This guide provides a general introduction to Library resources relating to French and Francophone Studies.
Primary sources refer to sources which are as close as possible to the origin of the information or idea under study. They have originated in the time period concerned that haven't been filtered through interpretation.
In literary studies, primary sources are often creative works such as poems, stories, novels, correspondence, and so on (c.f. films and paintings in art; memoirs and eyewitness accounts in historical studies; or government documents in political studies).
Secondary sources provide analysis, commentary, or criticism on the primary sources. Secondary sources have often been created with the benefit of hindsight.
The chief value of the secondary source lies not just in their analysis, commentary or criticism but in the fact that it points you to the primary source through a citation. It is important to read (and then cite) the primary source if you can, because that will enable you to verify the accuracy and completeness of the information. Reading the primary source could even enable you to question the related secondary source.
Sometimes, some primary sources are unobtainable (e.g. if they are out of print or impossible to find) or written in a language you don't understand. In these circumstances, secondary sources are the only information you rely on, and you should make this clear in your work.
Sometimes, secondary sources could become primary sources, e.g. if you are discussing the history of literary criticism of an author, then scholarly articles throughout a particular period can become the primary sources of your study
See also the Subject Guide:
ProQuest One Literature is probably the most extensive and most important source of literary works for the study of comparative literature. It contains more than 500,000 primary works - including novels, short stories, poems, plays, and rare and obscure texts by writers from around the world in and beyond the Western canon.
Primary wroks are enhanced by interpretive sources such as book reviews and criticism sourced from wider, interdiscipliary publications in the fields such as humanities and history, with diverse, global perspectives sourced from all over the world - Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, and North and South America - the majority of which are in full-text.
The database can be browed by literary period, literary movement, author name or literature collections.
ProQuest One Literature (PQOL) is the upgraded version of Literature Online (LION, also in the Database list) but the content is double the size of LION.
