/lit/ - Literature

>>17943926
Shakespeare - Catholic
Dante - Catholic
Mozart - Catholic
Joyce - Catholic

Really gets the noggin joggin. If nothing else faith is manifestly a strong framework to produce meaningful art across the board

>>17861080
If you are SOLELY interested in English literature, you can skip Herodotus and Thucydides. They're fun reads, especially Herodotus, but they don't contribute much to the development of later drama.

Before reading anything, I recommend 'The Well Educated Mind' by Bauer. Great breakdown of the Canon and gives you tips for insightful reading.

ESSENTIAL
>Hesiod
>Homer
>Aeschylus
>Sophocles
>Euripides
>Aristophanes

To prepare for the above I personally recommend Hamilton's Mythology and any primer to classical literature, I like the one by Jenkyns.

OPTIONAL
>Thucydides
>Herodotus
>Alcaeus
>Sappho
>Pindar

Then read a short philosophy primer. I recommend 'Problems of Philosophy' by Bertrand Russell.

NEXT - ESSENTIAL
>Plato
>Aristotle
>Cicero
>Virgil
>Ovid
>Augustine
>Aquinas (yes you can read abridged)
>Dante

OPTIONAL
>The historical stuff like Plutarch's Lives, Tacitus' Annals, Livy, etc
>Horace
>Catullus
>Lucretius
>Caesar's bits and pieces
>Aurelius if you're more of a philosophical bent. I'm mainly dealing with development of western literature here

If you're primarily interested in English Literature you can look at the old stuff like Beowulf and other medieval literature. My specialism is Classical stuff (as above) and Renaissance, so there's a bit of a gap in my knowledge. However, Renaissance literature is far and away the best produced in England ever. In a very short span of time you had Shakespeare, Milton, Marlowe, Jonson, Donne, etc. So, to get to grips with Renaissance, after having read Dante I recommend:

ESSENTIAL
>Chaucer
>Malory
>Spenser
>Montaigne (Essais)
>Cervantes
>Shakespeare (complete works. Prior to attempting I recommend Bate's 'The Genius of Shakespeare' and '1599: A year in the life of Shakespeare' to really appreciate how incredible he was. Emma Smith has a half-decent primer too).
>Marlowe

OPTIONAL
>Jonson
>Kyd
>Webster
>Donne

NEXT, moving through restoration and enlightenment, you should probably read

>Moliere
>Milton
>Pascal - Pensees
>Spinoza - Ethics
>Voltaire
>Rousseau (confessions really for literature focus)
>Johnson - essays
>Goethe
>Balzac
>Stendhal
>Flaubert
>Maupassant
>Austen
>Eliot
>Thoreau
>Pushkin
>Dostoevsky
>Tolstoy
>Chekhov
>Dickens
>Henry James
>Proust
>Joyce
>Woolf

DAMN I did not expect to effort post like that. Obviously there are HUGE names missing but I think this works pretty well as a condensed Canon that shouldn't take more than 18 months to work through. Let me know if you have any questions, especially around the classical reading or Renaissance

>>17739773
What a colossal generalisation. Are you an imbecile? I have a first class degree in the humanities and a Master's in Literature. The great passion of my life is in the study of Literature, Art and Philosophy. What is the result? A deep, abiding conviction that objective beauty exists and objective standards can be applied to art. Don't tell me that the works of Shakespeare or Goethe or Proust are no more valuable than the mud etchings of savages in a dark and dismal jungle. Postmodernism elevates the Benin bronzes to Michaelangelo. What rubbish! I loathe and detest the notion that 'equality', a tenuous term and best applied to the innate dignity of man merited by their creation in the image of God, is now wielded by the proverbial foxes to demand equal access to grapes. Not everybody should go to university - not everybody should be allowed. Gateways should be rendered narrower, not torn apart by the forceps of jealousy and pride. Academia used to mean something. Everything I love is degraded by the very existence of LGBTQ literary theory. But guess what? I am excellently paid, have a prestigious career in society, a wonderful white fiancee and a circle who share my convictions. I will do my utmost to keep the flame alive so that once the tide turns something from the great library of human dignity and lofty thought yet remains. And when my grandchildren's grandchildren look back to me and those like me who loathe and detest the corruption and perversion of the West's monumental artistic history, I comfort myself with the old Eliot quote:

>That things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life.

I rankle at your post and despise the mindset it betrays.

>>17412972
The latest nickelback album isn't comparable to the top composers living today and citizen kane is hardly comparable to low budget rom-coms. If you want to write the book equivalent, which I suppose would be cheap derivative genre fiction, then reading the greats isn't important, but if I recall correctly that image is from a graduate writing program which has produced a Nobel Prize winner and 3 booker prize winners, among others. Why not aspire to be great? And the classics are well worth reading besides, because they're the pinnacle of pleasure when it comes to reading literature. I recommend 'why read the classics' by italo calvino, and/or 'how to read and why' by Harold Bloom. Or better yet, order Dubliners, Mrs Dalloway, Swann's Way, Lolita, The Sound and The Fury, Heart of Darkness, Anna Karenina, and the short stories of Anton Chekhov and prepare to have your writing, mind, and life altered in a fundamental way.

Best books on appreciating art, how to look at paintings, art history, and the like?

>>17213562
But nothing remotely close to this