From: msmorris@watsci.waterloo.edu (Mike Morris)
Subject: Re: The Literary Canon
Organization: University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario
Date: Sat, 15 Aug 1992 21:25:51 GMT

Subject: Some Canonical Lists

                                  Saturday, the 15th of August, 1992

Part 2 of 5, Continued.

**********

List 3: ``A Recommended Reading List'' from Appendix A of
         _How to Read a Book_, by Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren
1. Homer (9th Century B.C.?)
    _Iliad_
    _Odyssey_
2. The Old Testament
3. Aeschylus (c.525-456 B.C.)
    Tragedies
4. Sophocles (c.495-406 B.C.)
    Tragedies
5. Herodotus (c.484-425 B.C.)
    _History_
6. Euripides (c.485-406 B.C.)
    Tragedies
7. Thucydides (c.460-400 B.C.)
    _History of the Peloponnesian War_
8. Hippocrates (c.460-377? B.C.)
    Medical Writings
9. Aristophanes (c.448-380 B.C.)
    Comedies
10. Plato (c.427-347 B.C.)
    Dialogues
11. Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)
    Works
12. Epicurus (c.341-270 B.C.)
    ``Letter to Herodotus''
    ``Letter to Menoecus''
13. Euclid (fl.c. 300 B.C.)
    _Elements_
14. Archimedes (c.287-212 B.C.)
    Works
15. Apollonius of Perga (fl.c.240 B.C.)
    _Conic Sections_
16. Cicero (106-43 B.C.)
    Works
17. Lucretius (c.95-55 B.C.)
    _On the Nature of Things_
18. Virgil (70-19 B.C.)
    Works
19. Horace (65-8 B.C.)
    Works
20. Livy (59 B.C.--A.D. 17)
    _History of Rome_
21. Ovid (43 B.C.--A.D. 17)
    Works
22. Plutarch (c.45-120)
    _Parallel Lives_
    _Moralia_
23. Tacitus (c.55-117)
    _Histories_
    _Annals_
    _Agricola_
    _Germania_
24. Nicomachus of Gerasa (fl.c. 100 A.D.)
    _Introduction to Arithmetic_
25. Epictetus (c.60-120)
    _Discourses_
    _Encheiridion_
26. Ptolemy (c.100-170; fl. 127-151)
    _Almagest_
27. Lucian (c.120-c.190)
    Works
28. Marcus Aurelius (121-180)
    _Meditations_
29. Galen (C. 130-200)
    _On the Natural Faculties_
30. The New Testament
31. Plotinus (205-270)
    _The Enneads_
32. St. Augustine (354-430)
    _On the Teacher_
    _Confessions_
    _City of God_
    _On Christian Doctrine_
33. _The Song of Roland_ (12th century?)
34. _The Nibelungenlied_ (13th century?)
    (_Volsunga Saga_ as Scandinavian version)
35. _The Saga of Burnt Njal_
36. St. Thomas Aquinas (c.1225-1274)
    _Summa Theologica_
37. Dante Alighieri (1265-1321)
    _The New Life_
    _On Monarchy_
    _The Divine Comedy_
38. Geoffrey Chaucer (c.1340-1400)
    _Troilus and Criseyde_
    _The Canterbury Tales_
39. Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)
    _Notebooks_
40. Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527)
    _The Prince_
    _Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy_
41. Desiderius Erasmus (c.1469-1536)
    _The Praise of Folly_
42. Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543)
    _On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres_
43. Sir Thomas More (c.1478-1535)
    _Utopia_
44. Martin Luther (1483-1546)
    _Table Talk_
    _Three Treatises_
45. Francois Rabelais (c.1495-1553)
    _Gargantua and Pantagruel_
46. John Calvin (1509-1564)
    _Institutes of the Christian Religion_
47. Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592)
    _Essays_
48. William Gilbert (1540-1603)
    _On the Loadstone and Magnetic Bodies_
49. Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616)
    _Don Quixote_
50. Edmund Spenser (c.1552-1599)
    _Prothalamion_
    _The Faerie Queene_
51. Francis Bacon (1561-1626)
    _Essays_
    _Advancement of Learning_
    _Novum Organum_
    _New Atlantis_
52. William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
    Poetry and Plays
53. Galieo Galilei (1564-1642)
    _The Starry Messenger_
    _Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences_
54. Johannes Kepler (1571-1630)
    _Epitome of Copernican Astronomy_
    _Concerning the Harmonies of the World_
55. William Harvey (1578-1657)
    _On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals_
    _On the Circulation of the Blood_
    _On the Generation of Animals_
56. Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)
    _The Leviathan_
57. Rene Descartes (1596-1650)
    _Rules for the Direction of the Mind_
    _Discourse on the Method_
    _Geometry_
    _Meditations on First Philosophy_
58. John Milton (1608-1674)
    Works
59. Moliere (1622-1673)
    Comedies
60. Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)
    _The Provincial Letters_
    _Pensees_
    Scientific Treatises
61. Christiaan Huygens (1629-1695)
    _Treatise on Light_
62. Benedict de Spinoza (1632-1677)
    _Ethics_
63. John Locke (1632-1704)
    _Letter Concerning Toleration_
    ``Of Civil Government''
    _Essay Concerning Human Understanding_
    _Thoughts Concerning Education_
64. Jean Baptiste Racine (1639-1699)
    Tragedies
65. Isaac Newton (1642-1727)
    _Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy_
    _Optics_
66. Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646-1716)
    _Discourse on Metaphysics_
    _New Essays Concerning Human Understanding_
    _Monadology_ 
67. Daniel Defoe (1660-1731)
    _Robinson Crusoe_
68. Jonathon Swift (1667-1745)
    _A Tale of a Tub_
    _Journal to Stella_
    _Gulliver's Travels_
    _A Modest Proposal_
69. William Congreve (1670-1729)
    _The Way of the World_
70. George Berkeley (1685-1753)
    _Principles of Human Knowledge_
71. Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
    _Essay on Criticism_
    _Rape of the Lock_
    _Essay on Man_
72. Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755)
    _Persian Letters_
    _Spirit of Laws_
73. Voltaire (1694-1778)
    _Letters on the English_
    _Candide_
    _Philosophical Dictionary_
74. Henry Fielding (1707-1754)
    _Joseph Andrews_
    _Tom Jones_
75. Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)
    _The Vanity of Human Wishes_
    _Dictionary_
    _Rasselas_
    _The Lives of the Poets_
76. David Hume (1711-1776)
    _Treatise on Human Nature_
    _Essays Moral and Political_
    _An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding_
77. Jean Jaques Rousseau (1712-1778)
    _On the Origin of Inequality_
    _On the Political Economy_
    _Emile_
    _The Social Contract_
78. Laurence Sterne (1713-1768)
    _Tristram Shandy_
    _A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy_
79. Adam Smith (1723-1790)
    _The Theory of Moral Sentiments_
    _Wealth of Nations_
80. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)
    _Critique of Pure Reason_
