Arts & Ideas
cultivates reading skills
by sharing concerns and sensibilities
of people within specific cultures
at specific times. Arts and Ideas
complements a course by that title
at the University of Baltimore.
 
Syllabus Readings 

Telling Stories 

I Fighting Trojans 
Homer: The Iliad 
Gods  The Trojan War 
Time Line Bullfinch Britannica Durant 
 
  
II Building Athens
Tragedy 
Aeschylus: The Agamemnon 
Aristotle: Poetics 
History 
Herodotus: Gyges   Croesus 
Thucydides: Pericles 
Plutarch: Pericles  Lycurgus Solon 
Philosophy 
Aristotle:  Pride   Magnanimity  
Metaphysics Poetics 
Plato:  The Symposium Light  
The Parable of the Cave  The Divided Line 
Heraclitus: Fragments Zeno: Paradoxes


III Illuminating Love 
Medieval Lyrics 
Chaucer: Troilus and Criseyde 
Middle English Troilus and Criseyde 
Capellanus: The Art of Courtly Love 
St Augustine: Confessions 
Innocent III: On Misery 
 
IV Distinguishing Perspectives 
Pico della Mirandola: On Dignity 
Machiavelli: The Prince 
Botticelli's Florence 
Titian's Venice 
Shakespeare: Othello 
 
V Mapping Directions 
Bacon: The New Organon 
Galileo: The Starry Messenger 
Harvey: The Motion of the Heart 
Darwin: Evolution 
 

VI Creating Self & Society 
Blake
Songs of Innocence  
Songs of Experience  
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell 
Goya