Suggested Reading Lists:
In This Section:
- I. TESOL and Linguistics
- II. Critical Theory
- III. Form and Theory of Poetry and Prose
- IV. Rhetoric and Composition
- V. Technical and Professional Writing
- VI. British Literature, Before 1798
- VII. British Literature, After and Including 1798
- VIII. American Literature, Before 1900
- IX. American Literature, After and Including 1900
- X. Children’s and Young Adult Literature
I. TESOL and Linguistics
No changes from the 1996 list. Students may petition to write their own lists.
Students should be familiar with the contents of books listed below, in addition to texts studied in courses.
Bloomfield. Language
Chomsky. Aspects of a Theory of Syntax
Comrie. Language Universals and Linguistic Typology
Foss and Hakes. Psycholinguistics
Jeffers and Lehiste. Principles and Methods for Historical Linguistics
Ladefoged. A Course In Phonetics
Lightfoot. The Language Lottery; Toward a Biology of Grammars
Lyons. Introduction to Theoretical Linguistics
Matthews. Morphology
Newmeyer. Linguistic Theory in America
Palmer. Semantics
Petyt. The Study of Dialect
Sapir. Language
Saussure de. Course in General Linguistics
Strang. A History of English
Villiers, P. and J. de. Early Language
Wolfram and Fasold. The Study of Social Dialects of American English
Students should be familiar with the contents of books listed, in addition to texts studied in courses.
Second Language Acquisition
Brown. Principles of Language Learning and Language Teaching, 2nd ed.
Ellis. Understanding second Language Acquisition
Fishman. Reversing Language Shift
Grosjean. Life with Two Languages
Newmeyer. Linguistic Theory in America
____. The Politics of Linguistics
TESOL Content Areas
Calce-Murcia and Larsen-Freeman. The Grammar Book
Hammerly. An Integrated Theory of Language Teaching and Its Practical Consequences
Hughes. Testing for Language Teachers
McCarthy, M. Discourse Analysis for Language Teachers
Rivers. Speaking in Many Tongues: Essays in Foreign Language Teaching
Rutherford and Sharwood Smith. Grammar and Second Language Teaching
II. Critical Theory
This list has changed from the 1996 list. Students are responsible for the following list of classic texts and then for compiling a list of 20th Century literary theorists.
Plato. Republic Book 10, Ion
Aristotle. Poetics
Horace. The Art of Poetry
Longinus. On the Sublime
Sidney. Defence of Poesie
Dryden. Essay of Dramatic Poesie
Johnson. Preface to Shakespeare, “Life of Cowley,” Rasselas Chap.10
Wordsworth. Preface to Lyrical Ballads
Coleridge. Lectures on Shakespeare, Biographia Literaria XIII–XVII
Shelley. A Defence of Poetry
Keats. Letters to Bailey 22 Nov 1817, to brothers 22 Dec 1817, to Reynolds
19 Feb 1818, to Woodhouse 27 Oct 1818
Poe. “Philosophy of Composition,” “The Poetic Principle”
Emerson. “The Poet”
Arnold. “The Function of Criticism at the Present Time”
James “The Art of Fiction”
Eliot, T. S. “Tradition and the Individual Talent”
The essays listed above can be found in many anthologies of literary criticism, including:
Bate, W. J. Criticism: The Major Texts
Kaplan. Criticism: The Major Statements
Richter. The Critical Tradition:Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends
Smith and Parks. The Great Critics: An Anthology of Literary Criticism
III. Form and Theory of Poetry and Prose
No change from 1996 list. Students may petition to write their own lists.
Students should be familiar with the contents of books and articles listed below, in addition to texts studied, in courses.
Poetry
Fussell. Poetic Meter and Poetic Form
Holden. Style and Authenticity in Postmodern Poetry
Ostriker. Stealing the Language: The Emergence of Women’s Poetry in America
Perkins. A History of Modern Poetry: From the 1890s to the High Modernist Mode (Vol.1) — History of Modern Poetry: Modernism and After (Vol.2)
Pinsky. Poetry and the Word, esp. Part 1: “Poetry and the World,” “Poetry and Pleasure,” and “Responsibilities of the Poet”; Part II, “American Poetry and American Life”
Shapiro. “The New Formalism.” Critical Inquiry 14 (1987): 200–213.
