Overview of Comprehensive Examination

Period Reading Lists

Part II Primary Text(s)

British Literature: Renaissance

Drama

Marlowe, The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus

Shakespeare, Hamlet, Twelfth Night

Jonson, Volpone

Webster, The Duchess of Malfi

Prose

More, Utopia

Sidney, The Defense of Poesy

Bacon, Essays (1625)

Poetry

Spenser, The Faerie Queene, Books 1, 3, and 6; Epithalamion

Sidney, Astrophil and Stella

Shakespeare, Sonnets

Donne, Poems (1633)

Lanyer, Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum

Jonson*

Herbert, The Temple (1633)

Marvell, Poems (1681)

Milton, "Lycidas" and Paradise Lost

* all selections in the most recent edition of the Norton Anthology of English Literature