Comparative Literature

Reading Lists

Breadcrumb

Reading Lists

British with American Literature

  • Chaucer
  • Shakespeare
  • Renaissance poetry
  • Renaissance drama
  • Milton
  • British and American prose of the 17th and 18th century (Bacon, Behn, Bunyan, Burton, Mather, Swift, Franklin, Edwards)
  • British and American poetry of the 17th and 18th century (Bradstreet, Dryden, Taylor, Pope, Johnson, Freneau, Wheatley)
  • 18th-century novel (Defoe, Fielding, Richardson, Sterne, Smollett)
  • British Romantic poetry (Blake, Byron, Coleridge, Keats, Shelley, Wordsworth)
  • British Victorian poetry (Arnold, the Brownings, Hopkins, Swinburne, Tennyson)
  • 19th-century British novel (Austen, Brontës, Eliot, Dickens, Hardy)
  • historical novel (Scott, Cather, Cooper)
  • 19th-century American poetry (Dickinson, Longfellow, Whitman)
  • 19th-century American prose (Douglass, Emerson, Poe, Thoreau)
  • 19th-century American novel (Hawthorne, Melville, Stowe, Twain)
  • African American literature of the Harlem Renaissance and up to the Civil Rights era (Baldwin, Ellison, Hughes, Hurston, Schuyler, Wright)
  • Late 19th- and early 20th-century American novel (Crane, Dreiser, James, London, Wharton)
  • Literature of the American South (Chopin, Faulkner, Welty, O’Connor, Southern Agrarians)
  • modernist novels (Dos Passos, Hemingway, Joyce, Woolf)
  • modernist poetry (Eliot, Frost, Pound, Stein, Stevens, Yeats)
  • drama of the 20th and 21st century (Albee, Beckett, Miller, O’Neill, Pinter, Shaw, Williams)
  • post-WW2 American fiction (Barthelme, DeLillo, Ellison, Gaddis, Morrison, Nabokov, Pynchon, Reed, Wright)
  • post-WW2 British and American poetry
  • post-WW2 global Anglophone fiction (Achebe, Coetzee, Ishiguro, Kincaid, Naipaul, Rhys, Rushdie)
  • literary criticism (Arnold, Carlyle, Du Bois, Eliot, Johnson, Morrison, Warren)

French Literature

  • La Chanson de Roland
  • Selections from Chrétien de Troyes, Marie de France & Villon 
  • Rabelais & Montaigne
  • Selected poetry of Ronsard, DuBellay, Scève, Labé  
  • Corneille
  • Molière
  • Racine
  • Pascal & Madame de Lafayette
  • Montesquieu
  • Selected works by Charrière, Graffigny, Gouges, Staël
  • Diderot
  • Voltaire
  • Rousseau
  • Hugo and/or Sand
  • Stendhal and/or Zola
  • Balzac
  • Flaubert
  • Selected poetry of Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Mallarmé
  • Proust & Beckett
  • Gide and/or Camus and/or Céline
  • selected modern poetry, such as Apollinaire, Breton, Éluard, Ponge, Césaire, Senghor, Bonnefoy, Hocquard, Roubaud, Deguy  
  • Césaire, “Discours sur le colonialisme”; Fanon, Peau noire, masques blancs;Chamoiseau et al, “Éloge de la créolité”; and literary works selected from among the following authors: Condé, Chamoiseau, Pineau, Schwarz-Bart, Ollivier, Laferrière 
  • Laâbi, “Réalités et dilemmes de la culture nationale I & II”; Haddad, “Les Zéros tournent en rond”; Memmi, Portrait du colonisé, précédé du portrait du colonisateur; and works selected from among the following authors:  Kateb Yacine, Chraïbi, Djebar, Ben Jelloun, Kane, Mariama Bâ, Camara Laye, Sembène, Kourouma 
  • selected works of mid-century & contemporary French fiction, such as Duras, Sarraute, Robbe-Grillet, Perec, Modiano, Le Clézio, Michon, Quignard, Toussaint, Redonnet, Cixous, Chevillard, Bon, Guibert, Rouaud, Ernaux, Houellebecq, NDiaye, Darrieussecq, Sebbar 
  • selected critical/ philosophical texts, such as Bataille, Beauvoir, Sartre, Lévi-Strauss, Blanchot, Barthes, Fanon, Foucault, Irigaray, Derrida, Deleuze, Glissant, and Mernissi.

