How to Cite Literature in MLA 9 (and Chicago When Assigned)

How to Cite Literature: Quick Answer

Use MLA 9 unless the syllabus names Chicago, Turabian, or a journal stylesheet. Build every Works Cited entry from the nine core elements in order. In the sentence, name the author (or title) and, when the copy prints one, a locator: a page for prose, printed line numbers for a long poem, or act.scene.line for a numbered play. Cite the physical or digital copy in your hands. If you found a passage only because a critic quoted it, name both the literary text and the critic, and use qtd. in until you open the original.

The University of Chicago Press still lists literature among the fields that prefer notes when Chicago is assigned:

That sentence is from the official Chicago-Style Citation Quick Guide. If your assignment says only “Chicago,” ask whether it wants Notes-Bibliography or Author-Date, then stay there. Turabian, A Manual for Writers, 9th edition (2018), is the student handbook built on Chicago 17, not a third literature style. For the side-by-side punctuation, use MLA vs Chicago.

Cite the Copy You Read, Not the Work in the Abstract

The MLA Style Center’s works-cited guide puts the whole field in container language:

A poem on the Poetry Foundation site, the same poem in a 2024 anthology, and an early collected edition are three sources. Hamlet in a Folger paperback is not Hamlet in the Riverside. Before you format anything, answer three questions. The rest of the entry is the MLA core elements in order: Author. Title of source. Title of container, Other contributors, Version, Number, Publisher, Publication date, Location.

1. What copy did you use? Cite that edition, website, or database — not a first printing you did not open.
2. Is the work standalone or inside a container? A novel or book-length poem is italicized. A short poem, story, or essay takes quotation marks and then the anthology, journal, or site.
3. What locator does this copy print? Pages, printed line numbers, or act.scene.line. Never invent line numbers by counting, and never paste a Kindle location number.

MLA or Chicago for a Literature Paper?

English, comparative literature, and most modern-language departments assign MLA. History-of-the-book seminars, some religion or philosophy cross-lists, and journals that follow Chicago want numbered notes. Do not mix a Works Cited list with footnotes that are doing the same job. For when a course might want APA instead, use which citation style.

PMLA is the field’s flagship journal. Regular articles run 6,000–9,000 words (discursive notes count; the works-cited list and translations do not). The live submission page states the documentation rule and the AI rule in two sentences you should not paraphrase away:

That AI sentence is why a literature paper that used a chatbot for a gloss, a translation draft, or an image still needs a citation. Use how to cite AI for the current APA, MLA, and CMOS forms. PMLA also does not publish book reviews or new fiction, requires MLA membership for authors, and (as of this rewrite) is collecting essays for an Indigenous literatures special issue with a 10 November 2026 deadline. Those are journal facts, not citation templates.

This page uses MLA 9 in every worked literature example because that is the system literature programs actually assign. When a seminar is on Chicago notes, copy the official CMOS 18 book and translation samples rather than restyling Mantel. CMOS 18 also dropped the city of publication from ordinary book citations:

Those six lines are from the live Notes and Bibliography samples. Yu replaced the older CMOS 17 Zadie Smith book. Liu keeps Eastern name order (family name first), as CMOS 13.75 requires for that author. Roy is the official reminder that a Kindle file gets a chapter, not a location number. Source-by-source Chicago walkthroughs start at how to cite a book in Chicago.

In-Text Citations: Author, Then a Real Locator

The MLA Style Center overview of in-text citations is the rule literature papers break most often — usually by repeating the author or inventing a number the edition does not print:

MLA Handbook 9 §§6.3–6.30 is the full chapter. There is no comma between the name and the page: (Baron 194), not (Baron, 194) and not (Baron pg. 194). If the sentence already names the author, only the locator stays in parentheses. The Style Center’s own example is a real PMLA essay:

If two works share an author, add a shortened italic or quoted title so the reader can tell them apart: (Morrison, Beloved 23) only when Beloved and another Morrison title both appear on your list and page 23 is a page in the edition you used. Do not invent a page to complete the pattern. Handbook §6.8 covers same-author titles; §6.22 covers commonly studied verse drama.

Novels and Other Standalone Books

A novel you read as a book is the simplest literature citation: author, italic title, publisher, year. The MLA Style Center book examples are the ones to copy. Leave out the city of publication. If the title page lists an imprint (Picador, Knopf, Penguin Classics), use that name, not the parent company.

