How do I the 'Western Canon" or "The Greeks"?
Before I start signing out every one of these books, and reading them from beginning to end, I'd like to know if there is a method to doing this as quickly as possible while still getting something out of them.
I realize it may take many years, but I have a lot of theory and contemporary stuff and a minimum wage job to get through as well.
Mainly, I want to read the greeks and the classics and the canon in order to recognize when newer lit is using the symbols or literary devices or stories or is references stuff by homer, Shakespeare, etc.
Any advice?
Ideally I'd enrol in a university, but I don't have the money for it.
Do you have autism?
>>7406607
>Ideally I'd enrol in a university, but I don't have the money for it
>>>/Germany/
>>7406609
no, why?
>>7406639
You don't need to read the whole canon just to understand a few allusions
>>7406647
should i just read a dozen or so of the most popular?
>>7406652
Read what interests you
>>7406662
>tfw everything interests you
It's a blessing and a curse.
I'd actually recommend something like this:
http://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/classical-mythology.html
I am an Audible subscriber and get 1 credit per month for an audiobook, and they have a ton of courses from The Great Courses in their catalog. Some of them can be $60+ but each credit is ~$18/month every month and you can get any book of any price with that credit. I purchased this and have been listening to about 1 lecture a day for the past couple weeks and it's been immensely informative and helpful:
http://www.audible.com/pd/History/Great-Mythologies-of-the-World-Audiobook/B013KRSIVC
With this as a springboard, you can dive deep into whatever stories or traditions piqued your interest the most. It's really an inexpensive way to amass a decent amount of information.
>>7406696
It's also worth looking to see what's available free here:
http://www.openculture.com/freeonlinecourses
Not so much comparable to that one, but the Berkeley one on the epic (http://english.berkeley.edu/courses/1471) could be balling.
>>7406848
...or this one:
http://www.openculture.com/the_western_canon_from_homer_to_milton
Get a half-decent knowledge of Western history
Get used to reading short and sweet surveys of Western lit eras
Read the books annotated
Read commentary on the books after reading them
Be cool with it being hard going at first because you have no connections at the start that make reading something really weird and unfamiliar to you interesting
Be cool with probably needing to come back and reread a lot later
Do this for several years, repeating steps that you completed with 37% efficiency because you were just starting out and finding your efficiency has doubled and so many more things fall into place without effort than they did the first time around
Actually genuinely enjoy reading something tough for the first time because your brain now makes all those little connections to the wider tradition, historical context, intellectual/stylistic/whatever predecessors and successors of the author, etc.
Keep compounding this for several more years, getting easier and easier until tackling some new major author you haven't read yet is more like clicking a missing part into your car's engine, while everything else is squared away and in place so you know just where it goes and what it plugs into and so on, and you only dimly remember the days when you had to pore over shitty and confusing manuals and diagrams to place a new part, because you had no point of reference
Enjoy being better than 99.99999% of college students even at top universities, even grad students (actually especially grad students), who instead of actually reading the Western tradition in any depth just memorise their professors' opinions about their tiny chosen field, read the major stuff in it, and spend 19 years of their life applying some critical method they don't understand to a text that was interpretatively exhausted in the 50s
>>7406607
Almost no works of literature require prerequisite reading or secondary sources in order to enjoy them. Knowing the allusions isn't going to somehow transform your reading experience, so if that is your only motivation for reading them, then you should probably just fuck off. How about reading the classics because they are good?
thanks for all the suggestions everyone
>>7406662
This. Stop stroking Bloom, he isn't as important as this board believes
>>7406696
Or just get them from Pirate Bay.
>Mainly, I want to read the greeks and the classics and the canon in order to recognize when newer lit is using the symbols or literary devices or stories or is references stuff by homer, Shakespeare, etc.
No. No, this WON'T do.
There is an appropriate reason to read the canon. And that is: "I would like to enjoy the canonical books. I want to see for myself what everyone thinks is so wonderful about them."
And if you really mean it, you will never be done with the canon. You will return to it all through your life. Shakespeare will be a constant companion even till the very end.
It cannot and should not be otherwise. Give up your desire to know—and be content only to learn.
Harold Bloom has claimed he can read War & Peace from front to back during lunch time.
I think he said one page is 20 seconds for him.
>>7407463
Good for him, it took me 3 months to read it.
>>7407463
bloom should write some canonical fiction himself sometime over lunch or w/e
>>7407463
I wouldn't be surprised, given how shallow his readings are
>>7408724
damn
ice cold
>>7407056
You realize he didn't invent the idea of the Western canon.
just read good books
it's not hard
>>7406607
>>7407056
Read the Iliad, Odyssey, and Aeneid. They're all great and are a foundation for Western Lit.
Then read the pertinent books of the bible so that you have a grip on the other foundation of Western Lit. Doesn't needto be all of it.
Other than that it doesn't really matter that much. You should just decide what you want to read, and then try and figure out what is best to read in anticipation before hand. Or read whatever you want, take note of what is referenced, and then supplement your initial reading when you finish.
>>7407056
He's pretty important considering how harshly he constrasts the common lit-professor opinions and whatnot
He's like a relic from the whole formalist era of way back when
>>7410420
I like Bloom because he respects the classics for lasting through the ages (including ones he doesn't like), while being unafraid to have his own opinions of them
I find it funny how people say "read the Bible so that you can understand references". The references themselves are usually either glossed or easy to look up. The thing you won't get from just reading the Bible is the outline of Christian theology as it is believed by the authors who use it, and you actually need that. Reading Augustine is at least as important as reading the Bible.
>>7410379
I'd chuck in Plutarch as well as he mentioned Shakespeare. And Ovid. And Chaucer. And Dante. And listen to Bach's Cantatas.
>>7410815
>and if ur poor they give aids
kicking people who are already down, sounds like America alright
