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/lit/ - Literature

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16668844 No.16668844 [Reply] [Original]

I'm an amateur reader. I have been reading more thoroughly for about a year and all my readings have been very erratic. I feel I need a more solid background.


I am going to start a systematic and chonological reading. I guess this way some time in the future I will appreciate better more recent literature.

So I decided to start with Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. I plan to go later for Plato and move on in chronological order, probably the Bible and so on.

Any advices on how to approach Homer's epics?

Also, would any of you advice to read Gilgamesh before or after the Bible?

>> No.16669070

>>16668844
To attain the best background consume the following:
Read Chapman's translation for Homer
Read Plato
Read Aristotle
Read Thucydides and Herodotus, alongside any history book that chronicles the events of the Persian and the Peloponnesian War.
Read Sextus Empiricus
Read Plotinus, Ptolemy, Proclus and Porphyry alongside Plato and Aristotle
Read Seneca and Lucretius
Read Cicero, Longinus and Demetrius alongside the speeches of Demosthenes and other famed Rhetoricians. For maximum benefit read these along with Aristotle's rhetoric.
Finish with the Bible.
All that comes before and after can be read once you've completed these works.

>> No.16669381

>>16669070
What will I get out of reading this?

>> No.16669495

>>16668844
Read either Lattimore (better) or Fagles (easier) translation of Homer. You need a background for the mythology he presents, so either read Hesiod's Works & Days and Theogony (released in the same time as Homer), Apollodorus's Library (released later but still a primary source, more readable and comprehensive), or Edith Hamilton's Mythology (easy, quick read). I would also recommend reading A Brief History of Ancient Greece for some good contextual elements. Also, before reading Plato, you should read the Greek tragedians (Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides) and historians (Herodotus and Thucydides). You also should consider reading the Presocratics before plato; I recommend "The First Philosophers" for this.

>> No.16669502

>>16668844
Also, Gilgamesh isn't super enjoyable to many people, so it might be better to read it later on, after the bible, giving you that extra interest factor as you see the parallels between it and the OT.

>> No.16671032

>>16669495
Thanks anon,I saved this suggestion, it will be helpful.

>> No.16671047

>>16669502
I've heard this commentary somewhere else. I think Gilgames is important.

>> No.16671354

>>16668844
Help yourself with secondary literature and don't let any pseud tell you that it's unnecessary or a waste of time. Don't think even things like sparknotes are above you, even as you have your foundation in classics and continue to modern works, there is always something about any given work that you'll miss. The pirate bay has a collection of different translations of Homer, check out different perspectives that are exhibited in the translators' introductions, they all have valuable things to say. For your first reading sample different translations and go for the one you like best, translations are very subjective (get some in your native tongue too if it's not English) and it's important to enjoy your reading, willpower can only get you so far. Also on pirate bay there are lectures on Homer by Elizabeth Vandiber, highly recommended. There is really no end to the rabbit hole of Homer's commentaries, but you at least read enough of them to recognize their value and figure out for yourself how deep you want to get into it.

>> No.16671475

Homer. The Ossian of the South.

>> No.16671512

>>16668844
>I am going to start a systematic and chonological reading.
ah, no way this goes wrong