6. Literature in English. The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition. 2002

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The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition. 2002.

Literature in English

From the standpoint of American cultural literacy, all commonly known literary works written in English are probably best placed in a single category. The separation of British from American literature is somewhat misleading, particularly in the case of older literature. William Shakespeare is an American author—not because he was an American, obviously, but because his writings formed a part of American culture from its beginnings. Every frontier town had Shakespeare productions and comic entertainments that alluded to details of Shakespearean plays. Geoffrey Chaucer and Milton are American writers in this sense too, having been part of educated discourse from the earliest days of our republic. In the nineteenth century Charles Dickens was as much an American as a British writer. (Certainly he thought himself so when he counted his American royalties and lecture fees.) It is uncertain whether Henry James and T. S. Eliot should be considered American or British writers, and it’s not particularly important.

Usual practice divides our literature into the following periods: the Middle Ages (e.g., Chaucer), the Renaissance (e.g., Shakespeare), the eighteenth century (e.g., Samuel Johnson), the Romantic period of the early nineteenth century (e.g., Wordsworth), the Victorian period of the later nineteenth century (e.g., Dickens), and the twentieth century (e.g., T. S. Eliot). The most self-consciously American literature belongs to the nineteenth century, when patriotic writers such as Emerson, Melville, and Whitman deliberately set out to reflect the distinctive character of American culture. In the twentieth century, literature written in English tended to be international as well as national in flavor, as in writers like Salman Rushdie.

Literature in English excels in every kind of writing. Its particular glory is its poetry. For historical reasons, the English language acquired a vocabulary that is unusually rich and nuanced, combining words of Germanic root (such as see and glimpse) with words of Latin root (such as perceive and envision). This variety in our vocabulary has allowed our poets a tremendous range of sounds and meanings and made poetry in English one of humanity’s great achievements.

—E.D.H.

