Wednesday, 9 January 2008

Curriculum for Me

I was musing to Jeff the other day about what books I'd like to put on my birthday wish list and he suggested I needed to read some of what we have on our shelves already before I get any more. Last year we purchased the complete set of Great Books of the Western World (ed Mortimer J Adler) and so far I've read only five chapters of The Iliad and not much else. So now that Jeff's flung down the gauntlet, I've put some thought into what I actually want to read. I also considered works included in Louise Cowan and Os Guinness's Invitation to the Classics. So here's my classics* reading list for the next year, and the year after that, and... you get the picture!
One chapter a day from The Bible

19th Century Authors
(Aside: I read the complete works of Jane Austen in 2006, but I'm sure I'll read them again.)
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte
Villette by Charlotte Bronte
The Life of Charlotte Bronte and Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell
Great Expectations, David Copperfield and possibly others by Charles Dickens (I read Oliver Twist and The Pickwick Papers in 2007)
(Maybe) Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
Middlemarch by George Eliot
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Philosophy of Education
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke
(Maybe) The Principles of Human Knowledge by George Berkeley
(Maybe) An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding by David Hume

Ancient Authors
(I'd like to get back to) The Iliad and The Odyssey by Homer
The Aeneid by Virgil
History of the Persian Wars by Herodotus
The Antiquities of the Jews and The Wars of the Jews by Flavius Josephus
The Didache
The Church History by Eusebius
The Confessions and On Christian Doctrine by Augustine, Bishop of Hippo

Medieval Authors
The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis

Authors from the Age of Reformation and After
Utopia by Thomas More
The Babylonian Captivity of the Church by Martin Luther
Institutes of the Christian Religion by John Calvin
Hamlet, King Lear and The Tempest by William Shakespeare
Paradise Lost and (maybe) Paradise Regained by John Milton
The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan

After learning a (very) little bit of XHTML, I've made this into a list for my sidebar which I can strikethrough as I progress through the list. Not sure how fast that'll be happening though!

* I will be reading other stuff! Sometimes my brain just needs a rest.

2 comments:

  1. Andrea19 January 2008 at 14:14

    Whoa - that's quite a list! I barely can get 4 or 5 books read in a year! You should have no problem w/ the classical education! I just started 1st grade w/ my oldest (based on help from WTM) and am excited but also a little overwhelmed by the classical model (I grew up in public school). We are both learning so much and I'm reading again (motherhood kind of shoved that aside for awhile), which I love.
    Great post!
    Andrea

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  2. Sharon19 January 2008 at 18:54

    I was public schooled also, but I've been reading about Classical Education and associated methods since before I had my firstborn. I used to be a high school teacher at a private school and it just seemed silly to think of teaching other people's kids while we sent our kids off to be taught by someone else.
    As to the book list, I did say I expected it to take a few years! I figure if I get this list read before Joshua reaches the Rhetoric stage (in a decade or so) I'll be set! So I have a lot of leeway!
    Thanks for dropping by.
    ~Sharon

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