The academic discipline of English literature has certain conventions, or standard practices, that scholars in the field use when writing about literature. In your literature paper, it is important that you observe the conventions so that your readers’ attention will be focused directly on your interpretation, not on the details of your presentation.
Important conventions relate to the following:
Referring to literary authors, titles, and characters
Using the present tense to describe fictional events
Avoiding shifts in tense when integrating quotations
Avoiding confusion of the author with a narrator, speaker, or character