MFA Master Reading List
NARRATIVE
Wichita State University
Pre-Eighteenth Century
Apuleus
Boccaccio
Bunyan
Chaucer
Cervantes
Dante
Homer
Hebrew Bible
New Testament
Malory
Mendoza
Milton
More
Murasaki
Nashe
Ovid
Rabelais
Wu
The Golden Ass
The Decameron
Pilgrim's Progress
Canterbury Tales
Don Quixote
The Divine Comedy
The Odyssey; The Iliad
Genesis; Job; Ecclesiastes; Psalms; Daniel; Lamentations; Proverbs
(King James Version) The Gospels; Acts; Revelation
final two books
The Life and Adventures of Lazarillo De Tormes
Paradise Lost
Utopia
The Tale of the Genji
The Unfortunate Traveller
Metamorphoses
Beowulf
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Gargantua and Pantagruel
Monkey
Eighteenth-Century British
Burney
Defoe
Fielding
Godwin
Pope
Radcliffe
Richardson
Smollett
Sterne
Swift
Walpole
Evelina
Robinson Crusoe; Moll Flanders
Joseph Andrews; Tom Jones
Caleb Williams
The Rape of the Lock; The Dunciad
The Mysteries of Udolpho
Pamela; Clarissa
The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker
Tristram Shandy
Gulliver's Travels
The Castle of Otranto
Nineteenth-Century British
Austen
Brontë, Emily
Brontë, Charlotte
Collins
Dickens
Eliot
Hardy
Meredith
Thackeray
Scott
Shelley
Fall 2001
Pride and Prejudice; Emma
Wuthering Heights
Jane Eyre
The Moonstone
Great Expectations; Bleak House
Middlemarch
The Mayor of Casterbridge; Jude the Obscure; Tess of the D'Urbervilles
The Egoist
Vanity Fair
Heart of Midlothian; Old Mortality
Frankenstein
WSU
1
American Pre-Twentieth Century
Cooper
Chopin
Crane
Douglass
Hawthorne
Howells
Melville
Poe
Stowe
Thoreau
Twain
The Prairie
The Awakening; “The Storm”; Selected Stories
The Red Badge of Courage; Maggie, Girl of the Streets; Selected Stories
Narrative of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave
The Scarlet Letter; The House of the Seven Gables; Selected Stories
The Rise of Silas Lapham
Moby Dick; Billy Budd; Foretopman
selected stories
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Walden
Huckleberry Finn
Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century European (excluding British)
Babel
Balzac
Bulkagov
Camus
Celine
Chekhov
Dinesen
Duras
Dostoevsky
Flaubert
Gide
Goethe
Hamsun
Kafka
Malraux
Mann
Maupassant
Musil
Proust
Remarque
Sartre
Schwartz-Bart
Stendahl
Tolstoy
Turgenev
Zola
Zweig
Stories
Old Goriot
The Master and Margherita
The Stranger; The Plague
Journey into the End of the Night
Anton Chekhov's Short Stories, New York, 1979
Out of Africa
The Lover
The Idiot; The Possessed; Brothers Karamazov; Crime and Punishment
Madame Bovary; Sentimental Education
The Immoralist
The Sorrows of Young Werther
Growth of the Soil; Wanderers; Hunger
The Trial; Collected Stories
Man's Fate
The Magic Mountain; Death in Venice; Doctor Faustus
Selected Stories
The Man without Qualities
Swann's Way
All Quiet On The Western Front
Nausea
The Last of the Just
The Red and the Black
Anna Karenina; War and Peace; “The Death of Ivan Ilyich”
Fathers and Sons; Selected Stories
Nana; Germinal
The Case of Sergeant Grisha
Modern British
Beckett
Bowen
Conrad
Ford
Forster
Joyce
Lawrence
Lessing
Fall 2001
Murphy; Watt
The Heat of the Day; Selected Stories
Lord Jim; The Heart of Darkness
The Good Soldier; Parade’s End
Passage to India; A Room With a View
Ulysses; Dubliners; Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Sons and Lovers; Women in Love; The Rainbow; Collected Stories
The Summer Before the Dark; The Golden Notebook
WSU
2
Gissing
Green
Greene
Huxley
Mansfield
Powys
Woolf
The Odd Woman
Loving
The Heart of The Matter; A Burnt-Out Case; The Comedians; Brighton Rock
Point Counter Point
selected stories
Wolf Solent
To the Lighthouse; Mrs. Dalloway
Modern American
Algren
Anderson
Abbey
Agee
Bellow
Baldwin
Barth
Barthelme
Brown
Burrows
Capote
Cather
Clark
Doctorow
Donato
Dos Passos
Dreiser
Du Bois
Elkin
Ellison
Farrell
Gass
Heller
Hemingway
Himes
Hughes
Hurston
Fitzgerald
Faulkner
Hammet, Dashiell
James
Jewett
Johnson
Jones
Kerouac
Lee
Lewis
McCullers
Mailer
Malamud
Maxwell
Nabokov
Fall 2001
Never Come Morning; The Neon Wilderness
Winesburg, Ohio;
Desert Solitaire
A Death in the Family
Herzog; Henderson The Rain King
Sonny’s Blues; Go Tell It On The Mountain
Lost in the Funhouse; The Floating Opera; The End of the World; Giles GoatBoy
Collected Stories
Manchild in the Promised Land
Naked Lunch; Junky
In Cold Blood
My Antonia; Death Comes for the Archbishop; A Lost Lady; The Professor’s
House
The Ox-Bow Incident
Loon Lake
Christ in Concrete
Three Soldiers; U.S.A.
