Great Books Program Middle Ages Year

  • Third 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 8 of the Middle Ages Year The Good Great Man, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge “How seldom, friend! a good great man inherits Honour or wealth with all his worth and pains! It sounds like stories from the land of spirits If any man obtain that which he merits Or any merit that which he obtains.” Reply to the above: For shame, dear friend, renounce this canting strain! What would`st thou have a good great man obtain? Place? titles? salary? a gilded chain? Or throne of corses which his sword had slain? Greatness and goodness are not means, but ends! Hath he not always treasures, always friends, The good great man? three treasures, LOVE, and LIGHT, And CALM THOUGHTS, regular as infant`s breath: And three firm friends, more sure than day and night, HIMSELF, his MAKER, and the ANGEL DEATH!

Middle Ages Year Sample Weekly Questions

These students have read Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar” in preparation for class. In this clip, the students are discussing the killing of Caesar. Prior to what you will hear the conversation has included discussion on whether or not the killing was murder; murder being understood as the taking of innocent life. Now the issue of “preemptive strike” has arisen and the students are discussing this issue in regard to the death of Caesar. Is it permissible to kill someone for something he hasn’t done but that you are are afraid he might do? Sometimes yes and sometimes no? If that is the case how does one know when it is permissible and when it isn’t? Are there principles that can be identified by which such judgements can be made? The moderators for the class are Dr. Peter Redpath and Mr. Stephen Bertucci.

Great Books of the Middle Ages Weekly Readings
Great Books of the High Middle Ages to the RenaissanceGreat Books of the Renaissance to the Enlightenment
First SemesterSecond Semester
Weekly ReadingsWeekly Readings
Week 1
Canterbury Tales* - Chaucer		Week 15
Don Quixote* - Cervantes
Week 2
Canterbury Tales* - Chaucer		Week 16
A Midsummer Night's Dream - Shakespeare
Week 3
Summa Theologica* - Aquinas		Week 17
The Taming of the Shrew - Shakespeare
Week 4
Summa Theologica* - Aquinas		Week 18
Coriolanus - Shakespeare
Week 5
Summa Theologica* - Aquinas		Week 19
Autobiography of St. Teresa of Avila*
Week 6
Summa Theologica* - Aquinas		Week 20
Julius Caesar - Shakespeare
Week 7
Summa Theologica* - Aquinas		Week 21
Othello - Shakespeare
Week 8
The Prince - Machiavelli		Week 22
Merchant of Venice - Shakespeare
Week 9
Utopia - Sir Thomas More		Week 23
Henry V - Shakespeare
Week 10
In Praise of Folly - Erasmus		Week 24
Rules for the Direction of the Mind*, Discourse on Method*, Meditation* - Descartes
Week 11
On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres* - Copernicus		Week 25
New Atlantis, Novum Organum* - Bacon
Week 12
Institutes of the Christian Religion* - Calvin		Week 26
Leviathan* - Hobbes
Week 13
Essays* - Montaigne		Week 27
Paradise Lost - Milton
Week 14
Don Quixote* - Cervantes		Week 28
Paradise Lost - Milton
First Semester Oral ExamsWeek 29
Pensees* - Pascal
Week 30
Romeo and Juliet - Shakespeare
*SelectionsSecond Semester Oral Exams

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