§ 5: Reading The Great Works

The following is the Molloy College Philosophy Department’s selection of some of the great works of Western Literature. The selection represented here is a modified version of the more extensive one that you can find in the back of Adler and Van Doren’s How to Read a Book. One important change is that our selection includes many more works from the Catholic tradition than one would typically find in a list of this type. This emphasis reflects an appreciation of the importance of the great works of the Catholic tradition in the formation of students at Catholic liberal arts colleges. The list is certainly not exhaustive, but represents a good starting point for any student who would like to begin a worthwhile reading program during his or her spare time.

Keep in mind that not every work on the list will appeal to all readers. Start by choosing those authors or genres of literature (i.e., fiction, epic poetry, philosophy, spirituality) that most appeal to your own taste. Even reading a few of these works a year will greatly improve your own critical reading abilities. And it might even make you a better human being.

Ancient | Medieval | Renaissance/Reformation | Modern | Contemporary

THE ANCIENT WORLD

1. Homer The Iliad The Odyssey	2. The Old Testament	3. Sophocles Oedipus Rex Antigone
4. Euripides Medea Hippolytus	5. Thucydides History of the Peloponnesian War	6. Aristophanes The Clouds The Birds The Frogs
7. Plato Republic Symposium Apology	8. Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics Politics Rhetoric	9. Cicero Letters Orations On Friendship
10. Lucretius On the Nature of Things	11. Virgil The Aeneid	12. Livy History of Rome
13. Ovid The Metamorphoses	14. Plutarch Lives of the Noble Greeks & Romans	15. Tacitus Histories Annals
16. Epictetus Discourses Encheiridion	17. Marcus Aurelius Meditations	18. The New Testament
19. Ignatius of Antioch Epistles	20. Seneca Moral Epistles Moral Essays	21. Tertullian To the Martyrs Apology
22. Cyprian Unity of the Catholic Church On the Lapsed Letters	23. Plotinus The Enneads	24. Psuedo-Dionysius The Divine Names The Mystical Theology

THE MEDIEVAL WORLD

1. Augustine Confessions City of God Christian Doctrine	2. Boethius The Consolation of Philosophy	3. Benedict of Nursia Rule of St. Benedict
4. Venerable Bede History of the English Church and People	5. Anselm Proslogion Why God Became Man	6. Song of Roland
7. Beowulf	8. Bernard of Clairvaux The Steps of Humility On Loving God	9. Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologica
10. Bonaventure Soul’s Journey into God Life of St. Francis	11. Meister Eckhart Sermons	12. The Nibelungenlied
13. Saga of Burnt Njal	14. Dante Aligheri The Divine Comedy	15. Catherine of Siena The Dialogue
16. Geoffrey Chaucer The Canterbury Tales Troilus and Criseyde	17. Thomas à Kempis Imitation of Christ

RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION

1. Petrarch Sonnets	2. Giovanni Boccaccio The Decameron	3. Niccolo Machiavelli The Prince
4. Desiderius Erasmus The Praise of Folly	5. Sir Thomas More Utopia Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation	6. Martin Luther 95 Treatises Concerning Christian Liberty
7. Ignatius of Loyola Spiritual Exercises	8. François Rabelais Gargantua and Pantagruel	9. Theresa of Avila Life of St. Teresa The Way of Perfection The Interior Castle
10. John of the Cross Ascent Up Mount Carmel Dark Night of the Soul	11. Michel de Montaigne Essays	12. Miguel de Cervantes Don Quixote
13. Francis de Sales Introduction to the Devout Life Treatise on the Love of God	14. Francis Bacon Essays Novum Organum Advancement of Learning	15. William Shakespeare Hamlet King Lear Much Ado About Nothing

