List of Approved Tests for the Independent Reading List

Ancient Texts

Aristophanes 

• Clouds¹
• Birds¹
• Frogs¹
• Wasps¹
• Lysistrata¹

Aristotle 

• Rhetoric²
• On the Soul²
• Physics³
• Metaphysics³
• Politics³

St. Athanasius 

• On the Incarnation of the Word ²

St. Augustine

•  On the Free Choice of the Will²
• On Christian Doctrine²
• City of God_⁴

 Cicero

• On Duties³
• On Old Age²
• On Friendship²
• On the Republic³

Confucius

•  Analects¹

 Epicetetus 

• Handbook¹

Euripides

• Bacchae¹
• Medea¹
• Iphigeneia at Aulis¹
• Trojan Women¹
• Hippolytus¹

Galen 

• On the Natural Faculties¹
• St. Gregory of Nyssa Life of Moses¹

Hesiod 

• Works and Days¹
• Theogony¹

Herodotus 

• Histories³ 

Hippocrates  

• Medical Writings (Please read all the treatises in each group for one point, select a maximum of three groups for three points total)     
• Group One (read all): The Oath; Tradition in Medicine; Airs, Waters, Places; The Sacred Disease — 1 point total
• Group Two (read all): The Canon; Epidemics 1; Epidemics 3; The Science of Medicine (aka the Art of Medicine); Aphorisms; Prognosis — 1 point total 

• Group Three (read all): Regimen in Acute Diseases; Dreams; The Nature of Man; A Regimen for Health; Fractures; The Seed; The Nature of the Child; The Heart — 1 point total 

  [These treatises are available in the Penguin edition Ed. Lloyd] 

Homer 

•  Iliad³ 
• Odyssey³

Horaces

• Odes³
• The Art of Poetry¹

Livy

• The History of Rome (Books 1-2)³ 

Lucretius 

• On the Nature of Things³ 

Origen

• Exhortation to Martyrdom²

Ovid

• Metamorphoses³ 

Plato

• Ion¹
• Euthyphro¹
• Apology¹
• Crito¹
• Meno¹
• Phaedo²
• Gorgias²
• Phaedrus²
• Symposium²
• Protagoras ²
• Timaeus²

Plutarch

• The Age of Alexander: Nine Greek Lives³
• Fall of the Roman Republic: Six Lives³ 

Ptolemy 

• Almagest³ 

Seneca 

• De Ira (on Anger)¹
• [De Clementia (On Clemency) and Apocolocyntosis]¹
• De Beneficiis (On Benefits)²  

Sophocles 

• Oedipus the King¹
• Antigone ¹
• Oedipus at Colonus¹
• Ajax¹
• Philoctetes¹
• Women of Trachis¹
• Electra¹

Tacitus

•  The Annals of Imperial Rome³ 

Thucydides 

• History of the Peloponnesian War ³ 

Virgil 

• Eclogues¹
• Georgic²

Medieval and Renaissance Texts

St. Anselm 

• Prayers and Meditations¹

Averroes 

• Decisive Treatise¹

Bede 

• Ecclesiastical History of the English People²

St. Benedict

• Rule of St. Benedict¹

St. Bonaventure 

• The Mind’s Journey to God¹

Chretien de Troyes

• Arthurian Romances²

Desiderius Erasmus 

• In Praise of Folly¹

Francesco Petrarch 

• My Secret Book¹

Francois Rabelais 

• Gargantua and Pantagruel³ 

Giovanni Boccaccio 

• The Decamerone³  

Hildegard of Bingen 

• Scivias³
• Physica²

John Bunyan 

• Pilgrim's Progress³ 

John Calvin

•  Institutes of the Christian Religion³ 

St. John of the Cross

• Dark Night of the Soul¹

Julian of Norwich 

• Revelations of Divine Love ³ 

Marie de France 

• Lais²

Martin Luther

• On Christian Liberty²
• Table Talk²
• Discourse on Free Will (against Erasmus)²

