Friday, October 24, 2014

History, Religion and Culture Studies (Part 10): Early Modern and Enlightenment Eras



In our most recent Homeschool History, Religion, and Culture studies, we have been studying the early modern and enlightenment eras in the West. Highlights have included reading John Milton's Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained and also learning a lot about the English Civil War, the French Revolution, and the great composers like Mozart and Beethoven.

As usual, we used Gloria Fiero's Humanistic Tradition to start us off with our studies, but here are the other books and resources we used:

Key texts:

Thomas Moore, Utopia
Desiderius Erasmus, In Praise of Folly*
John Milton, Paradise Lost*
John Milton, Paradise Regained*
John Milton, Samson Agonistes*
Voltaire, Candide*
Rene Descartes, Discourse on Method 

John Locke, Two Treatises of Government
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan


*Read in full; others we read important selections

Documentaries and lectures:

Open Yale Course: Milton (lectures on Paradise Lost and Regained)
Open Yale Course: Listening to Music (lectures on Mozart and Beethoven) 

Heroes of the Enlightenment (BBC documentary about Newton, Diderot etc. - one episode)
Sea of Faith (documentary about Galileo and Descartes and Pascal - one episode)
The Genius of Mozart (BBC documentary - three episodes)
The Genius of Beethoven (BBC documentary - three episodes)

The Birth of British Music: Handel (BBC documentary- one episode)
The Birth of British Music: Hadyn (BBC documentary- one episode)
The Power of Art: Caravaggio (BBC documentary - one episode)
The Power of Art: Bernini (BBC documentary - one episode)
The Power of Art: Rembrandt (BBC documentary - one episode)

Private Life of a Masterpiece: Vermeer (BBC documentary - one episode)

Great Artists: El Greco (documentary - one episode
Blood on our Hands (Channel 4 documentary about English civil war - all episodes here)
The Rise and Fall of Versailles - 3 part documentary about the run up to French Revolution
The French Revolution - History Channel Documentary.
La Revolution Francaise - French 6 hour movie that dramatizes the French revolution (available in its entirety on You Tube). 


 

Movies:

Amadeus (dir. Milos Forman, 1984 -- about Mozart)
Girl with a Pearl Earring (dir. Peter Webber, 2003 -- about Johannes Vermeer)
Amistad (dir. Steven Spielberg, 1997 -- about mutiny on a slave ship in the 19th century)
Candide: the Operetta (Leonard Bernstein, first written in 1956 - we watched this version)
Moliere (dir, Laurent Tirard, 2007)