Works

The Pardoner's Tale

A huckster, not "all man," vain, hypocritical. 3 drunkards search out Death, but instead find a treasure and murder each other over it.

To His Coy Mistress

Andrew Marvell, 1681. Theme is "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, i.e., have sex with me because we'll all die soon." "But at my back I always hear Time's winged chariot hurrying near; And yonder all before us lie Deserts of vast eternity."

The Mysteries of Udolpho

Anne Radcliffe, 1794. Follows Emily St. Aubert, who suffers the death of her father, supernatural terrors in a gloomy castle, and the machinations of an Italian brigand. Names: Emily St. Aubert Valancourt (her love interest) Madame Cheron (her aunt) Montoni (aunt's husband, a dubious nobleman from Italy) Count Morano (Montoni's friend) Du Pont

King James Bible

1611. Issued by the Church of England, and still the standard Bible in literary studies.

To the Memory of My Beloved Master William Shakespeare

Ben Jonson, 1623. "He was not of an age, but for all time!"

David Copperfield

Charles Dickens, 1849-50. Partly autobiographical novel that follows the life of David Copperfield from childhood to maturity. Other names: The Peggottys, James Steerforth, Tommy Traddles, Emily and Ham and Mrs Gummidge, Dr. Strong, Dora Spenlow Key names: David Copperfield, Edward Murdstone, Mr. Wilkins Micawber and Mrs. Micawber, Uriah Heep, Betsey Trotwood, Agnes

The Knight's Tale (Canterbury Tales)

Chivalry. First tale. Friends Arcite and Palamon, prisoners of war, fall in love with Emily, whom they see from their window. Eventually, Arcite prays to Mars, Palamon to Venus (each god seeming to assure victory), and they fight a great battle. Arcite wins but dies, so Palamon gets Emily.

Dr. Faustus

Christopher Marlowe (1564-93). A sorcerer sells his soul for power. Faustus is served and persecuted by devils: Lucifer, Beelzebub, Mephistopheles. Goethe retold the story in Faust (where he sells his soul for knowledge instead, and there's only Mephistopheles).

Tamburlaine

Christopher Marlowe (1564-93). Tamburlaine the Great, Parts I and II, tells of a Scythian shepherd who becomes a ferocious conquerer in Asia Minor. Characters: Tamburlaine, Zenocrate

The Passionate Shepherd to His Love

Christopher Marlowe, 1599. Alluded to widely: Sir Walter Raleigh ("The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd"), John Donne, Robert Herrick, C. Day Lewis. "Come live with me and be my love And we will all the pleasures prove"

The Ambassadors

Henry James, 1903. A dark comedy that follows Lewis Lambert Strether on his trip to Europe in pursuit of Chad Newsome, his widowed fiancée's supposedly wayward son. He is to bring the young man back to the family business, but becomes seduced by the charms of Europe. Names: Lewis Lambert Strether Chad Newsome Mrs. Newsome Marie de Vionnet Jeanne, her daughter Little Bilham (a friend of Chad's) Sarah Pocock (Chad's sister) Maria Gostrey

Moby-Dick

Herman Melville, 1851. Monologues have a Biblical-Shakespearean style. Names: Ishmael (narrator and sole survivor) Queequeg Dashoo Tashtego (the savage harpooners) Starbuck (first mate) Captain Ahab Pequod (the ship)

Bartleby the Scrivener

Herman Melville, 1853. A short story about the weirdly alienated Bartleby, who replies "I'd prefer not to" when asked to do anything at all.

Billy Budd

Herman Melville, 1924 (published posthumously). The story of a handsome sailor undone by his own goodness and the plottings of the repulsive Claggart. The title stock seafaring character is elevated to Christlike status.

