Why is every classs reading list different in World Literature?
Some of the texts you read in World Literature have been thought of for a long time as important and worthy of study. When you read an epic like Homer’s Odyssey, a philosophical work like Plato’s Republic, or a novel like Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, you join many generations of readers who have thought about and taken pleasure in them. These works are often thought of as “foundational” in Western civilization; they have helped to shape the way we think and act, the way we understand both the past and the present. But like all fields of study, the study of literature has been expanded and energized by new knowledge. Some of the texts you read in World Literature are ones people of an earlier generation will never have heard of; they are works whose greatness is just being discovered by the students and scholars who are encountering them. Works such as Frederick Douglass’s Narrative, Leslie Silko’s “Yellow Woman,” and Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart reflect the diversity of our
