Adventures in Mormonism

Posted under BYU, Belief systems, LDS Society, Main

It is, of course, fashionable to mock BYU as somehow being parochial or backwards, even (especially!) among the Bloggernacle. Having attended BYU in the 1970s and taught there in the 1980s, I don’t really buy that. BYU students as a body have more real-world exposure to international culture, language and politics — not to mention genuine third-world poverty — than any other major US university. As I have written here before, my freshman Honors English class was actually “composition and reasoning”, and we had to learn to construct and defend a logical argument, a skill sadly lacking in current public discourse, especially in academia and politics (and, frankly, religion).

Scrounging through my files after an e-mail exchange on reading lists with a good friend (hi, Linsey!), I ran across an “HONORS PROGRAM RECOMMENDED READING LIST” from my undergraduate years (1971-72, 74-78). I don’t know exactly when this was compiled; some analysis of the articles cited might establish a “no earlier than” date. But I had this before I graduated in 1978, since I didn’t have a lot of interaction with the Honors Program during my two years of teaching at BYU (1985-87; I was an instructor in the Computer Science department).

So, here’s what the Honors Program recommended back in the 1970s that we as undergraduates read. I’ve reformatted it a bit (and corrected a few typos, though probably introduced a few of my own; this was most likely typed upon on a typewriter on a mimeograph stencil), but the overall structure is still the same. Note that the original takes up seven pages, two columns per page. I’ve put in a few notes in italics and brackets. The list itself contains occasional duplications (e.g., Captial/Das Kapital by Karl Marx shows up in two different places); I’ve left those intact.

Given that this list was complied 30 years ago, what would you add or drop? What entries surprise you the most?

