Please note that this syllabus should be regarded as only a general guide to the course. The instructor may have changed
specific course content and requirements subsequent to posting this syllabus. Last Modified: 11:45:29 01/08/2014
BOSTON COLLEGE
THE HONORS PROGRAM
COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES
CHESTNUT HILL, MASSACHUSETTS 02467
MARK O’CONNOR
The Western Cultural Tradition:
"Don Quixote, Part II"
Spring Semester Readings:
Blake, Songs of Innocence and of Experience (Dover) ISBN 0486270513
Rousseau, The Confessions (Penguin)
ISBN 978-0-14-044033-1
Johnson, The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia (Penguin) ISBN 0-14043108-X
Kant, What is Enlightenment?
Nietzsche, On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life (Hackett)
ISBN 9780915144945
Baudelaire, Au Lecteur “To the Reader”, Flowers of Evil (Dover) ISBN
9780486270920
Paganini, 24th Caprice
Schubert, At the Spinning Wheel
Variations on a Theme by Mary Shelley
url: http://idesweb.bc.edu/ashp/shelley/
Goethe, Faust (Norton) ISBN 9780393972825
Baudelaire, L’Invitation au voyage “An Invitation to Travel”
Beethoven, Eroica
Shelley, Frankenstein (NAL) 9780451527714
Baudelaire. L’Irrémédiable “The Incurable”
Berlioz, Symphonie fantastique
David, The Oath of the Horatii, Lectors Bearing the Sons of Brutus
Burke, Kant & Schiller on The Sublime
Barnes, Julian, “Shipwreck”, from A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters
(Vintage International)
Baudelaire, Les Phares “Beacons”
Géricault, The Raft of the Medusa and the Physiognomy Portraits
Turner, Slaveship
Auden, Musée des Beaux Arts
Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov (FSG) ISBN 9780374528379
Baudelaire, Hymne à la beauté “Hymn to Beauty”
Liszt, Totentanz
Delacroix, The Death of Sardanapolis
Darwin, On Evolution (Hackett) ISBN 9780872202856
Baudelaire, La Géante “The Giantess”
Courbet, The Painter’s Studio
Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du Mal
Manet, Picnic on the Grass, Olympia, The Railroad
Morisot, View from the Trocadero, On the Balcony
Frazier, The Golden Bough (Oxford) ISBN 9780192835413
Baudelaire, Correspondances “Correspondences”
Manet, The Mocking of Christ
Freud, “The Three Caskets”, Civilization and its Discontents and
The Future of an Illusion from Peter Gay, ed., The Freud Reader (Norton) ISBN
9780393314038
Baudelaire, Le Gouffre “The Abyss”
Manet, A Bar at the Folies Bergère
Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols/The Anti-Christ (Penguin/VP) 9780140445145
Conrad, The “Preface” to The Nigger of the Narcissus (to be found as To Make
You See in the Norton edition of Heart of Darkness)
Conrad, Heart of Darkness (Norton) ISBN 9780393926361
Baudelaire, L’Irréparable “Irreparable”
Woolf, To the Lighthouse (Harbrace) ISBN 9780156907392
Requirements
We continue to play by the same rules as last semester: "The success or failure of
any seminar depends upon the willingness of all of its members to contribute. For this
reason, oral participation is essential: an important factor in the grading process will be
the quality of preparation each student exhibits in analyzing the various texts. Since it is
impossible to interact without being physically present, attendance is always presumed."
What is also presumed is that we will each continue to live up to the same high standards
of academic integrity that makes our community an honors program by the most
important standard of all.
Your principal written obligation for the spring term will again be three papers,
each of 6-8 pages in length. Topics will providentially appear just as they did in first
term: on Thursday evenings around repast time -- your intellectual dessert, as it were. The
papers will be due on the corresponding Thursday two weeks following, and always by
the witching hour, midnight, natch. As in first semester you must do one of the first
three topics proffered. By handing in your papers in staggered fashion you'll be doing
your not inconsiderable part to preserve the instructor's frail hold on sanity, for the
prospect of all your tomes piled before me at once holds more horror than Shelley's
"ghost story".
Our Final Exam is Monday, May 12 at 9 am. The inspirational setting will be
our seminar room looking out over the echoing campus green.