What works are absolutely essential reading in terms of understanding other lit (allusions, context, etc.) besides-
>Greeks
>King James Bible
>Shakespeare's major plays (Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, etc.)
>>7825509
virgil & milton
the fucking sticky
>>7825509
Greeks should at the very least consist of Iliad, Odyssey and Plato's Dialogues
Bible doesn't need to be KJV- good luck getting through an complete KJV bible.
Macbeth, Hamlet, King Lear at the very least for Shakespeare
You probably should also read Quixote
Also Dante's Inferno at the very least.
Goethe's Faust and Gogol's story "The Overcoat" are a bit of a stretch for 'essentials' but are pillars in their respective language that were crucial to the development of modern German and Russian literature respectively
That should give you a decent bare bones understanding of most modern literature
>>7825562
Don't even go there. Casts waaaay too wide of a net.
I am asking for the short list (in fact, the really short list). Not 30 books from every country and certainly not a 'lit starter guide' with Catch 22 and A Clockwork Orange.
Specifically, anything that has had massive influence on the western canon and/or thought in general.
>>7825559
So for Milton, just Paradise Lost? What by Virgil? Aeneid?
>>7825565
This seems like a really sensible answer. Good call on Quixote & Inferno.
>Bible doesn't need to be KJV- good luck getting through an complete KJV bible.
What books of the bible, if you had to do some pruning? So far, I have read the Torah (first 5 books). I plan to read the New Testament & Job but I'm not sure after that. Also, not going to read the whole thing back to back, just a few books here and there in between other things.
>>7825574
heh, to give you a heads up, you're talking to pretentious wankers. you really would be better off reading the sticky.
KJV for instance isn't hard to get through. it's designed so farm hands could read it, and it's influence on english is because it made reading in english possible for the great unwashed.
on the other hand, if you want to understand non-protestant works, like dante, you're going to need a douay rheims which is much harder to get through.
these kids are trying to pretend they know a coherent 30 book list. the truth is, they don't and if you wanted to get all the allusions, you're better off reading aaaaaall the greeks you can get your hands on, and then aaaaaaaall the hellenistic era works those anons forget, and all the latin works too.
you're asking for surface reading for allusions which should be obviously antithetical. you would be better off reading hall's dictionary of subjects and symbols in art than listening to what cunts who haven't read more than thirty books recommend to you.
Goethe
>>7825602
If you are really set on skipping around (i'd just read it all) the essentials other than the torah are probably Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings in the old testament.
As for the new testament its not that long. But definitely read Mathew Mark Luke John Acts and Revelations
>>7825609
>you're talking to pretentious wankers
Proceeds to post the most pretentious response in the thread.
> it's designed so farm hands could read it
Yeah, farmers in the 1600's
bad troll
>>7825609
I have looked around in the sticky for a concise list that fulfills my criteria. I don't think there is one although I would love to be proven wrong.
>>7825622
I'll eventually read the whole thing I just want to know what's most crucial. Also, I've heard it's best to skip around instead of reading all the way through in order. Is this true?
Also, with respect to the Hellenes, Herodotus and Thucydides, Xenophon and the fragments and reminiscences of Heraclitus and Pythagoras. These are massively influential in the European intellectual, literary tradition. And of course Aristotle.
Only an ignorant bumpkin who knows nothing of the real art of poetry and symbolism and the laws of correspondence would suppose he Bible written ONLY for mere farmhands. Obviously the Parable of the Sower is not simply advice to people who literally sow, no more than Genesis is meant to be taken literally.
>>7825634
do you think farmers in the 1600s were especially smart and time rich? most of the cliche phrases of english (e.g. "filthy lucre", "gave up the ghost", "stumbling block") come from tyndale's translation, which james stole once tyndale died in infamy. it's not pretense if you've got the goods, bby.