The Castle of Otranto

Horace Walpole, 1764. The first true gothic novel. Tells the convoluted story of Manfred, lord of the castle, and his family. The peasant Theodore is ultimately revealed to be the true heir and becomes king. Names: Manfred Conrad (Manfred's son, dies early) Isabella (princess) Theodore (peasant) Jerome (friar) Matilda (Manfred's daughter) Frederic (Isabella's father)

The Leather-Stocking Tales

James Fenimore Cooper, 1827-1841. A series of five novels set in the 18th century, in the Iroquois area of upstate NY. Features frontiersman Natty Bumppo (a.k.a., Deerslayer, Hawkeye, La Longue Carabine, The Pathfinder, Leatherstocking), a righteous nature lover and crack shot. The Deerslayer (1841) The Pathfinder (1840) The Prairie (1827) The Last of the Mohicans (1826) The Pioneers (1823) Names: Natty Bumppo (and his various nicknames) Chingachgook Uncas

The Dead

James Joyce, 1914. A short story from Dubliners, in which Gabriel Conroy and his wife Greta attend a party, and Gabriel learns of her dead girlhood lover, Michael Furey. The epiphany ruptures the pastoral construction of the rest of the story. Ends with a famous scene of Gabriel ruminating while watching snow fall.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

James Joyce, 1916. Semi-autobiographical novel about a young man growing up in Ireland and rebelling against family, country, and religion. Features Stephen Daedalus (also appears in Ulysses; name is from the Daedalus who created the Labyrinth). Starts in babyspeak and ends with pages from Dedalus' journal. "The artist, like the God of creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails."

Ulysses

James Joyce, 1922. Follows Leopold Bloom (acting as Odysseus, with Stephen Daedalus of Portrait of an Artist as Telemachus) through an unremarkable day in 1904 Dublin. Each "episode" of the book is based on an episode in the Odyssey. Famous for its difficulty and stream-of-consciousness style.

Finnegans Wake

James Joyce, 1939. One of the most difficult works of fiction in the English language. Incorporates up to 70 different languages to create a kind of dream-speak. The book discusses, in an unorthodox fashion, the Earwicker family, comprising the father HCE, the mother ALP, and their three children Shem the Penman, Shaun the Postman, and Issy. The opening line is a sentence fragment continued from the unfinished closing line, making it a never-ending cycle. Famous passage between two washerwomen beginning, "Well, you know or don't you kennet or haven't I told you every telling has a taking and that's the he and the she of it."

Cane

Jean Toomer, 1923. Considered a classic of High Modernism. Structured as a series of mostly freestanding vignettes concerning the experiences of African Americans, which alternate between narrative prose, poetry, and play-like passages of dialogue.

The Pilgrim's Progress

John Bunyan, 1678-84. An allegory of the believer's journey toward redemption. Presented as a dream sequence by an omniscient narrator, it follows Christian as he leaves the City of Destruction (this world) for the Celestial City (Heaven). Names/places: Christian Slough of Despond Vanity Fair Celestial City Wicket Gate

Mac Flecknoe

John Dryden (1631-1700). A mock-epic satirical attack on the dramatist Thomas Shadwell. Relates the succession of Shadwell/Flecknoe to the throne of dullness. Full of allusions.

Absalom and Achitopel

John Dryden (1631-1700). Biblical characters are used to analogize a political crisis during the reign of Charles II. Dryden delicately supports Charles II while trying to appear objective. Makes heavy use of heroic couplets. Witty but serious. Absalom = Duke of Monmouth Achitopel = Earl of Shaftesbury King David = Charles II

Comus

John Milton, 1634. A masque - a dramatic form with music, singing, dancing, acting, and stage design. A lass lost in the woods falls asleep and is captured by the lecherous Comus and carried back to be erotically harassed. "Mortals, that would follow me, / Love Virtue; she alone is free. / She can teach ye how to climb / Higher than the sphere chime; / Or, if Virtue feeble were, / Heaven itself would stoop to her."

Lycidas

John Milton, 1637. A pastoral elegy for Milton's friend Edward King. Point of contact between shared pastoral past, classical tradition, and Christian tradition. Irregular rhythms and rhymes and heavy allusiveness typical of Milton. Title comes from Theocritus's Idylls, though "Lycidas" also appears in Herodotus.

Areopagitica

John Milton, 1644. Milton's best-known prose, defending free expression (with religious justification). "...as good almost kill a man as kill a good book. Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were in the eye."

Paradise Lost

John Milton, 1667. Written in blank verse. Contorted sentence structure.

