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430 BCE
Oedipus Rex by Sophocles
- Tragic Hero
- Connection to Hamlet
- Aristolean trade by and first tragic hero
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8 BCE
The Odyssey by Homer
- Epic Poetry
- Greeks
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700
Beowulf (Unknown Author)
- Epic Poetry
- Allusions to the Bible
-
1392
Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
- Medieval
- Connections to Beowulf
-
1516
Utopia by Thomas More
- 16th Century
- Connections to The Praise of Folly
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Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
- Elizabethan
- Connected to West Side Story
- Tragic story
-
Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare
- Jacobean
- Connection to Plutarch’s Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans (Thomas North’s translation)
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Othello by William Shakespeare
- Elizabethan
- Connections to the Bible and the story of Venus and Mars (mythology) and Macbeth
-
Macbeth by William Shakespeare
- Jacobean, Tragedy
- connections to The Odyssey
-
Paradise Lost by John Milton
- Poem, epic, and Restoration period
- Connections to the Bible
-
Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God by Jonathon Edwards
- Puritan
- Connected to The Crucible
-
Poe Short Stories by Edgar Allan Poe
- Gothic
- Tragedy
-
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
- Classicism/Romanticism
- Connected to Chapman’s Northanger Abbey
-
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
- Gothic
- Connected to Paradise Lost
-
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
- Romantic and Victorian
- Connected to The Great Gatsby
-
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
- Victorian
- Connected to the Gospel of Matthew
-
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
- Victorian
- Connected to the Bible
-
Flatlands by Edwin Abbott
- Victorian
- Connected to the Bible
-
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
- Victorian and Modernism
- connections to the Bible
-
My Antonia by Willa Cather
- Modernism
-
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
- Lyrical style reminiscent of ancient spiritual texts
- connections to the Alchemist
-
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Modernism
- allusions to the Great Depression
-
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
- Modernism
- allusions to the Great Depression
-
1984 by George Orwell
- Dystopian, modernist
- connections to Mein Kampf
-
The Crucible by Arthur Miller
- Modernist Work
-
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
- Contemporary, war era
- Reference to Doxology and connected to the Bible
-
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
- Post war, post modern
- connection to the brutality of World War II
-
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
- Dystopian, contemporary, and post modern
- Connections to the Bible
-
West Side Story by Arthur Laurents
- Contemporary
- Modern story of Romeo and Juliet
-
A Separate Place by John Knowles
- Bildungsroman
- connections to World War II
- Realism, historical fiction
-
Night by Wiesel
- biography, memoir
- connected to the Book Thief
-
A Man For All Seasons by Robert Bolt
- biography, historical drama
- connected to Utopia
-
Malcom X / Beloved by Malcom X and Alex Haley
- Biography
- historical fiction, realism
- connections to the Civil Rights Movement
-
House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
- feminist novel
- one of the first famous Chicano writers
- coming of age
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Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer
- Contemporary
- Transcendentalism
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The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
- Historical fiction
- Modern classic
- connections to the Holocaust