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/lit/ - Literature

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5777019 No.5777019 [Reply] [Original]

Is this stuff a decent starting point for somebody interested in literature?

>Shakespeare's essential shit
>Don Quixote
>Metamorphosis (Ovid)
>The Canterbury Tales
>The Odyssey and The Iliad
>The Divine Comedy
>Plato's shit
>The Bible

I'm currently reading Don Quixote and finding it fascinating as fuck. Only on page 300, though, really looking forward to the supposedly even more brilliant second book.

>> No.5777024

I want to say something bad but that's a pretty good list for somebody that is not used to reading


i'm happy you like Don Quixote

>> No.5777026

Those are the ideal foundation but that'll be a lot of dense reading. I would suggest interspersing it with some more recent novels that are easy, short reads, as breaks.

>> No.5777041

>>5777024
>i'm happy you like Don Quixote
So am I. I was expecting something a lot denser, a lot drier, and a lot less clever. Very entertaining and at times very funny. I feel kind of bad for reading a translation, but that's probably just from /lit/ shaming me.
>>5777026
>I would suggest interspersing it with some more recent novels that are easy, short reads, as breaks.
That sounds like a pretty decent idea. What are some recent, more simple novels that you have in mind? This could be a good opportunity to tackle some modern 'classics' that aren't as trying. I already sort of did this, as I began my dive into literature by reading Catch-22 recently.

By the way, if anybody has any suggestions for specific translations or advice for reading the works I mentioned, by all means say something.

>> No.5777053

>>5777024

>liking 800 pages of poop and barf jokes
>being this pleb

>> No.5777068

>>5777041
Try the book If on a winter's night a traveler.

>> No.5777071

>>5777053

>who is rabelais lol sorry i'm new to reading please let me use the pleb meme though it's fun to pretend like i'm not

>> No.5777077

>>5777019
Pretty good.

Try this for more:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._John%27s_College_%28Annapolis/Santa_Fe%29#Reading_list

>> No.5777079

>>5777053
I find it pretty interesting reading poop and barf jokes from the early 1600s. The humor also seems to come less from bodily humor and more from Don Quixote's madness. If you had said liking x amount of pages of jokes about insanity and confusing reality with fantasy, your point might have actually been valid.

>> No.5777080

>>5777053
>>5777071
who is swift
who is joyce
who is pynchon
etc. etc.

>> No.5777199

>>5777079

>Don Quixote
>mad

uh huh

>> No.5777259

Virgil's Aeneid is also essential, but otherwise you're doing pretty well.

Don't bother reading anything written after Shakespeare until you've mastered him and everything before him.

>> No.5777268

>>5777019
I'm curious, which translation of Cervantes are you reading?

>> No.5777276

What's a good English translation of Don Quixote?

I'm asking for a friend

>> No.5777291

Edith Grossman's translation of Don Quixote is Harold Bloom's choice.

>> No.5777293

>>5777026
>that'll be a lot of dense reading

literally none of those books are dense.

>> No.5777301

>>5777291
>Harold Bloom
Literally who?

>> No.5777314

>>5777301
irrelevant, overpublished critic/professor whom /lit/ has a love/hate relationship with

>> No.5777338

>>5777291
>Oy vey! You NEED this nee translation by G-d's very own chosen!
>This new translation is NEW, making it a must have
>No need to buy $2 OLD copies from second-hand stores
>Deposite your shekels directly into nice Ms. Grossman's account

Wow, Bloom, and I thought you were above this petty tribalism.

>> No.5777343

>>5777314
Yeah, unfortunately /lit/ has some angsty iconoclastic freshmen, which accounts for the "hate" part of the relationship.

>> No.5777348

>>5777291
>Somewhere in La Mancha, in a place whose name I do not care to remember, a gentleman lived not long ago, one of those who has a lance and ancient shield on a shelf and keeps a skinny nag and a greyhound for racing.
dropped

>> No.5777360

>>5777348
I am a native speaker, and that translation is nearly perfect...

>> No.5777364

>>5777343
as opposed to the naive fawning freshmen, who account for the "love" part of the relationship?

>> No.5777369

>>5777360

I'm also a native speaker and that is dog shit.
Thomas Shelton or nothing.

>> No.5777373

>>5777364
I don't know where you went to college, but these days, hatred of Bloom is driven into you pretty quickly, by both professors and peers. It is not cool to like Bloom, and you don't realize he's right about nearly everything until years later. Some realize it in college and resist the influence; they're the lucky ones. :-)

>> No.5777397

>>5777369

You understand it's possible for people to be drawn to different translations depending on their own taste in style right? You understand that a translator's job is more complicated than a mere replication of the original text right? Right?

>> No.5777405

>>5777397

Of course, hence Shelton.

>> No.5777409

>>5777397
Don't listen to him. The translation he's promoting is the first one anyone ever did, and it's totally out of print (for a reason).

>> No.5777512

>>5777360
Nearly perfect in what sense? It's too sterile

>> No.5777527

Tried to compare the Oggsford; that red one by Edith Grossman and the Penguin Classics version

I think the Penguin C. and that red one are alright; Didn't like the OUP version.

>> No.5777535

>>5777019

I'm 15 pages away from the end of the Grossman translation. I haven't read the other translations though I did look at Samuel Putnam's and thought it also looked pretty good but god damn is this book ever incredible. I'm not looking forward to finishing it in the next half hour because I am anticipating the melancholy tone will probably transition into tragedy relatively shortly. Really though what a fucking massive book. Hilarious, compulsively readable, endlessly quotable, filled with one brilliant scenario after another, and characterized by two of the greatest and richest characters I've come across in literature. I never thought I'd feel more for a donkey than I felt for Balthazar but Cervantes even managed that feat. God damn

>> No.5777545

>>5777019


OP, listen to this guy: >>5777026

That's exactly what I did to get into high literature, and it's working out real well.

>> No.5777558

>>5777077
phew, why should they care of a reading list of some random college, biased to the local literature too

>> No.5777562

>>5777373
I only took a few lit classes in college and Bloom never came up.

I don't consider him a "bad" critic (in fact I was mainly bringing up the hyperbolic aspect of his namedropping), but I do think he's irrelevant and overpublished. I think the fact that he's overpublished/referenced is the only reason people still discuss him. He basically a figurehead of outdated/conservative criticism.

Last thing I read by him were Blake criticisms, which I generally found insightful, but no contemporary critic should bring up Freud so frequently.

>> No.5777572

>>5777019
Seems like a lot of compulsory reading of ''The Classics'', if you're interested in literature studies, you're going to have to read them eventually, but if you just want to get into literature, read what you want to read.

>> No.5777573

>>5777259
i would personally read bucolics first or even instead, aeneid is an imitation of homer, also written as a political propaganda, reading iliad and odissey you already covered similar stuff, while bucolics affected the culture quite a lot on their own, even though afaik he wasn't first there too but who knows of others

>> No.5777577

oh, and also metamorphoses partially cover the plot of aeneid too

>> No.5779252

>>5777268
Samuel Putnam's; it was the only one the library had. I know that Grossman has the most recommended translation, but this one has been going just fine.