The Duchess of Malfi

John Webster, 1612-13. A dark, macabre tragedy loosely based on real events from the early 1500s. Begins as a love story, with a virtuous Duchess who marries beneath her class; ends as a nightmarish tragedy as her two malevolent brothers undertake their revenge, destroying themselves in the process. Duchess faces her martyr-like death with classical Stoic courage. Key names: Duchess Antonio Bologna (her lover) The Cardinal Ferdinand

Gulliver's Travels

Jonathan Swift, 1726. A Restoration comedy prose satire on human nature and the popular "travellers' tales" literary subgenre. Names/places: Lemuel Gulliver, Lilliput, Brobdingnag, Laputa (flying island), Struldburgs (unhappy immortals who wish they could die), Houyhnhnms (intelligent horses), Yahoos

The Awakening

Kate Chopin, 1899. A landmark early feminist work. Set in New Orleans and on the Louisiana Gulf coast at the end of the 19th century. Concerns Edna Pontellier's struggle between her increasingly unorthodox views on femininity and motherhood, and the prevailing social attitudes of the turn-of-the-century American South. One of the earliest American novels that focuses on women's issues without condescension. Prefigures major modernist works. Louisiana setting means that many character names are French. Names: Léonce Pontellier Edna Pontellier Etienne Pontellier Raoul Pontellier Madame Lebrun Robert Lebrun Victor Lebrun Adèle Ratignolle Alcée Arobin Mademoiselle Reisz

The Plough and the Stars

Sean O'Casey, 1926. Themes of Irish nationalism and poverty. Sparked outrage for presenting an unidealized vision of the Irish "folk." The third of his Dublin Trilogy, the first two of which were The Shadow of a Gunman (1923) and Juno and the Paycock (1924).

Le Morte d'Arthur

Sir Thomas Malory, 1470. Written in prose, in Late Middle English.

Sartor Resartus

Thomas Carlyle, 1833-1834. Translates to "the tailor reclothed." Bombast, self-satire, and German metaphysics do battle in the speculations of Professor Teufelsdröckh and his beleaguered editor. A philosophical work in the guise of fiction that concerns the relationship of outward appearances and inward essences. Key terms: Professor Teufelsdröckh ("Demondung") Weissnichtwo (the prof's hometown) the Everlasting Yea the Everlasting No the Wanderer (a.k.a. the prof)

Elegy Written in a Country Church Yard

Thomas Gray, 1751. Epitaph at the end "Some mute, inglorious Milton here may rest, Some Cromwell gutless of his country's blood."

Hamlet and His Problems

T.S. Eliot, 1919. A further argument for Eliot's "impersonal poet" that also introduces the "objective correlative." Concept of the objective correlative is that the only way to express an emotion through art is to find "a set of objects, a situation, [or] a chain of events" that will evoke a specific sensory experience in the audience.

Tradition and the Individual Talent

T.S. Eliot, 1919. A poetic manifesto for Eliot's early work that argues for "impersonal poetry." Tradition operates as a "simultaneous order" of timeless work that unites past and present; a great artist must attach to, rather than break with, tradition. Thus, Eliot doesn't believe in the inspired genius popularized by the Romantics, arguing that a poet can use tradition to lift himself above personal experience. Impersonality became a paradigm for High Modernists (see Joyce).

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

T.S. Eliot, 1920. I'll just leave this here.

The Waste Land

T.S. Eliot, 1922. Split into five sections, with 7 pages of endnotes. Fragmented, with polyglot vocabulary and dense allusions. First stanza ("April is the cruelest month") is a vague allusion to The Canterbury Tales.

The Hollow Men

T.S. Eliot, 1925. The last great poem of early-phase Eliot. Post-WWI themes (like The Waste Land). Concerned with the difficulty of the search for meaning in postwar Europe. "This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper."

Ash Wednesday

T.S. Eliot, 1930. Eliot's first long poem after converting to Anglicanism. Marks a stylistic turning point. "Because I do not hope to turn again Because I do not hope Because I do not hope to turn"

Murder in the Cathedral

T.S. Eliot, 1935. A verse drama portraying the assassination of Archbishop Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral in 1170.

The Cocktail Party

T.S. Eliot, 1939. Based partly on Euripedes' Alcestis. Names: Edward Chamberlayne Lavinia Chamberlayne Celia Coplestone (Edward's mistress) Sir Henry Harcourt-Reilly (the mysterious stranger/psychiatrist)

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

The Pearl Poet, c. 1380. The Gawain story is told in verse stanzas, composed of long alliterative lines, ending with a "bob and wheel." The "bob" is a one-foot line, and the "wheel" following it is a quatrain of trimeter lines; together, they rhyme ababa.

