johnstonia
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This is the home page of Ian Johnston, a retired instructor (now a Research Associate) at Vancouver Island University (the new name for Malaspina University-College), Nanaimo, British Columbia, Canada. It is designed to provide curricular material for various courses in literature and Liberal Studies.
This site is under continual construction (last revised August 9, 2008). For comments, questions, corrections, and so on, please contact Ian Johnston. For information about copyright on the material listed on this page, check Copyright.
This site is dedicated to the memory of my son Geoffrey, 1974-1997
Generations of men are like the
leaves.
In winter, winds blow them down to
earth,
but then, when spring season comes
again,
the budding wood grows more.
And so with men—
one generation grows, another dies
away. (Iliad 6)
Book Reviews
E-Text Catalogue (for this site)
Curricular Material for Classics 101
General Study Materials (Handbooks, Exercises)
Introductory
Lecture Series
Miscellaneous Essays (by Ian Johnston)
Poetry
Anthology
Studies in Shakespeare: Curricular Materials
E-TEXT
CATALOGUE
Texts Available on This Site
(All translations, unless otherwise stated, are by Ian Johnston)
Note that some of these text are available in Publisher format for those who wish to make booklets, so that they or their students can read the works as books rather than as printed web pages. There is no charge for these Publisher files. For details, please use the following link: Publisher files.
AESCHYLUS
The Oresteia
ARISTOPHANES
Frogs
Birds
Clouds
Lysistrata
(html) Lysistrata
(pdf)
Peace
ARISTOTLE
Nicomachean
Ethics [Abridged]
JOHN BUNYAN
The Pilgrim's Progress
GEORGES CUVIER
Discourse on the
Revolutionary Upheavals on the Surface of the Earth (Third Edition) English and French texts available
English Reviews of the First Edition of Cuvier's Essay:
British Review and
London Critical Journal, 1813
Edinburgh
Review, 1813-1814
CHARLES DARWIN
Review of Origin of Species by Richard Owen (1860)
Review of Origin of Species by Fleeming Jenkin (1867)
On the Origin of Species (1859 text considerably abridged)
Preface to Later
Editions of Origin of Species
RENÉ DESCARTES
Discourse on
Method
DENIS DIDEROT
D'Alembert's Dream
Rameau's Nephew
EURIPIDES
Bacchae
Electra
Medea
Orestes
HOMER
The Iliad
The Odyssey
FRANZ KAFKA
The Metamorphosis
Selected Short Writings
IMMANUEL KANT
Universal History of Nature and Theory of Heaven
JEAN-BAPTISTE LAMARCK
Zoological Philosophy, Volume I
KARL MARX
The Communist
Manifesto
JOHN STUART MILL
On Liberty
(Drastically Abridged)
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
On the Use and Abuse of History for Life
The Birth of Tragedy (html) The Birth of
Tragedy (pdf)
The Genealogy of Morals
Beyond Good and Evil
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU
Discourse on the Arts and Sciences [First
Discourse]
Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of
Inequality Among Men [Second
Discourse]
SOPHOCLES
Ajax
Antigone
Oedipus
the King
Philoctetes
THUCYDIDES
History of the Peloponnesian War (abridged text)
CURRICULAR MATERIAL FOR CLASSICS 101
Background
Material on Classical Greece
On Classical
Greek Culture
A Note on the Trojan
War
And Still We Evolve. . . .
