Registered: Oct 2001
Location:
Posts: 18157

I was browsing the bookstore by the office this afternoon and ran across a book titled "The Western Canon" by Harold Bloom. I vaguely remember knowing about this book, and it might be one that Dad has. But I was intrigued and looked it up online. I come upon books like this from time to time, and they always interest me. I end up wishing I could read all the books on the list, thinking that will avail me of some arcane wisdom I don't already possess. Well, it likely would in some way or another, but I would forget a great deal of the material. However, anyone would probably be better off for having read all of these books:


http://www.literarycritic.com/bloom.htm

A. The Theocratic Age
"Since the literary canon is at issue here, I include only those religious, philosophical, historical, and scientific writings that are themselves of great aesthetic interest. I would think that, of all the books that are in this first list, once the reader is conversant with the Bible, Homer, Plato, the Athenian dramatists, and Virgil, the crucial work is the Koran....
"I have included some Sanskrit works, scriptures and fundamental literary texts, because of their influence on the Western canon. The immense wealth of ancient Chinese literature is mostly a sphere apart from Western literary tradition and is rarely conveyed adequately in the translations available to us." (p. 531)

The Ancient Near East
The Epic of Gilgamesh
Egyptian Book of the Dead
Holy Bible (King James Version)
The Apocrypha
Sayings of the Fathers (Pirke Aboth)

Ancient India (Sanskrit)
Mahabharata
Bhagavad-Gita
Ramayana

The Ancient Greeks
Homer. Iliad; Odyssey
Hesiod. Works and Days; Theogony
Archilochos
Sappho, Alkman
Pindar. Odes
Aeschylus. Oresteia; Seven Against Thebes; Prometheus Bound; Persians
Aeschylus. Suppliant Women
Sophocles. Oedipus the King; Oedipus at Colonus; Antigone; Electra
Sophocles. Ajax; Women of Trachis; Philoctetes
Euripides. Cyclops; Heracles; Alcestis; Hecuba
Euripedes. Bacchae; Orestes; Andromache; Medea; Ion; Hippolytus; Helen; Iphigenia at Aulis
Aristophanes. The Birds; The Clouds; The Frogs; Lysistrata
Arisotophanes. The Knights; The Wasps; The Assemblywomen
Herodotus. The Histories
Thucydides. The Peloponnesian Wars
The Pre-Socratics (Heraclitus, Empedocles)
Plato. Dialogues
Aristotle. Poetics; Ethics

Hellenistic Greeks
Menander. The Girl from Samos
Longinus. On the Sublime
Callimachus. Hymns and Epigrams
Theocritus. Idylls
Plutarch. Lives; Moralia
Aesop. Fables
Lucian. Satires

The Romans
Plautus. Pseudolus; The Braggart Soldier; The Rope; Amphitryon
Terence. The Girl from Andros; The Eunuch; The Mother-in-Law
Lucretius. The Way Things Are
Cicero. On the Gods
Horace. Odes; Epistles; Satires
Persius. Satires
Catullus. Attis and Other Poems
Virgil. Aeneid; Eclogues; Georgics
Lucan. Pharsalia
Ovid. Metamorphoses; The Art of Love; Heroides
Juvenal. Satires
Martial. Epigrams
Seneca. Tragedies, particularly Medea and Hercules Furens
Petronius. Satyricon
Apuleius. The Golden Ass

The Middle Ages: Latin, Arabic, and the Vernacular Before Dante
Augustine, Saint. City of God; Confessions
The Koran (Al-Qur'an)
The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Nights
The Poetic Edda
Snorri Sturluson. The Prose Edda
The Nibelungen Lied
Eschenbach, Wolfram von. Parzival
Troyes, Chrétien de. Yvain: The Knight of the Lion
Beowulf
The Poem of the Cid,
Pisan, Christine de. The Book of the City of Ladies
Pedro, Diego de San. Prison of Love


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

B. The Aristocratic Age
"It is a span of five hundred years from Dante's Divine Comedy through Goethe's Faust, Part Two [1321-1832], an era that gives us a huge body of reading in five major literatures: Italian, Spanish, English, French, and German. In this and in the remaining lists, I sometimes do not mention individual works by a canonical master, and in other instances I attempt to call attention to authors and books that I consider canonical but rather neglected. From this list onward, many good writers who are not quite central are omitted...." (p. 534)

Italy
Dante. The Divine Comedy; The New Life
Petrarch. Lyric Poems; Selections
Boccaccio, Giovanni. The Decameron
Boiardo, Matteo Maria. Orlando Innamorato
Ariosto, Ludovico. Orlando Furioso
Buonarroti, Michelangelo. Sonnets and Madrigals
Machiavelli, Niccolò. The Prince; The Mandrake, a Comedy
Vinci, Leonardo da. Notebooks
Castiglione, Baldassare. The Book of the Courtier
Stampa, Gaspara. Sonnets and Madrigals
Vasari, Giorgio. Lives of the Painters
Cellini, Benvenuto. Autobiography
Tasso, Torquato. Jerusalem Delivered
Bruno, Giordano. The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast
Campanella, Tommaso. Poems; The City of the Sun
Vico, Giambattista. Principles of a New Science
Goldoni, Carlo. The Servant of Two Masters
Alfieri, Vittorio. Saul

Portugal
Camoëns, Luis de. The Lusiads
Ferreira, Antònio. Poetry

Spain
Manrique, Jorge. Coplas
Rojas, Fernando de. La Celestina
Anonymous. Lazarillo de Tormes.
Quevedo, Francisco de. Visions; Satirical Letter of Censure
León, Fray Luis de. Poems
Cross, St. John of the. Poems
Góngora, Luis de. Sonnets; Soledades
Cervantes, Miguel de. Don Quixote; Exemplary Stories
Vega, Lope de. La Dorotea; Fuente Ovejuna; Lost in a Mirror; The Knight of Olmedo
Molina, Tirso de. The Trickster of Seville
Barca, Pedro Calderón de la. Life is a Dream; The Mayor of Zalamea; The Mighty Magician; The Doctor of His Own Honor
Cruz, Sor Juana Inés de la. Poems

England and Scotland
Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Canterbury Tales; Troilus and Criseyde
Malory, Sir Thomas. Le Morte D'Arthur
Dunbar, William. Poems
Skelton, John. Poems
More, Sir Thomas. Utopia
Wyatt, Sir Thomas. Poems
Surrey, Henry Howard, Earl of. Poems
Sidney, Sir Philip. The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia; Astrophel and Stella; An Apology for Poetry
Brooke, Fulke Greville, Lord. Poems
Spenser, Edmund. The Faerie Queene; The Minor Poems
Ralegh, Sir Walter. Poems
Marlowe, Christopher. Poems and Plays
Drayton, Michael. Poems
Daniel, Samuel. Poems; A Defence of Ryme
Nashe, Thomas. The Unfortunate Traveller
Kyd, Thomas. The Spanish Tragedy
Shakespeare, William. Plays and Poems
Campion, Thomas. Songs
Donne, John. Poems; Sermons
Jonson, Ben. Poems, Plays, and Masques
Bacon, Francis. Essays
Burton, Robert. The Anatomy of Melancholy
Browne, Sir Thomas. Religio Medici; Hydriotaphia, or Urne-Buriall; The Garden of Cyrus
Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan
Herrick, Robert. Poems
Carew, Thomas. Poems
Lovelace, Richard. Poems
Marvell, Andrew. Poems
Herbert, George. The Temple
Traherne, Thomas. Centuries, Poems, and Thanksgivings
Vaughan, Henry. Poetry
Rochester, John Wilmot, Earl of. Poems
Crashaw, Richard. Poems
Fletcher, Francis Beaumont and John. Plays
Chapman, George. Comedies, Tragedies, Poems
Ford, John. 'Tis Pity She's a Whore
Marston, John. The Malcontent
Webster, John. The White Devil; The Duchess of Malfi
Rowley, Thomas Middleton and William. The Changeling
Tourneur, Cyril. The Revenger's Tragedy
Massinger, Philip. A New Way to Pay Old Debts
Bunyan, John. The Pilgrim's Progress
Walton, Izaak. The Compleat Angler
Milton, John. Paradise Lost; Paradise Regained; Lycidas, Comus, and the Minor Poems; Samson Agonistes; Areopagitica
Aubrey, John. Brief Lives
Taylor, Jeremy. Holy Dying
Butler, Samuel. Hudibras
Dryden, John. Poetry and Plays; Critical Essays
Otway, Thomas. Venice Preserv'd
Congreve, William. The Way of the World; Love for Love
Swift, Jonathan. A Tale of a Tub; Gulliver's Travels; Shorter Prose Works; Poems
Etherege, Sir George. The Man of Mode
Pope, Alexander. Poems
Gay, John. The Beggar's Opera
Boswell, James. Life of Johnson; Journals
Johnson, Samuel. Works
Gibbon, Edward. The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
Burke, Edmund. A Philosophical Enquiry into the Sublime and Beautiful; Reflections on the Revolution in France
Morgann, Maurice. An Essay on the Dramatic Character of Sir John Falstaff
Collins, William. Poems
Farquhar, George. The Beaux' Strategem; The Recruiting Officer
Wycherley, William. The Country Wife; The Plain Dealer
Smart, Christopher. Jubilate Agno; A Song to David
Goldsmith, Oliver. The Vicar of Wakefield; She Stoops to Conquer; The Traveller; The Deserted Village
Sheridan, Richard Brinsley. The School of Scandal; The Rivals
Cowper, William. Poetical Works
Crabbe, George. Poetical Works
Defoe, Daniel. Moll Flanders; Robinson Crusoe; A Journal of the Plague Year
Richardson, Samuel. Clarissa; Pamela; Sir Charles Grandison
Fielding, Henry. Joseph Andrews; The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling
Smollett, Tobias. The Expedition of Humphry Clinker; The Adventures of Roderick Random
Sterne, Laurence. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman; A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy
Burney, Fanny. Evelina
Steele, Joseph Addison and Richard. The Spectator