LITERATURE

I. Narrative

• Genesis; Exodus; I & II Samuel; I Kings; Job; Psalms; Ecclesiastes; the Four Gospels (King James Version)
• Bhagavad-Gita
• Metamorphoses — Ovid (tr. Horace Gregory)
• Iliad; Odyssey — Homer (tr. Lattimore and Rieu, resp.)
• Aeneid — Virgil (tr. Lind)
• The Song of Roland
• Tristan and Iseult
• The Romance of the Rose — deLorris and deMeung
• Canterbury Tales – Chaucer (tr. Coghill)
• Gargantua and Pantagruel — Rabelais
• Don Quixote — Cervantes (tr. William Starkie)
• Rasselas – Johnson
• Paradise Lost – Milton
• Pilgrim’s Progress — Bunyan
• Robinson Crusoe – Defoe
• Gulliver’s Travels — Swift
• Pamela (Part I) — Richardson
• Tristam Shandy – Sterne
• Tom Jones – Fielding
• Émile — Rousseau
• Candide — Voltaire
• The Sorrows of Young Werther — Goethe
• Michale Kholhaas — Kleist
• Pride and Prejudice; Emma — Austin
• Ivanhoe – Scott
• Wuthering Heights — Brontë, E.
• Jane Eyre — Brontë, C.
• David Copperfield; Oliver Twist; Great Expectations; The Pickwick Papers; Hard Times — DIckens
• Vanity Fair – Thackery
• Adam Bede; The Mill on the Floss; Middlemarch; Silas Marner — Eliot
• Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland — Carrol
• The Egoist — Meredith
• Jude the Obscure; The Mayor of Casterbridge; Return of the Native; Tess of the d’Ubervilles — Hardy
• “The Apple Tree” — Galsworthy
• “Fall of the House of Usher”; “The Cask of Amontillado” — Poe
• The Scarlet Letter — Hawthorne
• Moby Dick; Billy Budd — Melville
• Huckleberry Finn — Twain
• The Red Badge of Courage, “The Open Boat” — Crane
• The Red and the Black — Stendhal
• Old Goriot; Eugéne Grandet; Gobseck — Balzac
• Madame Bovary; A Sentimental Education; The Three Tales — Flaubert
• René — Chateaubriand
• Les Miserables — Hugo
• Nana; L’Assomoir; Germinal; The Masterpiece — Zola
• Remembrance of Things Past (particularly “Swann’s Way) — Proust (tr. C. Scott Moncrieff)
• The Betrothed — Manzoni
• Eugene Onegin — Pushkin (tr. Walter Arendt, Vladimir Nabokov)
• Dead Souls — Gogol
• The Brothers Karamazov; The Idiot; Crime and Punishment — Dostoevsky
• War and Peace; Anna Karenina; “The Death of Ivan Ilych” — Tolstoy
• Short Stories — Chekhov
• Heart of Darkness; Lord Jim; Nostromo — Conrad
• Women in Love; Sons and Lovers — Lawrence
• Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man; Ulysses — Joyce
• A Passage to India — Forster
• “The Lotus Eater”; “The Verger”; “Mr. Know-It-All”; “The Colonel’s Lady” — Maugham
• The Power and the Glory; The Heart of the Matter; The Quiet American; A Burnt-Out Case — Greene
• The Ambassadors; Portrait of a Lady; The Wings of the Dove; The Golden Bowl; Daisy Miller — James, H.
• My Antonia — Cather
• The Trial; The Castle; “The Judgment”; “Metamorphosis”; “In the Penal Colony”; “The Hunger Artist” — Kafka
• Steppenwolf – Hesse
• The Magic Mountain; Joseph and His Brothers — Mann
• “The Necklace” — Maupassant
• The Immoralist; The Counterfeiters — Gide
• Man’s Fate — Malraux
• The Stranger — Camus
• Claudine’s House — Colette
• Nausea – Sartre
• The Erasers — Robbe-Grillet
• Bread and Wine — Silone
• The Tin Drum; Local Anesthetic — Grass
• Mist – Unamuno
• The Greek Passion — Kazantzakis
• Doctor Zhivago — Pasternak
• Pale Fire — Nobokov
• “Materna’s Home”; One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich; The First Circle; Cancer Ward – Solzhenitsyn
• The Great Gatsby — Fitzgerald
• An American Tragedy; Sister Carrie — Dreiser
• Main Street; Babbit – Lewis
• Absalom, Absalom!; The Sound and the Fury; “The Bear” — Faulkner
• A Farewell to Arms; Short Stories — Hemingway
• The Grapes of Wrath; Short Stories — Steinbeck
• The Ox-Bow Incident; “The Portable Phonograph” — Clark
• “Flowering Judas”; “He”; Other Short Stories — Porter
• The Good Earth — Buck
• The Naked and the Dead — Mailer
• Native Son – Wright
• A Death in the Family — Agee
• The Catcher in the Rye — Salinger
• Short Stories; Rabbit Run — Updike
• “Gimple the Fool” — Singer
• “The Assistant”; “The Magic Barrel” — Malamud
• Short Stories — O’Connor
• Herzog – Bellow
• The Chosen — Potok
• Catch 22 — Heller

[Editorial note: we're just getting started here. We're only about 20% of the way through the list]

Oriental

• The Floating World of Japanese Fiction (ed. Hibbett)
• Kojiki (tr. Donald Phillip)
• Tales of Ise (tr. McCollough)
• The Pillow Book — Sei Shonogon
• The Tale of the Genji — Murasaki
• The Love Suicide at Amijima — Chikamatsu
• Kokoro — Soseki (tr. Ediwn McClellan)
• Snow Country — Kawabata
• The Makioka Sisters — Tanizaki
• An Anthology of Chinese Literature (tr. Cyril Birch)
• All Men Are Brothers — Lo Kuan-Chung
• Monkey – Wu Ch’eng-en
• The Dream of the Red Chamber — Ts’ao Hsueh-ch’in
• Six Yuan Plays
• The Jade Mountain (tr. Witter Bynner)

Latin America

• The Modern Trend in Spanish American Poetry (ed. Craig)
• Dom Casmurro – Assis
• One Hundred Years of Solitude — Garcia, M.
• Don Segundo Sombra — Guiraldes
• The Underdogs — Azuela
• Rebellion in the Backlands — Cunha
• The Lusiades — De Camoes