Vendler. Introduction, The Harvard Book of Contemporary American Poetry
Williams. Patterns of Poetry
Fiction
Booth. The Rhetoric of Fiction
Forster. Aspects of the Novel
Gardner. The Art of Fiction
Halperin, ed. The Theory of the Novel: New Essays
Among secondary works in the theory of fiction, the following are particularly useful:
De Man. Allegories of Reading
Edel. The Future of the Novel: Essays on the Art of Fiction
Fiedler. Love and Death in the American Novel
James. The Art of the Novel
Lubbock. The Craft of Fiction
Lucacs. The Theory of the Novel
Miller. Narrative and Its Discontents: Problems of Closure in the Traditional Novel
Robbe-Grillet. For a New Novel: Essays on Fiction
Spilka. Towards a Poetics of Fiction
Todorov. The Poetics of Prose
Torgovnick. Closure in the Novel
Watt. The Rise of the Novel
IV. Rhetoric and Composition
This list has changed since 1996. Students may petition to make further changes.
M.A. in Writing students are reminded that their exams are tied directly to courses in the core and track areas, and that they should consult with M. A. in Writing Faculty in preparing for exams.
Classical Rhetoric
Bizzell and Herzberg, eds. The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from Classical Times to the Present
Please Note: Students are expected to know about classical rhetoric and its possible applications to the teaching of composition; students should read Aristotle carefully and be familiar with works by Plato, Cicero, Quintilian, Ramus, Campbell, Perelman, and Toulmin.
Kennedy, G. Classical Rhetoric and Its Christian and Secular Tradition from Ancient to Modern Times
Murphy, J. A Synoptic History of Classical Rhetoric
Discourse Theory
Crusius, T. Discourse: A Critique and Synthesis of Major Theories (Crusius provides an introduction and critique of theories developed by Kinneavy, Moffett, and D’Angelo)
Composition Theory
Bartholomae D. “Inventing the University.” In When a Writer Can’t Write, ed. Rose; 134–65
Berlin, J. “Contemporary Composition: The Major Pedagogical Theories.” College English 44 (1982): 765–777 (Berlin updated this taxonomy of composition theory from a Marxist perspective in “Rhetoric and Ideology in the Writing Classroom,” College English 50 (1988): 477–94. North presents an alternate taxonomy in his Making of Knowledge)
Brooke, R. “Modeling a Writer’s Identity: Reading and Imitation in the Writing Classroom.” College Composition and Communication 39 (1988): 23–41
Ede and Lunsford. “Audience Addressed/Audience Invoked: The Role of Audience in Composition Theory and Pedagogy.” College Composition and Communication 35 (1984): 155–72
Elbow, P. “The Shifting Relationship between Speech and Writing.” College Composition and Communication 36 (1985): 283–303
Flower and Hayes. “A Cognitive Process Theory of Writing.” College Composition and Communication 31 (1981): 365–87
Freire, P. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Trans. Myra Bergman Ramos. NY: Seaview, 1971.
Hartwell, P. “Grammar, Grammars, and the Teaching of Grammar.” College English 47 (1985): 105–27 (read in conjunction with Lazere)
Jensen and DiTiberio. “Personality and Individual Writing Processes.” College Composition & Communication 35 (1984): 285–300 (read in conjunction with Selzer)
Kent, T. “Paralogic Hermeneutics and the Possibilities of Rhetoric.” Rhetoric Review * (1989): 24–42.
Knoblauch and Brannon. Rhetorical Traditions and the Teaching of Writing
Lazere, D. “Back to Basics: A Force for oppression or Liberation?” College English 54 (1992): 7–21 read in conjunction with Hartwell)
Lu, M. “Conflict and Struggle: The Enemies or Preconditions of Basic Writing?” College English 54 (1992): 887–913
Miller, S. “The Feminization of Composition.” The Politics of Writing Instruction. Ed. Richard Bollock and John Trimbur. NH: Boynton/Cook, 1991. 39–54.
North, S. The Making of Knowledge in Composition
Trimbur, J. “Consensus and Difference in Collaborative Learning.” College English 51 (1989): 602–616.
Young, R. “Paradigms and Problems: Needed Research in Rhetorical Invention.” Research on Composing: Points of Departure. Eds. Charles C. Cooper and Lee Odell. Urbana: NCTE, 1978. 29–48.
V. Technical and Professional Writing
Students should be familiar with the contents of books listed, in addition to texts studied in courses.
M. A. in Writing students are reminded that their exams are tied directly to courses in the core and track areas, and that they should consult with M. A. in Writing Faculty in preparing for exams.