>>7825636
kek, you'd have probably found Bloom's Western Canon if you were capable of researching anything for yourself. if you want an intensive course, you're going to need more than thirty books to cover even a corner of the scope you want to get to- start here if you're not going to half ass it like the rest of these fucks:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_books
>>7825637
better than the alfred north whitehead approach
>>7825656
tyndale in 1521, rekin yo ass:
> before very long I shall cause a plough boy to know the scriptures better than you do
>>7825659
>start here
>"sample list"
>161 items, some items consisting of dozens of works alone
>start here
>implying you've read 10% of what's listed here
also, re: Bloom's canon
>Austen, Freud, Ibsen, the list could go on...
Since you're so good at reading, maybe reread my topic-
>What works are absolutely essential reading in terms of understanding other lit (allusions, context, etc.)
None of those are 'absolutely essential'. You show a complete lack of ability to pare off works that are 'classics' but certainly not crucial.
>The Bible meme
Pls guys, just pls.
>>7825726
kek, you think 161 books is a lot? damn, you low standards having motherfucker. what do you want me to do tell you that any anon in search of wealth of information would do well to form a screen memory of dancing the tarantella inappropriately? if you're too lazy to read 161 books when that doesn't even cover all the references you'll come across in most lit, you're a fucking lost cause.
>only the essentials pls
the essentials of canon are the whole fucking canon. you're asking people to pare it down to boku no picu because you're hoping nobody likes your hobby. on behalf of civilization, fuck you.
>>7825765
Let's try something. How about a top 25:
-Your list, not someone else's
-No cheating 'Shakespeare - Complete Works' type bullshit, one work per item
-Only books that you personally have read
-In rank order of influence on thought/literature as a whole
Feel free to exclude things because this is a 'top 25', not 'every important book ever written'. Since you are apparently so well read and you don't thing 161 books is a lot, I would genuinely love to see your list. After all, that's the reason I made this thread: to get the insight of people more knowledgeable than me, not condescension and a lazy link to wikipedia.com/great_books. If you don't actually want to be helpful, and just want to feel superior, that's fine I guess but you won't get any more (You)s from me.
>what do you want me to do tell you that any anon in search of wealth of information would do well to form a screen memory of dancing the tarantella inappropriately?
>you're asking people to pare it down to boku no picu because you're hoping nobody likes your hobby
We'll gloss over this.
>>7825800
try this: pay me a semester's tuition and i'll give you the first 20 on a great books list. i'm not here to spoon feed you, and it's arrogant to assume that you'll get every reference from reading 25 books.
some entry level fucker who just took the time to read borges because they like him knows how dumb that is.
so no, we're not glossing over that you want to reduce canon down to a cliff's notes version. if you don't want to read "too much" why fucking bother reading at all? the entire point isn't to finish but to keep going with it because it interests you. if all you're interested in is the most pared down bullshit so you don't have to feel inadequate, penguin sells entire sets of miniatures pre-boxed for hipster wankers like you.
do your own fucking reading and stop acting like the books board should support you for not wanting books. i've no faith you'll get through one book, tbqh. you spend more time trying to justify not reading than you'll probably ever spend reading. sci-fi fans with two book cases are worth more to this board than you are right now.
Okay, so far it seems like-
Iliad & Odyssey
Platonic Dialogues
Aeneid
King James Bible
Inferno
Paradise Lost
Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello
Don Quixote
Faust
provides a good starting point. What else?
>>7825953
why not use the start with the greeks chart?
>>7825953
Othello is shit.. read Henry 4 and King Lear
>>7825957
I am, actually. Finished Mythology this week & I'm well into the Iliad. My interest was sparked in the Odyssey because I just read Ulysses earlier this month. I've read quite a bit of Plato & Aristotle as a philosophy undergrad so I'm off to a good start.
My OP could be rephrased: Where do you go after the greeks?
>>7825967
Someone should replace mythology with Hesiod. You need pre-Socratics if your course is ripping you off. Attica isn't the only Greeks; Koine Greeks after that like Plutarch etc.
