Ph.D. Reading List for Literary Theory and Criticism

All lists must include at least twenty of the works below. The GSC will consider alternative texts from the same historical periods. In addition, the list must contain approximately twenty works from the twentieth century, chosen so as to include a reasonable distribution of texts that address at least three important areas of recent criticism.

Plato, Symposium, "Phaedrus,""Ion," Republic (Bks. 2,3,10)
Aristotle,"Rhetoric,""Poetics"
Horace,"The Art of Poetry"
Longinus, "On the Sublime"
Boethius, "The Consolation of Philosophy"
St. Augustine, "De Ordine," "De Musica"
Dante Alighieri, "Letter to Can Grande della Scala"
Leonardo da Vinci, "Notebooks" (selections)
Marsilio Ficino Commentary on Plato's Symposium
Sir Philip Sidney, "An Apologie for Poetrie"
Nicholas Boileau, "The Art of Poetry"
Alexander Pope, "An Essay on Criticism"
Samuel Johnson, Preface to Shakespeare, "Rasselas" (Bk. 10)
Giambattista Vico, "The New Science" (Bks. 1-3)
Gotthold Lessing, Laocoön (Chs.2,3,16)
Jean-Jacques Rousseau,"Essay on the Origin of Language"
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgement (Bks. 2,3)
G.W.F. Hegel, Introduction to The Philosophy of Fine Art
William Wordsworth, Preface to Lyrical Ballads
Samuel T. Coleridge, "Biographia Literaria" (Chs. 7,14,15,17,18)
Percy B. Shelley, "Defense of Poetry"
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music, "On Truth and Lies in Their Non-Moral Sense"
David Hume, "Of the Standard of Taste"
Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Inquiry...
Matthew Arnold, Science and Poetry, Culture and Anarchy, "The Function of Criticism at the Present Time"
Oscar Wilde, "The Critic as Artist"
Stéphane Mallarmé,"Crise de vers"
Marcel Proust, "Contre Sainte-Beuve"

Please note:

All titles and spelling must be correct. The GSC will not consider any list with more than 5 errors.

Sample Lists

Sample 1 | Sample 2 | Sample 3