/lit/ - Literature

Both the decline of Classics students and the rise of YA are symptoms of a general trend of anti-intellectualism.

>>16584500
Yes, obviously he was right. Just look at the disastrous effects of capitalism on everything. Culture is shit, nature is shit, work is shit, everything is shit. At least the feudal aristocracy had an aesthetic appreciation for the world and wanted more than profit for the sake of profit.

The collapse of the Soviet Union doomed the West to this, enjoy.

>>16584500
People don't look down on the classics. They look up at them and think they're too stupid to get them, or that they need to be respected and be read "properly"

>>16584500
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_in_the_Twentieth_Century

Jules Verne wrote a novel about this, Paris in the 20th ce. It's about a guy who majored in Latin and got mocked by his family and friends for studying something useless. They said he should've majored in something useful like STEM or finance.
I remember a funny scene when the protagonist went to the library and asked if they had Victor Hugo and the librarian answered WHO?

>>16584536
Yes they do. As soon as you tell someone you like reading the Greeks or Romans, they politicize it as misogynist/racist or whatever buzzword they sponged from the interwebs.

>>16584614
Thanks bro, I'll give it a read. I'm surprised by how many of his predictions came to pass.

>>16584536
This is true.
>>16585070
This isn't true.
The reason no one studies classics nowadays is because people genuinely believe there is nothing to learn from them. The idea of moral or intellectual development throughout life has died in the public conscience, for students to find Greek or Latin valuable they must find something written in those works to be valuable, which they do not. You can call them midwits for it but it's been like this for over a century, the societal elements that esteemed the classics simply aren't active anymore.

did you screencap your quarintine meeting?

>>16584535
>immediately starts blaming capitalism for everything
You fags never rest, do you?

literally who cares about some shit written 2000+ years ago lmao
oh ooh there's some big dude with one eye who almost eats another dude who got turned into a sheep or something, wow so deep

>>16586514
He’s not wrong the transformation of universities into glorified job training centers probably did have an impact.

>>16584535
I don't enjoy this at all.

>>16586514
the cultural marxists who took over universities are the ones to blame, not the fact that you can earn more unclogging toilets or painting walls than studying epic poetry

>>16586647
This. Unis are now the domain of the absolute utter filthy plebs as a gatekeeper to their life of wageslavery, when they used to be only for the rich who were free from the shackles of debt servitude or the exceptionally talented who were selected on their merits and provided scholarships.

Now universities are just farms for fat roasties to be given a piece of paper to go and make powerpoint presentations for 40 years afterwards, or for Jewish parasites to hide and poison the well of academia.

>>16584500
hey dickhead, don't charge me a trillion dollars in tuition and maybe I'd sign up for your course
idiot

>>16584500
It isn't that deep.

Unless you come from a rich family or are someone who is not driven by money and is okay with having poor job prospects, you don't go to university/college to study the classics.

Most of us study and read on our own time while working or studying something that will allow us to earn a living.

As much as I would love to spend my time in university getting a classical education, I want to have a family, so I studied risk management and finance instead.

Don't look at the enrollment numbers. Education is decentralized now.

i mean no offense but at some point the material becomes exhausted right?
We are going 2k years deep into studying these cultures, at some point all the preparing all the texts for easy access for when the real guys come along is kind of done with.

>everyoe should have studied latin and greek as languages though to make use of this.

My universiy has a greek philology program with only one (1) student enrolled, and it is top in the country, and he is my friend :)

>>16584500
Because spending 4 years of your life and thousands of dollars to read the small amount of literature written in a dead language is retarded unless you plan on becoming an academic in that field.

>>16584500
Who cares? The fate of the plebs is to work so that the few may enjoy the refined pleasures of otium. Things are going as intended.

>>16584500
In addition to >>16587672, degrees mean much less now than they did in the past. 50 years ago, you could've gotten a good job with a bachelor's in just about anything. I remember one of my elderly (about 75) math professors told me that when he worked as an electrical engineer for AT&T, many of his coworkers had degrees in history and economics. Having a degree used to mean that you had some critical thinking skills that were generally desirable to employers so you could get jobs unrelated to your major. Now that literally every fucking retard has a degree, it's meaningless. If you want to become an electrical engineer, you pretty much have to study EE. If you want to study Latin, you're screwed. There are tons of people, including me, who would like to study the arts, but choose not to because they don't want to be a jobless loser. If all the retards got filtered out of uni and degrees actually meant something in themselves, I'm sure you would see more people studying classics.

