(no subject)

[proximoception]

Finally found the reading lists for the comprehensive exams, one pre-1700, one post - which are administered to 2nd year PhDs candidates here, not MAs, so I have to retake. Pretty predictable and mostly Norton-based, and mostly bits and bites, like lyrics and essays, but including a surprising number of book length works I haven't read through, falling into three categories:

Ones I feel guilty about: Pride and Prejudice, Gulliver's Travels, Great Expectations, Beloved, maybe More's Utopia

Ones I've avoided because I hate how they start or they don't sound terribly exciting: Joseph Andrews, Moll Flanders, Things Fall Apart, A Vindication of the Rights of Women, Pamela (sigh), Book of Margery Kempe, Lydgate's Fall of Princes, Confessio Amantis, Piers Plowman (doubt many of us will be making it through these three), Oroonoko, The Blazing World

Ones I'm near totally ignorant of: Rushdie's Shame, Middleton's Roaring Girl and Chaste Maid of Cheapside, Lyly's Galathea, Cary's Tragedy of Mariam, The Book of John Mandeville

Two Middleton comedies! When there's only four Shakespeare plays on it.

The sole Canadian entry is Autobiography of Red.

Comments

[canonfire.livejournal.com]

Autobiography of Red is one of my very favorites. Carson's work is what gave me confidence to embrace my voice in my fiction writing.

[proximoception.livejournal.com]

It's amazing what she gets away with - some way she has of building trust and interest.

[nightspore.livejournal.com]

Some of those are pretty great.

Don't you know Middleton is the new Shakespeare? I'm surprised the balance isn't the other way.

You probably know to read Pamela before Joseph Andrews, which parodies it.

[proximoception.livejournal.com]

I'll skip straight to Andrews. I probably remember what I read/skimmed of Pamela much better than many books I actually finished, all preserved in hate fluid.