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Top Ten Books That Would Be on My Syllabus If I Taught...

Happy Top Ten Tuesday!

I think about this a lot because I do teach classes! But instead of my more hum-drum reading lists for English Composition, which you can find here, here are the reading lists for imaginary classes I'd like to teach:


Early Modern British Literature
(Note: would not necessarily teach in this order)

1. King Lear by William Shakespeare



2. Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare



3. Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare



4. Hero and Leander by Christopher Marlowe



5. Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe



6. Comus by John Milton



7. Penshurst and other poems by Ben Jonson



8. Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum by Aemilia Lanyer



9. The Poems of Katherine Philips

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10. Assaulted and Pursued Chastity by Margaret Cavendish



Extras: The Sonnets, selected poems from John Donne, selections from The Jew of Malta and The Duchess of Malfi, selected poems and speeches from Elizabeth I



Utopian and Dystopian Literature
(partially stolen from a class I took in graduate school; I thought more about order here)

1. Utopia by Thomas More



2. The Blazing World by Margaret Cavendish



3. The Giver by Lois Lowry



4. Animal Farm by George Orwell



5. The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin



6. Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy



7. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley



8. Dawn by Octavia Butler



9. The Female Man by Joanna Russ



10. Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler




Extra: "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" by Ursula K. Le Guin, "The Beast Below" episode from Dr. Who, "Sultana's Dream" by Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain

Comments

Maggie said…
I love your dystopia list! I am a big fan of Butler and especially The Parable of the Sower, and it's nice to see her mentioned.
Great list! Though my favorite Shakespeare is Hamlet :)
Shakespeare is hard because really students should take an entire class on just Shakespeare, so I was just picking those that I think were best representative of his interaction with his society and fit best with the other texts in the proposed course.

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