>>16584500
Who in their right mind would pay current tuition prices to study the fucking humanities.

>>16587824
People who don't worry about tuition, obviously. The rich and the scholarshippers.

>>16587834
Even on a full scholarship, the opportunity cost and job market realities make it impossible for anyone who doesn't want to become an academic.

>>16587895
opportunity cost is difficult to calculate for college kids. You can't say, for example, that if the Latin student had picked compsci instead that he would go on to start at 100k as a coder. What if his disposition makes him a better Latin student than a coder? It's not a simple this-or-that. Also, the humanities aren't a walled path to a professorship. People pivot into law, writing, management, financial and gov't jobs all the time

>>16586647
As opposed to ones that do nothing but churn out armchair pseuds like the Frankfurt school?

>>16587957
Even if the FS produced nothing but Walter Benjamin's "The Storyteller" it would have still done more for fiction than you and all your theoretical progeny.

>>16584500
UK also. everyone reading greats at ox4rd thinks they're the cleverest but actually it's the easiest to get in for as not so many people apply.
>Schop once wrote that when the study of Latin diminishes, the age of barbarism shall return despite all the technological advances
i'd like to see an otherwise reasonable person defend this in their own words

>>16587954
You are right and I do think there is a lot of value to be gained in getting that kind of education, I just don't think the average student gets as much of that value out of it in the end. It shows in the average earnings for graduates from those programs. I hate that we now measure the value of an education based off career prospects and potential earnings, degree programs have become another product that we are sold. If I chose based off passion and interest I know I wouldn't have been able to have the life I live now or the family I have.

Are you guys familiar with what has being going on in Classics departments?
There is an ongoing movement that tries to completely deface the Classics by turning them into pieces of left-wing propaganda.
BAP has talked a lot about this, though it is not necessary to agree with his views to see what's going on.

People like Donna Zuckerberg, Mary Beard, Emily Wilson, the Sententiae Antiquae guy on Twitter etc. are all into this.
Their propaganda includes things as:
- Pretending that black people were common in Rome, or that Romans born in North-Africa were black.
- Translating Homer and other classics in a "modern" way.
- Saying that neoclassical art is fascism.
- For them, claiming that Homer didn't exist is a very important thing, because Homer existing would be too close to hero-worship and other things associated with the "right-wing".
- Stopping people from getting personal inspiration from the classics.
- Criticizing any right-wing figures that seems to be close to the classics. Example: Boris Johnson reciting the Iliad was thoroughly criticized by people like Beard and Sent. Antiquae who said he had "embarrassed himself". Had it been Obama, we all know the reactions would have been different.

Therefore, given all that, why should anyone study the classics anyway? There is no point. You won't gain anything by going to university, when professors are like that. Just study at home.

>>16588196
>People like Donna Zuckerberg, Mary Beard, Emily Wilson, the Sententiae Antiquae guy on Twitter etc.
Doesn't surprise me that angloids will politicize anything they touch

>>16585070
Only a very small group of (overrepresented, granted) people do this.
When you tell most people you are reading Greeks or Romans, youll get a mix of "huh?", "neat" and "whatareyougonnadowithTHAT"

>>16588303
isn't that south america

>>16588196
think they're actually just sort of trying to undo 2000+ years of propoganda

>>16588321
I don't know what goes on in SA besides failed commie govs and coups

>>16587824
I was the first person to go to college in my immediate family- almost completely on some sort of scholarship or grant. My parents just assumed that any degree would be a good one, and so did I. None of my advisors sat me down and told me to suck it up and study something with good job prospects, so I just followed my passions. Now here I am with a double major in History and Anthropology and I bake bread for a living.

