Saturday, January 30, 2010

Spring is Here

The new schedule for Spring has been late in being posted. Partly this was due to some personal challenges that I am facing, and partly because our readers needed a bit more time to get through the holidays. Now that we are finished with Christmas and well into the New Year, it is time to start thinking about reading again.

We have been following the Great Books list from St. John's College. So far, it has proven to be a good program to follow. We have used online books and resources, mostly from the website: http://www.grtbooks.com. Another excellent resource, with links to not only resources that are online, but also to printed books (in several languages).

Presently, we are beginning the Middle Ages, approx. 1000-1600 AD. We just finished reading The Song of Roland, and are heading into more religious works (Aquinas and A Kempis). I am not sure if this is the track we want to take, after all, we spent a fair portion of time reading through earlier church works last year. I am thinking that we should stay with literature (story, fairy tales, etc.) for a while. I think our readers are more interested in story than in deep philosophy.

So with this decision in hand, here is the reading list for Spring 2010:

The Story of the Volsungs and Niblungs
  • HTML (56 pages, indexed) at Bartleby.com (Translated by Eiríkr Magnússon and William Morris)
  • HTML (364 KB; 128 KB zipped; 342/124 KB text file also available) of The Story of the Volsungs at Project Gutenberg (Translated by Eirikr Magnússon and William Morris)
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
  • HTML (Multi-page) at Bibliomania
  • HTML (339 KB; 201 KB zipped; 255/97 KB text file also available) at Project Gutenberg, also includes Middle English text (Translator unknown)
Canterbury Tales
  • HTML frames at Librarius
  • Text File (1.62 MB; 639 KB zipped) at Project Gutenberg (includes Canterbury Tales, Troilus and Cressida, and other works)
Le Morte d'Arthur The Prince
  • HTML (36 pages, indexed) at Oregon State's History of Western Philosophy course (Translated by W.K. Marriott)
  • HTML (Multi-page, indexed) at Sonshi.com (Translated by W.K. Marriott)
  • HTML (Multi-page, indexed; text file and PDF versions also available) at the Constitution Society (Translated by W.K. Marriott)
  • Text File (310 KB; 111 KB zipped; 298/109KB text file also available) at Project Gutenberg (Translated by William K. Marriott)
Utopia
  • HTML (Indexed, 10 pages) at Oregon State's History of Western Philosophy course
  • HTML (Multi-page, indexed) at the Constitution Society
  • Text file (231KB) at the Constitution Society
  • HTML (258 KB; 94 KB zipped; 254/93KB text file also available) at Project Gutenberg
This reading list will take us through Spring and into early Summer. We will then move into Renaissance literature and begin reading more familiar texts.

A reading schedule (of assignments) will be posted shortly, along with some background information and study help. Check out the Yahoo Group for specifics. Happy reading!
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