II. Drama

• The Oresteia — Aeschyulus (tr. Lattimore)
• Oedipus Rex; Oedipus at Colonus; Antigone — Sophocles
• Media; The Trojan Women; The Bacchae (tr. Grene and Lattimore) — Euripedes
• The Frogs — Aristphonanes
• Abraham and Isaac; The Second Shepherd’s Play; Everyman — Anonymous
• Life Is A Dream — Calderon
• The Tragic History of Doctor Faustus; Tamburlaine the Great– Marlowe
• Hamlet; Macbeth; Othello; King Lear; Julius Caesar; Romeo and Juliet; The Tempest; Richard III; Henry V — Shakespeare
• Volpone – Jonson
• The Way of the World — Congreve
• School for Scandal — Sheridan
• The Cid — Corneille
• Athalie; Phedre — Racine
• Tartuffe; The Misanthrope; The Would-Be Gentleman; The Imaginary Invalid; The Miser — Moliere
• Hernani — Hugo
• Faust I, II — Goethe (tr. W. Kaufman)
• Wallenstein; Maria Stuart — Schiller
• Uncle Vanya; The Seagull; The Three Sisters; The Cherry Orchard — Chekhov
• Miss Julie — Strindberg
• Peer Gynt; Ghosts; A Doll’s House; Hedda Gabler; The Wild Duck — Ibsen
• The Importance of Being Ernest — Wilde
• Man and Superman; Candida; St. Joan – Shaw
• The Playboy of the Western World — Synge
• Gas; The Citizens of Calais — Kaiser
• Mother Courage; The Caucasian Chalk Circle — Brecht
• The Flies; No Exit — Sartre
• The Bald Soprano; Rhinocerous — Ionesco
• The Balcony; The Maids — Genet
• Antigone; Beckett — Anouilh
• The Visits; The Physicists – Duerenmatt
• Waiting for Godot — Beckett
• Right You Are If You Think You Are; Six Characters in Search of An Author — Pirandello
• Yerma; Blood Wedding; The House of Bernarda Alba – Lorca
• Long Day’s Journey Into Night — O’Neill
• Our Town — Wilder
• The Glass Menagerie; A Streetcar Named Desire — Williams
• Death of a Salesman — Miller
• Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? — Albee
• The Room; The Homecoming — Pinter

III. Poetry

• Psalms
• Pindar
• Sappho
• Homer (tr. Lattimore)
• Virgil
• Geoffrey Chaucer
• Edmun Spenser
• William Shakespeare
• John Donne
• John Milton
• John Dryden
• Alexander Pope
• Thomas Gray
• William Blake
• Robert Burns
• William Wordsworth
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge
• Lord George Byron
• Percy Bysshe Shelley
• John Keates
• Alfred Lord Tennison
• Robert Browning
• Rudyard Kipling
• William Bulter Yeats
• T. S. Eliot
• W. H. Auden
• A. E. Houseman
• Gerard Manley Hopkins
• Dylan Thomas
• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
• John Greenleaf Whittier
• Sidney Lanier
• Edgar Allen Poe
• Walt Whitman
• Emily Dickenson
• Robert Frost
• Carl Sandburg
• Ezra Pound
• Wallace Stevens
• Wolfgang Goethe
• Frederick Schiller
• Heinrich Heine
• Ranier Maria Rilke
• Françios Villon
• Charles Baudelaire
• Ral Verlaine
• Stephane Malarmé
• Arthur Rimbaud
• Paul Valery
• Guillaume Appollinaire
• Francesco Petrarch
• Dante Alighieri
• Lodovico Ariosto
• Pablo Neruda
• Aleksandr Pushkin
• Mikhail Lermontov
• Aleksandr Blok
• Vladimir Majakovsky
• Boris Pasternak
• Anna Akhamatova
• Andrej Voznesensky

