Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926)

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) was a German poet and prose stylist, often considered the most important German poet of the 20th century.

One of the following works may appear on the GRE Literature exam. Read each linked summary once; read "Der Panther" twice.

1. Letters to a Young Poet

2. The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge (Novel)

3. "Der Panther" (Translation)

Rilke is not worth adding to your GRE reading list.

Henry James (1843-1916)

Henry James (1843-1916) was an American novelist who spent most of his career in Britain. He was a realist, and his work is remarkable for its creative use of interior monologue and unreliable narrators. His essay "The Art of Fiction" argued for greater creative freedom for writers.

Henry James has many works that could appear on the exam. For the GRE Literature exam, focus on the following. Read each linked summary at least once.

1. Daisy Miller (1878)
-Seduced into improper behavior by the cad Winterbourne

2. The Portrait of a Lady (1881)
-Heiress Isabel Archer in Italy

3. The Turn of the Screw (1898)
-Ghost story; unreliable narrator.
-Flora, Miles, Miss Jessel, Quint

4. The Beast in the Jungle (1903)
-John Marcher & May Bartram await the grand fate John is sure will befall him, but which never does.

5. The Ambassadors (1903)
-Lambert Strether; the Newsomes; Chad Newsome; Countess Madame de Vionnet
-Strether tries to bring Chad back to New England from Paris.

Several of Henry James' novellas are worth adding to your GRE reading list. I recommend the Signet Classics Edition, which includes Daisy Miller, The Beast in the Jungle, and The Turn of the Screw.

E. M. Forster (1879-1970)

E. M. Forster (1879-1970) was an early-20th-century English novelist, short story writer, and essayist. He was a secular humanist. His Aspects of the Novel broached the idea of "flat" and "round" characters.

For the GRE Literature exam, associate the following works with E. M. Forster. Read each linked summary at least once.

1. Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905)
-Caroline Abbott; Lilia Herriton; Lilia falls in love w/ Italian on trip to Italy; marries, starts family, dies.

2. A Room with a View (1908)
-Charlotte Bartlett, Lucy Honeychurch, Mr. Emerson, George Emerson, Mr. Beebe, Eleanor Lavish, Cecil Vyse; young Englishwoman's romantic encounter in Florence impedes marriage.

3. Howards End (1910)
-Maragaret, Helen, & Tibby Schlegel; Charles, Paul, & Evie Wilcox; Schlegel (sentimentality) vs. Wilcox (pragmatism); epigraph: "Only connect."

4. A Passage to India (1924)
-Dr. Aziz, Adela Quested, the Marabar Caves; murder plot

E. M. Forster's Howard's End may be worth adding to your GRE reading list. I recommend the Dover Thrift Edition.

Eudora Welty (1909-2001)

Eudora Welty (1909-2001) was a Southern Gothic novelist.

For the GRE Literature exam, associate the following works and characters with Eudora Welty.

1. Delta Wedding
-The Fairchild family; George. Whole family voices the story.

2. The Optimist's Daughter (Pulitzer winner)
-Laurel Hand, Fay McKelva, Judge Clint McKelva, Becky McKelva

3. "Why I Live at the P.O." (short story)
-Sister (that's her name) tells why Mr. Whitaker broke up with her to marry her sister, Stella-Rondo.
-Sister said she was bigger-breasted on one side.

Eudora Welty is not worth adding to your reading list for the GRE Literature exam.

Edith Wharton (1862-1937)

Edith Wharton (1862-1937) was an American novelist. She was from aristocratic New England stock; she lived and worked in France between the wars. Her work often depicts the suffocating society of the New England wealthy.

For the GRE Literature exam, associate the following works and characters with Edith Wharton. In each case, a summary knowledge will suffice.

1. The House of Mirth (1905)
-Lily Bart, NYC socialite seeking husband; title from Ecclesiastes 7:4
2. Ethan Frome (1911)
-1900s New England; Zenobia (Zeena), romance with Mattie Silver. Told through townspeople's eyes.
3. The Age of Innocence (1920; Pulitzer winner)
-1870s NYC. Newland Archer engaged to May Welland; May's cousin Ellen Olenska intrudes.

Edith Wharton is not worth adding to your GRE reading list unless you find yourself with some extra time and you haven't read any of her work. In that case, I recommend the Oxford World's Classics edition of The House of Mirth.

Saul Bellow (1915-2005)

Saul Bellow (1915-2005) was a Nobel-Prize-winning American novelist, born in Canada to parents of Russian Jewish descent.

For the GRE Literature exam, associate the following works with Saul Bellow. In each case, a summary knowledge will suffice.

1. Herzog
2. Seize the Day
3. Henderson the Rain King
4. The Adventures of Augie March

(He has some important later works, but they're too recent for the GRE folks.)

