Courses in the Discipline of Classical Studies

If we really mean business, this will mean Latin and Greek.
— Richard Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences

CSG 1361 · Greek I. This course is structured according to the order of lessons in the text, Clyde Pharr’s Homeric Greek (rev. by John Wright). The Greek alphabet and the pronunciation of classical Greek are introduced immediately. The declension of nouns and adjectives and the conjugation of regular verbs are studied systematically. Vocabulary lists are introduced in each lesson and are reinforced by the translation of both Greek sentences to English and English sentences to Greek. By the end of the semester, the readings in the lesson are centered on unaltered passages from Book I of the Iliad; thus, a serious literary text is the basis of study from the very first course.

CSG 1362 · Greek II. This course continues to follow the plan of Clyde Pharr’s Homeric Greek; unaltered passages from Book I of the Iliad are the center of each lesson. Additional forms and syntactic principles are introduced to complete the basic examination of the Greek language (pronouns, verbs, third declension adjectives, and irregular verbs). Thus by the end of the semester the essential properties of the language have been covered.

CSG 1363 · Greek Review: Grammar. This is a three credit hour course offered for those who need further work in the fundamentals of an inflected language before continuing their Greek studies.

CSG 2361 · Greek III. The remainder of Book I of the Iliad that was not translated in Greek I and Greek II provides the text for this course. Grammar and forms are systematically reviewed throughout the course, and time is usually available for the reading of some noteworthy selections from other books of the Iliad.

CSG 2362 · Greek IV. Plato’s Apology provides the text for this course. Pertinent features of Attic Greek are introduced as the student begins the translation of Greek prose. The major aim of the course is for the student to build confidence in understanding an ancient text. Attention continues to be directed to the basic features of the language in order to build a solid foundation for future work.

CSG 2363 · Greek Grammar and Composition Review. This course is designed for students with previous study of Greek who are, however, not sufficiently prepared to read in Greek Text courses.

CSH 1351 · Roman Civilization. This course consists of a one-credit-hour study of Roman architecture, literature, and history, taught as Roman Civilization during the last half of the first semester and presupposes participation in the January Rome Interterm following. Its purpose is to give students basic knowledge of Roman culture that will make the Rome Interterm a successful learning experience personally and academically. Participation in the January Rome Interterm bears two hours of academic credit. Every effort is made to enable all freshmen to participate in the Rome Interterm, but students who cannot participate for reasons acceptable to their Tutor may, upon petition to the Tutors, propose a project in Roman Civilization which, if approved by the Tutors and completed successfully, will be taken as a substitute for on-site participation in Rome. Students who pursue this option must have their proposals approved before the last day of fall term examinations and completed before the first day of the following spring term examinations.

CSL 1351 · Latin I. This is the first course in the initial three-semester sequence in which the student undertakes the mastery of basic Latin forms, syntax, and vocabulary. The analytic approach of forms and syntax is retained, with attendant English-to-Latin composition, while attention to the comprehension of Latin sentences and connected prose is not neglected. Learn To Read Latin is the text that provides the basis of study; this course covers topics through pronouns.

CSL 1352 · Latin II. This is the second course in the initial three-semester sequence in the study of basic Latin forms, syntax, and vocabulary. The method of study pursued in Latin I is continued in this course; Learn To Read Latin remains the text. The semester concludes with the formation and basic usage of the subjunctive.

CSL 1353 · Latin Review: Grammar. This is a three-credit-hour course offered for those who need further work in the fundamentals of an inflected language before continuing their Latin studies.

CSL 2351 · Latin III. This is the final course in the initial three-semester sequence in the study of basic Latin forms, syntax, and vocabulary. The first half of the course comprises a study of the concluding chapters of Learn To Read Latin as well as a review of the topics covered in the previous courses. The second half of the semester is devoted entirely to the reading of selections of unaltered Latin in order that the student may begin to attain accuracy and felicity in translation.

