The Literature Book

The Literature Book is a nonfiction book edited by James Canton. Released in 2015, it is a part of Dorling Kindersley's Big Ideas Simply Explained series and serves as a guide to literature.

Works discussed[]

Heroes and Legends[]

The Epic of Gilgamesh - used as an example of Bronze Age literature alongside writings found at Abu Salabikh, the works of Enheduanna, the Rig Veda, and the Egyptian Book of the Dead. Also used as an example of the epic.
Book of Changes - used as an example of The Five Classics alongside Fu Xi's trigrams, the Book of Rites, the formation of the Five Classics, Emperor Wu's titling of the Book, and the Four Books of Zhu Xi
Mahabharata by Vyasa - used as an example of the great Sanskrit epics alongside the Vedas, Valmiki's Ramayana, and the Puranas. Also used as an example of the epic.
Iliad by Homer - used as an example of the Greek epic alongside Homer's Odyssey and Hesiod's Theogony
Oedipus the King by Sophocles - used as an example of Classical Greek drama alongside the Dithyrambs, Thespis' acting career, Pratinas' satyr plays, Aeschylus' Oresteia, Euripides' Medea, and Aristophanes' The Clouds
Aeneid by Virgil - used as an example of Roman literature, along with the works of Gnaeus Naevius, the Annals of Quintus Ennius, Cicero's orations, Horace's poetry, Ovid's Metamorphoses, and Apuleius' The Golden Ass
Beowulf - used as an example of Anglo-Saxon literature alongside Caedmon's hymn, The Dream of the Rood, Waldere, and the Exeter Book
One Thousand and One Nights - used as an example of Early Arabic literature alongside the Koran, the Al-Mu'allaqat, Badi' al-Zaman al-Hamadani's Maqamat, and The Story of Bayad and Riyad. Also used as an example of the frame narrative.
Quan Tangshi - used as an example of Imperial Chinese poetry alongside the Songs of Chu
The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu - used as an example of the literature of the Heian Court alongside the Kokinshū, The Tale of the Lady Ochikubo, Sei Shōnagon's The Pillow Book, Konjaku monogatari, and the Senzaishū. Also used as an example of psychological realist fiction.
The Song of Roland - used as an example of chansons de geste alongside The Canticle of Saint Eulalia, the Chanson de Guilliaume, the Gormont et Isembart, and the Cantar de mio Cid
Under the Linden Tree by Walther von der Vogelweide - used as an example of the work of troubadors and minnesingers alongside the troubadors Chrétien de Troyes, Der von Kürenberg, Dietmar von aist, and Heinrich Frauenlob
Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart by Chrétien de Troyes - used as an example of the Arthurian chivalric romance alongside Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae, Thomas of Britain's Tristan, the Lancelot-Grail cycle, and Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur
Njall's Saga - used as an example of the Nordic sagas alongside the Konungasogur, Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda, the Poetic Edda, and the Sturlunga Saga
Egyptian Book of the Dead - used as an example of Bronze Age literature
Odyssey by Homer - used as an example of the Greek epic
Theogony by Hesiod - used as an example of the Greek epic
Tao Te Ching by Laozi
Oresteia by Aeschylus - used as an example of the Classical Greek drama
Medea by Euripides - used as an example of the Classical Greek drama
Wasps by Aristophanes
Ramayana by Valmiki - used as an example of the great Sanskrit epics
Songs of Chu - used as an example of Imperial Chinese poetry
Metamorphoses by Ovid - used as an example of Roman literature
The Golden Ass by Apuleius - used as an example of Roman literature
Hildebrandslied
Digenis Akritas
The Pillow Book by Sei Shōnagon - used as an example of the literature of the Heian Court
Mabinogion - used as an example of folklore collections
Cantar de Mio Cid - used as an example of the Chansons de geste
The Tale of Igor's Campaign
Nibelungenlied
Romance of the Rose by Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun
Cantigas de Santa Maria by Alfonso X

Renaissance to Enlightenment[]

