The Default Library
Paths / Path 36

Literature

How words make worlds: reading closely, the forms stories and poems take, and the literatures of every continent.

For: anyone starting the degree, anyone who reads and wants to read better, anyone who has wondered what English or literature students actually learn.

Shaped by Oxford's English Language and Literature, Harvard's English concentration, Columbia's Literature Humanities core and comparative-literature programmes, widened to the whole world.

9readings
1.8 hoursof reading
3stages
9 reads
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Stage 1

Year 1 · Learning to read

3 readings · 34 min
  1. 01ReadInteractiveQuiz11 min

    Close Reading & Poetry: How a Poem Means

    Reading closely: sound, image, form, and how a poem means.
  2. 02ReadInteractiveQuiz10 min

    Narrative: Who Tells It, and When

    How stories work: plot, voice, time and point of view.
  3. 03ReadInteractiveQuiz13 min

    Epic, Myth & the Ancient Literatures: The First Great Stories

    Gilgamesh, Homer, the Mahabharata, Sundiata: the first great stories.
Stage 2

Year 2 · The great forms

3 readings · 37 min
  1. 04ReadInteractiveQuiz13 min

    Drama & Tragedy: Words Made to Be Done

    Tragedy and comedy from Athens to Kyoto to Lagos.
  2. 05ReadInteractiveQuiz10 min

    The Novel: A Mind You Can Live Inside

    The novel, from Murasaki to Cervantes to Austen.
  3. 06ReadInteractiveQuiz14 min

    Literary Theory & Criticism: The Questions Behind Every Reading

    The schools of criticism and the arguments between them.
Stage 3

Year 3 · The modern world

3 readings · 36 min
  1. 07ReadInteractiveQuiz11 min

    Modern, Postcolonial & Contemporary Literature: Who Gets to Tell It

    Modernism, the postcolonial turn and literature now.
  2. 08ReadInteractiveQuiz12 min

    Translation & World Literature: Who Carries a Book Across

    Translation, and literature as a world system.
  3. 09ReadInteractiveQuiz13 min

    Political Theory: Justice, Power, Legitimacy and Liberty

    The political ideas literature argues with.
When you finish

Terry Eagleton, How to Read Literature; Martin Puchner, The Written World; the textbooks named at the end of each subject. See also the library's 10 Film & Story and 26 Language & Words.

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Start Here: What School Skipped

One evening's reading that covers the things adult life assumes you were taught.