/lit/ - Literature

Hello, /lit/izens,

I have recently embarked on the adventure of a lifetime: traversing the wide world of Western canonical literature. My roadmap is as follows:
>Greeks
>Desert Fathers
>Romans
>Bible
>Latins & early Italians
>Late Italians
>Middle English
>Scandinavians
>Shakespeare

I may have omitted some cultures that I should not have; I would appreciate if you can help me fix that.

I have also consciously omitted the Sumerians and Egyptians - I plan on that being its own silo for another journey. Of course, similar thoughts apply to the omission of other African and all Asian canon. I am conflicted about including Mesoamerica as I do feel it has its own cultural foundations, but I may be ignorant.

I completed The Iliad recently (tr. Fagles) and am now starting The Odyssey. I will follow this with Hesiod, then continue down the Greek path for some time. Also, I'm debating whether to add philosophy and art of the respective eras to my reading list as I do think it helps inform the characteristics and cultures of the people of the time, though it would significantly increase the reading load.

Would anyone be interested in longform threads that are dedicated to this project? It would be great to have an open forum to discuss all of these seminal works. I don't have a schedule in mind, but perhaps a thread can be started every Monday or something and folks can drop in whenever to offer their two cents. The core focus of these longform threads would be to learn from and enrich each other.

I'm excited to contribute to /lit/ with my thoughts as I progress, and just as excited to hear yours!

Are there any authors who are known for more than three distinct works among non-specialists? Counting series/cycles as single works, I can't name a single one that makes it to four in any period.

>Hard mode: No Ancient Greeks

Do you have to be religious (specifically Christian) to fully understand and appreciate much of the Western canon? Dante, Milton, Dostoevsky, Melville, etc?

I’ve seen so many reviews of these famous works on goodreads (from people who are clearly atheists) shitting on religious beliefs and saying dumb shit like, “Oh this work is a classic, it really represents how stupid and outdated believing in God is.” Like how fucking retarded do you have to have those takes? Most of the western canon are from guys who unironically believed angels existed and that some deity had a special interest in their souls. Most people just can’t fathom these things or can’t appreciate it.

I had a mystical experience upon prayer (saw a white light, everything flashed with colors like a rainbow) and I have to reveal this onto my brothers on /lit/.

G-d cannot be One, for that would limit him to numberhood, making numbers coeternal with him. We must conclude therefore, that G-d is polytheistic and non-monotheistic, necessitating an infinite emanationist hierarchy of gods, not reducible to created dualistic categories such as 'number'.

Refute this, protip: one cannot.

don't know if there's anyone left here who was around at the time, but a few years ago didn't /lit/ used to have a document that provided a reading list/study guide for philosophy from the greeks to the present day? It was an infographic or a chart - it might have been a standalone website, but I am pretty sure it was actually on Google Docs

what happened to that? It was really comprehensive. I should have saved a copy

Does anyone else hate going to the bookstore? I'm so disgusted every time I go. The shelves are stocked well with modern garbage that's kept in good condition while canonical works are scarce and in bad condition. It's rare that I find a canonical work, rarer that I find it in decent condition and when I buy it, the book is never restocked even weeks/months later. Even someone more modern and "progressive" like Virginia Woolf can be hard to find. I meant to go back to look at the garbage modern works but it slipped my mind. I really can't imagine how people can be interested in that garbage. I know most people feel the same way about literature in general, but the canon is at least more interesting than the garbage that lonely housewives read. Funko Pops, children's toys, and poorly written novels for housewives vastly outnumber canonical works. Yes, I live in America, sadly. All of the foreign bookstores I've been to have all had the basic respect of not having the eyesore of children's toys and Funko Pops stocked, at least.

Why haven't you read the western canon?

Which of you shall become atlas? Which of you shall bear the weight of western canon upon your shoulders now that bloom has tired?

> Homer or Aeschylus

> Vergil

> Dante

> Chaucer

> Tolstoy

Ok /lit/, I'm falling for the meme. I've mostly read fantasy and scifi books all my life, and I want to start reading the classics. I have a copy of Don Quixote I want to read because I was raised a Spanish speaker, but other than that, I don't know how to start. I don't even know if I'll be able to understand Don Quixote, so if there's a better starting point, I'd love to know about it.

>Inb4 start with the greeks

If free will wasn't real we would all be doing the exact same thing. We all would be writing the same thing. Self expression is the only proof we have of free will.

why can't people of today think or write like these bros?

Will there every be a literary titan as the ones depicted in related pic? Is the world forever too fractured and "modern" for there for one man/woman to have god-tier skill and also pre-eminent influence on culture?

DFW would probably be the closest thing in modern times I think. But he is surely a meme of our time. What about another Kafka or Joyce? (unless you think they were memes too).

I mean is art dead in this regard? Can anyone name a contemporary composer (ik you can but you get what I mean. I can't and most plebs can't so.)

Also DFW is not even that known. Taylor Swift gets several hundred milllion youtube views, is a name known by everyone in the world and yet the name "David Foster Wallace" which belonged to one of the greatest artists of the last 30 years people just stare at you blankly.

Dante, Homer, & Virgil.

2ez