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 EraGreat Books of the Modern Era
First SemesterSecond Semester
Weekly ReadingsWeekly Readings
Week 1
Hamlet - Shakespeare		Week 15
Emma - Jane Austen
Week 2
MacBeth - Shakespeare		Week 16
Critique of Pure Reason*, Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of - Immanuel Kant
Week 3
King Lear - Shakespeare		Week 17
Faust - Goethe
Week 4
Tartuffe – Moliere
Phaedra - Racine		Week 18
Philosophy of Right*
The Philosophy of History* - Georg Hegel
Week 5
The Tempest - Shakespeare		Week 19
War and Peace* - Tolstoy
Week 6
Gulliver’s Travels - Jonathan Swift		Week 20
War and Peace* - Tolstoy
Week 7
Essay Concerning Human Knowledge*, Letter on Toleration - John Locke		Week 21
The Brothers Karamazov* – Fyodor Dostoevsky
Week 8
Second Essay on Civil Government* - John Locke		Week 22
The Brothers Karamazov* – Fyodor Dostoevsky
Week 9
Life of Samuel Johnson - Boswell		Week 23
Wealth of Nations* - Adam Smith
Communist Manifesto - Marx, Engels
Week 10
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding - David Hume		Week 24
1st and 2nd Inaugural Addresses, Gettysburg Address, Emancipation Proclamation - Abraham Lincoln
Week 11
The Social Contract*, On the Origin of Inequality - Jean-Jacques Rousseau		Week 25
Representative Government* – J. S. Mill
Civil Disobedience - Henry David Thoreau
Week 12
U.S. Declaration of Independence,
Articles of Confederation, Constitution of the United States of America		Week 26
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
Week 13
The Federalist Papers* - Madison and Hamilton, Summa Theologica, Q 105, Art. 1 - Aquinas		Week 27
The Origin of Species* - Charles Darwin
Week 14
Democracy in America* - De Tocqueville		Week 28
1984 - George Orwell, Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
First Semester Oral ExamsWeek 29
Relativity: The Special and General Theory - Einstein
Week 30
My Antonia - Willa Cather
*SelectionsSecond Semester Oral Exams

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