The Toast discussion

Hey hi hello Toasties!

How many of you listened to Mallory on the Sunday School Dropouts podcast this week? I downloaded it as soon as I saw the tweet, and I was cracking up laughing in the car on my commute for the next day or two as I worked my way through it.

As always, Mallory's (poss Wikipedia-based?) knowledge of classical themes and literary concepts (Persian wisdom literature??) blows me away and makes me want to be smarter, more widely read, more broadly educated. My own literary education was pretty narrow - there weren't enough people in my year group to warrant running an English Lit class when I was in upper school, so any 'classics' I've ever even read have been under my own steam.

My history is all modern, my poetry is nonexistent. I am in the mood for something difficult, challenging, engaging, something that could start a conversation with another Toast-mourner. What are The Classics to you?

I actually recently just bookmarked this, which promises to be a a guide for self-education - The Well-Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25... Dunno if it's quite what you had in mind.

In general, I know so little of the Greek and Roman philosophers, literature in languages other than English, or like... how to read visual art. I would like to be knowledgeable about such things.

Amanda wrote: "I find that "The Classics" is often considered to mean "The Male Canon with a Few Female Exceptions." Certainly the 18th-20th century stuff, and all the way back to the Greek plays too, if you thin..."

Yeah I find the same thing. In fact reading back I realise I wasn't really clear at all in what I was looking for. *throws up hands*

In fact in this context I'm much more interested in history, philosophy, ideas, than in fiction. I kept my undergraduate history degree fiercely modern, and so I have no grounding in Greek, Roman, Persian history and thought. I would love suggestions on women-focused versions of these, as I'm always up for giving established history the finger, even if I don't have a solid background in said history!

This morning I decided that Agatha Christie's account of her travels through Syria with her archaeologist husband in the 30s/40s was too light and flippant for my current mood, so I pulled Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph off my shelf and started it. I'm disconsolately interested in colonialism and its impacts, and I really hope to read this book interrogatively. I realise I am just perpetuating the Male Canon by doing this, but it's something I've always thought would be worth reading.

Nicole wrote: "I actually recently just bookmarked this, which promises to be a a guide for self-education - The Well-Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had http://www.goodreads.com/book/..."

Hey I had just seen that earlier in the day when I started flail-googling! There ought to be a Google Image but for feelings, as it turns out sadly typing 'classical education' into a search engine ain't all that helpful.

Greek and Roman philosophers, literature in languages other than English, or like... how to read visual art

This is the exact feeling I was trying to capture with this question - the kind of thing I expect turn-of-the-century Oxford students were learning, and then discussing at length over quail's eggs in their elegantly-decorated quarters. Which probably says a lot more about me and my own educational limitations and literary fetishes than about any actual concept of 'education', really, but hey ho.

St. John's College in Maryland bases their curriculum on the classics; maybe you can see if they have a reading list online? Wikipedia says they also do a Masters in Eastern Classics, so that might give you some more variety than the standard lists of great books.

Thanks Shannon! I'll definitely look into that.