Reading List
The Reading List comprises a group of works which departmental majors should have read by the end of their senior year.The first day of the Departmental Comprehensive Examination held in May of the senior year tests the student's familiarity with the list.The works gathered here are meant to exemplify the development of various genres (epic, drama, lyric, novel) and modes (tragedy, comedy, satire).They are also chosen because of their historical importance as models for subsequent writers.The list may also give a shared body of reading to department majors whose interest and languages diverge in many different directions.
This list, which will be distributed to juniors and seniors in a newly updated version in October, should not be seen as prescriptive, and majors are not encouraged to shape their course work around it.The department does encourage students to read widely in world literature, which includes non-Western literature and a variety of traditions.
- Epic (4)
- Epic of Gilgamesh [14th century B.C.E.]
- Homer, Iliad and Odyssey [8th century B.C.E.]
- Vergil, Aeneid [1st century B.C.E.]
- The Tale of the Heike [13th century]
- Dante, Inferno [14th century]
- The Epic of Son-Jara; A West African Tradition (Sundiata; An Epic
- of Old Mali) [14th century]
- Milton, Paradise Lost [17th century]
- Lyric (7)
- Sappho, Lyric Poems and Fragments [7th century B.C.E.]
- Japanese Court Poetry [6th-14th century, esp. from Earl Miner's Introduction]
- 8th-9th centuries
- LiPo and TuFu, Selected Poems [esp. those in Arthur Cooper's Penguin
- anthology]
- Du Fu, Selected Poems
- Kokinshu Poems
- 12th-14th centuries
- Arnaut Daniel, Selected Poems
- Bernart de Ventadorn, Selected Poems
- Petrarch, Canzoniere [esp. 1-5, 16, 23, 30, 35, 52, 126, 129, 189, 190, 234, 264, 267, 281, 310, 323, 348, 359, 362, 364-6]
- 16-17th centuries
- Shakespeare, Sonnets
- Milton, Lycidas
- Juan de la Cruz, Selected Poems
- 19th century
- Keats, "Ode on a Grecian Urn,"and "Ode to a Nightingale"
- Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du Mal
- Dario, Azúl
- Whitman, Leaves of Grass
- Emily Dickinson, Selected Poems
- 20th century
- Yeats, Selected Poems [esp. "The Secret Rose", "Easter 1916", "The
- Second Coming", "Sailing to
- Byzantium", "Leda and the Swan", "Among
- School Children", "Byzantium", "Lapus Lazuli",
- "The Circus Animals' Desertion", "The
- Tower", "A Dialogue of Self and Soul", "Crazy Jane" poems]
- Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus
- Paz, Selected Poems
- Akhmatova, Requiem
- Césaire, Notebook of a Return to My Native Land
- Sédar Senghor, Selected Poems
- Drama (9)
- 5th-4th centuries B.C.E
- Aeschylus, Oresteia
- Sophocles, Oedipus Rex
- Euripides, Bacchae
- Aristophanes, The Clouds
- 15th-16th centuries
- Shakespeare, King Lear, Hamlet
- Rojas, La Celestina
- Zeami, No Plays
- 17th-18th centuries
- Molière, Misanthrope
- Racine, Phèdre
- Calderon, La Vida es sueño
- Basho, Narrow Road to the Deep North
- Tang Hsien-tsu, Peony Pavilion
- Chikamatsu, Love Suicides of Amijima
- 19th century
- Büchner, Woyzeck
- Ibsen, Hedda Gabler
- Chekhov, Cherry Orchard
- 20th century
- Brecht, Mother Courage
- Beckett, Waiting for Godot
- Pirandello, Six Characters in Search Of an Author
- Soyinka, The Bacchae of Euripides: A Communion Rite
- Other (10)
- Hebrew Bible (esp. Genesis and Exodus; 11th century
- B.C.E.)
- New Testament (esp. Matthew, Acts, Epistle
- to the Romans , Apocalypse; 2nd-4th centuries)
- Koran (7th century)
- Plato, Symposium and Phaedrus [4th century B.C.E.]
- Aristotle, Poetics [4th century B.C.E.]
- Sima Quin, Records of the Historian [2nd century B.C.E.]
- Parables of Zhuangzi [3rd century B.C.E.]
- Augustine, Confessions [4th century]
- 9th-12th centuries
- Sei Shonagon, Pillow Book
- Chretien de Troyes, The Tale of the Holy Grail
- Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzifal
- 14th-16th centuries
- The Thousand and One Nights
- Chaucer, Canterbury Tales
- Juan Ruiz, Book of Good Love
- Boccaccio, Decameron
- Garcilaso de la Vega, Royal Commentaries of the Incas
- Zeami, Fushikaden
- 17th-18th centuries
- Swift, Gulliver's Travels
- Voltaire, Candide
- Diderot, Rameau's Nephew
- Basho, Narrow Road to the Deep North
- 19th century
- Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy
- Goethe, Faust
- Chekhov, "The Duel" and "Lady with A Dog"
- 20th century
- Kafka, Metamorphosis
- Borges, Fictions
- Novel (10)
- Tale of Genji [11th century]
- 17th-18th centuries
- Cervantes, Don Quixote
- Lafayette, The Princess of Cleves
- Saikaku, Five Women Who Loved Love
- Dream of the Red Chamber
- 19th century
- Brontë, Wuthering Heights
- Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion
- Conrad, Heart of Darkness
- Flaubert, Mme Bovary
- Pushkin, Eugene Onegin
- Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
- Tolstoy, Anna Karenina or War and Peace
- Melville, Moby-Dick
- Jorge Isaacs, Maria
- Machado de Assis, Dom Casmurro
- 20th century
- Joyce, Ulysses
- Woolf, Between the Acts
- Proust, Swann's Way
- Mann, Magic Mountain
- Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom
- Carpentier, The Lost Steps
- Lispector, The Hour of the Star
- Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude
- Rushdie, Midnight's Children
- Achebe, Things Fall Apart
- Kane, Ambiguous Adventure
- Mahfouz, Cairo Trilogy [any of three]
- Tanizaki Jun'ichiro, Makioka Sisters
- Kawabata Yasunari, Snow Country
- Film [optional] (5)
- Lumière, Méliès, and Griffith, Selected Short
- Films [1895-1915]
- Wiene, Cabinet of Dr. Caligari [1920]
- Micheaux, Body and Soul [1924]
- Murnau, Sunrise [1927]
- Eisenstein, October [1927]
- Renoir, Rules of the Game [1939]
- Welles, Citizen Kane [1941]
- Rossellini, Rome Open City [1945]
- Kurosawa, Rashomon [1950]
- Godard, Breathless [1960]
- Ray, World of Apu [1960]
- Hitchcock, Psycho [1960]
- Buñuel, Viridiana [1961]
- Varda, Cleo from 5 to 7 [1962]
- Bergman, Persona [1966]
- Sembene, Black Girl [1966]
- Alea, Memories of Underdevelopment [1968]
- Chen Kaige, Yellow Earth [1984]
