GRE Reading List

4/26/09 2:09 PM

Recommended Reading List for the GRE Subject Test in Literature

The wise are not learned, the learned are not wise. ~~Lao-tse, Tao Te Ching

A growing number of PhD programs are relying more and more upon the GRE as a way to weed out applicants. They know and you know that the GRE is, at its base, a trivia game and what one of my professors referred to as "fun facts." However, with record numbers of students applying every year, the schools are using the GRE to tell them, if nothing else, who can figure things out. This list was compiled by counting the number of times a particular work appeared on six different past tests actually used by the GRE Testing Service, as well as the number of tests it appeared on. Yes, this was legal. I have taken the Subject Test twice, and I can assure you that things will show up that you *never* would have expected. However, if you have most of these works covered and have a good working knowledge in general of authors, trends, genres, and styles, you should do fine. Just don't panic. Use what you know of a period, for example, to extrapolate any names or styles you don't know. You may notice that although the questions are mostly canon, some periods are not equally represented. As a medievalist, I personally find this irritating, but c'est la vie. It all evens out in the end, I think, and it's no less than you should expect. Also, I recommend a good literary dictionary, like Oxford's _Guide to Literary Terms_. They will show up on the GRE and you will be expected to identify within a passage which things are in operation, and not just the easy ones, like alliteration or Petrachan sonnets vs. Shakespearean. Anyway, good luck and enjoy! The first number after the title of the book is the total number of times the work appeared in all of the six tests. The second number is the number of tests out of six that it appeared upon. For example, Milton's Paradise Lost appeared 27 times on five tests. The works are arranged here in order of the number of total questions that appeared on the six tests. Clear? Good. Author Milton, John Chaucer, Geoffrey Shakespeare, William Pope, Alexander Anonymous Swift, Jonathan Paradise Lost Canterbury Tales King Lear The Rape of the Lock Beowulf Gulliver's Travels Title/Work Appeared 27 22 20 17 13 13 # of Tests 5 7 5 5 6 5

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GRE Reading List

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Shakespeare, William Marlowe, Christopher Gray, Thomas Thoreau, Henry David Spenser, Edmund Alighieri, Dante Sophocles Faulkner, William Shakespeare, William Arnold, Matthew Dickens, Charles Swift, Jonathan Shaw, George Bernard Plato Keats, John Shakespeare, William Jonson, Ben Homer Fielding, Henry Tennyson, Alfred Lord

The Tempest Doctor Faustus Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard Walden The Faerie Queene The Divine Comedy Oedipus Rex The Sound and the Fury MacBeth Dover Beach Great Expectations A Modest Proposal Arms and the Man The Republic Ode on a Grecian Urn Othello Volpone The Iliad Tom Jones Ulysses

13 12 11 11 11 10 10 10 10 9 9 9 8 8 8 8 8 8 7 7

5 5 4 5 3 3 4 4 3 5 3 3 5 5 4 4 4 1 5 4

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Joyce, James Congreve, William Bronte, Emily Dryden, John Fitzgerald, F. Scott Shakespeare, William Forster, E.M. Milton, John Homer Johnson, Samuel Byron, George Lord Milton, John Pope, Alexander Anonymous Hardy, Thomas Wordsworth, William Shelley, Percy Bysshe Richardson, Samuel Sheridan Sterne, Laurance

Ulysses The Way of the World Wuthering Heights All for Love The Great Gatsby Hamlet Howard's End Lycidas The Odyssey The Preface to Shakespeare Don Juan Comus An Essay on Criticism Everyman Jude the Obscure Lyrical Ballads Ozymandius Pamela The Rivals Tristram Shandy

7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6

4 4 4 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 2 4 4 5 4 4 4 4 4 4

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Tolstoy, Leo Eliot, T.S. Shakespeare, William Shakespeare, William Johnson, Samuel Amis, Kingsley Melville, Herman Malory, Sir Thomas Johnson, Samuel Dickens, Charles Shelley, Percy Bysshe Forster, E.M. Aristotle Goldsmith, Oliver Anonymous Eliot, T.S. Chaucer, Geoffrey Thackerey, William Spenser, Edmund Shakespeare, William