The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri - used as an example of the Postclassical epic, with the Odyssey, the Aeneid, Luís de Camões' The Lusiads, and Paradise Lost being named as other examples.
Romance of the Three Kingdoms by Luo Guanzhong - used as an example of the four great classical novels of China alongside Shi Nai'an's The Water Margin, Wu Cheng'en's Journey to the West, The Plum in the Golden Vase, and Cao Xueqin's Dream of the Red Chamber
The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer - used as an example of frame narratives alongside One Thousand and One Nights, Giovanni Boccaccio's The Decameron, Marguerite de Navarre's The Heptameron, and David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas
Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais - used as an example of Renaissance humanist literature alongside Petrarch's translations, Giovanni Bocaccio's The Decameron, Johannes von Tepl's Ploughman of Bohemia, and Erasmus' translations of the New Testament. Also used as an example of censorship in literature
Les Amours de Cassandre by Pierre de Ronsard - used as an example of the works of the Pléiade alongside Joachim Du Bellay's principles of the movement, Ronsard's Hymns and Sonnets for Hélène and Jean Antoine de Baïf's poems
Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe - used as an example of Jacobean theatre alongside Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy, William Shakespeare's Henry IV Parts 1 and 2, Ben Jonson's The Alchemist, and John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes - used as an example of the literature of Spain's Golden Century alongside Fernando de Rojas' La Celestina, The Life of Lazarillo de Tormes and of His Fortunes and Adversities, Lope de Vega's New Rules for Writing Plays at this Time, and Pedro Calderón de la Barca's Life is a Dream. Also used as an example of the anti-novel, metafiction, and allegorical satires
First Folio by William Shakespeare - used as an example of Shakespeare's works alongside the Geneva Bible, Arthur Golding's translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses, Ben Jonson's Works, and Nicholas Rowe's Shakespeare's Complete Works
The Misanthrope by Molière - used as an example of French neoclassicist literature alongside Pierre Corneille's Le Cid, Philippe Quinault's The Rivals, Jean de la Fontaine's Fables, Molière's Psyché, and Jean Racine's Phèdre
Miscellaneous Poems by Andrew Marvell - used as an example of the works of metaphysical poets alongside John Donne's A Nocturnal Upon St. Lucy's Day, George Herbert's The Agony, Robert Herrick's Hesperides, and Henry Vaughan's The World
The Narrow Road to the Interior by Matsuo Bashō - used as an example of haikus and haibuns alongside the haikus of Bashō, Yosa Buson, Masaoka Shika, and Kobayashi Issa's The Spring of My Life
The Love Suicides at Sonezaki by Chikamatsu Monzemon - used as an example of Kabuki and Bunraku theatre alongside The Tale of the 47 Ronin
Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe - used as an example of the fictional autobiography alongside Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, Samuel Richardson's Pamela, Henry Fielding's Tom Jones, and Charles Dickens' David Copperfield
Candide by Voltaire - used as an example of the philosophes alongside Montesquieu's Persian Letters, Rond d'Alembert and Denis Dideriot's Encyclopédie, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's Nathan the Wise, and Denis Dideriot's Jacques the Fatalist. Also used as an example of censorship in literature
The Robbers by Friedrich Schiller - used as an example of Sturm und Drang literature alongside Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Discourse on the Arts and Sciences, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther, Friedrich Maximillian von Klinger's Sturm und Drang, and Goethe's Faust
Les Liasions dangereuses by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos - used as an example of epistolary fiction alongside Gabriel-Joseph de La Vergne's Letters of a Portuguese Nun, Samuel Richardson's Pamela and Clarissa, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Julie, or the New Heloise
The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio - also used as an example of the frame narrative and Renaissance humanist literature
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
The Well Cradle by Zeami Motokiyo
Le Morte D'Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory - used as an example of the Arthurian chivalric romance
Amadis of Gaul by Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo
The Barcas trilogy by Gil Vicente
The Lusiads by Luís de Camões - named as an example of the Postclassical epic
The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser
Le Cid by Pierre Corneille - used as an example of French neoclassicist literature
Paradise Lost by John Milton - named as an example of the Postclassical epic
Phèdre by Jean Racine - used as an example of French neoclassicist literature
The Princess of Cleves by Madame de la Fayette
Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift - used as an example of the fictional autobiography and allegorical satires
Clarissa by Samuel Richardson - used as an example of the epistolary novel
Tom Jones by Henry Fielding - used as an example of the fictional autobiography and the omniscient narrator
Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne - used as an example of metafiction
The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - used as an example of Sturm und Drang
Songs of Innocence and of Experience by William Blake - used as an example of the English Romantic poets
Jacques the Fatalist by Denis Dideriot - used as an example of the philosophes

