What are the classical texts of Western civilization? What works should a person know in order to understand the Western world?
Plato? Shakespeare? Homer? Marx? Freud? The Magna Carta? Adam Smith? The Bible? Twain? Tolstoy? Dante? Milton? Ibsen? Thomas Payne?
I would like to use this thread to compile a reading list for the group of such major texts. Please use the following form for your recommendations:
Title:
Author:
Summary/Description:
Importance:
Thanks.
The Classics
2Title: Beowulf
Author: Unknown
Summary/Description: Big dude with sword gets on boat, kills monster, kills monster's pissed off mom, gets shitfaced, kills dragon, dies.
Importance: Re: Dungeons & Dragons, Legend of Zelda, He-Man, mid-70s airbrush art/county fair silkcreened mirrors, crystal and pewter vendors at mall kiosks, Celtic Frost, Immortal, Dio, Venom, Manowar
Author: Unknown
Summary/Description: Big dude with sword gets on boat, kills monster, kills monster's pissed off mom, gets shitfaced, kills dragon, dies.
Importance: Re: Dungeons & Dragons, Legend of Zelda, He-Man, mid-70s airbrush art/county fair silkcreened mirrors, crystal and pewter vendors at mall kiosks, Celtic Frost, Immortal, Dio, Venom, Manowar
The Classics
3title:Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? ---Blade Runner
Author: Phillip K Dick
Sum: "Blade Runner's premise is simple. Deckard has to hunt down four ‘Replicants': artificial humans who have great intelligence but superior physical attributes. These replicants have run amock in space colonies and now human authorities on Earth are worried that the replicants will do the same here."
Importance: 23 out of 43 people found the following comment useful:-
Style over substance, yet still impressive,
Protools?
Author:Aldous Huxley
Title: A Brave New World
Sum:"Here, in one of the most important and fascinating books of his career, Aldous Huxley uses his tremendous knowledge of human relations to compare the modern-day world with his prophetic fantasy. He scrutinizes threats to humanity, such as overpopulation, propaganda, and chemical persuasion, and explains why we have found it virtually impossible to avoid them. Brave New World Revisited is a trenchant plea that humankind should educate itself for freedom before it is too late."
Impotance: shocking analysis of a scientific dictatorship seemed a projection into the remote future
processed gmo foods and no exercise
Author: Phillip K Dick
Sum: "Blade Runner's premise is simple. Deckard has to hunt down four ‘Replicants': artificial humans who have great intelligence but superior physical attributes. These replicants have run amock in space colonies and now human authorities on Earth are worried that the replicants will do the same here."
Importance: 23 out of 43 people found the following comment useful:-
Style over substance, yet still impressive,
Protools?
Author:Aldous Huxley
Title: A Brave New World
Sum:"Here, in one of the most important and fascinating books of his career, Aldous Huxley uses his tremendous knowledge of human relations to compare the modern-day world with his prophetic fantasy. He scrutinizes threats to humanity, such as overpopulation, propaganda, and chemical persuasion, and explains why we have found it virtually impossible to avoid them. Brave New World Revisited is a trenchant plea that humankind should educate itself for freedom before it is too late."
Impotance: shocking analysis of a scientific dictatorship seemed a projection into the remote future
processed gmo foods and no exercise
Last edited by hiredgeek_Archive on Mon Nov 28, 2005 1:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.
The Classics
4Title: The Holy Bible
Author: Moses, et al.
Summary/Description: Collection of 66 separate books by various authors over a period of thousands of years. Myth, history, law, poetry, prophecy, and more!
Importance: Western civilization was formed in great part by men who claimed that The Bible was the unerring word of God. Many of them probably even believed this claim. Even today, many, if not most, Americans would probably say that they live their lives according to precepts contained in The Bible. Read a few pages, and you've probably read more of it than most of these people have. The president's favorite book.
Author: Moses, et al.
Summary/Description: Collection of 66 separate books by various authors over a period of thousands of years. Myth, history, law, poetry, prophecy, and more!
Importance: Western civilization was formed in great part by men who claimed that The Bible was the unerring word of God. Many of them probably even believed this claim. Even today, many, if not most, Americans would probably say that they live their lives according to precepts contained in The Bible. Read a few pages, and you've probably read more of it than most of these people have. The president's favorite book.
Why do you make it so scary to post here.
The Classics
5Blade Runner is called Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Title: The Odyssey
Author: Homer, though there is debate if this was just one person
Summary: Odysseus encounters many trials on his way home.
