READING LIST FOR MA STUDENTS

The English section expects you to read widely in English during your studies. Making your own personal reading list is a way to plan, structure and make sense of the reading you do in class and on your won. The Reading List proposed by the Section groups exemplary texts by century or period and genre (fiction, poetry, drama), allowing you to situate your reading within the “bigger picture” of Anglophone literature.

The groups on the Reading List are quantitative. That is, they prescribe a certain number of “entries” for each group and a certain number of works for each entry. Thus, group 23, “The Short Story”, contains three “entries” (in this case authors) and three stories for each author.

The authors and texts in the various groups are suggestions and not requirements. Your own personal list may therefore substitute other authors or texts in the same category. To construct a coherent Reading List, you may wish to explore connections, parallels and contrasts among the various groups.

If you elect to do your 6-hour written examination in a literary subject, whether medieval, modern or American, you will be required to present a Reading list comprising twelve groups (instead of the maximum of nine for the BA). If you did your BA at Lausanne, you may simply add more groups to the list you presented for your 3rd year BA exam. If you did your BA elsewhere, your reading list may of course include texts you have read as part of your BA.

As for the BA, your list must include group 10: “Shakespeare”, group 18, “Romantic poetry”, and at least one further group of texts from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries.

In the modern periods (ie Elizabethan onwards), your Reading List may include Anglophone writers of any origin (English, Scottish, Irish, South African, Caribbean, American, Australian, etc.).

Medieval

1. Old English Heroic Poetry •

2. Old English: The Shorter Poems (3 entries) • ‘The Battle of Maldon’ • ‘The Wanderer,’ ‘The Seafarer’ • ‘Caedmon’s Hymn,’ ‘The Dream of the Rood’ • ‘Genesis B’ • ‘The Wife’s Lament’, ‘The Ruin’, ‘The Husband’s Message’, ‘Wulf and Eadwacer’

3. Early Middle English Literature (1 entry) • The Owl and the Nightingale • The Arthurian Section of Lawman’s Brut (9229-14297) • Ancrene Wisse • The Harley Lyrics 4. Chaucer (1 entry) • Canterbury Tales: General Prologue, the Physician’s and Pardoner’s Tales • Canterbury Tales: The Miller’s, Reeve’s, Merchant’s and Shipman’s Tales • Canterbury Tales: The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale, the Clerk’s and Franklin’s Tales • The Parlement of Foules, the Nun’s Priest’s Tale from the Canterbury Tales

5. Medieval Romance (1 entry) • Havelok, Amys and Amylion • Sir ; Malory’s Morte D’Arthur, Books 1, 20 and 21 • Sir Tryamour

6. Fourteenth-Century Literature (1 entry) • Piers Plowman, Prologue and Passus 1–7 • Pearl • Sir Gawain and the Green Knight • Cleanness and Patience • John Gower, Confessio Amantis, Books 1 to 4

7. Religious Literature (1 entry) • Julian of Norwich, A Revelation of Love • The Book of Margery Kempe • Richard Rolle, The English Writings • Walter Hilton, The Scale of Perfection • The Cloud of Unknowing

8. Medieval Drama (2 entries) • Chester, The Fall of Lucifer; York, The Fall of Man, The Last Judgment • Chester, Noah; Brome, Abraham and Isaac • Towneley, The Second Shepherds’ Play • Everyman

9. Fifteenth-Century Literature (1 entry) • Thomas Hoccleve, ‘La Male Regle de T. Hoccleve’, ‘My Compleinte’, ‘A Dialoge’ • John Lydgate, Troy Book, Prologue, Book One and Epilogue • Robert Henryson, The Testament of Cresseid, The Preiching of the Swallow

Elizabethan and 17th century

10. Shakespeare (3 plays plus Sonnet list) Sonnets 15, 18, 29, 30, 55, 73, 116, 129, 138, 146

11. Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama (2 entries) • Marlowe, Dr. Faustus • Jonson, The Alchemist • Webster, The Duchess of Malfi 12. Renaissance Poetry (3 entries) • Wyatt, ‘Madam, Withouten Many Words,’ ‘Whoso List to Hunt,’ ‘My Lute, Awake,’ ‘They Flee from Me’ • Donne, ‘Go and Catch a Falling Star,’ ‘The Canonization,’ ‘Valediction Forbidding Mourning,’ ‘The Sun Rising’ • Jonson, ‘To Penshurst,’ ‘To the Memory of . . . Wm. Shakespeare,’ ‘On My First Son’ • Herbert, ‘The Collar,’ ‘Love’ (3), ‘The Flower,’ ‘Death’

