12th Grade Common Core Suggested Reading Lists

12-1 Literary Texts—European Literature: Middle Ages

Epic Poems

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  Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

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• (Cantos I-XI, XXXI-XXXIV) (L 1170)

Stories

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  The Decameron (Penguin Classics)

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  (Giovanni Boccaccio) (continued in unit two) (L 1500)

Literary Nonfiction

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  The Confessions, Revised: Saint Augustine (The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century, Vol. 1)

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  (Saint Augustine) (Book XI) (L 1270)

Plays

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  The Summoning of Everyman

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  (Anonymous)
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  The Farce of Master Pierre Patelin

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  (Anonymous)

Poems

• “When the leaf sings” (Arnaut Daniel)
• “The bitter air”(Arnaut Daniel)
• “I see scarlet, green, blue, white, yellow” (Arnaut Daniel)
• “The Ruin” in The Exeter Book (Anonymous)
• “The Wanderer” in The Exeter Book (Anonymous)
• [easyazon_bestseller items=”5″ locale=”US” node=”468224″ tag=”mrcam0e-20″ title=”Bestseller The Canterbury Tales“]
• The General Prologue in The Canterbury Tales (Geoffrey Chaucer) (E)
• “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” in The Canterbury Tales (Geoffrey Chaucer) (E)
• “The Knight’s Tale” in The Canterbury Tales (Geoffrey Chaucer) (E)
• “The Monk’s Tale” in The Canterbury Tales (Geoffrey Chaucer) (E)
• “The Pardoner’s Tale”in The Canterbury Tales (Geoffrey Chaucer) (E)
• “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” in The Canterbury Tales (Geoffrey Chaucer) (E)
• “Lord Randall” (Anonymous)
• “Dance of Death” (“Danza de la Muerte”) (Anonymous)

Informational Texts

Historical Nonfiction

• The One and the Many in the Canterbury Tales (Traugott Lawler)
• Medieval Images, Icons, and Illustrated English Literary Texts: From Ruthwell Cross to the Ellesmere Chaucer (Maidie Hilmo)
• St. Thomas Aquinas (G. K. Chesterton)
• The History of the Medieval World: From the Conversion of Constantine to the First Crusade (Susan Wise Bauer)

Art, Music, and Media
Prompt: Can we see as man, both the earthly and divine, begins to take on human characteristics as the Middle Ages wane?

Art

• Cimabue, Maestà (1280)
• Giotto, Arena (Scrovegni) Chapel frescos (after 1305)
  • Joachim Among the Shepards
  • Meeting at the Golden Gate
  • Raising of Lazarus
  • Jonah Swallowed Up by the Whale
• Gustave Doré, illustrations for Dante’s Inferno
• Lorenzo Ghiberti, Gates of Paradise (1425-1452)
• Hans Holbein, Dance of Death (1538)

12-2 Literary Texts—European Literature: Renaissance and Reformation

Novel

• The Life of Gargantua and the Heroic Deeds of Pantagruel (François Rabelais) (Books 1 and 2)

Stories

• The Decameron (Giovanni Boccaccio) (continued from unit one) (L 1500)

Plays

• The Jewish Women (Les Juifves) (Robert Garnier)
• Nine Carnival Plays (Hans Sachs)
• Henry IV, Part I(William Shakespeare)
• The Tragedy of Macbeth (William Shakespeare) (L 1350)

Poems

• Dark Night of the Soul (Saint John of the Cross) (selections)
• “The Nightingale of Wittenberg” (Hans Sachs)
• The Faerie Queene (Edmund Spenser) (selections)
• Sonnets 29, 30, 40, 116, 128, 130, 143, and 146 (William Shakespeare)
• “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” (Christopher Marlowe)
• “The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd” (Sir Walter Raleigh)

Informational Texts

Historical Nonfiction

• Rabelais and His World (Mikhail Bakhtin)

Essays

• “Of Cannibals” (Michel de Montaigne)
• On the Divine Proportion (De divina proportione) (illustrations only) (Luca Pacioli)
• Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects (Giorgio Vasari)

Historical Nonfiction

• The Prince (Niccolo Machiavelli) (selections) (L 1510)

Art, Music, and Media
Prompt: How is man’s humanity depicted in Renaissance art?

