Great Books Readings

Below you will find the four year reading list for our Great Books Program for the current academic year, beginning with the Greek year of the program.  In addition to the readings and two-hour discussions each week, the students write essay papers which are evaluated, marked, and returned to them.  For students on our high school track the papers are generally about 800 words in length and there are two assigned each semester.  Our college track students write one 1500 word essay each semester in addition to weekly writing assignments pertaining to each week’s reading.  Reading and discussing great works is tremendously helpful to students in the development of their ability to speak well.

Please note in the lists below that some of the selections are marked with an asterisk.  We read selections from those texts rather than the entire work.

YEAR 1 – 2010/11 Great Books Program

First Year – The Ancient Greeks

First Semester
NOTA BENE: Reading before the second class: Theogony – Hesiod; Prometheus Bound – Aeschylus
Week 1: Orientation: (Sept. 3) Intro to the Great Books & Socratic Discussion. The Great Conversation, Adler
Week 2: Theogony – Hesiod – Prometheus Bound – Aeschylus (Sept. 10 )
Week 3: The Iliad – Homer (Sept. 17 )
Week 4: The Iliad – Homer (Sept. 24)
Week 5: The Odyssey – Homer (Oct. 1)
Week 6: The Odyssey – Homer (Oct. 8 )
Week 7: Agamemnon, Libation Bearers – Aeschylus Eumenides – Aeschylus (Oct. 15 )
Week 8: Trojan Women, Alcestis – Euripedes (Oct. 22)
Week 9: Aesop’s Fables – Aesop (Oct. 29)
Week 10: 10 Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus – Sophocles (Nov. 5)
Week 11: Antigone – Sophocles, Hippolytus – Euripides (Nov. 12)
Week 12: Histories* – Herodotus (Nov. 19)
Week 13: Histories* – Herodotus (Dec. 3)
Week 14: Histories* – Herodotus (Dec. 10)
Week 15: Lycurgus, Solon, Pericles, Alcibiades – Plutarch (Dec. 17 )
Week 16: Oral Exams (December 9-23)

Second Semester
Week 17: Medea, Bacchae – Euripedes (Jan. 21)
Week 18: Peloponnesian War* – Thucydides (Jan. 28)
Week 19: Peloponnesian War * Thucydides (Feb. 4)
Week 20: Fragments* – Presocratic Philosophers (Feb. 11)
Week 21: Ion, Meno – Plato (Feb. 18)
Week 22: Gorgias – Plato (Feb. 25)
Week 23: Republic – Plato (Mar. 4)
Week 24: Symposium – Plato (Mar. 11)
Week 25: Apology, Euthyphro – Plato (Mar. 18)
Week 26: Crito, Phaedo – Plato (Mar. 25)
Week 27: Poetics, On the Heavens*, On the Soul* – Aristotle (April 1)
Week 28: Ethics*, Metaphysics* – Aristotle (April 8 )
Week 29: Aristides, Alexander – Plutarch (Apr. 15)
Week 30: SPRING BREAK, April 18-22, 2011
Week 31: SPRING BREAK, April 25-29, 2011
Week 32: The Oath, On Ancient Medicine, On Airs, Waters, Places – Hippocrates (May 4)
Week 33: Elements, Euclid (May 13)
Week 34: Oral Exams (May 16-31)
*Selections Only

YEAR 2 – 2010/11 Great Books Program

Second Year – Roman Readings

First Semester
Week 1: Aeneid – Virgil
Week 2: Aeneid – Virgil
Week 3: Livy*
Week 4: Livy*
Week 5: Plutarch: Romulus, Numa Pomulus, Coriolanus, Caesar
Week 6: Conquest of Gaul – Caesar
Week 7: Plutarch: Cato the Younger, Antony, Brutus, Cicero
Week 8: On Friendship; On Duties – Cicero
Week 9: Annals* – Tacitus (Nov. 4)
Week 10: On the Nature of Things* – Lucretius
Week 11: Discourses*- Epictitus; Meditations* – Marcus Aurelius
Week 12: Almagest – Ptolemy
Week 13: On the Natural Faculties – Galen
Week 14: Enneads* – Plotinus
Week 15: Old Testament – Genesis
Week 16: Oral exams
*Selections Only

Second Semester
Week 17: New Testament*
Week 18: Apocalypse (Book of Revelation)- Saint John
Week 19: Confessions – Saint Augustine
Week 20: Confessions – Saint Augustine
Week 21: Consolation of Philosophy – Boethius
Week 22: City of God* – Saint Augustine
Week 23: City of God* – Saint Augustine
Week 24: Qu’ran*; Muhammed
Week 25: History of the English People – Bede
Week 26: Sir Galahad – Tennyson – Sir Gawain & the Green Knight (March 24)
Week 27: Spring Break
Week 28: Spring Break
Week 29: Memoirs of the Crusades; Crusade of St. Louis – Al-Makrisi
Week 30: Imitation of Christ* – Kempis
Week 31: The Divine Comedy – Dante (April 28)
Week 32: The Divine Comedy – Dante (May 5)
Week 33: The Divine Comedy – Dante (May 12)
Week 34: Oral Exams (May 12-31)