Importance: Everything seems to reference the Odyssey, from Ulysses to....something else.
Title: The Odyssey
Author: Homer, though there is debate if this was just one person
Summary: Odysseus encounters many trials on his way home.
Importance: Everything seems to reference the Odyssey, from Ulysses to....something else.
The Classics
6Of Mice and Men
Steinbeck
The story of two men desperatlely trying to make a home for
themselves during the Great Depression. One, Lenny, is
"slow" and has a fondness for things that are soft. This leads
to many bad situations for the two, and on at least one occasion
has led them to flee murder charges. In general, a tale of
capitalist greed, jealous stupidity, xenophobia, and an early
example of redefining the term "family".
Importance: High. It has a lot to say about humanity in general.
Did you want more than one example, Bradley?
Steinbeck
The story of two men desperatlely trying to make a home for
themselves during the Great Depression. One, Lenny, is
"slow" and has a fondness for things that are soft. This leads
to many bad situations for the two, and on at least one occasion
has led them to flee murder charges. In general, a tale of
capitalist greed, jealous stupidity, xenophobia, and an early
example of redefining the term "family".
Importance: High. It has a lot to say about humanity in general.
Did you want more than one example, Bradley?
King of the Punk Rogers.
The Classics
7I'll start with a couple of obvious ones:
Title: The Old Man and the Sea
Author: Ernest Hemingway
Summary/Description: An old man named Santiago hasn't caught a fish in a long time, so long that his intern leaves and goes to another boat. He then strikes it out alone and, for fifty pages, hooks and battles with a giant fish ("eighteen feet from nose to tail") and eventually catches him. Then sharks come along as he sails back to shore, and eat the fish, leaving Santiago with nothing for his efforts.
Importance: First off, it won him the Nobel Prize. That means it was regarded worldwide as the most important work of western literature in it's era (which I believe in this case was 1953... correct me if I'm wrong). So it has that going for it. It's prestige is such due to its use of what is essentially non-academic prose. That is, it is written in a very casual--often called "tough, athletic"--style, paying attention only to the details that are most important, and utilizing very realistic dialogue that, on paper, appears fragmented and incomplete at times. But then again, that's the way we really speak, and he played to that.
Furthermore, it has an incredible emphasis on the idea of Western Individualism (as opposed to Eastern Collectivism). The notion that a solitary man can battle against nature and--not necessarily win, but survive, is perfectly demonstrative of the Western world's "every man is an island" mentality.
***
Title: Crime and Punishment
Author: Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Summary/Description: A young man kills an old woman in the first one hundred pages or so. The last four hundred pages or so are dedicated to his internal psychological struggle of turning himself in (which he eventually does) or being smoked out by a detective with whom he has a great deal of contact throughout the book (and who makes for some great segments of dialogue). There are also numerous subplots including those of an old government clerk and his impoverished family and daughter who is a whore, as well as of an older man who stalks the young man's sister.
Importance: The basis for the young man's murder. He murdered the old woman to test a "theory" he had developed regarding the concept of "greatness." In it, he stated that there were two classes of people: the normal, and the superior, and that the latter would be allowed to pursue their quest for greatness at any cost, even that of another human life. This plays into much the same idea as does Old Man and the Sea in that it perpetuates the notion of individualism in Western society. It is different, however, because it does so to a more extreme degree. Dostoyevsky challenges the idea of traditional morals (something found much more prominently in individualist cultures), as well as discusses notions of economics and sexuality (often as one and the same) on the "morality" plane. Regarding the latter, he demonstrates the main shortcoming of individualism: poverty. The idea that one must suffer for another to achieve "greatness" is one of the less flattering aspects of Western civilization, and one that Dostoyevsky portrays expertly in this work.
***
Someone else should include The Grapes of Wrath, as well as The Communist Manifesto, both of which I think contribute a great deal of contrast to the works I listed here. I would, but I really need to get going on a research project. Great thread, Weissenberger!
Title: The Old Man and the Sea
Author: Ernest Hemingway
Summary/Description: An old man named Santiago hasn't caught a fish in a long time, so long that his intern leaves and goes to another boat. He then strikes it out alone and, for fifty pages, hooks and battles with a giant fish ("eighteen feet from nose to tail") and eventually catches him. Then sharks come along as he sails back to shore, and eat the fish, leaving Santiago with nothing for his efforts.
