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. Also, 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? [UPDATE: Here is the current BYU Honors “Great Works” list.]

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..