Multiple Reading Personalities

Here’s the ridiculous ambition behind this weblog… As I am preparing to go back to school for literature (and, with a background in business, am terrified of being behind everyone else), I decided to compile a reading list from several post-graduate and graduate programs, and added some recommended reading for the literature GRE. The list took its final form when I discovered through Incurable Logophilia the Great Books of the Western World list, which in turn led me to Ken Robert’s list.

I have omitted a number of works from their recommendations, though – I don’t think I’ll ever be a good Spinoza reader…

Worse than omissions, I have also made approximations, some of which are bound to be tragically stupid. I wanted some rough chronology to help sequence my reading, but not only are some books difficult to date (there’s a window of several centuries for Gilgamesh, for instance, depending on which version you are considering), I also wanted to keep all books of an author together no matter their date of publication. I’ll probably fiddle with the list in the future as I get a better sense of schools and movements – and of course, to add link to articles once written!

And now for the list…

XII century BC

Epic of Gilgamesh (translated by Andrew George – standard version)

XI century BC

Old Testament (esp. Genesis and Exodus)

VIII century BC

Homer: Iliad (Robert Fagles translation)
Homer: Odyssey

VII century BC

Sappho: Lyric Poems and Fragments

V century BC

Aeschylus: Oresteia (Agamemnon/ Libation Bearers/ Eumenides)
Aeschylus: Seven against Thebes
Aristophanes: The Clouds
Euripides: Bacchae
Euripides: Iphigenia at Taurus
Sophocle: Antigone
Sophocles: Oedipus Rex

IV century BC

Aristote: Poétique
Aristotle: Nicomachean Ethics
Plato: Phaedrus
Plato: Symposium
Plato: the Republic

III century BC

Parables of Zhuangzi

II century BC

Sima Quin: Records of the Historian

I century

New Testament (esp. Matthew, Acts, Epistle to the Romans, Apocalypse)
Ovide: Lettres d’amour (Les Héroïdes)

I century BC

Plutarch: Parallel lives
Vergil: Aeneid

II century

Marcus Aurelius: Meditations

IV century

Augustine: Confessions
The Kokin Wakashū
The Thousand and One Nights*

VI century

Japanese Court Poetry [6th-14th century, esp. from Earl Miner's Introduction]

VIII century

Anonymous: Beowulf
Du Fu: Selected Poems
LiPo and TuFu: Selected Poems [esp. those in Arthur Cooper's Penguin anthology]
The Venerable Bede: Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum 8

XI century

Sei Shonagon: The Pillow Book
Tale of Genji

XII century

Troyes, Chrétien de: The Tale of the Holy Grail
Ventadorn, Bernart de: Selected Poems

XIII century

Eschenbach, Wolfram von: Parzifal
The Tale of the Heike
Thomas Aquinas: Summa Theologica

XIV century

Alighieri, Dante: Inferno
Alighieri, Dante: La Divine Comédie
Anonymous: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Anonymous: Sir Patrick Spens
Boccaccio, Giovanni: Decameron
Chaucer, Geoffrey: Canterbury Tales
Chaucer, Geoffrey: Troilus and Criseyde
Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca): Canzoniere
Ruiz, Juan: Book of Good Love
Epic of Sundiata

XV century

Anonymous: Everyman
Malory, Thomas (Sir): Le Morte d’Arthur
Rojas, Fernando de: La Celestina
Villon, François: Ballade des Dames des Temps Jadis
Zeami: Fushikaden
Zeami: No Plays

XVI century

Anonymous: Life of Lazarillo de Tormès
de la Cruz, Juan: Selected Poems
Macchiavelli, Niccolò: The Prince
Montaigne, Michel de: Les Essais
Rabelais, François: Pantagruel
Rabelais, François: Gargantua
Raleigh, Walter: The Author’s Epitaph, Made by Himself
Raleigh, Walter: The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd
Sidney, Philip: The Defense of Poesy
Spenser, Edmund: Amoretti
Spenser, Edmund: The Faerie Queene
Spenser, Edmund: The Shepheardes Calender
Tang Hsien-tsu: Peony Pavilion

