Lifetime Reading List in Chronological Order
Part 2: Middle Ages, Renaissance, & 17th Century |
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(For the Middle Ages and Early Renaissance [through 1500] I have starred in red (*) the texts likely to be most useful in understanding later authors.) Date Read Author’s Life Span Author and Title |
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c. 349-425 |
Prudentius: Psychomachia |
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354-430 |
* Augustine: Confessions |
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354-430 |
Augustine: The City of God (A.D. 426) |
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480?-524 |
* Boethius: The Consolation of Philosophy |
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5th c. A.D. |
Nonnus: Dionysiaca |
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late 5th c. |
Musaeus: Hero and Leandro |
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500-565 |
Procopius: The Secret History |
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c. 610-632 |
The Qur’an |
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673-735 |
Bede: The Ecclesiastical History of the English People (c. 731) |
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9th c. |
* The Thousand and One Nights |
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c. 1000 |
* Beowulf |
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c. 976-1015 |
Lady Murasaki: The Tale of Genji |
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1048-? |
Omar Khayyam: The Rubaiyat |
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c. 1100-1154 |
Geoffrey of Monmouth: History of the Kings of Britain |
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c. 1140-1170 |
* The Song of Roland |
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c. 1150-1190 |
Chrétien de Troyes: Erec et Enide |
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Chrétien de Troyes: Cligés |
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* Chrétien de Troyes: Yvain |
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* Chrétien de Troyes: Lancelot |
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* Chrétien de Troyes: Perceval (c. 1180) |
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late 12th c. |
Marie de France: The Lays |
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late 12th c. |
Andreas Capellanus: The Art of Courtly Love (1184-1186) |
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† c. 1210 |
Gottfried Von Strassburg: Tristan and Isolde |
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early 13th c. |
Anonymous: The Poem of the Cid |
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c. 1170-c. 1230 |
Walter von der Vogelweide: Poems (in Penguin Book of German Verse) |
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c. 1212-c. 1237 / after 1237-1305 |
Guillaume de Lorris & Jean de Meun: The Romance of the Rose (1237-c. 1277) |
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c. 13th-14th c. |
Gesta Romanorum (selections) |
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c. 1170-1241 |
Wolfram von Eschenbach: Parzival (c. 1st quarter 13th century) |
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1178-1241 |
Snorri Sturluson: The Prose Edda (c. 1220) |
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before 13th c. |
Anonymous: Nibelungenleid |
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1221-1274 |
St. Bonaventure: Itinerarium Mentis ad Deum (The Mind’s Road to God) |
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1225-1274 |
St. Thomas Aquinas: Summa Theologica and Summa contra Gentiles: Selections |
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c. 1235-1276 |
Guido Guinizelli: Poems (in Penguin Book of Italian Verse) |
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1236-1306 |
Jacopone da Todi: Poems (in Penguin Book of Italian Verse) |
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c. 1245-1285 |
Rutebeuf: Poems (in Penguin Book of French Verse) |
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c. 1255-1300 |
Guido Cavalcanti: Poems (in Penguin Book of Italian Verse) |
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1265-1321 |
* Dante: The Divine Comedy [at least Inferno] (c. 1304-1321) |
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1304-1374 |
* Francesco Petrarca: Canzoniere (selections) |
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c. 1350 |
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight |
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1313-1375 |
* Giovanni Boccaccio: Decameron (selected stories) (c. 1350-1353) |
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c. 1343-1400 |
* Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales (c . 1380s) |
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c. 1343-1400 |
Chaucer: Troilus and Criseyde (c . 1380-1387) |
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c. 1330-1400 |
Luo Kuan-Chung: The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, tr. Moss Roberts |
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1363-c. 1434 |
Christine de Pisan: The Book of the City of Ladies (c. 1405) |
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1349-1465 |
Charles d’Orléans: Poems (in Penguin Book of French Verse) |
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1404-1472 |
Leon Battista Alberti: On Painting (1436) |
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1406-1457 |
Lorenzo Valla: Discourse on the Forgery of the Alleged Donation of Constantine (1440) |