CSL 2352 · Latin IV. The entire semester is employed in the reading of selections from Augustine’s Confessions to enable the student to acquire the faculty to translate and comprehend Latin prose. The Latin forms and syntax in the text continue to be scrutinized so that the basic understanding of the language is habitually reinforced. Augustine’s abundant use of standard classical rhetorical devices provides the opportunity for concentrated attention to the formal aspects of Latin style.

CSL 2353 · Latin Grammar and Composition Review. This course is designed for students with previous study of Latin who are, however, not sufficiently prepared to read in Latin Text courses.

CSL JS351 or CSG JS361 · Text Courses. A text in Greek or Latin is chosen for each seminar with a view to its relevance to the disciplines of theology, philosophy, and literature rather than for its philological interest. In addition to reading the text each student will deliver a seminar presentation on pertinent secondary scholarship or other classical works in translation. The primary aim of the course is for the student to begin to appreciate the sensibility of the text in the original language and to begin to heed the import of that exact meaning for its significance in its own particular discipline. The student may repeat the text seminar any number of times as the texts change.

Courses in the Discipline of Literature

LIT 1341 · Epic (Ancient). An introduction to the epic genre through a close reading of the first great epic texts of Western civilization: Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey and Virgil’s Aeneid. The themes considered in the study of ancient epic include the hero and his vocation, honor and the virtues, the relation of man to the gods, the meaning of time, Christian typology in pagan literature, and the importance and meaning of myth. This course also serves as an introduction to the study of literature and to the basic principles of literary criticism.

LIT 1342 · Epic (Medieval and Modern). The epic genre depicts the heroic vocation of man as he responds to the eternal values that he encounters in the temporal world. Medieval and modern epic literature is concerned with the epic theme of establishing right order in the city and the soul that has been revealed in ancient epic. However, this theme is studied in the specifically Christian context of Dante’s Divine Comedy and Milton’s Paradise Lost, in which the full epic pattern of the soul’s journey toward God and the attempt to build the New Jerusalem are embodied. This course may also include study of Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, and T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land.

LIT 2341 · Tragedy and Comedy. Study of the tragic and comic genres in literature reveals two related but different modes of human experience. Tragic texts are concerned with man’s confrontation with guilt and the choice he makes to accept or deny that guilt. Comic works reveal a universe permeated with grace in which the highest virtue is receptivity or humility. Works by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Jonson, Beckett, and T.S. Eliot are studied as offering paradigmatic expressions of these two possibilities of human experience.

LIT 2342 · The Novel. This course offers study of five to six literary works of art, some originally written in English and some read in translation. The novels read are exemplary in their depiction of man in modernity, embodying themes such as alienation, a preference for the abstract over the concrete, and the failure to interpret reality according to its true character. This fourth course in the literature sequence also deepens the student’s insight into the epic, comic, and tragic genres as they are manifested in this most recent major literary form. Works to be read are chosen from Moby Dick, Crime and Punishment, Madame Bovary, Lord Jim, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and Light in August.

LIT JS341 · The Russian Novel. As with all true literary works of art, the novels of the great Russian writers embody insights into the most profound questions of mankind: the meaning of existence and of suffering, the relationship of man to God and to his fellow man, the reality of human freedom and responsibility, and man’s calling to a life of active love (as Father Zosima puts it in The Brothers Karamazov). The Russians’ works, like Shakespeare’s, are worth studying for this reason alone. There are also, however, particular insights into the meaning of human experience to be gained from the specific sensibility of the Russian people—from their understanding, for instance, of the relationship of man to the earth, to culture, and to community. Works read in this course are chosen from Gogol’s Dead Souls; Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons; Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina; and Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov.

