English 30 Reading List


1. Writing about Literature
Chapter 1 and 2 from Heath
Canadian Writer’s Reference on Literary Essay
Sample final exam.
30-1: Emphasis on literary analysis. Evaluating author’s delivery of theme. “How is/isn’t the author successful in achieving a desired effect?”
30-2: Emphasis on developing personal response to theme. “What effect does the writing have on you as reader?”

2a. Hamlet, William Shakespeare
30-1: Emphasis on literary response, image, symbol, subplots, character development , close textual analysis. Ideas developed from independent investigations prompted by class discussion. Close examination of film adaptation.
30-2: Emphasis on personal response to character conflict. Personal response to themes developed in class discussion. Integration of modern film techniques.

2b. Oedipus Rex, Sophocles.
An additional reading recommended for those in 30-1.

3. Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller
30-1: Emphasis on literary analysis. Evaluating author’s delivery of theme. “How is/isn’t the author successful in achieving a desired effect?”
30-2: Emphasis on developing personal response to theme. “What effect does the writing have on you as reader?”

4. Short Stories
30-1: Emphasis on literary analysis. Evaluating author’s delivery of theme. “How is/isn’t the author successful in achieving a desired effect?”
30-2: Emphasis on developing personal response to theme. “What effect does the writing have on you as reader?”

30-1:The Lottery, Shirley Jackson
30-1:The Rocking Horse Winner, D. H. Lawrence
30-1:Young Goodman Brown, Nathaniel Hawthorne
30-1:The Ambitious Guest, Nathaniel Hawthorne
30-1:The Yellow Wall-Paper, Charlotte Perkins
30-1:A Rose for Emily, William Faulkner
30-2:The Cask of Amontillado, Edgar Allan Poe
30-2:The Killers, Ernest Hemingway
30-1:Everything that Rises must Converge, Flannery O’Connor
30-2:The Return of a Private, Hamlin Garland
30-2:To Build a Fire, Jack London
30-1:A Mother’s Tale, James Agee
30-1:The Chrysanthemums, John Steinbeck
30-2:Harrison Bergeron, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
30-2:The Enemy, Pearl S. Puck
30-2:The Bottle Imp, Robert Louis Stevenson
30-2:The Open Boat, Stephen Crane
30-2:A Christmas Memory
30-2:Miriam, Truman Capote
Other stories as distributed in class.

5. Poetry
30-1: Emphasis on literary analysis. Evaluating author’s delivery of theme. “How is/isn’t the author successful in achieving a desired effect?”
30-2: Emphasis on developing personal response to theme. “What effect does the writing have on you as reader?”

Songs of Innocence and Experience, William Blake
Margaret Avison, July Man
Ezra Pound, They Fought in Any Case
Thomas Hardy, The Man He Killed
W.B. Yeats, An Irish Airman Foresees His Death, The Folly of Being Comforted
P.B. Shelley, Ozymandias<
W.H. Auden, The Unknown Citizen
Alden Nowlan, Fly on the Blue Table
Margaret Atwood, The Landlady
A.M. Klein, The Rocking Chair
Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken
Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach
Dylan Thomas, Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night
T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, Journey of the Magi
Al Purdy, The Country North of Belleville

6. Paperback Novels
30-1: Night, Man’s Search for Meaning, The Stone Angel, The Bean Trees, Wild Geese, 1984, Saint Maybe, Quest for a Theory of Everything, The Ash Garden
30-2: Night, 2001 A Space Odyessey, Brave New World, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, The Bean Trees, The Ash Garden

7. Etexts
30-1: Brothers Karamazov, Russian Short Stories, Frankenstein

8. Film
30-1: Dr. Zhivago, Frankenstein,
30-2: Blade Runner, The Terminal, The Shawshank Redemtion