the concept of a corpus of books

[MonteSyllab]

Hi all,

continuing a previous post concerning 'groundbreaking books',
i now realize that what i want to find is:

Books that define a literature genre, either by initiating it
or by bringing it to its highest peak.

My concern is to move away from the single, standalone book,
toward a more broad view of the corpus which the book naturally belongs to.

This might be a formidable task, requiring detailed study of histories of the literatures of the world,
but if you wish, please post your thoughts and suggestions.

[Vota]

Well from a western perspective, I would look up "The Western Canon", The Harvard Classics, Great Books of the Western World, and several 100 greatest books ever written lists. The books you'll find talked about are worthy of reading and would provide more than a lifetime's worth of knowledge and enjoyment. Additionally, reading really good, challenging books, will help you generate your own personal benchmarks as to what constitutes a good book to you, at which point you'll find that some "great books" are not to your liking, or overrated in your opinion - opinions every individual should learn to develop.