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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 regular 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 – 2009/10 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. 1) Intro to the Great Books & Socratic Discussion. The Great Conversation, Adler
Week 2: Theogony – Hesiod – Prometheus Bound – Aeschylus (Sept. 8 )
Week 3: The Iliad – Homer (Sept. 15 )
Week 4: The Iliad – Homer (Sept. 22)
Week 5: The Odyssey – Homer (Sept. 29)
Week 6: The Odyssey – Homer (Oct. 6)
Week 7: Agamemnon, Libation Bearers – Aeschylus Eumenides – Aeschylus (Oct. 13 )
Week 8: Trojan Women, Alcestis – Euripedes (Oct. 20)
Week 9: Aesop’s Fables – Aesop (Oct. 27)
Week 10: 10 Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus – Sophocles (Nov. 3 )
Week 11: Antigone – Sophocles, Hippolytus – Euripides (Nov. 10)
Week 12: Histories* – Herodotus (Nov. 17)
Week 13: Histories* – Herodotus (Nov. 24)
Week 14: Histories* – Herodotus (Dec. 1)
Week 15: Lycurgus, Solon, Pericles, Alcibiades – Plutarch (Dec. 8 )
Week 16: Oral Exams (December 9 – 23 )
Second Semester
Week 17: Medea, Bacchae – Euripedes (Jan. 19)
Week 18: Peloponnesian War* – Thucydides (Jan. 26)
Week 19: Peloponnesian War * Thucydides (Feb. 2)
Week 20: Fragments* – Presocratic Philosophers (Feb. 9)
Week 21: Ion, Meno – Plato (Feb. 16)
Week 22: Gorgias – Plato (Feb. 23)
Week 23: Republic – Plato (Mar. 2)
Week 24: Symposium – Plato (Mar. 9)
Week 25: Apology, Euthyphro – Plato (Mar. 16)
Week 26: Crito, Phaedo – Plato (Mar. 23)
Week 27: Spring Break, Mar. 28 – April 10
Week 28: Spring Break, March 28 – April 10
Week 29: Poetics, On the Heavens*, On the Soul* – Aristotle (April 13)
Week 30: Ethics*, Metaphysics* – Aristotle (April 20)
Week 31: Aristides, Alexander – Plutarch (Apr. 27)
Week 32: The Oath, On Ancient Medicine, On Airs, Waters, Places – Hippocrates (May 4)
Week 33: Elements, Euclid (May 11)
Week 34: Oral Exams (May 12-31)
*Selections Only
YEAR 2 – 2009/10 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 – Cicero
Week 9: On Duties – Cicero
Week 10: Annals* – Tacitus
Week 11: On the Nature of Things* – Lucretius
Week 12: Discourses*- Epictitus; Meditations* – Marcus Aurelius
Week 13: Almagest – Ptolemy
Week 14: On the Natural Faculties – Galen
Week 15: Enneads* – Plotinus
Week 16: Oral exams
*Selections Only
Second Semester
Week 17: Old Testament
Week 18: New Testament
Week 19: Apocalypse (Book of Revelation)- Saint John
Week 20: Confessions – Saint Augustine
Week 21: Confessions – Saint Augustine
Week 22: Consolation of Philosophy – Boethius
Week 23: Qu’ran*; Muhammed
Week 24: Two Lives of Charlemagne
Week 25: History of the English People – Bede
Week 26: Sir Galahad – Tennyson – Sir Gawain & the Green Knight
Week 27: Spring Break
Week 28: Spring Break
Week 29: Memoirs of the Crusades; Crusade of St. Louis – Al-Makrisi
Week 30: Song of Roland
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: Summa – Saint Thomas Aquinas*
Week 8: The Prince by Machiavelli
Week 9: Utopia – Sir Thomas More
Week 10: Praise of Folly – Erasmus
Week 11: On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Sheres* – Copernicus
Week 12: Institutes of the Christian Religion* – Calvin
Week 13: Thanksgiving Break
Week 14: Essays* – Montaigne
Week 15: Don Quixote* – Cervantes
Week 16: Don Quixote* – Cervantes
Week 17: Oral Exams
*Selections Only
Second Semester
Week 18: – Comedy of Errors – William Shakespeare
Week 19: Midsummer Night’s Dream - William Shakespeare
Week 20: The Taming of the Shrew – William Shakespeare
Week 21: Coriolanus – Shakespeare
Week 22: Julius Caesar - Shakespeare
Week 23: Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences* – Galileo
Week 24: The Merchant of Venice – Shakespeare
Week 25: Henry V – Shakespeare
Week 26: The New Atlantis and Novum Organum* – Bacon
Week 27: Rules for the Direction of the Mind*, Discourse on Method*, Meditations- Descartes
Week 28: Spring Break
Week 29: Spring Break
Week 30: Leviathan* – Hobbes -
Week 31: Paradise Lost – Milton
Week 32: Paradise Lost – Milton
Week 33: Pensees* – Pascal
Week 34: Romeo & Juliet – Wm. Shakespeare
Week 35 Oral Exams -
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: The Tempest - William Shakespeare
Week 6: Tartuffe – Moliere; Phaedra, Racine
Week 7: Gulliver’s Travels – Jonathan Swift
Week 8: Essay Concerning Human Knowledge*, Second Essay on Civil Government*, Letter on Toleration* -John Locke
Week 9: Essay Concerning Human Knowledge*, Second Essay on Civil Government*, Letter on Toleration* – John Locke
Week 10: An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding*, Treatise of Human Nature*, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion* – David Hume
Week 11: The Social Contract*, On the Origin of Inequality* – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Week 12: The Federalist Papers*; – Q 105, Art. 1 – Aquinas
Week 13: U.S. Declaration of Independence, Articles of Confederation, & Constitution
Week 14: Democracy in America*, – De Tocqueville; Representative Government*, J.S, Mill
Week 15: Critique of Pure Reason*, Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals* – Immanuel Kant
Week 16: Emma – Jane Austen
Week 17: 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
Week 31: Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
Week 32: Relativity: The Special and General Theory – Einstein
Week 33: Oral Exams (May 12 – 29)
