W.H. Auden's Legendary 1941 Reading List

Dante's epic journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise is the foundational Christian vision of the soul's journey and the relationship between human free will and divine justice. The complete Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso explore how individual choices determine eternal fate within a divinely ordered universe.

The first play of the Oresteia trilogy presents the Greek tragic exploration of hereditary curse, moral responsibility, and the cycle of vengeance. Agamemnon returns victorious from Troy only to be murdered by his wife Clytemnestra, who avenges his sacrifice of their daughter Iphigenia. The play examines whether humans are doomed by fate or free to choose.

Sophocles's tragedy explores the conflict between individual conscience and state authority. Antigone defies King Creon's decree and buries her brother, choosing divine law over human law. The play examines the limits of political power and the grounds for civil disobedience.

Horace's Odes represent Roman Stoic philosophy in verse: accept what you cannot change, cultivate virtue, enjoy simple pleasures, and face death with equanimity. The famous carpe diem ("seize the day") philosophy offers wisdom without Christian theology. His measured, balanced voice presents pre-Christian ethics at its finest.

Augustine's Confessions invented the spiritual autobiography, telling the story of his conversion from a life of sin to Christian faith. His psychological insight into human weakness and his theology of grace, free will, and original sin became foundational to Western Christianity. The work examines how the individual will relates to divine providence.

The second part of Shakespeare's history explores aging, political responsibility, and the price of power. Prince Hal's cold rejection of Falstaff demonstrates the harsh demands of kingship. The play is darker and more melancholic than Part 1, meditating on time's passage and political necessity. "Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown" captures the burden of leadership.

Shakespeare's domestic tragedy explores jealousy, manipulation, and the destruction of innocence. Iago's apparently motiveless malevolence embodies the problem of evil. The play examines why humans destroy what they love and how evil operates in intimate relationships. The racial dynamics add another dimension to the tragedy.

Hamlet explores thought versus action, free will versus fate, and individual conscience in a corrupt world. Hamlet's paralysis—his inability to act even when action seems demanded—made him the archetypal modern intellectual. The play questions existence itself: "To be or not to be." It examines what prevents action even when moral duty appears clear.

The Tempest explores art, power, forgiveness, and freedom. Prospero the magician can control others but must choose forgiveness over revenge. The play examines the proper use of power and whether art can redeem. Auden later wrote The Sea and the Mirror (1942-44), calling it "my Ars Poetica, in the same way I believe The Tempest to have been Shakespeare's." He also lectured on the play at the New School (1946-47).

Jonson's savage comedy satirizes greed, deception, and human venality. Volpone (the "fox") pretends to be dying to trick greedy legacy-hunters. Everyone is corrupt; no one is innocent. The play is darker than most comedies—punishment is harsh and there's no romantic redemption. It presents a vision of human greed and self-deception.

Pascal's Pensées (Thoughts) are fragments of an unfinished Christian apologetics, written by a mathematical genius who became a mystic. His famous "wager"—that belief in God is the rational choice given potential infinite gain—represents reason confronting its limits. His vision of humans as "thinking reeds" suspended between infinity and nothingness captures existential anxiety. Each fragment is a polished aphorism.

Racine's neoclassical tragedy retells the myth of Phaedra, who falls in forbidden love with her stepson Hippolytus. The play examines passion as fate—Phèdre cannot help her desire even as it destroys her. Racine's alexandrine verse is perfectly controlled, making the emotional chaos more powerful by contrast. The play questions responsibility for uncontrollable passions.

Blake's visionary book argues that reason and passion, heaven and hell, good and evil are complementary, not opposed. "The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom." Blake attacks organized religion and celebrates energy, desire, and imagination. This represents the Romantic rebellion against orthodox Christianity, though Blake was deeply spiritual in his own way. The "Proverbs of Hell" are philosophical and quotable.

Goethe's dramatic poem retells the Faust legend—the scholar who sells his soul to the devil for knowledge and experience. But Goethe's version is complex: Mephistopheles is witty and philosophical, Faust is sympathetic, and salvation remains possible. The play explores what it means to live fully and whether striving itself has value. The seduction and abandonment of Gretchen is one of literature's great tragedies.

Kierkegaard's philosophical meditation on Abraham's willingness to sacrifice Isaac explores faith as a "leap" beyond reason. The "knight of faith" must suspend ethical norms in obedience to God—a terrifying paradox. Kierkegaard influenced Auden's return to Christianity. The book examines the individual's relationship to the divine and ethical absolutes.

Baudelaire's journals reveal the mind of the poet who wrote Les Fleurs du mal—meditations on sin, beauty, modern life, and his own spiritual struggles. Baudelaire was a Catholic who described himself as simultaneously drawn to God and Satan. The journals explore the psychology of the modern artist and the experience of spiritual crisis in an age of unbelief.

Ibsen's verse drama follows Peer Gynt, a Norwegian peasant who lives by the troll motto "to thyself be enough"—pure selfishness. His picaresque adventures around the world end with him facing judgment: has he ever truly been himself? The play explores authenticity, self-deception, and redemption through the faithful love of Solveig.