Romanticism and the Rise of the Novel[]

Lyrical Ballads by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge - used as an example of English Romantic poetry alongside William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience, Percy Bysshe Shelley's Ozymandias, John Keats' Ode to a Nightingale, and Lord Byron's Don Juan
Nachtstücke by E.T.A. Hoffmann - used as an example of German Romanticist literature alongside Friedrich Hölderlin's Hyperion, Heinrich von Kleist's The Prince of Homburg, and Heinrich Heine's The Book of Songs. It is also used as an example of early Gothic literature.
Fau st by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - used as an example of Weimar Classicist literature alongside the works of Johann Gottfried Herder and Friedrich von Schiller (whose Wallenstein trilogy is given as an example)
Children's and Household Tales by the Brothers Grimm - used as an example of collected folklore alongside the Mabinogion, Charles Perrault's Tales of Mother Goose, Johann Karl August Musäus's Volksmärchen der Deutschen, Elias Lönnrot's Kalevala, Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe's Norwegian Folktales, and Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen - used as an example of the novel of manners alongside Samuel Richardson's Pamela, Jane Eyre, William Makepeace Thackeray's Vanity Fair, and Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley - used as an example of early gothic literature alongside Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto, Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho, Matthew Lewis' The Monk, and E.T.A. Hoffmann's Nachtstücke. Also used as an example of the scientific romance
The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas - used as an example of historical fiction alongside Maria Edgeworth's Castle Rackrent, Walter Scott's Waverley, Rob Roy, and Ivanhoe, James Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales, Honoré de Balzac's The Chouans, and Gabriel García Márquez's The General in His Labyrinth
Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin - used as an example of "the superfluous man" alongside Mikhail Lermontov's A Hero of Our Time, Ivan Turgenev's The Diary of a Superfluous Men, and Ivan Goncharov's Oblamov
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman - used as an example of Transcendentalist literature alongside Ralph Waldo Emerson and Margaret Fuller's The Dial, Henry David Thoreau's Walden, and the works of Emily Dickinson
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - used as an example of slave narratives alongside The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Solomon Northup's Twelve Years a Slave, Harriet Jacobs' Life of a Slave Girl, and Octavia E. Butler's Kindred
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë - used as an example of Victorian feminist literature alongside Wuthering Heights, Charlotte Brontë's Villette, George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper. Also used as an example of Victorian gothic literature.
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë - used as an example of Victorian gothic literature alongside Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist, the works of Edgar Allan Poe, Jane Eyre, and Charles Dickens' Bleak House. Also used as an example of Victorian feminist literature.
Moby-Dick by Herman Melville - used as an example of Dark Romanticist literature, alongside Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven, Nathaniel Hawthorne's novels The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables, and Melville's Bartleby, the Scrivener. Also used as an example of the encyclopedic novel.
Bleak House by Charles Dickens - used as an example of serialized fiction alongside Dickens' The Pickwick Papers, Alexandre Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo, Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary, and Wilkie Collins' The Moonstone. Also used as an example of Victorian gothic literature and the social protest novel.
René by François-René de Chateaubriand
The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. by Washington Irving
Ivanhoe by Walter Scott - used as an example of the historical novel
The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper - used as an example of the historical novel
The Red and the Black by Stendhal - used as an example of French realist literature and psychological realist fiction
Old Goriot by Honoré de Balzac
Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen
Kalevala by Elias Lönnrot - used as an example of folklore collections
Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens - used as an example of Victorian gothic literature
A Hero of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov - used as an example of the superfluous men
Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque by Edgar Allan Poe
The Black Sheep by Honoré de Balzac
Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
Vanity Fair by William Makepiece Thackeray - used as an example of the novel of manners
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens - used as an example of the fictional autobiography and the bildungsroman
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne - used as an example of Dark Romanticist literature
Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe - used as an example of American literature
North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell

