A. Reading.
The aim of this course is to foster in the student the habit of
intelligent reading and to develop a taste for good literature, by
giving him a first-hand knowledge of some of its best specimens.
He should read the books carefully, but his attention should not
be so fixed upon details that he fails to appreciate the main purpose
and charm of what he reads.
With a view to large freedom of choice, the books provided for
reading are arranged in the following groups, from each of which
at least two selections are to be made, except as otherwise provided
under Group 1.
Classics in Translation.
Group 1: The Old Testament, comprising at least the chief
narrative episodes in Genesis, Exodus, Joshua, Judges, Samuel,
Kings, and Daniel, together with the books of Ruth and Esther;
The Odyssey, with the omission, if desired, of Books I, II, III, IV,
V, XV, XVI, XVII; The Iliad, with the omission, if desired, of
Books XI, XIII, XIV, XV, XVII, XXI; The Aeneid. The Odyssey,
Iliad and Aeneid should be read in English translations of recognized
literary excellence.
For any selection from this group a selection from any other
group may be substituted.
Group 2: Shakespeare's Midsummer Nights' Dream; Shakespeare's
Merchant of Venice; Shakespeare's As You Like It; Shakespeare's
Twelfth Night; Shakespeare's The Tempest; Shakespeare's
Romeo and Juliet; Shakespeare's King John; Shakespeare's Richard
II; Shakespeare's Richard III; Shakespeare's Henry V; Shakespeare's
Coriolanus, Julius Caesar, Macbeth, Hamlet (if not chosen
for study under B).
Prose Fiction.
Group 3: Malory's Morte d'Arthur (about 100 pages); Bunyan's
Pilgrim's Progress, Part I; Swift's Gulliver's Travels (voyages to Lilliput
and to Brobdingnag); Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Part I; Goldsmith's
Vicar of Wakefield; Frances Burney's Evelina; Scott's Novels,
any one; Jane Austen's Novels, any one; Maria Edgeworth's Castle
Rackrent, or The Absentee; Dickens' Novels, any one; Thackeray's
Novels, any one; George Eliot's Novels, any one; Mrs. Gaskell's
Cranford; Kingsley's Westward Ho! or Hereward, the Wake; Reade's
The Cloister and the Hearth; Blackmore's Lorna Doone; Hughes' Tom
Brown's Schooldays; Stevenson's Treasure Island, or Kidnapped, or
Master of Ballantrae; Cooper's Novels, any one; Poe's Selected Tales;
Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables, or Twice Told Tales, or
Mosses from an Old Manse; a collection of Short Stories by various
standard writers.
Essays, Biography, etc.
Group 4: Addison and Steele's The Sir Roger de Coverley Papers,
or selections from the Tatler and Spectator (about 200 pages);
Boswell's selections from the
Life of Johnson (about 200 pages);
Franklin's
Autobiography; Irving's selections from the
Sketch Book
(about 200 pages), or
Life of Goldsmith; Southey's
Life of Nelson;
Lamb's selections from the
Essays of Elia (about 100 pages); Lockhart's
selections from the
Life of Scott (about 200 pages); Thackeray's
lectures on
Swift, Addison, and
Steele in the
English Humorists;
Macaulay, any
one of the following essays:
Lord Clive, Warren
Hastings, Milton, Addison, Goldsmith, Frederic the Great, Madame
d'Arblay; Trevelyan's selections from the
Life of Macaulay (about
200 pages); Ruskin's
Sesame and Lilies, or
Selections (about 150
pages); Dana's
Two Years before the Mast; Lincoln's
Selections, including
at least the two Inaugurals, the Speeches in Independence
Hall and at Gettysburg, the Last Public Address, the Letter to
Horace Greely; together with a brief memoir or estimate of Lincoln;
Parkman's
The Oregon Trail; Thoreau's
Walden; Lowell's
Selected
Essays (about 150 pages); Holmes'
The Autocrat of the Breakfast
Table; Stevenson's
An Inland Voyage and
Travels with a Donkey;
Huxley's
Autobiography and selections from
Lay Sermons, including
the addresses on
Improving Natural Knowledge, A Liberal Education,
and
A Piece of Chalk; a collection of
Essays by Bacon, Lamb, DeQuincey,
Hazlitt, Emerson and later writers; a collection of
Letters
by various standard writers.
Poetry.
Group 5: Palgrave's Golden Treasury (First Series): Books II
and III, with special attention to Dryden, Collins, Gray, Cowper,
and Burns; Palgrave's Golden Treasury (First Series), Book IV, with
special attention to Wordsworth, Keats, and Shelley (if not chosen
for study under B); Goldsmith's The Traveller and The Deserted Village;
Pope's The Rape of the Lock; a collection of English and Scottish
Ballads, as, for example, some Robin Hood ballads, The Battle of
Otterburn, King Estmere, Young Beichan, Bewick and Grahame, Sir
Patrick Spens, and a selection from later ballads; Coleridge's The
Ancient Mariner, Christabel, and Kubla Khan; Byron's Childe Harold,
Canto III or IV, and The Prisoner of Chillon; Scott's The Lady of the
Lake, or Marmion; Macaulay's The Lays of Ancient Rome, The Battle
of Naseby, The Armada, Ivry; Tennyson's The Princess, or Gareth
and Lynette, Lancelot and Elaine, and Passing of Arthur; Browning's
Cavalier Tunes, The Lost Leader, How They Brought the Good News
from Ghent to Aix, Home Thoughts from Abroad, Home Thoughts
from the Sea, Incident of the French Camp, Hervé Riel, Pheidippides,
My Last Duchess, Up at a Villa—Down in the City, The Italian in England,
The Patriot. The Pied Piper, "De Gustibus," Instans Tyrannus:
Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum, and The Forsaken Merman; selections
from American Poetry, with special attention to Poe, Lowell, Longfellow
and Whittier.
