by Michael J. Cawley IV

Earlier this semester, I posted this post about required reading in school, mainly high school, and the Western Literary Canon. The basic gist of the post is that high school required reading lists used to be dominated by the Western Literary Canon, but due to concerns about diversity and complaints that students were only reading books by “dead white men,” high school reading lists now feature much more contemporary, diverse literature, often at the cost of the Western Literary Canon. I argued that this is depriving many high school students of a large and important part of our cultural heritage and of the important skill of cultural literacy, and I advocated for a restoration of the Western Literary Canon to high school required reading lists.

I was just thinking, however, about why we need to keep having this debate anyway. What if there was a compromise, where high school required reading lists were still mostly taken from the Western Literary Canon, but accounted for diversity by including works by minorities and women both within and outside of the Canon, and including some more modern literature? I think this would be a great idea, so I decided to come up with my own proposal for a high school required reading list. This list is meant to span all four years of high school, so it contains thirty books, one for every 1.2 months (I know, that’s a little impractical, but these are guidelines assuming the most efficient of reading speeds). The books are in no order and do not correspond to any particular year of high school. Each book is accompanied by a brief explanation of its inclusion on the list.

So, without further ado, here is my proposed high school reading list:

1. Hamlet by William Shakespeare:  Shakespeare’s greatest play and the quintessential Shakespearean tragedy has had unmeasurable influence on our culture, literature, and art, so it is the perfect start to this list.
2. Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare:  The quintessential tragic romance is just as influential as Hamlet and even more relatable for teens.
3. Macbeth by William Shakespeare:  This iconic tragedy about power, evil, regicide, and guilt is influential and powerful.
4. Othello by William Shakespeare:  Not only is this a masterful tragedy of jealousy and paranoia with one of the most evil villains ever conceived, it also dealt with racial issues in a time when such themes were beyond rare in literature.
5. A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare:  This delightful comedy shows the lighter side of Shakespeare and is one of his more fantasy-based plays, showcasing inspiration from Greek mythology.
6. Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare:  A more realistic comedy, this wonderful play offers a witty, relatable, and accurate depiction of love and relationships.
7. The Epic of Gilgamesh by Unknown Author:  Considered the first great work of literature, this epic poem was written in ancient Mesopotamia.
8. The Odyssey by Homer:  The quintessential Ancient Greek epic is the perfect introduction to Ancient Greek literature and mythology, and it is a thrilling read as well.
9. Oedipus Rex by Sophocles:  The quintessential Greek tragedy that named a psychological complex (Possibly a misnomer considering the accidental nature of the tragic act).
10. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens:  One of Dickens’ greatest works, this Victorian novel is a great introduction to the French Revolution and the surrounding social turmoil.
11. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain:  A frequent candidate for the “Great American Novel,” this classic is witty, hilarious, and exciting, and it offers commentary on race and slavery in the 1800s in America.
12. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald:  Another frequent candidate for the “Great American Novel,” this Jazz Age masterpiece is a tragedy exploring themes of unrequited love, obsession, and the American Dream that recently made its way back into popular culture with a major motion picture starring Leonardo DiCaprio.
13. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway:  Hemingway was an American literary master and a contemporary and friend of Fitzgerald. This is one of his greatest works, dealing with perseverance, old age, and humanity’s struggle with nature.
14. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë:  A quintessential Victorian romance and coming of age novel which deals with, among other things, gender roles in Victorian England.
15. Lord of the Flies by William Golding:  A high school staple about the conflict between nature and civilization and the dark side of human nature.
16. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad:  This bleak novella shows the horrors of colonialism in Africa from a European perspective. It loosely inspired Francis Ford Coppola’s classic film, Apocalypse Now.
17. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe:  This novel shows the horrors of colonialism in Africa from an African perspective and is something of a modern Greek tragedy set in Nigeria.
18. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes:  This classic Spanish novel has greatly influenced art, culture, and literature since it was published, and it is the best-selling novel of all time.
19. The Art of War by Sun Tzu:  This Chinese classic may be the most influential book on war strategy ever written.
20. The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith:  This classic Scottish work is an essential for understanding economics and is basically the founding text of capitalism.
21. The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels:  This German text is the founding text of communism and the opposing viewpoint to The Wealth of Nations.
22. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky:  Long but surprisingly entertaining, this is one of Dostoyevsky’s greatest works and a classic of Russian literature.
23. Night by Elie Wiesel:  A bleak and heartbreaking memoir of the horrors of the Holocaust.
24. The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank:  Another heartbreaking memoir of the Holocaust.
25. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley:  A classic of Gothic horror, this is also considered by many to be the first science fiction novel.
26. Dracula by Bram Stoker:  The other essential Gothic horror classic, the greatest vampire story ever told is genuinely scary.
27. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne:  Verne is considered by many to be the father of science fiction, and this may be his most iconic work.
28. The Time Machine by H. G. Wells:  One of the greatest works of Wells, without whom science fiction would be nowhere near where it is today, this novella offers interesting commentary on class relationships and evolution.
29. The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien:  Much better than the film trilogy, this classic and its sequel, The Lord of the Rings, form the foundation of modern fantasy literature.
30. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass:  The inspiring true story of a man’s journey from slavery to freedom to becoming one of the greatest abolitionist leaders.

