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/lit/ - Literature

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File: 24 KB, 260x384, 9780140275360_p0_v1_s260x420.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
6489598 No.6489598 [Reply] [Original]

is it ever justifiable to skim/speed read literature? sometimes i want to absorb the concept or gist of a work mainly for background information for later work.

pic related, reading iliad now and find it a bit boring and repetitive to read thoroughly

>> No.6489609

just read a wikipedia article if you just want background. Ofcourse, properly reading (and learning to enjoy it) it would be "better".

>> No.6489625

>>6489598
>is it ever justifiable to skim/speed read literature?

No.

Now memorize the names of those fucking ships, you pleb. Every last one. This will be on the final exam.

>> No.6489632

give up on books
gg no re

>> No.6491502

YES OF COURSE

If you even need to ask there is little hope for you

>> No.6491535
File: 1.52 MB, 500x222, 1422919920416.gif [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
6491535

>>6489625
Is there no one else on /lit/ that liked the catalog?

>> No.6491638

>>6489625
The great gathering of armies is just a list of places to get the audience in on the song.

>> No.6491700
File: 723 KB, 1502x1253, Homeric_Greece.svg.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
6491700

>>6491535
I did, particularly when I read along with the map. Rather than just being a string of <greek name> from <greek place> it made it feel like the whole greek world was massing line-by-line, adding compelling verisimilitude to the work.

I find myself buying in. Yeah, multiples of ten, he's pulling these out of his ass...wait, why did the Symians only send three ships? New colony with low manpower? "Three" fit the poem's meter? What did they hope to gain by sending any? Despite only having the manpower to send 12 ships, did Greater Ajax's mad skills manage to keep Salamis out of Athens' sphere in that time?

I suppose you could get that into it just by reading the bits of biography associated with each name, but having it all together like that really spurs my imagination.

>> No.6491773
File: 3.18 MB, 2702x4053, Fontana_di_trevi_Oceanus_detail.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
6491773

>>6489625
Srsly!

And doesn't it bother you that Hesiod doesn't mention the rest of the Okeanids?

>> No.6492060

>>6491700
Autism

>> No.6492102

Oh! An Iliad thread, I've been reading an old used copy lately, but is there any consensus on which translation is the best one?

>> No.6493207

>>6492102
Fagles. Everyone knows that penguin is the best publishing company.

>> No.6493262

>>6493207
No love for Rieu?

>> No.6493305

>>6492102
>consensus
Ha!

>> No.6493306

>>6492102
Rodney Merrill's, by far

>> No.6493309
File: 156 KB, 568x820, 1413685295330.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
6493309

>>6493306
pic related, compare it with any other translation

>> No.6493338
File: 55 KB, 685x1082, books.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
6493338

>>6493309
I wasn't sure about Merrill's after seeing the start but after getting used to the rhythm it did seem pretty damn good. There's a lot to be said for trying to recreate the Homeric rhythm.

On the other hand, I also like what I've seen of Lombardo's, which is the opposite in that it's free verse.

>> No.6493895

>>6492060
this, better not go too far on enjoying literature buddy, or an anonymous user of a singaporean wakeboarding board will criticize your interest in silly things like these newfangled oralists

>> No.6493912
File: 121 KB, 465x2037, iliad translations.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
6493912

>>6492102
this was posted recently

i've heard fagles criticized as hipster, but that might be another hipster trying to distance himself from his own kind

i know pope is dated, uses roman deity names, and coerces the text into rhymed couplets, but goddamn dat epic phrasing makes my dick hard

>> No.6493916

Serves you right for reading a prose translation instead of Alexander Pope.

>> No.6493919

>>6493912
Is that "witch" in the last Johnston translation a typo from whoever made that pic?

>> No.6493931

>>6493912
All of them have a thoroughly anglo cadence and sound more like Beowulf than Homer, except based Pope.

>> No.6493946

>>6493931
Is there an English translation that attempts to import Homeric verse at a technical level? Is it even transferable into English?

>> No.6493997

>>6493946
Greek verse is based on the length of the syllable sound. Elizabethan poets tried to write in such a metre but it was pretty much a disaster in English and they quickly abandoned the experiment.

Most of the translations in the image anon posted are trying to adapt Homer's Greek metre of long-short-short syllables into the standard accentual-syllabic metre of English (stressed-unstressed-unstressed). It doesn't really work too well, I think.

>> No.6494036

>>6493919
Johnston's whole translation is available free online:

https://records.viu.ca/~johnstoi/homer/iliad_title.htm

It's a typo. The pic comparing translations comes from an Amazon reviewer.