France
Froissart, Jean. Chronicles; The Song of Roland
Villon, François. Poems
Montaigne, Michel de. Essays
Rabelais, François. Gargantua and Pantagruel
Navarre, Marguerite de. The Heptameron
Bellay, Joachim Du. The Regrets
Scève, Maurice. Délie
Ronsard, Pierre. Odes, Elegies, Sonnets
Commynes, Philippe de. Memoirs
d'Aubigné, Agrippa. Les Tragiques
Garnier, Robert. Mark Antony; The Jewesses
Corneille, Pierre. The Cid; Polyeucte; Nicomède; Horace; Cinna; Rodogune
Rochefoucauld, François de La. Maxims
Fontaine, Jean de La. Fables
Moliere. The Misanthrope; Tartuffe; The School for Wives
Moliere. The Learned Ladies; Don Juan; School for Husbands; Ridiculous Precieuses; The Would-Be Gentleman
Moliere. The Miser; The Imaginary Invalid
Pascal, Blaise. Pensées
Bosuet, Jacques-Bénigne. Funerary Orations
Boileau-Despréaux, Nicolas. The Art of Poetry; Lutrin
Racine, Jean. Phaedra; Andromache; Britannicus; Athaliah
Marivaux, Pierre Carlet de. Seven Comedies
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. The Confessions; Émile; La Nouvelle Héloïse
Voltaire. Zadig; Candide; Letters on England; The Lisbon Earthquake
Prevost, Abbe. Manon Lescaut
Fayette, Madame de La. The Princess of Cleves
Chamfort, Sébastien-Roch Nicolas de. Products of the Perfected Civilization
Diderot, Denis. Rameau's Nephew
Laclos, Choderlos de. Dangerous Liaisons

Germany
Erasmus. In Praise of Folly
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Faust, Parts One and Two; Dichtung und Wahrheit; Egmont
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Elective Affinities; The Sorrows of Young Werther; Poems; Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship; Wilhelm Meister's Years of Wandering
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Italian Journey; Verse Plays; Hermann and Dorothea; Roman Elegies
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Venetian Epigrams; West-Eastern Divan
Schiller, Friedrich. The Robbers; Mary Stuart; Wallenstein; Don Carlos; On the Naïve and Sentimental in Literature
Lessing, Gotthold. Laocoön; Nathan the Wise
Hölderlin, Freidrich. Hymns and Fragments; Selected Poems
Kleist, Heinrich von. Five Plays; Stories


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

C. The Democratic Age
"I have located Vico's Democratic Age in the post-Goethean nineteenth century, when the literature of Italy and Spain ebbs, yielding eminence to England with its renaissance of the Renaissance in Romanticism, and to a lesser degree to France and Germany. This is also the era where the strength of both Russian and American literature begins." (p. 540)

Italy
Foscolo, Ugo. On Sepulchres; Last Letters of Jacopo Ortis; Odes and The Graces
Manzoni, Alessandro. The Betrothed; On the Historical Novel
Leopardi, Giacomo. Essays and Dialogues; Poems; The Moral Essays
Belli, Giuseppe Gioacchino. Roman Sonnets
Carducci, Giosué. Hymn to Satan; Barbarian Odes; Rhymes and Rhythms
Verga, Giovanni. Little Novels of Sicily; Mastro-Don Gesualdo; The House by the Medlar Tree; The She-Wolf and Other Stories

Spain and Portugal
Bécquer, Gustavo Adolpho. Poems
Galdós, Benito Pérez. Fortunata and Jacinta
(Clarín), Leopoldo Alas. La Regenta
Queirós, José Maria de Eça de. The Maias

France
Constant, Benjamin. Adolphe; The Red Notebook
Chateaubriand, François-Auguste-René de. Attala; René; The Ge nius of Christianity
Lamartine, Alphonse de. Meditations
Vigny, Alfred de. Chatterton; Poems
Hugo, Victor. The Distance, the Shadows: Selected Poems; Les Misérables
Hugo, Victor. Notre-Dame of Paris; William Shakespeare; The Toilers of the Sea; The End of Satan; God
Musset, Alfred de. Poems; Lorenzaccio
Nerval, Gérard de. The Chimeras; Sylvie; Aurelia
Gautier, Théophile. Mademoiselle de Maupin; Enamels and Cameos
Balzac, Honoré de. The Girl with the Golden Eyes; Louis Lambert; The Wild Ass's Skin
Balzac, Honoré de. Old Goriot; Cousin Bette; A Harlot High and Low; Eugénie Grandet; Ursule Mirouet
Stendhal. On Love; The Red and the Black; The Charterhouse of Parma
Flaubert, Gustave. Madame Bovary; Sentimental Education; Salammbô; A Simple Soul
Sand, George. The Haunted Pool
Baudelaire, Charles. Flowers of Evil; Paris Spleen
Mallarmé, Stéphane. Selected Poetry and Prose
Verlaine, Paul. Selected Poems
Rimbaud, Arthur. Complete Works
Corbière, Tristan. Les Armours Jaunes
Laforgue, Jules. Selected Writings
Maupassant, Guy de. Selected Short Stories
Zola, Émile. Germinal; L'Assommoir; Nana

Scandinavia
Ibsen, Henrik. Brand; Peer Gynt; Emperor and Galilean; Hedda Gabler; The Master Builder; The Lady from the Sea; When We Dead Awaken
Strindberg, August. To Damascus; Miss Julie; The Father; The Dance of Death; The Ghost Sonata; A Dream Play

