/lit/ - Literature

>>18574444
Checked. Greatest writer of the classical world. Illiterate.

Books on understanding the beauty of poetry? Because I'm unable to. I see poetry as someone deciding to change paragraph a bit too often. Even when I read the great classics, I get nothing. Am I just soulless?

He is my favorite poet and I don't speak Greek.

So, amidst this whole coronavirus crisis, (almost) everything has closed down here in Greece, and we're essentially confined to our houses. However, I have a lot of books I've been meaning to read for a while, but I'm a bit overwhelmed. Which one should I read first? Here's a list:
>Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War
>The Prince (Machiavelli)
>The Republic (Plato)
>The Iliad
>Medeia (Euripedes)
>The Art of War
>Mein Kampf
>The Bible
>A book about Hellenic mythology
I've probably forgotten some, but I'll just bump with any corrections

9th: Selections of the Odyssey translated into prose, Romeo and Juliet
10th: 12 Angry Men, The Alchemist
11th: Night, In Cold Blood, selected poems from Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, selected short stores by Poe and H.P. Lovecraft and Faulkner, A Raisin in the Sun
12th: all of Moby Dick, selected poems by Yeats and Keats and Pope, segments of Ulysses, segments of The Sound and the Fury, and surprisingly some selected sections from Gravity’s Rainbow

In 11th and 12th grade I wasn’t in normal English classes; I was taking the advanced English classes which only a few kids got into (I had like 10 people in my classes with me) by teacher recommendation only. We read all the shit that other kids thought was boring and had to write many book reports and the such. But, whereas the other normal English classes had kids doing busy work, our classes were ordered in a manner where you had a certain amount of time to read X book or X segment and make a report on it, and you could really do anything you wanted to do in class as long as it was legal. Some kids would even just listen to audiobooks of it and bring sleeping bags to lie in. You didn’t even have to read in class, you could play on your phone all day if you wanted

So, I'm intrigued in reading the Illiad and the Odyssey. I know I read bits of Odyssey in middle and high school, but it's been a while since I've actually done anything involving Greek Mythology. What would /lit/'s advice be on reading these two. Do I need to read both of them? What knowledge should I have going into them? And is there a specific version I should read? I know there exists one that is written just like a poem and one that's like a novelization of them. Any comment is greatly appreciated.

>>13295968
yeah.

If ever a great classic could have been deterred from writing by a knowledge of how posterity would treat her, the writer of the "Odyssey" should have been so, for never has poem more easy to understand failed more completely of being understood. If she was as lovely as I should like to think her, was ever sleeping beauty hidden behind a more impenetrable hedge of scholasticism? How could it be otherwise? The "Odyssey," like the "Iliad," has been a school book for nearly 3000 years, and what more cruel revenge could dullness take on genius? What has the erudition of the last 2500 years done for the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey" but to emend the letter in small things and to obscure the spirit in great ones?

But you can bet your life times that and twice its double
That God knew exactly where he wanted you to be placed
So make sure when you say you're in it but not of it
You're not helping to make this earth a place sometimes called Hell
Change your words into truths and then change that truth into love
And maybe our children's grandchildren
And their great-great grandchildren will tell
I'll be loving you

hello friends, I have decided that I want to start reading Roman/Ancient Greek history and literature. What would be some good books to start off with?

Divine Ὅμηρος

>strongest warrior in the world
>lol his heel suck though

Is anyone here actually able to read the Iliad and Odyssey in Ancient Greek? Does it really improve the experience?

If Homer brought us tragedy, who brought the world comedy?

>>12381117
homer

What is the best translation of the Iliad and Odyssey?

>>12137463
>>12137463
>How the hell do you write 33,000+ lines of iambic pentameter with a rhyme scheme and the story actually makes sense?
>Write
You are like a little babby.

Epic poetry was the answer and still is.

>To prove Homer's universal knowledge a priori, our Author says, "He design'd his Poem for Eternity, to please and instruct Mankind". Admirable again : "Eternity and Mankind": nothing less than all Ages and all Nations were in the Poet's foresight. Though our Author vouches that he "thinks every day de quolibet ente", give me leave to except Homer; for he never seems to have thought of Him or his History. Take my word for it, poor Homer in those circumstances and early times, had never such aspiring thoughts. He wrote a sequel of Songs and Rhapsodies, to be sung by himself for small earnings and good cheer, at Festivals and other days of Merriment; the Ilias he made for the Men, and the Odysseis for the other Sex. These loose Songs were not collected together in the form of an Epic Poem till Pisistratus's time, above 500 years after.
- Richard Bentley, "Remarks upon a late Discourse of Free-thinking" (1713)

How will /lit/ ever recover?

How hard is it to write down a story that’s been recited for hundreds of years? Isn’t he just a scribe?

Are The Iliad and The Odyssey actually really good or are they good to read because all other literature kind of stems from them?

I'm currently reading the Iliad, enjoying it as much as I can. I feel though that I'm not extracting as much from it as I could. Are there any classic commentaries on the Iliad/Odyssey available --- preferably online and free; I'm asking because it's fairly common to see classic commentators on the Gospels (mainly now saints) but I haven't stumbled upon no commentary on the homeric epics.

Obviously Homer

Is literature going to be dead in the next 50 years?