18th-century periodicals

The Spectator (Joseph Addision and Richard Steele) The Tatler (Richard Steele) The Rambler (Samuel Johnson) The Review (Daniel Defoe) The Examiner (Jonathan Swift) The Female Spectator (Eliza Haywood)

Far From the Maddening Crowd

Thomas Hardy, 1874. First of Hardy's novels set in his fictional region of Wessex. Title is an allusion to Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard." Shepherd Gabriel Oak proposes to Bathsheba, who turns him down. Years later, he is penniless and helps put out a fire on her farm, and she hires him. She toys with the affections of her neighbour, William Boldwood. Oak remonstrates her; she fires him but is forced to rehire him. She marries Troy, who had formerly been engaged to Fanny, who was pregnant. They run into her on the road; she dies in childbirth. Troy is disgusted with himself, goes to bathe in the sea, but is rescued. Years later, he returns to stop Bathsheba marrying Boldwood, who kills him. She marries Gabriel. Names Bathsheba Everdene (farmer) William Boldwood (her lonely neighbour) Gabriel Oak (faithful shepherd) Sergeant Francis "Frank" Troy (thriftless soldier) Fanny

Tess of the D'Urbervilles

Thomas Hardy, 1891. Challenged the sexual morals of late Victorian England. Tess is raped and everyone is terrible. Names: Tess Durbeyfield Alec d'Urberville Izz, Retty, and Marian Angel Clare Felix, Cuthbert, and Reverend James Clare Liza-Lu

Mrs. Dalloway

Virginia Woolf, 1925. Narrates, in an intimate stream-of-consciousness, a single day in Clarissa Dalloway's life. Eschews traditional beginning-middle-end form and foregrounds minor details of the characters' lives. Highlights interiority using free indirect style. Names: Clarissa Dalloway Septimus Smith Richard Dalloway Sally Seton Peter Walsh

To the Lighthouse

Virginia Woolf, 1927. Describes the Ramsay family's two separate visits to a lighthouse. Concerned with the effects of the passage of time (the middle section, "Time Passes," is an elliptical prose experiment meant to create a sense of its title). Invested in epistemological questions and characters' psychological experience of events. Names: The Ramsays Lily Briscoe Charles Tansley Augustus Carmichael Paul Rayley Minta Doyle

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

William Blake, 1790-1893. A series of texts written in imitation of biblical prophecy but expressing Blake's own intensely personal Romantic and revolutionary beliefs. Describes the poet's visit to Hell (a conceit borrowed from Dante). Famous for the "Proverbs of Hell." Ironically references, directly cites, and criticizes Emanuel Swedenborg's theological work Heaven and Hell. Blake expresses a depolarized, unified vision of the cosmos in which the material world and physical desire are equally part of the divine order (hence, a marriage of heaven and hell).

Visions of the Daughters of Albion

William Blake, 1793. A short and early example of Blake's prophetic books. Oothoon is in love with Theotormon, who represents the chaste man, filled with a false sense of righteousness. Oothoon desires Theotormon but is suddenly, violently raped by Bromion, whereupon both men want nothing to do with her.

The Countess Cathleen

William Butler Yeats, 1892. His first published play. Dramatizes an Irish fable concerning people who sell their souls for food during a famine.

The Second Coming

William Butler Yeats, 1921. "Things fall apart; the center cannot hold." "The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity." "And what rough beast, its hour come round at last Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"

The Way of the World

William Congreve, 1700. A Restoration comedy. Concerns the two lovers Mirabell and Millamant, who want to marry and receive Millamant's full dowry. To do so, Mirabell must receive the blessing of Millamant's aunt, Lady Wishfort, a bitter lady who despises Mirabell and wants her own nephew, Sir Wilfull, to wed Millamant. Names: Millamant, Mirabell, Mr. Fainall, Lady Wishfort, Foible, Mincing, Sir Wilfull

