Tyler van Opstal- Some brief notes on St. John’s College Great Books Reading List
The idea that there is a set of Great Books, from which a person might acquire a general understanding of the world and the subjects at work within it, has been a popular idea since not long after the initial interest in creating a literary canon of works (usually referred to as the Western Canon, as the concept has largely been pursued by western scholars concerned chiefly with western ideas). The specific term “Great Books” comes from an academic movement in the early 1900s to reform the college learning process into a liberal-arts focused curriculum, interdisciplinary in nature and making use of small classes with an emphasis on discussion rather than only lectures. The advocates for the Great Books model of education, which is now also gaining increasing popularity in high schools through the Classical School movement, believed that a liberal-arts education using discussion of primary sources instead of lectures from textbooks would reinvigorate student’s love and eagerness for learning while connecting them to ideas that had withstood the test of time.
There have been several attempts to compile a list of what works comprise the Great Books of the Western Canon, with one of the most prominent being Encyclopaedia Britannica’s Great Books of the Western World, a set first of fifty-four volumes (1952) and then sixty volumes (1990). Each volume contained multiple works, with a total inclusion list of around eighty authors and well over two hundred works. Another famous set of the Great Works, published before Britannica’s though arguably less influential, is Harvard University’s Dr. Eliot’s Five-Foot Shelf of Books (aka The Harvard Classics), a set of fifty volumes (1909-1910) which then-president of Harvard claimed would give a complete liberal education to anyone who read the full series of works.
In addition to the publication of dedicated sets by academic powerhouses, the concept of the literary canon was also tackled by several commercial publishers. The Modern Library, an imprint that bounced between various parent companies, was dedicated to publishing great works at affordable prices to provide the average American with a library of important books. Today, they still are focused upon publishing great works, but the dedication to affordable prices has largely been dropped (Curse you, Penguin-Random House). Regardless, their publication list and their “Modern Library Top 100 Books” are valuable sources for understanding the Great Books movement- as a side note, the Modern Library itself says about the Great Books that “We hope to remind readers that today’s classics are often the works of yesterday’s avant-garde; and that what we call the literary canon is an ever-fluid collection of great books.” Both good wisdom and good covering of their tail for the occasional bad pick.
To return to the topic hinted at by this blog’s title, the school that is almost certainly best known for its Great Books program (though GB programs exist at many Universities, largely confined to Honors departments) is St. John’s College, one of the oldest colleges in the United States (third oldest by their own reckoning, though whether they can actually claim that ranking is ambiguous as they absorbed an older school to get it). A college with less than 1000 students and an oversized $240 million endowment (by comparison, CNU has ~4500 students and an endowment of around $50 million), instead of having majors or lectures all students at St. John’s College go through a four-year liberal arts program centered around reading and discussing the Great Books, culminating in a senior essay that each prospective graduate defends before a panel. St. John’s reading list is a highly respected reference for what books comprise the Western Canon and their current reading list includes around two-hundred works of classical literature, science, mathematics, philosophy, and other topics (I have included the list as a picture below).
Also notable about St. John’s College is that they recognize the Great Books as generally structured to create a Western Canon inherently neglects works from the other parts of the world. They seek to remedy this in part with one of their two master’s programs, as in addition to a Master in Liberal Arts (which is a continuation of the Great Books program) they also offer a Master in Eastern Classics, which employs its own reading list of Great Books composing a theoretical Eastern Canon (this list comprises around fifty works, though unfortunately the College does not provide handy images for their graduate reading lists so I cannot easily paste it hear.).
As a final note on the Great Books and St. John’s College, for those involved in the Great Books movement it is seen as vital to equip new teachers to continue it. In addition to their master’s programs, SJC also offers an 18 credit Liberal Arts Education Certificate for teachers who wish to learn more about discussing and teaching the Great Books in their own work.
Sources of quotes graphics:
Giddins, Gary. “Why I carry a torch for the modern library.” https://www.nytimes.com/1992/12/06/books/why-i-carry-a-torch-for-the-modern-library.html
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