Classics and the Western Canon discussion
General
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Planning our Third Read of 2021
Today i finished Letters to a Young Poet( 5 stars) and today i shelved The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge on my tbr. It is the only book of the list which i still have to read.
The Decameron has been on my TBR forever. Considering it's a group of stories told by people escaping a plague, it seems apropos
I've read everything on the list except for the Rilke book. I feel so cultured.
The only one of these I've read is Tom Jones, which is wonderful (although I have read a fair bit of Rilke). If the choice was Beowulf, I guess a particular translation would be chosen? While translation is always a factor, in this case there seems to be a massive difference between texts.
Paul wrote: "If the choice was Beowulf, I guess a particular translation would be chosen?..."Not necessarily. When we did Demons recently, people read different translations, so we were able to compare. As you noted, the Beowulf translations vary in tone and diction. It might be interesting to compare the different translations as we read the material.
Tom Jones is one of a very few novels in the original Great Books set.The one time I seriously set out to read it, I was put off by its "Hogarthian" tone.
But Coleridge said it had a "perfect" plot.
Tamara wrote: "Paul wrote: "If the choice was Beowulf, I guess a particular translation would be chosen?..."Not necessarily. When we did Demons recently, people read different translations, so we we..."
Regarding Demons, the differences between translations were not so pronounced (I started with the Constance Garnett translation from the public domain and continued with the Richard Pevear & Larissa Volokhonsky version).
With Beowulf, it would be even more beneficial to read different translations as they are extremely different.
You'll find bellow some examples, maybe they will whet your appetite and make you vote for Beowulf:
Beowulf: A New Verse Translation, translated by R. M. Liuzza (2000):
a large company of thanes — and he laughed inside;
he meant to divide, before day came,
this loathsome creature, the life of each
man from his body, when there befell him
the hope of a feast. But it was not his fate
Charles Scott Moncrieff (1921):
A head of friendly warriors. / Then his heart laughed out ;
He was minded to divide, / ere the day came,
That ugly devil, / in each and all
The life from the limbs ; / then lust to him came
Of feasting his fill. / Nor was it fated again
Beowulf: A New Verse Translation, translated by Seamus Heaney (2000)
quartered together.And his glee was demonic,
picturing the mayhem: before morning
he would rip life from limb and devour them,
feed on their flesh; but his fate that night
R.K. Gordon (1926)
Then his mind exulted. The dread monster purposed ere day came to part the life of each one form the body, for the hope of a great feasting filled him.
Lucien Dean Pearson (1965):
His spirit laughed; the dreaded monster meant, before day came, to part the life of each man from his body, now that hope of banqueting had come.
Original text:
magorinca heap. þa his mod ahlog;
mynte þæt he gedælde, ærþon dæg cwome,
atol aglæca, anra gehwylces
lif wið lice, þa him alumpen wæs
wistfylle wen. Ne wæs þæt wyrd þa gen
Emil wrote: ".... With Beowulf, it would be even more beneficial to read different translations as they are extremely different. ..."Thx, Emil! Delightful! (view spoiler)
I haven’t been able to read with this group in a long time, but would love to dive back in with Beowulf.
Anyone who has tried Beowulf before, and been frustrated by notes or introductions that direct you to inaccessible parallel texts in Old Norse or Medieval Latin, may want to try "Beouwlf and Its Analogues," which contains translations of just about everything mentioned as relevant in the standard critical editions. It also contains a rather good prose translation of the poem by G.N. Garmonsway, a distinguished scholar. (I found it helpful figuring out the syntax while taking a seminar course on Beowulf in Old English, so I speak from more than casual acquaintance.) It is out of print, but used copies show up on Amazon fairly regularly: https://www.amazon.com/Beowulf-Analog... I can't predict the asking price, which may be more than you want to spend.For the second half of the twentieth century, the standard student and professional text of Beowulf was Friedrich Klaeber's third edition, with a supplement, "Beowulf, with the Fight at Finnsburg," This has been replaced by "Klaeber's Beowulf. Fourth Edition," edited by R.D. Fulk, Robert Björk. and John D. Niles. Unfortunately, this is way too expensive for me to recommend to anyone without a serious interest in Old English (Anglo-Saxon). https://www.amazon.com/Klaebers-Beowu...
