Great Works Academic Certificate Program

Great Works of Our Intellectual Heritage

            This list is open to modification.

Epic of Gilgamesh

Homer (?-?) Iliad, Odyssey

The Hebrew Scriptures
Tao-te Ching

Sappho (fl. early 6th century BCE) Fragments

Confucius (c. 551-479 BCE) Analects

Aeschylus (525-456 BCE) Tragedies (esp. Agamemnon, Libation Bearers, Eumenides, Prometheus

    Bound)

Sophocles (c. 496-406 BCE) Tragedies (esp. Antigone, Oedipus Rex, Philoctetes, Oedipus at

    Colonus)

Euripides (485/80 - 406 BCE) Tragedies (esp. Medea, Hippolytus, The Bacchae)

Herodotus (484?-425? BCE) History (of the Persian Wars)

Hippocrates (c. 460 - c. 370 BCE) Medical writings

Thucydides (c. 460 - c. 400 BCE) History of the Peloponnesian War

Aristophanes (c. 448 - ? BCE) Comedies (esp. The Clouds, The Birds, The Frogs)

Xenophon (c. 430 - c. 354 BCE) Cyropaedia, Memorabilia, Anabasis

Plato (427-347 BCE) Dialogues (esp. Apology of Socrates, Crito, Phaedo, Republic, Laws,

    Symposium, Meno, Phaedrus, Protagoras, Gorgias, Sophist, Theaetetus, Parmenides, Timaeus)

Bhagavad-Gita

Sun-tzu (c. 400?-320? BCE) The Art of War

Aristotle (384-322 BCE) Works (esp. Organon, Physics, Metaphysics, On the Soul, Nicomachean

    Ethics, Politics, Rhetoric, Poetics, On Generation and Corruption, Parts of Animals, Generation

    of Animals, On Interpretation, Prior Analytics, Categories)
Chuang-tzu (c. 369-286 BCE) The Pure Classic of Nan-hua

Epicurus (341-270 BCE) Letter to Herodotus, letter to Menoeceus

Euclid (fl. 300 BCE) Elements (of Geometry)

Archimedes (c. 287-212 BCE) Works (esp. On the Equilibrium of Planes, On Floating Bodies, The

    Sand-Reckoner)

Apollonius of Perga (c. 262 - c. 190 BCE) On Conic Sections

Cicero (106-43 BCE) Works (esp. On the Republic, On the Laws, On the Ends of Good and Bad Things, On Old Age, On Friendship, On

    Duties, Orations)

Lucretius (c. 99 - c. 55 BCE) On the Nature of Things

Vergil (70-19 BCE) Eclogues, Georgics, Aeneid

Horace (65-8 BCE) Works (esp. Odes and Epodes, The Art of Poetry)

Livy (59 BCE - 17 CE) History of Rome

Ovid (43 BCE - 18 CE) Works (esp. Metamorphoses)

Plutarch (46 - c. 120 CE) Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans (esp. Lycurgus, Solon, Caesar,

    Cato the Younger), Moralia

Epictetus (c. 50 - c. 138) Discourses, Encheiridion (Handbook)

Tacitus (c. 55 - c. 117) Histories, Annals, Agricola, Germania

Nicomachus of Gerasa (c. 60 - c. 120) Introduction to Arithmetic

Ptolemy (fl. 100s) Almagest

Marcus Aurelius (121-80) Meditations

Lucian (c. 125 - ?) Works (esp. The Way To Write History, The True History, The Sale of Creeds)

Galen (c. 130 - c. 200) On the Natural Faculties

The New Testament

Plotinus (205-70) The Enneads

Augustine (354-430) Works (esp. On the Teacher, Confessions, On the City of God, On Christian

    Doctrine, On Free Will, Letters 91 and 138)

The Song of Roland

The Nibelungenlied

The Saga of Burnt Njal

The Koran

Tales from the 1001 Nights

Alfarabi (c. 870-950) The Enumeration of the Sciences, The Political Regime, The Attainment of

    Happiness, The Philosophy of Plato, Plato’s Laws
Murasaki Shikibu (c. 978 - c. 1026) The Tale of Genji

Anselm (1033?-1109) Proslogium

Moses Maimonides (1135-1204) Guide of the Perplexed, Treatise on the Art of Logic, Letter on

    Astrology

Thomas Aquinas (1225-74) On Kingship to the King of Cyprus, On the Truth of the Catholic