The Sound and the Fury

William Faulkner, 1929. Split into four sections over 30 years, each with their own narrator. Employs stream-of-consciousness narration to follow the Compson family, former Southern aristocrats struggling to deal with the dissolution of their family and its reputation. First section's narrator is mentally disabled ("idiot man-child") Benjy. Second is more modernist, from perspective of Quentin Compson (appears again in Absalom). He is obsessed by the downfall of the South, infatuated with his sister Caddy's purity. Repulsed by her promiscuity and premarital pregnancy, he commits suicide. This is usually the "Quentin" critics mean when they use the name. Caddy also names her bastard daughter Quentin. Resourceful and morally ambiguous, she steals her detestable Uncle Jason's savings and disappears. Names: the Compsons Benjy Compson Quentin Compson Caddy Compson Jason Compson (Quentin's cynical younger brother, third narrator) Dilsey (black servant, focus of 4th section)

As I Lay Dying

William Faulkner, 1930. Southern Gothic novel and complex experiment in perspective (15 narrators in 59 chapters). Title is from The Odyssey, Book XI. Concerns the death of Addie Bundren and her poor, rural family's quest and motivations to honour her wish to be buried in her hometown of Jefferson, Mississippi. Names: Addie Bundren the Bundrens the Tulls Reverend Whitfield (with whom Addie had an affair)

Absalom, Absalom!

William Faulkner, 1936. Concerned with the life and death of Thomas Sutpen, a poor white who moves to Mississippi to become rich and powerful. He succeeds and gets a plantation and slaves. After the Civil War, he can't restore his glory, and the novel tangles up in the literal and figurative pairings between him and his slaves. Narrated (in fragments) by Quentin Compson (from The Sound and the Fury), to his Harvard roommate Shreve, with help from his father, who remembers parts from his grandfather and Rosa Coldfield. Names: Thomas Sutpen Quentin Compson Shreve Rosa Coldfield

Piers Plowman

William Langland, c. 1350-1380. A long poem in eight allegorical visions, wherein Will seeks out Truth in his dreams. Written contemporaneously with The Canterbury Tales, but in alliterative verse (like Gawain). Masterpiece of alliterative revival.

She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways

William Wordsworth, 1800. One of the Lucy poems, along with "Strange Fits of Passion Have I Known" ; "Three Years She Grew" ; "A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal" ; "I Traveled Among Unknown Men."

The Country Wife

William Wycherly, 1675. A Restoration comedy. Reflects an aristocratic and anti-Puritan ideology, and was controversial for its sexual explicitness. Concerns Horner's impotence trick, the married life of Pinchwife and Margery, and the courtship of Harcourt and Alithea. Names: Mr. Horner, Mr. Pinchwife, Sir Jasper Fidget, Mrs. Squeamish, Mrs. Dainty Fidget

Beowulf

Written down c. 750. Sung previously by scops (Anglo-Saxon bards). Swedish Beowulf slays Grendel and the monster's mother at the request of Danish King Hrothgar and rules the Geats. Later, dies slaying a dragon and appoints Wiglaf as successor. Written in Old English verse: organized by internal alliteration, not inter-line rhyme. Stressed syllables only are counted. Each line has a caesura. Names: Beowulf, Grendel, Grendel's mother, Hrothgar, Beaw, Scyld Scefing, Heorot (Beowulf's mead-hall), Wiglaf

The Rape of the Lock

Alexander Pope, 1712. A mock-epic in heroic couplets relating the real-life brouhaha of Lord Petre's cutting Arabella Fermor's hair. Contains all the hallmarks of the epic: the invocation, the feast the battle, the interference of the gods, the simile. John Caryll was a friend of Pope's who suggested he write the poem. Names: Belinda

The Dunciad

Alexander Pope, 1728-1743. Written in heroic couplets, an assault on bad poetry (and bad poets) aimed at all Pope's enemies, especially Colley Cibber (poet laureate). Concerns the coronation of Bayes as poet laureate of Dulness, suggesting dullness will prevail over the liberal arts.

Ulysess (poem)

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, 1842. "Old age hath yet his honour and his toil."

The Wings of the Dove

Henry James, 1902. Tells the story of Milly Theale, an American heiress stricken with a serious disease, and her effect on the people around her. Names: Milly Theale Kate Croy Merton Densher Maud Lowder Mrs. Stringham Sir Luke Strett

The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale

An outsized vision of woman, partly grotesque, but unselfconscious. Feminist (open marriage-like) philosophy of love and sex. In the tale, King Arthur's knight commits rape and is sentenced to death. After intervention of the Queen and her ladies, he must instead answer the question, "What do women desire most?" He marries an ugly witch to find out ("Sovereignty"), and she then turns into a beautiful maiden.