Non-Fiction

Classical History

• Persian Wars — Herodotus (Tr. Rawlinson)
• History of the Peloponnesian Wars — Thucydides
• The Early History of Rome — Livy
• Annales; Germania – Tacitus
• Jewish Wars — Josephus
• Ecclesiastical History — Eusebius

Biography

• Lives of Noble Greeks; Lives of Noble Romans (tr. Edmund Fuller) — Plutarch
• The Life of Thomas More — Chambers, R. W.
• Diary of Samuel Pepys — Pepys, S.
• Admiral of the Ocean Sea — Morrison, E.
• Young Man Luther — Erikson, E.
• Life of Samuel Johnson – Boswell, S.
• Napoleon — Ludwig, E.
• Joseph Smith, An American  Prophet — Evans, J. H.
• Autobiography – Pratt, P. P.
• Frederick Jackson Turner — Billington, R.
• Lincoln – Sandburg, C.
• Karl Marx — Berlin, I.
• My Life — Trotsky, L.
• Hitler, A Study in Tyranny — Bulloch, A.
• George C. Marshall: Organizer of Victory, 1943-1945 — Pogue, F. C.

New Views on the Human Legacy

• The Chrysanthemum and the Sword — Benedict, R.
• The Russian Idea — Berdyaev, N.
• New Testament History — Bruce, F. F.
• The Masks of God — Campbell, J.
• Gods, Graves and Scholars – Ceram, C. W.
• Civilization – Clark, K.
• The Lessons of History — Durant, W. & A.
• The Sacred and Profane: The Nature of Religion, Cosmos and History — Eliade, M.
• The U.S. and China — Fairbank, J. K.
• The Road to Pearl Harbor — Fies, H.
• Madness and Civilization — Foucoult, M.
• The Golden Bough — Frazer, J. G.
• The New Industrial State — Gailbraith, J. K.
• The Dead Sea Scrolls and the New Testament — LaSor, W.
• Structural Anthropology — Levi-Strauss, C.
• Capital – Marx, K.
• Japanese Society — Nakane, C.
• The World and the Prophets — Nibley, H.
• Anthropology and Art — Otten, C.
• Japan: Story of a Nation — Reischauer, E.
• Language: An Introduction to the Study of Speech — Sapir, E.
• The Decline of the West — Spengler, O.

Interpretations of American and Mormon Culture

• Mormonism and American Culture — Allen, J. B. and Cowan, R. O.
• “Circumstantial Confirmation of the First Vision through Reminiscences”, BYU Studies (Spring 1969) — Anderson, R. L.
• Great Basin Kingdom — Arrington, L.
• Go Tell It on the Mountain – Baldwin, J.
• Constitution of the United States — Barnes, W. R.
• The Declaration of Independence — Becker, C.
• The End of Ideology — Bell, D.
• The Americans: The National Experience; The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America – Boorstin, D.
• Soul on Ice — Cleaver, E.
• The God That Failed — Crossman, R.
• Custer Died for Your Sins — DeLoria, V.
• Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery — Fogel, R. and Engerman, S.
• The Affluent Society — Gailbraith, J.
• The Best and the Brightest — Halberstam, D.
• Quest for Empire — Hansen, K.
• Anti-Intellectualism in American Life — Hofstadter, R.
• The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It — Hofstadter, R.
• The Limits of Intervention — Hoopes, T.
• “The Early Accounts of Joseph Smith’s First Vision,” BYU Studies (Spring, 1969) — Jessee, D. C.
• The Agony of the American Left — Lasch, C.
• Politics: Who Gets What, When, How — Lasswell, H. D.
• American as a Civilization – Lerner, M.
• Autobiography of Malcolm X — Malcolm X
• The Restoration Movement: Essays in Mormon History – McKiernan, M., et al.
• Understanding Media – McLuhan, M.
• An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy — Myrdal, G.
• The Mormons (particularly Chapter 9 and the Epilogue) — O’Dea, T. F.
• The Status Seekers — Packer, V.
• The God of Economic Growth – Phelps, E.
• The Lonely Crowd — Riesman, D.
• Readings in Economics — Samuelson, P.
• The Time of Illusion — Shell
• “The Prophet Puzzle”, Journal of Mormon History I (1974) — Shipps, J.
• The Road to Serfdom — Von Hayek, F.

