Self education, college reading lists, and my academic goals

Saint Mary Magdalene reading, detail.

I've said it before, studying makes me absolutely happy. This doesn't mean I always do it at a university, in fact most of what I read and study is on my own. Saying this is easier than doing it, it's no secret that studying alone and at home requires a lot of organization and dedication. This year I made an ambitious decision regarding this: I want to read as much as possible from the required lists of universities like Harvard or Pennsylvania for English literature and Classics Philology studies over the next three years.

The journey of self-education is not merely a means to acquire knowledge; it is a transformative process that shapes our identities and empowers us to navigate the complexities of life. I always find myself reflecting on the profound importance of self-education but also about how this helps me to grow as a better and more empathetic person.

In my own experience, self-education has been a source of joy and fulfillment. I don't always see how hard it is, in the sense that I sometimes don't give myself the credit I deserve, but I am certainly proud of what I do. These past days I've been looking into the required lists of books especially for English and comparative literature, which is something I would love to study one day, but in the meantime I can go through readings on my own. I've made a short list of those titles that were most repeated and call more my attention, but below I´m putting the link to the complete lists from Pennsylvania and Princeton universities

Paradise Lost - John Milton

The Odyssey - Homer

The Iliad - Homer

The Aeneid - Virgil

Beowulf

Ars Poetic- Horace

King James’ Bible

Inferno - Dante Alighieri

Canzionere - Petrarca

Essais - Michel de Montagine

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Le Morte D’Arthur - Thomas Malory

Complete Shakespeare

Arabian Nights

Rape of the Lock - Alexander Pope

The Prelude - William Wordsworth

The Mill on the Floss - George Eliot

The Waste Land - T.S. Eliot

Wuthering Heights- Emily Bronte

Villette - Charlotte Bronte

Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

Middlemarch - George Eliot

Tess of the D’Urbevilles - Thomas Hardy

Selected Poems - W.B. Yeats

Portrait of the Artist - James Joyce

To the Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf

Mrs Dalloway - Virginia Woolf

Troilus & Criseyde - Chaucer

In a Glass Darkly - Sheridan Le Fanu

Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

Passage to India - E.M. Forster

The Canterbury Tales - Chaucer

The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne

Beloved - Toni Morrison

Moby Dick - Herman Melville

Orientalism - Edward Said

Our Mutual Friend - Charles Dickens

Confessions of an English Opium Eater - Thomas De Quincey

Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens

The Bostonians - Henry James

The Adventures of Huck Finn - Mark Twain

The Awakening - Kate Chopin

Selected Poetry - Walt Whitman

The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

The master and Margarita- Bulgakov

Crime and Punishment – Dostoievsky

Frankenstein – Mary Shelley

Dracula – Bram Stoker

Don Quixote – Cervantes

Complete tales – Edgar Allan Poe

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This absolutely wonderful and really long list is separated by century and literary movements.

And here is the list for Comparative literaure, which I find really complete and with a really interesting scope.

Jules Joseph Lefebvre - Sappho, detail.

Speaking of classical philology, the list is not that extensive, but it is quite complex and wonderful. In this case, the one I decided to follow is from Harvard, and although I am not able to read entire texts in ancient Greek or Latin (yet), I can say that I have read many of the required texts in translation. My goal is especially focused on this Harvard list.

Here is a part of it, Greek texts that should be read in translation:

Aeschines: Against Timarchus; Against Ctesiphon

Aeschylus: Libation Bearers; Eumenides; Prometheus Bound; Seven Against Thebes; Suppliants

Apollodorus: Against Neaera

Apollonius: Argonautica I

Aristophanes: Acharnians; Birds; Clouds; Peace; Women at the Thesmophoria

Aristotle: Rhetoric; Politics

Basil of Caesarea: On Greek Literature

Demosthenes: On the Crown

Dionysius of Halicarnassus: The Ancient Orators; Thucydides

Euripides: Cyclops; Helen; Hippolytus; Iphigenia at Aulis; Orestes

Heliodorus: Aethiopica

Herodotus: Histories

Hippocratics: Airs, Waters, Places; Diseases of Young Girls

Homer: Iliad; Odyssey

Isocrates: Panegyric

Letters: Selection in Trapp 2003

Libanius: Autobiography

Longinus: On the Sublime

Lucian: True History; The Ignorant Book Collector; Herodotus; You’re a Literary Prometheus; How to Write History

Menander: Dyskolos

Nonnus: Dionysiaca VII–IX

Philostratus: Lives of the Sophists

Plato: Ion; Phaedrus; Protagoras; Gorgias; Republic (all)

Plutarch: Lives of Alcibiades-Coriolanus, Demosthenes-Cicero

Polybius: Histories I

Procopius: Wars I, Secret History (prologue, chs. 6–18)

Sophocles: Ajax; Electra; Oedipus at Colonus; Philoctetes; Women of Trachis

Synesius of Cyrene: On Providence or Egyptian Tale

Theocritus: Idylls 15, 22

Theophrastus: Characters

Thucydides: History

Xenophon: Apology; Hellenica; Memorabilia

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Another of my specific goals is to read all of Shakespeare's works. The Bard's plays and sonnets are not only foundational texts in English literature but also offer timeless insights into human nature, society, and the complexities of life itself. Although I have already read many of his works, I had never wanted to read them all, so it is a goal that I am very excited about. In addition to this, I will watch the available films and operas of my favorites, something I have already started with Hamlet and Macbeth.

But what to do with these long lists? The first thing was to get organized. For Shakespeare I plan to read four plays a week and always write a short essay on each one. This is something fundamental in general that I set as a requirement for myself: always write about what I read. An essay makes the way we understand the text go deeper, it helps us organize our ideas and really study these texts.

For the philology texts I have not set a calendar, I will simply go in order and take the time I need on each text. After all, these lists are for studies of 4 or more years.

Elin Danielson-Gambogi: After Breakfast, detail.

Distributing the day between readings, academic texts and languages ​​is a challenge, but I always try to take it on as if I were really in one of these universities, demanding the most from myself.

If I had to give some advice to those who want to study alone, or are already doing it, it would be just these:

-organize realistic calendars, don't try to do a thousand things in one day

-distribute your studies and languages ​​throughout the week, including study hours

-don't force yourself to start too early. We are all different, there are people who, even if they have slept well, simply don't work in the morning. See when you are most productive and focus on that

-read classics, not trendy books

-write by hand. I know it is faster to do it on the laptop, but the brain works better and in a different way when writing by hand, it retains information better and promotes another type of knowledge

-use online resources. Internet archive, zlibrary, Perseus, Chicago Homer, it all depends on what you want to study

-leave the cellphone. Better to read, watch good movies, theater, join reading clubs, but stop wasting hours doing nothing

Reminder: if you want to support my writing, studies and my medical expenses you can do it with Buy me a coffee something that I would appreciate a lot!