Classics for Beginners discussion

the first fragment of the long list of books I should have read, want to read and will read [sooner or later].
[GT - link to gutenberg.org]


middle-ages - rennaissance
1. The Song of Roland (La Chanson de Roland, based on battle of Roncesvalles in 778, written in the late 11th century) - chanson de geste/ epic poem GT
2. Dante Alighieri -> The Divine Comedy (Divina Commedia, 1308-21) GT
3. Francesco Petrarca -> Songbook (Canzoniere, 14th century) - about Laura
4. Giovanni Boccaccio -> The Decameron (Decameron, 1350-53) GT
5. François Rabelais -> The Life of Gargantua and Pantagruel (La vie de Gargantua et de Pantagruel, 1532-~55) GT
6. Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus -> The Praise of Folly (Morias Enkomion//Stultitiae Laus, 1509/11) GT
7. Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra -> The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha (El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha, 1605 and 1615) GT
8. Geoffrey Chaucer -> The Canterbury Tales (14th century) GT
9. William Shakespeare -> Macbeth (1603-07) GT + Hamlet (~1599) GT + Richard III (~1591) GT + Shakespeare's Sonnets (~1609) GT


10. Beowulf (8th-11th century) - old english epic poem GT
11. The Poetic Edda (originaly - minstrel poeams; older that Beowulf but written down only in 13th century) and/or The Prose Edda (~13th century - here’s a lot of deposition from christianity) - both nordic - GT
12. Celtic legends/mythology which consists from for cycles - mythological, ulster, fenian, historical
13. The Lay of the Cid or The Poem of the Cid (El Cantar de Myo Çid, 12th century) - spanish epic poem GT
14. The Song of the Nibelungs//The Nibelungenlied (Nibelungenlied, 12th/13th century) - german epic poem GT

17th century
1. Pedro Calderón de la Barca -> Life is a Dream (La vida es sueño, 1629-35) GT
2. Pierre Corneille -> Le Cid (The Cid) (1636) GT
3. Jean Racine -> Brittanicus (1669)
4. Jean-Baptiste Poquelin / Molière -> Tartuffe or the Imposter (Tartuffe, ou l'Imposteur, 1664) GT + Don Juan or The Feast with the Statue (Dom Juan ou le Festin de pierre, 1660) + The Misanthrope (Le Misanthrope ou l'Atrabilaire amoureux, 1666) + The Miser (L'Avare, 1668) GT

18th century
1. Daniel Defoe -> Robinson Crusoe (1719) GT
2. Jonathan Swift -> Gulliver's Travels (Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, in Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships, 1726) GT
3. Henry Fielding -> The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (1749) GT
4. Laurence Sterne -> The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759-67) GT + A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy (1768) GT
5. Antoine François Prévost / Abbé Prévost -> Manon Lescaut (1731) GT
6. François-Marie Arouet / Voltaire -> Zadig, or The Book of Fate (1747) GT + Micromegas (1752) + Candide (Candide, ou l'Optimisme, 1759) GT
7. Denis Diderot -> Rameau's Nephew, or the Second Satire (Le Neveu de Rameau ou La Satire seconde, 1761-72)
8. Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais -> The Barber of Seville; Or, the Useless Precaution (Le Barbier de Séville ou la Précaution inutile, 1773) + The Mad Day, or The Marriage of Figaro (La Folle Journée, ou Le Mariage de Figaro, 1778)
9. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing -> Nathan the Wise (Nathan der Weise, 1779) GT
10. Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller -> The Robbers (Die Räuber, 1781) GT + Wilhelm Tell (1804) GT
11. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe -> The Sorrows of Young Werther (Die Leiden des jungen Werthers, 1774) GT + Faust: Part One; Faust: Part Two (1808; 1832)

19th century
1. Ernst Theodor Wilhelm Hoffmann -> The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr together with a fragmentary Biography of Kappelmeister Johannes Kreisler on Random Sheets of Waste Paper (Lebensansichten des Katers Murr, 1820) GT in german
2. Heinrich Heine -> collection of poems
3. George Gordon Byron/ Lord Byron -> collection of poems
4. Sir Walter Scott -> Ivanhoe (1820) GT
5. Victor Marie Hugo -> The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (Notre-Dame de Paris, 1831) GT
6. Edgar Allan Poe -> collection of horror/mystery tales and poetry GT
7. Marie-Henri Beyle/ Stendhal -> The Red and the Black (Le Rouge et le Noir, 1830)
8. Honoré de Balzac -> Old Goriot / Father Goriot (Le Père Goriot, 1835) GT
9. Gustave Flaubert -> Madame Bovary (1856) GT
10. Charles Pierre Baudelaire -> The Flowers of Evil (Les Fleurs du mal, 1857) GT
11. Charles John Huffam Dickens -> Dealings with the Firm of Dombey and Son: Wholesale, Retail and for Exportation (1846-48; 1848) GT
12. William Makepeace Thackeray -> Vanity Fair: A Novel without a Hero (1847-48) GT
13. Walter "Walt" Whitman -> Leaves of Grass: The First (1855) Edition (1855) GT
14. Émile François Zola -> Germinal (1885)
15. Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde -> The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) GT

only modern drama / 20th century
1. Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard Maeterlinck -> Pelleas and Melisande (1892) + Aglavaine et Sélysette (1896)
2. Gerhart Hauptmann -> The Weavers (Die Weber, 1892) + Elga (1896) + The Sunken Bell: A Fairy Play in Five Acts (Die versunkene Glocke, 1896)
3. Johan August Strindberg -> Easter (Påsk, 1900) + The Dance of Death (Dödsdansen, 1901) + A Dream Play (Ett drömspel, 1901) + The Ghost Sonata (Spöksonaten, 1907)
4. ....... (will continue sometime later, will go read something now)