British Literature

  • Old and Middle English Literature (Beowulf, Langland, The Seafarer, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight)
  • Chaucer
  • Spenser
  • Shakespeare
  • Milton
  • early modern drama (Jonson, Kyd, Marlowe, Middleton, Webster)
  • early modern poetry (Crashaw, Donne, Herbert, Jonson, Marvell, Marlowe, Sidney, Skelton, Vaughan, Wyatt)
  • early modern prose (Bacon, Burton, Browne, Donne, More, Nashe, Tyndale)
  • verse satire (Dryden, Johnson, Pope)
  • Restoration and 18th-century prose and drama (Addison, Behn, Bunyan, Dryden, Johnson, Sheridan, Steele, Wycherley)
  • 18th-century novel (Defoe, Fielding, Richardson, Sterne, Smollett)
  • Romantic-period novel (Austen, Scott, Mary Shelley)
  • early Romantic poetry (Blake, Coleridge, Wordsworth)
  • later Romantic poetry (Byron, Keats, Percy Shelley)
  • Victorian novel (Dickens, Eliot, Thackeray, Trollope)
  • Victorian poetry (Arnold, the Brownings, Hopkins, Swinburne, Tennyson)
  • Victorian prose (Carlyle, Newman, Pater, Ruskin)
  • later Victorian and Edwardian novel (Hardy, James, Conrad)
  • modernist novel (Joyce, Forster, Lawrence, Woolf)
  • modernist poetry (Eliot, Pound, Stein, Yeats)
  • British and American drama of the 20th and 21st century (Albee, Beckett, Miller, O’Neill, Pinter, Shaw, Williams)
  • post-WW2 British and American fiction
  • post-WW2 British and American poetry
  • post-WW2 global Anglophone fiction of the 20th and 21st century (Achebe, Coetzee, Kincaid, Naipaul, Rhys, Rushdie, Soyinka)
  • literary criticism (Arnold, Burke, Coleridge, Dryden, Eliot, Johnson, Jonson, Sidney)

Latin and Greek

  • Apuleius
  • Augustine, Confessions
  • Catullus
  • Julius Caesar
  • elegy (Ovid, Tibullus, Propertius)
  • epic  (Ennius, Lucan, Statius)
  • epigram (Martial, Ausonius)
  • epistles (Cicero, Pliny)
  • historiography  (Ammianus Marcellinus, Sallust, Suetonius)
  • Horace
  • literary criticism (Cicero, Horace, Quintilian)
  • Livy
  • Lucretius
  • oratory (Cicero)
  • Ovid, Metamorphoses
  • Petronius
  • philosophy (Cicero, Seneca)
  • Republican comedy (Plautus and Terence)
  • satire (Juvenal, Lucilius, Persius)
  • Senecan drama
  • Tacitus
  • Virgil, Aeneid
  • Virgil, Eclogues
  • Virgil, Georgics
  • Vulgate
  • Aeschylus
  • Apollonius of Rhodes
  • Aristotle
  • comedy (Aristophanes and Menander)
  • Demosthenes
  • elegiac and iambic verse
  • epigram (Greek Anthology)
  • epinician poetry (Bacchylides, Pindar)
  • Euripides
  • Herodotus
  • Hesiod
  • hymns (Homeric hymns, Callimachus)
  • Homer, Iliad
  • Homer, Odyssey
  • Lucian
  • lyric verse (Alcaeus, Alcman, Sappho, etc.)
  • New Testament
  • oratory (Hyperides, Isocrates, Lysias, etc.)
  • Plato
  • Plutarch 
  • romance (Longus, etc.)
  • Sophocles
  • Theocritus
  • Thucydides
  • Xenophon

