Sul Ross State University
A Member of the Texas State University System

Reading List for M.A. Exam

British Literature

1. Beowulf
2. Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales:  "General Prologue," "Miller's Tale," Pardoner's Tale," "Wife of Bath's Tale"
3. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
4. Everyman
5. Sir Thomas Malory, Morte D'Arthur (The Death of Arthur)
6. Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queen (Book I; Book II, Canto Book III, Canto 1)
7. Christopher Marlowe, The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Dr. Faustus
8. William Shakespeare, Sonnets, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Measure for Measure, As You Like It, Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, Macbeth,   The Tempest
9. John Donne, "Go and catch a falling star," "The Canonization" "The Flea," "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning," The Sun Rising"
10. John Milton, Paradise Lost, "Lycidas"
11. Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels, "A Modest Proposal"
12. Alexander Pope, Essay on Criticism, The Rape of the Lock
13. Robert Burns, "Tam O'Shanter," "Green Grow the Rushes," "Willie Brewed a Peck O'Maut"
14. William Blake, "The Lamb," "The Chimney Sweeper," "The Tyger," "London"
15. William Wordsworth, "Tintern Abbey," "Ode: Intimations of Immortality," "She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways," "Composed on Westminster Bridge"
16. Samuel Coleridge, "Christabel," "Dejection: An Ode," "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," "Kubla Khan"
17. Percy B. Shelley, "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty," "Ode to the West Wind"
18. George Gordon, Lord Byron, Don Juan (Canto I)
19. John Keats, "Ode to a Nightingale," "To Autumn," "Ode on a Grecian Urn," "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer"
20. Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "Ulysses," "In Memorium A.H.H." "Tithonus," "Lady of Shalott"
21. Robert Browning, "Fra Lippo Lippi," "Andrea del Sarto," "My Last Duchess," "The Bishop Orders His Tomb"
22. Matthew Arnold, "Dover Beach"
23. Jane Austen, Emma
24. Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights
25. Charles Dickens, Bleak House
26. Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre
27. George Eliot, Middlemarch
28. Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd
29. Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
30. William Butler Yeats, "Sailing to Byzantium," "Leda and the Swan," "The Second Coming"
31. E.M. Forster, A Passage to India
32. Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
33. James Joyce, Dubliners
34. Dylan Thomas, "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night," "And Death Shall Have No Dominion"
35. John Fowles, The French Lieutenant's Woman
36. Julian Barnes, Flaubert's Parrot
37. Seamus Heaney, "Digging," "Punishment," "Postscript"
38. Ted Hughes, "Pike," "The Thought-Fox"
39. A.S. Byatt, Possession