Depicting Real Life[]

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert - used as an example of French realist fiction alongside Stendhal's The Red and the Black, Honoré de Balzac's La Comédie humaine, Flaubert's A Sentimental Education, and Guy de Maupassant's Bel Ami
The Guarani by José de Alencar - used as an example of Indianism (or Indianismo) alongside Garcilaso Inca de la Vega's Comentarios Reales de los Incas, Gonçalves Dias' I-Juca-Pirama, and Gonçalves de Magalhães' A Confederação dos Tamoios
Les Fleurs du mal by Charles Baudelaire - used as an example of French symbolist literature alongside Théophile Gautier's Enamels and Cameos, Stéphane Mallarmé's The Afternoon of a Faun, Arthur Rimbaud's A Season in Hell, and Paul Verlaine's Songs without Words
Les Misérables by Victor Hugo - used as an example of social protest novels alongside William Godwin's The Adventures of Caleb Williams, Benjamin Disraeli's Sybil, the works of Charles Dickens and Émile Zola, alongside Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. Also used as an example of the omniscient narrator.
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll - used as an example of "the invention of childhood" alongside Johann David Wyss' Swiss Family Robinson, Charles Kingsley's The Water Babies, Carlo Collodi's The Adventures of Pinocchio, and Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky - used as an example of psychological realist fiction alongside Murasaki Shikibu's The Tale of Genji, Samuel Richardson's Pamela, Stendhal's The Red and the Black, George Eliot's Middlemarch, and Henry James' The Portrait of a Lady. Also used as an example of Russia's Golden Age and existentialism
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy - used as an example of the literature of Russia's Golden Age alongside Nikolai Gogol's Evenings on a Farm near the Dikanka, Alexander Pushkin's Tales of Belkin, Fyodor Dosteovsky's Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov, and Anton Chekhov's The Seagull. Also used as an example of the omniscient narrator
Middlemarch by George Eliot - used as an example of omniscient narrators alongside Henry Fielding's Tom Jones, Victor Hugo's Les Misérables, Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace, Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, and Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne - used as an example of scientific romances alongside Frankenstein, Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, H.G. Wells' The Time Machine, and Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World
The Red Room by August Strindberg - used as an example of the roman à clef alongside Madeleine de Scudéry's Clelia, Caroline Lamb's Glenarvon, Jack Kerouac's On the Road, and Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar
The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James - used as an example of transatlantic fiction alongside Charles Dickens' Martin Chuzzlewit, Anthony Trollope's The Way We Live Now, Edith Wharton's Madame de Treymes, Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, and Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain - used as an example of American literature alongside James Fenimore Cooper's The Pioneers, Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, Sarah Orne Jewett's The Country of Painted Firs, and John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath
Germinal by Émile Zola - used as an example of Naturalist literature alongside Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, Thomas Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd, George Gissing's New Grub Street, and Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage
Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy - used as an example of the pathetic fallacy, alongside William Wordsworth's I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, Chapter Five of Frankenstein, Wuthering Heights, D.H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers, and The Waste Land
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde - used as an example of Aestheticist literature alongside Joris-Karl Huysmans' Against Nature, Thomas Mann's Buddenbrooks and Death in Venice, and Arthur Schnitzler's Dream Story. Also used as an example of urban Gothic fiction
Dracula by Bram Stoker - used as an example of urban Gothic fiction alongside Charles Dickens' Bleak House, Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, and Gaston Leroux's The Phantom of the Opera
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad - used as an example of colonial literature alongside The Tempest, Robinson Crusoe, E.M. Forster's A Passage to India, and the Négritude movement
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Thérèse Raquin by Émile Zola
The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins - used as an example of serialized fiction
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky
A Sentimental Education by Gustave Flaubert - used as an example of French realist fiction
Seven Brothers by Aleksis Kivi
The Gaucho Martín Fierro by José Hernández
A Season in Hell by Arthur Rimbaud - used as an example of French symbolist literature
Far from the Maddening Crowd by Thomas Hardy - used as an example of Naturalist literature
Anna Karenia by Leo Tolstoy
Daniel Deronda by George Eliot
A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky - used as an example of Russia's Golden Age and existentalism
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
The Story of an African Farm by Olive Schreiner - used as an example of South African literature
La Regenta by Leopoldo Alas
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson - used as an example of urban Gothic fiction
The Maias by Eça de Queirós
Hunger by Knut Hamsun
The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling - used as an example of children's literature
Effi Briest by Theodor Fontane
Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane - used as an example of Naturalist fiction
Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekov - used as an example of Russia's Golden Age
The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
The Awakening by Kate Chopin
Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad
Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser

