“It is a span of five hundred years from Dante's Divine Comedy through Goethe's Faust, Part Two [1321-1832], an
era that gives us a huge body of reading in five major literatures: Italian, Spanish, English, French, and German.
“In this and in the remaining lists, I sometimes do not mention individual works by a canonical master, and in
other instances I attempt to call attention to authors and books that I consider canonical but rather neglected.
“From this list onward, many good writers who are not quite central are omitted. . . . ” (p. 534)
Portugal
- Camoëns, Luis de.
- The Lusiads.
- Ferreira, Antònio.
- Poetry.
Spain
- Jorge Manrique
- Coplas.
- Fernando de Rojas
- La Celestina.
- Anonymous.
- Lazarillo de Tormes.
- Francisco de Quevedo
- Visions; Satirical Letter of Censure.
- León, Fray Luis de.
- Poems.
- St. John of the Cross
- Poems.
- Góngora, Luis de.
- Sonnets; Soledades.
- Miguel de Cervantes, 1547-1616
- Don Quixote; Exemplary Stories.
- Lope de Vega
- La Dorotea; Fuente Ovejuna; Lost in a Mirror; The Knight of Olmedo.
- Tirso de Molina
- The Trickster of Seville.
- Pedro Calderon de la Barca, 1600–1681
- Life is a Dream; The Mayor of Zalamea; The Mighty Magician; The Doctor of His Own Honor.
- Cruz, Sor Juana Inés de la.
- Poems.
England and Scotland
- Chaucer, Geoffrey (ca.1343-1400)
- The Canterbury Tales; Troilus and Criseyde.
- Thomas Malory, 1430-1471
- Le Morte D'Arthur.
- William Dunbar
- Poems.
- John Skelton
- Poems.
- Thomas More, 1478-1535
- Utopia.
- Thomas Wyatt.
- Poems.
- Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey
- Poems.
- Philip Sidney, 1554-1586.
- The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia; Astrophel and Stella; An Apology for Poetry.
- Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke
- Poems.
- Edmund Spenser, 1552-1599
- The Faerie Queene; The Minor Poems.
- Walter Ralegh,
- Poems.
- Christopher Marlowe, 1564-1593
- Poems and Plays.
- Michael Drayton
- Poems.
- Samuel Daniel
- Poems; A Defence of Ryme.
- Thomas Nashe, 1567-1601
- The Unfortunate Traveller.
- Thomas Kyd
- The Spanish Tragedy.
- William Shakespeare, 1564-1616
- Plays and Poems.
- Thomas Campion
- Songs.
- John Donne, 1572-1631
- Poems; Sermons.
- Ben Jonson, 1573-1637
- Poems, Plays, and Masques.
- Francis Bacon, 1561–1626
- Essays.
- Robert Burton, 1577–1640
- The Anatomy of Melancholy.
- Thomas Browne, 1605–1682
- Religio Medici; Hydriotaphia, or Urne-Buriall; The Garden of Cyrus.
- Thomas Hobbes, 1588–1679
- Leviathan.
- Herrick, Robert, 1591-1674
- Poems.
- Thomas Carew
- Poems.
- Richard Lovelace
- Poems.
- Andrew Marvell, 1621-1678
- Poems.
- George Herbert
- The Temple.
- Thomas Traherne
- Centuries, Poems, and Thanksgivings.
- Henry Vaughan
- Poetry.
- John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester.
- Poems.
- Richard Crashaw
- Poems.
- Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher.
- Plays.
- George Chapman
- Comedies, Tragedies, Poems.
- John Ford, 1586-ca.1640
- 'Tis Pity She's a Whore.
- John Marston
- The Malcontent.
- John Webster, c.1580-c.1634
- The White Devil; The Duchess of Malfi.
- Thomas Middleton and William Rowley.
- The Changeling.
- Cyril Tourneur
- The Revenger's Tragedy.
- Philip Massinger
- A New Way to Pay Old Debts.
- John Bunyan
- The Pilgrim's Progress.
- Izaak Walton, 1593-1683
- The Compleat Angler.
- John Milton, 1608-1674
- Paradise Lost; Paradise Regained; Lycidas, Comus, and the Minor Poems; Samson Agonistes; Areopagitica.
- John Aubrey, 1626–1697
- Brief Lives.
- Jeremy Taylor
- Holy Dying.
- Samuel Butler, 1612-1680
- Hudibras.
- John Dryden, 1631-1700
- Poetry and Plays; Critical Essays.
- Thomas Otway
- Venice Preserv'd.
- William Congreve
- The Way of the World; Love for Love.
- Jonathan Swift, 1667-1745
- A Tale of a Tub; Gulliver's Travels; Shorter Prose Works; Poems.