Great Britain
Burns, Robert. Poems
Blake, William. Complete Poetry and Prose
Wordsworth, William. Poems; The Prelude
Scott, Sir Walter. Waverley; The Heart of Midlothian; Redgauntlet; Old Mortality
Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice; Emma; Mansfield Park; Persuasion
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. Poems and Prose
Wordsworth, Dorothy. The Grasmere Journal
Hazlitt, William. Essays and Criticism
Byron, Lord. Don Juan; P oems
Landor, William Savage. Poems; Imaginary Conversations
Quincey, Thomas De. Confessions of an English Opium Eater; Selected Prose
Lamb, Charles. Essays
Edgeworth, Maria. Castle Rackrent
Galt, John. The Entail
Gaskell, Elizabeth. Cranford; Mary Barton; North and South
Hogg, James. The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner
Maturin, Charles. Melmoth the Wanderer
Shelley, Percy Bysshe. Poems; A Defence of Poetry
Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft. Frankenstein
Clare, John. Poems
Keats, John. Poems and Letters
Beddoes, Thomas Lovell. Death's Jest-Book; Poems
Darley, George. Nepenthe; Poems
Hood, Thomas. Poems
Wade, Thomas. Poems
Browning, Robert. Poems; The Ring and the Book
Dickens, Charles. The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club; David Copperfield; The Adventures of Oliver Twist
Dickens, Charles. A Tale of Two Cities; Bleak House; Hard Times; Nicholas Nickleby; Dombey and Son; Great Expectations; Martin Chuzzlewit; Christmas Stories; Little Dorrit; Our Mutual Friend; The Mystery of Edwin Drood
Tennyson, Alfred, Lord. Poems
Rossetti, Dante Gabriel. Poems and Translations
Matthew Arnold. Poems; Essays
Clough, Arthur Hugh. Poems
Rossetti, Christina. Poems
Peacock, Thomas Love. Nightmare Abbey; Gryll Grange
Hopkins, Gerald Manley. Poems and Prose
Carlyle, Thomas. Selected Prose; Sartor Resartus
Ruskin, John. Modern Painters; The Stones of Venice; Unto This Last; The Queen of the Air
Pater, Walter. Studies in the History of the Renaissance; Appreciations; Imaginary Portraits; M arius the Epicurean
FitzGerald, Edward. The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
Mill, John Stuart. On Liberty; Autobiography
Newman, John Henry. Apologia pro Vita Sua; A Grammar of Assent; The Idea of a University
Trollope, Anthony. The Barsetshire Novels; The Palliser Novels; Orley Farm; The Way We Live Now
Carroll, Lewis. Complete Works
Lear, Edward. Complete Nonsense
Gissing, George. New Grub Street
Swinburne, Algernon Charles. Poems and Letters
Brontë, Charlotte. Jane Eyre; Villette
Brontë, Emily. Poems; Wuthering Heights
Thackeray, William Makepeace. Vanity Fair; The History of Henry Esmond
Meredith, George. Poems; The Egoist
Thompson, Francis. Poems
Johnson, Lionel. Poems
Bridges, Robert. Poems
Chesterton, Gilbert Keith. Collected Poems; The Man Who Was Thursday
Butler, Samuel. Erewhon; The Way of All Flesh
Gilbert, W. S.. Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan; Bab Ballads
Collins, Wilkie. The Moonstone; The Woman in White; No Name
Patmore, Coventry. Odes
Thomson, James (Bysshe Vanolis). The City of the Dreadful Night
Wilde, Oscar. Plays; The Picture of Dorian Gray; The Artist as Critic; Letters
Davidson, John. Ballads and Songs
Dowson, Ernest. Complete Poems
Eliot, George. Adam Bede; Silas Marner; The Mill on the Floss; Middlemarch; Daniel Deronda
Stevenson, Robert Louis. Essays; Kidnapped; Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; Treasure Island; The New Arabian Nights
Stevenson, Robert Louis. The Master of Ballantrae; Weir of Hermiston
Morris, William. Early Romances; Poems; The Earthly Paradise; The Well at the World's End; News from Nowhere
Stoker, Bram. Dracula
Macdonald, George. Lilith; At the Back of the North Wind

Germany
Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenburg). Hymns to the Night; Aphorisms
Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm. Fairy Tales
Mörike, Eduard. Selected Poems; Mozart on His Way to Prague
Storm, Theodor. Immensee; Poems
Keller, Gottfried. Green Henry; Tales
Hoffmann, E. T. A.. The Devil's Elixir; Tales
Gotthelf, Jeremias. The Black Spider
Stifter, Adalbert. Indian Summer; Tales
Schlegel, Friedrich. Criticism and Aphorisms
Büchner, Georg. Danton's Death; Woyzeck
Heine, Heinrich. Complete Poems
Wagner, Richard. The Ring of the Nibelung
Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Birth of Tragedy; Beyond Good and Evil; On the Genealogy of Mo rals; The Will to Power
Fontane, Theodor. Effi Briest
George, Stefan. Selected Poems

Russia
Pushkin, Aleksandr. Complete Prose Tales; Complete Poetry; Eugene Onegin; Narrative Poems; Boris Godunov
Gogol, Nikolay. The Complete Tales; Dead Souls; The Government Inspector
Lermontov, Mikhail. Narrative Poems; A Hero of Our Time
Aksakov, Segey. A Family Chronicle
Herzen, Aleksandr. My Past and Thoughts; From the Other Shore
Goncharov, Ivan. The Frigate Pallada; Oblomov
Turgenev, Ivan. A Sportsman's Notebook; A Month in the Country; Fathers and Sons; On the Eve; First Love
Dostoevsky, Fyodor. Notes from the Underground; Crime and Punishment; The Idiot; The Possessed (The Devils); The Brothers Karamazov; Short Novels
Tolstoy, Leo. The Cossacks; War and Peace; Anna Karenina; A Confession; The Power of Darkness; Short Novels
Leskov, Nikolay. Tales
Ostrovsky, Aleksandr. The Storm
Chernyshevsky, Nikolay. What is to Be Done?
Blok, Aleksandr. The Twelve and Other Poems
Chekhov, Anton. The Tales; The Major Plays

The United States
Irving, Washington. The Sketch Book
Bryant, William Cullen. Collected Poems
Cooper, James Fenimore. The Deerslayers
Whittier, John Greenleaf. Collected Poems
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Nature; Essays; Representative Men; The Conduct of Life; Journals; Poems
Dickinson, Emily. Complete Poems
Whitman, Walt. Leaves of Grass, first edition; Leaves of Grass, third edition; The Complete Poems ; Specimen Days
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter; Tales and Sketches; The Marble Faun; Notebooks
Melville, Herman. Moby-Dick; The Piazza Tales; Billy Budd; Collected Poems; Clarel
Poe, Edgar Allen. Poetry and Tales; Essays and Reviews; The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym; Eureka
Very, Jones. Essays and Poems
Tuckerman, Frederick Goddard. The Cricket and Other Poems
Thoreau, Henry David. Walden; Poems; Essays
Dana, Richard Henry. Two Years Before the Mast
Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth. Selected Poems
Lanier, Sidney. Poems
Parkman, Francis. France and England in North America; The California and Oregon Trail
Adams, Henry. The Education of Henry Adams; Mont Saint-Michel and Chartres
Bierce, Ambrose. Collected Writings
Alcott, Louisa May. Little Women
Chesnutt, Charles W.. The Short Fiction
Chopin, Kate. The Awakening
Howells, William Dean. The Rise of Silas Lapham; A Modern Instance
Crane, Stephen. The Red Badge of Courage; Stories and Poems
James, Henry. The Portrait of a Lady; The Bostonians; The Princess Casamassima; The Awkward Age; Short Novels and Tales; The Ambassadors; The Wings of the Dove; The Golden Bowl
Frederic, Harold. The Damnation of Theron Ware
Twain, Mark. Complete Short Stories; The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; The Devil's Racetrack; N umber Forty-Four: The Mysterious Stranger; Pudd'nhead Wilson
Twain, Mark. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
James, William. The Varieties of Religious Experience; Pragmatism
Norris, Frank. The Octopus
Jewett, Sarah Orne. The Country of the Pointed Firs and Other Stories
Stickney, Trumbull. Poems


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

D. The Chaotic Age: A Canonical Prophecy
"I am not as confident about this list as the first three. Cultural prophecy is always a mug's game. Not all of the works here can prove to be canonical; literary overpopulation is a hazard to many among them. But I have neither excluded nor included on the basis of cultural politics of any kind." (p. 548)

