Great Books of the Western Canon Video Series

May 11, 2020 | Watch

The Ramsay Centre is pleased to release a series of videos featuring academics discussing some of the great texts of Western Civilisation.

Texts include:
Sophocles, Oedipus Rex
Plato, The Apology
Augustine, Confessions
Machiavelli, The Prince
Shakespeare, Macbeth
Selections from Aristotle’s Ethics and Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae
Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals
Shakespeare, The Tempest
Shakespeare, Hamlet
Prufrock and Other Observations
Aeschylus’ The Oresteia: Agamemnon
Aeschylus’ The Oresteia: The Libation Bearers
Aeschylus’ The Oresteia:  The Eumenides

Recommended reading

1. Oedipus Rex – The Theban Plays (trans E F Watling) Penguin
2. Plato – The Last Days of Socrates – Penguin Classics
3. Augustine – Confessions (Oxford) Trans. Henry Chadwick
4. Machiavelli – The Prince (trans. Tim Parks)
5. Shakespeare – Macbeth. Oxford
6. Online texts – Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Bk 1 and Aquinas, On Happiness’, Summa Theologiae I-II, Qs 1-5
7. Nietzsche – Genealogy of Morals Penguin
8. Shakespeare – The Tempest  Penguin
9. Shakespeare – Hamlet Penguin
10. T.S. Eliot – The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
11. Aeschylus – The Oresteia: Agamemnon Penguin
12. Aeschylus – The Oresteia: The Libation Bearer The Eumenides Penguin
13. Aeschylus – The Oresteia:  The Eumenides Penguin

More videos will be added to the collection over the coming months.