    _Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals_
    _Critique of Practical Reason_
    _The Science of Right_
    _Critique of Judgment_
    _Perpetual Peace_
81. Edward Gibbon (1737-1794)
    _The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_
    _Autobiography_
82. James Boswell (1740-1795)
    Journal
    _Life of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D._
83. Antoine Laurent Lavoisier (1743-1794)
    _Elements of Chemistry_
84. John Jay (1745-1829), James Madison (1751-1836), and Alexander Hamilton
    (1757-1804)
    _Federalist Papers_
    (together with Articles of Confederation, Constitution of the
     United States, and Declaration of Independence)
85. Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832)
    _Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation_
    _Theory of Fictions_
86. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)
    _Faust_
    _Poetry and Truth_
87. Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier (1768-1830)
    _Analytical Theory of Heat_
88. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831)
    _Phenomenology of Spirit_
    _Philosophy of Right_
    _Lectures on the Philosophy of History_
89. William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
    Poems
90. Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)
    Poems
    _Biographia Literaria_
91. Jane Austen (1775-1817)
    _Pride and Prejudice_
    _Emma_
92. Karl von Clausewitz (1780-1831)
    _On War_
93. Stendhal (1783-1842)
    _The Red and the Black_
    _The Charterhouse of Parma_
    _On Love_
94. George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824)
    _Don Juan_
95. Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)
    _Studies in Pessimism_
96. Michael Faraday (1791-1867)
    _Chemical History of a Candle_
    _Experimental Researches in Electricity_
97. Charles Lyell (1797-1875)
    _Principles of Geology_
98. Auguste Comte (1798-1857)
    _The Positive Philosophy_
99. Honore de Balzac (1799-1850)
    _Pere Goriot_
    _Eugenie Grandet_
100. Ralph Waldo Emerson  (1803-1882)
    _Representative Men_
    _Essays_
    _Journal_
101. Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
    _The Scarlet Letter_
102. Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859)
    _Democracy in America_
103. John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)
    _A System of Logic_
    _On Liberty_
    _Representative Government_
    _Utilitarianism_
    _The Subjection of Women_
    _Autobiography_
104. Charles Darwin (1809-1882)
    _The Origin of Species_
    _The Descent of Man_
    _Autobiography_
105. Charles Dickens (1812-1870)
    Works
106. Claude Bernard (1813-1878)
    _Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine_
107. Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
    _Civil Disobedience_
    _Walden_
108. Karl Marx (1818-1883)
    _Capital_
    (together with _Communist Manifesto_)
109. George Eliot (1819-1880)
    _Adam Bede_
    _Middlemarch_
110. Herman Melville (1819-1891)
    _Moby Dick_
    _Billy Budd_
111. Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881)
    _Crime and Punishment_
    _The Idiot_
    _The Brothers Karamazov_
112. Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880)
    _Madame Bovary_
    _Three Stories_
113. Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906)
    Plays
114. Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910)
    _War and Peace_
    _Anna Karenina_
    _What is Art?_
    _Twenty-Three Tales_
115. Mark Twain (1835-1910)
    _The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn_
    _The Mysterious Stranger_
116. William James (1842-1910)
    _The Principles of Psychology_
    _The Varieties of Religious Experience_
    _Pragamatism_
    _Essays in Radical Empiricism_
117. Henry James (1843-1916)
    _The American_
    _The Ambassadors_
118. Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900)
    _Thus Spoke Zarathustra_
    _Beyond Good and Evil_
    _The Geneology of Morals_
    _The Will to Power_
119. Jules Henri Poincare (1854-1912)
    _Science and Hypothesis_
    _Science and Method_
120. Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)
    _The Interpretation of Dreams_
    _Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis_
    _Civilization and Its Discontents_
    _New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis_
121. George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
     Plays and Prefaces
122. Max Planck (1858-1947)
     _Origin and Development of the Quantum Theory_
     _Where Is Science Going?_
     _Scientific Autobiography_
123. Henri Bergson (1859-1941)
     _Time and Free Will_
     _Matter and Memory_
     _Creative Evolution_
     _The Two Sources of Morality and Religion_
124. John Dewey (1859-1952)
     _How We Think_
     _Democracy and Education_
     _Experience and Nature_
     _Logic, the Theory of Inquiry_
125. Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947)
     _An Introduction to Mathematics_
     _Science and the Modern World_
     _The Aims of Education and Other Essays_
     _Adventures of Ideas_
126. George Santayana (1863-1952)
     _The Life of Reason_
     _Skepticism and Animal Faith_
     _Persons and Places_
127. Nikolai Lenin (1870-1924)
     _The State and Revolution_
128. Marcel Proust (1871-1922)
     _Remembrance of Things Past_
129. Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
     _The Problems of Philosophy_
     _The Analsysis of Mind_
     _An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth_
     _Human Knowledge; Its Scope and Limits_
130. Thomas Mann (1875-1955)
     _The Magic Mountain_
     _Joseph and His Brothers_
131. Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
     _The Meaning of Relativity_
     _On the Method of Theoretical Physics_
     _The Evolution of Physics_ (with L. Infeld)
132. James Joyce (1882-1941)
     ``The Dead'' in _Dubliners_
     _Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man_
     _Ulysses_
133. Jaques Maritain (1882- )
     _Art and Scholasticism_
     _The Degrees of Knowledge_
     _The Rights of Man and Natural Law_
     _True Humanism_
134. Franz Kafka (1883-1924)
     _The Trial_
     _The Castle_
135. Arnold Toynbee (1889- )
     _A Study of History_
     _Civilization on Trial_
136. Jean Paul Sartre (1905- )
     _Nausea_
     _No Exit_
     _Being and Nothingness_
137. Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn (1918- )
     _The First Circle_
     _The Cancer Ward_