Art

• Sandro Botticelli, Primavera (1482)
• Leonardo da Vinci, Vitruvian Man (1487)
• Leonardo da Vinci, Mona Lisa (1503-1505)
• Michelangelo, David (1505)
• Leonardo da Vinci, The Virgin and Child with St. Anne (1508)
• Michelangelo, Sistine Chapel, ceiling (1508-1512)
• Raphael, The Niccolini-Cowper Madonna (1508)
• Jacopo da Pontormo, Desposition from the Cross (Entombment) (1525-28)
• Michelangelo, The Last Judgment, Sistine Chapel altar wall (1536-1541)
• Caravaggio, The Entombment of Christ (1602-1603)
• Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini, Ecstasy of Saint Teresa (1647–1652)

12-3 Literary Texts—European Literature: Seventeenth Century
Note: Because of the number and length of works included in this unit, teachers may want to organize it around two major works, one fiction (or dramatic, or poetic) and one nonfiction, with other works supplementing these selections. As a minimum, students should read one full literary work, a substantial excerpt from a philosophical or scientific work, and several shorter works of fiction and poetry.

Novels

• Don Quixote (Miguel de Cervantes) (E) (selections) (L 1410)
• The Pilgrim’s Progress (John Bunyan) (L 900)

Plays

• Hamlet (William Shakespeare) (L 1283)
• King Lear (William Shakespeare) (E) (L 1145)
• The Merchant of Venice (William Shakespeare) (E) (L 1083)
• The Alchemist (Ben Jonson)
• The Miser (Jean-Baptiste Molière) (EA)

Poems

• “The Flea” (John Donne) (E)
• “Song: Goe, and catche a falling starre” (John Donne) (E)
• “Holy Sonnet 10” (John Donne) (E)
• “To His Coy Mistress” (Andrew Marvell)
• “To the Virgins to Make Much of Time” (Robert Herrick)
• “To Daffodils” (Robert Herrick)
• “Love III” (George Herbert)

Informational Texts

Historical Nonfiction

• Leviathan (Thomas Hobbes) (selections) (L 1270)
• Novum Organum (Francis Bacon) (selections)
• An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Vol. 1 (John Locke), Vol. 2

Art, Music, and Media

Media

• Hamlet (1964)
• Hamlet (1948)
• Man of La Mancha (1972)
• Dale Wasserman, Man of La Mancha, the musical

12-4 Literary Texts—European Literature: Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Century
For this shorter unit, teachers may want to choose one novel, several short stories, or a play, and poetry.

Novels

• Robinson Crusoe (Daniel Defoe) (L 1070)
• Gulliver’s Travels (Jonathan Swift) (L 1210)
• The Vicar of Wakefield (Oliver Goldsmith) (L 1290)
• Emma (Jane Austen) (L 1147)
• The Sufferings of Young Werther (Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe)

Stories

• “Micromégas” (Voltaire)
• The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchhausen (Rudolf Erich Raspe)

Poetry

• “Auguries of Innocence” “Songs of Innocence and of Experience” (selected poems) (William Blake) (EA)
• “Ode on Indolence” “Ode on a Grecian Urn” (excerpts) (John Keats)
• In Memorium A. H. H (Alfred Lord Tennyson)
• “The Deserted Village” (Oliver Goldsmith)
• “Tintern Abbey” “London, 1802” “The World is too Much with Us” “Ode to Intimations to Immortality” (excerpts) (William Wordsworth)

Informational Texts

• The Diary of Samuel Pepys (Samuel Pepys)
• The Life of Samuel Johnson (James Boswell)
• Preface to Lyrical Ballads (William Wordsworth)

Art, Music, and Media
Prompt: How did artists of this period frame the relationship between man and nature?

Art

• John Singleton Copley, Watson and the Shark (1778)
• Frederic Edwin Church, Morning in the Tropics (1877)
• Caspar David Friedrich, The Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog (1818)
• John Constable, Seascape Study with Rain Cloud (1827)
• Jean Honore-Fragonard, The Progress of Love: The Pursuit (1771-1773)
• William Blake, The Lovers’ Whirlwind (1824-1827)
• Theodore Gericault, The Raft of the Medusa (1818-1819)

12-5 Literary Texts—European Literature: Nineteenth Century
This is a longer unit. Teachers may want to select one novel, one play; one long poem; and several short poems. Alternately, the teacher might choose to include two plays instead of a novel, or two long poems instead of a play. The selections of the unit should show a range of literary imagination and contrasting attitudes toward the role of literature in society.