Spanish Literature

  • Anon., Poema de Mío Cid
  • Anon., Romancero tradicional and Juan Ruiz, Arcipreste de Hita, Libro de buen amor
  • Anon., Lazarillo de Tormes
  • Cristóbal Colón
  • Bartolomé de las Casas
  • Spanish Renaissance (Garcilaso de la Vega, Santa Teresa de Jesús, Fray Luis de León)
  • El Inca Garcilaso or Guamán Pomo de Ayala
  • Miguel de Cervantes
  • Baroque poetry (Luís de Góngora, Francisco de Quevedo)
  • Golden Age Drama (Lope de Vega, Calderón de la Barca)
  • Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz
  • Spanish Enlightenment (José Cadalso, José Espronceda, Mariano José de Larra, Benito Feijóo, Joseph Blanco White)
  • The nineteenth-century Spanish novel (Benito Perez Galdós, Emilia Pardo, Bazán, Leopoldo Alas “Clarín”)
  • Domingo Faustino Sarmiento
  • Latin American foundations (Andrés Bello, Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda, José Marmol, José Martí de Heredia, Manuel de Jesús Galván, Ricardo Palma, Jorge Isaacs, Clorinda Matto de Turner)
  • Latin American Modernist poetry and prose
  • Generación del 98
  • Federico García Lorca
  • Jorge Luis Borges
  • Selected poetry of the Latin American avant-garde (Vicente Huidobro, Pablo Neruda, Octavio Paz, César Vallejo, Gabriela Mistral)
  • The Latin American novel of the early twentieth century (Mariano Azuela, Rómulo Gallegos, José Eustasio Rivera, Roberto Arlt, Teresa de la Parra, María Luisa Bombal, José María Arguedas)
  • Foundations of “Magical Realism” (Alejo Carpentier, Miguel Ángel Asturias, Juan Rulfo)
  • The Latin American “Boom” generation (Carlos Fuentes, Mario Vargas Llosa, Julio Cortázar, Manuel Puig, Gabriel García Márquez, Guillermo Cabrera Infante, José Donoso, Elena Garro)
  • Post-war Spanish narrative (Juan Goytisolo, Ana María Matute, Rafael Sánchez Ferlosio, Camilo José Cela, Carmen Laforet, Carmen Martín Gaite, Javier Marías)
  • Post-1969 Latin American narrative (Reinaldo Arenas, Diamela Eltit, Luis Rafael Sánchez, Guillermo Cabrera Infante,  Ricardo Piglia, Roberto Bolaño, Carmen Boullosa, Cristina Rivera Garza)

Brazilian Literature

  • Gregório de Matos
  • Tomás Antônio Gonzaga
  • Basílio da Gama
  • Gonçalves Dias
  • Castro Alves
  • Manuel Antônio de Almeida
  • José de Alencar
  • Sousândrade
  • Aluísio Azevedo
  • Machado de Assis
  • Olavo Bilac
  • Cruz e Souza
  • Euclides da Cunha
  • Lima Barreto
  • Manuel Bandeira
  • Oswald de Andrade
  • Mário de Andrade
  • Graciliano Ramos
  • José Lins do Rego
  • Rachel de Queiroz
  • Carlos Drummond de Andrade
  • João Guimarães Rosa
  • Clarice Lispector
  • Jorge Amado
  • João Cabral de Melo Neto
  • Lygia Fagundes Telles
  • Nélida Piñon
  • João Ubaldo Ribeiro
  • Moacyr Scliar
  • Sérgio Sant'Anna

