What is a Scholarly Source?

Hello, College Writing II blogreaders:
From the Franklin Pierce College Library website, here's a definition of a scholarly source:
A well-structured source written by experts and intended for experts, students, and scholars in the field.

Defining Scholarly Sources

A scholarly source is one that meets the following criteria:

* Authority
o Are the author or authors identified?
o Do they have scholarly credentials, or credentials within the appropriate field of expertise?
* Structure
o Do the authors cite the works from which they drew inspiration and/or information?
o Do illustrations relay vital information (charts, etc.), rather than simply making the article or book more attractive?
* Content
o Is the intended audience a group of scholars or a group of people who have expertise in a particular trade or profession?
o Is the language is specific to the discipline or intended for large audiences?

Don't think of a scholarly source as something that's been stamped SCHOLARLY SOURCE. Think of it as a resource which is authoritative, which is structured and presented professionally, and which has content and style appropriate to a scholarly rather than a popular audience.

Sometimes some of these criteria will be more important than others. For instance, a trade magazine on the advertising industry with an article on the marketing of beer to minors may be appropriate for a class in mass communication or marketing, but inappropriate for a class on the biological effects of alcohol on underage drinkers. While the publication is intended for people in a particular trade, and not mainly for scholarly consumption, the information in the magazine can be useful to students of advertising, rhetoric, and marketing.

From the Franklin Pierce College Library website/Instruction/"What's a Scholarly Source?!?" at http://library.fpc.edu/instruct/instruct05.html

Morality Tale or Lurid Romance? Little Red Riding Hood and Beauty and the Beast

The most well-known animal bridegroom tale, Madame Le Prince de Beaumont's "Beauty and the Beast, can be read http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/beauty.html.

"Yes, yes," said the Beast, "my heart is good, but still I am a monster."
"Among mankind," says Beauty, "there are many that deserve that name more than you, and I prefer you, just as you are, to those, who, under a human form, hide a treacherous, corrupt, and ungrateful heart."
"If I had sense enough," replied the Beast, "I would make a fine compliment to thank you, but I am so dull, that I can only say, I am greatly obliged to you."
Beauty ate a hearty supper, and had almost conquered her dread of the monster; but she had like to have fainted away, when he said to her, "Beauty, will you be my wife?"

Links to the other many versions of this myth are available on the page also.

There are many versions of the tale Little Red Riding Hood, or Little Red Cap. Charles Perrault's version ends:

"Grandmother, what big eyes you have!"
"All the better to see with, my child."
"Grandmother, what big teeth you have got!"
"All the better to eat you up with."
And, saying these words, this wicked wolf fell upon Little Red Riding Hood, and ate her all up.
Moral: Children, especially attractive, well bred young ladies, should never talk to strangers, for if they should do so, they may well provide dinner for a wolf. I say "wolf," but there are various kinds of wolves. There are also those who are charming, quiet, polite, unassuming, complacent, and sweet, who pursue young women at home and in the streets. And unfortunately, it is these gentle wolves who are the most dangerous ones of all.

A discussion of the story as a tale of coming of age seduction can be found at http://www.msmagazine.com/summer2004/danceswithwolves.asp

The Hobbit, Harry Potter, and The Prince

In case students of CWII would like to further explore works mentioned in this week's readings, I've posted links to excerpts from The Hobbit and Harry Potter (discussed in "Fantasy's Power and Peril") and a link to the text of the Machiavelli's entire The Prince on my website at http://academics.keene.edu/tmendham/FPC.htm. Go to the bottom of the links list.

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.

It had a perfectly round door like a porthole, painted green, with a shiny yellow brass knob in the exact middle. The door opened on to a tube-shaped hall like a tunnel: a very comfortable tunnel without smoke, with panelled walls, and floors tiled and carpeted, provided with polished chairs, and lots and lots of pegs for hats and coats—the hobbit was fond of visitors.
From JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit

Germaine Greer

Click on the title of this post to go to Germaine Greer's article, titled "Filth," which appeared in the UK newspaper, The Sunday Times, January 2005.

When Davina McCall asked me in her bright, overenthusiastic fashion why I called Big Brother a bully, there was not a hint of irony in the presenter's intelligent brown eyes.
People who have read George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-four will already be aware, however, that the whole point of Big Brother is that he is a bully.
They will also know that the language spoken by Big Brother'’s “Inner Party” bureaucracy is called Newspeak. In Davina'’s Newspeak, Big Brother is a force for good and the abuses that he designs are "“challenges"” --— character-building exercises, not degrading ordeals.
Both Kenzie and Lisa, two of my former housemates, can be heard regularly intoning Big Brother'’s mantra, "“It'’s all good"” -- which is Newspeak for "“It'’s all bad (but we musn't complain)."”

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