Overview of Comprehensive Examination

Period Reading Lists

Part II Primary Text(s)

World Literature: European: Classical

Homer, The Iliad or The Odyssey (either the Lattimore or the Fitzgerald translation)

Aeschylus, The Oresteia

Euripides, The Bacchae or Medea

Plato, The Apology, Cratylus, Phaedo

Aristophanes, The Clouds

Virgil, The Aeneid (Indiana / Humphries tr. or Fitzgerald tr.)

Aristotle, Poetics

Sophocles, Antigone

St. Augustine of Hippo, The Confessions (selections)

Tacitus, Annals (selections)

Ovid, Metamorphoses

Petronius, Satyricon ("Dinner at Trimaichio's"; Penguin / Sullivan tr.)

New Testament (Gospel According to Matthew)

Old Testament (Genesis, The Book of Job)

The Epic of Gilgamesh (Penguin)