Sister Carrie; An American Tragedy
Souls of Black Folk
Criers and Kibitzers; Kibitzers and Criers; The Living End
Invisible Man
Studs Lonigan
In the Heart of the Heart of the Country
Catch-22
The Sun Also Rises; A Moveable Feast; Collected Stories
If He Hollers Let Him Go
Simple Stories
Their Eyes Were Watching God
The Great Gatsby; Tender Is the Night; Collected Stories
The Sound and the Fury; Go Down Moses; Light in August; Absalom,
Absalom!; As I Lay Dying
The Thin Man; The Maltese Falcon
Portrait of a Lady; The Golden Bowl; The Ambassadors; selected stories
The Country of the Pointed Firs
Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man
From Here to Eternity
On The Road
To Kill a Mockingbird
Babbit
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
The Naked and the Dead; An American Dream
The Magic Barrel; The Fixer
Time Will Darken It
Pale Fire; Lolita
WSU
3
Norris
O'Connor, Flannery
O’Connor, Frank
Percy
Porter
Roth, Henry
Roth, Philip
Salinger
Schulberg
Selby
Stein
Steinbeck
Styron
Taylor
Toomer
Updike
Warren
Welty
West
Wharton
Williams, W.C.
Wolfe
Wright
X
Yates
McTeague
Complete Stories; Wise Blood
Collected Stories
The Movie Goer, Love In the Ruins
Pale Horse; Pale Rider; “Flowering Judas”
Call It Sleep
Goodbye Columbus
Nine Stories
Some Faces in the Crowd
Last Exit To Brooklyn
Three Lives
The Grapes of Wrath
Lie Down in Darkness; Sophie’s Choice
The Old Forest and Other Stories
Cane
Rabbit novels; selected stories
All The King’s Men
Stories; The Optimist’s Daughter
The Day of the Locust; Miss Lonelyhearts
The Age of Innocence; The House of Mirth
stories
Look Homeward, Angel
Black Boy; Native Son
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Revolutionary Road; Eleven Kinds of Loneliness
Post-Modern: In Translation
Abe, Kobo
Achebe, Chinua
Boll, Heinrich
Borges, Jorge
Calvino, Italo
Eco, Emberto
Fuentes, Carlos
Grass, Gunter
Katzanzakis, Nikos
Kundera, Milan
Marquez, Gabriel Garcia
Mishima, Yukio
Simon, Claude
Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr
Tanizaki, Junichiro
The Woman in the Dunes
Arrow of God; Things Fall Apart
Group Portrait with Lady
Labyrinths
Cosmicomic; Invisible Cities
The Name of the Rose
The Death of Artemio Cruz
The Tin Drum
The Last Temptation of Christ
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting; The Unbearable Lightness of Being
One Hundred Years of Solitude; Chronicle of a Death Foretold; Collected
Stories
The Temple of the Golden Pavilion
Conducting Bodies
The First Circle
Thousand Cranes
Post-Modern: In English
Alexie, Sherman
Atwood, Margaret
Banks, Russell
Betts, Doris
Beattie, Ann
Boyle, T. Coraghessan
Busch, Frederick
Fall 2001
The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven; Indian Killer
The Handmaid’s Tale
Affliction; Continental Drift; The Sweet Hereafter
The Astronomer; Heading West, Beasts of the Southern Wild; Souls Raised from
the Dead
The Burning House; Falling In Place
The Road to Wellville; selected stories
Girls
WSU
4
Byatt, A. S.
Canin, Ethan
Carver, Raymond
Casey, John
Chabon, Michael
Cheever, John
Coetzee, J. M.
Connell, Evan S.
Curley, Daniel
Davies, Robertson
Delilo, Don
Desai, Anita
Didion, Joan
Dillard, Annie
Dubus, Andre
Doctorow, E.L.
Erdrich, Louise
Ford, Richard
Fowles, John
Gardner, John
Gardner, Leonard
Gilchrist, Ellen
Gordimer, Nadine
Hansen, Ron
Haruf, Kent
Irving, John
Jen, Gish
Jong, Erica
Kagawa, Joy
Karr, Mary
Kincaid, Jamaica
Kingsolver, Barbara
Kingston, Maxine
Laurence, Margaret
Leavitt, David
McCourt, Frank
McGuane, Thomas
Marshall, Paule
Mason, Bobbie Ann
Miller, Sue
Minot, Susan
Momaday, N. Scott
Moody, Rick
Morris, Wright
Morrison, Toni
Munro, Alice
Murdoch, Iris
Naipaul, V. S.
