MA Reading Lists, 2006-2007
San Diego State University
literature.sdsu.edu
 

Students interested in critical editions of the work below may wish to consult available titles in such highly regarded series as the Norton critical editions series, the Bedford/St. Martin’s Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism series, and the Broadview Literary Texts series. 

I. American Literature Specialization

  • Benjamin Franklin, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
  • Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
  • Henry David Thoreau, Selected Writings, to include Walden and “On Civil Disobedience”
  • Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass 
  • Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn
  • Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence
  • T. S. Eliot, “The Waste Land”; William Carlos Williams, The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams (vol. 1), ed. A. Walton Litz and Christopher MacGowan; Langston Hughes, The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, ed. Arnold Rampersad and David Roessell; Marianne Moore, Selected Poems
  • Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises
  • William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury
  • Eugene O’Neill, The Emperor Jones, Desire Under the Elms, Long Day’s Journey Into Night
  • Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
  • Allen Ginsberg, Howl! And Other Poems; Robert Lowell, Life Studies; Adrienne Rich, The Fact of a Doorframe: Poems New and Selected, 1950-1984
  • Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye
  • Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49

    • British Literature Selections

  • Shakespeare, Othello, As You Like It, Henry V, Sonnets: 18, 20, 29, 30, 55, 73, 116, 129, 130, 144, 146
  • Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels
  • Jane Austen, Emma
  • James Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

    • Children’s Literature Selections

  • L. Frank Baum, The Wizard of Oz

    • Comparative Literature Selections

  • Homer, The Odyssey
  • Dostoevsky, Notes From Underground
      • II. British Literature Specialization 
      • Beowulf (Seamus Heaney verse translation)
      • Chaucer, General Prologue, Knight’s Tale, Miller’s Prologue and Tale, Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale, The Franklin’s Tale, Prioress’s Tale, Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale, Nun’s Priest’s Tale
      • Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
      • John Donne, Songs and Sonnets, “The Holy Sonnets” (“Go and Catch a Falling Star”); Air and Angels; A Valediction of Weeping; Love’s Alchemy; The Flea; Love’s Alchemy; A Valediction forbidding Mourning; The Ecstasy; The Funeral; The Relic; The Mistress; On his Mistress Going to Bed; Good Friday 1613, Riding Westward; Holy Sonnets: #1,5, 7, 9, 10, 13, 14, 17, 18]
      • Shakespeare, Othello, As You Like It, Henry V, Sonnets: 18, 20, 29, 30, 55, 73, 116, 129, 130, 144, 146 
      • Milton, Paradise Lost
      • Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels
      • English Romantic Poets: An Anthology, ed. Stanley Applebaum (Dover Thrift Edition); Blake: Songs of Innocence and Experience; The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (Norton Selections: The Argument; A Memorable Fancy; Proverbs of Hell); Coleridge: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner; Kubla Khan; Dejection: An Ode; Frost at Midnight; Biographia Literaria Chapters I, IV, XIII, XIV, XVII; Wordsworth: Preface to Lyrical Ballads (2nd edition); Ode Intimations of Immortality; Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey; Lucy Gray; Michael; My Heart Leaps Up; I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud; Ode to Duty; The Solitary Reaper; The Prelude Norton selections from books I, II, V, XII; Keats: On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer; Sleep and Poetry; On Seeing the Elgin Marbles for the First Time; The Eve of St. Agnes; La Belle Dame sans Merci; To Sleep; Ode to Psyche; Ode on a Grecian Urn; Ode to a Nightingale; Ode on Melancholy; To Autumn; Lord Byron: She Walks in Beauty; Written after Swimming from Sestos to Abydos; Darkness; So We’ll Go No More a-roving; Don Juan [Norton Selections from Cantos I, II, III, IV]; Shelley: Mutability; Hymn to Intellectual Beauty; Ozymandias; Ode to the West Wind; Prometheus Unbound; The Cloud; to a Skylark; Hymn of Pan; to Night; Music: When Soft Voices Die; When Passion’s Trance is Overpast.)
      • Jane Austen, Emma
      • Charles Dickens, Bleak House
      • James Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
      • Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
      • Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot, Endgame
      • Fay Weldon, The Heart of the Country

