The wise are not learned, the learned are not wise.
~~Lao-tse, Tao Te Ching
A growing number of PhD programs are relying more and more upon the GRE as a way to weed out applicants. They know and you know that the GRE is, at its base, a trivia game and what one of my professors referred to as "fun facts." However, with record numbers of students applying every year, the schools are using the GRE to tell them, if nothing else, who can figure things out. This list was compiled by counting the number of times a particular work appeared on six different past tests actually used by the GRE Testing Service, as well as the number of tests it appeared on. Yes, this was legal. I have taken the Subject Test twice, and I can assure you that things will show up that you *never* would have expected. However, if you have most of these works covered and have a good working knowledge in general of authors, trends, genres, and styles, you should do fine. Just don't panic. Use what you know of a period, for example, to extrapolate any names or styles you don't know. You may notice that although the questions are mostly canon, some periods are not equally represented. As a medievalist, I personally find this irritating, but c'est la vie. It all evens out in the end, I think, and it's no less than you should expect.
Also, I recommend a good literary dictionary, like Oxford's _Guide to Literary Terms_. They will show up on the GRE and you will be expected to identify within a passage which things are in operation, and not just the easy ones, like alliteration or Petrachan sonnets vs. Shakespearean. Anyway, good luck and enjoy!
The first number after the title of the book is the total number of times the work appeared in all of the six tests. The second number is the number of tests out of six that it appeared upon. For example, Milton's Paradise Lost appeared 27 times on five tests. The works are arranged here in order of the number of total questions that appeared on the six tests. Clear? Good.
| Author | Title/Work | Appeared | # of Tests |
|---|---|---|---|
| Milton, John | Paradise Lost | 27 | 5 |
| Chaucer, Geoffrey | Canterbury Tales | 22 | 7 |
| Shakespeare, William | King Lear | 20 | 5 |
| Pope, Alexander | The Rape of the Lock | 17 | 5 |
| Anonymous | Beowulf | 13 | 6 |
| Swift, Jonathan | Gulliver's Travels | 13 | 5 |
| Shakespeare, William | The Tempest | 13 | 5 |
| Marlowe, Christopher | Doctor Faustus | 12 | 5 |
| Gray, Thomas | Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard | 11 | 4 |
| Thoreau, Henry David | Walden | 11 | 5 |
| Spenser, Edmund | The Faerie Queene | 11 | 3 |
| Alighieri, Dante | The Divine Comedy | 10 | 3 |
| Sophocles | Oedipus Rex | 10 | 4 |
| Faulkner, William | The Sound and the Fury | 10 | 4 |
| Shakespeare, William | MacBeth | 10 | 3 |
| Arnold, Matthew | Dover Beach | 9 | 5 |
| Dickens, Charles | Great Expectations | 9 | 3 |
| Swift, Jonathan | A Modest Proposal | 9 | 3 |
| Shaw, George Bernard | Arms and the Man | 8 | 5 |
| Plato | The Republic | 8 | 5 |
| Keats, John | Ode on a Grecian Urn | 8 | 4 |
