World Theory Sample List Arranged by Region or Tradition

Steven J. Venturino
2007, 2013: aprofessorintheory.com
World Theory Home Page

This table of contents allows students to link the readings of a single tradition.

Arabic

• Ibn Sīnā (980–1037, aka Avicenna), selections (on truth and falsity of poetry)
• al Niffari (d. 976), from The Book of Spiritual Stayings (on the ineffable)
• al Jurjani (d. 1078, Arabic), on the faculty of imagination
• Ibn Rushd (1126–98, aka Averroes), selections (on mimesis and figurative language)
• Maimonides (1135–1204), from The Guide to the Perplexed (or from Commentary on the Mishna)

Africa & African diaspora

• Ifa divination and Esu Elegbara trickster figure(11^thC), from Gleason and Ogundipe, and/or Gates’s discussion
• Aimé Césaire (b.1913), selection from w L’Étudiant Noir

Biblical interpretation & exegesis

• Augustine (354-430), from On Christian Doctrine
• Macrobius (c. 400), from Commentary on the Dream of Scipio
• Bede (673–735), from Concerning Figures and Tropes (on allegory)
• Ruth Rabbah (600-700), later classic rabbinic midrash (Neusner’s discussion)
• Maimonides (1135–1204), from The Guide to the Perplexed (or from Commentary on the Mishna)
• Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), from Summa Theologica

China

• Confucius (551-479 BCE.), from Analects
• Laozi (4^th-3^rd BCE.), from Daodejing (“truthful words are not beautiful”) and the Carving of Dragons)
• Liu Xie (465-520), from Wenxin Xiaolong (The Book of Literary Design, aka The Literary Mind
• Li Zhi (1527–1602), from Fenshu (A Book to be Burned)
• Yong Yuzi, preface to Sanguo zhi tongsu yanyi (Romance of the Three Kingdoms) (on historiography)
• Jin Shengtan (1610–61), from his edition of Shuihu zhuan (Water Margin) (on the novel)
• Liang Qichao (1873–1929), selection
• Wang Guowei (1877–1927), from Honglou meng pinglun (A critique of Dream of the Red Chamber)
• Lu Xun (1881-1936, Zhou Shuren), selection
• Hu Shi (1891-1962), “A Proposal fro Reforming Literature”
• Guo Morou (1892–1978), on the Creation Society
• Mao Zedong (1893-1976), from “Talks at the Yan’an Forum on Literature and Arts”
• Mao Dun (1896-1981, Shen Yanbing), on the Literature Research Society

India

• Rig Veda (1700-1000 BCE), Hymns to Vāc (on speech and language)
• Valmiki (c. 200 BCE), from Ramayana (“invention of poetry”)
• Bharata (2^ndC), from Natyasastra
• Dandin (8^thC), from Kavyadarsa
• Anandavardhana (855-85), from Light on Suggestion
• Abhinavagupta (9-11C?), on the theory of rasadhvani (socio-moral value of poetry)
• Altaf Hussain Hali (1837-1914), from Muqaddama-e-Sher-o-Shaeri
• Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), selection
• Kuppuswami Sastri (1885–1980), from lectures of 1919

Japan

• Murasaki Shikibu (978–1016?), from The Tale of Genji
• Zeami Motokiyo (1363–1443, Japanese), from On the Art of No
• Motoori Norinaga (1730–1801), selections
• Tsubouchi Shōyō (1859–1935), from The Essence of the Novel (1885–86)
• Shimamura Hōgetsu (1871–1918), on poetry and naturalism vs. modernity
• Yokomitsu Riichi (1898–1947), on New Sensualism
• Kobayashi Hideo (1902–83), selection (on creative imagination)

Latin America

• Popol Vuh (1550), (on shared language)
• Manuel González Prada (1848-1918), on indigenous writing
• José Martí (1853-95), “Nuestro America”
• Rubén Darío (1867-1916), from “La literatura en Centroamérica” and/or another on modernismo

Western tradition

• Hesiod (c. 700 BCE), from Theogony (on lies and truth)
• Plato (427-347 BCE), from Ion, Republic
• Aristotle (384-322 BCE), from Poetics
• Horace (65-8 BCE), from Ars Poetica
• Longinus (1^stC), from On the Sublime
• Augustine (354-430), from On Christian Doctrine
• Bede (673–735), from Concerning Figures and Tropes (on allegory)
• Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), from Summa Theologica
• Christine de Pizan (1365-1429), from The Book of the City of Ladies
• Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586), from “An Apology for Poetry”
• Pierre Corneille (1606-1684), “Of the Three Unities of Action, Time, and Place”
• John Dryden (1631-1700), from An Essay of Dramatic Poesy, from Preface to Troilus and Cressida
• Giambattista Vico (1668-1744), from The New Science
• Alexander Pope (1688-1744), “An Essay on Criticism”
• Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), from The Rambler (on fiction), from Preface to Shakespeare
• David Hume (1711-1776), “Of the Standard of Taste”
• Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), from Critique of Judgment
• Edmund Burke (1729-1797), from Enquiry into the Sublime
• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), from Conversations with Eckermann
• Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831), from The Philosophy of Fine Art
• Germaine Necker de Stael (1766-1817), from Literature in its Relations to Social Institutions
• William Wordsworth (1770-1850), Preface to Lyrical Ballads
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), from Biographia Literaria
• Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), from A Defence of Poetry
• Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), from The Poet
• Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Friedrich Engels (1820-1895), selected writings
• Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867), from The Painter of Modern Life
• Matthew Arnold (1822-1888), “The Function of Criticism at the Present Time,” from Culture and Anarchy
• Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910), from What is Art?
• Wilhelm Dilthey (1833–1911), on the hermeneutic circle (and Schleiermacher)
• Henry James (1843-1916), from “The Art of Fiction”
• Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), “On Truth and Lying in a Nonmoral Sense”
• Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), from “The Critic as Artist”
• Sigmund Freud (1856 – 1939), “Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming” and/or from The Interpretation of Dreams
• Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913), from Course in General Linguistics
• W. E. B. Du Bois (1868-1963), from “Criteria of Negro Art”
• Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961), from “On the Relation of Analytical Psychology to Poetry”
• Leon Trotsky (1879-1940), from Literature and Revolution (on the formalists)
• Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), from A Room of One’s Own
• Viktor Shklovsky (1893-1984), from “Art as Technique”
• T. S. Eliot (1888-1965), “Tradition and the Individual Talent”
• John Crowe Ransom (1888-1974), from The New Criticism
• Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960), from “Characteristics of Negro Expression”
• Walter Benjamin (1892-1940), from “On Language as Such and On the Language of Man”
• Edmund Wilson (1895-1975), from “Marxism and Literature”
• Mikhail Bahktin (1895-1975), from “Epic and Novel: Toward a Methodology for the Study of the Novel”
• Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), selection
• André Breton (1896-1966), from Les pas perdus
• Nazım Hikmet (1901-1963), selection (letters)
• Langston Hughes (1902-1967), “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain”
• Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980), “What is Literature?”
• Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986), from The Second Sex

Selections in chronological order
Selections organized by topic
For a pdf file of the full list and sample TOCs, click here

Steven J. Venturino
aprofessorintheory.com