What books should every English major undergrad have read?

>All that romantishit
>4 (four!) Dickens novels
>Mark Twain

>telling people to read the turd that is Pericles and such of his lesser works

>All that romantishit
They're the most important poets after Chaucer, Shakespeare, Donne, Milton, and Pope.

>4 (four!) Dickens novels
True, I should have included more.

>Mark Twain
He's great.

Also, are you that same user from the questions thread?

Every English Major undergrad I've met at Uni so far as read none of these in their spare time. Any of the books mentioned have only been read because of assignments.

...

You got 4 years this is just not that hard

Rabbit, Run by John Updike.

Doesn't matter if its hard, what matters is whether its efficient. I'd rather have my students reading Beckett or Williams instead of the fucking Merry Wives of Windsor

Another question so I don't have to make a separate thread:

What would be some good books if I want to influence people psychologically or involving social engineering? That kind of stuff.

...

I'd have tolkien over any of that shit.

Hah. Well done.

But seriously.

I think this is actually quite close.

Here's your (you)

Then read Tolkien, no one is stopping you.

I will, I'll literally smack the book out his hand if I spot him

Id say one or two of fhose works would be taught in undergrad, possibly none

And what books should Philosophy undergrads have read?

Plato: Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo, Republic
Aristotle: Nicomachean Ethics
Descartes: Meditations
Leibniz: Monadology
Locke: Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Hume: Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
Kant: Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics
Kierkegaard: Either/Or
Nietzsche: Beyond Good and Evil

>Locke
>Kierkegaard
>No Hegel

Dude what are you on

Hegel is too hard

Hyperbole

Maybe you could add his History of Philosophy

Hegel is a nonentity. Simple English wikipedia entry understanding of Kant, a fact almost as embarassing as him getting tenure. Commit him to the flames.

Nabokov pls

Wannabe fucking teachers, man.

Cool opinion dude

I am that user and I'm not OP

Sorry if that hurt your feelings dude

Awful list desu

Nah its ok man

The Canterbury Tales, Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, sonnets by Shakespeare, Rape of the Lock, Oxymandias, Pride & Prejudice, Great Expectations, Jan Eyre, Picture of Dorian Gray, Emily Dickinson's poems and Huck Finn were taught in my brother's university.

lol, eight. You've clearly not read much shakespeare

I know.

That's good.

I'd say at least 12. Harold Bloom says 24 are essential.

This is actually a decent list for a freshman introductory class that's historically wide ranging but avoids complex works.

Alright let's go through it thoroughly:

The Tempest,
A Midsummer Night's Dream,
The Merchant of Venice,
Twelfth Night,
The Winter's Tale,
Coriolanus,
Romeo and Juliet,
Titus Andronicus,
JC,
Macbeth,
Hamlet,
King Lear,
Othello,
Richard II,
Henry IV, Part 1,
Richard III
Taming of the Shrew

That's 17, I'd give you a free pass on Titus but I still think it's worth reading. Honestly, if you're an English major, which I wasn't, even the lesser plays are worth reading. All the history plays are fun, Merry Wives of Windsor is great even if just for Falstaff ( fuck you ), and there is absolutely much to be gained from reading all the comedies.

Except As You Like It. Nobody should ever have to read that play or read it voluntarily. Fuck that play. Worst fucking play he's ever written. Fuck that play. Fuck Shakespeare for even having thought of writing that play. Unfortunately it's got some pretty dank language in it:

Sweet are the uses of adversity,
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, 560
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;
And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.
I would not change it.

And the World's a stage line too is pretty good. But other than that fuck As You Like It.

>Honestly, if you're an English major, which I wasn't

Oh it shows

The Dadaist Manifesto (Hugo Ball), Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Friedrich Nietzsche), A, A Novel (Andy Warhol), Selected Poems (W.B Yeats), Crow (Ted Hughes), The Hypnotizer (Michael Rosen), The Constant Gardener (John LeCarre), The Ministry of Fear (Graham Greene), Monsoon (Wilbur Smith), Fire on the Common (T Llew Jones), The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time (Mark Haddon), The Red Room (August Strindberg), The Christiana Bohemia (Hans Jaeger), I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream (Harlan Ellison), Jonathan Livingston Seagull + Illusions (Richard Bach), Dear God This is Anna (Flynn), Still Life With Woodpecker (Tom Robbins), No Longer Human (Osamu Dazai), The Western Fells (A Wainwright), A Road Less Travelled (M Scott Peck)

Some of these weren't even originally in English

damn, fucking SCORCHED me

The Dadaist Manifesto (Hugo Ball), A, A Novel (Andy Warhol), Selected Poems (W.B Yeats), Crow (Ted Hughes), The Hypnotizer (Michael Rosen), The Constant Gardener (John LeCarre), The Ministry of Fear (Graham Greene), Monsoon (Wilbur Smith), The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time (Mark Haddon), I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream (Harlan Ellison), Jonathan Livingston Seagull + Illusions (Richard Bach), Dear God This is Anna (Flynn), Still Life With Woodpecker (Tom Robbins), The Western Fells (A Wainwright), A Road Less Travelled (M Scott Peck)

Thanks, now it's a good list.

