Twentieth-Century Literature in English

Each of the three one-hour essay questions in this area addresses a broad issue of the period but asks for in-depth analysis of specific authors and works. For each question students must choose appropriate works to discuss; in most cases, they must choose authors as well. (Thus they may choose authors and works other than those listed below.) Students are expected to demonstrate knowledge of the period's major themes and of the formal characteristics of its novels, short stories, nonfiction prose, plays, and poetry by applying these broader issues to discussions of the following works.

(More information about the MA Qualifying Exam can be found in the Guidelines.)

Representative Poems by Modern Poets

(such as Yeats, Frost, Stevens, Williams, Pound, Moore, L. Hughes, Eliot, Owen, Graves, Auden)

Representative Novels by Modern Writers

(such as Conrad, Joyce, Woolf, Lawrence, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Hemingway)

Representative Short Stories by Twentieth-Century Writers

(such as Anderson, Joyce, Lawrence, Hemingway, O'Connor)

Representative Plays by Twentieth-Century Dramatists

(such as Shaw, O'Casey, O'Neill, Beckett, Williams, Miller)

Representative Novels by Contemporary Writers

(such as Nabokov, Ellison, Bellow, Lessing, Fowles, Morrison, Drabble)

Representative Poems by Contemporary Poets

(such as S. Smith, Roethke, Bishop, D. Thomas, Lowell, Larkin, Rich, T. Hughes, Plath, Heaney)

Return to Area Reading Lists Page

English Department
College of Arts & Sciences
Oklahoma State University
205 Morrill Hall
Stillwater, OK 74078
Phone: 405-744-9474
For Information about English Programs: english.information@okstate.edu
Webmaster: engweb@okstate.edu

Statement of
"Organic Knowledge"
for Literature and Film

A student with "organic knowledge" of the reading lists will

1. understand the way individual texts reflect the material and intellectual conditions of the time of their production; this means that the student can perceive an author's work in reference to history, including literary or film history, and to contemporary social and philosophical issues;

2. consider the way texts exemplify the major concerns and formal features that critics have associated with literary or film periods, movements, and genres; further, the student will be aware of the ways that texts change, depart from, or undermine the conventions of movements or periods to which they belong;

3. in summary, be able, on request, to forge links between author or filmmakers, their individual works, and various intellectual, social, and aesthetic traditions, when applicable.