    Faith, Commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics, Commentary on the Politics of Aristotle,

    Summa Theologica

Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) Works (esp. The New Life, On Monarchy, The Divine Comedy)

Marsilius of Padua (c. 1275-1342) The Defender of the Peace

Petrarch (1304-74) Secretum, Canzoniere

Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-75) Decameron

Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1340-1400) Works (esp. Troilus and Criseyde, Canterbury Tales)

Catherine of Siena (1347-80) The Dialogue

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Thomas à Kempis (c. 1380-1471) The Imitation of Christ

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) Notebooks

Desiderius Erasmus (1466?-1536) The Praise of Folly

Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527) The Prince, Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy

Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres

Ludovico Ariosto (1474-1533) Orlando Furioso

Baldassare Castiglione (1478-1529) The Courtier

Thomas More (1478-1535) Utopia

Martin Luther (1483-1546) Commentary on Psalm 101; Three Treatises; Secular Authority;

    Sincere Admonition; Whether Soldiers, Too, Can Be Saved; Commentary on Galatians;

    Table-Talk

François Rabelais (c. 1490-1553) Gargantua and Pantagruel

John Calvin (1509-64) Institutes of the Christian Religion, Commentary on Romans, Commentary

    on the Harmony of the Gospels

Teresa of Avila (1515-82) Autobiography

Michel de Montaigne (1533-92) Essays

François Viete (1540-1603) “Introduction to the Analytical Art”

John of the Cross (1542-91) Dark Night of the Soul

William Gilbert (1544-1603) On the Loadstone and Magnetic Bodies

Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616) Don Quixote

Edmund Spenser (1552?-99) Prothalamion, The Faerie Queene

Richard Hooker (1553-1600) The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity

Francis Bacon (1561-1626) Advancement of Learning, Wisdom of the Ancients, History of the

    Reign of Henry VII, New Atlantis, Novum Organum, Advertisement touching an Holy War, Of

    the True Greatness of Britain, Essays (esp. 6,10,11,13,14,16,17,19,29,41,51,55,58)

Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) The Starry Messenger, Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences

William Shakespeare (1564-1616) Works (esp. Richard II, Henry IV, Henry V, As You Like It,

    Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, Coriolanus, The Tempest, Sonnets)

Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) Concerning the Harmonies of the World, Epitome of Copernican

    Astronomy

John Donne (1572-1631) Poems (esp. Songs and Sonnets, Elegies, The Anniversary Poems)

Ben Jonson (1572-1637) Plays (esp. Volpone, The Alchemist, Bartholomew Fair, Sejanus), Poems

William Harvey (1578-1657) On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals, On the

    Circulation of the Blood, On the Generation of Animals

Hugo Grotius (1583-1645) The Law of War and Peace

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) Leviathan

René Descartes (1596-1650) Rules for the Direction of the Mind, The World, Discourse on

    Method, Geometry, Meditations on First Philosophy, Objections against the Meditations and

    Replies

John Milton (1608-74) Works (esp. Of Reformation in England, Areopagitica, Of Education, The

    Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, A Second Defense of the People of England, The Ready and

    Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth, A Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes,

    Paradise Lost, Samson Agonistes, the minor poems)

François La Rochefoucauld (1613-80) Maximes

Jean La Fontaine (1621-95) Fables

Jean Molière (1622-73) Comedies (esp. The School for Wives, The Critique of the School for

    Wives, Tartuffe, Don Juan, The Doctor in Spite of Himself, The Misanthrope, The Miser, The

    Would-be Gentleman, The Imaginary Invalid)

Blaise Pascal (1623-62) Scientific treatises (esp. Generation of Conic Sections), The Provincial

    Letters, Pensees

Christian Huygens (1629-95) On the Movement of Bodies by Impact, Treatise on Light

John Locke (1632-1704) Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Letter Concerning Toleration,

    Second Treatise of Government, Thoughts Concerning Education, Some Considerations of the

    Consequences of the Lowering of Interest and Raising the Value of Money

Benedict Spinoza (1632-77) Ethics, Theologico-Political Treatise, Political Treatise, Letter 50

Jean Baptiste Racine (1639-99) Tragedies (esp. Andromache, Berenice, Phaedra)

Isaac Newton (1642-1727) Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, Optics
Matsuo Basho (1644-94) The Narrow Road to the Deep North

Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibnitz (1646-1716) Discourse on Metaphysics, New Essays Concerning

    Human Understanding, Monadology, What is Nature?, Essay on Dynamics

Daniel Defoe (1660?-1731) Robinson Crusoe

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) A Tale of a Tub, Journal to Stella, Gulliver's Travels, A Modest

    Proposal

William Congreve (1670-1729) The Way of the World

Shaftesbury (1671-1713) Characteristics

George Berkeley (1685-1753) Principles of Human Knowledge, Three Dialogues between Hylas

    and Philonous

Alexander Pope (1688-1744) Essay on Criticism, Rape of the Lock, Essay on Man

Montesquieu (1689-1755) Persian Letters, Considerations on the Greatness and Decline of the

    Romans, On the Spirit of the Laws

François Voltaire (1694-1778) Letters on the English, Candide, Philosophical Dictionary

Benjamin Franklin (1706-90) Autobiography

Henry Fielding (1707-54) Joseph Andrews, Tom Jones

Samuel Johnson (1709-84) The Vanity of Human Wishes, Dictionary, Rasselas, The Lives of the

    Poets (esp. the essays on Milton and Pope)

David Hume (1711-76) A Treatise of Human Nature; Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding;

    An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals; Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-78) Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts, Discourse on the Origin

    and Foundations of Inequality among Men, Discourse on Political Economy, Letter to M.

    d’Alembert on the Theater, Emile, On the Social Contract, The Government of Poland

Denis Diderot (1713-84) Rameau’s Nephew

Laurence Sterne (1713-68) Tristram Shandy, A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy
Tsao Chan (1715?-63) Dream of the Red Chamber

William Blackstone (1723-80) Commentaries on the Laws of England

Adam Smith (1723-90) Theory of Moral Sentiments, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the

    Wealth of Nations

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) Critique of Pure Reason, “Idea for a Universal History with

    Cosmopolitan Intent,” What Is Enlightenment?, Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of

    Morals, “Conjectural Beginning of Human History,” Critique of Practical Reason, Critique of

    Judgment, The Science of Right, Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, “On the Common

    Saying: That Might Be True in Theory But It Does Not Apply in Practice,” Perpetual Peace,

    Metaphysics of Morals, “Battle between the Faculties”

Edmund Burke (1729-97) Tracts on the Popery Laws in Ireland, Thoughts on the Cause of the

    Present Discontents, Speech to the Electors of Bristol (3 November 1774), Speech on

    Conciliation with America, Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol, Speech on Economical Reform,

    Speech on the Reform of the Representation of the Commons in Parliament (7 May 1782),

    Reflections on the Revolution in France, An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs, Letter to

    Sir Hercules Langrishe (1792), Letter to a Noble Lord, Four Letters on a Regicide Peace

Edward Gibbon (1734-94) The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Autobiography

Thomas Paine (1737-1809) Common Sense, Rights of Man, Dissertation on First Principles of

    Government, Agrarian Justice

James Boswell (1740-95) Journal (esp. London Journal); The Life of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D.

Antoine Laurent Lavoisier (1743-94) Elements of Chemistry

Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) A Fragment on Government, An Introduction to the Principles of

    Morals and Legislation, Theory of Fictions, Deontology together with A Table of the Springs of

    Action and the Article on Utilitarianism

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) The Sorrows of Young Werther, Faust, Poetry and

    Truth

Alexander Hamilton (1755-1804), James Madison (1751-1836), and John Jay (1745-1829) The

    Federalist Papers (together with the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation,

    and the Constitution of the United States)

Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-97) A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Maria

Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier (1768-1830) Analytical Theory of Heat

Georg W. F. Hegel (1770-1831) “On the German Constitution,” Phenomenology of Spirit, Logic

    (from the Encyclopedia), Philosophy of Right, “On the English Reform Bill,” Lectures on the

    Philosophy of History

William Wordsworth (1770-1850) Poems (esp. Lyrical Ballads, Lucy poems, sonnets, The Prelude)

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) Poems (esp. Kubla Khan, Rime of the Ancient Mariner),

    Biographia Literaria

James Mill (1773-1836) Essay on Government

Jane Austen (1775-1817) Pride and Prejudice, Emma

Karl von Clausewitz (1780-1831) On War

Stendhal (1783-1842) On Love, The Red and the Black, The Charterhouse of Parma

Byron (1788-1824) Don Juan

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) Studies in Pessimism

Michael Faraday (1791-1867) Chemical History of a Candle, Experimental Researches in Electricity

