Reading materials/pointers for 21st Cen Lit

TITLE AUTHOR SYNOPSIS

The Republic
The Communist Manifesto
Common Sense
The Prince
The Wealth of Nations
The Canterbury Tales
Divine Comedy
Shakespearean Sonets
Moby Dick
The Iliad and The Odyssey
Describes the importance of
Plato being “just” in the world and by
being happy.
Reflects an attempt to explain
Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels the goals of communism, as
well as the theory underlying
this movement.
Argues that representational
Thomas Paine government is superior to a
monarchy or other forms of
government based on
aristocracy and heredity.
A short treatise on how to
Niccolo Machiavelli acquire power, create a state,
and keep it.
By allowing individuals to
Adam Smith freely pursue their own self-
interest in a free market, without
government regulation nation
prosper.
A group of pilgrims traveling to
Geoffrey Chaucer Canterbury Cathedral to
compete in a storytelling
contest.
A man is miraculously enabled
Dante Alighieri to undertake an ultra-mundane
journey, which leads him to
visit the souls in Hell,
Purgatory, and Paradise.
Themes include time, love,
William Shakespeare infidelity, jealousy, beauty, and
morality.
The sole survivor of a lost
Herman Melville whaling ship relates the tale of
his captain’s self-destructive
obsession to hunt the white
whale, Moby Dick.
The Iliad: A story about the
Homer bitter war between the Greeks
and Trojans over the capture of
the Spartan Queen Helen by the
Trojan prince Paris.
 The Odyssey: Tells of the Greek
warrior Odysseus’s adventurous
journey home from the Trojan
war.
Portrays the life of a Spanish
Don Quixote Miguel de Cervantes man who seems to be losing his
mind on his quest to become a
knight.
These are the tales that saved
Arabian Nights Andrew Lang the life of Shahrazad, whose
husband, the King, executed
each of his wives after a single
night of marriage.
Broadly focuses on Napoleon
War and Peace Leo Tolstoy invasion of Russia in 1812.

The story of two slaves, Eliza

Uncle Tom’s Cabin Harriet Beecher Stowe and Tom who both belong to the
same Master.
Faust is unsatisfied with his life
Faust Johann Wolfgang von Goethe as a scholar and becomes
depressed. After an attempt to
take his own life, he calls on the
Devil for further knowledge and
magic powers with which to
indulge all the pleasure and
knowledge of the world.
Tells the story of Anne Frank’s
The Diary of a Young Girl Anne Frank family who live in Frankfurt,
Germany and suddenly have to
go into hiding as a result of
Hilter’s treatment of the Jews in
Europe during the second world
war.
A critique of the pretensions of
Critique of Pure Reason Immanuel Kant pure theoretical reason to attain
metaphysical truths beyond the
ken of applied theoretical
reason.