From “Resources for Further Study” in Louis Markos’ Literature: A Student’s Guide (Crossway, 2012)

Handbooks on poetry

• Paul Fussell, Poetic Meter and Poetic Form (revised edition)
• John Hollander, Rhyme’s Reason: A Guide to English Verse

Handbooks of literary terms

• M. H. Abrams, A Glossary of Literary Terms (10th edition)
• Wilfred L. Guerin, A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature (5th edition)
• Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia (5th edition)

Anthologies of European and British literature

• The Norton Anthology of Western Literature I and II
• The Norton Anthology of British Literature I and II

Surveys of Greco-Roman mythology

• Edith Hamilton, Mythology and The Roman Way
• Michael Grant, Myths of the Greeks and Romans and The World of Rome
• Thomas Cahill, Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter

Surveys of ancient literature from a Christian perspective

• Peter J. Leithart, Heroes of the City of Man: A Christian Guide to Select Ancient Literature
• Louis Markos, From Achilles to Christ: Why Christians Should Read the Pagan Classics

To understand the ordered and balanced cosmos that lies behind so much of the best medieval and renaissance poetry:

• C. S. Lewis, The Discarded Image
• E. M. W. Tillyard, The Elizabethan World Picture
• Louis Markos, Lewis Agonistes: How C. S. Lewis Can Train Us to Wrestle with the Modern and Postmodern World (Chapter 3, “Wrestling with the New Age”)

Studies of medieval allegory, Milton’s epic, and the epic genre:

• C. S. Lewis, The Allegory of Love
  
• C. S. Lewis, A Preface to Paradise Lost 

Romantic poetry

• M. H. Abrams, Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature
• Louis Markos, Eye of the Beholder: How to See the World Like a Romantic Poet

Other books, each of which, in its own idiosyncratic way, defend the traditional literary canon:

• Erich Auerbach, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature
• Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind
• E. D. Hirsch Jr., Cultural Literacy
• Harold Bloom, The Western Canon
• C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man

Anthologies of literary criticism

• Hazard Adams & Leroy Searle, Critical Theory Since Plato (3rd edition)
• Walter Jackson Bate, Criticism: The Major Texts
• Charles Kaplan & William Davis Anderson, Criticism: The Major Statements (4th edition)

Handbooks of literary theory

• M. H. Abram, A Glossary of Literary Terms (10th edition)
• Wilfred L. Guerin, A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature (5th edition)
• Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory: An Introduction (3rd edition)

Postmodern theory

• Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism

Canonical-friendly, Christian-friendly critiques of classic works of literature

• Ignatius Critical Editions

Three books that will help you view literature from exciting new perspectives and to think like a theorist without losing your passion for literature

• C. S. Lewis, An Experiment in Criticism
• Cleanth Brooks, The Well-Wrought Urn
• Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism 

Other

• The Great Courses: Louis Markos, Plato to Postmodernism: Understanding the Essence of Literature and the Role of the Author
• Louis Markos, Lewis Agonistes (Ch. 5 “Wrestling with the Arts”). An argument for an “aesthetics of incarnation” that can redeem postmodernism and deconstruction.
• M. H. Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition. Features a fourfold system of literary theory and a richly detailed study of the sources, assumptions, and legacies of the Romantic theorists.
• Leland Ryken, How to Read the Bible as Literature. A critic who combines a high view of Scripture as the Word of God with an appreciation of the literary devices used in the Bible.