ENSH482_LiteraryTexts

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eng ENSH482_LiteraryTexts

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30 items
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29 items

  • A Little Life

    A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara is a novel that spans decades, focusing on four college friends, Jude, Willem, JB, and Malcom, and their life in New York City. Willem is an aspiring actor, JB a talented and opportunistic artist, Malcolm an architect, and Jude a headstrong litigator. Jude St. Francis is at the center of the novel’s plot yet is irreparably scarred by his past and unable to share his deep trauma with his loved ones. As the plot slowly unravels, Jude’s tragic backstory is revealed: abandoned at birth, he subsequently suffered physical, emotional, and sexual abuse before reaching adulthood. As an adult, he struggles with mental health and self-harm, unable to cope with the metaphorical hyenas in his mind that he associates with his abusers. The community he builds is rich with love for him and held together by his kindness and selflessness, though his friends and family are desperate to know the trauma of his past that he refuses to share with them and that they learn of only after his death.

  • Antigone

    A cornerstone of classical Greek tragedy, Sophocles’ Antigone explores themes of justice, familial loyalty, and defiance against authority. Written in 441 BCE, the play was first performed during the City Dionysia in Athens, a festival celebrating art and religious devotion. Set after the Theban civil war, it follows Antigone’s moral courage as she chooses to bury her brother Polynices despite King Creon’s decree. Her defiance suggests the consequences of resistance and moral conviction, sparking a tragic conflict between divine and human laws. The play resonated deeply with ancient audiences and has since inspired countless interpretations across cultures. Its enduring relevance lies in its ability to question power, authority, and the moral choices that define humanity. Through its exploration of sacrifice, justice, and love, Antigone continues to engage modern readers and audiences, offering timeless lessons on the complexities of human nature.

  • Badlands

    Kroetsch’s fifth novel, Badlands, follows the protagonist, Anna Dawe, who tries to understand her absent father, William. As both a first-person and third-person narrator, Anna creates a story about her father using his cryptic field notes that detail his time as a paleontologist in the Alberta Badlands in 1916. This largely fictive account of William’s life helps Anna reconcile her identity with her family’s past. First published in 1975, the novel underwent five further editions in 1976, 1982, 1983, 1988, and 1991. Initial reviews of Badlands celebrated the novel’s comedic elements, while critics in the 1980s and 1990s underscored its postmodern dimensions. Current approaches highlight how the text describes colonized Canadian land. The text deals with historiographic themes, showing how individuals remember, but also reject, the past. Badlands challenges myths about masculinity and heroism, and it subverts nationalist colonial narratives by illustrating the division between settler mentalities and Indigenous land.

  • Beloved

    The original cover of Toni Morrison's Beloved.

  • Beloved

    Toni Morrison’s Beloved grapples with the haunting legacy of slavery through the experiences of Sethe, a woman living in post-Civil War Ohio after escaping enslavement. Inspired by the real story of Margaret Garner, the novel gives a voice to African-Americans silenced by history. Morrison draws attention to the smaller, everyday details and experiences of mid-19th century African-American people, ultimately humanizing them and detailing quiet acts of survival rather than focusing on statistics and monumental events. The novel delves deeply into both personal and collective history, exploring how Sethe, her family, and her community confront and navigate the trauma of their pasts. Sethe’s struggle to reconcile with her memories, especially the haunting presence of her deceased daughter Beloved, embodies the complexities of trauma and healing. Beloved won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1988 and quickly became a literary masterpiece, widely praised for its rich prose and complex exploration of the African-American experience. Today, the novel stands as a cornerstone of contemporary literary studies.

  • Burn Our Bodies Down

    Burn Our Bodies Down is an eerie horror novel following teenager Margot, who, after years of living alone with her mother’s toxicity, finds a piece of her mother’s hidden past and runs away to find out the truth about her family’s history. Margot ends up in the small town of Phalene, where she meets her grandmother for the first time. While staying with her grandmother, Margot uncovers the sinister reason her mother left Phalene in the first place. Burn Our Bodies Down is haunting in the best way possible and keeps readers hooked as they uncover familial secrets alongside Margot. During Margot’s time in Phalene, she makes friends, begins to understand why her mother is the way she is, and discovers herself. Burn Our Bodies Down was well received by audiences who enjoyed Power’s first novel, Wilder Girls, and who relish twisted family dynamics, farmland, and generational secrets.