Italy
Pirandello, Luigi. Naked Masks: Five Plays
D'Annunzio, Gabriele. Maia: In Praise of Life
Campana, Dino. Orphic Songs
Saba, Umberto. Stories and Recollections; Poems
Lampedusa, Giuseppe Tomasi di. The Leopard
Ungaretti, Giuseppe. Selected Poems; The Buried Harbour: Selected Poems
Montale, Eugenio. The Storm and Other Things: Poems; The Occasions: Poems; Cuttlefish Bone s: Poems; Otherwise: Last and First Poems; The Second Life of Art: Selected Essays
Quasimodo, Salvatore. Selected Writings: Poems and Discourse on Poetry
Landolfi, Tommaso. Gogol's Wife and Other Stories
Sciascia, Leonardo. Day of the Owl; Equal Danger; The Wine-Dark Sea: Thirteen Stories
Pasolini, Pier Paolo. Poems
Pavese, Cesare. Hard Labor: Poems; Dialogues with Leucò
Levi, Primo. If Not Now, When?; Collected Poems; The Periodic Table
Svevo, Italo. The Confession of Zeno; As a Man Grows Older
Bassani, Giorgio. The Heron
Ginzburg, Natalia. Family
Vittorini, Elio. Women of Messina
Moravia, Alberto. 1934
Zanzotto, Andrea. Selected Poetry
Calvino, Italo. Invisible Cities; The Baron in the Trees; If on a Winter's Night a Traveler; t zero
Porta, Antonio. Kisses from Another Dream: Poems

Spain
Unamuno, Miguel de. Three Exemplary Novels; Our Lord Don Quixote
Machado, Antonio. Selected Poems
Jiménez, Juan Ramón. Invisible Reality: Poems
Salinas, Pedro. My Voice Because of You: Poems
Guillén, Jorge. Guillén on Guillén: The Poetry and the Poet
Aleixandre, Vicente. A Longing for the Light: Selected Poems
Lorca, Federico Garcia. Selected Poems; Three Tragedies: Blood Wedding, Yerma, The House of Bernardo Alba
Alberti, Rafael. The Owl's Insomnia: Poems
Cernuda, Luis. Selected Poems
Hernández, Miguel. Selected Poems
Otero, Blas de. Selected Poems
Cela, Camilo José. The Hive
Goytisolo, Juan. Space in Motion

Catalonia
Ribá, Carles. Selected Poems
Foix, J. V.. Selected Poems
Perucho, Joan. Natural History
Rodoreda, Merce. The Time of the Doves
Gimferrer, Pere. Selected Poems
Espríu, Salvador. La Pell de Brau: Poems

Portugal
Pessoa, Fernando. The Keeper of Sheep; Poems; Selected Poems; Always Astonished: Selected Poems; The Book of Disquiet
Sena, Jorge de. Selected Poems
Saramago, José. Baltasar and Blimunda
José Cardoso Pires. Ballad of Dogs' Beach
Breyner, Sophia de Mello. Selected Poems
Andrade, Eugénio de. Selected Poems

France
France, Anatole. Penguin Island; Thaïs
Alain-Fournier. Le Grand Meaulnes
Proust, Marcel. Remembrance of Things Past (In Search of Lost Time)
Andre Gide. The Immoralist; Corydon; Lafcadio's Adventure (The Caves of the Vatican); The Journals
Colette. Collected Stories; Retreat from Love
Bataille, Georges. Blue of Noon
Céline, Louis-Ferdinand. Journey to the End of Night
Daumal, René. Mount Analogue
Genet, Jean. Our Lady of the Flowers; The Thief's Journal; The Balcony
Giraudoux, Jean. Four Plays
Jarry, Alfred. Selected Works
Cocteau, Jean. The Infernal Machine and Other Works
Apollinaire, Guillaume. Selected Writings
Breton, André. Poems; Manifestoes of Surrealism
Valéry, Paul. The Art of Poetry; Selected Writings
Char, René. Poems
Éluard, Paul. Selected Poems
Aragon, Louis. Selected Poems
Giono, Jean. The Horseman on the Roof
Leiris, Michel. Manhood
Radiguet, Raymond. Count d'Orgel's Ball
Sartre, Jean-Paul. No Exit; Nausea; Saint Genet; The Words; The Family Idiot; Gustave Flaubert
Beauvoir, Simone de. The Second Sex
Camus, Albert. The Stranger; The Plague; The Fall; The Rebel
Michaux, Henri. Selected Writings
Jabès, Edmond. The Book of Questions; Selected Poems
Perse, Saint-John. Anabasis; Birds; Exile and Other Poems
Reverdy, Pierre. Selected Poems
Tzara, Tristan. Seven Dada Manifestoes
Jacob, Max. Selected Poems

Jouve, Pierre-Jean. Selected Poems.
Ponge, Francis. Things: Selected Writings, tr. by Cid Corman.
Prévert, Jacques. Paroles.
Jacottet, Philippe. Selected Poems, tr. by Derek Mahon.
Péguy, Charles. The Mystery of the Charity of Joan of Arc.
Péret, Benjamin. Selected Poems.
Malraux, André. The Conquerors; The Royal Way; Man's Fate; Man's Hope; The Voices of Silence.
Mauriac, François. Therese; The Desert of Love; The Woman of the Pharisees, tr. by Gerard Hopkins.
Anouilh, Jean. Becket; Antigone; Eurydice; The Rehearsal.
Ionesco, Eugène. The Bald Soprano; The Chairs; The Lesson; Amédée; Victims of Duty; Rhinoceros.
Blanchot, Maurice. Thomas the Obscure, tr. by Robert Lamberton.
Klossowski, Pierre. The Laws of Hospitality; The Baphomet.
Roussel, Raymond. Locus Solus.
Artaud, Antonin. Selected Writings, tr. by Helen Weaver.
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. Tristes Tropiques.
Robbe-Grillet, Alain. The Voyeur; Jealousy; In the Labyrinth; The Erasers; Project for a Revolution in New York; For a New Novel, tr. by Richard Howard.
Sarraute, Nathalie. The Use of Speech, tr. by Barbara Wright; The Planetarium, tr. by Maria Jolas.
Simon, Claude. The Grass; The Wind; The Flanders Road, tr. by Richard Howard.
Duras, Marguerite. The Lover, tr. by Barbara Bray; Four Novels, tr. by Sonia Pitt-Rivers and others.
Pinget, Robert. Fable; The Libera Me Domine; That Voice, tr. by Barbara Wright.
Tournier, Michel. The Ogre; Friday.
Yourcenar, Marguerite. Coup de Grace; Memoirs of Hadrian.
Follain, Jean. Transparance of the World: Poems, tr. by W. S. Merwin.
Bonnefoy, Yves. Words in Stone, tr. by Susanna Lang.

