Description: A literary study of what Alan Tate has called the "double retreat from the moral center" in modern thought and culture: the dis-integration of the modern mind seen in the flight of modern writers and thinkers into two intellectual camps—atheistic existentialism and naturalism. The first semester focuses on nihilism in the fictional writing of the great existentialist thinkers and the literary response of great modern Christian writers. The first semester begins with Kafka's Metamorphosis, and ends with Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday. The second semester focuses on the nonfiction books and articles of modern materialist thinkers and the Christian intellectual response, beginning with A. J. Ayer's "The End of Metaphysics," from his book, Language, Truth, and Logic, and ending with Chesterton's The Ball and the Cross. Students study with the help of reading questions on the assigned reading, and short biographies of key writers and thinkers. Based on Mr. Cothran's Senior Seminar course at Highlands Latin School. The first semester of a two-semester course.

Recommended Age: Ideal for solid students in the 11th and 12th grades who wish to read, study, discuss, and enjoy great literature in the context of a broader worldview study. This course is also open to courageous (and perhaps foolhardy) adults.

Content Covered (First Sem.): "The Men of Canto III of Dante's Inferno," by Michael Aeschliman; Metamorphosis, by Kafka; The Plague, by Albert Camus; "The Wall," by Jean Paul Sartre; The Death of Ivan Ilych, by Leo Tolstoy; The Brothers Karamazov, by Dostoevsky (required summer reading); The Violent Bear it Away, by Flannery O'Connor; The Moviegoer, by Walker Percy; The Man Who Was Thursday, by G. K. Chesterton; Jayber Crowe, by Wendell Berry. Browse preferred editions here.

Content Covered (Second Sem.): The Restitution of Man: C. S. Lewis and the Case Against Scientism, by Michael Aeschliman; "The Death of Metaphysics" and "Logical Positivism," by A. J. Ayer; "A Free Man's Worship ," by Bertrand Russell; "A Debate on the Existence of God," by Bertrand Russell & Frederick Copleston; "Logical Positivism: A Debate," by A. J. Ayer & Frederick Copleston; A Third Testament, by Malcolm Muggeridge, Chance or the Dance, by Thomas Howard; "Diagnosing the Modern Malaise," by Walker Percy; "The Man of Letters in the Modern World," by Alan Tate; "Screwtape Proposes a Toast," and Miracles, by C. S. Lewis; "The Blatchford Controversies," "The Ethics of Elfland," from Orthodoxy, and The Ball & the Cross, by G. K. Chesterton; Life is a Miracle and "Fidelity," from Fidelity: Five Stories, Wendell Berry

Summer Reading: The Brothers Karamazov

Instructor: Martin Cothran
Class Chat Time: Wednesday, 10:30 a.m. est.

Enroll in English III/IV: Existentialist Fiction & Christian Response, Fall 2009, ($199.95)
Enroll in English III/IV: Modernist Non-Fiction & Christian Response, Spring 2010 ($199.95)

Special Offer:
Enroll in Composition, Writers' Workshop, Fall 2009 Semester ($124.95: discounted price for those who have also enrolled in an English course)
Enroll in Composition, Writers' Workshop, Spring 2010 Semester ($124.95: discounted price for those who have also enrolled in an English course)