Year 4: Early Moderns is primarily British literature and spans the Rise of Poetry, Politics, Enlightenment (philosophy based), and Novels (Austen, Dickens, Dostoevsky, and Lewis).
Wish to streamline this course but still maintain enough rigor for a 1-credit course? If you’re not needing an honors-equivalent rigor, the publisher recommends the following as most crucial for study: Essay on Criticism, by Alexander Pope; De Descriptione Temporum by C. S. Lewis; The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Note: the poetry selections are generally short: The Solitary Reaper, by William Wordsworth; She Walks in Beauty and The Destruction of Sennacherib, by Lord Byron; Ode to the West Wind, by Percy Shelley; Annabel Lee, To Helen, The Raven, and The Bells by Edgar Allen Poe; The Lady of Shalott, by Alred, Lord Tennyson; Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister, by Robert Browning; Dover Beach, by Matthew Arnold; and Song, by Christina Rossetti. Then, What is Enlightenment? by Immanuel Kant; Letter to Benedetto Castelli and Letter to Duchess Christiana of Tuscany, by Galileo Galilei; Part IV, Discourse on Method, by René Descartes; Laws of Gravity, Sir Isaac Newton; An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense; Chapter 5, Section VII, VIII; and Chapter 6 Section XX, by Thomas Reid. Novels will include The Brothers Karamazov, (Chapter IV: Rebellion and Chapter V: The Grand Inquisitor) by Dostoevsky; Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen; The Bet, by Chekhov and optionally, The Lord of the Rings, by J. R. R. Tolkien.