Great Britain and Ireland.
Yeats, William Butler. The Collected Poems; Collected Plays; A Vision; Mythologies.
Shaw, George Bernard. Major Critical Essays; Heartbreak House; Pygmalion; Saint Joan; Major Barbara; Back to Methuselah.
Synge, John Millington. Collected Plays.
O'Casey, Sean. Juno and the Paycock; The Plough and the Stars; The Shadow of a Gunman.
Brown, George Douglas. The House with the Green Shutters.
Hardy, Thomas. The Well-Beloved; The Woodlanders; The Return of the Native; The Mayor of Casterbridge; Far From the Madding Crowd; Tess of the D'Urbervilles; Jude the Obscure; Collected Poems.
Kipling, Rudyard. Kim; Collected Stories; Puck of Pook's Hill; Complete Verse.
Housman, A.E.. Collected Poems.
Beerbohm, Max. Zuleika Dobson, Seven Men and Two Others.
Conrad, Joseph. Lord Jim; The Secret Agent; Nostromo; Under Western Eyes; Victory.
Firbank, Ronald. Five Novels.
Ford, Ford Madox. Parade's End; The Good Soldier.
Maugham, W. Somerset. Collected Short Stories; The Moon and Sixpence.
Powys, John Cowper. Wolf Solent; A Glastonbury Romance.
Saki (H.H. Munro). The Short Stories.
Wells, H. G.. The Science Fiction Novels.
Lindsay, David. A Voyage to Arcturus.
Bennett, Arnold. The Old Wives' Tale.
Mare, Walter De la. Collected Poems; Memoirs of a Midget.
Owen, Wilfred. Collected Poems.
Rosenberg, Isaac. Collected Poems.
Thomas, Edward. Collected Poems.
Graves, Robert. Collected Poems; King Jesus.
Jones, David. In Parenthesis; The Anathemata.
Galsworthy, John. The Forsyth Saga.
Forster, E. M.. Howard's End; A Passage to India.
O'Connor, Frank. Collected Stories.
Lawrence, D. H.. Complete Poems; Studies in Classic American Literature; Complete Short Stories; Sons and Lovers; The Rainbow; Women in Love.
Woolf, Virgina. Mrs. Dalloway; Woolf To the Lighthouse&tag=provisliteraclas">To the Lighthouse; Orlando: A Biography; The Waves; Between the Acts.
Joyce, James. Dubliners; Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man; Ulysses; Finnegans Wake.
Beckett, Samuel. Murphy; Watt; Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnameable; Waiting for Godot; Endgame; Krapp's Last Tape; How It Is.
Bowen, Elizabeth. Collected Stories.
Farrell, J. G.. The Siege of Krishnapur.
Green, Henry. Nothing; Loving; Party Going.
Waugh, Evelyn. A Handful of Dust; Scoop; Vile Bodies; Put Out More Flags.
Burgess, Anthony. Nothing Like the Sun.
Edwards, G. B.. The Book of Ebenezer Le Page.
Murdoch, Iris. The Good Apprentice; Bruno's Dream.
Greene, Graham. Brighton Rock; The Heart of the Matter; The Power and the Glory.
Isherwood, Christopher. The Berlin Stories.
Douglas, Norman. South Wind.
Huxley, Aldous. Collected Essays; Antic Hay; Point Counter Point; Brave New World.
Durrell, Lawrence. The Alexandria Quartet.
Golding, William. Pincher Martin.
Lessing, Doris. The Golden Notebook.
Peake, Mervyn. The Gormenghast Trilogy.
Winterson, Jeanette. The Passion.
Auden, W. H.. Collected Poems; The Dyer's Hand.
Fuller, Roy. Collected Poems.
Ewart, Gavin. Selected Poems.
Bunting, Basil. Collected Poems.
Empson, William. Collected Poems; Milton's God; Some Versions of Pastoral.
Knight, George Wilson. The Wheel of Fire; The Burning Oracle.
Thomas, R. S.. Poems.
Kermode, Frank. The Sense of an Ending.
Smith, Stevie. Collected Poems.
Prince, F. T.. Collected Poems.
Larkin, Philip. Collected Poems.
Davie, Donald. Selected Poems.
Hill, Geoffrey. Selected Poems.
Spence, Jonathan. The Death of Woman Wang; The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci.
Jennings, Elizabeth. Selected Poems.
Douglas, Keith. The Complete Poems.
MacDiarmid, Hugh. Complete Poems.
MacNeice, Louis. Collected Poems.
Thomas, Dylan. The Poems.
Dennis, Nigel. Cards of Identity.
Heaney, Seamus. Selected Poems: 1969-1987; Field Work; Station Island.
Kinsella, Thomas. Peppercanister Poems.
Muldoon, Paul. Selected Poems.
Montague, John. Selected Poems.
Arden, John. Plays.
Orton, Joe. The Complete Plays.
O'Brian, Flann. The Dalkey Archive; The Third Policeman.
Stoppard, Tom. Travesties.
Pinter, Harold. The Caretaker; The Homecoming.
Bond, Edward. The Fool; Saved.
Orwell, George. Collected Essays; 1984.
O'Brian, Edna. A Fanatic Heart.

Germany.
Hofmannsthal, Hugo von. Poems and Verse Plays, tr. by Michael Hamburger and others; Selected Prose, tr. by James Huttinger and Tania and James Stern; Selected Plays and Libretti, tr. by Michael Hamburger and others.
Rilke, Rainer Maria. Selected Poetry; The Sonnets to Orpheus; The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge all tr. by Stephen Mitchell; New Poems: First Part and Other Part, tr. by Edward Snow.
Broch, Hermann. The Sleepwalers; The Death of Virgil; Hugo von Hofmannsthal and His Time.
Trakl, Georg. Selected Poems.
Benn, Gottfried. Selected Poems.
Kafka, Franz. Amerika; The Complete Stories; The Blue Octavo Notebook; The Trial; Diaries; The Castle; Parables, Fragments, Aphorisms.
Brecht, Bertolt. Poems 1913-1956; The Threepenny Opera, tr. by Desmond Vesey and Eric Bentley; The Good Woman of Setzuan, tr. by Eric Bentley; Galileo, tr. by Charles Laughton; The Caucasian Chalk Circle.
Schnitzler, Arthur. Plays; Stories.
Wedekind, Frank. Lulu Plays; Spring Awakening, tr. by Edward Bond
Kraus, Karl. The Last Days of Mankind.
Eich, Günter. Moles.
Mann, Thomas. The Magic Mountain; Stories of Three Decades; Joseph and His Brothers; Doctor Faustus; Confessions of Felix Krull,,Confidence Man.
Döblin, Alfred. Berlin Alexanderplatz.
Hesse, Hermann. The Glass Bead Game (Magister Ludi); Narcissus and Goldmund.
Musil, Robert. Young Törless; The Man Without Qualities.
Roth, Joseph. The Radetzky March.
Celan, Paul. Poems, tr. by Michael Hamburger
Bernhard, Thomas. Woodcutters.
Böll, Heinrich. Billiards at Half-Past Nine.
Bachmann, Ingeborg. In the Storm of Roses, tr. by Mark Anderson
Enzensberger, Hans Magnus. Poems for People Who Don't Read Poems.
Benjamin, Walter. Illuminations.
Walser, Robert. Selected Stories, tr. by Christopher Middleton et al.
Wolf, Christa. Cassandra.
Handke, Peter. Slow Homecoming.
Frisch, Max. I'm Not Stiller; Man in the Holocene.
Grass, Günter. The Tin Drum; The Flounder.
Dürrenmatt, Friedrich. The Visit.
Bobrowski, Johannes. Shadow Lands, tr. by Ruth and Matthew Mead.

Russia.
Akhmatova, Anna. Poems, tr. by Stanley Kunitz and Max Hayward.
Andreyev, Leonid. Selected Tales.
Bely, Andrey. Petersburg.
Mandelshtam, Osip. Selected Poems, tr. by Clarence Brown and W. S. Merwin.
Khlebnikov, Velimir. The King of Time.
Mayakovsky, Vladimir. The Bedbug and Selected Poetry, tr. by Max Hayward and George Reavey.
Bulgatov, Mikhail. The Master and Margherita.
Kuzmin, Mickhail. Alexandrian Songs.
Gorky, Maxim. Reminiscences of Tolstoy, Chekhov, and Andreev; Autobiography.
Bunin, Ivan. Selected Stories.
Babel, Isaac. Collected Stories.
Pasternak, Boris. Doctor Zhivago; Selected Poems, tr. by Jon Stallworthy and Peter France.
Olesha, Yury. Envy.
Tsvetayeva, Marina. Selected Poems, tr. by Elaine Feinstein
Zoshchenko, Mikhail. Nervous People and Other Satires.
Platonov, Andrei. The Foundation Pit.
Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich; The Cancer Ward; The Gulag Archipelago; August 1914.
Brodsky, Joseph. A Part of Speech: Poems.

Scandinavia.
Dineson, Isak. Winter's Tales; Seven Gothic Tales.
Nexo, Martin Anderson. Pelle the Conqueror.
Hamsun, Knut. Hunger; Pan.
Undset, Sigrid. Kritin Lavransdatter.
Ekelöf, Gunnar. Guide to the Underworld, tr. by Rika Lesser
Tranströmer, Tomas. Selected Poems.
Lagerkvist, Pär. Barrabas.
Gustafsson, Lars. Selected Poems.

Serbian/Croatian.
Andric, Ivo. The Bridge on the Drina.
Popa, Vasko. Selected Poems.
Kis, Danilo. A Tomb for Boris Davidovich.

Czech.
Capek, Karel. War with the Newts; R. U. R..
Havel, Vaclav. Largo Desolato.
Kundera, Milan. The Unbearable Lightness of Being.
Seifert, Jaroslav. Selected Poetry.
Holub, Miroslav. The Fly.

