Recommended Reading for English Literature:

Hi I'm hoping to be studying English Literature in one form or another at uni, and was thinking it would be useful, not just for me but to all potential english students, to compile a list of recommended reading.

Obviously, it wouldn't just come across as a list of read-these-or-fail-type books, but more something that attempts to be comprehesive in a general sense for all courses, at all institutions.

I was hoping current students, and anyone else, would contribute to the list. Obviously the list could be massive, but it would be nice to start of with what people deem as the fundamentals.

For example, which modern poets do people recommend really should be read? Or, which Elizabethan play is a must-read?

It would be nice if people would recommend then write a short paragraph saying why, or something.

........................................................................................................

I could edit into the following layout:

Novels

Classical, Early & Medieval
16th to 18th Centuries
19th Century
20th Century

Drama

Classical, Early & Medieval
16th to 18th Centuries (Elizabethan, Jacobean)
Shakespeare
19th Century (Victorian)
20th Century

Poetry

Classical, Early & Medieval
16th to 18th Centuries
19th Century
20th Century

Literary Theory and Criticism

........................................................................................................

If people like the idea and it does well it could potentially be stickied which would be nice for saving future threads about reading lists and stuff.

Thanks :smile:

Reply 1

Mr_Pedantic

9

Dante Alighieri - The Divine Comedies
John Milton - Paradise Lost
J.R.R. Tolkien - The Hobbit
J.R.R. Tolkien - The Lord of the Rings
Issac Asimov - I, Robot
Neil Gaiman - Neverwhere
Neil Gaiman - Stardust

Reply 2

Elements

13

Paradise Lost by John Milton.
Some Virgil, Homer and Sophocles too.
Also for 20th century poetry, reading some of Sylvia Plaths poetry is an absolute must as she's a very stark literary figure too.
16th to 18th centuries for Poetry, I'd really recommend looking into the Romanticist Movement- romanticist poetry. Some Romantic poets are as follows: Willian Blake, Sir Percy Schelley, Elizabeth Barett, Samuel Coleridge, William Wordsworth etc. Whether or not you want to read it, you'll probably end up reading The Canterbury Tales by Chaucer for your Classical, Early, Medieval section of poetry. Chaucer wrote in Middle English.
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee is an absolute class and revolutionary 20th century novel so I'd recommend that too.
More novels wise, I'd recommend reading Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, and you might want to read Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte too. Emily Bronte also wrote some poetry and she is mentioned in relation to Sylvia Plath, in Ted Hughes's poem of Wuthering Heights. (Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes were married and had children together btw, in case you didn't already know that).

Reply 3

rottcodd

3

for literary critcisim I'd recommend terry eagletons 'An introduction to literary critcism'. Also Ovid for classics, and a bit of Dosteovsky never did anyone any harm...

Reply 4

Sallykins

1

I'd definitely say Barthes' 'The Death of the Author' and a bit of Derrida for literary criticism.

Reply 5

etherised

1

OK, firstly a list of what I'd regard as the 'fundamentals'. This doesn't necessarily include my favourite bits of writing. Rather, it's a list of 'canonical' literature which would usefully inform any reading of later work. (some will overlap with what people have said already). I'll leave it to someone else to fill in post-Milton.

Homer: The Illiad, The Odyssey
Aeschylus: The Oresteia
Sophocles: Antigone, Oedipus Tyrannus, Oedipus at Colonnus
Euripides: Medea, Electra
Virgil: The Aeneid
Ovid: Metamorphoses
The Bible - at the very least the first five books, the Gospels, and Revelations, though it all helps.
Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales
Shakespeare: read according to your own preference.
Milton: Paradise Lost

And, since this is the area I've specialised in, my must-reads for Elizabethan / Jacobean Drama. (Again, deliberately a non-obscure list, though I'm happy to suggest some more off-the-track stuff if anyone wants.)

Kyd - The Spanish Tragedy
Marlowe - everything really; it's all stunnning. Tamburlaine and Faustus are the most central. Read both texts of Faustus.
Beaumont - The Knight of the Burning Pestle (there's nothing else quite like it; I think it's hilarious)
Middleton - The Revenger's Tragedy, Women Beware Women, A Game at Chess (possibly my favourite playwright from this era)
Webster - The White Devil, The Duchess of Malfi
Jonson - Volpone, The Alchemist (I've never really got along with Jonson, but he is important to the whole scene)

Some theory:
Auerbach - Mimesis (A mind-blowing account of representations of reality in Western Literature from Homer to Woolf. You'll never read novels in quite the same way again.)