| Shakespeare, William | Othello | 8 | 4 |
| Jonson, Ben | Volpone | 8 | 4 |
| Homer | The Iliad | 8 | 1 |
| Fielding, Henry | Tom Jones | 7 | 5 |
| Tennyson, Alfred Lord | Ulysses | 7 | 4 |
| Joyce, James | Ulysses | 7 | 4 |
| Congreve, William | The Way of the World | 7 | 4 |
| Bronte, Emily | Wuthering Heights | 7 | 4 |
| Dryden, John | All for Love | 7 | 3 |
| Fitzgerald, F. Scott | The Great Gatsby | 7 | 3 |
| Shakespeare, William | Hamlet | 7 | 3 |
| Forster, E.M. | Howard's End | 7 | 3 |
| Milton, John | Lycidas | 7 | 3 |
| Homer | The Odyssey | 7 | 3 |
| Johnson, Samuel | The Preface to Shakespeare | 7 | 3 |
| Byron, George Lord | Don Juan | 7 | 2 |
| Milton, John | Comus | 6 | 4 |
| Pope, Alexander | An Essay on Criticism | 6 | 4 |
| Anonymous | Everyman | 6 | 5 |
| Hardy, Thomas | Jude the Obscure | 6 | 4 |
| Wordsworth, William | Lyrical Ballads | 6 | 4 |
| Shelley, Percy Bysshe | Ozymandius | 6 | 4 |
| Richardson, Samuel | Pamela | 6 | 4 |
| Sheridan | The Rivals | 6 | 4 |
| Sterne, Laurance | Tristram Shandy | 6 | 4 |
| Tolstoy, Leo | War and Peace | 6 | 4 |
| Eliot, T.S. | The Waste Land | 6 | 4 |
| Shakespeare, William | Henry IV, Part 1 | 6 | 3 |
| Shakespeare, William | As You Like It | 6 | 3 |
| Johnson, Samuel | History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia | 6 | 3 |
| Amis, Kingsley | Lucky Jim | 6 | 3 |
| Melville, Herman | Moby Dick | 6 | 3 |
| Malory, Sir Thomas | Le Morte D'Arthur | 6 | 3 |
| Johnson, Samuel | The Vanity of Human Wishes | 6 | 3 |
| Dickens, Charles | Hard Times | 6 | 2 |
| Shelley, Percy Bysshe | Ode to the West Wind | 5 | 5 |
| Forster, E.M. | A Passage to India | 5 | 4 |
| Aristotle | The Poetics | 5 | 4 |
| Goldsmith, Oliver | She Stoops to Conquer | 5 | 4 |
| Anonymous | Sir Gawain and the Green Knight | 5 | 4 |
| Eliot, T.S. | Tradition and the Individual Talent | 5 | 3 |
| Chaucer, Geoffrey | Troilus and Criseyde | 5 | 3 |
| Thackerey, William | Vanity Fair | 5 | 3 |
| Spenser, Edmund | The Shepheardes Calender | 5 | 3 |
| Shakespeare, William | Romeo and Juliet | 5 | 3 |
| Faulkner, William | A Rose for Emily | 5 | 3 |
| Spenser, Edmund | Amoretti | 5 | 3 |
| Coleridge, S.T. | Biographica Literaria | 5 | 3 |
| Dostoevsky | Crime and Punishment | 5 | 3 |
| Dickens, Charles | David Copperfield | 5 | 3 |
| Thomas, Dylan | Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night | 5 | 3 |
| Webster, John | The Duchess of Malfi | 5 | 3 |
| Pope, Alexander | An Essay on Man | 5 | 3 |
| Steinbeck, John | The Grapes of Wrath | 5 | 2 |
| Hemingway, Ernest | Hills Like White Elephants | 5 | 2 |
| Johnson, Samuel | Life of Cowley | 5 | 2 |
| Etherege, Sir George | The Man of Mode | 5 | 2 |
| Browning, Robert | My Last Duchess | 5 | 2 |
| Eliot, T.S. | Journey of the Magi | 5 | 1 |
| Tennyson, Alfred Lord | In Memoriam A.H.H. | 4 | 4 |
| Eliot, T.S. | The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock | 4 | 4 |
| Flaubert, Gustave | Madame Bovary | 4 | 4 |
| Cervantes | Don Quixote | 4 | 4 |
| Joyce, James | Dubliners | 4 | 3 |
| Austen, Jane | Emma | 4 | 3 |
| Shaw, George Bernard | Major Barbara | 4 | 3 |
