Great Books

Great Books
The original uploader was Chick Bowen at English Wikipedia. · Public domain · source
Name	Great Books
Focus	Canonical works of literature, philosophy, science, religion
Regions	Worldwide
Languages	Ancient Greek, Latin, Classical Chinese, Sanskrit, Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, Modern European languages
Notable	Homer, Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Dante, Shakespeare, Newton, Confucius, Sun Tzu

Great Books Great Books are collections of canonical works that have shaped Rome, Athens, Qin, Tang, Abbasids, Gupta, Renaissance thought and modern institutions such as Harvard University, Oxford University, Yale University, Columbia University. Advocates cite texts from authors like Homer, Plato, Aristotle, Augustine of Hippo, Dante Alighieri, William Shakespeare, Isaac Newton, Confucius, Sun Tzu that influenced events including the Peloponnesian War, the Fall of the Western Roman Empire, the Reformation, the Scientific Revolution, the American Revolution, and the French Revolution. Critics counter with revisions inspired by Postcolonialism, Feminism, Critical Race Theory, Postmodernism and curricular reforms at institutions such as University of Chicago and Harvard College.

Definition and Criteria

Scholars define Great Books by inclusion of works by figures like Homer, Virgil, Sophocles, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Augustine of Hippo, Thomas Aquinas, Dante Alighieri, Geoffrey Chaucer, Miguel de Cervantes, William Shakespeare, John Milton, Voltaire, Immanuel Kant, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Mary Wollstonecraft, Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Charles Darwin, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Leo Tolstoy, Marcel Proust, James Joyce, Franz Kafka, Gabriel García Márquez, Rainer Maria Rilke, T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Simone de Beauvoir, Hannah Arendt, Michel Foucault, Jean-Paul Sartre, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Max Planck, Søren Kierkegaard, Molière, Niccolò Machiavelli, Sun Tzu, Confucius, Laozi, Zhuangzi, Buddha, Vyasa, Kalidasa, Rumi, Ibn Sina, Ibn Rushd as canonical authorities. Criteria often include historical influence demonstrated in Magna Carta, Peace of Westphalia, Treaty of Versailles, philosophical rigor associated with Nicomachean Ethics or Critique of Pure Reason, literary excellence evidenced by Divine Comedy, Hamlet, Don Quixote, and cross-cultural transmission via translations sponsored by institutions like Royal Society and patrons such as Medici family.

Historical Origins and Development

The canon traces to antiquity when figures in Athens and Alexandria curated texts for schools such as the Lyceum and the Platonic Academy, while Han dynasty scholars compiled classics used by Han imperial examinations. The medieval period saw preservation and commentary by scholars in Byzantine Empire, Abbasid Caliphate, Al-Andalus, Carolingian Empire and monasteries tied to Papal States. The Renaissance revived classical authors in Florence and Venice, aided by printers in Gutenberg's Mainz and patrons like Cosimo de' Medici. The modern era featured lists produced by educators at St. John's College (Annapolis and Santa Fe), the University of Chicago's Committee on General Education, and projects like the Great Books of the Western World series from Encyclopædia Britannica.

Canon Formation and Major Lists

Major curated lists include the medieval Trivium and Quadrivium curricula, the Oxbridge reading lists, the Great Books of the Western World series, the St. John's College program, and syllabi at Harvard College, Yale University, Princeton University, Columbia University, Stanford University, University of Paris (Sorbonne), and University of Bologna. Compilers such as Mortimer Adler, Charles Van Doren, Harold Bloom, Allan Bloom, Lionel Trilling, F.R. Leavis and institutions like Modern Library shaped canons emphasizing authors from Homer to Joyce. Lists have been revised to include writers from Africa, Latin America, East Asia, South Asia and Islamic Golden Age figures like Al-Farabi and Al-Ghazali.

Geographic and Cultural Representations

Initially Eurocentric, canonical lists increasingly incorporate works from China (e.g., Analects of Confucius, Tao Te Ching), India (Bhagavad Gita, Mahabharata, Ramayana), Persia (Shahnameh), Arabic world (One Thousand and One Nights, Ibn Khaldun), Africa (Sundiata, Chinua Achebe), and Latin America (Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Jorge Luis Borges). Debates over representation involve scholars working at University of Cape Town, University of São Paulo, Peking University, Jawaharlal Nehru University, American University of Beirut and museums like the British Museum and the Bibliothèque nationale de France.

Influence on Education and Intellectual Movements

Great Books programs influenced curricula in liberal arts colleges, shaping pedagogy at St. John's College (Annapolis and Santa Fe), Shimer College, Thomas Aquinas College, and seminar formats at Harvard Law School and Yale Law School. Intellectual movements such as Renaissance humanism, Enlightenment, Romanticism, Existentialism, Phenomenology, Analytic philosophy, Pragmatism, Marxism, Postcolonialism and Feminist theory engaged canonical texts from authors like Montesquieu, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Immanuel Kant, John Stuart Mill, Karl Marx, Simone de Beauvoir, Frantz Fanon, and Edward Said.

Criticisms and Debates

Critics cite exclusionary practices highlighted by scholars such as Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Cornel West, bell hooks, Patricia Hill Collins, Edward Said, and Stuart Hall. Contentious issues include linguistic bias confronting translations of Homer, Aeschylus, Euclid, and Avicenna; historiographical disputes tied to Orientalism; and curricular battles at institutions like University of California, Berkeley, Columbia University, University of Oxford and National University of Singapore. Reform proposals range from diversification advocated by Amartya Sen and Kwame Anthony Appiah to pedagogical shifts toward comparative, transnational, and multimedia approaches championed by centers such as the Kennedy Center and initiatives at the Modern Language Association.

Category:Literary canons