YEAR 3 – 2010/11 Great Books Program
Third Year – Medieval Readings

First Semester
Week 1: Canterbury Tales – Chaucer
Week 2: Canterbury Tales – Chaucer
Week 3: Summa – Saint Thomas Aquinas*
Week 4: Summa – Saint Thomas Aquinas*
Week 5: Summa – Saint Thomas Aquinas*
Week 6: Summa – Saint Thomas Aquinas*
Week 7: The Prince – Machiavelli
Week 8: Dark Night of the Soul – St. John of the Cross
Week 9: Utopia – Sir Thomas More
Week 10: Praise of Folly – Erasmus
Week 11: Autobiography of St. Teresa of Avila
Week 12: On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres* – Copernicus
Week 13: Institutes of the Christian Religion* – Calvin
Week 14: Essays* – Montaigne (Dec. 3)
Week 15: A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream; Shakespeare
Week 16: Oral Exams
*Selections Only

Second Semester
Week 17: Don Quixote* – Cervantes
Week 18: Don Quixote* – Cervantes
Week 19: The Taming of the Shrew – William Shakespeare
Week 20: Coriolanus – Shakespeare
Week 21: Julius Caesar – Shakespeare
Week 22: Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences* – Galileo
Week 23: The Merchant of Venice – Shakespeare
Week 24: Henry V – Shakespeare
Week 25: The New Atlantis and Novum Organum* – Bacon
Week 26: Rules for the Direction of the Mind*, Discourse on Method*, Meditations- Descartes
Week 27: Spring Break
Week 28: Spring Break
Week 29: Leviathan* – Hobbes -
Week 30: Paradise Lost – Milton
Week 31: Paradise Lost – Milton
Week 32: Pensees* – Pascal
Week 33: Romeo & Juliet – Wm. Shakespeare
Week 34 Oral Exams – (May 12-31)

YEAR 4 – 2010/11 Great Books Program
Fourth Year – Modern Readings

First Semester

Week 1: Hamlet – Wm. Shakespeare
Week 2: Othello – William Shakespeare
Week 3: MacBeth – William Shakespeare
Week 4: King Lear – William Shakespeare
Week 5: Tartuffe – Moliere; Phaedra, Racine
Week 6: Gulliver’s Travels – Jonathan Swift
Week 7: Essay Concerning Human Knowledge*, Second Essay on Civil Government*, Letter on Toleration* -John Locke
Week 8: Essay Concerning Human Knowledge*, Second Essay on Civil Government*, Letter on Toleration* – John Locke
Week 9: An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding*, Treatise of Human Nature*, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion* – David Hume
Week 10: The Social Contract*, On the Origin of Inequality* – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Week 11: The Federalist Papers*; – Q 105, Art. 1 – Aquinas
Week 12: U.S. Declaration of Independence, Articles of Confederation, & Constitution
Week 13: Democracy in America*, – De Tocqueville; Representative Government*, J.S, Mill
Week 14: Critique of Pure Reason*, Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals* – Immanuel Kant
Week 15: Emma – Jane Austen
Week 16: Oral Exams
*Selections Only

Second Semester
Week 17: Faust – Goethe
Week 18: Philosophy of Right*, The Philosophy of History* – Georg Hegel
Week 19: War and Peace – Tolstoy
Week 20: War and Peace* – Tolstoy
Week 21: Apologia Pro Vita Sua – Cardinal John Henry Newman
Week 22: The Brothers Karamazov – Fyodor Mikailovich Dostoevsky (Feb. 26)
Week 23: The Brothers Karamazov – Fyodor Mikailovich Dostoevsky (Mar. 5)
Week 24: Wealth of Nations* – Adam Smith;
Communist Manifesto – Karl Marx (Mar. 12)
Week 25 1st & 2nd Inaugural Addresses, Gettysburg Address; Emancipation Proclamation – Abraham Lincoln (Mar. 19)
Week 26: Walden, Civil Disobedience – Henry David Thoreau (Mar. 26)
Week 27: Spring Break
Week 28: Spring Break
Week 29: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain – (April 16)
Week 30: The Origin of Species* – Charles Darwin;
Humani Generis* – Pope Pius XII
Week 31: Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
Week 32: Relativity: The Special and General Theory – Einstein
Deus Caritas Est – Pope Benedict XVI
Quas Primas – Pope Pius XI
Week 33: Oral Exams (May 12 – 29)