The reading list must also include literature with examples from drama, the novel and poetry, both epic and lyric. The dramatists often include Sophocles, Euripides, Shakespeare and modern playwrights. Among epic poets Homer appears frequently with Vergil, the Beowulf poet, Dante, or Milton on occasion and the poet of the Bhagavad Gita when it suits the theme. Lyric poets are frequently represented by Blake, the Romantics or T.S. Eliot. Novelists range more widely from Austen, to Dostoevsky to Hardy to Camus to Orwell to Burgess to Atwood and many others.
Care is taken to relate themes in fiction to some of the analytical issues of the course.
Distinctive themes require texts designed to explore them. The method employed to guide students through this material is a combination of the traditional lecture, plus seminars and tutorials. The conventional lecture occurs only once a week and is intended to provide a context for the text assigned for that week. The lecturer identifies critical parameters which will inform the discussion of the text. The lecture is two hours long usually with a break.