  • By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept

    This confessional novella was born from Smart's love affair with the poet George Barker. It doesn't name names or follow a linear path. It is a tumbling out of poetic prose, like blood from a slit artery, words gushing, pulsing and messy, onto the page. Only 2,000 copies were printed on initial publication. Smart's mother bought as many copies as possible, for burning. Despite this initially limited distribution, the book has achieved cult status and influenced other artists, including Morrissey of The Smiths.

  • Candle Cove

    This is my cover of the Nightlight Press-published Ichor Falls: A Visitor’s Guide, which contains a printed edition of Candle Cove. Originally published digitally in 2009 on Kris Straub’s now-defunct website Ichorfalls.com, Candle Cove narratively questions the relationship between fiction and memory. Within his narrative, Straub tasks the reader with examining how fiction can easily be conflated with memory. Framed as a message board discussion among four characters, the narrative describes in detail a disturbing television program from the characters’ youth. The ending twist of the story reveals that the show never actually existed, and the reader now must examine the supposed memories of the story’s characters. After its original digital publication, the story gained traction as a creepypasta (a term derived from the computer commands of “copy and paste”), a genre of internet fiction focused on spreading horror-related legends online. Other notable examples of creepypastas include The Slender Man and The Backrooms.

  • Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

    Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is set in a post-apocalyptic future where Earth has become a desolate wasteland, and much of its natural life has vanished. The majority of humanity has relocated to Mars, where they live alongside android slaves. However, some of these androids manage to escape back to Earth, leaving bounty hunter Rick Deckard to find and "retire" them. To distinguish androids from humans, Deckard relies on a test designed to measure a trait that androids supposedly lack: empathy. As the novel progresses, the distinction between human and android becomes increasingly unclear, challenging readers to question the very nature of humanity itself. First published in 1968 in the United States, Philip K. Dick’s novel did not achieve immediate success but gained attention for its innovative world-building. Over time, critics came to regard it as a foundational work of science fiction. Yet it was ultimately overshadowed by its iconic film adaptation, Blade Runner, which premiered in 1982.

  • Green Grass, Running Water

    In this magical realist novel, Thomas King blends Indigenous oral traditions and Western literary forms, creating a circular narrative that reflects his characters’ navigation of Indigenous identity in a post-colonial world. The novel is structured through a frame narrative and divided into four sections, each narrated by Four Indigenous Elders who move between plotlines in mythic and realist realms. In the mythic realm, they guide Coyote through blended Indigenous and Biblical creation stories, while in the realist realm, they escape from a psychiatric hospital. Joined by Coyote, their journey affects the lives of characters preparing for the Sundance, a Blackfoot ceremony in Blossom, Alberta. First published in Canada, Green Grass, Running Water has received critical acclaim, contributing to King’s list of award-winning literature. His work is widely taught in Canadian and international universities because of its innovative form and engagement with diverse themes such as storytelling, identity, spirituality, gender, and media.

  • Hamnet

  • Hamnet

    Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet is an exploration of grief, love, family, and memory. It follows the story of Agnes and her husband as they navigate the devastating loss of their young son. The novel weaves the themes of loss with artistic inspiration and examines how tragedy can shape and fuel someone’s creativity. Published in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, Hamnet resonated profoundly with contemporary readers facing global loss and uncertainty. The novel's emotional depth earned it the Women’s Prize for Fiction. Maggie O’Farrell’s portrayal of her protagonist, Agnes, is rooted in resilience and intuition, offering readers a reflection on the ways that love can emerge from sorrow and an enduring depiction of human experience.

  • I, Robot

    Asimov is a foundational author in the genre of Science Fiction. "I, Robot" is the first novel of the “Robot Series”, a five-decade long series of novels and short stories. This novel is set in a future world where robots capable of independent thought work for humans while bound by the “Laws of Robotics,” which exist to safe-keep humanity from the potential actions and inactions of robots. It is through the conversations and arguments about interpreting these laws that the humans reveal their truest selves.

