Fill in the blank!

[lollardfish]

Readings - The Self: From Antiquity to You.

• St. Augustine - Confessions
• Abelard and Heloise - Letters
• ______________________________???
• Ralph Ellison - The Invisible Man
• John McCain/Barak Obama - their autobiographies

I have some thoughts, but I want yours!

Comments

[txanne.livejournal.com]

Montaigne, Essais.

[new-kid16.livejournal.com]

All my suggestions would be for more medieval folks, which I doubt would be very helpful. Although someone like Frederick Douglass or Harriot Jacobs might be useful, for making the jump from Europe to the US? Sounds like a cool class - I've always wanted to teach one like that! (Though mine would have been populated almost exclusively by crazy medieval people, so it would have had much less widespread appeal...)

[zinzinzinnia.livejournal.com]

Francis Bacon's essays, modeled on Montaigne's, could be tossed in from time to time. I teach "Of Studies" in AP Language. They're readily available online.

You may also want to check out "This I Believe" on NPR. Another assignment I do with my students. :)

[madtruk.livejournal.com]

Richard Bach, Illusions
Benjamin Hoff, The Tao of Pooh

You're missing the 1970's ;-)

[regularpapi.livejournal.com]

At the risk of seeming like self parody.... Seneca is a pretty important classical figure in the history of the self, both because his plays feature outsized characters built around extreme self-assertion and because Roman stoicism has what one recent classicist calls the most rubust version of the self in antiquity. Seneca talks about a daily ritual of self-scrutiny. I just bought, but have not yet read, this:

http://www.amazon.com/Self-Ancient-Modern-Insights-Individuality/dp/0226768252/ref=pd_bbs_sr_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1212427686&sr=8-4