What Do Our Oldest Books Say About Us?
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What Do Our Oldest Books Say About Us?
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Re: What Do Our Oldest Books Say About Us?
#2Just for interest, of the set of mutually intelligible Germanic dialects we lump into 'Old English', it was the West Saxon flavor that most of the works referenced in the article are written in.
Re: What Do Our Oldest Books Say About Us?
#3The title of article was more interesting than it's contents.
Re: What Do Our Oldest Books Say About Us?
#4I've read Beowulf for a university class and I thought it was boring and unrelatable. I know it's supposed to be some kind of cornerstone of English literature, but I personally feel like it has nothing worthwhile to say to a modern audience.
Maybe it sounds better in the Old English.
Re: What Do Our Oldest Books Say About Us?
#5I've read Beowulf for a university class and I thought it was boring and unrelatable. I know it's supposed to be some kind of cornerstone of English literature, but I personally feel like it has nothing worthwhile to say to a modern audience. Maybe it sounds better in the Old English.
There are two opportunities that arise from reading literature from outside of your own culture and time.
One is to have that revelation of "oh, wow, these folks are just like me!"
The other is to have the revelation, "wow, these folks are nothing like me, and here's what they felt was important, beautiful, terrifying, etc"
Both are pretty important, even if the latter doesn't come as naturally. You'll never be completely empathetic to it, but at least you can learn to be sympathetic.
Re: What Do Our Oldest Books Say About Us?
#6I've read Beowulf for a university class and I thought it was boring and unrelatable. I know it's supposed to be some kind of cornerstone of English literature, but I personally feel like it has nothing worthwhile to say to a modern audience. Maybe it sounds better in the Old English.
There are two opportunities that arise from reading literature from outside of your own culture and time. One is to have that revelation of "oh, wow, these folks are just like me!" The other is to have the revelation, "wow, these folks are nothing like me, and here's what they felt was important, beautiful, terrifying, etc" Both are pretty important, even if the latter doesn't come as naturally. You'll never be compl…
I guess that's true, but IMHO Beowulf tells you nothing about what those ancient people felt. Not a single one of the characters has any inner life or motivation, it's just a chronicle of monster-slaying. You might as well read a poorly written comic book.
Re: What Do Our Oldest Books Say About Us?
#7The title of article was more interesting than it's contents.
I was also expecting it to be about much older texts, but I guess that was a reading comprehension failure on my part since it did say "books" and not, for example, "stone tablets". As someone who has been (very, very slowly) reading the translations of ancient Sumerian texts, I was kinda hoping this would be about those. But Sumerians didn't write "books".
Re: What Do Our Oldest Books Say About Us?
#8I've read Beowulf for a university class and I thought it was boring and unrelatable. I know it's supposed to be some kind of cornerstone of English literature, but I personally feel like it has nothing worthwhile to say to a modern audience. Maybe it sounds better in the Old English.
Maybe it helps to think of Beowulf as a "Commodore 64" of the monster slaying genre. It doesn’t have much ram or fast cpu but it was a pretty decent piece of literature from the time period.
Re: What Do Our Oldest Books Say About Us?
#9I've read Beowulf for a university class and I thought it was boring and unrelatable. I know it's supposed to be some kind of cornerstone of English literature, but I personally feel like it has nothing worthwhile to say to a modern audience. Maybe it sounds better in the Old English.
There are two opportunities that arise from reading literature from outside of your own culture and time. One is to have that revelation of "oh, wow, these folks are just like me!" The other is to have the revelation, "wow, these folks are nothing like me, and here's what they felt was important, beautiful, terrifying, etc" Both are pretty important, even if the latter doesn't come as naturally. You'll never be compl…
This is what I find fascinating about the annals of Lü Buwei (239bc Qin Dynasty), in that he brought together the best philosophers of the time to create a book of all the knowledge, arts, sciences, food, almanacs and state leadership for future generations. Some of his leadership advice I actually haven’t seen elsewhere and learned from. So exactly what he had in mind after over 2200 years ago.
I think the other thing one realizes with history is how much makes up the present, it’s part of our cultures today. We didn’t invent ideas of equality, women and animal rights, Aristotle references ancient states with these ideals — notably he mentions them as vulnerable to demagogues. Almond milk was used as a milk substitute in medieval French cooking since it’s easier to use. I feel we’re dismisive of previous generations and think of our selves as better when really nothing has changed outside of technology and our physical sciences.
Re: What Do Our Oldest Books Say About Us?
#10The title of article was more interesting than it's contents.
I was also expecting it to be about much older texts, but I guess that was a reading comprehension failure on my part since it did say "books" and not, for example, "stone tablets". As someone who has been (very, very slowly) reading the translations of ancient Sumerian texts, I was kinda hoping this would be about those. But Sumerians didn't write "books".
You got any suggestions for the Sumerian works? I've read The Literature of Ancient Sumer, and made it through, but didn't enjoy it at all and nothing stuck. Attempted From Distant Days (Akkadian literature) but just couldn't do it. Book was poorly put together and it was pretty much the same stuff as the Sumerian book I'd just finished, which wasn't a huge surprise but man that book is bad.
I read all three volumes of Lichtheim's Ancient Egyptian Literature first, though, so that may have spoiled me. It's dry as hell but way better than either of those other volumes. Was good enough that I remember quite a few details and individual works from it years later, unlike those.
I've got about seven volumes of ultra-early literature (the last 1.5 or so of Lichtheim aren't that early), six of which I've read or attempted (haven't made it to the Indian philosophy sourcebook yet, some of which is quite old) and of them the only one I'd recommend to the general reader is Stephen Mitchell's Gilgamesh, which was entirely excellent and so wildly better than any of the other Mesopotamian work from that time that I suspect Mitchell embellished heavily (IIRC reviews indicate he didn't, but still) or the modern version of the work was much improved by the time any of the copies or large fragments we have were written/chiseled. It's crazy good. A couple later Egyptian tales were of similar (though definitely lesser) quality but absolutely nothing else Sumerian or Akkadian's even got a hint of anything like that, from what I've seen.
I'm not sure I'd recommend the Sumerian or Akkadian collections to anyone, really, unless that's their specialty in which case they don't need me to recommend things to them. It's possible I just chose poor collections, though. Certainly the Akkadian one was no good, though I'm not sure there's any better in English.