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) Collected Poems

Nikolay Ivanovich Lobachevsky (1793-1856) Theory of Parallels

John Keats (1795-1821) Collected Poems

Charles Lyell (1797-1875) Principles of Geology

Mary Shelley (1797-1851) Frankenstein

Auguste Comte (1798-1857) The Positive Philosophy

Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850) Eugenie Grandet, Pere Goriot, Cousin Bette

Aleksandr Pushkin (1799-1837) Tales of Belkin

Victor Hugo (1802-85) The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Les Misérables, Selected Poems

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-82) Journal, Essays, Representative Men

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-64) The Scarlet Letter

Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-59) Democracy in America, The Old Regime and The French

    Revolution, The European Revolution and Correspondence with Gobineau, The Recollections

    of Alexis de Tocqueville

John Stuart Mill (1806-73) A System of Logic, Principles of Political Economy, On Liberty,

    Considerations on Representative Government, Utilitarianism, The Subjection of Women,

    Autobiography

Charles Darwin (1809-82) The Origin of Species, The Descent of Man, Autobiography

Nikolai Gogol (1809-52) Dead Souls

Abraham Lincoln (1809-65) Selected Speeches

Charles Dickens (1812-70) Works (esp. Pickwick Papers, David Copperfield, Hard Times, Little

    Dorrit)

Claude Bernard (1813-78) Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine

Søren Kierkegaard (1813-55) Fear and Trembling, Philosophical Fragments

Charlotte Brontë (1816-55) Jane Eyre

Frederick Douglass (c. 1817-95) Autobiography, Collected Speeches

Henry David Thoreau (1817-62) Civil Disobedience, Walden

Emily Brontë (1818-48) Wuthering Heights, lyric poems

Karl Marx (1818-83) Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, “Theses on Feuerbach,”

    The German Ideology, Capital, Manifesto of the Communist Party

Ivan Turgenev (1818-83) Fathers and Children

George Eliot (1819-80) Adam Bede, Middlemarch

Herman Melville (1819-91) Moby Dick, “Benito Cereno,” Billy Budd

Walt Whitman (1819-92) Leaves of Grass

Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-81) Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Brothers Karamazov

Gustave Flaubert (1821-80) Madame Bovary, Three Stories

Gregor Johann Mendel (1822-84) Experiments in Plant Hybridization

Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) Plays (esp. A Doll’s House, The Wild Duck, Hedda Gabler, The Master

    Builder)

Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) War and Peace, Anna Karenina, What Is Art?, Twenty-three Tales

Julius Dedekind (1831-1916) Essay on the Theory of Numbers

Mark Twain (1835-1910) The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Mysterious Stranger

Henry Adams (1838-1918) The Education of Henry Adams

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) The Return of the Native, The Mayor of Casterbridge, Tess of the

    d’Urbervilles, Jude the Obscure

William James (1842-1910) The Principles of Psychology, Briefer Course, The Varieties of Religious

    Experience, Pragmatism, Essays in Radical Empiricism

Henry James (1843-1916) The American, The Ambassadors, The Beast in the Jungle

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) The Birth of Tragedy, The Advantage and Disadvantage of

    History for Life, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Beyond Good and Evil, The Genealogy of Morals

James Frazer (1854-1941) The Golden Bough

Jules Henri Poincaré (1854-1912) Science and Hypothesis, Science and Method

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) The Interpretation of Dreams, Introductory Lectures on

    Psychoanalysis, Civilization and Its Discontents, New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) Plays (and Prefaces) (esp. Caesar and Cleopatra, Man and

    Superman, Major Barbara, Pygmalion, Saint Joan)

Booker T. Washington (1856-1915) Selected Writings

Joseph Conrad (1857-1924) Heart of Darkness, Nostromo, The Secret Agent

Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929) The Theory of the Leisure Class

Max Planck (1858-1947) Origin and Development of the Quantum Theory, Where Is Science

    Going?, Scientific Autobiography

Henri Bergson (1859-1941) Time and Free Will, Matter and Memory, Creative Evolution, The Two

    Sources of Morality and Religion

John Dewey (1859-1952) How We Think, Democracy and Education, Reconstruction in

    Philosophy, Human Nature and Conduct, Experience and Nature, The Public and Its Problems, The Quest for Certainty

