Western Connecticut State University
DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH
COMPREHENSIVE EXAM READING LIST
(Spring 2008-Spring 2009)
1. Chaucer, Geoffrey: Troilus and Criseyde
2. Shakespeare, William: Antony and Cleopatra, Hamlet
3. Milton, John: Paradise Lost, Samson Agonistes
4. Defoe, Daniel: Moll Flanders
5. Wollstonecraft, Mary: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, The Wrongs of Woman: or Maria
6. Samuel Taylor Coleridge: “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” “Kubla Khan,” and “Christabel”
7. Woolf, Virginia: Between the Acts
8. Yeats, William Butler: "Adam's Curse," "The Fisherman," "In Memory of Major Robert Gregory," "A Prayer For My Daughter," "Vacillation,” “Among Schoolchildren," “Under Ben Bulben," "The Circus Animals' Desertion," "Politics"
1. Bradstreet, Anne: “The Prologue,” “The Author to her Book,” “Before the Birth of One of Her Children,” “To My Dear and Loving Husband,” “Here Follows Some Verses upon the Burning of Our House July 10th 1666,” “To My Dear Children”
2. Thoreau, Henry David: Walden, "Civil Disobedience"
3. Douglass, Frederick: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
4. Dickinson, Emily: Numbers 130, 165, 216, 258, 324, 435, 465, 712, 968 and 1624
5. Melville, Herman: Billy Budd, "Bartleby the Scrivener"
6. Faulkner, William: Absalom, Absalom!
CRITICAL THEORY AND GENRE STUDIES
1. Conrad, Joseph: Heart of Darkness
2. Ralph Ellison: Invisible Man
3. Hardy, Thomas: Jude the Obscure
4. Shaw, George Bernard: Major Barbara
5. Frost, Robert: “Mending Wall,” “Home Burial,” “Design,” “Directive,” “For Once Then, Something,” “The Witch of Coos,” “Out Out,” “Once by the Pacific,” “Birches” “West Running Brook”
(The following material is for those students who are taking the M.A. in TESOL option. Students who are earning the M.A. in TESOL will be tested on the following texts. They will, however, have the option of skipping one of the previous three literary components on the exam, since they will be taking the TESOL section.)