LIT JS342 · Faulkner. Almost fifty years after being awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, Faulkner continues to be one of the least understood of the truly great writers, although he has been called by those who have come to understand him the “Dante of the twentieth century.” Faulkner has said that it is the “eternal verities” which are the subject of great literature and that “the human heart in conflict with itself” is the only thing worth writing about, and a close study of his work reveals that indeed it is the perennial human condition which is his subject. This course examines the full scope of Faulkner’s vision, from the earlier novels embodying a tragic view of the world through the later works which reveal his deepening insight into man’s experience as fundamentally comic, permeated by grace, love, and hope and issuing in glory. Works read include Absalom, Absalom; The Sound and the Fury; Go Down, Moses; The Hamlet; The Town; The Mansion; and The Reivers.

LIT JS343 · Lyric Poetry. The lyric genre embodies themes of vision, knowledge, love, and wholeness, exploring man’s memory and intuitions of an unfallen world. Thus, study of the lyric genre includes the themes of poetic intuition, love between man and woman, and love between the soul and God. This course considers the patterns of the lyric genre from its roots in Genesis, the Song of Solomon, and the Psalms and proceeds through English and American poetry to the twentieth century, with particular emphasis upon seventeenth and early nineteenth century British poetry. Additional texts—short stories, novels—that embody the pattern of the lyric genre may also be studied.

LIT JS344 · Literary Criticism and the Creative Process. This course focuses on literature and the other arts as modes of knowledge through examining the origin of works of art in creative intuition; the process of embodying creative intuition in the work; mimesis; the organic form and unity of works of art (particularly literary works of art); the analogical imagination and levels of analogy in the literary work of art; the eschatological nature of works of art; the telos of the work of art; the transmission of creative intuition through the work to the reader; and the proper critical approach to explicating literary works of art. Readings include literary criticism, poetry, a novel and short story, and essays on the creative process.

LIT JS345 · Topics in Literature. Topics outside the courses that make up the required curriculum and are approved by the Fellows are offered from time to time. These courses do not fulfill degree requirements unless approved for this purpose by the Dean at registration.

Courses in the Discipline of Philosophy

PHIL 1331 · Propaedeutics. This course offers a basic introduction to logic, the traditional propaedeutic to philosophy. In addition, this course provides an introduction to philosophic thought through the study of texts that both clarify the nature of philosophy and the proper attitude of the philosopher and also illuminate basic philosophic questions about faith and reason, truth and learning, and the relations among the disciplines.

PHIL 1332 · Philosophy of Nature. Philosophy of nature – the beginning of philosophy proper – seeks to identify the primary causes and principles of the natural world and thereby to explain this world. Therefore, students will be led to contemplate the natural world as a whole, so as to discover the principles that constitute natural beings and, ultimately, the Principle that moves the natural world. Focusing on change as the primary phenomenon that natural things exhibit, philosophy of nature deals with such topics as matter, motion, nature, chance, the infinite, space, and time. Philosophy of nature also addresses, in preliminary fashion, the relationship of man to nature.

PHIL 2331 · Philosophy of Man. As a philosophic investigation of the person as a natural unity of mind and body, spirit and matter, this course examines, through natural reason, fundamental questions about the nature and meaning of life, the reality of “soul” as the vital or life-giving principle in living things, and the features of the rational soul characterizing personal beings.

PHIL 2332 · Epistemology. The philosophy of knowledge, or epistemology, investigates fundamental problems concerning how man is able to know. Of special concern are the relationship between sensation and intellection; the nature, objects, and scope of knowledge; and the nature of a science.

PHIL JS331 · Metaphysics. Metaphysics, the highest branch of philosophy, is the systematic study of being qua being. Beginning with the study of finite being and concluding with natural theology, metaphysics seeks to identify the principles, structures, and properties pertaining to existents as existing. This course offers an introduction to this most fundamental of all philosophical investigations. Students will contemplate such basic metaphysical topics as finite and infinite being, substance and accident, essence and existence, the transcendentals of being, analogical predication of being, participation, first principles, and the existence and attributes of God.

PHIL JS332 · Aesthetics. Aesthetics considers the distinction between art and non-art. It explores the meaning of the beautiful, and the nature of aesthetic judgment. It examines the relation of being, art and truth, and the formative role of creative intuition in the work of art.