Importance: First off, it won him the Nobel Prize. That means it was regarded worldwide as the most important work of western literature in it's era (which I believe in this case was 1953... correct me if I'm wrong). So it has that going for it. It's prestige is such due to its use of what is essentially non-academic prose. That is, it is written in a very casual--often called "tough, athletic"--style, paying attention only to the details that are most important, and utilizing very realistic dialogue that, on paper, appears fragmented and incomplete at times. But then again, that's the way we really speak, and he played to that.
Furthermore, it has an incredible emphasis on the idea of Western Individualism (as opposed to Eastern Collectivism). The notion that a solitary man can battle against nature and--not necessarily win, but survive, is perfectly demonstrative of the Western world's "every man is an island" mentality.
***
Title: Crime and Punishment
Author: Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Summary/Description: A young man kills an old woman in the first one hundred pages or so. The last four hundred pages or so are dedicated to his internal psychological struggle of turning himself in (which he eventually does) or being smoked out by a detective with whom he has a great deal of contact throughout the book (and who makes for some great segments of dialogue). There are also numerous subplots including those of an old government clerk and his impoverished family and daughter who is a whore, as well as of an older man who stalks the young man's sister.
Importance: The basis for the young man's murder. He murdered the old woman to test a "theory" he had developed regarding the concept of "greatness." In it, he stated that there were two classes of people: the normal, and the superior, and that the latter would be allowed to pursue their quest for greatness at any cost, even that of another human life. This plays into much the same idea as does Old Man and the Sea in that it perpetuates the notion of individualism in Western society. It is different, however, because it does so to a more extreme degree. Dostoyevsky challenges the idea of traditional morals (something found much more prominently in individualist cultures), as well as discusses notions of economics and sexuality (often as one and the same) on the "morality" plane. Regarding the latter, he demonstrates the main shortcoming of individualism: poverty. The idea that one must suffer for another to achieve "greatness" is one of the less flattering aspects of Western civilization, and one that Dostoyevsky portrays expertly in this work.
***
Someone else should include The Grapes of Wrath, as well as The Communist Manifesto, both of which I think contribute a great deal of contrast to the works I listed here. I would, but I really need to get going on a research project. Great thread, Weissenberger!
if i got lasik surgery on one eye, i could wear a monacle.
The Classics
8Title: War and Peace
Author: Leo Tolstoy
Summary/Description: Shit, man, there's some war, and there's some balls with duchesses and shit. And after a while, every other chapter is a long-ass essay about shit. You can skip those. If you don't just barrel through the first couple of hundred pages, you're fucked.
Importance: Tells you a little bit about pretty much everything in life and a shitload about Nap Bonaparte's assault on Russia and the Russian response. Many characters--good exercise if you are bad at remembering names. Very thick book. Good for blocking drafts.
Author: Leo Tolstoy
Summary/Description: Shit, man, there's some war, and there's some balls with duchesses and shit. And after a while, every other chapter is a long-ass essay about shit. You can skip those. If you don't just barrel through the first couple of hundred pages, you're fucked.
Importance: Tells you a little bit about pretty much everything in life and a shitload about Nap Bonaparte's assault on Russia and the Russian response. Many characters--good exercise if you are bad at remembering names. Very thick book. Good for blocking drafts.
The Classics
9this is like homework. i'll nominate some vonnegut.
i'll say slaughterhouse five. someone else do the rest.
(i'd rather say sirens of titan, cat's cradle, player piano, godbless you, mr. rosewater, and breakfast of champions. but those weren't as popular.)
i'll say slaughterhouse five. someone else do the rest.
(i'd rather say sirens of titan, cat's cradle, player piano, godbless you, mr. rosewater, and breakfast of champions. but those weren't as popular.)
The Classics
10Do The Specials count as a classic of Western Civilization?
Okay, if that doesn't count, I've always been partial to
Title: Flowers for Algernon.
Author: Daniel Keys
Summery: A retarted kid gets experimental treatment that makes him smart/normal for a time, then he slides back down into retardum. It's a heartbreaking story about becoming a dimwit. Totally rad.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/055327 ... 5&v=glance
THX,
Jason D
Okay, if that doesn't count, I've always been partial to
Title: Flowers for Algernon.
Author: Daniel Keys
Summery: A retarted kid gets experimental treatment that makes him smart/normal for a time, then he slides back down into retardum. It's a heartbreaking story about becoming a dimwit. Totally rad.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/055327 ... 5&v=glance
THX,
Jason D
www.statikfire.com
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