Technical Writing Theory
Alred, Oliu, and Brusaw. The Professional Writer
Anderson, P. New Essays in Technical and Scientific Communication
Bazerman, Ch. Shaping Written Knowledge
Corbett, E. Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student, 2nd ed.
Day, R. How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper, 4th ed.
Gross, A. The Rhetoric of Science
Kinneavy, J. A Theory of Discourse
Nelson, Megill, Allan, and McLoskey, eds. The Rhetoric of the Human Sciences
Prelli, L. A Rhetoric of Science
Simons, H. , ed. The Rhetorical Turn
Williams T. Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace, 3rd ed.
Zook, L. Technical Editing
Scientific/Technical Literature
Aristotle. Rhetoric
Bacon. Essays
Darwin. The Origin of the Species
Einstein. Relativity
Gould. The Panda’s Thumb
Hawking. A Brief History of Time
Sagan. Dragons of Eden
Thomas. The Medusa and the Snail
Secondary works in scientific/technical literature include the following:
Brown, R. Prose Styles: Four Primary Types
Kuhn, T. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
Taylor, P. A Short History of Science and Scientific Thought
Document Design
Brockmann, R. Writing Better Computer User Documentation
Felker, D.Guidelines for Document Designers
McKim, R. Experiences in Visual Thinking, 2nd ed.
Tufte, E. Visual Display of Quantitative Information
White, J. Words into Type, 3rd ed.
VI. British Literature, Before 1798
Students should be familiar with the following representative works. Most can be found in the Norton Anthology of English Literature, Volume One.
Beowulf, “The Dream of the Rood”
Chaucer. The Canterbury Tales: General Prologue, Tales of the Knight, Miller, Wife of Bath, Pardoner, Nun’s Priest, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Everyman, The Second Shepherd’s Play
Malory. Morte D’Arthur, esp. the death of Arthur
Middle English Ballads and Lyrics: “Sumer is i-cumen in,” “Sir Patrick Spens,” Alysoun,” “Western Wind,” “Now Sinks the Sun Beneath the Wood,” “I Sing of a Maiden,” “The Cuckoo Song”
Spenser. The Faerie Queen Book I
Shakespeare. Twelfth Night, Hamlet, The Tempest, I Henry IV, Sonnets 18, 29, 30, 73, 129, 146
Marlow. Dr. Faustus
Webster. The Duchess of Malfi
Sidney. Defence of Poesie
Jonson. Volpone, “To Penshurst,” “To the Memory of . . . Shakespeare”
Donne. “The Good Morrow,” “The Canonization,” “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning,” “The Ecstasy,” “Hymn to God My God, in My Sickness,” Holy Sonnets 7, 10, 14
Herrick. “Corinna’s Going a-Maying,” “To the Virgins,” “Upon Julia’s Clothes,” “Delight in Disorder.”
Herbert. “The Collar,” “The Pulley,” “The Altar,” “Easter Wings,” “Jordan (1)”
Marvell. “To His Coy Mistress,” “The Garden,” “An Horatian Ode Upon Cromwell’s Return From Ireland”
Vaughan. “The World”
Milton. “Lycidas,” Areopagitica, Paradise Lost I-III, IX
Dryden. “Mac Flecknoe,” “All for Love,” “Religio Laici,” “To the Pious Memory of . . . Anne Killigrew,” “Song for St. Cecilia’s Day”
Aphra Behn. The Rover, Part I
Defoe. Robinson Crusoe
Congreve. The Way of the World
Swift. Gulliver’s Travels, “A Modest Proposal,” “Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift”
Pope. An Essay of Criticism, An Essay on Man, The Rape of the Lock, Dunciad Book IV
Gay. Beggar’s Opera
Fielding. Joseph Andrews
Johnson. Preface to Shakespeare, “The Vanity of Human Wishes,” Rasselas
Stern. Tristam Shandy
Gray. “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”
Sheridan. The School for Scandal
Goldsmith. “The Deserted Village”
VII. British Literature, After and Including 1798
Students should be familiar with the following works, or others by the same authors. Excepting novels, most can be found in the Norton Anthology of English Literature, Volume Two.
