Course Objective: To familiarize students with the great ideas contained in the original works written by the greatest authors in the High Middle Ages to the Renaissance, from Chaucer through Cervantes, which are foundational to Western civilization (see course syllabus for specific titles studied). Authors of the works studied this semester include: Chaucer, Aquinas, Machiavelli, Thomas More, Erasmus, Copernicus, Calvin, Montaigne, Cervantes, Shakespeare (8 Plays), Galileo, Descartes, Bacon, Hobbes, Milton, and Pascal.