Portuguese Literature

  • Poesia Trovadoresca (Cantigas de Amor, Cantigas de Amigo, Cantigas de Escárnio e Mal dizer)
  • Fernão Lopes
  • Gil Vicente
  • Luís de Camões
  • Antônio Vieira
  • Poetas Barrocos (selections from D. Francisco Manuel de Melo, António Barbosa e Sóror Violante do Céu)
  • Bocage
  • Almeida Garrett
  • Camilo Castelo Branco
  • Júlio Dinis
  • Eça de Queiroz
  • Cesário Verde
  • Antero de Quental
  • Camilo Pessanha
  • Florbela Espanca
  • Fernando Pessoa
  • José Régio
  • Miguel Torga
  • Manuel da Fonseca
  • Vergílio Ferreira
  • Agustina Bessa-Luís
  • Jorge de Sena
  • José Rodrigues Miguéis
  • Vitorino Nemésio
  • José Cardoso Pires
  • Eugénio de Andrade
  • Sophia de Mello Breyner
  • José Saramago
  • Lídia Jorge
  • António Lobo Antunes

German Literature

  • Nibelungenlied; selections from Walter von der Vogelweide; Tristan or Parzival 
  •  Luther
  •  Selected Baroque poetry including Opitz and Gryphius
  • Selected Baroque drama including Gryphius and Lohenstein
  • Grimmelshausen
  • Lessing and Mendelssohn
  • Kant and Herder
  • Goethe
  • Schiller
  • Hölderlin
  • Selections from idealist philosophers (Fichte, Schelling, Hegel)
  • F. Schlegel and Novalis
  • Hoffmann
  • Tieck, Brentano, and A. v. Arnim
  • Kleist
  • Droste-Hülshoff
  • Mörike
  • Büchner
  • Stifter and Keller
  • Fontane
  • Nietzsche
  • Hauptmann and Wedekind
  • George and Hofmannsthal
  • Rilke
  • Benn, Lasker-Schüler, and Trakl
  • T. Mann
  • Musil
  • Kafka
  • Brecht
  • Selected modern poetry including Celan and Bachmann

Italian Literature

  • Dante
  • Petrarca
  • Boccaccio
  • Machiavelli/Lorenzo de’Medici
  • Cellini
  • Tasso
  • Vico
  • Goldoni
  • Foscolo
  • Manzoni
  • Leopardi
  • Verga
  • De Sanctis
  • D’Annunzio
  • Pirandello
  • Futurists
  • Svevo
  • Gadda
  • Montale
  • Saba
  • Pasolini
  • Calvino
  • Morante
  • Ginzburg
  • Resistance literature: Pavese, Fenoglio, Elio Vittorini

Arabic Literature

  • The mu‘allaqat
  • Qur’an, hadith, and sirah
  • Umayyad poetry and prose
  • Abu Nuwas
  • Abu Tammam & al-Buhturi
  • al-Jahiz
  • al-Mutanabbi
  • Abu al-‘Ala’ al-Ma‘arri
  • Poetry of al-Andalus
  • Alf layla wa-layla
  • Selected maqamat
  • Medieval Arabic anthologies
  • Mamluk and early Ottoman literature
  • Selected neo-classical poetry including Barudi, Shawqi
  • Selected prose of the Nahdah including Muwaylihi
  • Romantic Poetry in the Mashriq and the Mahjar
  • Mid-century Iraqi poetry including al-Mala’ikah, al-Sayyab
  • Commitment/Iltizam
  • Pioneers in Egypt: Yahya Haqqi, Taha Husayn, Tawfiq al-Hakim
  • Later Egyptian fiction: Naguib Mahfouz, Yusuf Idris, Sonallah Ibrahim
  • Palestinian Literature after the Nakbah
  • The Shi‘r group in Lebanon
  • Fiction and poetry after 1967
  • Lebanese Civil War Fiction
  • The novel in the Maghreb