Classic novels exist in dozens of editions. MLA lets you put the original year in the optional slot right after the title. The Style Center’s reprint example is Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart, and it uses 1959 — the year of the first U.S. edition (McDowell Obolensky), not the 1958 Heinemann first printing:

Use the first form when the original year is the fact you need. Use the second when the original publisher matters to the argument. Do not add a year you did not confirm from the title page, a scholarly note, or a reliable bibliography. A later printing is not an edition. The Style Center’s printing note uses Yeats:

Do not write “3rd printing” after Penguin. Do write “2nd ed.” when the title page says so. For the rest of the book template, see how to cite a book in MLA. For reprints and translations as a pair, see reprinted and translated works.

E-books and Audiobooks of Literary Works

A Kindle, Apple Books, or EPUB file that has no URL is an e-book in the Version slot. The Style Center’s own specimen is the Handbook itself. Device location numbers are not locators:

Cite a chapter, section, or other stable division the file prints. If the notes are unnumbered, the Style Center lets you write (ch. 1, note on cinematic adaptations) rather than invent a number. If you read a library PDF that does keep the print pagination, cite those pages and treat the database as a second container.

An audiobook is a different source from the print novel. Credit the narrator when that performance matters, and use a timestamp instead of a page:

Those three lines are the Style Center’s Atwood and Heaney specimens. If you downloaded the file, name Audible as publisher, not as a storefront. If you only streamed a clip, the site becomes a second container. CMOS 18’s matching Kindle reminder is the Roy chapter note above.

Poems: Line Numbers Only When the Copy Prints Them

Classroom handouts often say “always cite line numbers.” The MLA Style Center is more careful. The “ultimate goal is to be concise and to cite what is most useful to the reader.” For a poem in print or online, there are three common possibilities:

Two classroom myths follow from that passage. First, you do not invent line numbers by counting. If the margin is blank, the numbers do not exist for citation purposes. Second, a fourteen-line sonnet that fits on one anthology page usually needs no parenthetical number at all. Use line or lines (not the older ll.) only on the first citation of a numbered long poem. The book-and-line form 9.19 is for epics that print both numbers, not a pattern to force onto a lyric.

The Style Center’s own worked poem is Felicia Hemans, and its online verse example is Adrienne Rich. Copy those forms; do not swap in a poem whose page you have not opened.

Short poems and stories take quotation marks. A standalone epic or book-length poem takes italics, like Beowulf above. The decision tree for containers, Poetry Foundation pages, numbered sonnets, and two versions in one anthology is how to cite poems and short stories in MLA.

Plays: Follow the Edition’s Numbering

A published play is usually italicized, like a book. In the parenthetical, use the numbering the edition prints. Commonly studied verse drama uses act, scene, and line with periods and no spaces: (5.1.323). If the edition does not number lines, the MLA Style Center says to cite act and scene only, and you may add a page if it helps. Do not cite the character. Hamlet does not write Hamlet.

Those four lines are from the Style Center’s note on Shakespeare epilogues. The same office’s note on an edition without line numbers uses an 1813 Macbeth and an explanatory footnote — copy the method, including the note, rather than inventing line numbers:

A live performance is a different work from the printed script; that split, plus unpublished typescripts, is how to cite a play in MLA. For a reliable, line-numbered classroom text, the Folger Shakespeare Library editions are a common assigned copy — cite the Folger volume you used, not “Shakespeare, Hamlet” in the abstract.

Anthologies, Excerpts, and Critical Editions

Most undergraduate literature courses assign a Norton, Bedford, or Longman anthology. The story, poem, or essay is the source; the anthology is the container. Name the editor of the anthology, the edition if it is not the first, the volume if the set is multi-volume, and the page range of the piece you used. If the anthology prints original publication facts and those facts matter, MLA lets you add them as a supplemental element.

Those two entries are the Style Center’s anthology-excerpt examples. “Excerpt from” is a description, not a title, so it is not italicized and not in quotation marks. Duyckinck is the model for a Norton Critical reprint of a real 1851 Literary World review: the critical edition is the container you held; the original magazine facts sit in the optional slot. If you are citing the editor’s introduction rather than the primary text, list the editor as author and use the description Introduction (no quotation marks) in the Title of source slot.

If you quote the novel and not the introduction, you may omit the introducer. The Style Center says front and back matter are “not usually essential to identifying a work”:

Keep Pevear in the contributor slot when the name tells the reader which translation or which critical stance you used. Drop it when you only quoted Gogol’s chapters. The full anthology template is how to cite anthologies in MLA.

