/lit/ - Literature

>>18577428
... Simply reading Shakespeare's plays with serious attention and thought is enough to judge their value. When you study them in detail and understand what he's doing with wordplay, characterisation, etc you are stunned by his creativity and ability. You have people calling Shakespeare gay, which I do not believe he was, although he perhaps might have been bisexual. People turn to the fair youth of the sonnets. But close male friendship, intensely close, was a natural part of classical life, and mirrored in art through figures like Achilles and Patroclus. The revival of classicism in the Renaissance meant that many in Shakespeare's time likewise had intensely close male friendships that were devoid of a sexual element. There are male friends who today would go to great lengths for each other, die for each other. The difference is we are less literature, sensitivity is seen as a weakness, and declaring your feelings marks you instantly as gay, whereas in Shakespeare's time expressing your feeling eloquently and being well-versed in arts and literature was seen as a positive. Then you have occasional posters claiming Shakespeare was Catholic, who I am sympathetic too. Again, I recommend Shadowplay for anyone interested.

>>18577437
In translation something is always lost, the dactylic hexameter of ancient Greek verse doesn't ring true in English, so as long as the story remains intact I don't mind. I own Fagles.

>>18577452
Nope, though have had obvious (clumsy) advances made.

>>18577701
Defeatism won't get us anywhere. Overall things are bad, but I have faith they will swing the other way soon enough. The kind of exclusionary politics that would ban Homer, Shakespeare and Dante from schools has a lifespan. Those authors, archived on the internet, will last forever even if all physical copies of their works are destroyed. You can go back over 2000 years to Homer, to the Bible, and see that humans really haven't changed very much in terms of character, and I dont believe we'll change all that much in the next 2000 years. Eventually someone will rediscover the works, connect with them and fall in love with them as we always do with great literature, and they will outlive shifting cultural perceptions.

>>18577705
Ha! I like that. I see academics like myself more as gamekeepers or gardeners. The Great Torch is lit and someone has to keep it burning. At university you engage with a text on an exponentially deeper level than you do in High School, and it's not just about reading books, it's about analysing the work in terms of aesthetic (prose) value, judging it in its socio-historical context, studying the author and various literary movements, and - most importantly - grappling with the ideas the text raises. No text studied at university is considered solely for entertainment value. What is this author telling us about life? Do we agree with them? For this reason we work very closely with history and philosophy departments... (cont)