Narayan, R. K.
O’Brien, Edna
O’Brien, Flann
O’Nan, Stewart
Oates, Joyce Carol
Olsen, Tillie
Fall 2001
Possession: A Romance
Emperor of the Air; Blue River; The Palace Thief
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
Spartina
Mysteries of Pittsburgh
Collected Stories
Waiting for the Barbarians
Mrs. Bridge; Son of the Morning Star
Mummy
Fifth Business
White Noise; Libra; Mao II
Clear Light of Day
The White Album
The Writing Life
Selected Stories
Welcome to Hard Times
Tracks; Love Medicine; Beet Queen; The Antelope Wife; The Last Report on the
Miracles at Little No Horse
Rock Springs; Independence Day
The French Lieutenant’s Woman
The Sunlight Dialogues; Grendal; Nickel Mountain
Fat City
In the Land of Dreamy Dreams; The Anna Papers
Burger’s Daughter
Desperadoes; Nebraska
Plainsong
Cider House Rules; The World According to Garp
Mona in The Promised Land
Fear of Flying
Obasan
The Liars’ Club: A Memoir
Annie John
Animal Dreams
Woman Warrior
The Fire Dwellers; Rachel, Rachel; The Diviners
Family Dancing
Angela’s Ashes
Ninety-Two in the Shade
Praisesong for the Widow
In Country
The Good Mother
Monkeys; Lust & Other Stories
House Made of Dawn
The Ice Storm
Field of Vision; Ceremony in Lone Tree; Man and Boy; Fire Sermon
Bluest Eye; Sula; Beloved
Friend of My Youth
The Sacred and Profane Love Machine
A House for Mr. Biswas
The Guide
The Country Girls Trilogy
At Swim Two Birds
The Names of The Dead
Son of the Morning; Because It Is Bitter and Because It Is My Heart; selected
stories
Tell Me a Riddle; Silences
WSU
5
Ondaatje, Michael
Ozick, Cynthia
Paley, Grace
Paton, Alan
Petry, Ann
Proulx, Annie
Pynchon, Thomas
Robison, Mary
Rushdie, Salman
Silko, Leslie
Southern, Terry
Smiley, Jane
Spark, Muriel
Stead, Christina
Stegner, Wallace
Stone, Robert
Tan, Amy
Trevor, William
Vonnegut, Kurt
Walker, Alice
Welsh, James
White, Patrick
Wideman, John
Wolff, Tobias
Fall 2001
The English Patient
The Pagan Rabbi
The Collected Stories
Cry, the Beloved Country
The Street
Postcards; The Shipping News
Gravity’s Rainbow; The Crying of Lot 45; “V”; Vineland
Believe Them: Stories
Midnight’s Children
Ceremony
Red Dirt Marijuana and Other Stories; The Magic Christian
The Age of Grief; A Thousand Acres
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
The Man Who Loved Children
Angle of Repose; Wolf Willow
Dog Soldiers; Hall of Mirrors
The Kitchen God's Wife; The Joy Luck Club
The Collected Stories
Slaughterhouse Five
The Color Purple
The Death of Jim Loney
The Eye of the Storm
Philadelphia Fire; Brothers and Keepers; Homewood Trilogy
In The Garden of the North American Martyrs; The Night in Question
WSU
6
MFA Master Reading List
Aristotle
Booth, Wayne
Frye, Northrup
Gass, William
Gardner, John
James, Henry
Miller, J. Hillis, ed.
Plato
Richards, I.A.
Stegner, Wallace
Stevick, Philip
Watt, Ian
NARRATIVE THEORY, CRITICISM
WSU
Rhetoric; Poetics
The Rhetoric of Fiction, Chapters 1-3, 6, 7, and 13.
Fables of Identity; “Theory of Modes' in Anatomy of Criticism”
Fiction and the Figures of Life
The Art of Fiction; On Moral Fiction
The Art of the Novel
Aspects of Narrative
The Republic
Principles of Literary Criticism
Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs
The Theory of the Novel
The Rise of the Novel
Other Important Works
Agee, James
Bakhtin, Mikhail
Burroway, Janet
Chase, Richard
DeMan, Paul
Fiedler, Leslie
Forster, E.M.
Frye, Northrup
O’Connor, Flannery
Welty, Eudora
Woolf, Virginia
Fall 2001
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
The Dialogical Imagination
Writing Fiction
The American Novel and Its Traditions
Allegories of Reading
Love and Death in the American Novel
Aspects of the Novel
Anatomy of Criticism
Mystery and Manners
One Writer’s Beginnings
The Common Reader
WSU
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