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johnstonia
This is the home page of Ian Johnston, a retired instructor (now a Research Associate) at Vancouver Island University (formerly Malaspina 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 January 2012). For comments, questions,
corrections, and so on, please contact Ian
Johnston. For information about copyright on the material listed anywhere
on this site, check the following link: Copyright.
[Vancouver
Island University]—[Capitan
Mail]
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)
SITE INDEX
Book
Reviews
Curricular Material for Classics 101
E-Text Catalogue
General Study Materials (Handbooks)
Introductory Lecture
Series
Miscellaneous Essays (by Ian Johnston)
Studies in
Shakespeare
Some of these texts 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 (Agamemnon, Libation Bearers, Eumenides)
ARISTOPHANES
Birds
Clouds
Frogs
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 (English and French)
English Reviews of the First Edition of Cuvier’s Essay: British Review and
London Critical Journal (1813); Edinburgh Review,
1813-1814
CHARLES DARWIN
On the Origin
of Species (1859 text, abridged)
Preface to Later
Editions of the Origin of Species
Review of Origin of Species by Richard Owen (1869)
Review of Origin of Species by Fleeming
Jenkin (1867)
RENE DESCARTES
Discourse on
Method
DENIS DIDEROT
A Conversation Between D’Alembert and Diderot
D’Alembert’s Dream
Rameau’s Nephew
EURIPIDES
Bacchae
Electra
Medea
Orestes
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
Beyond Good and Evil
On the Use and
Abuse of History for Life
The Birth of
Tragedy
The
Genealogy of Morals
OVID
Metamorphoses
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU
Discourse on
the Sciences and the Arts [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
MATERIALS FOR CLASSICS 101
Background
Material on Classical Greece
On Classical Greek Culture
A
Note on the Trojan War
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
I’ll Give You a Definite
Maybe: A Handbook on Probability, Statistics, and
Excel
Writing Reviews of
Fine and Performing Arts Events
A
Practical Introduction to College Teaching
INTRODUCTORY LECTURE SERIES
[This section lists the texts of various introductory and public lectures and supplementary notes prepared for college courses, particularly for Liberal Studies at Vancouver Island University (once Malaspina College). 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. These materials are in the public domain and may be used, in whole or in part, by anyone without permission and without charge, provided the source is acknowledged. For comments or questions, please contact Ian Johnston.]
On
Aeschylus, Oresteia
On Alfons Mucha and Art Nouveau
On the American
Adam: Why God Rides a Harley in the Land of the Free
On Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem
On Aristophanes, Clouds
On Aristotle, The Nicomachean
Ethics
On the Life of
Aristotle
On de Beauvoir,
The Second Sex: Some Historical
Aspects of Feminism
On Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress
On Chaucer,
The General Prologue to the Canterbury
Tales
On
Cubist Architecture in Prague
On Czech
History
On Dante, The Inferno
On Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
On Defoe, Robinson Crusoe
On
Descartes, Discourse on Method
On
Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground
On Dryden, “Mac Flecknoe”: Introduction to Satire
On T. S. Eliot: “Prufrock” and The
Waste Land
On
Euripides, The Bacchae
On the Book of
Exodus
On Frayn, Copenhagen
On Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents
On the
Gospel of Matthew and the Epistle to the Romans
On Hasek, The Good
Soldier Svejk
On Hildegard
of Bingen: Mystical Writing
On Hobbes, Leviathan
On Homer, The Iliad (series of essays)
On Homer, The Odyssey
On Ibsen, A Doll’s House
On William James, Varieties of Religious Experience
On Kafka’s Metamorphosis (A lecture by Karl
Marx)
On Kant, “Perpetual
Peace”
On Lucretius, On the Nature of Things
On
Machiavelli, The Prince
On Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude
On Marx, The Communist Manifesto and Other
Writings
On Mill, On Liberty
On Milton, Paradise Lost
On Montaigne, Essays
On Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
On Ovid, Metamorphoses
On Plato, Poesis in Plato’s Republic
On Plato, The Meno
On English
Poetry in the Romantic Era
On Rorty, Contingency,
irony and solidarity
On Rousseau, Emile
On Rousseau, The Discourse on Inequality
On
Shakespeare (Lectures in Studies of Shakespeare)
On Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
On Sophocles, Oedipus the King
On Spiegelman, Maus I and II
On Stendhal, Red and Black
On Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
On Swift, Gulliver’s Travels
On Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War
On the Trojan War
(A Summary Account)
On Twain, Huckleberry Finn
On
Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the
Rights of Woman
On Woolf, To the Lighthouse
STUDIES IN SHAKESPEARE
Critical
Approaches to Shakespeare: Some Initial Observations
Henry
IV, Part 1: A Short Introductory Note
Historical
Background to Shakespeare’s History Cycles
Lectures
on Shakespeare
On
Scholarship and Literary Interpretation: An Introductory Note
Ancient and
Modern Science: Some Observations
Deconstructing
Shakespeare
E-Coli (A Satirical Ezine)
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
A Proposal to
Reduce the Cost of Undergraduate Education
Research
Revisited: The Rage of Caliban
To the Immortal
Memory of Robert Burns
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?
BOOK REVIEWS
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).
Francis Crick, Of Molecules and Men (Prometheus Books, 2004) and Paul Kurtz, Affirmations: Joyful and Creative Exuberance (Prometheus Books, 2004), reviewed together.
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).
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