An Essay on Criticism

Alexander Pope, 1711. A didactic poem after the example of Horace. Simple, conversational style, and tone of well-bred ease. Discusses the key concepts of neoclassical criticism: wit, Nature, ancients, rules, genius. The poem impressed Joseph Addison. "To err is human, to forgive divine" "A little learning is a dang'rous thing" "Fools rush in where angels fear to tread"

The Prioress's Tale

Dainty, materialistic, sentimental about her dogs. Brooch says, "Love conquers all." Tale is in rhyme royal (staid). Tale is about a boy killed by Jews for singing a hymn but he keeps singing in death. "Murder will out."

The Miller's Tale

Drunk, coarse guy who tells a vulgar tale in which a cuckold is tricked into sleeping on his roof by his wife, Alison, and their boarder, Nicholas, a young scholar learned in astrology. The two lovers are interrupted by Alison's other suitor, Absalom, to whom she promises a kiss; she makes him kiss her ass. He ends up poking Nicholas's ass with a hot poker.

The Faerie Queene

Edmund Spenser, 1590-96. Deliberate use of archaic spelling and diction, though a contemporary of Shakespeare. Written in nine-line Spenserian stanzas: ababbcbcc, 8 in iambic pentameter and then an alexandrine, a line of iambic hexameter). A moral allegory that invites the reader to interpret the characters and events in terms of the virtues and vices they come to embody. Vilifies the Catholic Church (Spenser was a Protestant). Names: The Redcrosse Knight Una Duessa (Fidessa) Archimago Arthur

Wuthering Heights

Emily Brontë, 1847. Significant for its unusually stark depiction of mental and physical cruelty and its moorland setting. Names/places: Lockwood Heathcliff Wuthering Heights Thrushcross Grange Ellen (Nelly) Dean Hindley Earnshaw Hareton Earnshaw (Hindley and Frances's son) Edgar Linton Isabella Linton Cathy Linton (Catherine and Cathy's daughter) Linton (Heathcliff and Isabella's son)

The Sun Also Rises

Ernest Hemingway, 1926. Modernist novel about a group of American and British expatriates who travel from Paris to the Festival of San Fermín in Pamplona to watch the running of the bulls and the bullfights. Set in 1920s France and Spain. Features Jake Barnes, who is mysteriously injured, and sexually dysfunctional, though in exactly what way isn't clear. A roman à clef that depicts sordid café life in Paris and the Pamplona festival; a middle section is devoted a fishing trip in the Pyrenees. Names: Jake Barnes Lady Brett Ashley Robert Cohn Bill Gorton Mike Campbell (Brett's fiance) Romero

The Bible (Old Testament)

From Genesis: creation (a series of creation, assessment, and classification), the fall, Cain and Abel, the flood, the Tower of Babel, and Abraham and Isaac - Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling takes the almost-sacrifice of Isaac as its theme From Exodus: Moses and the plagues; "Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth," Mount Sinai, ram's blood, the casting down of the first two tablets Samuel and Kings: detail the first kings of Israel (anointed by the prophet Samuel, last of the Hebrew judges), Saul and David. Saul is killed in battle with the Philistines. David killed Goliath, composed many Psalms, had Solomon by Bathsheba. His son Absalom rebelled and tried to usurp the throne (mirroring David and Saul), a story retold in Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel (1681-1682) and Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! (1936). Job Daniel: set during the Babylonian captivity. Two parts: the "court tales" of Daniel, Sharach, Meshach, and Abednego, and Daniel's dream interpretations. He predicts an upcoming famine and is appointed to a high position; the others cast him into a den of lions. "Daniel in the lion's den," King Belshazzar, "writing on the wall." Jonah

The Canterbury Tales

Geoffrey Chaucer, 1387. Written in Middle English. A series of stories told by pilgrims en route to Canterbury shrine. Meter varies depending on teller, but rhyming couplet form of the Prologue predominates. 24 tales, 29 (or 31) pilgrims. Most important: Knight, Prioress, Nun's Priest, Merchant, Wife of Bath, Miller, Pardoner.

