Literature Paper Topics

The teacher or professor of a given class often carefully define literature paper topics. For many younger students, they are not used to thinking up a topic for a literature paper. For more advanced students, they may feel like they have written about “everything”, or at least everything of interest to them. This post may help spark some new ideas.

For some of you, you may have no interest whatsoever in writing about literature. Alternatively, you may be coping with another far more difficult class or personal issues that make the time required to write such a paper too dear to give up. If that is the case, we can help!

Literature Paper Topics

Literature paper topics can be written from countless points of view. You can write about the historical context of a novel. This might include an examination of the government at the time Pride and Prejudice or the factories that built the B-25s described in Catch 22.

Science, technology, psychology, history, and even subject areas like urban planning and public transportation intersect with literature. Literature intersects with every part of human life and human endeavor. Sometimes this helps students and sometimes it overwhelms them. That is OK; everyone is different!

Topic for a Research Paper

Research papers can be among the most exciting papers you will ever write. However, it can be a challenge for people who have only engaged literature as fun or “art” to consider the academic aspects of literature. They will the topic as frivolous and unserious and because of that, they do not want to be serious about it.

Of course, that is OK. If you are struggling for any reason to come up with a topic for a research paper in literature, we hope this list will help!

  1. A History of the Novella
  2. Adventure Fiction
  3. American Indian Literature From 1900 To Today
  4. American Novels
  5. American Novels Since 1945
  6. Anne Frank and Other Young Adult Biographers
  7. Arthur Conan Doyle
  8. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: Gambling Pays off
  9. Chicano Culture and Identity In Literature
  10. Children’S Literature
  11. Chinese Novels In Translation
  12. Close Reading and Its Limitations
  13. Contemporary American Poetry
  14. Contemporary Short Stories
  15. Cultural Production and Latina Writers
  16. Debut Novels of Major Novelists
  17. Detective Fiction For Children
  18. Dracula and the Foundations of Modern Erotica
  19. Dune In Literature and Film
  20. Dystopia: Roth’S Divergent and More
  21. Early Readers: Literacy and Revolution of Seuss
  22. English Adventure Fiction: Harry Potter and His Fictional Ancestors
  23. English Literature
  24. English Novels
  25. Epistolary Novels
  26. Ethics of Representation
  27. Fairy Tales and Folk Tales of North America
  28. Feminist Literature
  29. Feminist Poetry Aesthetics
  30. Fiction of the Eastern Bloc
  31. Fictional Mothers of Classic theater
  32. Folk Drama of North America
  33. Genre and Status
  34. Genre As Ghetto: You Don’T Belong In This Neighborhood
  35. Global Children’S Literature
  36. Gone Girl and the Fiction of Gillian Flynn
  37. Gone With the Wind and the Mythical Antebellum South In Fiction
  38. Harlem Renaissance
  39. Home In American Novels
  40. Justice and the Novel: Almanac of the Dead and the Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
  41. L.M. Montgomery and Anne of Green Gables
  42. Lesbian Literature
  43. Limits of Genre
  44. Literary Criticism
  45. Literature In Translation
  46. Major Political Movements In Jane Austen’S England
  47. Marge Piercy’S Detroit
  48. Marxist Literatures and theories
  49. Medieval Literature
  50. Melodrama
  51. Memoir Today: From Persepolis To Me Talk Pretty One Day
  52. Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot: the Stories of Agatha Christie
  53. Modern Poetry
  54. Modern Tragedies
  55. Native American Literature From Contact To 1900
  56. Native American Renaissance
  57. Native American Speculative Fiction
  58. Neuromancer and the Conflict Between the Real and the Construct
  59. Night By Elie Wiesel and Other Holocaust Fiction
  60. Noir In Fiction and Film
  61. Novels of Contemporary India
  62. Novels of the Middle East Since 1981
  63. Oral Narratives In Contemporary America
  64. Ordinary Language
  65. Original Fangirl: Mary Shelley and the Founding of Science Fiction
  66. Pastoral Novels
  67. Paulo Coelho and the Alchemist
  68. Picture Books
  69. Poetry and Prose of the Civil Rights Era
  70. Postcolonial Literature In Translation
  71. Poverty and the Novel: From A Tale of Two Cities To the Hunger Games
  72. Pulp Apocalypse: the Hunger Games and More
  73. Sex and Sexuality In Medieval Literature
  74. Star Trek and Doctor Who: Modern Epics and their Literary Roots
  75. Suffragettes and Fiction: Authors and Subjects
  76. Superhero Comics then and Now
  77. The Absence of Work In Contemporary American Novels
  78. The Bible As Literature
  79. The Book Sells The Film, The Film Sells The Book: The Exorcist
  80. The Catcher In The Rye: From Hero To Hipster: How Holden Caulfield Lost His Glamour
  81. The Girl On The Train and Modern Noir
  82. The History of The Novel
  83. The Life of Pi and Black Beauty: Human-Animal Friendships In Novels
  84. The Novelist In The 19Th Century and Today
  85. The Saving Power of Human Frailty In George Orwell’S 1984
  86. Theater and Comedy of Errors
  87. Theater In The Era of Aids and Hiv
  88. Theater of Colonial America
  89. Things Fall Apart and the Iowa School
  90. To Kill A Mockingbird: White Saviors and the Novel
  91. Topics and Trends In American Drama
  92. Tripmaster Monkey and Other Contemporary Novels
  93. Urban Planning and the Creation of Ghettoes In Toni Morrison’S America
  94. Victorian Literature and Culture
  95. What’S the Meaning of This: Women and Genre:  Mysteries
  96. When Parents Told Stories: Did Reading Replace Imagination
  97. Women and theater
  98. World Literature In Translation
  99. Writing Pedagogies
  100. Young Adult Fiction

See more great research paper topics by discipline.

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