Breaking with Tradition[]

The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle - used as an example of the coming-of-age of detective fiction alongside Edgar Allan Poe's The Murders in the Rue Morgue, Charles Dickens' Bleak House, Wilkie Collins' The Moonstone, and Agatha Christie's The Mysterious Affair at Styles
I am a Cat by Natsume Sōseki - used as an example of the I-novel alongside Mori Ōgai's The Dancing Girl, Tōson Shimazaki The Broken Commandment, Tayama Katai's Futon, and Shiga Naoya's A Dark Night's Passing
Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka - used as an example of existentialism alongside Fyodor Dostoevsky's Notes from the Underground and The Brothers Karamazov, Friedrich Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Jean-Paul Sartre's Nausea, Albert Camus' The Outsider, and Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot. Also used as an example of Weimar-era experimentalism
Poems by Wilfred Owen - used as an example of World War I poetry alongside Rupert Brooke's The Dead, Alan Seeger's I Have a Rendezvous with Death, Isaac Rosenberg's Break of Day in the Trenches, and Siegfried Sassoon's The General
The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot - used as an example of Modernist poetry alongside the poems of Emily Dickinson, Ezra Pound's Cantos, Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, and Wallace Stevens' Harmonium. Also used as an example of the pathetic fallacy and the Lost Generation's literature.
Ulysses by James Joyce - used as an example of the stream of consciousness alongside Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time, Fernando Pessoa's The Book of Disquiet, Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse, and William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury
Call to Arms by Lu Xun - used as an example of Baihua literature alongside Hu Shi's A Preliminary Discussion of Literature Reform, Xun's Diary of a Madman, The True Story of Ah Q, and Old Tales Retold, and Ba Jin's Turbulent Stream
The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran - used as an example of Modern Arabic literature alongside Taha Hussein's A Man of Letters, Naguib Mahfouz's Cairo Trilogy, and Tahar Ben Jelloun's The Sand Child
The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann - used as an example of the bildungsroman alongside Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Wilhelm Meister's Apprentice, Ludwig Tieck's Franz Sternbald's Wanderings, Charles Dickens' David Copperfield, Gottfried Keller's Green Henry, and James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald - used as an example of the Lost Generation, alongside Fitzgerald's Bernice Bobs Her Hair, T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, and John Dos Passos' U.S.A. trilogy
Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Döblin - used as an example of Weimar-era experimentalism alongside Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis, Hermann Broch's The Sleepwalkers, Robert Musil's The Man Without Qualities, and Herman Hesse's The Glass Bead Game
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston - used as an example of the Harlem Renaissance alongside Jean Toomer's Cane, Countee Cullen's The Ballad of the Brown Girl, and Langston Hughes' The Ways of White Folks
The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler - used as an example of Hard-boiled fiction alongside Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon, James M. Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity, and Chandler's The Long Goodbye
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry - used as an example of fiction written in exile alongside Joseph Roth's The Radetzky March, Bertolt Brecht's Mother Courage and Her Children, Stefan Zweig's The Royal Game, and Paul Celan's Poppy and Memory
The Call of the Wild by Jack London
Nostromo by Joseph Conrad
Ethan Fromme by Edith Wharton
Death in Venice by Thomas Mann - used as an example of Aestheticist literature
Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence - used as an example of the pathetic fallacy
In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust - used as an example of the stream of consciousness
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce - used as an example of the bildungsroman and young adult literature
The Heartless by Yi Kwang-Su
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
A Passage to India by E.M. Forster - used as an example of colonial literature
The Trial by Franz Kafka
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf - used as an example of omniscient narrators
The Counterfeiters by André Gide
Doña Barbara by Rómulo Gallegos
The Sound and Fury by William Faulkner - used as an example of stream of consciousness
The Man Without Qualities by Robert Musil - used as an example of Weimar-era experimentalism
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley - used as an example of dystopian literature
Journey to the End of the Night by Louis-Ferdinand Céline
Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller - used as an example of censorship in literature
The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa - used as an example of the stream of consciousness
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre - used as an example of existenialism
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck - used as an example of American literature
Mother Courage and Her Children by Bertolt Brecht - used as an example of fiction written in exile
The Outsider by Albert Camus - used as an example of existenialism and absurdism
The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges - used as an example of metafiction
Animal Farm by George Orwell - used as an example of allegorical satire