13. Milton (1 entry) • Comus, ‘Lycidas,’ ‘How Soon Hath Time,’ ‘When I Consider,’ Samson Agonistes • Paradise Lost

Restoration and the 18th century

14. Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Comedy (3 entries) • Wycherley, The Country Wife • Congreve, The Way of the World • Gay, The Beggar’s Opera • Goldsmith, She Stoops to Conquer • Sheridan, School for Scandal

15. Eighteenth-Century Poetry (1 entry) • Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel (I), ‘MacFlecknoe’ • Pope, Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, Essay on Criticism, Rape of the Lock • Pope, The Dunciad • Johnson, The Vanity of Human Wishes, London

16. Eighteenth-Century Prose (1 entry) • Swift, A Tale of a Tub, Battle of the Books • Swift, A Modest Proposal, Gulliver’s Travels • Addison and Steele, selected Tatler and Spectator essays • Johnson, ‘Preface’ to Dictionary, ‘Preface to Shakespeare,’ ‘Lives of the Poets’ (Cowley, Milton) • Boswell, The Life of Johnson • Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France; Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Women

17. Eighteenth-Century Novel (1 entry) • Defoe, Robinson Crusoe, Moll Flanders • Richardson, Clarissa • Fielding, Joseph Andrews, Tom Jones • Sterne, Tristram Shandy, A Sentimental Journey • Burney, Evelina, Cecilia • Walpole, The Castle of Otranto; Radcliffe, The Mysteries of Udolpho 19th and 20th centuries

18. Romantic Poetry (5 entries) • Blake, ‘London,’ ‘The Tyger,’ ‘The Clod & the Pebble,’ ‘Holy Thursday’ • Wordsworth, ‘Tintern Abbey,’ ‘Ode: Intimations of Immortality,’ ‘Composed upon Westminster Bridge,’ 1799 Prelude • Coleridge, ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,’ ‘Kubla Khan,’ ‘Frost at Midnight,’ ‘Dejection: an ode’ • Byron, ‘Prisoner of Chillon,’ ‘Stanzas to the Po,’ ‘Don Juan’ Canto 1 • Keats, ‘On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer,’ ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn,’ ‘Ode to a Nightingale,’ ‘To Autumn’ • Shelley, ‘The Triumph of Life,’ ‘Adonais,’ ‘Ode to the West Wind,’ ‘The World’s Great Age Begins Anew’ (Chorus from Hellas )

19. Nineteenth-Century Prose (1 entry) • Hazlitt, De Quincey and Lamb (selections) • Arnold, ‘Wordsworth,’ ‘The Study of Poetry,’ ‘Literature and Science’ • Mill, ‘What is Poetry?’ ‘On Liberty,’ Autobiography • Carlyle, The French Revolution (selections) • Ruskin, Modern Painters, The Stones of Venice (selections) • Emerson, ‘Nature,’ ‘Self-Reliance,’ ‘The Oversoul,’ ‘Experience’ • Thoreau, Walden

20. Victorian Poetry (3 entries) • Tennyson, ‘The Lady of Shalott,’ ‘Ulysses,’ ‘Morte d’Arthur,’ ‘Maud’ • Browning, ‘My Last Duchess,’ ‘Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came,’ ‘Love Among the Ruins’ • Elizabeth Barrett Browning, ‘How do I love thee?’ ‘Mother and Poet,’ ‘A Year’s Spinning’ • Arnold, ‘Dover Beach,’ ‘The Buried Life’ • Hopkins, ‘God’s Grandeur,’ ‘The Windhover,’ ‘Spring and Fall,’ - ‘Terrible Sonnets’