On a slightly less esoteric note, Peter Barry's 'Beginning Theory' is an excellent and reasonably comprehensive introduction. The OUP Very Short Introductions are also great - the Postmodernism and Postcolonialism ones are very lucid and readable.

And, lastly, an honorable mention for Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy - a novel (apparently) that's at least 200 years ahead of itself.

Reply 6

wilbur

1

http://www.interleaves.org/~rteeter/grtbloom.html

Reply 7

Mr_Pedantic

9

zigguratted

...

Homer: The Illiad, The Odyssey
Aeschylus: The Oresteia
Sophocles: Antigone, Oedipus Tyrannus, Oedipus at Colonnus
Euripides: Medea, Electra
Virgil: The Aeneid
Ovid: Metamorphoses
The Bible - at the very least the first five books, the Gospels, and Revelations, though it all helps.
Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales
Shakespeare: read according to your own preference.
Milton: Paradise Lost

...

If you're going to recommend The Bible, you should recommend other religious texts too, e.g. Koran, Torah and many others. Even if they are not the text of your religion they have some relevance to the world around you.

Reply 8

thefin

OP

1

wilbur

http://www.interleaves.org/~rteeter/grtbloom.html

That website is perfect! Thank you very much. :biggrin:

Reply 9

silence

16

i find this sort of prescriptive text selection a bit depressing. i am a fan of traditional/canonical literature in many senses, but literature is sort of a selfcanonising thing. if you read something, there'll almost always be references or associations with other texts and you end up looking into those other things by accident. for example, i only began to read kyd and middleton when i discovered the wasteland. i then ended up reading marlowe after the initial dosage of early modern drama.

whilst agreeing that it's helpful if english students have a knowledge of certain texts, there are far better and more rewarding ways to access them then simply highlighting them on a list.

Reply 10

Ariadne

16

Definitely Terry Eagleton's 'An Introduction to Literary Theory' - almost every uni seems to have it on their reading list and I got asked about it in my Oxford interview. If it's any guidelines, I can give you the 1st year reading list for Exeter, just as an example of the sort of stuff you should read:

Literary Theory
Roland Barthes - Mythologies
Doug Babington - 'The Broadview Guide to Writing'
Terry Eagleton - 'Literary Theory - An Introduction'
Karl Marx - 'The Communist Manifesto'
Julie Rivkin - 'Literary Theory - An Anthology'

Literature
'Frankenstein'
'Jane Eyre'
'The Importance of Being Earnest'
James Joyce - 'Dubliners'
The Book of Genesis from the King James Bible
Homer - 'The Odyssey'
'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight'
'Beowulf'
Thomas More - 'Utopia'
Shakespeare - 'The Tempest' , 'Richard III'
Milton - 'Paradise Lost'
Aphra Benn - 'Oroonoko'
Daniel Defoe - 'Robinson Crusoe'

Other than that, go for the classics - Austen, Dickens, Shakespeare, the Bronte sisters, Hardy etc. Or, concentrate on a particular genre and read around that in depth, say the treatment of women in eighteenth century literature, or dystopian fiction. Also, poetry is always a good fallback; it's quick to read and you can get through much more of it. Try the metaphysical poets, (eg John Donne), the romantics (Wordsworth / Blake), Shakespeare's sonnets and maybe the realists if you can be bothered! Before applying, I looked at what the different exam boards were setting for A level English too, and picked out texts from that, which might work for other people, it might not.

If you're trying for somewhere that interviews, ie, Oxbridge, it's also a really good idea to keep on top of the current Booker Prize winner etc and to have an idea about current literary debates. A question that EVERY don will ask you is 'what are you reading at the moment?', and they'll expect you to be able to talk at length about the style of the book.

Hope at least some of this helps! :smile:

Reply 11

wilbur

1

thefin

That website is perfect! Thank you very much. :biggrin:

You're welcome, I hope it proves useful.

But as silence says, the canon is possibly the most controversial aspect of studying English Literature, so selections such as Harold Bloom's should be seen as a the opinion of one individual, rather than an infallible guide. An almost 'accidental' approach to different texts, as he puts it, can be more rewarding than the mechanical reading of 'classic' works one after the other.

Reply 12

thefin

OP

1

Yeh I agree that lists shouldn't become the be all and end all of english. I was just thinking more along the lines of for those that have limited knowledge of literature, where do people recommend as a staring point. It's hard to explain, but what I'm trying to be able to do is begin to find my own way to the more obscure texts, but by using a starting point of things which are generally considered the best, in order filter out the less useful writings.