XVII century

Basho: Narrow Road to the Deep North*
Calderón de la Barca, Pedro: La Vida es sueño
Cervantes, Miguel de: Don Quixote
Garcilaso de la Vega: Royal Commentaries of the Incas
Descartes, René: Discours de la Méthode
Donne, John: An anatomy of the World
Dryden, John: All for Love
Etherege, George: The Man of Mode
Jonson, Ben: Volpone
Madame de La Fayette : La Princesse de Clèves
Marlowe, Christopher : The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
Marlowe, Christopher: Doctor Faustus
Milton, John: Areopagitica
Milton, John: Comus
Milton, John: Lycidas
Milton, John: Paradise Lost
Milton, John: Samson Agonistes
Molière: Misanthrope
Molière: Tartuffe
Pascal, Blaise: Pensées
Racine, Jean: Phèdre
Saikaku, Ihara: Five Women Who Loved Love
Shakespeare, William: As you Like it
Shakespeare, William: Hamlet
Shakespeare, William: Henry IV
Shakespeare, William: King Lear
Shakespeare, William: McBeth
Shakespeare, William: Othello
Shakespeare, William: Richard II
Shakespeare, William: Romeo and Juliet
Shakespeare, William: Sonnets
Shakespeare, William: The Tempest
Webster, John: The Duchess of Malfi
Wycherley, William: The Country Wife

XVIII century

Abbé Prévost: Manon Lescaut
Beaumarchais, Pierre Augustin (Caron) de: Le Barbier de Séville
Beaumarchais, Pierre Augustin (Caron) de: Le Mariage de Figaro.
Blake, William: The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
Boswell, James: The Life of Samuel Johnson
Burney, Frances: Evelina
Burns, Robert: Ae Fond Kiss
Chikamatsu Monzaemon: Love Suicides at Amijima
Congreve, William: The Way of the World
Defoe, Daniel: Moll Flanders
Diderot, Dennis: Le neveu de Rameau
Cao Xueqin: Dream of the Red Chamber
Edwards, Jonathan: Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God
Fielding, Henry: Joseph Andrews
Fielding, Henry: Tom Jones
Finch, Anne: Adam Pos’d
Godwin, William: Caleb Williams
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von: Faust
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von: Les souffrances du jeune Werther
Goldsmith, Oliver: She Stoops to Conquer
Gray, Thomas: Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
Johnson, Samuel: History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia
Johnson, Samuel: Life of Cowley
Johnson, Samuel: The Preface to Shakespeare
Johnson, Samuel: The Vanity of Human Wishes
Choderlot de Laclos, Pierre: Les Liaisons dangereuses
Marquis de Sade: 120 Days of Sodom
Montesquieu, Charles de: Les Lettres Persanes
Paine, Thomas: The Age of Reason
Pope, Alexander: An Essay on Criticism
Pope, Alexander: An Essay on Man
Pope, Alexander: The Rape of the Lock
Richardson, Samuel: Pamela
Richardson, Samuel: Clarissa or the history of a young lady
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques: Julie ou la Nouvelle Héloïse
Sheridan, Richard: The Rivals
Sterne, Laurence: Tristam Shandy
Swift, Jonathan: A Modest Proposal
Swift, Jonathan: Gulliver’s Travels
Swift, Jonathan: A Description of a City Shower
Thoreau, Henry David: Walden
Voltaire: Candide