Novels

• The Red and the Black (Stendhal) (L 1080)
• The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Victor Hugo) (L 1205)
• The Three Musketeers (L 960), The Count of Monte Cristo (Andre Dumas) (L930)
• Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (Jules Verne) (L1030)
• The Time Machine (H.G. Wells) (L1070)
• Heart of Darkness (Joseph Conrad) (L1050)
• A Passage to India (E.M. Forster) (L 950)
• Sense and Sensibility (Jane Austen) (L 1160)
• Jane Eyre (Charlotte Brontë) (E) (L 840)
• Wuthering Heights (Emily Brontë) (L 880)
• A Christmas Carol(Charles Dickens) (L 900)
• Frankenstein (Mary Shelley) (L 1170)
• Dracula (Bram Stoker) (L 960)
• The Picture of Dorian Gray (Oscar Wilde) (L 920)

Children’s Literature

• Peter and Wendy (J.M. Barrie)
• The Adventure of Alice in Wonderland (Lewis Carroll) (L 860)
• The Jungle Book (Rudyard Kipling) (L 740)

Drama

• A Doll’s House (Henrik Ibsen) (E)
• The Sunken Bell (Gerhart Hauptmann)
• The Importance of Being Earnest (Oscar Wilde) (E)

Poetry

• Flowers of Evil(Charles Baudelaire) (poems)
• Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (George Gordon, Lord Byron)
• “The Ballad of Reading Gaol” (Oscar Wilde) (EA)
• “Dover Beach” (Matthew Arnold)
• “Goblin Market” (Christina Rossetti) (EA)
• “Spring and Fall” (Gerard Manley Hopkins)
• Sonnet 43 (Elizabeth Barrett Browning)
• “Love Among the Ruins” (Robert Browning)
• “The Raven” “Annabel Lee” (Edgar Allan Poe)
• The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” (Samuel Taylor Coleridge)

Informational Texts

• Excerpts from Culture and Anarchy (Matthew Arnold)
• Excerpts from the opening of Faust(Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe)
• Excerpts from Reveries of a Solitary Walker (Jean-Jacques Rosseau)
• Excerpts from The Origin of Species (Charles Darwin) (L 1430)
• Excerpts from Hard Times (Charles Dickens) (L 1060)
• The Decay of Lying (Oscar Wilde) (EA)
• Tallis’s History and Description of the Crystal Palace, and the Exhibition of the World’s Industry in 1851 (John Tallis)

12-6 Literary Texts—European Literature: Twentieth Century
Teachers may make the literary selections in a number of ways. They may select works across the genres, or they may focus primarily on a particular genre. The selections should address the ideas of anxiety and beauty in some manner and should offer contrasting responses to the tension and crises of the twentieth century.

Novels

• The Mayor of Casterbridge (Thomas Hardy) (L 1090)
• Pan: From Lieutenant Thomas Glahn’s Papers (Knut Hamsun) (L 760)
• Steppenwolf (Hermann Hesse) (L 918)
• Briefing for a Descent into Hell (Doris Lessing)
• 1984 (George Orwell) (L 1090)
• Brave New World (Aldous Huxley) (L 870)
• All Quiet on the Western Front (Erich Maria Remarque) (L 830)

Novellas

• The Metamorphosis (Franz Kafka) (E) (L 1340)

Plays

• Antigone (Jean Anouilh)
• Mother Courage and Her Children (Bertolt Brecht)
• Caligula (Albert Camus)
• Pygmalion(George Bernard Shaw) (L 1019)
• Rhinoceros (Eugene Ionesco) http://csdlibrary.wikispaces.com/Common+Core–12th+Grade(E)
• Waiting for Godot (Samuel Beckett)
• King Lear (William Shakespeare)
• Hamlet (William Shakespeare)

Poems

• “The Darkling Thrush” (Thomas Hardy)
• “Archaic Torso of Apollo” (Rainer Maria Rilke)
• “The Second Coming” (William Butler Yeats)
• Poem of the Deep Song (Federico García Lorca) (selections)
• “Four Quartets” (T. S. Eliot) (EA)
• “The Wasteland” (T. S. Eliot) (EA)
• “Conversation with a Stone” (Wisława Szymborska)
• “Suicide in the Trenches” (Siegfried Sassoon)
• “Counter-Attack” (Siegfried Sassoon)
• “The Old Huntsman” (Siegfried Sassoon)
• “Dreamers” (Siegfried Sassoon)
• “The Daffodil Murderer” (Siegfried Sassoon)
• The Age of Anxiety: A Baroque Eclogue (W.H. Auden) (EA)

Informational Texts

Historical Nonfiction

• Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche)
• Letters to a Young Poet (Rainer Maria Rilke)
• The Courage to Be (Paul Tillich) (selections)
• The Ego and the Id (Sigmund Freud) (selections)

Speeches

• “Their Finest Hour” (House of Commons, June 18, 1940) (Winston Churchill) (EA)
  • Abridged audio version

Essays

• “Crisis of the Mind” (Paul Valéry)
• “The Fallacy of Success” (G.K. Chesterton) (E)

Art, Music, and Media

Music

• Ludwig van Beethoven, String Quartet No. 15 in A Minor, Op. 132 (1825)
• Flamenco guitar music (such as that performed by Carlos Montoya or Paco Peña)