/lit/ - Literature

Everytime I check out Goodreads I swear I need to slog through this guy's spittle-covered abortions:

>http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/27788046-bookdragon-sean

On Hamlet

>Hamlet is one of the most idiotic and self-obsessed characters in creation. His inaction defines him as a tragic character, but to my mind that’s just silly. He caused his own death and the death of everyone in the play; yes, again, this makes his inaction tragic but it was also completely self-defeating; it boarded upon the absurd. The man needed a slap and a reality check, I just find him so unbearably frustrating.

He gives Shakespeare's most revered tragedy one star because he can't read.

>excerpt from an essay i'm working on.

On the 14th of January, 1208 CE, a papal legate named Peire de Castlenau was stabbed in the back by an anonymous squire as he crossed the Rhone (sic!). He died shortly after forgiving his anonymous murderer. Peire de Castlenau, a virulent denouncer of heresy in Languedoc, would then become the martyred cause of some twenty years of the “sporadic warfare, indiscriminate butchery, and bloody conquest” (pegg, 4) known as the Albigensian Crusade. The particular heretical movement Peire de Castlenau had denounced, Catharism, had become especially widespread in Northern Italy and Southern France, where the sect had flourished. The Albigensian Crusade, it is estimated, claimed somewhere between 200,000 to 1,000,000 souls (cite). Yet—the event was not singular; it was part of a much larger narrative of church persecution of heretics in the high and late middle ages, the reasons for which are worth investigation.


The reason why the persecution of heretics greatly increased in the high and late middle ages is an unsatisfying and facile one: there were simply more heretics to be persecuted. However superficial, this is nonetheless the most fundamental reason. The Cathars, the most significant heretical movement of the middle ages, blossomed between the 11th and 12th centuries CE. What this entailed was, as the middle ages peaked and waned, church and state alike exerted merciless force in order to maintain religious and social hegemony. For the Cathars, this reached its apex in the Albigensian Crusade and later, the Inquisition—two events which all but eliminated nearly any trace of Catharism in Europe. Growth in heresy created a unity between church and state, which gave the church a strong, secular arm to combat unorthodox beliefs and behaviours. From this, decrees, papal bulls, and ecumenical councils legitimized persecution of heresy as they were accepted with zeal by secular rulers. A rhetoric of heresy developed, which sought to justify persecution by appealing to popular prejudice and perceptions of heretics. Church reformers of the time were aware of heresy’s growth and spread, and sought to re-define what exactly it meant to be a christian in a christian community. Heretics, by definition, did not follow these reforms, thus they had to be changed or eliminated. A zeal for violence, especially in the name of God, seized Europe. Rewards for persecuting heretics made it even desirable. The confluence of these factors made Europe in the high and late middle ages what R.I. Moore called a “persecuting society”: a society that found unity and stability in the formalized slaughter of religious dissidents. The eradication of the Cathars in order to secure religious hegemony for the catholic church cannot be seen as a solely religious issue; rather, the decline and fall of Catharism reflected a society equipped with the arms to beat down any and all religious dissent—and by any means possible.

>>8868040
the constant reiteration of war's potential glory is what leads some to get a pro-war sentiment from it. alexander the great, for example, carried the lliad on campaign for i believe its insights into war, courage, and manhood. achilles has a choice in the iliad: to go home and live a long, though forgotten life, or to die a short, glorious death. he chooses the latter. while the latter choice is the more desirable, it is lamentably so. i think homer might say it is sad that war is so alluring and necessary; that glory as the ultimate good isn't the best thing, though it is ingrained in our nature to think so.

lebron james might be said to be ultimately useless in his ability to do one thing (basketball) exceptionally well. and it could also be said that the very idea of basketball and the excellence therein is useless. yet, lebron james is glorified as the greatest; revered as godlike in his athleticism; he is both unnecessary and revered, just like great men in war.

homer's time is a time of martial life. do not make the mistake of inflicting your own liberal views of mankind onto those of others. yes, homer acknowledges the absurdity of human life ("like the generations of leaves" simile), but achilles himself sings of the heroic deeds of great men, and wishes for himself to be a great man as well.

as fun as it is to say that all human action is ultimately futile, we revere napoleon. we revere alexander, lebron, julius caesar, etc. and the very fact that we can recognize these names might point to the value glory has, despite its cost. war and excellence therein, might not be a zero sum game; at the very least, it is not for homer and his world.

>>8226370
carver. maybe frank o connor. cormac mccarthy is a bad example because his prose draws from a lot of weird stuff. e.g "starsprent" in blood meridian is a portmanteau of star and sprent, an archaic, middle english word meaning 'sprinkled'. hardly clean, easy prose, and it's definitely easy to get lost in his diction and diverse florid and dragging sentences in general. maybe his dialogue is 'clean'. i don't know.

for contemporary? knaussgard is really terse as well. communicates without too crazy diction.