I’ve decided to be less haphazard about how I write and read about the classics.
Here is the classics reading list. It’s long. It’ll probably take me a year or more to fill the gaps that I haven’t read, and also to re-read the pieces that I have read before.
I also want some excuses to write about them, in part because we all probably need some remedial education in them, given that when they are still taught, they’re taught from the perspective that all the people who wrote and cherished these stories are evil people to be loathed.
Rather than deconstructing, I’ll be reconstructing. The first commentary will be on the Oresteia of Aeschylus. Because I don’t know the classical languages and am not sure I will ever have time to do so, I’ll have to rely on translations most of the way through. The only language that I can read well enough besides English is French.
I tend to be bad at preserving most of the writing that I keep private, so this is partly also to help me be a bit more organized about how I keep my e-papers.
I’ll be mostly focusing on any one time period in the list at once, but I’m likely going to jump around when I feel like it.
If you write or have written commentary on one or many of the titles on the list, contact me, I’ll review it, and if it’s good, I’ll link out to your article.
I will participate in the comments. I personally started going through the classics in December, and have finished Homer (translated by Fagles) and Sophocles (University of Chicago) by now. I’ll pick up Aeschylus next to follow along, also the University of Chicago version.
I find that Classics list very interesting. I have recently been leaning away from a “universal” classics list towards classifying the Western tradition as strictly the synthesis of Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian thought, with other works taking place in more minor European traditions (Norse, Anglo, Russian, French, etc). But methods of canon classification is an endless discussion.
Anyways, good luck!
Thanks. You will enjoy tomorrow’s post. This sorr of response was what I was fishing for. I won’t be going directly in order, but I will try to stay in the same general time period.
Sounds good, my copy of Aeschylus will arrive Friday. I’m a physical book snob. “Classics that should always be a part of my library” provides a decent jusitification.
Best of luck. I look forward to reading your commentaries.
That’s a good list, I’m going to save it. I notice you don’t have “Le Morte d’Arthur” in there though. It really should be, especially if Roland is. Orlando Furioso maybe also should be included (since it’s about Roland). There’s the whole tripartite “the matter of France”, “the matter of Britain”, “the matter of Rome” concept under which all these great stories were taught through the medieval period.
I would also comment that Proust makes sense as an inclusion but don’t make yourself any promises about reading it. My grandparents’ bookshelf has the full set. It’s … long.
I tried once and failed.
Oh, and “Tristan et Iseult”. That’s maybe not of the same weight as the others but definitely is a classic that is often mentioned in the same breath as Roland, and certainly helped shape the whole “courtly love” idea.
I would like to know your opinion of Homer translations. I want to find editions of the Iliad and Odyssey that don’t cut out the juicy reactionary bits.
Me too. I’ll aim to find an older one.
I’m definitely gonna be tagging along.
Note if you’re going to read hippocrates text you might as well read galen’s Subfiguratio Empirica alongside it (outlines of empiricism), he comments on sextus empiricus, menodotus, hippocrates, and what was going on at the time. Levantine essayist says almost everything on empiricism is contained in it, and it’s pretty short.
John Gray is essentially Nrx before it was so, and his book is on Routledge classics “Enlightenment’s Wake”. A reprint of his 1997 work. I wonder what he will do he finds out there’s a reactionary/neoreactionary movement that has his ideas repackaged, or rediscovered it perhaps.
http://www.amazon.com/Enlightenments-Wake-Politics-Routledge-Classics/dp/0415424046
I’ll make a note of it. Maybe send him an e-mail?