Some history courses assign fiction, poetry, even art alongside their more conventional readings. In like manner, you should consider including references to such "cultural texts" in your writing. A well-chosen text of this sort opens up additional perspectives on the topic you are engaging. Indeed, sometimes the human drama, the emotion, and/or the moral complexity of an event or issue get lost in its telling. Names and dates, analyses of broader contexts and cause and effect: all this makes for dry reading. You can reinvigorate a history paper by citing a poem or a work of art or fiction that touches upon a related issue. If these works were produced during the same time period as the events they comment upon, think of them as primary sources in their own right. Their use can energize a paper, giving the reader an "in" that operates on a more visceral level than mere historical data. Where appropriate and available, the use of such sources is recommended.

Using a work of fiction/art/poetry in a Research paper:

For our sample research paper topic on the Austrian Catholic Church and the Anschluss, we included a poem by the poet Stefan George among our various sources, and incorporated it into our outline (the poem and its translation are reproduced in the Archives). Here's why:

Honestly now - does George's poem not more effectively make the point than our own prose efforts ever could, that both Germans and Austrians yearned for renewed greatness under strong leadership? On the other hand, combined with the poem, our effort too becomes more compelling. No longer merely making a claim, our words are now backed up by a concrete example that elegantly articulates the case we are trying to make. You too can and should avail yourself of the illustrative power of fiction, art, and poetry in this manner.

Just as such cultural texts help us establish a broader context for a particular event or issue, however, so the texts themselves need to be placed into context in their own right. Is it relevant, do you think, that George - a German strongly associated with early twentieth-century Austrian modernism - was a nationalist and an arch conservative (although not a Nazi)? Would that make the sentiments expressed in his poem more readily comprehensible? The answer of course is yes, but the mere fact that George was biased does not disqualify his work: just as works of poetry, art, and fiction on the Spanish Civil War, for example, by such left-leaning artists as Pablo Picasso (his famous painting Guernica), George Orwell (Homage to Catalonia) or the poet Pablo Neruda ("Spain in Our Hearts") are best understood as an expression of their creators' politics, so too any reference to George's poetry must acknowledge his conservative and nationalist bent.

Once you have established the broader context of a cultural text (even if only in a few words) and have identified any bias or particular slant it may display, you are free to mine it for all its potential to shed additional light on your topic. Doing so is sure to improve the quality of your paper.