Course Title: Great Books: Modernity and Contemporary
Grade: 12
Credits: 2
A. Course Description:
Great Books: Modernity and Contemporary is a survey of great western literature and historical sources from the 19th and 20th centuries.
B. Course Objectives/Methods:
This course surveys modern and contemporary Philosophy and Literature Great emphasis is placed on understanding each author and work in their historical context. Classes are conducted using the Socratic method to encourage independent research and critical thinking skills.
C. Course Goals:
Students will be able to do the Following:
- Accurately interpret key passages and paraphrase them in writing and speaking;
- Orally present summaries and critical analyses of daily readings and entire works;
- Independently identify and discuss multiple levels of meaning in a text using appropriate interpretation techniques;
- Identify and explain the key elements of beauty in literature;
- Independently generate ideas relating course material to other contexts;
- Independently synthesize various ideas from different authors into a coherent thesis for discussion and writing;
- Persuasively and eloquently argue a thesis in speech and writing;
- Perform the entire writing process from outline to final draft independently;
- Relate ideas presented in works from previous courses to ideas in works studied;
- Critically analyze, in discussion and writing, authors' ideas from Scriptural perspective;
- Independently identify and explain the influence of the works studied on culture, especially as the students see it in their own contexts and worldviews.
D. Teacher Materials:
Class notes, outlines. See required student texts.
E. Student Texts:
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter
Melville, Hermann. Billy Budd: Sailor
Thoreau, Henry David. Walden, or Life in the Woods.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Emerson's Prose and Poetry
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. Great Gatsby.
Tolstoy, Leo. The Death of Ivan Ilych.
Dickens, Charles. Hard Times.
Dostoevsky. Notes From the Underground
Kierkegaard, Søren A Kierkegaard Anthology. ed. Robert Bretall.
Lewis, C.S. Perlandrea
Chesterton Orthodoxy
Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. The Cost of Discipleship.
Frankl, Viktor. Man's Search for Meaning.
Camus, Albert. The Plague.
Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich. Essential Works of Lenin. ed. Henry Christman.
Shelley, Percy. Prometheus Unbound
c. Copyright Providence Christian Academy