Put down the Sparknotes, freshmen—Bwog has your cheatsheet study guide to the Lit Hum exam right here.

No, we’re not trying for a repeat of those fateful days of two years yore, but we are hoping to help you prepare for your Lit Hum exam with the best study device known to mankind: limericks.

After the jump, Bwog has converted all several thousand pages of reading into 11 limericks, the perfect size for you to memorize in between sips of Red Bull and Pepsi Max. Only the required texts could be included, so if your instructor slipped some random book into the syllabus (Persepolis, anyone?), you’ll be on your own, unfortunately.

But, as you freshmen take a last-minute—and maybe first-time—glance over your Lit Hum books, Bwog wishes you best of luck. You’ve almost made it!


 AENEID  (Vergil)

Aeneas of Troy had grown tired

Of fighting off gods who conspired.

From Carthage he’d sailed,

Fought hard and prevailed:

To rule Latium was what he desired. 		 KING LEAR (Shakespeare)

There once was a man named King Lear

With two daughters who were really queer

Cordelia got kicked out

While Edmund had a pout

And ‘Never’ was the word we would hear
 METAMORPHOSES (Ovid)

In this story the constant is change

The transforming spans quite a range:

Into birds, trees, and dogs,

Circe’s victims to hogs.

Yet the poems survived, which is strange.		  DON QUIXOTE (Cervantes)

I know what you think, this one’s easy

Dude thinks he’s Prince Charming, fo’sheezy

But his missions quixotic

Look merely psychotic

The end makes romantics quite queasy!
CONFESSIONS (Augustine)

Saint Auggie stole pears and loved sex.

No one knew where his mind would go next.

But he became Christian

When in a garden he listened

To a voice that Satan did vex.
 PRIDE AND PREJUDICE (Austen)

A fripperous fable of Britain,

The most the most elegant prose ever written,

Where the worst kind of flirts

Find out that love hurts.

Pity Liz, with whom Darcy is smitten!
DIVINE COMEDY (Dante)

There once was an arrogant poem

Where Dante through Hades did roam.

He met friend and foe,

Stuck Ulysses down low,

And now we’re stuck reading his tome.
 CRIME AND PUNISHMENT (Dostoevsky)

Raskolnikov wielded an axe,

Then found that he could not relax.

A detective–Porfiry–

Made poor Rodion leery

With his tireless hunt for the facts.
DECAMERON (Boccaccio)

Ten teenagers go gallivanting,

In the countryside they start a’ranting,

Devils in hell,

On the roof for a spell,

Frisky nuns they’re still a ‘panting.
 TO THE LIGHTHOUSE (Woolf)

To the lighthouse James wanted to go,

But his scholarly Father said no.

Though his Mom said they might,

She then died in the night,

And the trip ten years later just blowed.
ESSAYS (Montaigne)

Imagination can fuck you up?

And idleness totally sucks?

What does it mean to repent?

What about when years are spent?

Montaigne will never shut up.
 —JYH, DYB, LDP, SV, JMB