Also
>reading Dante to understand allusions
No, anon, that won't work. The entire thing is obscure allusions to long dead Italians. You'd probably get more understanding out of reading A Game of Chess by Middleton which is slightly less rife with allusion.Don't take that as a recommendation
>>7825979
>The entire thing is obscure allusions to long dead Italians.
haha fair enough, I read Inferno when I was way too young to understand it and I need to reread it at some point.
>Someone should replace mythology with Hesiod.
Hesoid is great. I read him too, actually, in college (Theogony and Works & Days). He is on both intro charts, I believe. Do you mean make him the starting point?
>You need pre-Socratics if your course is ripping you off.
Any reccs? Only read snippets here and there for a philosophy of mind course.
>>7825982
>He is on both intro charts, I believe. Do you mean make him the starting point?
He's not, that's why people read Hamilton's Mythology. Theogony is the start for most people learning Greek mythology to read the Greeks.
>Any recs?
Uh, the Ionian school? Like, all of them?
>>7825993
He's on this one, which is the one I was going off of. And yeah, I read him in a Greek mythology course, so that makes sense.
>Uh, the Ionian school? Like, all of them?
Not sure. To be honest, I know very little about pre-Socratics. Whatever you'd recommend as a jumping off point, I guess.
>>7826010
You really do not like google, anon. =/
Go forth and research and you'll find out which ones you'll need before reading the playwrights that aren't on that chart, and Dante or Goethe.
Moby Dick
Inferno
>>7825509
The Romantics.
>>7825509
Kerin Portillo?
>>7825765
Jesus, you're such an insufferable prick. Not all persons who visit /lit/ want to spend their time reading the entire western cannon.
>>7825953
If you're still here OP you should really add Ovid's Metamorphoses to the list.
>>7825622
I have a degree in Religious Studies, and I can tell you that Daniel is the most interesting book for contemporary scholars, especially when dealing with textual criticism and analysis.
This is because Jesus is literally taking from Daniel when we examine the best manuscripts.
>>7827661
>Jesus, you're such an insufferable prick.
He's being absolutely honest with you and you simply can't take it. You should just stick to lurking without posting, because your posts aren't even worth reading if this is your attitude toward literature.
But I guess the truth ends where your feelings begin, right?
>>7827877
>tfw 4chan is white knighting you
i feel so pretty
>>7827661
It's not advice for everyone.
It's what you'd need to do to get the range of references throughout, because what OP is asking for is a mammoth job. I'm trying to tell explain to him how big an endeavor it is and how it will not be covered by reading 20 books. I could just tell him "lol read zarathustra it's all you need holmes" but that wouldn't help him understand shit.
>>7827877
>>7827919
You guys are reading way too much into my comment. I'm not at all in disagreement about the work it takes to be "well read," to really understand how literature has evolved and the ways in which earlier works influence later works. It really is the task of a lifetime.
What I said was that the poster was an "insufferable prick." And I stand by this statement. He does not seem to understand that not all persons share his literary ambitions or his criteria for what is acceptable or expected in terms of knowledge. More than anything, I'm pointing out that he is not being helpful to OP. Maybe OP really does aspire to be "well read." Maybe he really will go on to read all of the hundreds of works in the western cannon. However, he has to start somewhere. Rather than coping an attitude about how OP is so plebeian and doesn't appreciate the work that goes into reading literature, he could have simply suggested a starting place (e.g. essential reading) AS THIS IS WHAT OP WAS ASKING FOR.
Some of you fucking people really are angsty pompous asses. You seem to guard your knowledge as if it's some rare and precious thing. Why not share some of your erudition with others in order to help them read, understand and enjoy literature. I don't know why you come to /lit/, but for me it's not to engage in literary pissing contests. I don't really care about the "hard truths" of how difficult it is to truly appreciate literature, or whatever. Again, you're right that it is difficult. But the way you communicated this idea is undeniably and insufferably prickish:
>"Pay me a semester's tuition..."
>"I'm not here to spoon feed you"
>"...some entry level fucker..."
>"You want to reduce cannon down to cliff's notes version."