>reading plays

What books should every Masters of English student have read?

this is why english is a joke

little known fact: it was invented as a major for women in the early 20th century, to give them something to do

AMAZING HOW LITTLE THINGS CHANGE, ISN'T IT?

A lot of major 20th century writers studied English though

on the contrary, user, I found to my growing panic that exceedingly few did

You think? Joyce and Beckett both did at least

Pynchon
Joyce
Beckett
DFW
Toni morrison
Cormac mccarthy
Wallace stevens
Alice munro

I randomly thought of those people, and lo and behold they all studied english

Googling, it says that the two studied French, Italian, and English.

A minor distinction? What do you think?

There was a bigger emphasis on learning foreign languages back then, especially French. Overall though its still a lot of literature

You two are both totally right. It's mind blowing to me, I think I was under some spell of cognitive dissonance or something when I denied that people who studied English had ever become good authors. I dunno what it was, but it doesn't matter. Clearly you can do it, and ALL of lits big three studied it (Pynchon, DFW, and Joyce), which is even more impressive.

I've had one year so far, and most of the obligatory works to read are:

>Sidney, Philip; An Apology for Poetry
>Pope, Alexander; An Essay on Criticism
>Shelley, P.B.; A Defence of Poetry
>Wordsworth, William; Preface to Lyrical Ballads
>Emerson, Ralph Waldo; The American Scholar
>Pater, Walter; Preface to 'The Renaissance'
>Poe, Edgar Allan; The Poetic Principle
>Hallam, Arthur Henry; On Some Characteristics of Modern Poetry
>Abrams, M.H.; The Mirror and The Lamp
>Rice, Philip, Waugh, Patricia; Modern Literary Theory,
>Barry, Peter; Beginning Theory. An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory
>Culler, Jonathan; Literary Theory. A Very Short Introduction
>Eagleton, Terry; Literary Theory: An introduction
>Akmajian, Adrian; Demers, Richard A.; Farmer, Ann Kathleen; Harnish, Robert M.;; Linguistics: an Introduction to Language and Communication.
>Fromkin, V. A.; Rodman, R.; Hyams, N.M; An Introduction to Language
>Blake, William; Complete Writings with Variant Readings
>Dickens, Charles; Hard Times
>More, Thomas; Utopia
>Pope, Alexander; The Poems of Alexander Pope
>Shakespeare, William; Macbeth
>Hawthorne, Nathaniel; Young Goodman Brown
>Fitzgerald, F. Scott; The Great Gatsby
>Twain, Mark; "The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County"
>Welty, Eudora; "Where is the voice coming from?"
>Orwell, George; Collected Essays
>Osborne, John; Look back in anger
>Pinter, Harold ; The Homecoming
>Conrad, Joseph, Heart of Darkness
>Hemingway, Ernest; A Farewell to Arms
>Faulkner, William; As I Lay Dying
>Sallinger, J.D.; Catcher in the Rye
>Morrison, Toni; The Bluest Eye
>Kerouac, Jack; On The Road

I blame Hemingway for this

could someone who didnt major in English, but has read the key works, be alright in a masters of english?

Oh yeah definately, fuck if you seen the average student in my graduation class

sydney.edu.au/arts/english/undergrad/index.shtml

scroll down bottom

How to win friends and influence people by Dale Carnegie. It's basically a textbook for social engineering.

The entire Western Canon - including the Bible, Philosophy, and Theology.

>Someone recognizes being wrong after being proven so
This is very pleasant.

To go back on topic, only the giants (Bible, Homer, Milton, Shakespeare, Dante, Montaigne) are absolutely mandatory. But since most students won't even read these, how can one expect them to read Sidney or Webster?

Meh, Carnegie's book is mostly about little advice like remembering people's names and praising them regularly; I found it pretty useless albeit quite a fun read due to al the anecdotes. What really helped me be more convincing was to read treatises of rhetoric (just start with Aristotle or Cicero). Also, writing poetry will really help you see the influence of figures, rhythms, syntax and so on towards the aim of your discourse.