Burns. “Tam O’Shanter,” “To a Mouse,” “Holy Willie’s Prayer”
Blake. Songs of Innocence and Experience, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
Wollstonecraft. A Vindication of the Rights of Women, 2, 4
Wordsworth, W. “Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey,” Preface to Lyrical Ballads, “I Wondered Lonely as a Cloud,” “Composed Upon Westminster Bridge,” “The World is Too Much With Us,” “Ode to Duty,” “Ode: Imitations of Immortality”
Coleridge. “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” “Kubla Khan,” “Cristabel,” “Dejection: An Ode,” Biographia Literaria XIII-XIV
Byron. Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage III, Don Juan I-II
Shelley. “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty,” “Ode to the West Wind,” Prometheus Unbound, A Defence of Poetry
Keats. “On . . . Chapman’s Homer,” “When I Have Fears,” “The Eve of St. Agnes,” “Upon . . . King Lear Once Again,” “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” “Ode to a Nightingale,” “Ode on Melancholy,” “To Autumn”
Austen. Pride and Prejudice
Bronte. Wuthering Heights
Dickens. Great Expectations
Tennyson. “Morte D’Arthur,” “Ulysses,” In Memoriam, A. H. H., “Crossing the Bar”
Browning. “My Last Duchess,” “Fra Lippo Lippi,” “Meeting at Night,” “Parting at Morning”
Arnold. “Dover Beach,” “The Scholar Gypsy,” “Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse,” “Sweetness and Light” (from Culture and Anarchy)
G. Eliot. Middlemarch
Hopkins. “The Windhover,” “God’s Grandeur,” “Pied Beauty,” “Carrion Comfort”
Swinburne. “Hymn to Proserpine”
Hardy. Tess of the D’Urbervilles, “Hap,” “Neutral Tones,” “Channel Firing,” “The Convergence of the Twain”
Wilde. The Importance of Being Earnest, Preface to Dorian Gray
Shaw. Pygmalion
Conrad. Heart of Darkness
Owen. “Dulce et Decorum Est”
Yeats. “The Lake Isle of Innisfree,” “A Dialogue of Self and Soul,” “The Second Coming,” “Among School Children,” “Sailing to Byzantium,” “Leda and the Swan,” “Lapis Lazuli”
Lawrence. “Bavarian Gentians,” “Odor of Chrysanthemums,” “The Horse-Dealer’s Daughter”
Mansfield. “The Daughters of the Late Colonel”
Woolf. Mrs. Dalloway, “Shakespeare’s Sister”* (from A Room of One’s Own)
Joyce. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, “The Dead”
Forster. A Passage to India
Auden. “Musee des Beaux Arts,” “In Memory of W. B. Yeats”
Huxley. Brave New World
Thomas, D. “Fern Hill,” “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night,” “A Refusal to Mourn the Death, By Fire, of a Child in London”
Greene. The Power and the Glory
Larkin. “Church Going,” “High Windows”
Heaney. “Digging,” “Punishment”
VIII. American Literature, Before 1900
This list has changed since 1996, and is designed to be a sample list. In a number of cases, the student should supply titles. Students may certainly petition to write their own lists.
Winthrop.
Bradford
Bradstreet. “The Author to Her Book”
Taylor. Preface to God’s Determinations, “Huswifery”
Edwards. “Personal Narrative,” “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”
Wheatley
Paine
Franklin. Autobiography
Cooper. The Prairie
Poe. “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “The Purloined Letter,” “To Helen,” “The Poetic Principle,” “The Philosophy of Composition”
Emerson. “Nature,” “The American Scholar,” “Self-Reliance”
Douglass
Hawthorne. The Scarlet Letter, “Young Goodman Brown”
Melville. Moby Dick
Thoreau. Walden, “Resistance to Civil Government”
Whitman. “Song of Myself,” “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking,” “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d”
Dickinson. (Johnson edition numbers) 49: “I never lost as much but . . . twice,” 67: “Success is counted sweetest,” 214: “I taste a liquor never brewed,” 241: “I like a look of agony,” 258: “There’s a certain slant of light,” 288. “I’m nobody! Who are you?” 303:* “The soul selects her own society,” 341: “After great pain a formal feeling comes,” 435: “Much madness in divinest Sense,” 441: “This is my letter to the world,” 449: “I died for Beauty—but was scarce,” 465: “I heard a fly buzz, then I died,” 712: “Because I could not stop for Death,” 986: “A narrow fellow in the grass,” 1078: “The Bustle in a House,” 1129: “Tell all the truth but tell it slant,” 1732: “My life closed twice before its close”
Twain. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Innocents Abroad
Howells. The Rise of Silas Lapham
Dreiser. Sister Carrie
DuBois
Washington
Chopin. The Awakening
Crane. The Red Badge of Courage
IX. American Literature, After and Including 1900
This list has changed since 1996. Students may petition to write their own lists.
Students should be familiar with the following works, or others by the same authors. Excepting novels, most can be found in the Norton Anthology of American Literature Volume Two, and the Heritage of American Literature.