Impact of Science on Man’s World View

• The Wellsprings of Life — Asmiov, I.
• Science and Religion — Barbour, I.
• The Universe and Doctor Einstein — Barnett, L.
• The Restless Universe – Born, M.
• Science and Human Values; The Ascent of Man — Bronowski, J.
• The Challenge of Man’s Future — Brown, H.
• Violent Universe: An Eyewitness Account of the New Astronomy — Calder, N.
• Readings in General Psychology — Snow[?], C. & A.
• Problems of Knowledge: Philosophy, Science and HIstory — Cassirer, E.
• The Language of Science – Dantzig, T.
• The Origin of Species; Voyage of the Beagle — Darwin, C.
• The Physics and Chemistry of Life — Editors, Scientific American
• The Evolution of Physics — Einstein & Infield
• Darwin’s Century: Evolution and the Man Who Discovered It — Eiseley, L.
• Man and the Changing Environment — Franke
• A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis; The Interpretation of Dreams — Freud, S.
• An Introduction to Language — Fromkin, V.
• Great Essays in Science – Gardner, M.
• The Strange Story of the Quantum — Hoffman, B.
• Man in the Modern World — Huxley, J.
• Noam Chomsky — Lyons, J.
• Motivation and Personality — Maslow, A.
• The Origins of Life on Earth — Miller & Orgel
• Life on the Planet Earth — Morowitz
• Landmark Readings — Scientific American
• The Web of Life — Storer, J. H.
• The Natural History of Man — Swanson, C. P.
• The Phenomenon of Man — Teilhard de Chardin, P.
• On Growth and Form — Thompson, D.
• Earth in Upheaval — Velikovsky, I. [ack! thppf! I can't believe someone snuck this on the list]

Contemporary Social Isuses and Ethical Challenges

• The Origins of Totalitarianism — Arendt, H.
• Silent Spring — Carson, R.
• Where Do You Draw The Line? An Exploration into Media Violence, Pornography and Censorship – Cline, V.
• The Closing Circle — Commoner, B.
• The Second Sex — de Beauvoir, S.
• The Wretched of the Earth: Toward the African Revolution — Fanon, F.
• Man’s Search for Meaning — Frankel, V. E.
• Escape from Freedom — Fromm, E.
• The Third Force: A Psychology of Abraham Maslow — Goble, F.
• The True Believer — Hoffer, E.
• Social Behavior: Its Elementary Form — Homans, G.
• Children of Sanchez — Lewis, O.
• Limits to Growth: A Report for the Club of Rome’s Project on the Predicament of Mankind — Meadows, D. & D, et al.
• Obedience to Authority — Milgram, S.
• Environment, Power, and Society — H. T.
• Beyond Freedom and Dignity — Skinner, B. F.
• The Gulag Archipelago — Solzhenitsyn

Religious Perspectives

[note: some selections you may expect to find here are actually in the next section]

• Bible
• Book of Mormon
• Doctrine & Covenants
• Pearl of Great Price
• Confessions – Augustine
• Matthew Cowley Speaks — Cowley, M.
• Freedom of the Will — Edwards, J.
• Young Man Luther — Erikson, E.
• Fear and Trembling and the Sickness unto Death — Kierkegaard
• The Miracle of Forgiveness — Kimball, S. W.
• Screwtape Letters; Mere Christianity — Lewis, C. S.
• Eternal Man; Four Essays on Love; Christ and the Inner Life — Madsen, T. G.
• Gospel Ideals — McKay, D. O.
• The Seven Storey Mountain — Merton, T.
• Lehi in the Desert and the World of the Jaredites; Since Cumorah; The Message of the Joseph Smith Papyri: An Egyptian Endowment; “What is a Temple” — Nibley, H. W.
• A Comprehensive History of the Church; The Gospel; New Witness for God, Vol. 1 — Roberts, B. H.
• History of the Church; “Sixth Lecture on Faith”; Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith — Smith, J.
• Doctrines of Salvation – Smith, J. F.
• Jesus the Christ — Talmage, J. E.
• Dynamics of Faith – Tillich, P.
• “Socialization, Self-Deception, and Freedom through Faith” — Warner, C. T.
• A Rational Theology — Widtsoe, J. a.
• Discourses of Brigham Young — Young, B.