Postwar Writing[]

Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell - used as an example of dystopian literature alongside Thomas More's Utopia, Yevgeny Zamyatin's We, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange, and Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger - used as an example of "the birth of the teenager" alongside Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther, the works of John Keats, James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar, and Charles Bukowski's Ham on Rye. Also used as an example of dysfunctional families in literature.
Poppy and Memory by Paul Celan - used as an example of Holocaust literature alongside Nelly Sachs' In the Apartments of Death, Primo Levi's Survival in Auschwitz, and Edgar Hilsenrath's The Nazi and the Barber
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison - used as an example of Civil Rights Movement literature alongside Richard Wright's Native Son, Gwendolyn Brooks' Annie Allen, James Baldwin's Go Tell It on the Mountain, and Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov - used as an example of censorship in literature alongside François Rabelais' Gargantua and Pantagruel, Voltaire's Candide, Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer, William S. Burroughs' Naked Lunch, and Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses. Also used as an example of unreliable narrators
Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett - used as an example of Absurdist literature alongside Albert Camus' The Outsider, Jean Genet's The Blacks, Eugène Ionesco's Rhinoceros, and Harold Pinter's The Caretaker
The Temple of the Golden Pavilion by Yukio Mishima - used as an example of Postwar Japanese literature alongside Haruo Umezaki's Sakurajima, Shōhei Ōoka's Fires on the Plain, and Kōbō Abe's The Woman in the Dunes
On the Road by Jack Kerouac - used as an example of Beat Generation literature alongside Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, John Clellon Holmes' Go, Allen Ginsberg's Howl and Other Poems, and William S. Burroughs' Naked Lunch. Also used as an example of the roman à clef
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe - used as an example of Nigerian literature alongside Amos Tutuola's The Palm-Wine Drinkard, Cyprian Ekwensi's People of the City, Wole Soyinka's A Dance of the Forests, Helon Habila's Waiting for an Angel, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun
The Tin Drum by Günter Grass - used as an example of unreliable narrators alongside The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange, Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho, and Yann Martel's Life of Pi. Also used as an example of magical realism.
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee - used as an example of Southern Gothic literature alongside Carson McCullers' The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces
Hopscotch by Julio Cortázar - used as an example of antinovels alongside Don Quixote, Flann O'Brien's At Swim-Two-Birds, Italo Calvino's The Castle of Crossed Destinies, and Enrique Villa-Matas' Bartleby & Co. Also used as an example of the Latin American boom.
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller - used as an example of American black humor alongside Nathanael West's The Day of the Locust, Philip Roth's Goodbye, Columbus, Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49, and Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five
Death of a Naturalist by Seamus Heaney - used as an example of poetry after World War II alongside W.H. Auden's Collected Poetry, Ted Hughes' The Hawk in the Rain, Philip Larkin's Whitsun Weddings, and Sylvia Plath's Ariel
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote - used as an example of New Journalism alongside Tom Wolfe's Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers and Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez - used as an example of the Latin American boom, alongside Miguel Angel Asturias' Mr. President and Men of Maize, Carlos Fuentes' The Death of Artemio Cruz, Julio Cortázar's Hopscotch, and Mario Vargas Llosa's Conversation in the Cathedral. Also used as an example of magical realism.
Paroles by Jacques Prévert
Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton - used as an example of South African literature
Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata
The Lagoon and Other Stories by Janet Frame
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury - used as an example of dystopian literature
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
Pedro Páramo by Juan Rulfo
Memed, My Hawk by Yasar Kemal
The Devil to Pay in the Backlands by João Guimarães Rosa
Howl and Other Poems by Alan Ginsberg - used as an example of the Beat Generation
Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
La Jalousie by Alain Robbe-Grillet
A House for Mr. Biswas by V.S. Naipaul
The Time Regulation Institute by Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess - used as an example of dystopian literature and the unreliable narrator
The Death of Artemio Cruz by Carlos Fuentes - used as an example of the Latin American boom
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath - used as an example of the roman à clef and young adult literature
The Time of the Hero by Mario Vargas Llosa
The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon - used as an example of American black humor
Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
The Armies of the Night by Norman Mailer
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut - used as an example of American black humor
The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou - used as an example of Civil Rights Movement literature
Crow by Ted Hughes

