Great Works of Literature II

A Reader

by Catherine Keohane

Great Works of Literature II invites you to explore texts written by authors around the world from 1650 to the present. This reader collects and links to texts we’ll be exploring this semester. The Manifold platform will also allow us to engage in social annotation, sharing comments, questions, and ideas within the readings.

19th-century illustration of a scene in "The Bookworm", a short story by Pu Songling in Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio

Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Texts available for the final annotation assignment

“Our Casuarina-tree” by Toru Dutt (1899)

“A Nocturnal Reverie” by Anne Finch (1713)

“To One who has been Long in City Pent” by John Keats (1817)

“To Melancholy. Written on the Banks of the Arun” by Charlotte Smith (1786)

“Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey” by William Wordsworth (1798)

“On Imagination” by Phillis Wheatley (1773)

“The Lady with the Dog” by Anton Chekhov (1899)

“The Young Gentleman Who Couldn’t Spell” by Pu Songling (written by 1679, published 1740)

“Punishment” by Rabindranath Tagore (1893)

Course Readings

Post-Spring Break Readings

For Mon., April 25

“Eva is Inside Her Cat” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1948)

“Happiness” by Jane Kenyon (1995)

For Wed., April 27

“kitchenette building” by Gwendolyn Brooks (1963) and

“Trowbridge Street” by Octavio Paz (written between 1969-1975)

For Mon., May 2

“Extra” by Yiyun Li (2005)

“A Private Experience” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2009)

Past Readings

Cluster 3: Certainties and Uncertainties

“Dead Men’s Path” by Chinua Achebe (1953)

“A Private Experience” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2009)

“The Reed-Choked House” by Ueda Akinari (1776)

“In a Grove” by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa (1921)

“Miracles for Sale” by Tawfiq al-Hakim (1967)

“Happy Endings” by Margaret Atwood (1983)

“kitchenette building” by Gwendolyn Brooks (1963)

“The Lady with the Dog” by Anton Chekhov (1899)

“The Secret” by Choi Eunyoung (2021)

“Eva is Inside Her Cat” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1948)

“Happiness” by Jane Kenyon (1995)

“Extra” by Yiyun Li (2005)

“Horror Story” by Carmen Maria Machado (2015)

“Trowbridge Street” by Octavio Paz (written between 1969-1975)

“The Young Gentleman Who Couldn’t Spell” by Pu Songling (written by 1679, published 1740)

“Punishment” by Rabindranath Tagore (1893)

Cluster 2: Self and Society

“Female 2000” by Souad Al-Mubarak Al-Sabah (2010)

“The Cat” by Layla Ba’labakki (c. 1963)

The Convent of Pleasure by Margaret Cavendish (1668))

“You Foolish Men” by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz

“Daughters in Boxes” by Kitshida Toshiko (1883)

“The Walk” by Kamila Shamsie (2020). Alternative source

The Song of Ch’un-Hyang (excerpt) (18th century)

“On Imagination” by Phillis Wheatley (1773)

“The New Dress” by Virginia Woolf (1927)

Cluster 1: Nature and National Parks

"Secretly I walk to the park" by Oral Arukenova (2020)

“In My Small Garden” by Rosalía de Castro (1884)

“All Mountains” by H.D. (1931)

“Our Casuarina-tree” by Toru Dutt (1899)

“A Nocturnal Reverie” by Anne Finch (1713)

“A Small Needful Fact” by Ross Gay (2015)

“To One who has been Long in City Pent” by John Keats (1817)

“Los Perdidos del Bosque” by Pablo Neruda (1904-1973)

“To Melancholy. Written on the Banks of the Arun” by Charlotte Smith (1786)

“Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey” by William Wordsworth (1798)

[Rockefeller Archives Center Great Smoky Mountains correspondence and diaries] on Blackboard

[Rockefeller Archives Center National Parks Photos] on Blackboard

Metadata

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    Creative Commons License Great Works of Literature II: A Reader by Catherine Keohane is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. License excludes materials from the Rockefeller Archive Center, used by permission for this reader only
  • publisher place
    New York City
  • rights holder
    Catherine Keohane