(A Handbook on the Early
History of Modern Science)
Essays and Arguments
(A Handbook on Writing
Argumentative Essays)
Guide to the Marking of Written Assignments (Second Revised Edition, 2000)
Writing Reviews of Fine and Performing Arts Events (Part of Essays and Arguments)
A Practical Introduction to College Teaching
[This section lists the texts of various introductory and public lectures and some supplementary notes prepared for college courses, particularly in Liberal Studies. These are not scholarly studies of the works listed but rather initial introductions, designed for readers who are encountering these texts for the first time. All texts are in the public domain. They may be used, in whole or in part, by anyone for any purpose, without permission and without charge, provided the source is acknowledged]
On Aeschlyus's Oresteia
On
Alfons Mucha and Art Nouveau
On the American
Adam: Why God Rides a Harley
On Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem
On Aristophanes's
The Clouds
On Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics
On Aristotle's Life (with relation to the Nichomachean
Ethics)
On de Beauvoir's The Second Sex: Some Historical Aspects of Feminism
On Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress
On Chaucer's General Prologue
On Classical
Greece (introductory note)
On
Classical Greek Culture
On
Cubist Architecture in Prague
On
Czech History
On Dante's Inferno
On Darwin's The Origin of Species
On Dawkins's The Selfish Gene
On Defoe's Robinson Crusoe
On Descartes' Discourse on Method
On Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground
On Dryden's "Mac
Flecknoe": Introduction to Satire
On Eliot's
"Prufrock" and The Waste Land
On Euripides' Bacchae
On Exodus
On Frayn's Copenhagen
On Freud's Civilization and Its Discontents
On the Gospel
of Matthew and the Epistle to the Romans
On Hašek’s The Good Soldier Švejk
On Hildegard of
Bingen's Mystical Writing
On Hobbes's Leviathan
On Homer's Iliad (series of essays)
On Homer's Odyssey
On Ibsen's A Doll's House
On James's Varieties of Religious Experience
On Kafka's Metamorphosis
(a lecture by Karl Marx)
On Kant's
"Perpetual Peace"
On
Machiavelli's The Prince
On Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude
On Marx's Communist Manifesto (and other
writings)
On Mill's On Liberty
On Milton's Paradise Lost
On Montaigne's Essays
On Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil
On Ovid's Metamorphoses
On Poesis in Plato's Republic
On Plato's Meno
On Romantic
Poetry (English Poetry in the Romantic Era)
On Rorty's Contigency, irony and solidarity
On Rousseau's Emile
On Rousseau's Second Discourse
On
Shakespeare's Plays (Lectures in English 366)
On Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
On Sophocles's Oedipus the King
On Spiegelman's Maus
On Stendhal's Red and Black
On Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are
Dead
On Swift's Gulliver's Travels
On Thucydides's History of the Peloponnesian
War
On the Trojan War
(summary account of the narratives)
On Twain's Huckleberry Finn
On Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights
of Woman
On Woolf's To the Lighthouse
Critical
Approaches to Shakespeare: Some Initial Observations
Henry
IV, Part 1: A Short Introductory Note
Historical
Background to Shakespeare's History Cycles
Lectures
in English 366
Note on
Shakespeare's Sonnets
On
Scholarship and Literary Interpretation: An Introductory Note
by Ian Johnston
Ancient and
Modern Science: Some Observations
Deconstructing
Shakespeare
E-Coli (a satirical
E-zine)
The Illogic
of a Creationist Argument
Creationism
in the Science Curriculum?
God's Handicap: Golf
as Spiritual Ordeal
In Praise of
Conversation
My Body the
Billboard
Malaspina
At the Crossroads: Reflections for the Record
Myth
Conceptions of Academic Work Once More
No Snakes on
These Islands
Research
Revisited: The Rage of Caliban
The Short
Proof of Evolution
Some
Non-Scientific Observations on the Importance of Darwin
Towards
an Initial Understanding of Science
On
Western Civilization: Or Why is Everyone Trying to Learn English?
Our
Universities: How We Got Where We Are
Why Should I Obey
the State?
Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything (Doubleday Canada, 2003)
Thomas Cahill, Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter (Nan A. Talese [Doubleday] 2003)
Robert Kaplan, Warrior Politics: Why Leadership Demands a Pagan Ethos (Vintage Books, 2003)
Stephen Lewis, Race Against Time (Anansi Press, 2005)
Richard Rorty, Contingency, irony and solidarity (Cambridge University Press, 1989)
David Selbourne, The Losing Battle With Islam (Prometheus Books: Amhurst, NY, 2005)
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