Etc. etc.
>>7828099
He told him how to pursue that education he claim he wanted.
When he told OP to read Bloom's Western Canon, which any course on the Western Canon would do, OP poopooed the idea.
When he told OP which bible to read for which books and purposes, OP got maaaad
When he told OP the standard books list that someone who's attending /lit/s dream college for Western Canon, OP called him lazy when OP is clearly too lazy to actually read one book on the Western Canon, let alone follow the study course any student who wants to achieve the same goal would sell their kidney to get to do.
He gave OP lots of ways to achieve his goal, and OP baulked at the effort. The only way he could help OP more is if he snuck into OP's room at night and played him Bloom's Western Canon on audio book against his consent.
Who's that semen demon
>>7828099
>you guys are wrong because you are mean
You either have the drive or you don't.
Take your hurt feelings and jog the fuck on out of here.
>>7825602
Genesis
Exodus
Deuteronomy
Samuel 1&2
Kings 1&2
Job
Psalms
Proverbs
Ecclesiastes
Song of Solomon
Isaiah
Daniel
then just read all of The New Testament since it's only like 180 pages.
>>7825967
>after the Greeks
Rome. Virgil has already been mentioned, but also Ovid. If you want to read history you should read Polybius (arguably first "academic" historian) and Plutarch/Suetonius (early biographers).
Cynics/stoics/epicureans.
Also probably Cicero, who drew on Demosthenes, whom in turn you should only read after Plato.
>>7828481
fucking lmao. you literally have not read the post and replied with this embarressing insecure reply. god damn i rarely cringe this hard.
>>7825509
>Decameron
>Petrarch
>Tales from 1001 Arabian Nights
>>7825659
Tyndale never wrote anything down. It's a good thing James picked up his translation.
>>7826302
>Moby Dick
Reading American Literature in order to understand English literature=priceless.
best english translations of following?
virgil
dante
don quixote
>>7828702
Mandelbaum
Learn Spanish by translating Don Quixote into English. It's long enough.
>>7828111
OP here, you sound way too invested in this to not be that guy...
>OP poopooed the idea
>OP got maaaad
>OP is clearly too lazy to actually read one book on the Western Canon
>OP lots of ways to achieve his goal, and OP baulked at the effort
Embarassing- give it a break. I came here for some friendly advice for books to read that are heavily referenced throughout the rest of literature. I never said, at any point, that I wanted to 'read the western canon' or something similar. That poster (who may or may not be you) failed to understand this and apparently so do you. You also bring the same accusation against me- that I'm 'too lazy to read one book' which simply isn't true. I love to read.
Of course I found it funny that someone 'recommended' the entire western canon in a thread requesting 'absolutely essential' reading. That shows a basic failure of comprehension to the point of comedy.
>What kind of food should I learn to cook that will help me understand how to cook other dishes
>Wow lazy piece of shit you need to learn how to cook every type of food. You think you are entitled to MY advice? Pay me for culinary school, etc, etc dance the tarantella etc etc
It's honestly cringey as fuck.
Why is the bible /lit/ core?
>>7828902
m8 >>7825726 is some serious poopooing. Bloom would give you 26 authors which illustrate the main tropes and allusions and the general form of canon. It's exactly what you're looking for and your response is "irrelevant". Yeah, I think if you baulked at that chance to read *one* survey book which does exactly what you asked for, you're not going to read the 26 Bloom makes his argument around either.
You're looking for him to give you a list of interdependencies, and, when he does give you one, complete with an argument for how they are interdependent, you dismiss it out of hand? That's going to look dumb to a lot of people not just him.