Mrs. Warren's Profession

George Bernard Shaw, written 1893, performed 1902. About a former prostitute, now a madam, who attempts to come to terms with her disapproving daughter. A problem play, offering social commentary to illustrate Shaw's belief that the act of prostitution was not caused by moral failure but by economic necessity.

The Man of Mode

George Etherege, 1676. A Restoration comedy. Follows the libertine Dorimant as he tries to win over the young heiress Harriet, and to disengage himself from his previous affair with Mrs. Loveit. Names: Mr. Dorimant, Harriet, Sir Fopling Flutter, Mrs. Loveit

Three Lives

Gertrude Stein, 1909. Three disconnected stories of working-class women in the fictional town of Bridgepointe (based on Baltimore): "The Good Anna," "Melanctha," and "The Gentle Lena."

The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas

Gertrude Stein, 1933. A biography of Stein from the perspective of her lover. Concerns Paris in the 1910s and 1920s - specifically, Stein's relationships with young Modernists in Paris (Picasso, Hemingway, Eric Satie, etc.) and her role is discovering/popularizing them.

Bible (New Testament)

Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, John Jesus' story (virgin birth, King Herod, Massacre of the Innocents, kiss of Judas Iscariot and arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane, etc.). Salome - daughter of a later Herod, who requests John the Baptist's head on a plate. Inspired: Dante (The Divine Comedy, Vita Nuova) Milton (Paradise Lost, etc.) Bunyan (Pilgrim's Progress) Jonathan Swift - clergy John Donne - clergy Book titles: Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom! Marcel Proust, Sodom and Gomorrah Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises Samuel Butler, The Way of All Flesh Henrik Ibsen, The Master Builder Jean Toomer, Cane

The Portrait of a Lady

Henry James, 1881. The story of a spirited young American woman, Isabel Archer, who, in "confronting her destiny," finds it overwhelming. She inherits a large amount of money and subsequently becomes the victim of Machiavellian scheming by two American expatriates.

Turn of the Screw

Henry James, 1898. A horror novella. An unnamed narrator listens to his friend, Douglas, read a manuscript from a former governess he knew (she's dead now). The governess describes her experience attending to a pair of young children at a country estate. The children, Miles and Flora, seem to be haunted by the ghosts of two former employees, Peter Quint and Miss Jessel. When the Quint's ghost disappears, the boy Miles dies. Ambiguity abounds - it's not clear whether the haunting is real or the governess is crazy. A strong aura of sexual perversity and sexual hysteria pervades the story. Names: Flora Miles Mrs. Grose (housekeeper) Miss Jessel Peter Quint

The Playboy of the Western World

J. M. Synge, 1907. An Irish play that drew a morally unflattering portrait of the Irish working class, drawing protest and angry criticism. Synge's language was praised for its poetic richness. Set in Michael James Flaherty's public house in County Mayo (on the west coast of Ireland) during the early 1900s. Tells the story of Christy Mahon, a young man running away from his farm, claiming he killed his father; his tale captures the romantic attention of the bar-maid Pegeen Mike. The locals are more interested in vicariously enjoying his story than in condemning the immorality of his murderous deed.

Giovanni's Room

James Baldwin, 1956. Story of an American man, David, in Paris and his relationships with other men in his life, especially Giovanni, an Italian bartender he meets at a gay bar who is about to be executed. The novel brought complex representations of homosexuality and bisexuality to a reading public with empathy and artistry. Names: David Giovanni Hella (David's girlfriend) Jacques Guillaume Sue

The Adventures of Augie March

Saul Bellow, 1953. A picaresque bildungsroman set in depression-era Chicago and featuring the eponymous protagonist. Often comically explores issues of alienation and belonging, poverty and wealth, and love and loss through a series of occupations, encounters, and relationships that follow the protagonist from childhood to manhood.

Childe Harold's Pilgrimage

Lord Byron, 1812-1818. A narrative poem written in Spenserian stanzas, elements of which are autobiographical. Describes the travels and reflections of a world-weary young man who, disillusioned with a life of pleasure and revelry, looks for distraction in foreign lands. Expresses the melancholy and disillusionment of the post-Revolutionary and Napoleonic eras.