    Liberalism and Social Action, Experience and Education, Logic

Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) “Philosophy as Rigorous Science,” “Philosophy and the Crisis of

    European Man,” The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology

Anton Chekhov (1860-1904) The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, The Three Sisters, The Cherry Orchard

Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947) An Introduction to Mathematics, Science and the Modern

    World, The Aims of Education and Other Essays, Adventures of Ideas

George Santayana (1863-1952) The Life of Reason, Skepticism and Animal Faith, Persons and

    Places

Max Weber (1864-1920) Essays in Sociology

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) Collected Poems

Luigi Pirandello (1867-1936) Right You Are If You Think You Are, Six Characters in Search of an

    Author

W. E. B. Du Bois (1868-1963) The Souls of Black Folk

Robert Andrews Millikan (1868-1953) The Electron

Nikolai Lenin (1870-1924) The State and Revolution

Marcel Proust (1871-1922) Remembrance of Things Past

Paul Valery (1871-1945) Poems

Johan Huizinga (1872-1945) The Waning of the Middle Ages

Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) The Problems of Philosophy, The Analysis of Mind, An Inquiry into

    Meaning and Truth, Human Knowledge

Willa Cather (1873-1947) My Antonia, A Lost Lady, Death Comes for the Archbishop

Robert Frost (1874-1963) Collected Poems

Thomas Mann (1875-1955) Buddenbrooks, Death in Venice, The Magic Mountain, Joseph and His

    Brothers

Godfrey H. Hardy (1877-1947) A Mathematician’s Apology

Albert Einstein (1879-1955) Relativity, The Meaning of Relativity, The Method of Theoretical

    Physics, The Evolution of Physics (with L. Infeld)

Wallace Stevens (1879-1955) Collected Poems

Richard Tawney (1880-1962) The Acquisitive Society

Arthur Stanley Eddington (1882-1944) The Expanding Universe

James Joyce (1882-1941) “The Dead” in Dubliners, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses

Jacques Maritain (1882-1973) The Degrees of Knowledge, Art and Scholasticism, True Humanism,

    The Rights of Man and Natural Law

Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) To the Lighthouse

Franz Kafka (1883-1924) “The Metamorphosis,” “The Penal Colony,” The Trial, The Castle

John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money

Niels Bohr (1885-1962) Atomic Theory and the Description of Nature, Discussion with Einstein

    on Epistemological Problems in Atomic Physics

D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930) The Prussian Officer

Ezra Pound (1885-1972) Collected Poems

Karl Barth (1886-1968) The Word of God and the Word of Man
Junichiro Tanizaki (1886-1965) The Makioka Sisters

Erwin Schrödinger (1887-1961) What is Life?

Georges Bernanos (1888-1948) The Diary of a Country Priest

T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) Collected Poems

Eugene O’Neill (1888-1953) Mourning Becomes Electra
Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966) Poem without a Hero

Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) Being and Time, Nietzsche, The Question Concerning Technology

    and Other Essays, An Introduction to Metaphysics, A Letter on Humanism, What Is

    Philosophy?

Arnold Toynbee (1889-1975) A Study of History, Civilization on Trial

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) Philosophical Investigations
Ryunosuke Akutagawa (1892-1927) Rashomon

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) The Great Gatsby

William Faulkner (1897-1962) The Sound and the Fury; “A Rose for Emily”; Go Down, Moses

Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) Mother Courage and Her Children

Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) The Short Happy Life of Macomber
Yasunari Kawabata (1899-1972) The Izu Dancer

Theodosius Dobzhansky (1900-75) Genetics and the Origin of Species

Werner Karl Heisenberg (1901-76) The Physical Principles of the Quantum Theory, Physics and

    Philosophy

George Orwell (1903-50) Animal Farm

Jean Paul Sartre (1905-80) Nausea, Being and Nothingness, No Exit

Conrad Waddington (1905-75) The Nature of Life

Samuel Beckett (1906-89) Waiting for Godot

W. H. Auden (1907-73) Collected Poems

Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908-) Structural Anthropology

Albert Camus (1913-60) The Myth of Sisyphus, The Stranger, Caligula

Ralph Ellison (1914-94) Invisible Man

Walker Percy (1916-90) The Moviegoer, Love in the Ruins

Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008) The First Circle, Cancer Ward

Flannery O’Connor (1925-64) Selected Stories

Chinua Achebe (1930-) Things Fall Apart