War and Peace The Waste Land Henry IV, Part 1 As You Like It History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia Lucky Jim Moby Dick Le Morte D'Arthur The Vanity of Human Wishes Hard Times Ode to the West Wind A Passage to India The Poetics She Stoops to Conquer Sir Gawain and the Green Knight Tradition and the Individual Talent Troilus and Criseyde Vanity Fair The Shepheardes Calender Romeo and Juliet

6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5

4 4 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 2 5 4 4 4 4 3 3 3 3 3

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Faulkner, William Spenser, Edmund Coleridge, S.T. Dostoevsky Dickens, Charles Thomas, Dylan Webster, John Pope, Alexander Steinbeck, John Hemingway, Ernest Johnson, Samuel Etherege, Sir George Browning, Robert Eliot, T.S. Tennyson, Alfred Lord Eliot, T.S. Flaubert, Gustave Cervantes Joyce, James Austen, Jane

A Rose for Emily Amoretti Biographica Literaria Crime and Punishment David Copperfield Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night The Duchess of Malfi An Essay on Man The Grapes of Wrath Hills Like White Elephants Life of Cowley The Man of Mode My Last Duchess Journey of the Magi In Memoriam A.H.H. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock Madame Bovary Don Quixote Dubliners Emma

5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 4 4 4 4 4 4

3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 2 2 2 2 2 1 4 4 4 4 3 3

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Shaw, George Bernard Eliot, George Melville, Herman Huxley, Aldous Milton, John Wilde, Oscar Moliere Boswell, James O'Neill, Eugene Edwards, Jonathan Butler, Samuel Wright, Richard Sophocles Conrad, Joseph Anonymous Hawthorne, Nathanial Orwell, George Woolf, Virginia Wycherley, William Wilde, Oscar

Major Barbara Adam Bede Bartleby the Scrivener Brave New World Samson Agonistes The Importance of Being Earnest Tartuffe The Life of Samuel Johnson Mourning Becomes Electra Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God The Way of All Flesh Native Son Antigone Heart of Darkness Sir Patrick Spens The Scarlet Letter Shooting an Elephant To the Lighthouse The Country Wife The Critic as Artist

4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4

3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2

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Swift, Jonathan Frost, Robert Villon, Francois/Rossetti Mill, J.S. Marlowe, Christopher Wilde, Oscar Shakespeare, William Fielding, Henry Defoe, Daniel Twain, Mark Bruegel Plath, Sylvia Raleigh, Sir Walter Keats, John Dickenson, Emily Holmes, Oliver Wendell The Venerable Bede Virgil Burney, Fanny Thomas, Dylan

A Description of a City Shower Design The Ballad of the Dead Ladies On Liberty The Passionate Shepherd to His Love The Picture of Dorian Gray Richard II Joseph Andrews Moll Flanders Huckleberry Finn Icarus (painting) The Mirror The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd Ode on Melancholy If I Could Stop The Chambered Nautilus Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum The Aeneid Evelina Fern Hill

4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 3 3 3

2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 3 3 3

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Keats, John Milton, John Voltaire Heller, Joseph Miller, Arthur Joyce, James Boccaccio Tolstoy, Leo Dickens, Charles Godwin, William Miller, Arthur Meredith, George Finch, Anne Burns, Robert Paine, Thomas Mencken, H.L. Donne, John Fleming, William Raleigh, Sir Walter Wilde, Oscar

Endymion Areopagitica Candide Catch .22 The Crucible The Dead Decameron Anna Karenina Bleak House Caleb Williams All My Sons The Egoist Adam Pos'd Ae Fond Kiss The Age of Reason The American Language An Anatomy of the World Arts and Ideas The Author's Epitaph, Made by Himself The Ballad of Reading Gaol

3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3

3 3 3 3 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

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GRE Reading List

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Browning, Robert Cooper, James Fenimore Sidney, Sir Philip Yeats, William Butler Stevenson, Robert Louis

The Bishop Orders His Tomb The Deerslayer The Defense of Poesy The Dolls Dr. Jekyll

3 3 3 3 3

1 1 1 1 1

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