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must reads for World Lit?


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Several Literature Programs offer a World Lit. year -- check the table of contents for ideas.

Lightning Literature: World Lit I -- Africa & Asia
Lightning Literature: World Lit II -- Latin America, Africa & Asia
Excellence in Literature V: World Lit
SMARR: Survey of World Literature
free: Introduction to World Literature course
Teaching Company: History of World Literature

And here are some past threads with great ideas:
World Literature
Help! Need World Literature suggestions
World Literature course?
Help! I need a World Literature anthology, high school level

 Below are more ideas to get you started thinking of what YOU want to cover for World Lit. BEST of luck! Warmly, Lori D.

NOVELS

WESTERN EUROPE
- A Day of Pleasure (Singer) -- Poland
- Around the World in 80 Days (Verne) -- France
- Cyrano Debergerac (Rostand) -- France
- Count of Monte Cristo (Dumas) -- France
- Les Miserables (Hugo) -- France
- The Scarlet Pimpernel (Orczy) -- Hungary
- Don Quixote (Cervantes) -- Spain
- Inferno (Dante) -- Italy
- All Quiet on the Western Front (Remarque) -- Germany
- Faust (Goethe) -- Germany
- My Family and Other Animals (Durrell) -- British family living on a Greek island


RUSSIA
- One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (Solzhenitsyn)
- War and Peace (Tolstoy)
- Crime and Punishment (Dostoyevski)

CHINA
- The Good Earth (Buck)

JAPAN
- The Samurai (Endu)

- AFRICA
- South Africa -- Cry the Beloved Country (Paton)
- Nigeria -- Things Fall Apart (Achebe)

USA (minority viewpoints)
- Their Eyes Were Watching God (Hurston) -- African American woman (U.S., 1930s)
- Black Like Me (Griffith) -- African American / Civil Rights & Deep South era (late 1950s)
- The Chosen (Potok) -- immigrant Jewish sub-culture within 1940s U.S.
- The Joy Luck Club (Tan) -- Chinese immigrant mothers and their first-generation daughters; U.S. 1980s

LATIN AMERICA
- 100 Years of Solitude (Marquez)


SHORT STORIES

EUROPE - France
- The Necklace (de Maupassant)
- The Storm (Verne)

EUROPE - Russia
- How Much Land Does a Man Need (Tolstoy)
- The Inspector (Gogol)

- The Nose (Gogol)
- The Overcoat (Gogol)
- The Grand Inquisitor (Dostoyevski)
- The Queen of Spades

EUROPE - Germany
- Metamorphosis (Kafka)

EUROPE - Poland
- The Cinnamon Shops (Shultz) -- short story collection

LATIN AMERICA - Argentina
- a short story by Jorge Borges

MIX
- Reflections (Hearn) -- Greek-born, Irish-Japanese author

Edited by Lori D.
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I believe both Japanese poetry and Chinese poetry were very influential on 20th century poets so including a collection of their work is a good plan. I do not have a volume of Japanese poetry for you, but I am presently reading: http://www.amazon.com/The-Anchor-Book-Chinese-Poetry/dp/0385721986/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1379366106&sr=8-1&keywords=the+anchor+book+of+chinese+poetry and can recommend it. 

 

While Lori includes Faust I think The Sorrows of Young Werther may have been more influential on English writers and you might wish to consider it. If you do go with Faust, I suggest this edition: http://www.amazon.com/Goethes-Faust-Johann-Wolfgang-Goethe/dp/0385031149/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1379366212&sr=1-2

 

I should say both the two books above include introductory material on translation which I found very helpful not just for the works included but in understanding the translation process. 

 

Lori also does not mention any classical literature which could be included in this category: Iliad, Odyssey, Aeneid as well as various plays and poetry for ancient cultures. 

 

You may wish to consider if you want to cover only modern works, older works, prose, poetry, drama, etc. Most of what Lori has put above is prose and hence part of the Modern Period, but you might wish to narrow to only 20th Century OR you might wish to go further back in time and draw a more complete picture of world lit. I don't know. 

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On 9/16/2013 at 2:21 PM, Candid said:

Lori also does not mention any classical literature which could be included in this category: Iliad, Odyssey, Aeneid as well as various plays and poetry for ancient cultures. 

Thanks for mentioning that! :) I was assuming a 4-year cycle, which would have included Ancient and Medieval/Renaissance World Literature previously. But not everyone does a chronological History/Lit., and you wouldn't want to miss some of those earlier World Classics! 😄

Also, I wasn't shooting for an exhaustive list -- or even that I thought all of those were "must-reads" -- just a few ideas to start you thinking! 😉

A few more resources I just thought of:
- book lists / authors in The Well Educated Mind
- book lists/ authors and background info in Invitation to the Classics
- Norton Anthology of World Literature -- authors and selections to choose from, with sort introductory articles

Cheers! Lori D.

Edited by Lori D.
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