Polish.
Schulz, Bruno. The Street of Crocodiles; Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass.
Milosz, Czeslaw. Selected Poems.
Gombrowicz, Witold. Three Novels.
Lem, Stanislaw. The Investigation; Solaris.
Herbert, Zbigniew. Selected Poems.
Zagajewski, Adam. Tremor.

Hungarian.
Jósef, Attila. Perched on Nothing's Branch.
Juhasz, Ferenc. Selected Poems.
Németh, Laszlo. Guilt.

Modern Greek.
Cavafy, C. P.. Collected Poems.
Seferis, George. Collected Poems.
Kazantzakis, Nikos. The Greek Passion; The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel.
Ritsos, Yannis. Exile and Return.
Elytis, Odysseas. What I Love: Selected Poems.
Sikelianos, Angelos. Selected Poems.

Yiddish.
Aleichem, Sholem. Tevye the Dairyman; The Railroad Stories, tr. by Hillel Halkin; The Nightingale, tr. by Aliza Shevrin.
Seforim, Mendele Mokher. The Travels and Adventures of Benjamin the Third.
Peretz, I. L.. Selected Stories.
Glatstein, Jacob. Selected Poems.
Halpern, Moshe-Leib. Selected Poems.
H. Leivick (Leivick Halpern). Selected Poems.
Singer, Israel Joshua. The Brothers Ashkenazi; Yoshi Kalb.
Grade, Chaim. The Yeshiva.
Ansyky, S. The Dybbuk.
Leib, Mani. Selected Poems.
Asch, Sholem. East River.
Singer, Isaac Bashevis. Collected Stories; In My Father's Court; The Manor, the Estate, the Family Moskrat; Satan in Goray.

Hebrew.
Bialik, Hayyim Nahman. Shirot Bialik: The Epic Poems.
Agnon, S. Y.. In the Heart of the Seas.
Appelfed, Aharon. The Immortal Bartfuss; Badenheim 1939.
Shabtai, Yaakov. Past Continuous.
Amichai, Yehuda. Selected Poetry, tr. by Stephen Mitchell and Chana Bloch; Travels, tr. by Ruth Nevo.
Yehoshua, A. B.. A Late Divorce.
Oz, Amos. A Perfect Peace.
Carmi, T. At the Stone of Losses, tr. by Grace Schulman.
Zach, Nathan. Selected Poems.
Ravikovitch, Dalia. A Dress of Fire.
Pagis, Dan. Selected Poems.
Shahar, David. The Palace of Shattered Vessels.
Grossman, David. See Under: Love.
Kaniuk, Yoram. His Daughter.

Arabic.
Mahfuz, Najib. Midaq Alley; Fountain and Tomb; Miramar.
Adunis. Selected Poems.
Darwish, Mahmud. The Music of Human Flesh.
Husayn, Taha. An Egyptian Childhood.

Latin America.
Dário, Rubén. Selected Poetry.
Borges, Jorge Luis. The Aleph and Other Stories; Dreamtigers (The Maker); Ficciones; Labyrinths; A Personal Anthology.
Carpentier, Alejo. Explosion in a Cathedral; The Lost Steps; Reasons of State; The Kingdom of this World.
Infante, Guillermo Cabrera. Three Trapped Tigers; View of Dawn in the Tropics.
Sarduy, Severo. Maitreya.
Arenas, Reinaldo. The Ill-Fated Peregrinations of Fray Servando.
Neruda, Pablo. Canto General, tr. by Jack Schmitt; Residence on Earth, tr. by Donald Walsh; Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair, tr. by W. S. Merwin; Fully Empowered, tr. by Alastair Reid; Selected Poems, tr. by Ben Belitt.
Paz, Octavio. The Collected Poems; The Labyrinth of Solitude.
Vallejo, César. Selected Poems, tr. by H. R. Hays; Spain, Take This Cup from Me.
Asturias, Miguel Angel. Men of Maize.
Lima, José Lezama. Paradiso.
Donoso, José. The Obscene Bird of Night.
Cortázar, Julio. Hopskotch; All Fires the Fire, tr. by Suzanne Jill Levine; Blow-up and Other Stories, tr. by Paul Blackburn.
Márquez, Gabriel Garcia. One Hundred Years of Solitude, tr. by Gregory Rabassa; Love in the Time of Cholera, tr. by Edith Grossman.
Llosa, Mario Vargas. The War of the End of the World.
Fuentes, Carlos. A Change of Skin; Terra Nostra.
Andrade, Carlos Drummond de. Travelling in the Family, tr. by Elizabeth Bishop, et al.

The West Indies.
James, C. L. R.. The Black Jacobins; The Future in the Present.
Naipaul, V. S.. A Bend in the River; A House for Mister Biswas.
Walcott, Derek. Collected Poems.
Harris, Wilson. The Guyana Quartet.
Thelwell, Michael. The Harder They Come.
Césaire, Aimé. Collected Poetry.

Africa.
Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart.
Soyinka, Wole. A Dance of the Forest.
Tutuola, Amos. The Palm-Wine Drinkard and His Dead Palm-Wine Tapster in the Dead's Town.
Okigbo, Christopher. Labyrinths, with Path of Thunder.
(Bekederemo), John Pepper Clark. Casualties: Poems.
Armah, Ayi K.. The Beautiful Ones Are Not Yet Born.
Ngugi, Wa Tiong'o. A Grain of Wheat.
Okara, Gabriel. The Fisherman's Invocation.
Gordimer, Nadine. Collected Stories.
Coetzee, J. M.. Foe.
Fugard, Athol. A Lesson from Aloes.
Senghor, Léopold S.. Selected Poems.

India (in English) .
Narayan, R. K.. The Guide.
Rushdie, Salman. Midnight's Children.
Jhabvala, Ruth Prawer. Heat and Dust.

Canada.
Lowry, Malcolm. Under the Volcano.
Davies, Robertson. The Deptford Trilogy; The Rebel Angels.
Munro, Alice. Something I've Been Meaning to Tell You.
Frye, Northrop. Fables of Identity.
Hébert, Anne. Selected Poems.
Macpherson, Jac. Poems Twice Told.
Atwood, Margaret. Surfacing.
Hine, Daryl. Selected Poems.

Australia and New Zealand.
Franklin, Miles (Stella). My Brilliant Career.
Mansfield, Katherine. The Short Stories.
Hope, A. D.. Collected Poems.
White, Patrick. Riders in the Chariot; A Fringe of Leaves; Voss.
Stead, Christina. The Man Who Loved Children.
Wright, Judith. Selected Poems.
Murray, Les A.. The Rabbier's Bounty; Collected Poems.
Kennealy, Thomas. The Playmaker; Schindler's List.
Malouf, David. An Imaginary Life.
Hart, Kevin. Peniel and Other Poems.
Carey, Peter. Oscar and Lucinda; Illywhacker.

