tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29676463.post2948209948362334988..comments2024-03-19T21:50:12.583+13:00Comments on The Imaginary Museum: The True Story of the Novel (2): The Greek and Roman NovelDr Jack Rosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01805945600952222957noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29676463.post-4624276673168144322013-09-07T13:03:13.125+12:002013-09-07T13:03:13.125+12:00It's interesting that he strongly rejects &quo...It's interesting that he strongly rejects "multiculturalism" and post-stucturalism etc He even wont accept Ashbery's poems in 'The Tennis Court Oath' whereas his "enemies" the (loosely defined) Language poets and "postmodern" writers. <br /><br />But he is passionate about the culture and literature. It's almost as if he has devoted his life to reading and studying literature. I also like these lists and the idea of order. But chaos is always near.<br /><br />Yes, it is also hard to define the "novel" it is like a slowed down long poem or something...<br /><br />We had that Richardson thing and the Aristotelian theory of drama, Forster's book about the novel and it was all good, but things (some) have changed.Richardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10272507198753290435noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29676463.post-89221344772972563572013-09-07T08:24:39.742+12:002013-09-07T08:24:39.742+12:00Yes, I have to say that I quite enjoyed Bloom'...Yes, I have to say that I quite enjoyed Bloom's <i>Western Canon</i> when I read it last year. My aims are far less ambitious than his, though -- I simply want to illuminate a particular mode of genre transference ... from other forms of prose literature and narrative in general to the form we now call "the novel" -- it's hard not to include just about everything that's ever been written in the story at some point, however.Dr Jack Rosshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01805945600952222957noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29676463.post-48216910802406355542013-09-06T21:47:39.905+12:002013-09-06T21:47:39.905+12:00Blooms list (or some of it):
A. The Theocratic Ag...Blooms list (or some of it):<br /><br />A. The Theocratic Age<br />"Since the literary canon is at issue here, I include only those religious, philosophical, historical, and scientific writings that are themselves of great aesthetic interest. I would think that, of all the books that are in this first list, once the reader is conversant with the Bible, Homer, Plato, the Athenian dramatists, and Virgil, the crucial work is the Koran....<br />"I have included some Sanskrit works, scriptures and fundamental literary texts, because of their influence on the Western canon. The immense wealth of ancient Chinese literature is mostly a sphere apart from Western literary tradition and is rarely conveyed adequately in the translations available to us."<br />(Bloom, p. 531)<br />The Ancient Near East<br />· Gilgamesh<br />· Egyptian Book of the Dead<br />· Holy Bible (King James Version)<br />· The Apocrypha Sayings of the Fathers (Pirke Aboth) <br />Bloom, Harold. The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages.<br />· <br />Ancient India (Sanskrit)<br />· Mahabharata<br />· Bhagavad-Gita<br />· Ramayana<br />The Ancient Greeks<br />· Homer<br />Iliad<br />Odyssey<br />· Hesiod<br />Works and Days<br />Theogony<br />· Archilochos, Sappho, Alkman<br />· Pindar<br />Odes<br />· Aeschylus<br />Oresteia<br />Seven Against Thebes<br />Prometheus Bound<br />Persians<br />Suppliant Women<br />· Sophocles<br />Oedipus the King<br />Oedipus at Colonus<br />Antigone<br />Electra<br />Ajax<br />Women of Trachis<br />Philoctetes<br />· Euripides<br />Cyclops<br />Heracles<br />Alcestis<br />Hecuba<br />Bacchae<br />Orestes<br />Andromache<br />Medea<br />Ion<br />Hippolytus<br />Helen<br />Iphigenia at Aulis<br />· Aristophanes<br />The Birds<br />The Clouds<br />The Frogs<br />Lysistrata<br />The Knights<br />The Wasps<br />The Assemblywomen<br />· Herodotus<br />The Histories<br />· Thucydides<br />The Peloponnesian Wars<br />· The Pre-Socratics (Heraclitus, Empedocles)<br />· Plato<br />Dialogues<br />· Aristotle<br />Poetics<br />Ethics<br />Hellenistic Greeks<br />· Menander<br />The Girl from Samos<br />· "Longinus"<br />On the Sublime<br />· Callimachus<br />Hymns<br />and Epigrams<br />· Theocritus<br />Idylls<br />· Plutarch<br />Lives<br />Moralia<br />· "Aesop"<br />Fables<br />· Lucian<br />Satires<br />The Romans<br />· Plautus<br />Pseudolus<br />The Braggart Soldier<br />The Rope<br />Amphitryon<br />· Terence<br />The Girl from Andros<br />The Eunuch<br />The Mother-in-Law<br />· Lucretius<br />The Way Things Are<br />· Cicero<br />On the Gods<br />· Horace<br />Odes<br />Epistles<br />Satires<br />· Persius<br />Satires<br />· Catullus<br />Attis<br />and Other Poems<br />· Virgil<br />Aeneid<br />Eclogues<br />Georgics<br />· Lucan<br />Pharsalia<br />· Ovid<br />Metamorphoses<br />The Art of Love<br />Heroides<br />· Juvenal<br />Satires<br />· Martial<br />Epigrams<br />· Seneca<br />Tragedies<br />, particularly Medea and Hercules Furens<br />· Petronius<br />Satyricon<br />· Apuleius<br />The Golden Ass<br />The Middle Ages: Latin, Arabic, and the Vernacular Before Dante<br />· Saint Augustine<br />City of God<br />Confessions<br />· The Koran (Al-Qur'an)<br />· The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night<br />· The Poetic Edda<br />· Snorri Sturluson<br />The Prose Edda<br />· The Nibelungen Lied<br />· Wolfram von Eschenbach<br />Parzival<br />· Chrétien de Troyes<br />Yvain: The Knight of the Lion<br />· Beowulf<br />· The Poem of the Cid<br />· Christine de Pisan<br />The Book of the City of Ladies<br />· Diego de San Pedro<br />Prison of Love<br />B. The Aristocratic Age<br />"It is a span of five hundred years from Dante's Divine Comedy through Goethe's Faust, Part Two [1321-1832], an era that gives us a huge body of reading in five major literatures: Italian, Spanish, English, French, and German. In this and in the remaining lists, I sometimes do not mention individual works by a canonical master, and in other instances I attempt to call attention to authors and books that I consider canonical but rather neglected. From this list onward, many good writers who are not quite central are omitted...." <br />(Bloom, p. 534)<br />Italy<br />· Dante<br />The Divine Comedy<br />The New Life<br />· Petrarch<br />******************************<br /><br />.... and there is much more. Not a bad list (if one needs a "list") but a bit more limited than your sense of a non-hierarchic assembly.Richardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10272507198753290435noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29676463.post-41312640422908739912013-09-06T21:42:26.986+12:002013-09-06T21:42:26.986+12:00The last chapter is worth reading on its own - it ...The last chapter is worth reading on its own - it is the Psyche - Eros legend and is quite wonderful, beautiful, mysterious. <br /><br />I also enjoyed reading St. Augustine's 'Confessions' <br /><br />Those Penguins are good but in many other cases (I've been told by an expert in classics etc) these are not very good. But many are good if one (like me) has no Greek and little Latin...<br /><br />Jack - your list coincides in some points with Harold Bloom's 'Great Books'! Richardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10272507198753290435noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29676463.post-6723809147630175202013-09-05T08:43:23.538+12:002013-09-05T08:43:23.538+12:00Yes, I think that Robert Graves was right when he ...Yes, I think that Robert Graves was right when he remarked that <i>The Ass</i> "lacked charm." That business of laughing at the most brutal of pratfalls is very conspicuous in <i>Don Quixote</i>, too -- always with copious quantities of blood and vomit and so on ...<br /><br /><i>Aethiopika</i> is probably a bit better from that point of view. And Longus is positively mealy-mouthed!Dr Jack Rosshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01805945600952222957noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29676463.post-5181981877181391372013-09-04T15:16:39.735+12:002013-09-04T15:16:39.735+12:00Magnificent, as usual. We found a copy of Collecte...Magnificent, as usual. We found a copy of Collected Greek Novels and I started reading "The Ass" to John but it was too gory. I couldn't stop being horrified by how you're clearly supposed to think the poor animal being tortured or frightened out of its wits is just the funniest thing in the world. Katherine Dolanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01831799082347506550noreply@blogger.com