People rightly talk about the ivory tower rich kids that fill humanities programs- but in my experience there were a chunk of us poorer kids in there who were 18 and dumb and went into school fully buying into the "any degree can get you a job" line

>>16587509
cultural marxists, in the truest sense, if you mean the Frankfurt school, were/are some of the last people to actually meaningfully engage in the classics with new theories (see part on Odysseus in Dialektik der Aufklärung)... what do you expect that people wouldn't apply contemporary hermeneutic models to the classics? That we should just read it and say that was good? the antipode but just as anti-intellectual as refusing to read them. You can't just keep doing 19th century german philology forever and expect the field of classics to grow, structuralist and marxist criticism in the classics was certainly a welcome addition. You are clearly someone who has skimmed the classics in translation and hasn't sought any meaningful engagement, you just revere them as these fetishistic totems which we must bow down to as a sign of cultivation but never seriously engage with. midwit

>>16588327
doesn't that answer my question in the affirmative though

>>16588196
Homer probably was not one person, this hasn't been that controversial among actual academics –– and not just left wings one –– for decades

>>16588356
>structuralist and marxist criticism in the classics was certainly a welcome addition.

fuck the hell off. nothing worse than encountering marx in reading old classics books; nothing but an anachronistic fallacy

classics are better off dead instead of being taught in the auspex of marxist criticism

>>16588366
The key word is "probably".
Nobody knows if there was a Homer or not.

>>16588325
With propaganda? Emily Wilson is relentlessly retarded; she keeps shoving in idiotic feminist criticism in everything she touches. She's remarkably adept at getting her slimy hands in NYT/London Review, etc.

>>16588196
This is correct. When I was still in university before I dropped out the biggest concern of the classics department was erasing its 'whiteness'. There were a few greek statues up in the classics building and the professors celebrated there removal because they were "symbols of white supremacy". Any discipline that hates itself that much can't last.

>>16588303
>>16588325
>>16588393
>>16588395
https://twitter.com/bronzeagemantis/status/1046623198136213504

BAP's thread on this same issue, in case anyone is interested. I don't agree with everything he says, though.

>>16588381
nah he fuckin got you dude he's right

>>16588196
>- Pretending that black people were common in Rome, or that Romans born in North-Africa were black.

I was watching the BBC adaptation of I, Claudius and really couldn't believe all the black people they shoved in randomly. Make no mistake, pushing blacks into ancient history was an ongoing meme even in the 70's.

>>16588418
got me with what? mere assertions? all feminist/marxist criticism has given us are the complete degradation of the classics. these are the same people pushing blacks into Rome and brow-beating you for not accepting that the maids at the end of the Odyssey were innocent, and not unfairly maligned by evil misogynist slut-shaming.

>>16588381
I mean yeah if someone tries to map on a dualistic bourgeoise–proletariat reading it would obviously be quite stupid; I think the key is to understand by this, people who study classics mean an analysis of greek or roman production, of the greek or roman text as production, of the cultural and political valences of the theater, all stuff you can't neatly extricate the text from. As I said, no student of classics, even right-wing ones, will wholesale reject the importance of this new interpretive work, the only people who will (from personal experience, as a classics student who is not particularly left-wing politically) are people who have a massive vested interest in the classics being this austere, ahistorical marker of some far more anachronistic idea of western culture. This kills the text far faster than a deconstructionist.

>>16588428
>This kills the text far faster than a deconstructionist.

How exactly does it "kill the text" to regard it as austere? How is it a-historical to keep the text safe from grimy hands of marxist interpretation? Why should we judge and teach these books under a foreign ideology that came about 2,000 years or so later?

More mere assertions. Who is brought closer to Homer or Aeschylus via Marx? Nobody, nowhere.

>>16588393
the iliad & odyssey have been school books for nearly 3000 years. that comes with a lot of preconceived ideas &tc
>never has poem more easy to understand failed more completely of being understood
samuel butler

>>16588426
New critical lenses are best used to revitalize readings of the classics, otherwise they carry less nuance than more contemporary literature. The really hard pill to swallow in regards to the classics is that they have been completely outdone by English-language literature from 1700-2000. They can't even compete; they're not as complex, interesting, daring, or intelligent in parsing antinomies.