      American Literature Selections

      • Henry David Thoreau, Selected Writings, to include Walden and “On Civil Disobedience”
      • Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass 
      • Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence
      • William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury
      Children’s Literature Selections
      • L. Frank Baum, The Wizard of Oz

      Comparative Literature Selections

      • Homer, The Odyssey
      • Dostoevsky, Notes From Underground


      III. Children’s Literature Specialization

      While students specializing in children’s literature may wish to buy separate and different editions of the texts listed below, the first five items are collected in Griffith and Frey’s Classics of Children’s Literature 5th edition (Prentice Hall). 

      • FAIRY TALES. Charles Perrault: The Sleeping Beauty in the Woods. Little Red Riding-hood. Blue Beard. Cinderella, or The Little Glass Slipper. Mme Le Prince de Beaumont: Beauty and the Beast. The Brother’s Grimm: Snow-white. The Frog Prince. Hansel and Grethel.  Aschenputtel. Rupunzel. The Sleeping Beauty. Hans Christian Andersen: The Snow Queen: A Tale in Seven Stories. The Little Mermaid. The Princess and the Pea. The Little Match Girl. The Swineherd. The Emperor’s New Clothes. The Ugly Duckling. Joseph Jacobs: Jack and the Beanstalk. Molly Whuppie.
      • Lewis Carroll: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
      • Mark Twain: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
      • Kenneth Grahame: The Wind in the Willows
      • L. Frank Baum: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
      • Daniel Defoe: Robinson Crusoe
      • Joanna Spyri: Heidi
      • PICTURE BOOKS: Beatrix Potter: The Tale of Peter Rabbit; Dr. Seuss: The Cat in the Hat; Maurice Sendak: Where the Wild Things Are
      • E. B. White: Charlotte’s Web
      • Russell Hoban: The Mouse and his Child
      • Banana Yoshimoto: Kitchen; and Francesca Lia Bloch: Weetzie Bat
      • Mildred Taylor: Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry
      • Sandra Cisneros: The House on Mango Street
      • J.K. Rowling: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

      American Literature Selections

      • Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
      • Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence

      British Literature Selections

      • Shakespeare, Othello, As You Like It, Henry V, Sonnets: 18, 20, 29, 30, 55, 73, 116, 129, 130, 144, 146
      • Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels
      • Jane Austen, Emma

      Comparative Literature Selections

      • Homer, The Odyssey
      • Dostoevsky, Notes From Underground


      IV. Comparative Literature Specialization

      • Homer, The Odyssey 
      • Murasaki, The Tale of Genji (Seidensticker translation, the single-volume Vintage Classics abridged version) 
      • The Poems of the Late T’Ang (ed. A.C. Graham)
      • Tales of the Thousand and One Nights (Penguin Classics edition, trans. Dawood)
      • Dante, The Divine Comedy (“Inferno” and “Purgatorio”)
      • Cervantes, Don Quixote (Part One)
      • La Fayette, The Princess of Cleves (either the Walter J. Cobb translation or the Perry/Lyons translation)
      • Moliere, Tartuffe and The Misanthrope (Wilbur translation, if possible)
      • Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther 
      • Dostoevski, Notes from Underground
      • Ousmane Sembene, God’s Bits of Wood 
      • Emecheta, The Joys of Motherhood
      • Calvino, If on a winter’s night a traveler 
      • Garcia Marquez, Love in the Time of Cholera

      American Literature Selections

      • Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass 
      • Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence

      British Literature Selections

      • William Shakespeare, Othello, As You Like It, Henry V, Sonnets: 18, 20, 29, 30, 55, 73, 116, 129, 130, 144, 146
      • Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels
      • Jane Austen, Emma
      • James Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

      Children’s Literature

      • L. Frank Baum, The Wizard of Oz