High Level Texts:
| Spielvogel | Western Civilization (Ch. 15-30) |
Primary Sources and Subject Texts
| More | Utopia |
| Pico della Mirandola | On The Dignity of Man |
| Erasmus | In Praise of Folly |
| Ernle Bradford | The Great Siege: Malta 1565 |
| Galileo | Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina |
| Bacon | Of Truth, Great Place, Studies, Friendship |
| Spenser | Prothalamion; Epithalamion; Hymn in Honor of Beauty; Hymn in Honor of Heavenly Beauty |
| Sidney | Selected Poems |
| Southwell | Selected Poems |
| John Donne | Selected Poems |
| Robert Herrick | Selected Poems |
| George Herbert | Selected Poems |
| Vaughan | Selected Poems |
| A. Marvell | Selected Poems |
| Milton | Paradise Lost (1-4, 7, 10, 12) |
| Montaigne | Essays: Of Repenting; Of Solitariness; Of the Inconstancie of our Actions |
| Pascal | Pensees: Boredom; Causes and Effects; Greatness; Contradictions; Philosophers; The Wager |
| Addison & Steele | Spectator selections |
| Goldsmith | The Deserted Village |
| -- | The Declaration of Independence |
| -- | US Constitution |
| -- | Federalist Papers: 1, 9, 10, 11, 14, 23, 37, 47, 49-80 |
| Washington | Farewell Address |
| Swift | Gulliver's Travels |
| A Modest Proposal | |
| Austin | Pride and Prejudice |
| Byron | Selected Poems |
| Shelley | Selected Poems |
| Keats | Selected Poems |
| Goethe | Faust |
| Gogol | The Overcoat |
| Chekhov | Uncle Vanya |
| Dickens | David Copperfield |
| Trollope | The Warden |
| William Wordsworth | Selected Poems |
| Coleridge | Selected Poems |
| Southey | Selected Poems |
| Frederick Douglass | Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave |
| E.E. Hale | The Man Without a Country |
| Lincoln | 1st & 2nd Innaugural Addresses, Gettysburg Address |
| Ken Burns | Watch: The Civil War |
| Wagner | Watch: The Ring Cycle |
| Dostoyevsky | Crime and Punishment |
| Conrad | Heart of Darkness |
| Kipling | Selected Poems |
| W. B. Yeats | Selected Poems |
| Sir Winston Churchill | London to Ladysmith via Pretoria |
| Graves | Goodbye to All That |
| Sassoon | Selected Poems |
| Owen | Selected Poems |
| Junger | Storm of Steel |
| Fitzgerald | The Great Gatsby |
| Frost | Selected Poems |
| Edith Sitwell | Selected Poems |
| W. H. Auden | Selected Poems |
| T. S. Eliot | Selected Poems |
| Gironella | The Cypresses Believe in God |
| Orwell | Animal Farm |
| Wilder | Our Town |
| Chandler | The Big Sleep |
| Anne Frank | Diary of Anne Frank |
| Hersey | Hiroshima |
| Solzhenitzen | One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch |
| Camus | The Stranger |
| Sartre | No Exit |
Shakespeare List:
The goal with Shakespeare in the Humanities Program is to gain familiarity with Shakespearean language and cultural literacy in regards to plots, characters and themes. In this regard, it is best for the student to experience Shakespeare's plays as they were designed to be, by watching them rather than reading them silently as texts. Watching plays live can be ideal, but it's often far more practical to watch filmed productions. Among these, the BBC Complete Shakespeare series (available at many libraries or via NetFlix) is highly recommended because they are full text productions which are in the main very "straight" productions, rather than imposing some unusual setting or interpretation on the play. Theatrical movie adaptations which significantly shorten and reinterpret the play are to be avoided. Another great approach, if practical, is to do a read-aloud of some plays, with family and friends taking parts.
Start watching a play every week or two at the beginning of the year and work through as many as fit the time and interest levels of the student. These are in priority order, so if you can't watch from the top down and make it as far as you can.
Macbeth
Hamlet
Much Ado About Nothing
Romeo and Juliet
Merchant of Venice
Henry V (Branagh or Olivier productions also recommended)
Taming of the Shrew
Richard III
Twelfth Night
King Lear
Movie List:
The following movies are recommended (as interest and time permit) to be watched as the student reaches the relevant historical periods in the program.
Barry Lyndon
HBO Series: John Adams
Persuasion (1995)
Gettysburg
Glory
Paths of Glory
HBO Series: Band of Brothers
Schindler's List
Judgment at Nuremberg
The Best Years of Our Lives
The Third Man
The Bicycle Thief
The Graduate
American Graffiti
Apocalypse Now
Notes:
Really interesting. I am trying to do something similar, although I've divided it up differently. First year: ancients; second year: world lit; third year: american lit; fourth year: brit lit.
ReplyDeleteIt's hard to find room for all the things I would like my kids to read.