XIX century

Arnold, Matthew: Dover Beach
Austen, Jane: Emma
Austen, Jane: Persuasion
Austen, Jane: Pride and Prejudice
Balzac, Honoré de: Eugénie Grandet
Balzac, Honoré de: Illusions perdues
Balzac, Honoré de: La Peau de Chagrin
Balzac, Honoré de: Le Père Goriot
Balzac, Honoré de: Splendeur et Misère des Courtisanes
Baudelaire, Charles: Les Fleurs du Mal
Brontë, Charlotte: Jane Eyre
Brontë, Emily: Wuthering Heights
Browning, Robert: My Last Duchess
Browning, Robert: The Bishop Orders His Tomb
Büchner, Georg: Woyzeck
Byron, George: Don Juan
Chekhov, Anton: Lady with a Dog
Chekhov, Anton: The Duel
Chekhov, Anton: Cherry Orchard
Coleridge, Samuel: Biographica Literaria
Constant, Benjamin: Adolphe
Cooper, James Fenimore: The Deerslayer
Dario, Ruben: Azúl
Dickens, Charles: Bleak House
Dickens, Charles: David Copperfield
Dickens, Charles: Great Expectations
Dickens, Charles: Hard Times
Dickinson, Emily: Selected Poems
Dostoevsky, Fyodor: Crime and Punishment
Dostoïevski, Fyodor: Les Démons
Dostoïevski, Fyodor: Les frères Karamazov
Eliot, George: Adam Bede
Eliot, George: Middlemarch
Emerson, Ralph Waldo: Nature
Flaubert, Gustave: Madame Bovary
Gautier, Théophile: La morte amoureuse
Gautier, Théophile: Spirite
Hardy, Thomas: Jude the Obscure
Hardy, Thomas: Tess of the D’Ubervilles
Hawthorne, Nathaniel: The Scarlet Letter
Holmes, Oliver: The Chambered Nautilus
Hugo, Victor: L’Homme qui rit
Hugo, Victor: Notre-Dame de Paris
Ibsen, Henrik: Hedda Gabler
Isaacs, Jorge: Maria
James, Henry: Portrait of a Lady
Keats, John: Endymion
Keats, John: poems (esp.”Ode on a Grecian Urn”, “Ode to a Nightingale”  and “Ode on Melancholy”)
Leroux, Gaston: Le Fantôme de l’Opéra
Leroux, Gaston: Les Aventures extraordinaires de Rouletabille
Machado de Assis, Joaquim Maria: Dom Casmurro
Melville, Herman: Bartleby the Scrivener
Melville, Herman: Moby-Dick
Meredith, George: The Egoist
Mill, Stuart: On Liberty
Nietzsche, Friedrich: The Birth of Tragedy
Pushkin, Alexander: Eugene Onegin
Sand, George: La petite Fadette
Shelley, Mary: Frankenstein
Shelley, Percy: Ode to the West Wind
Shelley, Percy: Ozymandius
Stendhal: le Rouge et le Noir
Stevenson, Robert Louis: Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
Tennyson, Alfred: In Memoriam A.H.H.
Tennyson, Alfred: Ulysses
Thackeray, William: Vanity Fair
Tolstoy, Leo: Anna Karenina
Tolstoy, Leo: War and Peace
Twain, Mark: Huckleberry Finn
Whitman, Walt: Leaves of Grass
Wilde, Oscar: The Ballad of Reading Gaol
Wilde, Oscar: The Critic as an Artist
Wilde, Oscar: The Importance of Being Earnest
Wilde, Oscar: The Picture of Dorian Gray
Wordsworth, William: Lyrical Ballads