Contemporary Literature[]

Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon - used as an example of the encyclopedic novel, alongside Moby-Dick, Pynchon's V., David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, and Don DeLillo's Underworld
If on a Winter's Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino - used as an example of metafiction alongside Don Quixote, Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy, Jorge Luis Borges' Ficciones, and Paul Auster's New York Trilogy
Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie - used as an example of the globalism of magical realism alongside Jorge Luis Borges' A Universal History of Infamy, Günter Grass' The Tin Drum, Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, Isabel Allende's The House of the Spirits, Angela Carter's Nights at the Circus, and Haruki Murakami's Kafka on the Shore
Beloved by Toni Morrison - used as an example of contemporary African-American literature alongside James Baldwin's Go Tell It on the Mountain, Alex Haley's Roots, Alice Walker's The Color Purple, Junot Díaz's Drown, and Edwidge Danticat's The Farming of Bones
Red Sorghum by Mo Yan - used as an example of the xungen movement's literature alongside Gao Xingjian's A Preliminary Enquiry into the Techniques of Modern Fiction, Zhaxi Dawa's Tibet: A Soul Knotted on a Leather Thong, Wang Anyi's Bao Town, Ah Cheng's Romances on the Landscape, and Han Shaogong's A Dictionary of Maqiao
Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey - used as an example of Australian literature alongside Patrick White's Voss, Thomas Keneally's Schindler's Ark, Carey's True History of the Kelly Gang, and Alexsis Wright's Carpentaria
Omeros by Derek Walcott - used as an example of Caribbean literature alongside Alejo Carpenter's The Kingdom of this World, George Lamming's In the Castle of My Skin, Aimé Césaire's Return to My Native Land, and Lorna Goodison's To Us, All Flowers are Roses: Poems
American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis - used as an example of transgressive fiction alongside J.G. Ballard's Crash, Jay McInerney's Bright Lights, Big City, Patrick McCabe's The Butcher Boy, and Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club
A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth - used as an example of India's literature in English alongside the works of R.K. Narayan, Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things, Amitav Ghosh's The Glass Palace, and Kiran Desai's The Inheritance of Loss
The Secret History by Donna Tartt - used as an example of the campus novel alongside Mary McCarthy's The Groves of Academe, Kingsley Amis' Lucky Jim, A.S. Byatt's Possession: A Romance, and Philip Roth's The Human Stain
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami - used as example of globalist literature alongside Murakami's Norwegian Wood and Kafka on the Shore, Banana Yashimoto's Kitchen, and Ryu Murakami's In the Miso Soup
Blindness by José Saramago - used as an example of allegorical satires alongside Don Quixote, Gulliver's Travels, George Orwell's Animal Farm, and The Hunger Games
Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee - used as an example of South African literature alongside Olive Schreiner's The Story of an African Farm, Alan Paton's Cry, the Beloved Country, the works of Nadine Gordimer, Zakes Mda's The Heart of Redness, and Damon Galgut's The Good Doctor
White Teeth by Zadie Smith - used as an example of multicultural literature alongside Sam Selvon's Moses Ascending, Michael Ondaatje's In the Skin of a Lion, Renan Demirkian's Black Tea with Three Sugars, and Andrea Levy's Small Island
The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood - used as an example of Southern Ontario Gothic literature alongside John Richardson's Wacousta, Timothy Findley's The Last of the Crazy People, Robertson Davies' Fifth Business, Alice Munro's Too Much Happiness, and Hilary Scharper's Perdita
The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen - used as an example of dysfunctional families in literature alongside J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, John Updike's Rabbit, Run, Jeffrey Eugenedies' The Virgin Suicides, Lionel Shriver's We Need to Talk About Kevin, and Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch. Also used as an example of post-9/11 literature