This contains elaborate technical notes, a glossary which doubles as a concordance and grammatical commentary, and original-text passages from the "Analogues" translated in Garmonsway (et al.)
Fulk also edited a plainer edition, but with facing translations, of the whole Beowulf manuscript (which contains other texts), "The Beowulf Manuscript: Complete Texts and The Flight at Finnsburg," in the Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library series. This is less expensive, but still a substantial investment, so, again, this is for those who are already really interested: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/067...
More bibliography (which I hope someone finds helpful).It is impossible to study (or in some cases even read introductions to) "Beowulf" without stumbling across J.R.R. Tolkien, whose 1936 British Academy lecture on "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics" is generally taken as the start of modern, literary, criticism of the poem as such. This was/is available on line in bootleg pdf copies, but is in print in a collection, "The Monsters and the Critics, And Other Essays" https://www.amazon.com/Monsters-Criti...
This is actually reasonably priced, and includes a separate essay on the problems of translating Beowulf which once accompanied a reprint of a then-standard rendering aimed at undergraduates. A little bit of it is technical (on verse forms), but it is mostly easy to follow.
The lecture was actually the third, much condensed, redaction of a long work, now edited by Michael Drout, "Beowulf and the Critics by J. R. R. Tolkien" (Second Revised Edition). It is extremely illuminating, if you happen to have studied Beowulf formally: unfortunately, thanks to small print runs from the publisher, it has become quite expensive as well.
https://www.amazon.com/Beowulf-Critic...
Much more affordable is Tolkien's own "Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary," edited by Christopher Tolkien. It was published recently, but the translation dates from the 1920s (and was based largely on Klaeber's first edition): the accompanying commentary is condensed from lectures Tolkien gave pretty much annually at Oxford for a couple of decades. Unfortunately, it covers in detail mostly the first two-thirds of the poem, which were the only part included in the Oxford Syllabus at the time: a practice Tolkien seems to have accepted only under protest (for reasons explained in the British Academy lecture). https://www.amazon.com/Beowulf-Transl... I thought that this was available in Kindle format, but that doesn't seem to be the case. {ADDITIONAL NOTE: it *was* available in Kindle, because I bought a copy in order to mark it up, but it seems to have been withdrawn.}
Also relevant, but again very specialized, is another posthumous publication by Tolkien, "Finn and Hengest," a detailed study of the "Finn Episode" in Beowulf proper, as well as the perplexing "Fight at Finnsburg"/"Finnsburh Fragment" (which Tolkien liked to point out should be rendered in modern English as 'Finsbury,' an existing English place-name). It was edited by A.J. Bliss, one of Tolkien's students, who had independently come up with a theory parallel to Tolkien's explanation of what is going on in the background story. https://www.amazon.com/Finn-Hengest-O...
Ian wrote: "More bibliography (which I hope someone finds helpful).It is impossible to study (or in some cases even read introductions to) "Beowulf" without stumbling across J.R.R. Tolkien, whose 1936 Britis..."
Thanks for the bibliography Ian, it will come in handy if we will end up reading Beowulf.
I have a polyglot edition of the Seamus Heaney translation (which I find great by the way) but I was planning to get Tolkien's "Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary". I've read some samples of his version and It feels pleasant and poetic, even though it's a prose translation:
"Woe shall be to him that through fiendish malice shall thrust down his soul into the fire’s embrace, to look for no comfort, in no wise to change his lot! Blessed shall be he that may after his death-day go unto the lord and seek peace in the bosom of the Father!"
Emil wrote: "Thanks for the bibliography Ian, it will come in handy if we will end up reading Beowulf. ..."And maybe for some of us anyway, even if we don't decide to read it together.
I'm also putting together a list of Kindle editions to avoid, mostly because they have obsolete translations (especially that by William Morris, which makes much more sense if you already know Old English), or have nineteenth-century Old English text editions facing non-matching translations. Fortunately, these are cheap and returnable, so I don't feel any immediate urgency (like, by tomorrow) to identify them.
