Literature
More coming soon!
Never underestimate the importance of
fiction. History is the study of what was and what may be again.
Literature is the study of what could have been and what can
be.
I've organized the books by the historical
period of their setting (not when they were written) and with
recommendations for the age level according to the trivium:
Grammar Stage - through about 6th grade
Logic Stage - about 7th through 9th grade
Rhetoric Stage - about 10th through 12th grade
The historical periods are as follows:
Ancient (3000 B.C. - 476
A.D.)
Medieval (477 A.D. - 1350 A.D.)
Renaissance/Age of Discovery (1351
A.D. - 1638 A.D.)
Enlightenment/Age of Revolution
(1639 A.D. - 1789 A.D.)
Romantic Era (1790 A.D. - 1910 A.D.)
Modern Times (1911 A.D. to 2009 A.D.)
No Historical Era (books without historical
context)
Ancient (3000 B.C. -
476 A.D.)
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Arma virumque cano: "I
sing of warfare and a man at war." Long the bane of second-year Latin
students thrust into a rhetoric of sweeping, seemingly endless
sentences full
of difficult verb forms and obscure words, Virgil's Aeneid finds a
helpful
translator in Robert Fitzgerald, who turns the lines into beautiful,
accessible
American English. Full of betrayal, heartache, seduction, elation, and
violence, the Aeneid is the great founding epic of the Roman empire.
Its pages
sing of the Roman vision of self, the Roman ideal of what it meant to
be a
citizen of the world's greatest power. The epic's force carries across
the
centuries, and remains essential reading. This book, along with
The Iliad
and The Odyssey, is necessary to a classical education.
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Rhetoric Stage
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Aesop,
a Greek slave who lived in the 6th Century B.C., told short stories
using the
lives of animals. Each story has a simple but important moral.
These are wonderful to use for narrating for young children. |
Grammar Stage
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The queen of the Nile meets
her match in Marc Antony, and the lovers destroy each other--yet
triumph in
ruin--in this great romantic tragedy
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Rhetoric Stage
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The
earliest existing poem in English, Beowulf was composed 400 years
before the
Norman Conquest. As a social document, this great epic poem reflects a
feudal,
newly Christian world of heroes and monsters, blood and victory and
death. As a
work of art, it rings with a beauty, power, and artistry that have kept
it
alive for more than twelve centuries. This version has a very
fine translation and, on facing pages, the original Old English.
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Rhetoric
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This is a version of
Beowulf that has been rewritten for younger children.
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Late Grammar through
Logic Stages
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This is a
beautifully illustrated children's version of the Iliad by a
tremendously talented author. While it would be a mistake to
focus only on "remakes" of great works of literature for children,
there's much to be said for becoming familiar with the stories that
create a common culture in society.
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Grammar Stage
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This story is set in
Israel during the time of Our Lord. The main character is an
orphan who joins a band of zealots. It is exciting and well
written.
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Logic Stage
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This is another
wonderful version of both The Iliad and the Odyssey, perhaps for a
slightly older audience than the Sutcliff version, but they are really
both top-notch.
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Late Grammar or
Logic Stage
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Late Grammar
or Logic Stage
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Medieval (477 A.D. - 1350 A.D.)
Renaissance/Age of Discovery
(1351 A.D. - 1638 A.D.)
Enlightenment/Age of
Revolutions (1639 A.D. - 1789 A.D.)
Romantic Era (1790 A.D. - 1910 A.D.)
Modern Times (1911 A.D. to 2009 A.D.)
No Historical Era (books without
historical context)
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