Every English major will take an examination based in 2017 on the following reading list:
Everyman
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet
Johnson, Samuel. The Vanity of Human Wishes, Rasselas
Brontë, Emily. Wuthering Heights
Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Joyce, James. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Stoppard, Tom. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
Morrison, Toni. Song of Solomon
Munro, Alice. Open Secrets
Roy, Arundhati. The God of Small Things
Shakespeare, William. Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?; Sonnet 29: When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eye; Sonnet 30: When to the seasons of sweet silent thought; Sonnet 55: Not marble, nor the gilded monuments; Sonnet 73: That time of year thou mayst in me behold; Sonnet 116: Let me not to the marriage of true minds; Sonnet 129: Th’expense of spirit in a waste of shame; Sonnet 130: My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun; Sonnet 144:Two loves I have of comfort and despair; Sonnet 146: Poor soul the centre of my sinful earth
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. “The Eolian Harp,” “This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison,” “Frost at Midnight,” “The Nightingale,” “Kubla Khan,” “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” “Christabel,” Letter to Sara Hutchinson [the first draft of “Dejection: An Ode”], “Chamouny; the Hour before Sunrise: A Hymn,” “To William Wordsworth”
Dickinson, Emily.* J.241 F.339 “I like a look of Agony”; J.249 F.269 “Wild Nights - Wild Nights!”; J.258 F.320 “There’s a certain Slant of light”; J.280 F.340 “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain”; J.303 F.409 “The Soul selects her own Society”; J.341 F.372 “After great pain, a formal feeling comes”; J.465 F.591 “I heard a Fly buzz - when I died”; J.505 F.348 “I would not paint - a picture”; J.640 F.706 I cannot live with You”; J.709 F.788 “Publication - is the Auction”; J.712 F.479 “Because I could not stop for Death”; J.754 F.764 “My Life has stood - a Loaded Gun”; J.1129 F.1263 “Tell all the Truth but tell it slant”; J.1545 F.1577 “The Bible is an antique Volume”; J.1677 F.1743 “On my volcano grows the Grass”
* “J” refers to the number of the poem in the edition by Thomas H. Johnson; “F,” to the number of the poem in the edition by R. W. Franklin
Since this reading list is short, students can expect that the examination will test their knowledge of each and every work, including the lyric poems.