Kells because I think there ought to be an example of dark ages illustrated manuscript - this monastic tradition is credited with keeping written language alive. Anglo-saxon Chronicle because it tells the history of a people coming together out of a mass of different competing traditions (and because the “dark ages” are somewhat light on anything else) and Fra Bacon as I said, marking the rediscovery of the ancients from the Arabic world which enabled the flourishing of rennaissance science.

Hang on - the KJV was written in the early seventeenth century, by which time the vowel shift was nearly complete.

I’m going to reply at greater length about the Bible’s place; I’m not entirely sure what I think yet. What would your justification be for the books you mention? The Book of Kells is just the four gospels, albeit beautifully written!

Eamon - same question to you; why those books?

Douglas -

I would want to put something in that represents the atheist current. However, I would probably go for something by Russell rather than Dawkins if for no other reason than that Dawkins work has not had enough time to be ‘great’.

On the bible, particularly the King James Version, the reason I mention it is that people like Anthony Burgess, if I recall correctly, name it as the single most influential work that codified modern English (and led to the great vowel shift which he also names as the main reason why we are “divided by a common tongue” between over here and over there!…:) Its religious nature is if you like “only” so important because it ensured massive readership.

However I do offer two more to fill the “dark ages” - the Book of Kells and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle? And not quite dark ages, but what about Roger Bacon’s Opus Majus - marking the “rediscovery” of the classical arts from the Muslim scholars who had kept it alive during the western dark ages? And slightly later still, how about More’s Utopia? And far later, what about Samuel Johnson?

Yup, I know you went to the source with ‘Origin of the Species’ but it is quite hard going for undergraduates.

That opens up a debate as to where philosophy ends and religion starts - which I won’t open here.

Except to note that texts such as the Aeneid were religious texts for the Romans, weren’t they?

Bishop Berkeley (immaterialism)

Handel: The Messiah
Charles Dickens: David Copperfield

WB Yeats

There are a whole host of issues around religion. I would tend to say that no primary religious texts should be included. While I accept Jock’s comment about the Vulgate and the Authorised versions (particularly the beauty of the Authorised’s sound when read aloud), their importance was due to the way they were used. In terms of the canon, the Pilgrim’s Progress (for instance) is more important as a literary work. The Bible is important as a concept. Equally, if we extend to the Qu’ran, we start extending to the Torah and so on and it becomes hard to put an end on it. Aleister Crowley?

I suppose ‘interesting’ and ‘influential’ are not the same. There is nothing listed, for instance, from Bentham or either Mill. Equally, it is weak on the modern, both here and across the west outside the anglosphere. There is a good rationale for excluding, say, Latin America, but not Spain. We do not see Lazarillo de Tormes or anything by Delibes or Sender.

Jock - I agree with you about the Venerable Bede. Would we extend to the Domesday Book? I agree with Matt about Beowulf and would add Le Morte d’Arthur by Sir Thomas Mallory.

xD.

I’d be tempted to include the bible twice actually - for linguistic rather than religious reasons. Once under St Jerome for the Vulgate which effectively set the standard for a thousand years and also which set in stone ecclesiastical Latin, and once under the King James Authorized Version which set in stone modern English in a way that no other work has done for other western languages IMO.