Great Books Program
| Dates: | Students arrive between 3:00pm and 5:00pm on Monday, July 9 and depart after 9:00am on Saturday, July 21 |
| Program Cost: | $895 for room, tuition, books and meals |
Why pursue truth? Why discipline the mind?
Why, if not because the quest for the true, the good, and the beautiful is the last great crusade open to honest seekers? Why, if not because the study of our past gives us a fresh look on the present? Why, if not because the reward is beyond compare? Why, if not because Truth is the greatest liberating gift that the Catholic Church keeps aflame for all mankind?
At the 2012 Great Books Program, you will join other students at the oldest summer program in the country, discovering the inspiring well-springs of truth and the ever fresh source of Western civilization.
During this program, you will surround yourself with a community of learners all dedicated to renewing that spirit of learning and living developed in the schools of Greece and Rome, and in the universities of the Middle Ages. Here you will build friendship meant to last as you study, play sports, hike, and pray together. Moreover, you will experience the healthy balance of prayer, work, and play—essential to the undergraduate life of Thomas More College.
Program
Our guides for life are those who have gone before us. Their difficulties, their failures, and their successes are the foundation of our own ideas and actions.
The Thomas More College Great Books Program will take you back in time five hundred years to an age of magnificence—magnificent problems, magnificent heroes, magnificent art—to explore the lives of great men and women who lived, challenged, defended, and helped spread the Catholic Faith to the world.
From statesman, to missionary, to bard, you will ponder the lives of people such as Thomas More and Shakespeare, Ignatius and the North American martyrs, Bernini and Calderon. You will read Thomas More’s Utopia, discuss its political implications, and consider and explore More’s own life and martyrdom.
You will have the opportunity to learn about the first Jesuit missionaries to North America, read their writings, and track their journeys through New England – you will even see the same mountainous peaks they beheld! You will read, perform, and compare scenes from Shakespeare’s plays, and to conclude the course you will stage a full-length performance of Life is a Dream, a masterful play written by Spanish playwright, Calderon de la Barca.
What lessons does the past offer us today? Using original texts and first-hand experience, The Thomas More College Great Books Program marks a full immersion into Catholic History.
Book List and Schedule
Texts (included in tuition price):
- Thomas More’s Utopia
- A Man for All Seasons
- The Jesuit Missionaries to North America: Spiritual Writings and Biographical Sketches, edited by Fr. Francois Roustang, S.J.
- Calderon de la Barca’s Life Is a Dream
- Selected Scenes from Shakespeare
The all-day trips to Boston and Maine fall on the weekend.
The weekday schedule is as follows:
7:45 AM Rise
8:30 AM Breakfast
9:00 AM Reflection in the chapel, time for prayer and reading
10:00 AM The Statesman: seminar on Thomas More’s Utopia
11:00 AM The Missionary: lecture and seminar on the North American missionaries using The Jesuit Missionaries to North America: Spiritual Writings and Biographical Sketches, edited by Fr. Francois Roustang, S.J.
Noon Holy Mass
1:00 PM Lunch and break
2-3:30 PM Activities, swimming, etc.
3:30 PM The Bard: Theater workshop, reading and comparing Shakespeare texts to Calderon’s Life Is a Dream. Technique and preparation for full-length production of Calderon’s Life Is a Dream.
This time will also include viewing and discussing A Man for All Seasons or hiking in the footsteps of the Jesuit missionaries.
8:00 PM Dinner European-style and recreation
9:00 PM Study Hall
10:00 PM Curfew
11:00 PM Quiet Hours