The United States.
Robinson, Edwin Arlington. Selected Poems.
Frost, Robert. The Poetry.
Wharton, Edith. Collected Short Stories; The Age of Innocence; Ethan Frome; The House of Mirth; The Custom of the Country.
Cather, Willa. My Antonia; The Professor's House; A Lost Lady.
Stein, Gertrude. Three Lives; The Geographical History of America; The Making of Americans; Tender Buttons.
Stevens, Wallace. Collected Poems; The Necessary Angel; Opus Posthumous; The Palm at the End of the Mind.
Lindsay, Vachel. Collected Poems.
Masters, Edgar Lee. Spoon River Anthology.
Dreiser, Theodore. Sister Carrie; An American Tragedy.
Anderson, Sherwood. Winesberg, Ohio; Death in the Woods and Other Stories.
Lewis, Sinclair. Babbitt; It Can't Happen Here.
Wylie, Elinor. Last Poems.
Williams, William Carlos. Spring and All; Paterson; Collected Poems.
Pound, Ezra. Personae: Collected Poems; The Cantos; Literary Essays.
Jeffers, Robinson. Selected Poems.
Moore, Marianne. Complete Poems.
H.D. (Hilda Doolittle). Selected Poems.
Ransom, John Crowe. Selected Poems.
Eliot, T. S.. The Complete Poems and Plays; Selected Essays.
Porter, Katherine Anne. Collected Stories.
Toomer, Jean. Cane.
Passos, John Dos. U.S.A..
Aiken, Conrad. Collected Poems.
O'Neill, Eugene. Lazarus Laughed; The Iceman Cometh; Long Day's Journey into Night.
cummings, e. e.. Complete Poems.
Wheelwright, John B.. Collected Poems.
Fitzgerald, Robert. Spring Shade: Poems.
Bogan, Louise. The Blue Estuaries: Selected Poems.
Adams, Léonie. Poems: A Selection.
Crane, Hart. Complete Poems; Selected Letters and Prose.
Tate, Allen. Collected Poems.
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. Babylon Revisited and Other Stories; The Great Gatsby; Tender is the Night.
Faulkner, William. As I Lay Dying; Sanctuary; Light in August; Absalom, Absalom!; The Sound and the Fury; The Wild Palms; The Collected Stories; The Hamlet.
Hemingway, Ernest. Complete Short Stories; A Farewell to Arms; The Sun Also Rises; The Garden of Eden.
Steinbeck, John. The Grapes of Wrath.
Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God.
West, Nathanael. Miss Lonelyhearts; A Cool Million; The Day of the Locust.
Wright, Richard. Native Son; Black Boy.
Welty, Eudora. Collected Stories; Delta Wedding; The Robber Bridegroom; The Ponder Heart.
Hughes, Langston. Selected Poems; The Big Sea; I Wonder as I Wander.
Wilson, Edmund. The Shores of Light; Patriotic Gore.
Burke, Kenneth. Counter-statement; A Rhetoric of Motives.
Mitchell, Joseph. Up in the Old Hotel.
Cahan, Abraham. The Rise of David Levinsky.
Boyle, Kay. Three Short Stories.
Glasgow, Ellen. Barren Ground.
Marquand, John P.. H. M. Pulham, Esquire.
O'Hara, John. Collected Stories; Appointment in Samarra.
Roth, Henry. Call It Sleep.
Wilder, Thornton. Three Plays.
Warren, Robert Penn. All the King's Men; World Enough and Time; Selected Poems.
Schwartz, Delmore. Summer Knowledge: Selected Poems.
Kees, Weldon. Collected Poems.
Bishop, Elizabeth. The Complete Poems.
Berryman, John. Collected Poems.
Bowles, Paul. The Sheltering Sky.
Jarrell, Randall. Complete Poems.
Olson, Charles. The Maximus Poems; Collected Poems.
Hayden, Robert. Collected Poems.
Lowell, Robert. Collected Poems.
Roethke, Theodore. Collected Poems; Straw for the Fire.
Agee, James. Permit Me Voyage; Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (with Walker Evans).
Garrigue, Jean. Selected Poems.
Swenson, May. New & Selected Things Taking Place; In Other Words.
Duncan, Robert. Bending the Bow.
Wilbur, Richard . New and Collected Poems.
Eberhart, Richard. Collected Poems.
Tolson, M. B.. Harlem Gallery.
Koch, Kenneth. Seasons on Earth.
O'Hara, Frank. Selected Poems.
Schuyler, James. Collected Poems.
Baldwin, James. The Price of the Ticket.
Bellow, Saul. Seize the Day; The Adventures of Augie March; Herzog.
Cheever, John. The Stories; Bullet Park.
Ellison, Ralph. Invisible Man.
Capote, Truman. In Cold Blood.
McCullers, Carson. The Ballad of the Sad Café; The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter.
O'Connor, Flanner. Complete Stories; The Violent Bear It Away; Wise Blood.
Nabokov, Vladimir. Lolita; Pale Fire.
Vidal, Gore. Myra Brechinridge; Lincoln.
Styron, William. The Long March.
Salinger, J. D.. The Catcher in the Rye; Nine Stories.
Morris, Wright. Ceremony in Lone Tree.
Malamud, Bernard. The Stories; The Fixer.
Mailer, Norman. Advertisements for Myself; The Executioner's Song; Ancient Evenings.
Hawkes, John. The Cannibal; Second Skin.
Gaddis, William. The Recognitions.
Williams, Tennessee. A Glass Menagerie; A Streetcar Named Desire; Summer and Smoke.
Miller, Arthur. Death of a Salesman.
Mayer, Edwin Justus. Children of Darkness.
Brodkey, Harold. Stories in an Almost Classical Mode.
Guin, Ursula K. Le. The Left Hand of Darkness.
Carver, Raymond. Where I'm Calling From.
Coover, Robert. Spanking the Maid.
DeLillo, Don. White Noise; Libra; Running Dog; Mao II.
Crowley, John. Little, Big; Aegypt; Love and Sleep.
Davenport, Guy. Tatlin!.
Dickey, James. The Early Motion; The Central Motion.
Doctorow, E. L.. The Book of Daniel; World's Fair.
Elkin, Stanley. The Living End.
Gass, William. In the Heart of the Heart of the Country; Omensetter's Luck.
Hoban, Russell. Riddley Walker.
Johnson, Denis. Angels; Fiskadoro; Jesus' Son.
McCarthy, Cormac. Blood Meridian; Suttree; Child of God.
Kennedy, William. Ironweed; The Albany Cycle.
Morrison, Toni. Song of Soloman.
Naylor, Gloria. The Women of Brewster Place.
Oates, Joyce Carol. Them.
Percy, Walker. The Moviegoer.
Paley, Grace. The Little Disturbances of Man.
Pynchon, Thomas. V.; The Crying of Lot 49; Gravity's Rainbow.
Ozick, Cynthia. Envy, or Yiddish in America; The Messiah of Stockholm.
Reed, Ishmael. Mumbo Jumbo.
Roth, Philip. Portnoy's Complaint; My Life as a Man; Zuckerman Bound: A Trilogy and Epilogue; The Counterlife; Patrimony; Operation Shylock.
Salter, James. Solo Faces; Light Years.
Stone, Robert. Dog Soldiers; A Flag for Sunrise.
Barth, John. The Floating Opera; The End of the Road; The Sot- Weed Factor.
Abish, Walter. Alphabetical Africa; How German Is It; Eclipse Fever; I am the Dust Under Your Feet.
Barthelme, Donald. Forty Stories; The Dead Father.
Disch, Thomas M.. On Wings of Song.
Theroux, Paul. The Mosquito Coast.
Updike, John. The Witches of Eastwick.
Vonnegut, Kurt. Cat's Cradle.
White, Edmund. Forgetting Elena; Nocturnes for the King of Naples.
McCourt, James. Time Remaining.
Wilcox, James. Modern Baptists.
Ammons, A. R.. Collected Poems; Selected Longer Poems; Collected Poems; Sphere: The Form of a Motion.
Ashbery, John. The Double Dream of Spring; Houseboat Days; Selected Poems; Flow Chart; Hotel Lautréamont; And the Stars Were Shining.
Mamet, David. American Buffalo; Speed-the-Plow.
Rabe, David. Streamers.
Shepard, Sam. Seven Plays.
Wilson, August. Fences; Joe Turner's Come and Gone.
Hecht, Anthony. Collected Earlier Poems.
Bowers, Edgar. Living Together: New and Selected Poems.
Justice, Donald. Selected Poems.
Merrill, James. From the First Nine.
Merwin, W. S.. The Changing Light at Sandover.
Wright, James. Above the River: The Complete Poems.
Kinnell, Galway. Selected Poems.
Levine, Philip. Selected Poems.
Feldman, Irving. New and Selected Poems.
Hall, Donald. The One Day; Old and New Poems.
Feinman, Alvin. Poems.
Howard, Richard. Untitled Subjects; Findings.
Hollander, John. Reflections on Espionage; Selected Poetry; Tesserae.
Snyder, Gary. No Nature: New and Selected Poems.
Simic, Charles. Selected Poems.
Strand, Mark. Selected Poems; The Continuous Life; Dark Harbor.
Wright, Charles. The World of the Ten Thousand Things.
Wright, Jay. Dimensions of History; The Double Invention of Komo; Selected Poems; Elaine's Book; Boleros.
Clampitt, Amy. Westward.
Grossman, Allen. The Ether Dome and Other Poems: New and Selected.
Moss, Howard. New Selected Poems.
Applewhite, James. River Writing: An Eno Journal.
McClatchy, J. D.. The Rest of the Way.
Cord, Alfred. A Call in the Midst of the Crowd.
Crase, Douglas. The Revisionist.
Dove, Rita. Selected Poems.
Moss, Thylias. Small Congregations: New and Selected Poems.
Hirsch, Edward. Earthly Measures.
Kushner, Tony. Angels in America.

back to Introduction

Copyright and disclaimer © 1999-2002 Tim McCormick





Which of these have you read? I haven't gone through and checked any off yet, but I'll bet there aren't many on this list that I have read. I may surprise myself.

just checkin

Report this post to a moderator | IP: Logged

Registered: Nov 2001
Location: Rio de los Brazos de Dios
Posts: 3876

I have by no means read or possessed all of those books but I've got a good start on them and I would like to reads everyone. I must go over the list and make a list of those I do not have and have not read.,

__________________

[Ignore Sig]

oxsan


Don't kick until yer spurred.