Dostoevsky's final novel explores faith, doubt, suffering, and free will through the story of three brothers and their father's murder. The "Grand Inquisitor" section is one of literature's greatest explorations of religious doubt. Ivan's rebellion against God's justice and Alyosha's faith represent two responses to human suffering. The novel asks whether faith is possible after Enlightenment rationalism.

Rimbaud's prose poems describe a spiritual crisis—a "season in hell" of the soul. Written when he was 19 and abandoned poetry shortly after, the work is a bildungsroman of poetic consciousness, exploring the visionary ambitions and ultimate failure of the poet-seer. It influenced symbolism and modernism. The work examines the cost of artistic ambition and spiritual rebellion.

Adams's autobiography (written in third person) chronicles his education as inadequate to modern life. Born into America's political aristocracy, Adams finds his 18th-century education useless for understanding 20th-century technology, economics, and culture. The famous chapter comparing the Virgin (medieval unity) to the Dynamo (modern multiplicity) explores the loss of coherent worldviews. It's a meditation on modernity's disorientation.

Melville's epic of Captain Ahab's monomaniacal pursuit of the white whale explores fate, free will, and the individual's war against the universe. Ahab's defiance of fate—"I'd strike the sun if it insulted me"—represents human rebellion against cosmic indifference or divine will. The novel mixes adventure, philosophy, natural history, and metaphysical speculation.

Rilke's only novel follows a young Danish poet in Paris recording his observations and memories. The fragmentary notebook form explores modern alienation, the terror of existence, and the struggle to see and express truth. Malte confronts death, poverty, and the breakdown of traditional meaning. The work influenced modernist fiction's exploration of consciousness.

Kafka's unfinished novel follows K., a land surveyor trying to gain access to a castle and the authorities who summoned him. The castle remains perpetually inaccessible through endless bureaucratic obstacles. The novel explores the individual's relationship to inscrutable authority—religious, political, or existential. It can be read as allegory of modern alienation, divine hiddenness, or totalitarian power.

Eliot's verse drama updates the Oresteia for modern England. Harry, Lord Monchensey, returns home pursued by Furies (guilt over his wife's death). The play explores sin, guilt, and redemption in a modern context. Eliot attempts to create modern verse drama drawing on Greek tragedy and Christian theology. The chorus of aunts and uncles provides commentary on Harry's crisis.

Auden included nine opera libretti in his course: Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice, Mozart's Don Giovanni and Die Zauberflöte, Beethoven's Fidelio, Wagner's Der fliegende Holländer, Tristan und Isolde, and Götterdämmerung, Verdi's La Traviata, and Bizet's Carmen. Opera combined literature, music, and philosophy. Auden would later write opera libretti himself, including The Rake's Progress with Igor Stravinsky (1951).

Benedict's anthropological study compared three cultures—Zuni, Kwakiutl, and Dobuan—to demonstrate cultural relativism. She argued that cultures are not random collections of traits but coherent patterns, each with its own "personality." The work challenged racial determinism and argued that human behavior is culturally learned rather than biologically fixed. It became a landmark text in anthropology.

This compilation included Mead's three major ethnographies: Coming of Age in Samoa, Growing Up in New Guinea, and Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies. Mead argued that gender roles, sexual behavior, and personality development are culturally determined rather than biologically fixed. Her work challenged biological determinism and influenced thinking about human potential and social change.

The Lynds' sociological study of Muncie, Indiana ("Middletown") examined a typical American community's ways of earning a living, making a home, training the young, and engaging in religious and leisure activities. The book pioneered the ethnographic study of American culture, treating an American town the way anthropologists studied foreign societies. It revealed tensions and contradictions in American life.

Chadwick's comparative study examined heroic literature and culture across ancient Greece, Germanic societies, and early medieval Europe. He explored common patterns in heroic poetry—warrior ethics, gift-giving, loyalty, fame-seeking—to understand early societies' values. The work connected literature to historical and anthropological understanding.

Ker's study distinguished between epic (Homeric, Germanic) and romance (medieval, Arthurian) as different literary modes. Epic focuses on heroic action and fate; romance on love, adventure, and individual psychology. The work provided a framework for understanding medieval literature's development from heroic to courtly traditions.

Crossman's book examined Plato's political philosophy in light of 1930s totalitarianism. Published as fascism and communism rose, it questioned whether Plato's Republic—with its philosopher-kings and rigid class structure—was a totalitarian blueprint. The work engaged with the political uses and dangers of Platonic thought.

Cochrane's study examined the transformation of classical Greco-Roman culture into Christian civilization from Augustus to Augustine. The book explored how Christianity answered problems that classical philosophy couldn't solve—providing meaning, hope, and moral renewal when classical culture had exhausted itself. Published in 1940, it resonated with those seeing Western civilization in crisis.

Lewis's study traced the development of courtly love and allegory in medieval literature from the troubadours through Spenser. The book explained how medieval poets used allegory to explore love, examined the cultural invention of "courtly love," and showed how these traditions influenced later literature. Lewis's scholarly masterpiece secured his academic reputation and became "enormously influential" in setting terms for discussing medieval literature.