XX century

Achebe, Chinua: Things Fall Apart
Akhmatova, Anna: Requiem
Amis, Martin: Lucky Jim
Amis, Martin: Money
Anouilh, Jean: Antigone
Bâ, Mariama: Une si longue lettre
Beckett, Samuel: Waiting for Godot
Bellow, Saul: Mr. Sammler’s Planet
Bellow, Saul : Herzog
Borges, Jorge Luis: Fictions
Brecht, Bertolt: Antigone
Brecht, Bertolt: La Résistible ascension d’Arturo Ui
Brecht, Bertolt: Mother Courage
Burroughs, Edward S.: Naked Lunch
Butler, Samuel: The Way of All Flesh
Calvino, Italo: If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler
Carpentier, Alejo: The Lost Steps
Césaire, Aimé: Cahier d’un retour au pays natal
Chandler, Raymond: The Big Sleep
Conrad, Joseph: Heart of Darkness
Eliade, Mircea: Aspects du mythe
Eliade, Mircea: Le mythe de l’éternel retour
Eliot, T.S.: Journey of the Magi
Eliot, T.S.: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
Eliot, T.S.: The Waste Land
Eliot, T.S.: Tradition and the Individual Talent
Ellroy, James: L.A. Confidential
Faulkner, William: A Rose for Emily
Faulkner, William: Absalom, Absalom
Faulkner, William: As I Lay Dying
Faulkner, William: The Sound and the Fury
Fitzgerald, Scott F: The Great Gatsby
Forster, E.M.: A Passage to India
Forster, E.M.: Howard’s End
Frost, Robert: Design
Garcia Marquez, Gabriel: One Hundred Years of Solitude
Giono, Jean: Un roi sans divertissement
Giraudoux, Jean: Electre
Golding, William: Lord of the Flies
Guilleragues, Gabriel de: Lettres portugaises
Hammett, Dashiell: Collected Novels
Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
Hemingway, Ernest: Hills like White Elephants
Huxley, Aldous: Brave New World
Ishiguro, Kazuo: The Remains of the Day
Joyce, James: Dubliners
Joyce, James: The Dead
Joyce, James: Ulysses
Jun’ichiro, Tanizaki: The Makioka Sisters
Kafka, Franz: Metamorphosis
Kafka, Franz: The Trial
Kane, Amidou: L’adventure ambiguë
Kawabata, Yasunari: Snow Country
Kerouac, Jack: On the Road
Lawrence, D.H.: Women in Love
Lispector, Clarice: The Hour of the Star
Mahfouz, Naguib: Cairo Trilogy
Malraux, André: La Condition humaine
Mann, Thomas: Death in Venice
Mann, Thomas: Magic Mountain
Miller, Arthur: All My Sons
Miller, Arthur: The Crucible
Miller, Henry: Tropic of Cancer
Modiano, Patrick: Dora Bruder
Nabokov, Vladimir: Lolita
Nin, Anaïs: Delta of Venus
O’Neill, Eugene: Mourning Becomes Electra
Orwell, George: 1984
Orwell, George: Shooting an Elephant
Paz, Octavio: Selected Poems
Perec, Georges: W ou Le souvenir d’enfance
Pessoa, Fernando: Oeuvres poétiques d’Alvaro de Campos
Pirandello, Luigi: Six Characters in Search Of an Author
Plath, Silvia: The Mirror
Proust, Marcel: Du côté de chez Swann
Proust, Marcel: Le Temps retrouvé
Pynchon, Thomas: The Crying of Lot 49
Queneau, Raymond: Exercices de style
Rhys, Jean: Good Morning, Midnight
Rilke, Rainer Maria: Les Cahiers de Malte Laurids Brigge
Rilke, Rainer Maria: Lettres à une musicienne
Rilke, Rainer Maria: Lettres sur Cézanne
Rilke, Rainer Maria: Sonnets to Orpheus
Robbe-Grillet, Alain: The Voyeur
Rouaud, Jean: Les Champs d’honneur
Rushdie, Salman: Midnight’s Children
Saint-John Perse: Anabase (in Eloges)
Salinger, J.D.: The Catcher in the Rye
Sanchis-Sinisterra, José: Ay Carmela !
Senghor, Léopold Sédar: Selected Poems
Shaw, George Bernard: Arms and the Man
Shaw, George Bernard: Major Barbara
Shaw, George Bernard: Pygmalion
Simon, Claude : La Route des Flandres
Stein, Gertrude: The Making of the Americans
Steinbeck, John: The Grapes of Wrath
Thomas, Dylan: Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night
Thomas, Dylan: Fern Hill
Thompson, Hunter: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Toole, John Kennedy: A Confederacy of Dunces
Tournier, Michel: Vendredi ou les Limbes du Pacifique
Vinaver, Michel: Les Huissiers
Vonnegut, Kurt: Slapstick
Wallace, David Foster: Infinite Jest
Webb, Mary: Precious Bane
Wharton, Edith: The Age of Innocence
Wolfe, Tom: The Bonfire of the Vanities
Woolf, Virginia: Between the Acts
Woolf, Virginia: Mrs Dalloway
Woolf, Virginia: To the Lighthouse
Wright, Richard: Native Son
Yeats, William Butler: 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”, “The Dolls” poems

XXI century
(ok, these have nothing to do with the rest of the books on this list… They just are on my TBR list!)

Bolaño, Roberto: 2666
Hesse, Thierry: Démon
Matthieussent, Brice: La vengeance du traducteur
McEwan, Ian: Atonement
Millhauser, Steven: Dangerous Laughter
Munro, Alice: Runaway
Niffenegger, Audrey: Her Fearful Symetry
Roth, Philip: Everyman
Smith, Zadie: On Beauty