100 great works that shaped western civilisation

> Download the 100 Works list

In his speech at the 2017 Commencement Dinner, Master Rufus Black engaged the room to reflect on our cultural past “Not knowing our cultural past is like not having a memory of growing up. Our loss of cultural knowledge is probably a lot worse than that. Imagine if your memory only went back a week.”

The speech underlies a yearlong project – The 100 Works Initiative – that brings to light an awareness of the forces that have shaped the current day and the literature, art, music and architecture that has fashioned our cultural identity and values.

The 100 Works Initiative asked students and staff of the College to contribute to a compilation of 100 great works that shaped western civilization. Nominations could be works from any form and any era that are seen to reflect some kind of relevance to current politics, economics, social values or any other cultural art form. This culminated in a launch event in the Academic Centre with students giving readings of some of the works.

Essentially, this list contains the seeds of many discussions that go on today, particularly around scholarly environments like Ormond.

 

Ormond student William Devilee was just one of the many who tracked the progress of the initiative over the course of theyear and was incredibly pleased with the outcome. “It’s such a diverse range of works – from The Great Gatsby to the Bible to the Pantheon and Beethoven. I think it’s interesting that you can look at each one and clearly see how they were individually influential. There’s nothing in there that I’m not interested in.”

The nominated works were narrowed down to the top 100 by a committee of SCR members representing different disciplines and with expertise in different eras of Western history and culture, chaired by Master Rufus Black.

Through rigorous discussion, the completed compilation included literary titles like the ancient Greek epic poem The Iliad by Homer, the Magna Carta, Shakespeare’s tragedy for the stage Hamlet, Donne’s English Poems and Jane Austen’s classical romance novel Pride and Prejudice.

The music of Mozart, Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, Monet’s paintings of Waterlilies, The Colosseum in Rome and Michelangelo’s paintings in the Sistine Chapel just scratch the surface of the landmark works in this timeless capsule of culture and knowledge.

Students and staff alike were invited to nominate works, like Louise Dorignon, an Ormond graduate student who put forward Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Times.

She was also asked to select prose to read at the initiative’s launch. “I was thrilled to see this great piece of literature make the 100 Works Initiative and honoured to attend the Gala evening.

I was able to read an excerpt of my choosing that night, and that was a fantastic opportunity to share my passion with friends, colleagues and students and to inspire some to.”

Acting Director of Learning, Anne Bourke, explains how this initiative is deeply embedded into the College’s values. “The 100 Works project showcased the value Ormond places on engagement with ideas and the success of place-based and personal relationships in drawing students into new ways of understanding their culture and society.

Led by staff, it connected students to a world of literature, painting, architecture, philosophy and history of deep significance to western culture which countered the ahistorical nature of much of their previous education. The students embraced this world with enthusiasm and delight.

To witness students reciting John Donne, reading from The Great Gatsby or performing the ghost scene from Macbeth, was an affirming tribute to the rationale behind this project.”

The 100 Works is a permanent fixture in the Academic Centre for students, staff and visitors to peruse, discuss and reflect on how these great works have shaped the society that we live in today.

> Download the 100 Works list

Written by Lucy Miller. Photos by Hanna Ough and Emma Eline-Koster.

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