>>16588438
I highly doubt the reading you do of it is uninfluenced by new criticism or modern conceptions of interpretation. You have to be an immense retard to think that you read it the way a roman, greek, or even medieval or early modern scholar does. The tropologic readings of ancient texts and much of medieval Christian scholarship was far more anachronistic and invasive than most well-reasoned contemporary Marxist scholarship, this just seems like a political cope by you.

>>16588444
Preconceived ideas such of what? What are these ideas, who conceived them, what will they be replaced with?

If they are taught as the one of the earliest accounts of epic literature we have, this is the truth, and should be taught because of that alone. If they are taught as one of the most influential texts of poetry/fiction that we have, that is also the truth.

>>16588410
his panache is unbearably awful, would rather be dead than read all that. what does he say

>>16588445
>New critical lenses are best used to revitalize readings of the classics,

Revitalize readings...to who? Does a text die after you read it? Does Homer lose his luster after you return to him?

>The really hard pill to swallow in regards to the classics is that they have been completely outdone by English-language literature from 1700-200

Merely subjective; the classics should be taught and studied simply because their fruit were the great novel tradition of the 1700's-2000's.

You cannot teach western literature without the Greeks, simple as.

>>16588451
More mere assertions. How the romans, greeks, or medievalist thought of it, does not in turn justify teaching what the Marxist thought of it. I daresay what the greeks thought of it matters much more in regards to the text than what Marxists think, really.

>>16588445
>t. English major

>>16588470
>I daresay what the greeks thought of it matters much more in regards to the text than what Marxists think, really.
Do you envision a world where there is scholarship on the classics? because the world you are describing does not allow for this. The idea that we can bracket or obviate historical development to read the text immanently as a greek would, the idea that the marxist or whatever lens wouldn't give important insights into the production of the text. This is just the peak of midwitticism, its truly painful to read.

>>16588470
>You cannot teach western literature without the Greeks
You can, but only because of their brilliance and cultural success, and that is the issue. Why read the classics when their tools have been employed to explore not a heroic or peripatetic tale but a story about atomization, poverty, alienation, interior conflict, the death of idols, or the destruction of the sacred? The new interpretations of the classics exist to keep them relevant, and to appeal to masses of students who are not interested in them for their contribution to the medium. You may have a perspicacious enough respect for literature that your readings take you back that far because you feel rewarded for studying the tools. But you're still trading discipline for deeper understanding of already-treaded ground, and it is simply easier (and more effective for pedagogic purposes) to truncate that process for those who aren't specialists.

>>16584500
why the fuck would I waste so much money on siting in a room while some fag reads ancient greek history summaries from a textbook? It's ridiculously easy to get the primary sources or even the textbooks on libgen, and for discussion there are millions of free published essays

>>16588489
>Do you envision a world where there is scholarship on the classics?

Sure.

>because the world you are describing does not allow for this.

the world you endorse you crave subjects the classics to whatever fashionable wave of interpretation is of the day until nobody can read the text without stepping on the toes of another method of interpretation.

why you think this world is intellectual sound and not a tragic and idiot exercise of sophistry is beyond me; but allow me to reiterate: the only interpretation of Homer that matters is the Greek. Potentially the Romans when they re-created their entire literature around the Greeks.

>This is just the peak of midwitticism, its truly painful to read.

Shush, not my fault you blew your 20's on ridiculous liberal garbage.

>>16588497
>but only because of their brilliance and cultural success, and that is the issue.

What? Did you even know that most of the great writers up until the 20th century were taught to speak Greek or Latin?

Seriously, what ignorance.

>>16588454
should they be taught at all? 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?

>>16588527
That is very much my point and you have misunderstood what I was trying to say

>>16588529
>should they be taught at all

uh huh

>what has the erudition of the last 2,500 year done for Homer

make sure we read it? that we're aware of it, and its cultural spread throughout the entire western canon?

>emend the letter in small things and obscure the spirit in great ones?

You don't understand. Understanding influence does not hamper the appreciation of a great work.

>>16588532
Try speaking clearly.