PHIL JS333 · Ethics. This course offers an introduction to moral philosophy through an investigation of the tradition of ethical thought that has informed Western civilization. The course examines various accounts of the human desire for what is good, questions concerning moral choice and the nature of good and evil actions, distinctions between utility, right, and duty, and conceptions of human happiness. In so doing, this course examines the nature and role of the virtues and of the moral law.

PHIL JS334 · Political Philosophy. This course offers an introduction to the philosophical study of political activity. Students become acquainted with various manifestations of the political community in the West since the time of the ancient Greeks. Students examine the distinctive characters of the Greek polis, the Roman res publica, the Medieval realm, the American republic, and the modern state, while investigating the assigned authors’ attempts to answer questions concerning the limits of political activity, the nature of law, and the character of the political community.

PHIL JS335 · Topics in Philosophy. Topics outside the courses that make up the required curriculum and are approved by the Fellows are offered from time to time.

Courses in the Discipline of Theology

THEO 1321 · Western Theological Tradition I. Beginning with the Greeks—Hesiod, Plato and Aristotle—who pondered God and the gods, this course offers an introductory intellectual consideration of theological tradition regarding the nature, significance, duties, and destiny of man in his relation to God as that tradition was taught by such great witnesses and scholars as the Apostolic Fathers, St. Justin, St. Ireneaus, St. Augustine, St. John of Damascus, St. Anselm, and St. Thomas.

THEO 1322 · The Bible. This course studies the images and themes of the Bible as the revealed literature that has been the single most fruitful source for knowledge of things human and divine. On the basis of a careful reading and following a literary and theological methodology, the Bible is studied for its moral and theological significance.

THEO 2321 · Western Theological Tradition II. The development of theology from Occam and the sixteenth-century division of Christendom to the twentieth century, including texts and documents from Renaissance thinkers such as Pico della Mirandola and Erasmus, Luther and Calvin, Trent, Deists, Enlightenment critics, and theologians of the Catholic Revival, especially Gregory XVI, Pius IX, Pius X, Adam, Guardini and de Lubac.

THEO 2322 · Western Spiritual Tradition. Reviewing the Christian tradition of spiritual life, this course requires study of the books of Romans and I John from the Bible, the epistles of St. Clement of Rome and St. Ignatius of Antioch, Origin’s On Prayer, the Steps of Humility of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, Blessed Henry Suso, Julian of Norwich, Thomas à Kempis, St. Francis de Sales, John Tauler, St. Thomas More, Newman, and Tolkien. The focus of this course is the objective influence of Christian spiritual tradition in Mediterranean culture.

THEO JS321 · Early Fathers. Readings are from texts and selections taken from the theologians of the first millennium including the Apostolic Fathers, St. Cyril of Alexandria, St. Irenaeus, St. Cyril of Jerusalem, Dionysius of Alexandria, St. Basil, St. Melito, St. Athanasius, St. Gregory the Great, St. Leo, Boethius, and St. Anselm.

THEO JS322 · St. Augustine and Augustinianism. This course presents selected texts fundamental to St. Augustine’s thought and to the Augustinian tradition and investigates the importance of Augustinian themes in the intellectual history of the West. This course includes St. Augustine’s Confessions, On the Free Choice of the Will, City of God, On Christian Doctrine, and other selected readings.

THEO JS323 · St. Thomas Aquinas and the Thomist Tradition. Selected questions from the Summa theologiae that define themes central to the thought of St. Thomas and to the medieval debate are studied. The influence of St. Thomas’s thought on the nineteenth-century revival in interest in Scholasticism is also studied.

THEO JS324 · Newman and Modernity. This course has as its subject John Henry Newman, his biography and intellectual biography, his contribution to the Oxford Movement and to Catholic theology, and his role as a major and prophetic expositor of the theological themes of modernity. Readings include Newman’s Apologia pro Vita Sua, The Idea of a University, and Lectures on Justification.