Michel de Montaigne 

• Essays (choose 3 essays, identify each by name)¹

Miguel de Cervantes 

• Don Quixote⁴

Moses Maimonides

• Guide for the Perplexed¹

Niccolo Machiavelli 

• The Prince²

Peter Abelard

• Letters of Abelard and Heloise¹

Pico della Mirandola

• Oration on the Dignity of Man¹

Pseudo-Dionysius 

• On the Divine Names²

Teresa of Avila 

• Interior Castle²
• Life of St. Teresa of Avila²

Thomas à Kempis 

• The Imitation of Christ²

St. Thomas Aquinas 

• On Being and Essence²
• The Division and Method of the Sciences²
• Treatise on Happiness²
• Treatise on Law²

Thomas More 

• Utopia²

Unknown 

• Beowulf²

Unknown

•  Song of Roland2

William Shakespeare (choose no more than 2 plays) 

• Richard II¹
• Henry IV¹
• Henry V¹
• Tempest¹
• As You Like It¹
• Hamlet¹
• Othello¹
• Macbeth¹
• King Lear¹
• Sonnets¹
• Much Ado About Nothing¹
• Merchant of Venice¹

Modern Texts

Adam Smith

•  The Wealth of Nations (abridged) ³  

Albert Camus 

• The Stranger²
• The Plague³ 

Albert Einstein 

• The Meaning of Relativity² 

Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay 

• The Federalist Papers ³ 

Alexander Pope 

•  Rape of the Lock²

Alexander Solzhenitsyn  

• Cancer Ward²

Alexis de Tocqueville 

• Democracy in America (abridged)³ 

Benjamin Franklin 

• Autobiography¹

Bertrand Russell 

• The Problems of Philosophy²
• “Why I am Not a Christian”¹

Blaise Pascal

• Pensees (Choose 3 sections. Chosen sections must be specified on your final list)²  

Charles Darwin 

• The Origin of Species³ 

Charles Dickens 

• David Copperfield ³
• Bleak House³   

Christa Wolf 

• Divided Heaven²
• Kassandra3   
• Accident; A Day’s News² 

C.S. Lewis

• The Abolition of Man¹
• Till We Have Faces³
• The Screwtape Letters² 

David Hume

• Dialogues on Natural Religion² 

Denis Diderot 

• Rameau’s Nephew²  

Eugene O’Neill 

• A Long Day’s Journey into Night³  

Evelyn Waugh 

• Brideshead Revisited³ 

Flannery O’Connor 

• The Complete Stories³
• Wise Blood² 

Francis Bacon 

• Novum Organum ³
• Essays² 

Francois La Rochefoucauld

•  Maxims² 

Franz Kafka 

• The Castle²
• Amerika²
• The Hunger Artist¹  

Frederick Douglass 

• Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass¹ 

Friedrich Nietzsche 

• The Birth of Tragedy ²
• On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History 2
• On the Genealogy of Morals ³
• Thus Spoke Zarathustra ²
• The Gay Science ³
• Beyond Good and Evil ³
• Twilight of the Idols¹

Fyodor Dostoevsky 

• Crime and Punishment⁴
• Notes from Underground¹
• The Brothers Karamazov⁴

G.K. Chesterton 

• Orthodoxy² 

G.W.F. Hegel 

• Introduction to the Philosophy of History²  

Galileo Galilei 

• The Assayer²
• The Starry Messenger¹ 

George Berkeley 

• Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous³

George Bernard Shaw 

• Plays (Choose and identify up to two plays. 1 point each)¹  

George Eliot 

• Middlemarch³  

George Gordon (Lord Byron)

• Don Juan³ 

Gustave Flaubert 

• Madame Bovary ³ 

Hans-Georg Gadamer

• Truth and Method³ 

Henri Beyle Stendhal

• The Red and the Black³ 

Henrik Ibsen 

• Four Major Plays² 

Henry David Thoreau 

• Walden¹

Henry Fielding  

• Tom Jones³ 

Henry James 

• Portrait of a Lady³
• The Ambassadors³
• The Europeans ² 

Herman Melville 

• Moby Dick³ 

Immanuel Kant 

• Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals²
• What is Enlightenment? ¹
• Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics¹ 