Either way, your reasoning is circular: why must new interpretation be taught? -> because students lose interest -> why do students lose interest -> because they need new interpretation

>>16588196
>saying that neoclassical art is fascism
Exhibit A: Albert Speer, Hitler, and Arno Breker, neoclassicalist extroardinaire

>>16588545
>Every scholar has read a Book or two of the Odyssey here and there; some have read the whole; a few have read it through more than once; but none that I have asked have so much as been able to tell me whether Ulysses had a sister or no—much less what her name was.
nothing short of saturating yourself in the poem (unhampered by a single preconceived idea in connection with it) is of the smallest use.

>>16588556
They lose interest because more recent writers deal with more relevant issues, using techniques learned from classical study. Attempting to teach the formation of culture that no longer has relevancy for its own sake will be ignored, no matter how much you try to force the issue.

>>16588561
by that logic, the French revolution was a crypto-facist movement

>>16588561
As well as the American revolution

>>16588596
it's more that every every dictatorship has always adapted the gestures and costumes of an ancient nation

>>16584500
I'm gonna guess a big reason is because people don't want to drop literally tens of thousands dollars for an education that will likely not offer good returns.

Higher education is mostly about attaining good jobs nowadays.

>>16588590
>They lose interest because more recent writers deal with more relevant issues,


and many students have interest because they deal with immortal themes

>Attempting to teach the formation of culture that no longer has relevancy for its own sake will be ignored, no matter how much you try to force the issue.

twisting the text into a sick contortion for the sake of relevancy simply makes the text irrelevant

what they are doing, is tearing apart the text until there is nothing left. irrelevant classics are far better than dead classics; and the brighter ones among us will always be there to enjoy these irrelevant masterpieces.

>>16588633
I mean, fine, but that doesn't fix the fact that few people want to study the classics.

>>16586647
Yes, but thats not specifically capitalism. that is a subsection of a trend in something. Im not even against anti-capitalism. But people use the phrase "capitalism" as a catch all vague bad term instead of talking about the specific problem faced (which may essentially be an aspect of capital, but it itslef is not) in itself like you actually did (good on you).

>>16588640
I don't see the harm in that. Classics will out-live our era as they have out-lived many others, and a small niche of true lovers will do more than the bored feminist-marxist.

>>16588624
>every dictatorship has always adapted the gestures and costumes of an ancient nation
Sure thing

>>16584536
This is true for some. I’m a lower middle class pleb: I can’t read Latin or Greek, why the hell would I pick classics?

>>16587601
should have become an architect, nothing is higher than architect.

I don't know about the US, but here a person would study Greek and Latin in high school and during two years of "college" only to leave and teach kids who are 14yo and below.

>>16588445
yikes

>>16584500
Barbarism is such a misinformed word.
Back then in ancient culture, the lesser culture will called invading forces and other people they dont understand as barbarians.

>>16588713

>>16588651
based

>>16584500
Because the classics are hard. It's hard to learn Latin and Greek, and what do you get for it? Never mind the erudition and edification of the soul, you can't get a good job with that.

>>16584500
>Schop once wrote that when the study of Latin diminishes, the age of barbarism shall return despite all the technological advances. Was he right?
Take a look at the world at the moment. Yes, he was right.

>>16587601
>risk management
>finance
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Enjoy the next few years zoomer.

>>16588651
Basado

The interest in YA is because everyone wanted to get a shitty 4 part movie deal like Hunger Games

>>16588347
damn dude. any regrets?

>>16588561
1) Go read a book on the history of art.
2) Fascism is not Nazism, you imbecile. Fascist art relied heavily on modernist aesthetics, such as futurism. Its neoclassical elements were usually ''stripped", as were those of Nazism, but it didn't have just neoclassical elements, but many more.
3) Stripped classicism isn't real classicism. It's more of an eclectic movement combining classicism with modernism.

>>16588794
Languages aren't that hard compared to pure math or theoretical physics, you can do it. Of course it should only be studied at an elite university where you can get a job based off your pedigree, or if you're already from a rich family. The downside is that said schools will teach Classics in a leftist manner.

Universities don't make sense even for the classics. You're paying for impersonal lectures that present content worse than you'll find it in reputable textbooks like Wheelock. You'd be better off learning most of the material yourself and maybe hiring on a personal tutor for weekly/biweekly lessons with the money you saved.