The Guest by Hwang Sok-Yong - used as an example of North Korean literature alongside Hwang Sok-yong's The Shadow of Arms and Park Kyong-ni's The Land
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer - used as an example of post-9/11 American literature alongside Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections, Don DeLillo's Falling Man, Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist, and Thomas Pynchon's Bleeding Edge
The Man Made Whole (listed as L'Homme rapaillé) by Gaston Miron
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson - used as an example of New Journalism
Crash by J.G. Ballard - used as an example of transgressive fiction
History by Elsa Morante
The Aesthetics of Resistance by Peter Weiss
Roots by Alex Haley - used as an example of African American literature
Life a User's Manual by Georges Perec
The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories by Angela Carter - used as an example of folklore collections
A Dry White Season by André Brink
So Long a Letter by Mariama Bâ
The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende - used as an example of magical realism
The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
Neuromancer by William Gibson
The Lover by Marguerite Duras
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood - used as an example of dystopian literature
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez
White Noise by Don DeLillo
The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster - used as an example of metafiction
The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie - used as an example of censorship in literature
Playing for Thrills by Wang Shuo
The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
Texaco by Patrick Chamoiseau
The Rock of Tanios by Amin Maalouf
Green Grass, Running Water by Thomas King
Selected Stories by Alice Munro
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace - used as an example of the encyclopedic novel
My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk
Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
Austerlitz by W.G. Sebald
Life of Pi by Yann Martel - used as an example of unreliable narrators
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
2666 by Roberto Bolaño
Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - used as an example of Nigerian literature
Wizard of the Crow by Ngugi wa Thiong'o
The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid - used as an example of post-9/11 American literature
We Need New Names by Noviolet Bulawayo

Publisher's summary[]

A global look at the greatest works of Eastern and Western literature and the themes that unite them, for students and lovers of literature and reading.

The Literature Book is a fascinating journey through the greatest works of world literature, from the Iliad to Don Quixote to The Great Gatsby. Around 100 crystal-clear articles explore landmark novels, short stories, plays, and poetry that reinvented the art of writing in their time, whether Ancient Greece, post-classical Europe, or modern-day Korea.

As part of DK's award-winning Big Ideas Simply Explained series, The Literature Book uses infographics and images to explain key ideas and themes. Biographies of important authors offer insight into their lives and other writings, and a section on Further Reading details more than 150 additional works to explore.

Discover masterpieces from the world's greatest authors, and explore the context, creative history, and literary traditions that influenced each major work of fiction with The Literature Book.

Series Overview: Big Ideas Simply Explained series uses creative design and innovative graphics, along with straightforward and engaging writing, to make complex subjects easier to understand. These award-winning books provide just the information needed for students, families, or anyone interested in concise, thought-provoking refreshers on a single subject.

Sources[]

Goodreads