>>7828902
>dance the tarantella
kek that's an ibsen allusion. i mixed austen and freud and ibsen together into a reference because you told me they were not essential to understanding allusion.
who you reference and when requires way more than a small list and who they referenced will always be a problem.
shakespeare, as a quick example, references danish myths, the bible, greek educators and roman historians, and that's just one play and not a complete reference list. which version and translation he got from where would fill out more books than you want but all those books are vitally important to the development of English, arguably more so than dante, and they're all mostly forgotten now. there would be little point in me telling you where all shakespeare's quotes come from, and even a completely annotated shakespeare won't touch all of them. (he used work off other writers and readers commonplace books, where people collected quotes from any author they came across, and the entire thing would be a mess.) he uses danish myth b/c in england it's new, and the bible because the illiterates will understand, and the greek educator so that the educated members of the audience recognise a childlike understanding of the greeks while the uneducated will think he's smart and original. and that is when there was a countable number of english french and latin works for him to draw from.
think how more complex that process becomes when there are authors who deliberately choose obscure works and allusions, while the canon is constantly expanding its range of reference. by the time you hit Romanticism, you need to not just read the Greeks, Romans, and every feminist and anarchist you could get your hands on, but also far flung tombstones being eroded in the desert to be considered new, and once they did, Ozymandias became a reference which anyone else could allude to.
this brings us to what an allusion is: it's something the author puts in so people who have read the same shit understand him, and others are excluded. i put ibsen and austen and freud all clumsily together to see if you knew shit about them, and you don't. it's a shibboleth for the well-read, and you'll lisp with any list if you read something where the author intended it as such, because he'll have made it something off the beaten path if the point of the allusion is more than putting in a cliche so the plebs understand. essential reading is being broadly read in what the author read, and compared to what that used be for schoolboys in the 1800s, the longer Great Books list is easy. that's before the novel took off in English. to understand allusions in Dickens, you have to read all the court cases he sat in on as a reporter. to get all the allusions in Joyce, you've to probably be Joyce. most writers don't read only the same 20 books. they read about the same 500+ books and then choose allusions from the 20 books they can be assured only some people'll get even if they read 200
>>7829194
> to get all the allusions in Joyce, you've to probably be Joyce.
Kekd. You're right of course. What I think OP & friends are failing to see is that it's okay to not get every allusion, because, as you said, the big picture will still be apparent and will likely be drawn from major sources (the Bible, rather than Dickens' court cases). Anyone reading writers like Pushkin or Dumas will find nods to dozens of long-forgotten writers possibly hardly even known to their contemporaries; it's impossible to understand every reference, but that's okay.
>>7829314
they're kind of like easter eggs in games. there's a few where you'll find them by accident and be happy, but if you need to find every single one in every game you play, you're spending far too much time fucking around in that game to not be an autist.
>>7829314
btw i mentioned Dickens' court cases because his audience for novels and reporting was newspaper readers. so the allusions would have been clear if you got a paper back then, but now it's harder to understand what he's on about even if it wasn't an allusion because we're not in Dickensian London any more
420 BLAZE IT FAGIT
Greeks
Latins
Bible + Church Fathers
Some chanson de geste
Genji Monogotari
Dante, Petrarch, Tasso
Don Quichotte
Camoes
Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton
Montaigne, Racine, La Fontaine, Molière
Goethe, Schiller, Hoffmann
Pushkin, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky
>>7828599
>fucking
>literally
>embarassing
>insecure
>god damn
>cringe
all these buzzwords fa'm. sounds like you are the angered one tb;h
>>7828902
>OP here
it's almost like you're not the other 12 replies
>"someone 'recommended' the entire western canon in a thread requesting 'absolutely essential' reading"
1) essential to what? to you? we dont know jackshit about you
2) dismissing the canon out of hand is below entry-level fuckery
>>7829325
Agreed. It's an issue of diminishing marginal utility: You'll undeniably get huge returns from reading the Bible. You'll probably gain a lot from reading Augustine, but likely not quite as much as from the Bible itself. Maybe you'll gain a bit more from reading works of minor early church fathers, and maybe just maybe you'll gain something from learning ancient Greek and reading fragmented early church texts in their original language. But the input:output ratio quickly becomes ridiculous, and should be sternly considered in light of the extremely finite time any one of us has to read and live.