Translations: Credit the Translator

A translation is an interpretation. MLA puts Translated by in the Other contributors slot. Capitalize the label when it follows the period after the title; leave it lowercase when it follows a container title and a comma. The Style Center’s examples are Cervantes for the capitalized label and Dostoevsky for the lowercase container label:

If the title page says the author also translated the work, repeat the surname in the contributor slot, as the Style Center does for Beckett: Waiting for Godot. Translated by Beckett, Grove Press, 1954. If a work is known to be self-translated but the copy does not present it as a translation, do not add the label; the Style Center’s example is Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Wizard of the Crow, Anchor Books, 2007. Mention the self-translation in prose if it matters. If you are comparing two translations, each translation is its own source.

Literary Criticism, Databases, and qtd. in

Secondary sources — journal essays, monographs, and chapters about literature — use the same core elements. A journal article takes the article title in quotation marks, the journal title in italics, volume, issue, date, and page range. If you read it in JSTOR, Project MUSE, or another database, add that database as a second container and prefer a DOI. The Style Center’s criticism example is the Baron PMLA essay already quoted above. Pair close reading of the primary text with the criticism you actually used; your Works Cited should show both. For the line between a primary text and a later interpretation, use primary vs secondary sources. For the journal-article template itself, use how to cite a journal article in MLA.

Start a criticism search in the MLA International Bibliography, not in a general web search. It is the discipline’s index of literary scholarship. JSTOR and Project MUSE then supply the PDFs your library licenses.

If you quote a line of verse that you found only inside a critic’s essay, you have not yet cited the poem. The Style Center’s poem-quoted-in-an-article note uses a real PMLA essay and qtd. in:

The original author’s name can sit in the prose, in the parenthetical, or in a note. The Style Center’s indirect-source examples all keep Pope’s wording and Damrosch as the source you held:

List Kantor or Damrosch, not Wordsworth or Pope, until you fetch the poem or An Essay on Criticism yourself. Then replace qtd. in with a citation to the edition you opened.

How to Quote Verse and Prose

Citation format and quotation format are different jobs. The Style Center’s verse rule is short:

Mark a line break with a space-slash-space. Mark a stanza break with a space-double-slash-space, as in the Style Center’s Hemans example: “Since here the mournful seal was set / By love and agony! // Temple and tower have mouldered” (lines 3–5). A prose quotation longer than four lines becomes a block: indented half an inch, no quotation marks, the parenthetical after the final period. Never drop a quotation into the paper without a signal phrase and a sentence of analysis.

Failure Modes Literature Papers Still Hit

• Citing a work you did not open. If a monograph quotes a letter, a variant stanza, or a 19th-century review, cite the monograph unless you then fetched the original. Use qtd. in in the meantime.
• Invented line numbers. Counted-in-the-margin numbers are not locators. The Style Center only accepts numbers the edition prints.
• Kindle location numbers. The e-book post says to avoid device-specific numbering. Use a chapter, section, or print page the file actually shows.
• `pg.` or a comma in the parenthetical. MLA prose citations look like (Mantel 12), not (Mantel, p. 12).
• Repeating the author. If the sentence says Hemans, the parenthesis does not also say Hemans.
• *One Hamlet entry for every copy.* The Folger paperback, an Oxford scholarly edition, and a performance you attended are different sources.
• Dropping the translator. The English words you quoted are the translator’s.
• Treating Gutenberg or a teaching site as the first edition. Project Gutenberg is a real container. Cite that transcription and date, then discuss the 1855 Leaves of Grass in prose if the history matters.
• Listing EasyBib as a style authority. Generate a draft in the MLA citation generator, then check it against the Handbook or the Style Center.

Tools That Help a Literature Paper

• MLA Handbook, 9th edition (2021), and the MLA Style Center, including Ask the MLA.
• PMLA submissions for journal word counts, anonymity, and the AI-citation rule.
• MLA International Bibliography for criticism; JSTOR and Project MUSE for the PDFs.
• Folger Shakespeare Library for assigned, line-numbered play texts; Poetry Foundation and Poets.org for poems you actually read online.
• Chicago Quick Guide when the seminar is on notes, not MLA — Yu, Liu, and Roy are the current book samples.
• A reference manager such as Zotero to store the edition, DOI, and page — not to invent a citation from a title alone.

Related guides

• How to cite a book in MLA
• How to cite a poem or short story in MLA
• How to cite a play in MLA
• How to cite an anthology in MLA
• How to cite a journal article in MLA
• MLA vs Chicago
• How to cite reprinted and translated works
• Primary vs secondary sources
• How to cite AI-generated text