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1454-1494 |
Angelo Poliziano: Stanzas for the Joust of Giuliano de’ Medici (1478) |
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1431-after 1463 |
Françoise Villon: The Testaments (c. 1456) |
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1432-1484 |
Luigi Pulci: Morgante (1483) |
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1400-1470 |
* Sir Thomas Malory: Le Morte d’Arthur (1485) |
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1463-1494 |
Pico della Mirandola: On the Dignity of Man (1486) |
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c. 1434-1494 |
Matteo Maria Boiardo: Orlando Innamorato (Roland in Love) (1495) |
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c. 1465-1541 |
Fernando de Rojas: La Celestina (1499) |
1500-1699 |
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Since I am mostly interested in narrative, I give short shrift to poets and philosophers from this point on, although a representative selection of major English poets do appear throughout, as well as a few major poets from other languages (primarily Italian). Still, English authors you might expect to see—e.g., Thomas Wyatt, Edmund Spenser (The Faerie Queen and Epithalamium), Sir Philip Sydney (Astrophel and Stella), Thomas Campion, Andrew Marvell, Thomas Wyatt, George Herbert, and John Dryden—are not listed here. Nor will one find Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy or Sir Thomas Browne’s Urne-Buriall, which some may find interesting, or later works by scientists such as Copernicus and Galileo. For Italian poets not included below, one might read the Renaissance authors: Gaspara Stampa, Veronica Franco, and Pietro Bembo. For early French poets: among others, Marguerite de Navarre’s The Heptameron. For Spanish poets: Antonio de Guevara, Jorge de Montemayor, Francisco de Quevedo, Fray Luis de León, St. John of the Cross, Luis de Góngora, and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. |
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Date Read Author’s Life Span Author and Title |
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1466/69-1536 |
Desiderius Erasmus: In Praise of Folly (1511) |
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1452-1519 |
Leonardo da Vinci: Notebooks (selections) |
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1469-1527 |
Niccolò Machiavell: The Prince (1513) |
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1469-1527 |
Niccolò Machiavelli: The Mandragola (1518) |
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1478-1529 |
Baldassare Castiglione: The Book of the Courtier (1528) |
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1474-1533 |
Lodovico Ariosto: Orlando Furioso (1532) (selections) |
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c. 1494-1553 |
François Rabelais: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532-) |
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1475-1564 |
Michelangelo: Poems (in Penguin Book of Italian Verse) |
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1496-1544 |
Clément Marot: Poems (in Penguin Book of French Verse) |
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c. 1501-1563 |
Maurice Scève: Poems (in Penguin Book of French Verse) |
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1522-1560 |
Joachim Du Bellay: Poems (in Penguin Book of French Verse) |
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c. 1524-1566 |
Louise Labé: Poems (in Penguin Book of French Verse) |
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1524-1585 |
Pierre de Ronsard: Poems (in Penguin Book of French Verse) |
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1511-1574 |
Giorgio Vasari: The Lives of the Artists (1550) (selections) |
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mid-16th c. |
Anonymous: Lazarillo de Tormes (1554) |
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1500-1571 |
Benvenuto Cellini: Autobiography (1558-) |
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c. 1524-1580 |
Luís de Camões: The Lusiads (1572) |
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1544-1595 |
Torquato Tasso: Aminta (1573) |
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1544-1595 |
Torquato Tasso: Jerusalem Delivered (1580) (selections) |
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1500-1582 |
Wu Cheng’en: Journey to the West (tr. as Monkey by Arthur Waley) |
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1533-1592 |
Michel de Montaigne: Essays (1580) |
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1548-1600 |
Giordano Bruno: The Candle Bearer (Il Candelaio) (1582) |
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1564-1593 |
Christopher Marlowe: Doctor Faustus (1588) |
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1554-1600 |
Richard Hooker: Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity: Book I (1593) |
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1552-1630 |
Agrippa d’Aubigné: Poems (in Penguin Book of French Verse) |
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1564-1616 |
Shakespeare: Venus and Adonis |
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Shakespeare: The Sonnets |
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Shakespeare: The Comedy of Errors |
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Shakespeare: The Tragedy of King Richard III |
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Shakespeare: Love’s Labour’s Lost |
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Shakespeare: The Two Gentlemen of Verona |
