Do you hate old literature?

Post Reply New Topic

I enjoy reading classic literature.

Novels from the 19th century tend to be a bit "wordy" and flowery by today's standards.

I remember reading "The Deerslayer" and other books by James Fennimore Cooper and thinking: "This guy has to be kidding! People back then didn't talk like university professors"

But maybe they did! That book was a HUGE best seller back in it's day.

There was an English classic called "The Boy's Own Magazine" which went for decades with one man writing most of the stories. (Billy Bunter and so on)

In the 1960's the publisher told him to "tone his vocabulary down" because kids these days didn't understand what he was saying. He retired instead of "dumbing down" his writing.

When I was eight or nine years old I had no trouble reading "Alice in Wonderland" or "Robinson Caruso" or "Wind in the Willows", "Treasure Island", "Robin Hood" or even "Pilgrim's Progress".

Shakespeare didn't set out to write arty-farty "literature". He wanted the masses to come to the theater and pay their penny to get in.

So the real question is why are young people so ignorant these days that they can't even read or understand the glorious achievements of their ancestors?

I actually like old-style books, even though they are hard to understand sometimes. And I will shamelessly admit that yes, I do enjoy Shakespeare.

I remember when I had to read The Odyssey in Pre-AP English in the 9th grade. I gave up on it after, like, the first chapter because I had no idea what was going on. I tend to have the same problem with any book that was published over a century ago, although I did read The Scarlet Letter in whole, and I was able to understand most of it.

I really enjoyed Romeo and Juliet, though, mainly because we read it aloud in class and the teacher was able to help us understand it. We each read individual parts, and I read the part of Friar Laurence.

I remember last semester, when I took British Lit, I had to read all kinds of stories that were written centuries ago. Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, The Tain, The Canterbury Tales, all of which I had a difficult time comprehending. Sparknotes saved me.

I LOVED Romeo and Juliet and understood the fighting and poison etc. I can understand the overall plot for example Mocha Dick (where Mellville got his Moby Dick idea from) is basically these men getting together in small boats throwing harpoons at the massive whale. Descriptions of "White as Wool" White as the sea I understand but there are terms I'm left scratching my head since I have never heard them. The first few pages of Moby Dick itself I threw in the towel Cato and Sword???? We have a hardtime understanding metaphors in real life yet alone literature from 1851!! ! Plus is it just me or is MOBY DICK! Copy right infrigement on Mocha Dick? That's like me writing Jerry Potter (YA! I'd be sued by J.K. Rowling in a second!)

I loved Faust, and Dante's Infernp, but the Aeneid is strange, and many older books annoy me to some degree. I love modern English.

I mention Sparknotes and the teacher said the following: Egad! No! Please don't read these kind of summaries. You've got to read the real text. Melville's language is no different than our own and the point of studying "the classics" or any literature is to appreciate the beauty, the nuance, and the artistry of a writer's language. It's not about the plot. In fact, the plot is almost secondary in Moby Dick. Give yourself lots of time to read slowly and carefully. Read out loud and read with a pen to write yourself notes and summaries and reminders to look things up.

So much for useing that site. Understanding old literature is so difficult.

She is right you know. But on the other hand, the use of SparkNotes is generally not something to be shared with your prof.

hate is a strong word. i don't hate or really dislike classic literature, i would say i generally enjoy it more than modern literature. it can be more difficult to understand, but i'd agree with the teacher for the most part, though a good plot can be very enjoyable too.
my first experience of old literature was the jabberwocky, not that old and written as nonsense but probably one of the most beautiful collection of 'words' i'll ever read..
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird,and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!

"He took his vorpal sword in hand;
Long time the manxome foe he sought
?So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"
He chortled in his joy.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

as Alice said 'It seems very pretty,' she said when she had finished it, 'but it's rather hard to understand!'
(You see she didn't like to confess, even to herself, that she couldn't make it out at all.)
'Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas?-only I don't exactly know what they are!
However, somebody killed something: that's clear, at any rate'

Hey, sparknotes isn’t a substitute for reading the text; it is about the beauty of the language. HOWEVER, if you’re finding a text particularly impenetrable, a bit of summary and analysis might be just the thing to crack it open.

My lit teachers always encouraged me to do whatever it took to understand a reading—slow, careful reading, paraphrasing and annotation, no-fear-Shakespeare, WHATEVER.

There is a beauty to the language and (more importantly) the thoughts those works contain, but that beauty is wasted if you give up reading them in frustration…

I know. I am going to read the text of course. Those summaries sound good though for example I began part one and it mention New York well I got no idea from the first 3 pages that Ishmael was in New York.