21. Nineteenth-Century American Poetry (3 entries) • Poe, ‘The Raven,’ ‘To Helen,’ ‘The City in the Sea,’ ‘Annabel Lee’ • Emily Dickinson, ‘There’s a certain Slant of light,’ ‘After great pain,’ ‘I started early,’ ‘Because I could not stop for Death,’ ‘As imperceptibly as Grief’ • Whitman, ‘Song of Myself’ (selections, for instance 1–5 & 52), ‘When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed,’ ‘Crossing Brooklyn Ferry’

22. Nineteenth-Century Novel (2 entries) • Scott, Waverley • Austen, Pride and Prejudice • Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights • Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre • Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter • Melville, Moby Dick • Thackeray, Vanity Fair • Dickens, Great Expectations • George Eliot, Middlemarch • Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn • Henry James, Portrait of a Lady • Hardy, Tess of the D’Urbervilles

23. The Short Story (3 entries) • Poe, ‘Ligeia,’ ‘The Purloined Letter’ ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ • Hawthorne, ‘Young Goodman Brown,’ ‘Rappaccini’s Daughter,’ ‘The Minister’s Black Veil’ • James, ‘The Figure in the Carpet,’ ‘The Real Thing,’ ‘The Beast in the Jungle’ • Joyce, ‘The Sisters,’ ‘Araby,’ ‘The Dead’ • Mansfield, ‘Daughters of the Late Colonel,’ ‘Bliss,’ ‘Je ne Parle pas Français’ • Lawrence, ‘Odour of Chrysanthemums,’ ‘The Horse-Dealer’s Daughter,’ ‘The Prussian Officer’ • Faulkner, ‘The Bear,’ ‘Barn Burning,’ ‘A Rose for Emily’ • Hemingway, ‘The Snows of Kilimanjaro,’ ‘Big Two-Hearted River,’ ‘Cat in the Rain’

24. Modern Poetry (3 entries) • Eliot, ‘The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock,’ ‘The Waste Land,’ ‘The Hollow Men’ • Pound, ‘I Make a Pact With You, Walt Whitman,’ ‘In a Station of the Metro,’ ‘Hugh Selwyn Mauberley’ • Yeats, ‘Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop,’ ‘Leda and the Swan,’ ‘Sailing to Byzantium’ • Frost, ‘Stopping By Woods,’ ‘Once by the Pacific,’ ‘Design’ • Stevens, ‘Sunday Morning,’ ‘Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,’ ‘The Idea of Order at Key West’ • Williams, ‘Spring and All,’ ‘Burning the Christmas Greens,’ ‘Landscape with the Fall of Icarus’ • Auden, ‘In Memory of W. B. Yeats,’ ‘Musée des Beaux Arts,’ ‘The Shield of Achilles’

25. Twentieth-Century Novel (3 entries) • Conrad, Heart of Darkness • Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • Lawrence, Sons and Lovers • Woolf, To the Lighthouse • Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby • Beckett, Malone Dies • Morrison, Song of Solomon • Rushdie, Midnight’s Children • Carter, Wise Children • Byatt, Possession

26. Modern Drama (3 entries) • Miller, Death of a Salesman, The Crucible • Albee, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Zoo Story • Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest, Lady Windermere’s Fan • Beckett, Waiting For Godot, Endgame • Pinter, The Caretaker, The Homecoming • Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Travesties

27. Post-war Poetry (3 entries) • Plath, ‘Daddy,’ ‘Lady Lazarus,’ ‘Edge’ • Berryman, ‘Homage to Mistress Bradstreet,’ Dream Songs 1, 14 • Lowell, ‘The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket,’ ‘For the Union Dead,’ ‘Night Sweat’ • Merrill, ‘Lost in Translation,’ ‘An Urban Convalescence,’ Mirabell’s Books of Number (selection) • Larkin, ‘Church Going,’ ‘MCMXIV,’ ‘High Windows’ • Walcott, ‘A Far Cry from Africa,’ ‘The Glory Trumpeter,’ Omeros (selection) • Hill, ‘September Song,’ Mercian Hymns 6 & 7 • Heaney, ‘Station Island,’ ‘Digging,’ ‘Punishment,’ ‘Exile Runes’

28. Open Category (3 entries) Works not classifiable under the above headings, such as science or detective fiction, autobiographies, literary theory, screenplays, etc.

(List last revised November 2005)