  • Les Misérables

    Les Misérables is a French historical novel centering around the life of an ex-convict named Jean Valjean. The novel begins in 1815 and chronicles Valjean’s life up until 1833. The June Rebellion of 1832 becomes central to the narrative in the later sections of the book, emphasizing the struggle of the lower classes under the reign of King Louis Philippe I. The novel has remained popular since its publication. 

    In the preface to this novel, Hugo writes, “[S]o long as social asphyxia is possible in any part of the world – in other words, and with a still wider significance, so long as ignorance and poverty exist on earth, books of the nature of Les Misérables cannot fail to be of use.” The novel focuses thematically on systemic injustice, love, and social progress, and it furthermore reflects heavily on the systems in 19th-century France that caused inequity.

  • Pride and Prejudice

    Austen’s second novel was published anonymously by Egerton in three hardcover volumes, which correspond to the three parts the novel is divided into. The novel’s opening line describes exactly what the novel is about, stating that “it is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” The novel explores societal conventions in Regency England, specifically around marriage. Notably, marriage was a means for guaranteeing financial security for women, as laws at the time favoured male relatives for property inheritance. The novel’s successful first publication quickly led to a second publication later that year, which signaled the novel’s ongoing success. The novel’s popularity has stood the test of time, as evidenced by its numerous adaptations. Adaptations range from remakes like the BBC’s straight-to-television mini-series Pride and Prejudice (1995) to modern spin-offs like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2016).

  • The Bell Jar

    The Bell Jar is a semi-autobiographical novel that narrates the decline of a young writer suffering from depression. Plath delves into social expectations of gender roles, mental health, and sexuality in a realist depiction of the 1950s. Plath and her family were concerned about how the personal material in the book would be interpreted by friends of the family, so it was originally published under the pseudonym “Victoria Lucas”; The Bell Jar would not be released under her own name, or in the United States at all, until years after Plath’s death. Although it initially received mixed reviews, the novel has since inspired many feminist, poststructuralist, and psychoanalytical readings. Esther Greenwood, the main character, emulates Plath’s struggles with mental illness, and her suicide attempt parallels Plath’s own attempt on her life at age 20, ten years before she died.

  • The Bell Jar

    Sylvia Plath’s semi-autobiographical novel, The Bell Jar, is the sole novel by the renowned American poet and writer. The haunting work explores the complexities of mental illness and the profound impact of societal norms on the human psyche. Plath, drawing heavily from her own experiences, chronicles struggles with depression, suicidal attempts, and time spent in psychiatric institutions through the vessel of Esther Greenwood, the protagonist. The Bell Jar emerged from Plath’s desire to articulate her descent into madness and the suffocating constraints of mid-20th-century societal expectations in America. Published under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas only a month before her tragic suicide at the age of 30 in 1963, the novel remains a powerful and unsettling exploration of mental health. While deeply personal, the narrative reflects Plath’s subjective interpretation of events, shaped by memory and artistic expression, making it both intensely intimate and profoundly universal.

  • The Book of The City of Ladies

    This is the cover for The Book of the City of Ladies by Christine De Pizan

  • The Book of The City of Ladies

    “I will tell you about several very strong women,” Pizan says, to refute “men who have called women weak.” The Book of the City of Ladies follows a narrative representation of Pizan as she embarks on the journey of constructing the fictional City of Ladies, a safe haven for women that acts as a defense against the misogynistic conventions spread by male authors of her time. After reading a particularly saddening text from her library that discusses the nature and virtues of women, Pizan is joined by the allegorical characters Reason, Rectitude, and Justice. Throughout the book, she deconstructs her own learned prejudices and celebrates the intellectual and moral capabilities of women, advocating for recognition and equality both socially and in literature. Ultimately, Pizan condemns the idea that women are in any way lesser than men, as well as the perpetuated belief that women enjoy and welcome assaults on both their bodies and their character.