THEO JS325 · Topics in Theology. Topics outside the courses that make up the required curriculum and are approved by the Fellows are offered from time to time. These courses do not fulfill degree requirements unless approved for this purpose by the Dean at registration.

THEO JS326 · Old Testament. The literary and exegetical study of texts from Wisdom Literature, Major Prophets, and the Apocrypha.

THEO JS327 · New Testament. The literary and exegetical study of texts from the Gospels, Acts, the Pauline and Catholic Epistles, and the Apocalypse.

Courses in the Discipline of Trivium

TRIV 1371 · Grammar, Logic, Rhetoric. This course intends to provide students with the tools of learning. The term trivium denotes the three liberal arts of grammar, logic, and rhetoric concerned with methods of discourse, or linguistic operations. These arts are meant to prepare a student for the study of the higher disciplines of philosophy and theology by means of the study of language, which has been called “the supreme organon of the mind’s self-ordering growth.” In respect of the other disciplines in the curriculum, their purpose is thus instrumental, training the mind to think and the tongue to speak so that a student can pursue the wisdom which is the end of a liberal education. The method of the course is an intensive study of grammar, logic, and rhetoric, and the student will acquire both theoretical and practical knowledge of these arts in this class.

Courses in the Discipline of Quadrivium

QUAD 1181 · Music. The music seminar in the fall semester of the freshman year
introduces students to the theory and canon of classical music.

QUAD 1182 · Music. The music seminar in the spring semester of the freshman year continues the introduction to the theory and canon of classical music.

QUAD 2381 · Geometry I. Mathematics studied as a liberal art through close reading and discussion of Euclid’s Elements of Geometry, books I-V. Directed not only toward developing the student’s mathematical competence through demonstration of propositions at the blackboard, this course emphasizes reflection upon the meaning and nature of mathematics.

QUAD 2382 · Geometry II.

QUAD JS381 · Astronomy. The history of the heavens, including experience of the stars by computer and telescope. Ptolemy, Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler are read.

Interdisciplinary Courses

IC 1191, 1192, 2191, 2192, 3191, 3192, 4191, 4192 · College Seminar. The College Seminar and Dinner is a bi-weekly symposium based upon a specific text and is a requirement for matriculated students, while other students and friends of the College are invited to attend. The assigned text for each seminar can be obtained from the information table in the Refectory one week before the Seminar.

IC JS392 · Person and Community. A critical examination of modern social and behavioral theorists, with particular emphasis on their methodological approaches. This course focuses on the founders of modern sociological and psychological theory but also includes contemporary thinkers. Texts for this course address both intrapersonal and interpersonal dynamics, exploring the nature of the person in himself and in his relation to others.

Rome, Oxford, and Greece

CSH 1351 · Roman Civilization. See CSH 1351: Roman Civilization (above).

IC2392 · Greece: Poetry and Place. “Let the land, sea, and stones speak…” The Greece Study Tour is organized around those sites with which matriculated students have become familiar through their study of Homer, Virgil, and the Greek tragedians. The imagination of students animates the archaeological sites of the tour with stories and myths, heroes and gods. A special focus of the course is genius loci—spirit of place— which students ponder as they contemplate the magnificent ruins and beautiful sea, land, and sky of Greece. The Greece Study Tour usually occurs bi-annually, in May following the sophomore year, and carries two credit hours. It is preceded by the one hour credit course “Greek Civilization,” taught during the latter half of spring semester, sophomore year. Persons of all ages who have not attended the College are invited to participate and are furnished a reading list and all pertinent information. Sites visited include Athens, Delphi, Olympia, Mycenae, Epidaurus, Corinth, the island of Santorini, and, on some tours, Crete and the western Turkish coast, including Ephesus, Pergamum, Troy, and Istanbul.

IC3391 · Oxford: Lyric Poetry. See Lit JS341: Lyric Poetry (above).