Columbia Reading List, 1961-1962
Frequently Asked Questions
Who wrote this list?
See the heading above and the credit below
to find out who wrote this list. If you don't like the selections in
this list or the arrangement, take it up with the author(s).
Why isn't my favorite author listed here?
This list may not include your favorite author, but
he or she may be on other Great Books lists. Check the
author index to see.
See the Great Books FAQ
for more about the Great Books and these lists of them.
Fall Semester
- Homer. Iliad.
- Aeschylus. Oresteia; Prometheus Bound.
- Herodotus. The Persian Wars.
- Sophocles. Oedipus the King; Antigone; Ajax;
Philoctetes.
- Euripides. Hippolytus; Medea; The Bacchae.
- Thucydides. The History of the Peloponnesian War.
- Aristophanes. The Frogs; Lysistrata; The Clouds.
- Plato. Ion; Apology; Phaedo;
Symposium; Republic.
- Aristotle. The Ethics; The Art of Poetry.
- Lucretius. On the Nature of Things.
- Virgil. Aeneid.
- The Bible. Genesis; Amos; Job.
Spring Semester
- The Bible. Matthew; John; Romans.
- Augustine. Confessions.
- Dante. Inferno.
- Rabelais. Gargantua and Pantagruel.
- Montaigne. Essays.
- Shakespeare. Henry IV, Part 1; King Lear; Antony
and Cleopatra; The Tempest.
- Cervantes. Don Quixote.
- Milton. Paradise Lost.
- Spinoza. Ethics.
- Moliere. School for Wives; Tartuffe; The
Misanthrope; The Physician in Spite of Himself.
- Swift. Gulliver's Travels.
- Voltaire. Candide.
- Goethe. Faust, Parts 1 and 2.
- Dostoyevsky. Crime and Punishment.
The content of this page may belong to the author. The transcription,
however, is the result of my research and hard work. It may not
be reposted on any Web site, newsgroup, mailing list, or other
publicly available electronic format. Please link to this page instead.