It's probably not worth adding Bellow to your GRE reading list.

Marcel Proust (1871-1922)

Marcel Proust (1871-1922) was a French novelist, essayist, and critic. He's a titan of French and world literatures, but don't get sucked in--you're studying for an English literature test.

For the GRE Literature exam, it's enough to know some general facts:

A la Rechere du Temps Perdu
(or, In Search of Lost Time; Remembrance of Things Past)
-A sprawling, largely unplotted fictionalized autobiography.
-Memories often flow from present sensory details.
-The opening discusses memories sparked by the flavor of a madeleine.

Proust doesn't show up often enough on the exam to make him worth reading for test prep, but he's a such a huge influence on so much 20th-century literature, it's worth dabbling on your own if you have time. You can start here.

Virginia Woolf (1882-1941)

Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) was an English Modernist novelist and essayist. She was one of the major figures of the Modernist movement.

She was a pioneer of the modern stream-of-consciousness techniques, though in her hands the effect is less pronounced as in other modernist works, such as Joyce's Ulysses.

For the GRE Literature exam, associate the following works with Virginia Woolf. In each case, if you haven't read the book already, a general knowledge of plot, character, and style will suffice.

1. Mrs. Dalloway
-1 day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, in post-WWI England
-A famous example of stream of consciousness
2. To the Lighthouse
-Follows the Ramsay family, plus Lily Briscoe, before, during, and after WWI.
3. A Room of One's Own
-Book-length essay on barriers faced by woman writers of literature.
-Hypothetical "Judith Shakespeare;" coined the term "Oxbridge"
-Examines Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, and George Eliot in detail
-Tone is heavily ironic/sarcastic

There's the off chance that the GRE folks will expect you to know that Woolf, who could be more than a bit haughty, once dismissed Joyce's Ulysses as "illiterate" and "underbred."

If you're interested in reading more, I recommend starting with this annotated To the Lighthouse.

William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)

William Carlos Williams (1883-1963) was a modern American poet. The GRE folks will occasionally expect you to know that, like contemporary Wallace Stevens, he wasn't a professional poet--Williams was a pediatrician.

For the GRE Literature exam, associate the following works with William Carlos Williams. Read each poem at least once; poems in bold should be read multiple times before the exam.

1. "Spring and all"
2. "Aspodel, that greeny flower" (excerpt)
3. "Tract"
4. "The Red Wheelbarrow"
5. "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus"

Wallace Stevens (1879-1955)

Wallace Stevens (1879-1955) was a major American modernist poet. The GRE folks will expect you to know that he worked for an insurance company in Hartford--he wasn't a professional poet.

*Wallace Stevens is almost guaranteed to appear on the exam.

For the GRE Literature exam, associate the following works with Wallace Stevens. Each poem should be read at least once; poems in bold should be read multiple times before the exam.

1. "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird"
2. "The Anecdote of the Jar"
3. "The Emperor of Ice Cream"
4. "The Snow Man"

Robert Frost (1874-1963)

Robert Frost (1874-1963) was an American poet and Pulitzer Prize winner. His work usually features colloquial language and depictions of rural life in early 20th century New England coupled with complex social or philosophical themes.

For the GRE Literature exam, associate the following works with Robert Frost. Read each poem at least once; poems in bold should be read multiple times before the exam.

1. "Mending Wall"
2. "Design"
3. "Meeting and Passing"
4. "Mowing"
5. "Spring Pools"
6. "Once by the Pacific" (sonnet in 7 couplets)

("Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening" and "The Road Not Taken" are usually considered too well-known for inclusion on the GRE Literature exam.)

Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)

Carl Sandburg (1878-1967) was an American poet and two-time Pulitzer prize winner--once for his poetry and once for a biography of Lincoln.

For the GRE Literature exam, associate the following poems with Carl Sandburg. Read each poem at least once before the test.

1. "Chicago"
-epithet: "hog butcher for the world"
-looks more like a Ginsburg poem than a typical Frost poem
2. "Fog"

Robert Lowell (1917-1977)

Robert Lowell (1917-1977) was a major postwar American poet and the founder of the confessionalist school. He taught Anne Sexton & Sylvia Plath; he was friends with, but often criticized by, Elizabeth Bishop.

Robert Lowell is slightly more likely than other late-20th-century American poets to appear on the GRE Literature exam. Read the poems below at least once; poems in bold should be read at least twice.

1. "The Drunken Fisherman"
2. "Skunk Hour (for Elizabeth Bishop)"
3. "Mr. Edwards and the Spider"
-A reference to the colonial American preacher and theologian Jonathan Edwards.

