START

>>7583929
Elaborate on your comment "START"

These are the very rough essentials imo. There's more but it all depends on how much you want to read beforehand I guess
Old Testament
The Iliad
Beowulf, Song of Roland, etc.
Don Quixote
A good chunk of Shakespeare
Dostoyevsky
Flaubert
Stendhal
Proust
Joyce

>>7583948
I want to read a lot before hand. Its the holy GOAT after all, I want to appreciate it to the fullest.

>>7583948
What about other books of literary theory?

>>7583926
Just start reading it. Seriously, one of the reasons it's one of the most approachable texts of literary criticism ever is because Auerbach more or less quotes every section of a text that he's talking about. And the whole point of his argument is that it moves from text to text sequentially and historically. So it's pretty self-executing in terms of how the book works.

A familiarity with works is useful because it allows you to judge the broader import of what he's saying. You'll certainly get more out of it. But IMO absolutely the best way to get into it is to just jump in.

Also I am kind of weirded out but glad to see that this has now gotten a genuine reputation on /lit/, lol