James. The Ambassadors
Elliot. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” The Waste Land
Pound. “Hugh Selwyn Mauberley,” “The Seafarer”
H. D. The Walls Do Not Fall 1, 4, 5, 6, 8
Moore, M. “The Fish,” “Poetry”
Frost. “Directive,” “Birches,” “Mending Wall,” “The Road Not Taken,” “Acquainted With the Night,” “Design,” “Desert Places”
Stevens. “Sunday Morning,” “The Idea of Order at Key West,” “Anecdote of the Jar”
Williams, W. C. “Spring and All,” “Danse Russe,” “Tracts”
Fitzgerald. The Great Gatsby
Hemingway. The Sun Also Rises
Faulkner. The Sound and the Fury, Go Down, Moses
Steinbeck. The Grapes of Wrath
Welty. “Delta Wedding,” “Why I Live at the P. O.”
Porter. Noon Wine
McCullers. The Ballad of the Sad Café
Miller. Death of a Salesman
Williams, T. A Streetcar Named Desire
Lowell, R. “The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket,” “Skunk Hour,” “For the Union Dead”
O’Connor. A Good Man is Hard to Find
Bishop, E. “The Fish”
Rich, A. “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers,” “Living in Sin,” “Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law,” “Diving into the Wreck,” “Upper Broadway,” “Grandmothers”
Barth. Lost in the Funhouse
Bellow. Seize the Day
Carver, R. “Cathedral”
Percy. The Moviegoer
Didion. Play It As It Lays
Pynchon. Crying of Lot 49
African-American Authors
Baldwin. Go Tell it on the Mountain
Ellison. Invisible Man
Hurston. Their Eyes Were Watching God
Angelou. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Morrison. Beloved, Sula
Walker, Alice. The Color Purple
Brooks, G. “The Lovers of the Poor,” “The Anniad,” “The Defender Sends Its man to Little Rock”
Hughes. Collected Poems
Bontemps, ed. American Negro Poetry
Naylor, Gloria. Mama Day
Bambara. Gorilla, My Love
Wright. Black Boy
Ethnic-American Authors
Alvarez, Julia. How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents
Cisneros, Sandra. House on Mango Street
Dorris, Michael. Yellow Raft on Blue Water
Erdrich, Louise. Love Medicine
Jen, Gish. Typical American
Kingston, Maxine Hong. Woman Warrior
Momaday, N. Scott. The Way to Rainy Mountain
Tan, Amy. The Joy Luck Club
Yammauchi, Wakako. And the Soul Shall Dance
X. Children’s and Young Adult Literature
Students should be familiar with the following representative works.
Perrault, C. Selections from Tales of Mother Goose (1696)
Grimm, T. and W. Selections from Household Tales (1812)
Carroll, L. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking Glass (1871)
Alcott, L. M. Little Women, Parts 1 and 2 (1865)
MacDonald, At the Back of the North Wind (1871), The Princess and the Goblin (1872)
Twain, M. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876)
Stevenson, R. L. A Child’s Garden of Verses (1888)
Baum, L. F. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900)
Nesbit, S. Five Children and it (1902)
Potter, B. The Tale of Peter Rabbit (1902)
Grahame, K. The Wind in the Willows (1908)
Barrie, J. Peter Pan (1911)
Burnett, P. E. The Secret Garden (1911), A Little Princess (1905)
Tolkein, J. R. R. The Hobbit (1939)
Wilder, L. I. Little House on the Prairie (1941)
White, E. B. Charlotte’s Web (1952)
Pearce, P. Tom’s Midnight Garden (1959)
L’Engle, M. A Wrinkle in Time (1962)
Sendak, M. Where the Wild Things Are (1963)
Fitzhugh, L. Harriet the Spy (1964)
Zindel, P. The Pigman (1968)
Fritz, J. Homesick (1972)
Cormier, R. The Chocolate War (1974)
Taylor, M. Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry (1976)
Paterson, K. Bridge to Terabithia (1977)
Cleary, B. Dear Mr. Henshaw (1983)
Hamilton, V. , ed. The People Could Fly (1985)
Among secondary works in children’s and young adult literature, the following are particularly useful:
Frey, C. H. The Literary Heritage of Childhood: An Appraisal of Children’s Classics in Western Tradition (1987)
Nodelman, P. Touchstone: Reflections on the Best in Children’s Literature, Volume One (1985)
Townsend, J. Written for Children Rev. ed. (1992)