THE MODERN WORLD

1. Thomas Hobbes Leviathan	2. René Descartes Discourse on Method Meditations on First Philosophy	3. John Milton Paradise Lost
4. Molière The Misanthrope Tartuffe	5. Blaise Pascal Pensées	6. Benedict de Spinoza Ethics
7. John Locke Letter Concerning Toleration Second Treatises of Civil Government Essay Concerning Human Understanding	8. Gottfried Wilhem von Leibniz Monadology	9. Daniel Defoe Robinson Crusoe Moll Flanders
10. Jonathan Swift Gulliver’s Travels A Modest Proposal	11. Alexander Pope Rape of the Lock Essay on Man	12. Montesquieu Spirit of Laws
13. Voltaire Candide Philosophical Dictionary	14. Henry Fielding Joseph Andrews Tom Jones	15. David Hume Treatise of Human Nature Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
16. Jean Jacques Rousseau On the Origin of Inequality Emile The Social Contract	17. Adam Smith The Theory of Moral Sentiments Wealth of Nations	18. Immanuel Kant Critique of Pure Reason Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals Critique of Practical Reason
19. Edward Gibbon Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire	20. James Boswell Journal Life of Samuel Johnson	21. American Founding Fathers Declaration of Independence Federalist Papers Constitution of the United States
22. Jeremy Bentham Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation	23. Johann von Goethe Faust	24. Georg Wilhem Friedrich Hegel Phenomenology of Spirit Philosophy of Right
25. William Wordsworth Poems	26. Samuel Taylor Coleridge Poems	27. Charlotte Bronte Jane Eyre
28. Emily Bronte Wuthering Heights	29. Jane Austen Pride and Prejudice Sense and Sensibility	30. Karl von Clausewitz On War
31. Stendhal The Red and the Black Charterhouse of Parma	32. George Gordon, Lord Byron Don Juan	33. Arthur Schopenhauer On Suicide Studies in Pessimism
34. Honoré de Balzac Père Goriot Eugénie Grandet	35. Ralph Waldo Emerson Essays	36. Nathaniel Hawthorne The Scarlet Letter
37. Alexis de Tocqueville Democracy in America	38.John Stuart Mill On Liberty Utilitarianism	39. Charles Darwin The Origin of Species The Descent of Man
40. Charles Dickens Oliver Twist David Copperfield Great Expectations	41. Henry David Thoreau Civil Disobedience Walden	42. Karl Marx Communist Manifesto The German Ideology
43. John Henry Newman Apologia Pro Vita Sua Idea of a University	44. Herman Melville Moby Dick Billy Budd	45. Fyodor Dostoyevski Crime and Punishment Notes From the Underground The Brothers Karamazov
46. Gustave Flaubert Madame Bovary	47. Thérèse of Lisieux Autobiography	48. Henrik Ibsen Hedda Gabler A Doll’s House
49. Leo Tolstoy War and Peace Anna Karenina Twenty-three Tales	50. Mark Twain Tom Sawyer Adventures of Huckleberry Finn	51. William James Principles of Psychology Varieties of the Religious Experience Pragmatism
52. Henry James Portrait of a Lady Washington Square

THE CONTEMPORARY WORLD

1. Frederich Wilhem Nietzsche Thus Spoke Zarathustra Beyond Good and Evil The Genealogy of Morals Twilight of the Idols The Antichrist	2. Soren Kierkegaard Sickness Unto Death The Concluding Unscientific Postscript	3. Sigmund Freud The Interpretation of Dreams Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis The Future of an Illusion
4. George Bernard Shaw Man and Superman Pygmalion Saint Joan	5. John Dewey Democracy and Education	6. Nilolai Lenin The State and Revolution
7. E. M. Forester A Room With a View Howard’s End	8. Marcel Proust Remembrance of Things Past	9. Thomas Mann The Magic Mountain Joseph and His Brothers
10. Martin Heidegger Being and Time	11. Albert Einstein The Meaning of Relativity	12. James Joyce Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man Ulysses
13. Franz Kafka The Trial The Castle	14. Sinclair Lewis Elmer Gantry	15. Ernest Hemingway A Farewell to Arms The Sun Also Rises
16. John Steinbeck The Grapes of Wrath Of Mice and Men	17. Jean Paul Sartre Nausea Existentialism is a Humanism No Exit	18. Harper Lee To Kill a Mockingbird

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