James D. Watson 

• The Double Helix³ 

James Joyce 

• Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man²
• Ulysses³
• Finnegans Wake¹

Jacques Derrida 

• “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences”¹ 

Jane Austen 

• Emma³
• Pride and Prejudice³
• Mansfield Park ³ 

Jean Racine 

• Phedre¹

Jean-Jacques Rousseau 

• Discourse on the Arts and Sciences¹
• Discourse on the Origin of Inequality²
• On the Social Contract²
• Emile³ 

Jean-Paul Sartre 

• No Exit ¹
• Existentialism is a Humanism¹ 

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 

• Faust 1 or 2³
• Italian Journey ³
• Hermann and Dorothea¹ 

John Henry Newman 

• Idea of a University²

John Locke 

• An Essay Concerning Human Understanding³ 

John Milton

• Paradise Lost³  

John Rawls

• Political Liberalism³ 

John Stuart Mill 

• On Liberty²
• Utilitarianism²
• The Subjection of Women²

Jonathan Swift 

• A Modest Proposal¹

Second Treatise on Government ²

•  Letter on Toleration¹

Karl Barth 

• The Humanity of God² 

Karl Marx

•  The Communist Manifesto¹

Leo Strauss

• Natural Right and History³
• “What is Political Philosophy?”¹

Leo Tolstoy 

• War and Peace⁴
• Anna Karenina³ 

Ludwig Wittgenstein 

• Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus²

Marcel Proust

•  In search of Lost Time: Swann’s Way²

Martin Luther King

• “Letter from the Birmingham Jail”¹

Max Weber 

• The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism³

Matthew Arnold

• Culture and Anarchy² 

Michel Foucault

• Discipline and Punish³
• “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History”¹

Moliere (Jean Baptiste Poquelin) 

• The Misanthrope¹
• The Miser¹
• Tartuffe¹

Ralph Ellison 

• Invisible Man³

Ralph Waldo Emerson

• Essays³

Rene Descartes 

• Discourse on the Method²
• Meditations on First Philosophy ²

Samuel Beckett

• Waiting for Godot¹

Samuel Johnson

• Lives of the English Poets³

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

• Biographia Literaria²

Sigmund Freud

• On the Interpretation of Dreams³
• New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis³
• Future of an Illusion²
• Civilization and Its Discontents²

Simone de Beauvoir 

• The Second Sex⁴ 

Simone Weil 

• Waiting for God² 

Soren Kierkegaard 

• Either/Or³
• Fear and Trembling² 

Stephen Hawking 

• The Universe in a Nutshell³

T.S. Eliot 

• The Waste Land and Other Poems (read The Waste Land and 1 additional poem from the collection)²
• Four Quartets¹
• “Tradition and the Individual Talent”¹

Thomas Hobbes

• Leviathan³

Thomas Jefferson

• Declaration of Independence¹

Thomas Kuhn

• The Structure of Scientific Revolutions²

Thomas Mann

• Lotte in Weimar³
• Tristan¹
• Dr. Faustus1
• Buddenbrooks³
• Death in Venice³

Thomas Paine

• Common Sense¹
• The Rights of Man³

Thorstein Veblen 

• Theory of the Leisure Class³

Toni Morrison

• Beloved³

Virginia Woolf 

• Orlando³
• A Room of One’s Own ²
• To the Lighthouse³

Vladimir Lenin 

• What is to be Done?³

Voltaire (Francois Marie Arouet)

• Candide¹

Walker Percy

• The Moviegoer²

William Blake

• The Marriage of Heaven and Hell¹

William Faulkner

• The Sound and the Fury³
• Light in August³

William Wordsworth 

• Lyrical Ballads ²
• The Prelude²

Zora Neale Hurston 

• Their Eyes Were Watching God³