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 July, 2010). 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

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        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)

SITE INDEX

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
Knights
Lysistrata
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. The English text includes Cuvier’s appendix on the Ibis.

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

JAMES HUTTON
Theory of the Earth; or an Investigation of the Laws Observable in the Composition, Dissolution, and Restoration of Land upon the Globe (1785)

FRANZ KAFKA
The Metamorphosis
Selected Short Writings

IMMANUEL KANT
Universal History of Nature and Theory of Heaven

JEAN-BAPTISTE LAMARCK
Zoological Philosophy, Volume I

LUCRETIUS
On the Nature of Things

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
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)

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CURRICULAR MATERIAL FOR CLASSICS 101

Background Material on Classical Greece
On Classical Greek Culture
A Note on the Trojan War

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GENERAL STUDY MATERIALS

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)

I'll Give You a Definite Maybe: An Introductory Handbook on Probability, Statistics, and Excel (Revised Edition, May 2000)

Writing Reviews of Fine and Performing Arts Events (Part of Essays and Arguments)

Participating in Seminars

Grammar Review Exercises

A Practical Introduction to College Teaching

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INTRODUCTORY LECTURE SERIES

[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 Lucretius, The Nature of Things
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