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/lit/ - Literature

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16431191 No.16431191 [Reply] [Original]

What are the 10 most important books in the Western canon? No "complete works", just individual works.

>> No.16431200

>>16431191

Iliad/Odyssey
Old and New Testaments
The Aeneid
Beowulf
The Divine Comedy
The First Folio
Don Quixote
Faust I & II
Ulysses
Pale Fire

>> No.16431209
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16431209

>>16431200
>Iliad/Odyssey
>cheating from the first entry

>> No.16431232

>>16431209
You would’ve preferred them taking up two slots?

>> No.16431239
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16431239

>>16431200
Add this too

>> No.16431251

harry potter
how to cave shit and get frends
doktor faustus
tsing tsu the art of war

>> No.16431269

Iliad
The Bible
Parmenides
Nicomachean Ethics
Poetic Edda
The Divine Comedy
Summa Theologiae
Hamlet
Paradise Lost
War and Peace

>> No.16431275

>>16431191
the old testament
the new testament
phenomenology of spirit
ethics
critique of pure reason
difference and repetition
being and time
the trial
vineland
richard yates

>> No.16431289

>>16431200
>Iliad/Odyssey
2 books
>Old and New Testaments
2 books
>The First Folio
Compilation
>Faust I & II
2 books
>Pale Fire
Really now?

>> No.16431381
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16431381

None of them are that important to me

>> No.16431417

>>16431191
>The Iliad
>The Odyssey
>Beowulf
>The Divine Comedy
>The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, because fuck you OP
>On Liberty
>1984
>Utopia
>Paradise Lost
>The Age of Reason

>> No.16431647

>>16431417
Your list really went to shit after Shakespeare lmao

>> No.16431656

>>16431269
/thread and based

>> No.16431796

>>16431191
Only book you need is the bible

>> No.16431821

the first 10 books of The Diary of a Wimpy Kid

>> No.16431826

>>16431239
This + replace some problematic work like Divine Comedy with In Defense of Looting

>> No.16432796

>>16431191
It's an interesting question that deserves an answer, but you haven't defined "important". Are these works important because they fundamentally altered the Occidental collective consciousness? Are they important because they created new standards in the literature that would endure for posterity? There's no real way to answer such a vague prompt; anyone could come along and just as easily prove how the entirety of the Western Canon is arbitrary.

>> No.16432851
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16432851

>>16431191
>Harold Bloom's Shiterary Canon, v. 2.0
The Iliad
The Aeneid
The Divine Comedy
The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
Don Quixote
Lyrical Ballads
Faust (Goethe)
Fathers and Sons
Mrs Dalloway
Infinite Jest

This is the definitive list. If you disagree with it, you are most certainly a faggot and probably a pleb as well

>> No.16432868

>>16431269
>The Bible
>individual work
This is like saying that Veda is just one book.

>> No.16432880

>>16431796
The Bible came from the Middle East, anon.

>> No.16432965

Just The Republic. It consists of exactly 10 books after all.

>> No.16433178
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16433178

>>16432965
Based platoposter

>> No.16433265

>>16431200
Pale Fire is one of my favorite books but I don't think it's one of the top 10 most important in the Western Canon

>> No.16433300

My diary desu vol 1
My diary desu vol 2
My diary desu vol 3
My diary desu vol 4
My diary desu vol 5
My diary desu vol 6
My diary desu vol 7
My diary desu vol 8
My diary desu vol 9
My diary desu vol 10

>> No.16433311

>>16431191
Republic
Iliad
New Testament
Divine Comedy
Don Quixote
Hamlet
Faust
War and Peace
Critique of Pure Reason
Ulysses

idk this is hard

>> No.16433336

>>16431200
Why does everyone love Ulysses so much? I had such a hard time getting through it.

>> No.16433364

>>16432851
>Fathers and Sons
>Mrs Dalloway
>Infinite Jest
Lol so many lists ITT that become instantly shit towards the end

>> No.16433372

>>16433336
It's just swag points cause it's "hard"

>> No.16433379

>>16433336
It's not necessarily a "love" thing, but "recognize the importance of," since it influenced pretty much every literary novel that came after (either in the case of people who loved and emulated it, or those who hated it and reacted against it.) Though I would say that Eliot's "Waste Land" deserves a spot on the list for the same reasons.

>> No.16433826

>>16431200
>>16432851
Is the Aeneid worth reading?

>> No.16433838

>>16431232
Yeah, could be done by taking out Beowulf, which wasn’t all that influential or widely read until the 19th and 20th century.

>> No.16434700

all greeks

>> No.16434739
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16434739

>>16431289
>Old and New Testaments
>2 books

>> No.16434872

>>16433364
Those are all good but yeah no clue why those were included

>> No.16434886

>>16433826
No

>> No.16434917

>No "complete works"
Then it is just Shakespeare.

Hamlet
King Lear
Romeo and Juliet
Richard III
Much Ado About Nothing
Macbeth
Henry IV Part 1
The Tempest
Julius Caesar

and either Othello, Winter's Tale, Twelfth Night or Midsummer Night's Dream

>"Anyone seeking Joyce finds Joyce even if both Joyce and the victim found the item in Shakespeare"

>> No.16435051

There are none. A canon implies an eternal, neverchanging set of books that will never be surpassed or discarded, and unfortunately for us, the inevitable forward movement of time makes this completely impossible

>> No.16435440

>>16435051
cringe

>> No.16435894

>>16431647
Not a fan of liberty, freedom of thought, or reason? What is your list?