--------- 

Wow! Two whole people born in this century!

There's a new edition of _How to Read a Book_ out with a slightly
updated list, so the one here is out of date. (I strongly recommend
reading the book, by the way.)

Mortimer Adler and his circle are sort of the canonical canonizers,
the people the ``canon-bashers'' love to hate, as it were.

This list duplicates much of the Great Books set. I think it's like
the short list from which the actual books to be included in the Set
were chosen. So, it maybe gives an example of the act of choosing
a smaller set of books from the larger set, or canonization in action.

Clearly, Dickens and Voltaire were excluded because they are not reducible
to one volume.

This list, to my mind, still has the character of a History of Ideas
in Western Civ Canon, although it does a little better on including
works of the imagination than the Great Books list does.

Though I haven't seen the new Great Books set, this does make me think
that the criticism of that set for not being inclusive of black authors
(in the article that Terrance Heath posted for us) is a little bit
off the mark. Adler's canon is going in a completely different direction
than an aesthetic, literary canon would go. Also, it's deliberately
biased to *old* books. And older almost always means less democratically
egalitarian, for obvious reasons.

Again, though I've read sizable chunks of a lot more, if I count only
the entries where I've read everything, I've read 1., 2., 3., 4., 5.,
6., 7., 8., 9., 10., 11., 12., 13., 14., 15., 17., 24., 25., 28., 29.,
30., 33., 41., 94., 101., and 132., for a total of 26 out of 137 on this list.

**********
(continued to Part 3)

	
                 Mike Morris
           (msmorris@watsci.uwaterloo.ca)

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