Two books, one table
Compare Set two works beside each other. Suggested pairings are arguments, not assignments.
First work Choose a work The Iliad The Odyssey Oedipus Rex Antigone Lyric Fragments The Aeneid The Georgics Metamorphoses Odes The Divine Comedy La Vita Nuova The Canterbury Tales Beowulf Hamlet King Lear Sonnets Don Quixote Essays Paradise Lost Tartuffe Gulliver’s Travels Candide Confessions The History of Rasselas Lyrical Ballads The Prelude The Great Odes Frankenstein The Tell-Tale Heart Pride and Prejudice Emma Great Expectations Bleak House Anna Karenina War and Peace Middlemarch Ulysses A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man Mrs Dalloway To the Lighthouse The Trial The Metamorphosis The Waste Land Beloved One Hundred Years of Solitude Giovanni’s Room The Fire Next Time The Handmaid’s Tale Genesis The Book of Job The Psalms The Oresteia The Bacchae The Song of Roland Confessions Doctor Faustus Faust Moby-Dick Madame Bovary The Brothers Karamazov Poems Heart of Darkness The Sun Also Rises Absalom, Absalom! Blood Meridian Second work Choose a work The Iliad The Odyssey Oedipus Rex Antigone Lyric Fragments The Aeneid The Georgics Metamorphoses Odes The Divine Comedy La Vita Nuova The Canterbury Tales Beowulf Hamlet King Lear Sonnets Don Quixote Essays Paradise Lost Tartuffe Gulliver’s Travels Candide Confessions The History of Rasselas Lyrical Ballads The Prelude The Great Odes Frankenstein The Tell-Tale Heart Pride and Prejudice Emma Great Expectations Bleak House Anna Karenina War and Peace Middlemarch Ulysses A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man Mrs Dalloway To the Lighthouse The Trial The Metamorphosis The Waste Land Beloved One Hundred Years of Solitude Giovanni’s Room The Fire Next Time The Handmaid’s Tale Genesis The Book of Job The Psalms The Oresteia The Bacchae The Song of Roland Confessions Doctor Faustus Faust Moby-Dick Madame Bovary The Brothers Karamazov Poems Heart of Darkness The Sun Also Rises Absalom, Absalom! Blood Meridian
Two poems of the warrior’s public death. Achilles chooses a short life and long fame; Roland delays the horn until death can be a song. Both ask whether a code is worth the friend it spends.
Epic poem · c. 750 BCE
The Iliad Homer
In the tenth year of the Trojan War, Achilles withdraws from battle after a quarrel with Agamemnon. The poem follows rage, friendship, and the death of Hector until a king kneels for his son’s body.
Chanson de geste · c. 1100
The Song of Roland The Roland Poet
Charlemagne’s rear guard is betrayed at Roncevaux. Roland will not sound the horn until it is too late for rescue and exactly on time for legend. The poem loves courage and does not forgive the cost.
Loyalty and pride Christendom and the other