Entries

Achebe, Chinua	Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale / Her infinite variety	Agee, James
Ahab, Captain	Alas, poor Yorick!	Alcott, Louisa May
Alger, Horatio, Jr.	Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland	All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others
All the world’s a stage	Angelou, Maya	Animal Farm
Antony and Cleopatra	Antony, Mark	Arthur, King
As You Like It	Auden, W. H.	Austen, Jane
Baa, baa, black sheep	Babbitt	Bacon, Francis
Baldwin, James	Bard of Avon	Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations
Beowulf	Big Bad Wolf	Big Brother is watching you
Black Arts Movement	Black Boy	Blake, William
Book of Common Prayer	Boswell, James	Brave New World
Brontë, Charlotte and Emily	Browning, Elizabeth Barrett	Browning, Robert
Brutus	Brutus is an honorable man	Bumppo, Natty
Burns, Robert	Byron, George Gordon, Lord	Byronic hero
The Canterbury Tales	Carroll, Lewis	“Casey at the Bat”
Catch-22	The Catcher in the Rye	Cather, Willa
Chandler, Raymond	“The Charge of the Light Brigade”	Chaucer, Geoffrey
Cheshire cat	Christie, Agatha	A Christmas Carol
“Civil Disobedience”	Clemens, Samuel L.	Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
Come live with me and be my love	Conrad, Joseph	Cooper, James Fenimore
Cordelia	cummings, e. e.	David Copperfield
Death, be not proud	Death of a Salesman	Dickens, Charles
Dickinson, Emily	Dinesen, Isak	Do not go gentle into that good night … Rage, rage against the dying of the light
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Strange Case of	Donne, John	Dos Passos, John
Double, double toil and trouble; / Fire burn, and cauldron bubble	Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan	Dracula, Count
Dreiser, Theodore	Drink to me only with thine eyes	Dunbar, Paul Laurence
East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet	The Education of Henry Adams	“Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”
Elementary, my dear Watson	Eliot, George	Eliot, T. S.
Ellison, Ralph	Elmer Gantry	Emerson, Ralph Waldo
Et tu, Brute?	face that launched a thousand ships, Was this the	Fagin
“The Fall of the House of Usher”	Falstaff	far from the madding crowd
A Farewell to Arms	Faulkner, William	The female of the species is more deadly than the male
Fielding, Henry	Fifteen men on the Dead Man’s Chest—/ Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!	Fitzgerald, F. Scott
for whom the bell tolls	Frankenstein	Franklin, The Autobiography of Benjamin
Friday	Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears	Frost, Robert
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may	Get thee to a nunnery	Gibbon, Edward
“The Gift of the Magi”	Ginsberg, Allen	Give me your tired, your poor
Globe Theater	God’s in his heaven—All’s right with the world	“Goldilocks and the Three Bears”
Gone With the Wind	The Grapes of Wrath	Great Expectations
The Great Gatsby	Grinch Stole Christmas, How the	Gulliver’s Travels
“Gunga Din”	Had we but world enough, and time, / This coyness, Lady, were no crime	Hamlet
Hammett, Dashiell	Harlem Renaissance	Harry Potter
Hawthorne, Nathaniel	Heart of Darkness	Hellmann, Lillian
Hemingway, Ernest	Henry, O.	“Hey Diddle Diddle”
Hiawatha, The Song of	“Hickory, Dickory, Dock”	Holmes, Sherlock
Hook, Captain	The horror! The horror!	Huckleberry Finn, The Adventures of
Hughes, Langston	“Humpty Dumpty”	Hurston, Zora Neale
Huxley, Aldous	Hyde, Mr.	I wandered lonely as a cloud
Iago	ides of March, Beware the	If music be the food of love, play on
“In Flanders Fields”	“Invictus”	Invisible Man
Irving, Washington	It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done	It was the best of times, it was the worst of times
“Jack and the Beanstalk”	“Jack and Jill”	“Jack, Be Nimble”
“Jack Sprat”	James, Henry	Jane Eyre
Jeeves	Jekyll, Dr.	Johnson, James Weldon
Johnson, Samuel	Joyce, James	Julius Caesar
justify the ways of God to men, to	Keats, John	King James Bible
King Lear	kingdom for a horse!, My	Kipling, Rudyard
“Kubla Khan”	The lady doth protest too much	The land was ours before we were the land’s
The Last of the Mohicans	Lawrence, D. H.	Lay on, Macduff
lean and hungry look	Leaves of Grass	“The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”
Legree, Simon	Lessing, Doris	Let me not to the marriage of true minds / Admit impediments
Lewis, C. S.	Lewis, Sinclair	“Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing”
Lilliput	“Little Bo-Peep”	“Little Boy Blue”
“Little Jack Horner”	“Little Miss Muffet”	Little Women
“London Bridge Is Falling Down”	London, Jack	Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
Lord of the Flies	Lord, what fools these mortals be!	Macbeth
McCarthy, Mary	McCullers, Carson	Mailer, Norman
Malaprop, Mrs.	a man’s reach should exceed his grasp	Mary had a little lamb
“Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary”	The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation	Melville, Herman
Mencken, H. L.	The Merchant of Venice	Middle English
A Midsummer Night’s Dream	miles to go before I sleep	Milne, A. A.
Milton, John	Moby Dick	“A Modest Proposal”
more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio	Morrison, Toni	Mother Goose rhymes
Nabokov, Vladimir	Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass	Nash, Ogden
Native Son	Neither a borrower nor a lender be	Never-Never Land
“The Night Before Christmas”	Nineteen Eighty-Four	“O Captain, My Captain”
“Ode on a Grecian Urn”	Off with her head! Off with his head!	O’Hara, Scarlett
Old English	“Old King Cole”	“Old Mother Hubbard”
Oliver Twist	Once more unto the breach, dear friends	one that loved not wisely but too well
O’Neill, Eugene	Orwell, George	Othello
Our Town	Out, damned spot!	“The Owl and the Pussy-Cat”
Paradise Lost	Parker, Dorothy	Parting is such sweet sorrow
“Paul Revere’s Ride”	Peter Pan	“Peter Piper”
Pickwick, Samuel	“The Pied Piper of Hamelin”	The Pilgrim’s Progress
Plath, Sylvia	Poe, Edgar Allan	poet laureate
Pollyanna	Poor Richard’s Almanack	Pope, Alexander
pound of flesh	Pride and Prejudice	providence in the fall of a sparrow, There’s a special
Pulitzer Prizes	Pygmalion	The quality of mercy is not strained
Rand, Ayn	“The Raven”	The Red Badge of Courage
The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated	“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”	Ring-a-Ring o’ Roses
Rings on her fingers and bells on her toes	“Rip Van Winkle”	Robin Hood
Robinson Crusoe	“Rock-a-Bye, Baby”	romanticism
Romeo and Juliet	Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo?	Roots
Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose	Rushdie, Salman	Sandburg, Carl
The Scarlet Letter	Scott, Sir Walter	Scrooge, Ebenezer
“The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”	“Self-Reliance”	Seuss, Dr.
Shakespeare, William	Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?	Shangri-La
Shaw, George Bernard	Shelley, Percy Bysshe	Shoot, if you must, this old gray head
Shylock	“Sing a Song of Sixpence”	Something is rotten in the state of Denmark
star-crossed lovers	Stein, Gertrude	Steinbeck, John
Steinem, Gloria	Stevenson, Robert Louis	Stowe, Harriet Beecher
A Streetcar Named Desire	The Sun Also Rises	sweetness and light
Swift, Jonathan	The Taming of the Shrew	Tarzan
The Tempest	Tennyson, Alfred, Lord	There was a little girl / Who had a little curl
“There Was an Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe”	They also serve who only stand and wait	A thing of beauty is a joy forever
Thirty days hath September	“This Little Piggy Went to Market”	Thomas, Dylan
Thoreau, Henry David	“Three Blind Mice”	“The Three Pigs”
Through the Looking-Glass	Thurber, James	tide in the affairs of men, There is a
Tiger! Tiger! burning bright	Time’s wingéd chariot	Tiny Tim
To be, or not to be	Tobacco Road	Tolkien, J. R. R.
Tom Sawyer, The Adventures of	Tom Thumb	transcendentalism
Treasure Island	“Trees”	Twain, Mark
Tweedledum and Tweedledee	Twelfth Night	“Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”
Uncle Tom’s Cabin	Vanity Fair	Victorian
“The Village Blacksmith”	Vonnegut, Kurt, Jr.	Walden
Walker, Alice	“The Waste Land”	Water, water everywhere, / Nor any drop to drink
We are such stuff / As dreams are made on	Wells, H. G.	Welty, Eudora
Wharton, Edith	What’s in a name? That which we call a rose / By any other name would smell as sweet	Whitman, Walt
Wilde, Oscar	Wilder, Thornton	Williams, Tennessee
Wind in the Willows	Winnie-the-Pooh	the winter of our discontent
Wizard of Oz, The Wonderful	Woolf, Virginia	Wordsworth, William
“The World Is Too Much with Us”	Wright, Richard	Wuthering Heights
Yahoos	Yeats, William Butler

The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition. Edited by E.D. Hirsch, Jr., Joseph F. Kett, and James Trefil. Copyright © 2002 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

CONTENTS · INDEX · GUIDE · BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

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