Post-1945 American Poetry

In general, the GRE Literature test does not weight post-1945 literature heavily. The poets below are most likely to appear in a process-of-elimination ID section. It's enough to recognize the names and read the listed poems at least once. (Poems in bold should be read multiple times.)

1. Sylvia Plath
-"Daddy"
-"The Mirror"
2. John Berryman
3. Amiri Baraka
-"Poem for Half-White College Student"
4. Anne Sexton
-"The Truth the Dead Know"
5. Elizabeth Bishop
-"One Art"
6. Robert Lowell (link to GRE Lit Blog post)
7. Gwendolyn Brooks
-"The Mother"
-"Gay Chaps at the Bar"
-"We Real Cool"

The Harlem Renaissance

The Harlem Renaissance was an explosion of African-American arts and letters in in 1920s and 1930s.

For the GRE Literature exam, associate the following writers with the Harlem Renaissance.

For authors in bold, a general familiarity with their works and and biographies is preferred. For the other authors listed, knowing the titles of one major work each will suffice.

1. James Baldwin
-Notes on a Native Son
-Go Tell It on the Mountain
2. Richard Wright
3. Ralph Ellison
-The Invisible Man
4. Langston Hughes
5. Zora Neale Hurston
-Their Eyes Were Watching God (parallels with the Odyssey)
6. Countee Cullen
7. James Weldon Johnson

Dylan Thomas (1914-1953)

Dylan Thomas (1914-1953) was a Welsh-born modernist poet. He also wrote short stories and scripts. One or two of the poems below are almost guaranteed to show up on the GRE Literature test.

For the test, associate the following works with Dylan Thomas. Poems in bold should be read at least twice before the exam.

1. "Do not go gentle into that good night"
-Know that this poem is a villanelle.
2. "And Death Shall Have No Dominion"
3. "Fern Hill"
-Known for its very lush imagery.

T.S. Eliot (1888-1965)

T.S. Eliot (1888-1965) was an American-born modernist poet who spent most of his career in the United Kingdom. He is one of the foremost figures of modernism.

Associate the following works with T.S. Eliot. For The Waste Land and Four Quartets, read a short excerpt to get a feel for the style of the work. Read the other poems at least once before the exam. The quotes listed below are especially likely to appear on the test.

1. The Waste Land
"April is the cruelest month, breeding / Lilacs out of the dead land"
2. "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
"Let us go then, you and I, / when the evening is spread out against the sky / Like a patient etherized upon a table"
3. Four Quartets
"Time present and time past . . . all time is unredeemable"
4. "The Journey of the Maji"
-Written after Eliot's conversion to Christianity

Ezra Pound (1885-1972)

Ezra Pound (1885-1972) was an American-born modernist poet who spent most of his career in Europe. Many of his works demonstrate Pound's fascination with Asia.

Associate the following works with Ezra Pound. For The Cantos and "Hugh Selwyn Mauberley," read a short excerpt to get a feel for the style of the work. Read the other poems at least once before the exam.

1. The Cantos
-multilingual (includes Chinese characters); wide geographical spread; many unexplained references; extremely difficult; written from 1915-1962
2. "Hugh Selwyn Mauberley"
-Pound debates Mauberly on poetry; both are facets of Pound
3. "The Lake Isle"
-A parody of Yeats, "The Lake Isle of Innisfree"
4. "The River Merchant's Wife: A Letter"
-Chinese subject matter
5. "In a Station of the Metro"
-Haiku (the title is the first line)

W. H. Auden (1907-1973)

W. H. Auden (1907-1973) was a British-born modernist poet, though he spent most of his career in the United States. His body of work is hard to characterize briefly, since it encompasses a wide variety of tones, themes, and forms. He particularly liked putting modern spins on traditional verse forms and made frequent use of irregular rhyme schemes.

Associate the following works with Auden. Read each at least once before the exam. Poems in bold should be read multiple times.

1. "Musee des Beaux Arts"
-see also William Carlos Williams, "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus"
2. "In Memory of W. B. Yeats"
3. "Lay Your Sleeping Head, My Love"

W.B. Yeats (1865-1939)

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) was an Irish modernist poet and playwright influential in the Irish Literary Revival. He was also a co-founder of the Abbey Theatre.

Yeats is very common on the GRE. You'll recognize many postwar book titles among his poems--Didion's Slouching Towards Bethlehem, for example, and McCarthy's No Country for Old Men.

Associate the following works with Yeats. Short poems should be read at least once before the exam. Poems in bold should be read multiple times.

1. "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" (parodied by Pound)
2. "When You Are Old"
3. "The Wild Swans at Coole"
4. "The Second Coming"
5. "Sailing to Byzantium"
6. "Leda and the Swan"
7. "Crazy Jane Talks With the Bishop"
8. "Among Schoolchildren"
9. "The Dolls"