2009).
- For Tibetan Romanization system (2015).
PLEASE USE THE PROPER ROMANIZATION SYSTEM.
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