Study the Great Books

FIRST SEMESTER

Week 1:

• The Aeneid - Virgil

Week 2:

• The Aeneid - Virgil

Week 3:

• History of Rome* - Livy

Week 4:

• Romulus, Numa Pompilius, and Caesar - Plutarch

Week 5:

• Conquest of Gaul - Caesar

Week 6:

• Brutus and Cicero - Plutarch

Week 7: (Thanksgiving Break)

Week 8:

• On Friendship and On Duties - Cicero

Week 9:

• Annals* - Tacitus

Week 10:

• On the Nature of Things* - Lucretius

Week 11:

• Discourses* - Epictetus
• Meditations* - Marcus Aurelius

Week 12:

• Cato the Younger and Antony - Plutarch

Week 13:

• On the Natural Faculties - Galen

Week 14:

• Enneads* - Plotinus

Week 15:

• Genesis and Job

Week 16: (Oral Exams)


*Selections

SECOND SEMESTER

Week 17:

• Gospel of Matthew*

Week 18:

• Gospel of John* and First Epistle of John

Week 19:

• Acts of the Apostles

Week 20:

• Confessions - Augustine

Week 21:

• Confessions - Augustine

Week 22:

• The Consolation of Philosophy - Boethius

Week 23:

• The City of God* - Augustine

Week 24:

• The City of God* - Augustine

Week 25:

• Qur'an* - Muhammad

Week 26:

• Ecclesiastical History of the English People* - Bede

Week 27:

• Sir Gawain and the Green Knight - Anonymous

Week 28: (Spring Break)

Week 29: (Spring Break)

Week 30:

• The Imitation of Christ* - Thomas à Kempis

Week 31:

• The Guide for the Perplexed* - Maimonides

Week 32:

• The Divine Comedy - Dante Alighieri

Week 33:

• The Divine Comedy - Dante Alighieri

Week 34:

• The Divine Comedy - Dante Alighieri

Week 35: (Oral Exams)

FIRST SEMESTER

Week 1:

• The Canterbury Tales* - Geoffrey Chaucer

Week 2:

• The Canterbury Tales* - Geoffrey Chaucer

Week 3:

• Summa Theologica* - Thomas Aquinas

Week 4:

• Summa Theologica* - Thomas Aquinas

Week 5:

• Summa Theologica* - Thomas Aquinas

Week 6:

• Summa Theologica* - Thomas Aquinas

Week 7: (Thanksgiving Break)

Week 8:

• Summa Theologica* - Thomas Aquinas

Week 9:

• The Prince - Niccolò Machiavelli

Week 10:

• Utopia - Thomas More

Week 11:

• In Praise of Folly - Desiderius Erasmus

Week 12:

• On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres* - Nicolaus Copernicus

Week 13:

• Institutes of the Christian Religion* - John Calvin

Week 14:

• Essays* - Michel de Montaigne

Week 15:

• Don Quixote* - Miguel de Cervantes

Week 16: (Oral Exams)


*Selections

SECOND SEMESTER

Week 17:

• Don Quixote* - Miguel de Cervantes

Week 18:

• A Midsummer Night's Dream* - William Shakespeare

Week 19:

• The Taming of the Shrew - William Shakespeare

Week 20:

• Coriolanus - William Shakespeare

Week 21:

• Autobiography of St. Teresa of Ávila* - Teresa of Ávila

Week 22:

• Julius Caesar - William Shakespeare

Week 23:

• Othello - William Shakespeare

Week 24:

• The Merchant of Venice - William Shakespeare

Week 25:

• Henry V - William Shakespeare

Week 26:

• Rules for the Direction of the Mind*, Discourse on Method*, and Meditations on First Philosophy* - René Descartes

Week 27:

• New Atlantis and Novum Organum* - Francis Bacon

Week 28: (Spring Break)

Week 29: (Spring Break)

Week 30:

• Leviathan* - Thomas Hobbes

Week 31:

• Paradise Lost - John Milton

Week 32:

• Paradise Lost - John Milton

Week 33:

• Pensees* - Blaise Pascal

Week 34:

• Romeo and Juliet - William Shakespeare

Week 35: (Oral Exams)

FIRST SEMESTER

Week 1:

• Hamlet - William Shakespeare

Week 2:

• Macbeth - William Shakespeare

Week 3:

• King Lear - William Shakespeare

Week 4:

• Tartuffe - Molière
• Phaedra - Jean Racine

Week 5:

• The Tempest - William Shakespeare

Week 6:

• Gulliver's Travels - Jonathan Swift

Week 7: (Thanksgiving Break)

Week 8:

• A Letter Concerning Toleration and An Essay Concerning Human Knowledge* - John Locke

Week 9:

• Second Essay on Civil Government* - John Locke

Week 10:

• The Life of Samuel Johnson* - James Boswell

Week 11:

• An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding - David Hume

Week 12:

• The Social Contract* and Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men - Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Week 13:

• The Declaration of Independence
• The Articles of Confederation
• The Constitution of the United States

Week 14:

• The Federalist Papers*
• The Anti-Federalist Papers*
• Summa Theologica* - Thomas Aquinas

Week 15:

• Democracy in America* - Alexis de Tocqueville

Week 16: (Oral Exams)


*Selections

SECOND SEMESTER

Week 17:

• Emma - Jane Austen

Week 18:

• Critique of Pure Reason* and Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals* - Immanuel Kant

Week 19:

• Faust - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Week 20:

• Philosophy of Right* and The Philosophy of History* - Georg Hegel

Week 21:

• War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

Week 22:

• War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

Week 23:

• The Brothers Karamazov* - Fyodor Dostoevsky

Week 24:

• The Brothers Karamazov* - Fyodor Dostoevsky

Week 25:

• The Wealth of Nations* - Adam Smith
• The Communist Manifesto - Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

Week 26:

• First Inaugural Address, Second Inaugural Address, Gettysburg Address, and Emancipation Proclamation - Abraham Lincoln

Week 27:

• Considerations on Representative Government* - John Stuart Mills
• Civil Disobedience - Henry David Thoreau

Week 28: (Spring Break)

Week 29: (Spring Break)

Week 30:

• Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain

Week 31:

• On the Origin of Species* - Charles Darwin

Week 32:

• Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
• Nineteen Eighty-Four - George Orwell

Week 33:

• Relativity: The Special and the General Theory - Albert Einstein

Week 34:

• My Ántonia - Willa Cather

Week 35: (Oral Exams)