World Literatures for UGC NET English

World Literatures for UGC NET English Aspirants

For the UGC NET English Literature exam, the syllabus covers a wide range of world literatures, with a strong emphasis on British, American, Indian, and Postcolonial literatures, but also includes major works from other national literatures. Here is a categorized list of countries/regions and their literature that you should study:

Disclaimer: This list provides only a gist of authors and literary traditions from various nations that UGC NET English aspirants may encounter. It is not an exhaustive list. Students are expected to study deeply and gather comprehensive knowledge from diverse sources, including primary texts, critical essays, literary theories, historical contexts, and previous year papers. This guide is merely a starting point to help aspirants proceed in a structured and informed manner.

🇬🇧 British Literature (Most Important)

• Old English: Beowulf
• Middle English: Geoffrey Chaucer
• Renaissance: William Shakespeare, Edmund Spenser, Christopher Marlowe
• Metaphysical Poets: John Donne, George Herbert
• Augustan Age: Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift
• Romantic Poets: Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Shelley, Byron
• Victorian: Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, Robert Browning, Tennyson
• Modernist: Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, T.S. Eliot, D.H. Lawrence
• Postmodern: Iris Murdoch, Tom Stoppard, Zadie Smith

🇺🇸 American Literature

• Puritan Writings: Anne Bradstreet, Jonathan Edwards
• 19th Century: Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, Dickinson, Twain
• Modernist: Robert Frost, William Faulkner, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Langston Hughes
• Contemporary: Toni Morrison, Sylvia Plath, J.D. Salinger, Pynchon

🇮🇳 Indian Literature in English

• Foundational: Bankim Chandra, Rabindranath Tagore
• Trio: R.K. Narayan, Raja Rao, Mulk Raj Anand
• Contemporary: Arundhati Roy, Amitav Ghosh, Kiran Desai, Jeet Thayil
• Marginal Voices: Bama, Mahasweta Devi, Temsula Ao

🌍 Postcolonial Literatures

• Nigeria: Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka
• Kenya: Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o
• South Africa: J.M. Coetzee, Nadine Gordimer
• Caribbean: Derek Walcott, Jean Rhys
• India/UK: Salman Rushdie, Hanif Kureishi
• Sri Lanka/Canada: Michael Ondaatje

🇨🇦 Canadian Literature

• Margaret Atwood
• Alice Munro
• Michael Ondaatje

🇦🇺 Australian Literature

• Patrick White
• David Malouf
• Judith Wright

🇳🇿 New Zealand Literature

• Katherine Mansfield

🇮🇪 Irish Literature

• W.B. Yeats
• James Joyce
• Samuel Beckett
• Seamus Heaney

🇫🇷 French Literature (in translation)

• Voltaire, Rousseau
• Victor Hugo
• Albert Camus (Absurdism)
• Jean-Paul Sartre (Existentialism)

🇷🇺 Russian Literature (in translation)

• Fyodor Dostoevsky
• Leo Tolstoy
• Anton Chekhov
• Vladimir Nabokov

🇩🇪 German Literature (in translation)

• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• Franz Kafka
• Bertolt Brecht
• Thomas Mann

🇪🇸 Spanish Literature

• Miguel de Cervantes
• Federico García Lorca
• Gabriel García Márquez (Colombian, Magical Realism)

🇮🇹 Italian Literature

• Dante Alighieri (The Divine Comedy)
• Italo Calvino

🇨🇳 Chinese Literature (in translation)

• Lao She
• Mo Yan
• Classical: Confucius, Taoism (as philosophical/literary traditions)

🇯🇵 Japanese Literature (in translation)

• Haruki Murakami
• Yukio Mishima
• Matsuo Bashō (Haiku tradition)

🇧🇷 Brazilian Literature

• Paulo Coelho
• Machado de Assis

📚 Other Important Categories

• African-American Literature: Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou, James Baldwin
• Magical Realism (Latin America): Márquez, Isabel Allende
• Indigenous/Adivasi Literature: Native American poetry, Indian tribal oral traditions
• Diasporic Literature: Jhumpa Lahiri, Monica Ali, Meena Alexander

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