Reply 13

xedx

Mr_Pedantic

If you're going to recommend The Bible, you should recommend other religious texts too, e.g. Koran, Torah and many others. Even if they are not the text of your religion they have some relevance to the world around you.

well, the first five books of the Bible is the Torah...

the Bible is especially worth reading, though, as much european literature from the last 2000 years has been specifically religious in intent, or contains many allusions to Biblical passages. the Bible has undoubtedly been the cornerstone of western literature. other texts such as the koran, the upanishads or the tripitaka may be interesting, high examples of literature, useful for contextualising the modern world etc etc, but they probably aren't so relevant to study of english literature in Britain, where the focus is predominantly on works from the christian world.

Reply 14

Mr_Pedantic

9

xedx

well, the first five books of the Bible is the Torah...

the Bible is especially worth reading, though, as much european literature from the last 2000 years has been specifically religious in intent, or contains many allusions to Biblical passages. the Bible has undoubtedly been the cornerstone of western literature. other texts such as the koran, the upanishads or the tripitaka may be interesting, high examples of literature, useful for contextualising the modern world etc etc, but they probably aren't so relevant to study of english literature in Britain, where the focus is predominantly on works from the christian world.

true but what a lot of people don't realise is that a lot of european literature that people believe to have christian origins were actually based on pagan folk tales, such as merlin and king arthur.

Reply 15

silence

16

thefin

Yeh I agree that lists shouldn't become the be all and end all of english. I was just thinking more along the lines of for those that have limited knowledge of literature, where do people recommend as a staring point. It's hard to explain, but what I'm trying to be able to do is begin to find my own way to the more obscure texts, but by using a starting point of things which are generally considered the best, in order filter out the less useful writings.

what lit are you studying at school and which year of sixth form are you in?

if you do want some starting point, then canonical lists could give you too much information.

personally, and i'm sure i'll end up echoing many other posts, i'd say that:

at least one or two shakespeare tragedies, kyd's spanish tragedy and marlowe's faustus are a good idea for typical early modern dramas. tragedy that is though. middleton and others, though great, aren't the central point of the genre, in my opinion.

modernism: some eliot poems, including the wasteland. maybe a virginia woolf book, but if you get to the point where you want to fill your pockets with stones, do stop reading immediately. it's just not worth it. some ezra pound maybe, dip into joyce's dubliners if you want.

lame but 'classic' women's writing: just pick up any old bronte or austen book if you really feel the need.

real classics: virgil or homer. don't sit down and read all three (as in iliad, odyssey and aeneid). just pick one (my favourite by a mile or two is the aeneid) and see where it takes you.

if none of these can catalyse the discovery of other random texts, then i'd eat my hat. obviously there are tonnes of other authors and periods out there, but you'll come across them sooner or later. that's the whole point of an english degree. i'm off to do some hoovering now, with my new dyson. yeeh baby.

Reply 16

thefin

OP

1

silence

what lit are you studying at school and which year of sixth form are you in?

I've actually finished A2 and Im on a gap year, working now; so I was hoping to use the time for a some wider reading.

Reply 17

etherised

1

Wellll, re: religious texts other than the Bible - I take your point. But you have to remember that for all but the last, say, fifty years, England has been a Christian country whose social, political and even economic spheres have been influenced by and even inseparable from its religious position. Much early literature (Piers Plowman, the Medieval devotional writings, Paradise Lost, etc. etc. etc.) is directly derived from or inspired by Christian writings and particularly the Bible. While it's true that the Koran, et al have probably been influential too, especially more recently, we're talking about a completely different scale here. This isn't about equality, this is about proportionality.

As for whether or not to recommend canonical literature. Well, yes, obviously there are problems - not least the fact that it perpetuates a canon that's been created by dead white guys [insert typical outraged objections from screaming minority groups]. But I still think there are a few texts which are massively helpful in terms of getting your bearings - especially the Bible and the Classical stuff. Just to acquire some of the intellectual background of the writers you're studying. But, that's partly why I stopped my list at the Renaissance - because although the chain continues, in the last 400 years it becomes increasingly difficult to pick out things which have been influential in the way the early texts were.

Reply 18

A Dad

What a great thread.

I am no expert, but would suggest concentrating on:

Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Revelation (don't expect to understand Revelation, just take in the imagery)
Some Homer & Virgil (e.g. Odyssey / Iliad / Aeneid)
Eirik the Red (or other Icelandic sagas)
Beowulf
Some Milton (e.g. Paradise Lost)
( plus possibly Beckford's Vathek)

Poets: Donne, Pope, Byron

Also suggest some English Language study to complement this:

The Adventure of English is a good introductory read, but if you are looking for something weightier, David Crystal's Enyclopedia of the English Language

Recommended Reading for English Literature:

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