>>7829347
Which totally makes sense, and again you're absolutely right. We are not Dickens' audience for that facet of his work, although we can still appreciate much of his writing for the still-relevant and possibly eternal themes therein.
Here.
>>7829412
i'd argue most of the allusions you're going to get from the bible etc are practically cliche at this point because they're so often alluded to that not knowing the source doesn't mean you don't know it's a reference to something. when someone says that there's nothing new under the sun, nobody's first thought is ecclesiates 1:9 unless they're a religious freak. the misattributed quote marco memes aren't new really, because a lot of people won't recognise the greek philosopher quotes in the greek letters of the NT, but they'll know the quote because it's invaded culture. when someone tells you not to lean your elbows on the table, nobody is going to answer "sorry, i'm an atheist"
people might know Ozymandias now because of Breaking Bad, but they might not know fuck all about Shelley, and probably won't know that Shelley wrote it in competition with another poet about the same subject. in fact, the writers of the episode don't even need to know that last part, but someone who wants to read Shelley for Shelley probably would want to know.
most of what you'll need for basic allusions, you'll already know and recognise some. for someone who's choosing allusions that you won't recognise as near cliche, you're fucked with any basic list because the author's writing with a specific pool of references in mind. some even take it a step further, like borges, and allude to shit that doesn't even fucking exist.
but most of what you need to be basic, any mainstream media exposure will give you things that have been done before. a tv watcher will probably recognise some phrases in eliot's wasteland, just because tv uses some of the same broad reference pool eliot draws from, but even a dedicated scholar has his work cut out for him if he tries to pin down every line in it.
Can any of you please provide me the start with the Greeks chart? I've tweeted ny phone so I lost all the lit chats, sadly :'B
install gentoo
>>7828599
>god damn i rarely cringe this hard
aka "I'm rarely triggered this hard".
Again, you either have the drive or you don't. The truth of this couldn't be more provable. If you're feeling a lot of emotions about a position like that you should seriously ask yourself why.
Or you could continue to transparently project the words "insecure" and "cringe" around whilst anon continues to impassively note how triggered and emotional this has made you. The latter is far more entertaining, so choose whatever you wish.
>>7825765
>>7829460
>if you're too lazy to read 161 books when that doesn't even cover all the references you'll come across in most lit, you're a fucking lost cause.
>most of what you need to be basic, any mainstream media exposure will give you things that have been done before.
Not trying to take you out of context here but it seems like you pulled a 180. Regardless, I do sincerely appreciate the advice especially since this has turned to a constructive conversation.
>>7829194
This was very educational for me, by the way. Thank you!
>>7829394
>it's almost like you're not the other 12 replies
I wasn't the only person replying to him and I was responding to personal attacks regarding my perceived tone. (e.g. op was maaaaaad) So yes, it seemed appropriate to clarify.
>dismissing the canon out of hand is below entry-level fuckery
Never questioned its value, just its relevance to the topic.
>>7829459
Thank you. This is pretty much exactly the scope I was looking for, by the way (i.e. a starting point) and seems to conform with what others have been posting as well.
>>7829487
>>7826010
Here.
>>7829925
>Not trying to take you out of context here but it seems like you pulled a 180. Regardless, I do sincerely appreciate the advice especially since this has turned to a constructive conversation.
lol. no not really, most of the allusions you're already getting from cartoons saying "to be or not to be" isn't anything you'll understand any allusion written for an educated adult; it's an allusion which you're culturally bound to get unless retarded. like I said, most of the allusions you'll understand are a reference to something, even if you never read a book and just watch tv.
if you want to get the allusions which a five year old won't understand from tom & jerry, you're going to have to read far more than 160 books.