- George Etherege
- The Man of Mode.
- Alexander Pope, 1688-1744
- Poems.
- John Gay, 1685-1732
- The Beggar's Opera.
- James Boswell, 1740-1795
- Life of Johnson; Journals.
- Samuel Johnson, 1709–1784
- Works.
- Edward Gibbon, 1737–1794
- The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
- Edmund Burke, 1729–1797
- A Philosophical Enquiry into the Sublime and Beautiful; Reflections on the Revolution in France.
- Maurice Morgann
- An Essay on the Dramatic Character of Sir John Falstaff.
- William Collins
- Poems.
- George Farquhar
- The Beaux' Strategem; The Recruiting Officer.
- William Wycherley
- The Country Wife; The Plain Dealer.
- Christopher Smart
- Jubilate Agno; A Song to David.
- Oliver Goldsmith, 1728-1774
- The Vicar of Wakefield; She Stoops to Conquer; The Traveller; The Deserted Village.
- Richard Brinsley Sheridan, 1751–1816
- The School of Scandal; The Rivals.
- William Cowper, 1731-1800
- Poetical Works.
- George Crabbe
- Poetical Works.
- Defoe, Daniel (1661?-1731)
- Moll Flanders; Robinson Crusoe; A Journal of the Plague Year.
- Samuel Richardson, 1689-1761.
- Clarissa; Pamela; Sir Charles Grandison.
- Henry Fielding, 1707-1754
- Joseph Andrews; The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling.
- Tobias Smollett, 1721-1771
- The Expedition of Humphry Clinker; The Adventures of Roderick Random.
- Laurence Sterne, 1713-1768
- The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman; A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy.
- Fanny Burney, 1752-1840
- Evelina.
- Joseph Addison and Richard Steele.
- The Spectator.
France
- Jean Froissart, 1337-1405
- Chronicles; The Song of Roland.
- François Villon,
- Poems.
- Michel de Montaigne, 1533-1592
- Essays.
- Francois Rabelais, 1494?-1553?
- Gargantua and Pantagruel.
- Marguerite de Navarre, 1492–1549
- The Heptameron.
- Joachim Du Bellay,
- The Regrets.
- Maurice Scève,
- Délie.
- Pierre Ronsard
- Odes, Elegies, Sonnets.
- Philippe de Commynes
- Memoirs.
- Agrippa d'Aubigné,
- Les Tragiques.
- Robert Garnier
- Mark Antony; The Jewesses.
- Pierre Corneille
- The Cid; Polyeucte; Nicomède; Horace; Cinna; Rodogune.
- François de La Rochefoucauld,
- Maxims.
- Jean de La Fontaine, 1621-1695
- Fables.
- Molière, 1622-1673
- The Misanthrope; Tartuffe; The School for Wives; The Learned Ladies; Don Juan; School for Husbands; Ridiculous
Precieuses; The Would-Be Gentleman; The Miser; The Imaginary Invalid.
- Blaise Pascal, 1623–1662
- Pensées.
- Bosuet, Jacques-Bénigne.
- Funerary Orations.
- Boileau-Despréaux, Nicolas.
- The Art of Poetry; Lutrin.
- Jean Racine
- Phaedra; Andromache; Britannicus; Athaliah.
- Pierre Carlet de Marivaux,
- Seven Comedies.
- Rousseau, Jean–Jacques, 1712–1778
- The Confessions; Émile; La Nouvelle Héloïse.
- Voltaire, 1694-1778
- Zadig; Candide; Letters on England; The Lisbon Earthquake.
- Abbe Prevost
- Manon Lescaut.
- Madame de La Fayette,
- The Princess of Cleves.
- Chamfort, Sébastien-Roch Nicolas de.
- Products of the Perfected Civilization.
- Denis Diderot
- Rameau's Nephew.
- Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, 1741-1803
- Dangerous Liaisons.
Germany
- Erasmus of Rotterdam, 1466–1536
- In Praise of Folly.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1749–1832
- Faust, Parts One and Two; Dichtung und Wahrheit; Egmont; Elective Affinities; The Sorrows of Young Werther; Poems;
Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship; Wilhelm Meister's Years of Wandering; Italian Journey; Verse Plays; Hermann and
Dorothea; Roman Elegies; Venetian Epigrams; West-Eastern Divan.
- Friedrich Schiller, 1759-1805
- The Robbers; Mary Stuart; Wallenstein; Don Carlos; On the Naïve and Sentimental in Literature.
- Gotthold Lessing
- Laocoön; Nathan the Wise.
- Freidrich Hölderlin,
- Hymns and Fragments; Selected Poems.
- Heinrich von Kleist
- Five Plays; Stories.