  • The Catcher in the Rye

    This iconic American novel was “first published in July 1951 by Little, Brown…and Company” (Benson 51-52). The Catcher immediately garnered popularity: within the first month after the novel came out, “Little, Brown and Company had reprinted the novel five times” (Benson 52). Salinger penned parts of the novel when he was in the military service (Benson 7). The critics’ opinions varied: while some were clearly impressed, others denounced the novel for its expletives and its potential corrupting influence on teenagers (Steinle qtd. in Benson 52). In the novel, the main character, Holden, is kicked out of Pency Prep, an exclusive boarding school, and embarks on a journey around New York City before he goes home for Christmas. Throughout his journey, he meets influences that could either further corrupt or uplift him. He also constantly reaches out to people constantly to ease his loneliness in the metropolis. In the end, he is lucky enough to find some sort of salvation in his ties to his sibling.

  • The Common Life (For Chester Kallman)

    W. H. Auden’s poem is an ode to the secrecy granted by the house through features that strongly resonate as analogies to the personalities of its dedicated occupants: Auden and his partner, Chester Kallman. The poem emanates comfort and closeness as Auden guides the readers through their home in Austria. Auden answers the question: what makes the home a haven for a relationship? Devotion is not found in money or luxury, but in an intangible type of wealth characterised by precious everyday moments. “The Common Life” caters to the reader’s sense of familiar contentment in their own home. The poem shows Auden’s ability to capture love in the most mundane moments. The subtlety the poem emits is indicative of the secrecy that the two men relied upon during their time together. The type of love that Auden writes about is not perfect and poised, but raw and human—that is, centered around being free to be vulnerable in their own home.

  • The Goldfinch

    In a coming-of-age story often compared to the works of Charles Dickens, Donna Tartt portrays the journey of Theo Decker after a museum explosion leaves him motherless and in illicit possession of Carel Fabritius’s priceless painting, also titled “The Goldfinch.” Tartt’s novel follows Theo across the USA, and then across the world, through tumultuous relationships and a life on the precipice of criminal exposure, navigating the tribulations of adolescence and adulthood as a complex balance of fair consequence and ineffable tragedy. Winner of the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, The Goldfinch is commended and criticized for its realist style and control over the reader’s experience, balancing the simultaneously bleak and hopeful sentiment that life just goes on. In 2019, the novel—the third of her career—was also adapted for film.

  • The Little Prince

    The Little Prince (Le Petit Prince) is a novella whose poignant messages about love and loss resonate with readers of all ages. Written and illustrated by French aviator and writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry during World War II, the novella tells the story of a Little Prince who travels the universe to gain wisdom. Since the novella’s first publication in 1943, an estimated 140 million copies have been sold worldwide. It has been translated into over 550 languages, making it the second-most-translated book in history, and adapted into many different art forms, including film, television, opera, ballet, and more. While it initially received mixed reviews from puzzled critics, the story is now considered a beloved classic. The Little Prince relies on the logic and imagination of children to teach readers to see life with their hearts rather than their eyes.

  • The Midnight Library

    Matt Haig’s 12th novel tells the story of Nora, a 35-year-old woman from Bedford, England, who decides to end her life. Although she thinks she dies, she finds herself in a library. This library exists “between life and death” and has a librarian named Mrs. Elm, the librarian from Noa’s old high school. In this library, Nora has the chance to explore the lives she might have lived if she had made different choices. Nora navigates these alternate lives and embarks on a journey of self-discovery and enlightenment with the guidance of Mrs. Elm, who comes to represent her inner guide. Ultimately, Nora discovers that her mindset, not her circumstances, shapes her life and chooses to return to her original life. Using the lessons that she learns along her journey, she completely changes her mentality and starts to create the life she has always dreamed of.

  • The Song of Achilles

    This modern retelling of Homer’s Iliad reframes the epic narrative into a coming-of-age novel about love and loss. Since its publication in 2011, Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles has become best known for its “BookTok” affiliations. As of 2022, the novel has sold 2 million copies worldwide, allowing a new generation to learn about and indulge in this nearly 3000-year-old story.