Great Books Program

Moderns Year

  • Final year of our four-year Great Books Program
  • High school or college credit options
  • Read & discuss the finest works of Western civilization
  • Our faculty are highly experienced online moderators
  • Weekly, online classes with students from around the world
Each of our Great Books Program online classes begin with a poem and a short discussion of poetry related to the week’s reading. Complete list of poetry can be found in our Great Books Study Guides.

Poetry for Week 16 of the Moderns Year
Into My Own, by Robert Frost

One of my wishes is that those dark trees,
So old and firm they scarcely show the breeze,
Were not, as ’twere, the merest mask of gloom,
But stretched away unto the edge of doom.

I should not be withheld but that some day
Into their vastness I should steal away,
Fearless of ever finding open land,
Or highway where the slow wheel pours the sand.

I do not see why I should e’er turn back,
Or those should not set forth upon my track
To overtake me, who should miss me here
And long to know if still I held them dear.
They would not find me changed from him they knew–
Only more sure of all I thought was true.

Moderns Year Samples

For this class the students have read Willa Cather’s “My Antonia.” As the sample begins the students have just been commenting on the day’s opening poetry reading (“The Hawthorne Tree” by Willa Cather), and Dr. James Taylor comments on poetry in general and “The Hawthorne Tree” in particular. Dr. Taylor and Stephen Bertucci were the moderators for this class.  Note: We begin each class with poetry related to the larger reading, and what you see on the whiteboard as the recording begins is the poetry with which this class began. It is replaced on the board with selections for the primary text of the day as the discussion begins.

Great Books of the Moderns Weekly Readings
Great Books of the Enlightenment to the Modern Era
First Semester
Great Books of the Modern Era
Second Semester
Weekly ReadingsWeekly Readings
Week 1
Hamlet - Shakespeare
Week 17
Emma - Jane Austen
Week 2
MacBeth - Shakespeare		Week 18
Critique of Pure Reason*;
Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals*
Immanuel Kant
Week 3
King Lear - Shakespeare
Week 19
Faust - Goethe
Week 4
Tartuffe - Moliere
Phaedra, Racine
Week 20
Philosophy of Right*
The Philosophy of History* -Georg Hegel
Week 5
The Tempest - Shakespeare
Week 21
War and Peace* - Tolstoy
Week 6
Gulliver’s Travels - Jonathan Swift
Week 22
War and Peace* - Tolstoy
Week 7
Essay Concerning Human Knowledge*
Second Essay on Civil Government*
Letter on Toleration* -John Locke
Week 23
The Brothers Karamazov -
Fyodor Mikailovich Dostoevsky
Week 8
Essay Concerning Human Knowledge*
Second Essay on Civil Government*
Letter on Toleration* -John Locke
Week 24
The Brothers Karamazov -
Fyodor Mikailovich Dostoevsky
Week 9
Life of Samuel Johnson - Boswell		Week 25
Wealth of Nations* - Adam Smith
Communist Manifesto - Marx, Engels
Week 10
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding*
Treatise of Human Nature*
Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion* - David Hume		Week 26
1st & 2nd Inaugural Addresses
Gettysburg Address
Emancipation Proclamation - Abraham Lincoln
Week 11
The Social Contract*
On the Origin of Inequality* - Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Week 27
Representative Government - Mills;
Civil Disobedience- Henry David Thoreau
Week 12
U.S. Declaration of Independence
Articles of Confederation		Week 28
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
Week 13
Thanksgiving week, no classes		Week 29
Spring Break – April 15-19
Week 14
The Federalist Papers*; – The Constitution; Q 105, Art. 1 - Aquinas
Week 30
The Origin of Species* -Charles Darwin
Week 15
Democracy in America*, - De Tocqueville
Week 31
1984, George Orwell
Week 16
Oral Exams (December 12 - 13)
Week 32
Relativity: The Special and General Theory - Einstein
Week 33
My Antonia - Willa Cather
*Selections

Join the Great Conversation Your Way

Choose your track

Choose your mode: live or asynchronous

Choose your tuition plan

Enrollment Process Powered by FACTS®