The Experience of Literature

The Experience of Literature: A Reader with Commentaries is an anthology of drama, fiction, and poetry selected and edited by the American critic Lionel Trilling and published in 1967. The anthology is intended to provide a representative selection of works that Trilling considered to be great literature. It includes examples from the whole history of western literature, from Greek tragedy up to the 1960s, with each piece preceded by an introductory preface by Trilling. The selections reflect the literary canon of western universities at that time, with correspondingly low representation of women and writers of colour.

Part 1: Drama Sophocles, Oedipus Rex William Shakespeare, The Tragedy of King Lear Henrik Ibsen, The Wild Duck Anton Chekhov, The Three Sisters George Bernard Shaw, The Doctor's Dilemma Luigi Pirandello, Six Characters in Search of an Author: A Comedy in the Making William Butler Yates, Purgatory Bertolt Brecht, Galileo

Part 2: Fiction Nathaniel Hawthorne, My Kinsman, Major Molineux Herman Melville, "Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street" Plus 20 more stories.

Part 3: Poetry "Lydicus" "Dover Beach" "Ode to a Nightingale" "To His Coy Mistress" "Ode to the West Wind" Plus many more poems

Part 4: Poetry for Further Reading Contains over 200 poems

References