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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 September 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
E-TEXT CATALOGUE
FOR THIS SITE
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
Oresteia (Agamemnon, Libation Bearers, Eumenides)
Persians
Prometheus
Bound
Seven Against Thebes
Suppliant
Women
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
Meditations
on First Philosophy (1641)
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
On Perpetual
Peace: A Philosophical Tract
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
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
[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
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
MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS
[by Ian Johnston]
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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