About Secondary Composition and Literature

Welcome!  The purpose of this blog is to communicate with high school English class at our homeschool co-op in Birmingham, Alabama.  Assignments will be posted here.  

Course Description:  This is a high-school level survey of literary and historical selections from the Fall of Rome to the immediate Post-Reformation.    The class will feature weekly reading and writing assignments.    Lesson plans and assignments for the following week will be posted at the class blog on Fridays by 6 pm:  Http://wehavecausetobeuneasy.blogspot.com  (the title is a reference from C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity, in case you were wondering!)

Prerequisites:  Students should have a basic understanding of parts of speech, the ability to construct cohesive sentences, and the willingness to tackle challenging material, and the willingness to put forth the effort to master it with the help of their instructor and parent teachers. 

Student Expectations:  Students should check the blog, know their assignments, be prepared to spend about four hours per week on course assignments.   They should come to class having read the material assigned and having writing assignments completed. 

Texts:   Students will need Macbeth (Shakespeare Made Easy) and selections provided below.  I will post links to them on the class blog.  

Selections:

Augustine, from The Confessions of St. Augustine

Augustine, from The City of God

Benedict of Nursia, from The Rule of St. Benedict

Tacitus, from The Early Germans

Magna Carta

Geoffrey Chaucer, from The Canterbury Tales

Thomas Aquinas, from Whether God Exists

Thomas Aquinas, from Of Cheating and Of the Sin of Usury

Niccolo Machiavelli, from The Prince

Dante Alighieri, from The Divine Comedy

Erasmus, from In Praise of Folly

Martin Luther, from Address to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation

John  Calvin, from The Institutes of the Christian Religion

Convocation of the Clergy, from The Thirty-Nine Articles

Council of Trent, from The Decrees of the Council of Trent

Jacques Benigne Bousset, from Political Economy Drawn from Holy Scripture

Thomas Hobbes, from The Leviathan

John Locke, from The Second Treatise on Government

John Locke, from An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

Voltaire, from Candide