Sources:

http://meghanward.com/blog/2013/05/22/the-literary-canon-what-books-should-be-required-reading/

by Michael J. Cawley IV

In addition to the debate over public schooling versus private schooling versus homeschooling, the other main topic which I will be writing blog posts on this semester is the debate over required reading in school and whether or not it is necessary, and what books and types of books should be required reading for students. This topic is typically mainly centered around high school English classes, but it can easily apply to English classes in elementary school, middle school, and college as well.

Traditionally, students in every stage of school are required to read a number of fiction books throughout the academic year. They analyze their themes, writing styles, diction, and so forth, and sometimes connect them to a historical context by examining the life of the author and the context in time and place of his or her works. Historically, the lists of books to read from school to school have been largely similar to one another, borrowing from a vast and ambiguously defined reservoir of literature known by different people as either the American Literary Canon or the Western Literary Canon. While this canon is ambiguously defined, there are many authors whose works are universally acknowledged to be part of it. These include Homer, Sophocles, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, John Milton, Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, to name a few. These authors were all unique, and the works of each one are vastly different from the works of every other. They all have one thing in common, however. They are all, to cite a popular cliche, “dead white men.”

Now, the claim that the authors of the Western Literary Canon are all “dead white men” can actually be easily debunked, since a number of them, including Jane Austen, the Brontës, and Mary Shelley, were in fact women, and there are even non-white people to be found among their ranks, such as Alexandre Dumas, pére, who had an African mother and gave us The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that the majority of the writers in the Western Literary Canon are “dead white men,” the majority being from Europe with most of the rest being from the United States, and this has not sat well with many academics in our modern, diversity-valuing age. So, beginning in the 1960s, a backlash against the Western Literary Canon began in academia, with professors beginning to replace many of the works of “dead white men” with more modern works written by minorities and women. Despite these changes, complaints about too much required reading written by “dead white men” have persisted to the present day. However, if you look a little closer, the required reading problem has actually changed in many situations.

For example, the author of the blog post which I have cited as my main source for this post relates an anecdote that illustrates an interesting reversal of the required reading stereotype:

Last week, a member of the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto presented this dilemma: She had a Latino American high school student in one of her classes who didn’t feel he was prepared for college because he felt that his high school reading list was dominated by Latino and African American writers and that he had missed out on reading many of the works of other writers of the American Literary Canon. (Ward)

Ironically, the push to downplay the writers of the Western Literary Canon has resulted in modern, minority writers dominating the required reading lists in many schools, replacing many to all of the writers of the Western Literary Canon. You may now be wondering why this matters, and whether writers of the Western Literary Canon or modern, minority writers are preferable for required reading. In answer to this, experience has shown many benefits and advantages to writers of the Western Literary Canon being predominant on required reading lists.

The Western Literary Canon is still essential for required reading in school because of how it has pervaded all aspects of our culture. Countless phrases and terms we use every day, such as “Trojan Horse,” “Sisyphean,” “star-crossed lovers,” and “Dickensian,” came from the Western Literary Canon. Modern storytellers of all mediums still constantly borrow storylines and character types from Shakespeare, Homer, and Dickens. The Western Literary Canon is such an essential cornerstone of our culture that we cannot afford to disregard it altogether in schools. While diversity should be present on required reading lists, the majority of required books should, in my opinion, come from the Western Literary Canon.

Sources:

http://meghanward.com/blog/2013/05/22/the-literary-canon-what-books-should-be-required-reading/