it'd be a turn if you didn't consider understanding culture at a five year old's level to be equivalent to being well-read. like I said, most people who understand it's a reference don't know what from or its original context, so if you want to fall for misattributed quote marcos, carry on not reading
>>7825509
I decided to make a reading list to cover the basics of classical and medieval lit up to Chaucer (is it any good?) In the order I've read/am reading them:
>The Elder Edda
>The Iliad
>Beowulf
>The Odyssey
>The Prose Edda
>Theogony & Works and Days
>The Saga of the Volsungs
>Persians & Other Plays
>Oresteia
>Oedipus Cycle (I'm here atm)
>Nibelungenlied
>The Aeneid
>From Ritual to Romance (Jessie Weston)
>Horace's Complete Odes and Epodes
>Chretien's Arthurian Romances
>Metamorphoses
>Eschenbach's Parzival & Titurel
>St Augustine's Confessions
>Strassburg's Tristan
>The Divine Comedy
>The Canterbury TalesThe list was somewhat influenced by TS Eliot and Wagner 2bh family
>>7831592
while it's later, you might want to add in the once and future king after you've done most of the arthurian ones because it's shaped a lot of what people think about those. this might also interest you and it'll give you more refs: vimeo.com/62801325
>>7825659
>great books
This list is crap anyway. I mean srsly who the fuck would read a couple hundred years dissertations on physics like Galilei, Huygens, Lavoirsier, etc. About 1/3 of the list is of books like these. Just learn proper math and physics at school and university textbooks, it should be more understandable and more relevant.I'm a physicist.
Other 1/3 is the same but with philosophy. I guess instead of them, you're better off with some book on the history of philosophy/ uni textbook.
>>7831600
>Just learn proper math and physics at school
>daily reminder ywnb james clerk maxwell with this method
I dunno, anon, a lot of what are considered outdated texts, like Euclid's mathematics, are still useful texts for certain geometries. If you want to understand the changes in physics and math, it's not a bad idea to read primary sources. It's not like a 19th C writer is going to describe a 21st C understanding of the universe, or like our current understanding is unlikely to be usurped.
There's a lot of overlap between the sciences and arts up until recently, so you see things like 'pataphysics riffing off philsophy and science, or EA Abbot writing mathematical romance, or O'Brien writing early current thermodynamic theory into a story about bicycles falling in love. Not knowing which view was held when could lead someone to thinking that when O'Brien was writing The Third Policeman that it was old hat, not some Manhattan Project level shit that got rejected for being too far ahead of its time and only got accepted for publication after society had time to adapt to the new idea. Most of those books were ground breaking for their time, and not knowing why or how they shaped the history of science could easily lead to one thinking that we have it right now and we aren't doing the same thing as back then: wondering at a new perspective which in 500 years will be considered a foolish perspective as valid as, or less valid than, texts written before us.
>>7825953
>no Lear
Just read the entire works of the Bard. Also The Oresteia should be on your list.
>>7829352
That is a tasty list
>>7831618
>understand the changes in physics
In some way I agree with you, but not in the way, that's useful for OP. OP'd like to understand lit better, so I guess he'd like general understanding of physics (ie. how the world works and how people figured it out) rather than seeing the theoretical development of natural sciences.
In scientific works, we talk about PROVEABLE THUTH, derived from the current knowledge. Ofc they'll become outdated as time passes. So if you'd like to learn physics, you'd be better off with reading books that explain the work of earlier scientists from a contemporary point of view. These will point out the thoughts that are worthy and made science advance as well as showing where the predecessors were wrong and why.
(example: Newtonian mechanics describe motions fine, as long as velocities are not huge. Special relativity does the same for all velocities. If you understand Newton first, you'll understand specrel easier. If you understand specrel first, you'll see that N's mechanics is a trivial consequence. You'd either read tons of original texts, since these theories were debated in their own time or you'd read textbooks from later times, after the debates settled, you'd get perfectly what the current truth is based on the current knowledgewhich was OP looking for in the first place.)
>>7831762
or you'd read newton for the development of scientific language in English since he had to make up so many words to publish in the vernacular on lenses. we could just go back to only writing science papers in latin of course, but you might have a problem with that since you seem to be having problems with spelling and volume in English alone.
>>7825562
hahahaha 10/10