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Shakespeare: The Taming of the Shrew |
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Shakespeare: A Midsummer Night’s Dream |
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Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet |
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Shakespeare: The Merchant of Venice |
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Shakespeare: Much Ado About Nothing |
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Shakespeare: As You Like It |
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Shakespeare: Twelfth Night; or, What You Will |
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Shakespeare: The Tragedy of King Richard II |
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Shakespeare: Henry IV, Part I |
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Shakespeare: Henry IV, Part II |
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Shakespeare: Henry V |
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Shakespeare: Julius Caesar |
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Shakespeare: All’s Well that Ends Well |
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Shakespeare: Measure for Measure |
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Shakespeare: Hamlet, Prince of Denmark |
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Shakespeare: Othello, the Moor of Venice |
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Shakespeare: King Lear |
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Shakespeare: Macbeth |
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Shakespeare: Antony and Cleopatra |
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Shakespeare: Coriolanus |
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Shakespeare: The Winter’s Tale |
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Shakespeare: The Tempest |
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1573-1637 |
Ben Jonson: Every Man in His Humor (1601) |
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Ben Jonson: Volpone or The Fox (1606) |
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Ben Jonson: The Alchemist (1610) |
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1547-1616 |
Miguel de Cervantes: Don Quijote (1605, 1615) |
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1569-1625 |
Giambattista Marino: Poems (in Penguin Book of Italian Verse) |
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1562-1635 |
Lope de Vega: Fuente Ovejuna (1619) |
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1572-1631 |
John Donne: Selected Poems |
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c. 1580-c. 1634 |
John Webster: The Duchess of Malfi (1623) |
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1568-1639 |
Tommaso Campanella: The City of the Sun (1623) |
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c. 1571-1648 |
Tirso de Molina: The Trickster of Seville (c. 1630) |
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1591-1674 |
Robert Herrick: Selected Poems |
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1573-1637 |
Ben Jonson: Selected Poems |
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1600-1681 |
Calderon de la Barca: Life Is a Dream (c. 1635) |
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1621-1695 |
Jean de la Fontaine: Fabliaux |
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1588-1679 |
Thomas Hobbes: Leviathan (1651) (selections) |
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1622-1673 |
Molière: The School for Wives (1662) |
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1608-1674 |
John Milton: Paradise Lost (1665) |
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1593-1633 |
George Herbert: Selected Poems |
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1622-1673 |
Molière: Don Juan (1665) |
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1622-1673 |
Molière: The Misanthrope (1666) |
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1622-1673 |
Molière: The Doctor In Spite of Himself [The Reluctant Doctor] (1666) |
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1622-1673 |
Molière: The Miser (1668) |
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1622-1673 |
Molière: Tartuffe (1669) |
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1623-1662 |
Blaise Pascal: Pensées: Of the Necessity of the Wager, etc. (1870) |
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1633-1703 |
Samuel Pepys: Diary (selections) (1660-1669; pub. 1825) |
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1621-1678 |
Andrew Marvell: Selected Poems |
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1632-1677 |
Benedict de Spinoza: Ethics: Part IV (Of Human Bondage) [E-text] (1676) |
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Benedict de Spinoza: Ethics: Part V (Of Human Freedom) [E-text] (1676) |
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1634-1693 |
Madame de La Fayette: The Princess of Clèves (1678) |
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1628-1688 |
John Bunyan: The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678) |
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1640-1689 |
Aphra Behn: Oroonoko; or, The Royal Slave (1688) |
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1644-1694 |
Matsuo Bashō: The Narrow Road to the Deep North (1689) |
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1632-1704 |
John Locke: Second Treatise on Civil Government (1690) [E-text] |