Philosophy, Politial Theory and Speculation

• Sections from the Summa Theologica — Aquinus
• Nichomachean Ethics — Aristotle
• City of God — Augustine
• Ideas and Man — Brinton, C.
• The Analects — Confucius
• Discourse on Method — Descartes, R. (tr. Wollaston)
• Democracy in America — deToqueville, A.
• Human Nature and Conduct — Dewey, J.
• The American Scholar — Emerson, R. W.
• The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire — Gibbon, E.
• The Federalist Papers — Hamilton, J. & M. (ed. A. Hacker)
• On History — Hegel
• Leviathan — Hobbs, T.
• An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding — Hume, D.
• Varieties of Religious Experience; Pragmatism — James, W.
• Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysic…; Critique of Pure Reason — Kant, I.
• The Economic Consequences of the Peace — Keynes, J. M.
• Tao Te Ching — Lao Tzu (tr. D. C. Lau)
• Philosophy and the Modern World — Levi, A.
• Second Treatise on Government — Locke, J.
• Of the Nature of Things — Lucretius
• The Prince — Machiavelli
• Mediation — Marcus Aurelius
• Early Writings; Das Kapital; The Communist Manifesto — Marx, K.
• On Liberty – Mill, J. S.
• Essays – Montaigne, M.
• Spirit of the Laws — Montesquieu, C. (tr. Thomas Nugent)
• Thus Spake Zarathustra — Nietzche, F. (tr. Kaufman)
• Pensées — Pascal, B.
• Republic; Apology — Plato
• The Social Contract — Rousseau, J.-J.
• The Lost Puritan — Santayana, G.
• Wealth of Nations — Smith, A.
• The Decline of the West — Spengler, D.
• Walden; Duty of Civil Disobedience – Thoreau, H. D.
• Science and Sentiment in America; Social Thought in America; The Revolt against Formalism — White, M.

Aesthetics

• The Mirror and the Lamp — Abrams, M. H.
• Poetics – Aristotle
• Mimesis – Auerbach
• Aesthetics and History in the Visual Arts — Berenson, B.
• The Rhetoric of Fiction — Booth, W. C.
• Shakespearean Tragedy — Bradley, A. C.
• The Creative Process — Brewster, C.
• What to Listen for in Music — Copland, A.
• Arts and the Man — Edman, I.
• Theatre of the Absurd — Esslin, M.
• Anatomy of Criticism — Frye, N.
• The Painter’s Eye – Grosser, M. R.
• Deeper into Movies — Kael, P.
• Letters – Keats, J.
• Poesis – Kitto, D. H. F.
• The Wheel of Fire — Knight, G. W.
• The Great Tradition — Leavis, F. R.
• The Gates of Horn: A Study of Five French Realists — Levin, H.
• Film as Film — Perkins, V. F.
• Practical Criticism — Richards, I. A.
• The Sense of Beauty – Santayana, G.
• Death of Tragedy; Language and Silence — Steiner, G.
• Four Stages of Renaissance Style; Rococo to Cubism in Art and Literature — Sypher, W.
• Concepts of Criticism; Theory of Literature — Wellek, R.
• Axel’s Castle; The Triple Thinkers — Wilson, E.
• Primitive Art — Wingert, P. S.

Whew! And we’re done. So how many of these have you read?  How many have you even heard of? ..bruce..