>>16584500
nobody enrols in this stuff because its POZZED not because they aren't interested in classics

>>16584500
>Schop once wrote that when the study of Latin diminishes, the age of barbarism shall return despite all the technological advances. Was he right?
No.

>One should not study contemporaries and competitors, but the great men of antiquity, whose works have, for centuries, received equal homage and consideration. Indeed, a man of really superior endowments will feel the necessity of this, and it is just this need for an intercourse with great predecessors, which is the sign of a higher talent. Let us study Moliere, let us study Shakspeare, but above all things, the old Greeks, and always the Greeks." "For highly endowed natures," remarked I, " the study of the authors of antiquity may be perfectly invaluable ; but, in general, it appears to have little influ- ence upon personal character. If this were the case, all philologists and theologians would be the most ex-cellent of men. But this is by no means the case; and such connoisseurs of the ancient Greek and Latin authors are able people or pitiful creatures, according to the good or bad qualities which God has given them, or which they have inherited from their father and mother." " There is nothing to be said against that," re- turned Goethe" but it must not, therefore, be said, that the study of the authors of antiquity is entirely without effect upon the formation of character. A worthless man will always remain worthless, and a little mind will not, by daily intercourse with the great minds of antiquity, become one inch greater. But a noble man, in whose soul God has placed the capa-bility for future greatness of character, and elevation of mind, will, by a knowledge of, and familiar inter- course with, the elevated natures of ancient Greeks and Romans, every day make a visible approximation to similar greatness."
Goethe's conversations with Eckermann

>>16589383
Beyond based, thanks anon. Where can I read more of this?

>>16588410
Hrs basically right though.

>>16584500
>enrolling to being taught how greeks had slaves and womyn couldn't vote and greeks bad
Fuck off

>>16588366
>Homer probably was not one person
Jesus shut your gay mouth already you retard

Are there any krauts or frogs who can chime in and let us know if their classics departments are as bad as the anglophone ones?

>>16588366
>Homer probably was not one person,
Based on literally 0 evidence

>>16584500
>study of classics
Is this a subject? In your pic I see Ancient Greek and Latin where I'd assume they learn the language and culture. How does the study of classics work? Don't you have to spend a few years to learn both languages? Do they just spend half of their undergrad learning the languages and the rest studying the classics? I'm confused

>>16589505
Never mind I'm retarded, kidds already know the languages from school

>>16589383
absolutely based

>>16584500
I don't know if he's right but that sounds right. The age of barbarism is upon us society doesn't give a fuck about science or the truth.

>>16588939
I work for a company that deals with insurance and financial products, owned by a pension fund, and own my house outright at 23. I work in sales and have been getting job offers through the pandemic while working from home making the same pay working half the amount of time.

I'm as comfortable as you can get. Talented people don't have to worry, unlike you.

>>16588939
What is so funny? I work in sales for a company that isn't going anywhere, selling a product that is legally required. I own my home outright at 23. No debt. I've even gotten job opportunities thrown my way through this pandemic. When you have talent and bring in the most money for a company like mine, you're set for life. I could quit tomorrow and still be okay. You sound like someone who blames everyone but himself for his poor position in life.

>>16584500
Absolutely. I have a disdain for the majority of books written after 1900. The exceptions include, of course, Asimov and Tolkien. The rest can eat shit for the most part.

>>16588713
Hahaha

>>16590860
>>16590896

>>16584500
I'm a europoor in a country where higher education is relatively cheap, so my perspective on this is quite different, but I'm set on getting a classics degree then doing an English/German (my first and second foreign languages) translator masters degree. Assessing myself honestly, I don't see much of a chance in my future to have a family, and since I come from a relatively poor household, I'm fucked anyway. Might as well study what I love if I'm fucked either way. I'd rather blow my brains out than to sink any deeper into this bugman world around me by "studying comp sci" for the cash or any gay shit like that.

>>16584535
>>16586647
Universities were much better, especially in classical studies, in the heyday of capitalism.
Now that we have 50% of GDP in state expenditures, it has fortunately stopped!

>>16588366
>Homer probably was not one person, this hasn't been that controversial among actual academics
Anglo academia is still stuck on that bizarre "critical" phase. Are they still denying there were kings of Rome too?