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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   3606 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 30, 2023

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What's a reasonable base/canon of Western literature to be familiar with to call oneself "educated" like a man from the early 20th century? I want to read in chronological order the great works and ideas of western civilization and am hoping Mottizens can help me fill in some gaps. I'm mainly interested in literature but of course there is room for philosophical works as well. Obviously this can be a really wide range of works, but I'm looking for the absolute indisputable foundation, things you cannot skip at all.

What I have so far (very basic in rough chronological order):

Iliad/Odyssey by Homer

Dialogues by Plato

Metamorphoses by Ovid

The Bible (King James version for the literary value?)

Beowulf (already read this one)

Summa Theologica by Aquinas? (Not sure how foundational this is)

Canterbury Tales by Chaucer

Divine Comedy by Dante

Shakespeare's Works

Paradise Lost by Milton

Don Quixote by Cervantes

Moby-Dick by Melville

In Search of Lost Time by Proust

Thoughts? Please help me fill in some gaps!

The Summa is a big 'un and unless you seriously mean to delve into mediaeval logic and theology, better to just look up particular queries in it (e.g. what did Aquinas say about X?)

All the thumbs up about The Divine Comedy, especially if you mean to stick with all three volumes and not drop out after Inferno. I would personally recommend the Hollander translation, which is about twenty years old now, but all available on Kindle on Amazon.

You might throw in a little poetry by Wordsworth and Tennyson and Browning as well; generally The Idylls of the King for Tennyson as his take on the Arthurian legend. Browning has long poems but also lots of short ones which might be easier to read at a go.

And because I love the sound of the words, even though I can't speak Italian (modern or mediaeval) or Occitan, but just mangle them aloud in a bad French accent, here's a bit from the Divine Comedy:

"Tan m'abellis vostre cortes deman,

qu'ieu no me puesc ni voill a vos cobrire.

Ieu sui Arnaut, que plor e vau cantan;

consiros vei la passada folor,

e vei jausen lo joi qu'esper, denan.

Ara vos prec, per aquella valor

que vos guida al som de l'escalina,

sovenha vos a temps de ma dolor!"

Poi s'ascose nel foco che li affina.

'Your courteous question pleases me so much

I neither can nor would conceal myself from You.

'I am Arnaut, weeping and singing as I make my way.

I see with grief past follies and I see,

rejoicing, the joy I hope is coming.

'Now I pray You, by that power

which guides You to the summit of the stairs,

to remember, when the time is fit, my pain.'

Then he vanished in the fire that refines them.

The Summa is a big 'un and unless you seriously mean to delve into mediaeval logic and theology, better to just look up particular queries in it (e.g. what did Aquinas say about X?)

On the other hand, a good introduction to Thomism would help clear up a lot of the confusion a modern person would have going into Aquinas. Edward Feser is a good contemporary Catholic philosopher whose books are very illuminating.

For a broader book on medieval thought, Etienne Gilson's Reason and Revelation in the Middle Ages is tough to beat.

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