| Eliot, George | Adam Bede | 4 | 3 |
| Melville, Herman | Bartleby the Scrivener | 4 | 3 |
| Huxley, Aldous | Brave New World | 4 | 3 |
| Milton, John | Samson Agonistes | 4 | 3 |
| Wilde, Oscar | The Importance of Being Earnest | 4 | 3 |
| Moliere | Tartuffe | 4 | 3 |
| Boswell, James | The Life of Samuel Johnson | 4 | 3 |
| O'Neill, Eugene | Mourning Becomes Electra | 4 | 3 |
| Edwards, Jonathan | Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God | 4 | 3 |
| Butler, Samuel | The Way of All Flesh | 4 | 3 |
| Wright, Richard | Native Son | 4 | 2 |
| Sophocles | Antigone | 4 | 2 |
| Conrad, Joseph | Heart of Darkness | 4 | 2 |
| Anonymous | Sir Patrick Spens | 4 | 2 |
| Hawthorne, Nathanial | The Scarlet Letter | 4 | 2 |
| Orwell, George | Shooting an Elephant | 4 | 2 |
| Woolf, Virginia | To the Lighthouse | 4 | 2 |
| Wycherley, William | The Country Wife | 4 | 2 |
| Wilde, Oscar | The Critic as Artist | 4 | 2 |
| Swift, Jonathan | A Description of a City Shower | 4 | 2 |
| Frost, Robert | Design | 4 | 2 |
| Villon, Francois/Rossetti | The Ballad of the Dead Ladies | 4 | 2 |
| Mill, J.S. | On Liberty | 4 | 2 |
| Marlowe, Christopher | The Passionate Shepherd to His Love | 4 | 2 |
| Wilde, Oscar | The Picture of Dorian Gray | 4 | 2 |
| Shakespeare, William | Richard II | 4 | 2 |
| Fielding, Henry | Joseph Andrews | 4 | 2 |
| Defoe, Daniel | Moll Flanders | 4 | 2 |
| Twain, Mark | Huckleberry Finn | 4 | 2 |
| Bruegel | Icarus (painting) | 4 | 1 |
| Plath, Sylvia | The Mirror | 4 | 1 |
| Raleigh, Sir Walter | The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd | 4 | 1 |
| Keats, John | Ode on Melancholy | 4 | 1 |
| Dickenson, Emily | If I Could Stop | 4 | 1 |
| Holmes, Oliver Wendell | The Chambered Nautilus | 4 | 1 |
| The Venerable Bede | Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum | 4 | 1 |
| Virgil | The Aeneid | 3 | 3 |
| Burney, Fanny | Evelina | 3 | 3 |
| Thomas, Dylan | Fern Hill | 3 | 3 |
| Keats, John | Endymion | 3 | 3 |
| Milton, John | Areopagitica | 3 | 3 |
| Voltaire | Candide | 3 | 3 |
| Heller, Joseph | Catch .22 | 3 | 3 |
| Miller, Arthur | The Crucible | 3 | 2 |
| Joyce, James | The Dead | 3 | 2 |
| Boccaccio | Decameron | 3 | 2 |
| Tolstoy, Leo | Anna Karenina | 3 | 2 |
| Dickens, Charles | Bleak House | 3 | 2 |
| Godwin, William | Caleb Williams | 3 | 2 |
| Miller, Arthur | All My Sons | 3 | 2 |
| Meredith, George | The Egoist | 3 | 2 |
| Finch, Anne | Adam Pos'd | 3 | 1 |
| Burns, Robert | Ae Fond Kiss | 3 | 1 |
| Paine, Thomas | The Age of Reason | 3 | 1 |
| Mencken, H.L. | The American Language | 3 | 1 |
| Donne, John | An Anatomy of the World | 3 | 1 |
| Fleming, William | Arts and Ideas | 3 | 1 |
| Raleigh, Sir Walter | The Author's Epitaph, Made by Himself | 3 | 1 |
| Wilde, Oscar | The Ballad of Reading Gaol | 3 | 1 |
| Browning, Robert | The Bishop Orders His Tomb | 3 | 1 |
| Cooper, James Fenimore | The Deerslayer | 3 | 1 |
| Sidney, Sir Philip | The Defense of Poesy | 3 | 1 |
| Yeats, William Butler | The Dolls | 3 | 1 |
| Stevenson, Robert Louis | Dr. Jekyll | 3 | 1 |
Return to Academics page.