She Walks in Beauty

Lord Byron, 1813. A lyric poem in iambic tetrameter. "She walks in beauty, like the night Of cloudless climes and starry skies; And all that's best of dark and bright Meet in her aspect and her eyes:"

Don Juan

Lord Byron, 1819 (-1824). An "epic satire" in 16 cantos (with more to come when he died). Based on the legend of Don Juan, which Byron reverses, portraying Juan not as a womaniser but as easily seduced. In iambic pentameter.

The Merchant's Tale

Merchant wears a fool's motley and a beaver hat; obsessively discusses business but successfully hides his debt. A bawdy tale in which the old knight January marries the young May and "enjoys" her continually until he goes blind. Despite his obsessive jealousy, she takes a young lover, Damian, in a tree in the garden. When Pluto restores January's sight, May claims she committed adultery to cure J's blindness.

The Scarlet Letter

Nathanial Hawthorne, 1850. Names: Roger Chillingworth (the husband) Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale Hester Prynne Pearl (the daughter)

The Blithedale Romance

Nathanial Hawthorne, 1852. Blithedale Farm is based on a utopian community called Brook Farm, near Boston. Emerson, Hawthorne, Thoreau, and Bronson Alcott were stockholders. Dominant philosophy there was transcendentalism, then turned turned Fourierism before dissolving in 1847. Names: Miles Coverdale, Hollingsworth, Zenobia, Priscilla

The House of the Seven Gables

Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1851. A Gothic novel featuring the Pyncheons. Takes as its theme sins of the fathers visited upon later generations. Names: Hepzibah Pyncheon Old Male Phoebe Holgrave Clifford

The Nun's Priest's Tale

Prologue mentions 3 priests, but now there's only 1. A mock-heroic in which Chaunticleer the rooster (after a prophetic dream that the hen Perteltote dismisses) is taken by the fox Sir Russell, but escapes when the fox opens his mouth to brag.

Invisible Man

Ralph Ellison, 1952. Themes include black nationalism, the relationship between black identity and Marxism, and the reformist policies of Booker T. Washington. "Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?" Names: Unnamed narrator Mr. Norton Dr. Bledsoe Lucius Brockway Mary Rambo Brother Jack Tod Clifton Rinehart

The School for Scandal

Richard Sheridan, 1777. A Restoration comedy. Names: Sir Peter Teazle, Maria, Lady Sneerwell, Sir Benjamin Backbite, Charles Surface

Native Son

Richard Wright, 1940. The story of 20-year-old Bigger Thomas, an African American youth living in utter poverty in Chicago's South Side in the 1930s. Its publication launched Wright's fame. Wright portrays a systematic inevitability about Bigger's crimes. Names: Bigger Thomas Mary Dalton Henry and Mrs. Dalton Jan Erlone Boris Max Bessie Mears

Caliban upon Setebos

Robert Browning, 1864. A poetic dramatic monologue concerning Caliban's (from The Tempest) reflections on Setebos, the brutal god he believes in. Contemplates the origins and motives of divine power, and what humans are capable of understanding. In blank verse, the voice blends misery with perception.

Julia poems

Robert Herrick, 1648. "Upon Julia's Breasts" ; "Upon Julia's Clothes" ; "The Night Piece, to Julia." An invented mistress.

The Way of All Flesh

Samuel Butler, 1903. A semi-autobiographical novel that attacks Victorian-era hypocrisy. Traces four generations of the Pontifex family.

Hudibras

Samuel Butler, mid-1600s. Long satirical poem written in couplets of rhymed lines in (roughly) iambic tetrameter. Deliberately and humorously ill-rhythmed and ill-rhymed. Spawned the term "hudibrastic" to describe such poetry. Satirizes the factions of the English Civil War (Roundheads, Puritans, Presbyterians, etc.). Names: Sir Hudibras Ralpho (squire)

Rasselas

Samuel Johnson, 1759. A philosophical fable in the form of the then-popular Oriental tale that examines the question, "What choice of life will bring us happiness?" About the Prince of Abyssinia's unsuccessful quest for a happy and fulfilling "life of choice." Main theme is the folly of cherishing the dream of unalloyed happiness in a world that can never wholly satisfy our desires. A gentle satire of all who stubbornly cling to illusions despite the evidence of experience. Its stately prose has a melancholy resonance and intelligence. Written in a week because Johnson, struggling in poverty, needed money for his dying mother.