Report this post to a moderator | IP: Logged

Registered: Feb 2003
Location: Harm's Way
Posts: 557

I've read Bloom's THE WESTERN CANON - his list is EXCELLENT but limited in that it only includes works of creative literature --- novels, poetry, plays, etc.

I would use Bloom to supplement more comprehensive lists from HOW TO READ A BOOK by Moritmer Adler & Mark Van Doren, and Clifton Fadiman's LIFETIME READING PLAN --- both of which include essential works in the history of History, Science, Philosophy, Political Theory, Psychology, Sociology, ESSAYS, etc.

Report this post to a moderator | IP: Logged

Registered: Oct 2001
Location:
Posts: 18157

We have both of those books at the farm, I'm certain. I've seen Adler's interviews with Buckley when that book came out. I read his Intro to Aristotle and Ten Philosophical Mistakes. He's very readable.

I personally think that if limited to any three works of literature to understand Western civilization I would cheat a bit and pick the complete corpus of Shakespeare's writings, Durant's 14-volume History of Western Civilization and probably the Bible. I think those three bodies of writing for me best convey the dominant spiritual themes and myths, the history and the expression of the two in art. I would work out from those, of course, and perhaps take a chronological reading of the great books in the way that it is done in, say, St John's Liberal Arts program.

I really think a student is better served following a course of study like that than they are by reading Chinwe Achebe or Arundhati Roy. They read like children's books compared to Thomas Mann or Stendhal or Cicero.

And what happened to requiring Latin in high school? What's wrong with that?

Report this post to a moderator | IP: Logged

Registered: Nov 2001
Location: Rio de los Brazos de Dios
Posts: 3876

Got them both.

__________________

[Ignore Sig]

oxsan


Don't kick until yer spurred.

Report this post to a moderator | IP: Logged

Registered: Oct 2001
Location:
Posts: 18157

Durant's thoughts on the Roman legacy we inherited underpin the importance of understanding the core curriculum of the Western canon. At least, it seems a waste to throw it all away.

quote:

---

It is easier to explain Rome’s fall than to account for her long survival. This is the essential accomplishment of Rome – that having won the Mediterranean world she adopted its culture, gave it order, prosperity, and peace for 200 years, held back the tide of barbarism for two centuries more, and transmitted the classic heritage to the West before she died.

Rome has had no rival in the art of government. The Roman state committed a thousand political crimes; it built its edifice upon a selfish oligarchy and an obscurantist priesthood; it achieved a democracy of freemen, and then destroyed it with corruption and violence; it exploited its conquests to support a parasitic Italy, which, when it could no longer exploit, collapsed. Here and there, in East and West, it created a desert and called it peace. But amid all this evil it formed a majestic system of law which through nearly all Europe gave security to life and property, incentive and continuity to industry, from the Decemvirs to Napoleon. It molded a government of separated legislative and executive powers whose checks and balances inspired the makers of constitutions as late as revolutionary America and France. For a time it united monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy so successfully as to win the applause of philosophers, historians, subjects, and enemies. It gave municipal institutions, and for a long period municipal freedom to half a thousand cities. It administered its Empire at first with greed and cruelty, then with such tolerance and essential justice that the great realm has never again known a like content. It made the desert blossom with civilization, and atoned for its sins with the miracle of a lasting peace. Today our highest labors seek to revive the Pax Romana for a disordered world.

Within that unsurpassed framework Rome built a culture Greek in origin, Roman in application and result. She was too engrossed in government to create as bountifully in the realms of the mind as Greece had done; but she absorbed with appreciation, and preserved with tenacity, the technical, intellectual, and artistic heritage that she had received from Carthage and Egypt, Greece and the East. She made no advance in science, and no mechanical improvements in industry, but she enriched the world with a commerce moving over secure seas, and a network of enduring roads that became the arteries of a lusty life. Along those roads, and over a thousand handsome bridges, there passed to the medieval and modern worlds the ancient techniques of tillage, handicraft, and art, the science of monumental building, the processes of banking and investment, the organization of medicine and military hospitals, the sanitation of cities, and many varieties of fruit and nut trees, of agricultural or ornamental plants, brought from the East to take new root in the West. Even the secret of central heating came from the warm south to the cold north. The south has created the civilizations, the north has conquered and destoyed or borrowed them.

Rome did not invent education, but she developed it on a scale unknown before, gave it state support, and formed the curriculum that persisted till our harassed youth. She did not invent the arch, the vault, or the dome, but she used them with such audacity and magnificence that in some fields her architecture has remained unequaled; and all the elements of the medieval cathedral were prepared in her basilicas. She did not invent the sculptural portrait, but she gave it a realistic power rarely reached by the idealizing Greeks. She did not invent philosophy, but it was in Lucretius and Seneca that Epicureanism and Stoicism found their most finished form. She did not invent the types of literature, not even the satire; but who could adequately record the influence of Cicero on oratory, the essay, and prose style, of Virgil on Dante, Tasso, Milton,… of Livy and Tacitus on the writing of history, of Horace and Juvenal on Dryden , Swift, and Pope?

Her language became, by a most admirable corruption, the speech of Italy, Rumania, France, Spain, Portugal, and Latin America; half the white man’s world speaks a Latin tongue. Latin was, till the eighteenth century, the Esperanto of science, scholarship, and philosophy in the West; it gave a convenient international terminology to botany and zoology; it survives in the sonorous ritual and official documents of the Roman Church; it still writes medical prescriptions, and haunts the phraseology of the law. It entered by direct appropriation, and again through the Romance languages to enhance the wealth and flexibility of English speech. Our Roman heritage works in our lives a thousand times a day.

When Christianity conquered Rome the ecclesiastical structure of the pagan church, the title and vestments of the pontifex maximus, the worship of the Great Mother and a multitude of comforting divinities, the sense of supersensible presences everywhere, the joy or solemnity of old festivals, and the pageantry of immemorial ceremony, passed like maternal blood into the new religion, and captive Rome captured her conqueror. The reins and skills of government were handed down by a dying empire to a virile papacy; the lost power of the broken sword was rewon by the magic of the consoling word; the armies of the state were replaced by the missionaries of the Church moving in all directions along the Roman roads; and the revolted provinces, accepting Christianity, again acknowledged the sovereignty of Rome. Through the long struggles of the Age of Faith the authority of the ancient capital persisted and grew, until in the Renaissance the classic culture seemed to rise from the grave, and the immortal city became once more the center and summit of the world’s life and wealth and art. When, in 1936, Rome celebrated the 2689th anniversary of her foundation, she could look back upon the most impressive continuity of government and civilization in the history of mankind. May she rise again.

---

Report this post to a moderator | IP: Logged

Registered: May 2002
Location:
Posts: 8833

My mother is a fish.

Report this post to a moderator | IP: Logged

Registered: Jul 2000
Location: Sydney
Posts: 2570

And here I am fooling around on the internet.

Report this post to a moderator | IP: Logged