Sunday, April 29, 2012

2012 Reading Schedule

Welcome to 2012 and the new year's reading schedule. This year we move out of the high middle ages and Renaissance, and open the door to the Age of Reason and Revolutions. Our historical period will cover approximately1600-1800. Note: biographical information provided through http://www.wikipedia.org.

Major Events of this Period:
  • The Thirty Years War
  • The English settle Jamestown
  • The English Civil War
  • The American Revolution
  • The French Revolution
Major Authors of the Period:
  • John Milton
  • Jonathan Swift
  • Alexander Pope
  • Thomas Paine
  • Thomas Jefferson
Selected Works:

This year our focus is on major authors of the period. The following selections have been chosen for your reading pleasure.

1. John Milton

John Milton (9 December 1608 – 8 November 1674) was an English poet, polemicist, a scholarly man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth (republic) of England under Oliver Cromwell. He wrote at a time of religious flux and political upheaval, and is best known for his epic poem Paradise Lost.

2. Jonathan Swift

Jonathan Swift (30 November 1667 – 19 October 1745) was an Anglo-Irish[2] satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer (first for the Whigs, then for the Tories), poet and cleric who became Dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin.

3. Alexander Pope

Alexander Pope (21 May 1688 – 30 May 1744) was an 18th-century English poet, best known for his satirical verse and for his translation of Homer. He is the third-most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, after Shakespeare and Tennyson.[1] Pope's use of the heroic couplet is famous.

The following works can be accessed here: http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poets/pope-alexander
  • Essay on Criticism
  • Essay on Man
  • Rape of the Lock
4. Thomas Paine

Thomas Paine (January 29, 1737 [1] (NS February 9, 1737) – June 8, 1809) was an English American author, pamphleteer, radical, inventor, intellectual, revolutionary, and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States.[2] He has been called "a corsetmaker by trade, a journalist by profession, and a propagandist by inclination."[3]
5. Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson (April 13, 1743 (April 2, 1743 O.S.) – July 4, 1826) was an American Founding Father who was the principal author of the United States Declaration of Independence (1776) and the third President of the United States (1801–1809). At the beginning of the American Revolution, Jefferson served in the Continental Congress, representing Virginia. He then served as a wartime Governor of Virginia (1779–1781). Just after the war ended, from mid-1784 Jefferson served as a diplomat, stationed in Paris, initially as a commissioner to help negotiate commercial treaties. In May 1785, he became the United States Minister to France. He was the first United States Secretary of State (1790–1793) during the administration of President George Washington. Upon resigning his office, with his close friend James Madison he organized the Democratic-Republican Party. Elected Vice-President in 1796, under his opponent John Adams, Jefferson with Madison secretly wrote the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, which attempted to nullify the Alien and Sedition Acts and formed the basis of states' rights.

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