Ian wrote: "I'm also putting together a list of Kindle editions to avoid"I am curious if this edition should be avoided and why: Beowulf: A Verse Translation (Second Edition) (Norton Critical Editions) Kindle Edition, Daniel Donoghue (Editor), Seamus Heaney (Translator). If so, what is the best Kindle edition in your opinion?
David wrote: "Ian wrote: "I'm also putting together a list of Kindle editions to avoid"I am curious if this edition should be avoided and why: Beowulf: A Verse Translation (Second Edition) (Norton Critical Edi..."
This is an excellent edition: it contains both the Seamus Heaney translation (originally commissioned for the same publisher's "Norton Anthology of English Literature," although it soon escaped its bounds), and a good choice of critical and background material. I can't think why I didn't mention it yesterday: it may have vanished because my posts were already too long.
N.B. I really should have mentioned it: I have it, and knew that it contains a substantial part of Tolkien's "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics." with some additional notes translating passages left in Old English.It omits the fairly technical appendices, which amount to ten pages that most readers could just as well do without.
It may take a while to sort out bad examples: since I last checked, about a year ago, the array of Kindle versions has reached 21 pages (versus 75 for all formats), and the specific editions I noted then seem to have been either dropped or re-issued with new covers.
In general, I would avoid as obsolete the translations by Francis Barton Gummere (although the verse is rather good), John Leslie Hall (aka Leslie Hall), and William Morris, all of whom show up frequently, and any mention of the Heyne-Socin edition (nineteenth-century German -- very good in its day, but that is long past). "Look Inside" should provide that information (if it is working: it currently seems incompatible with my Firefox for Mac browser, and I have to switch to Safari to use it, and others may have similar problems on their platforms of choice.)
By the way, the (John) Leslie Hall translation should not be confused with the Clark-Hall translation, a revision of which provided the context for Tolkien's essay on translating the poem. The latter doesn't seem to be available, but I may have missed it.
I remember in 10th grade, we were supposed to read Beowulf over Thanksgiving, and I wound up w. the translation in the Harvard Classics, instead of the then most current reader-friendly Burton Rafael translation, and I couldn't make head or tail of it.Does the interest for Beowulf on this thread portend a landslide come poll time?
Tom Jones, anyone?
If you read the Harvard Classics edition, it was the verse translation by Francis B. Gummere (1910), which, being out of copyright, is readily available on the Net, and of course Kindle. Gummere was a distinguished scholar, but seems to have wanted his verse to alliterate and scan more than he wanted it to make clear sense -- or stay faithful to the text, although he was pretty good about that.Burton Raffel's likewise "imitative" verse translation, from 1963, had a vogue as a student version, but has been replaced by others. The more I learned about Beowulf the less happy I was with his translation, which added "explanatory" phrases to the text. Apparently Raffel thought his likely readers were allergic to footnotes: he may have been right, but the interjections make the translation hard to use or quote safely by a student.
No one has yet mentioned the newest translation by Headley. Since I read an older translation, I'm going to go with this shake up, should Beowulf be chosen. :-)
Christopher wrote: "Tom Jones, anyone?."I never expected to like Tom Jones when I was coerced into reading it many years ago, but I thought it was great fun. It certainly is a chunkster, but it isn't as long as it looks.
Sam wrote: "No one has yet mentioned the newest translation by Headley. Since I read an older translation, I'm going to go with this shake up, should Beowulf be chosen. :-)"Translating "hwaet" as "Bro" definitely got my attention.
Christopher wrote: ".. I remember in 10th grade, we were supposed to read Beowulf over Thanksgiving, and I wound up w. the translation in the Harvard Classics, instead of the then most current reader-friendly Burton Rafael translation, and I couldn't make head or tail of it."I read it once before with similar results, lol...which is why I’d love to reread it with this group.
I haven't read anything pre-19th century for a while, so Decameron, Tom Jones and Beowulf sounds good to me..
Tom Jones, the Decameron, or The Notebooks all tempt me. I read Tom Jones years ago and thought it was great fun. The Decameron and the Notebooks are on my list of books I’d like to read, and the Decameron seems very timely with the group of young friends going to the countryside to avoid the plague and telling each other stories. (I’ve reread Silas Marner and Great Expectations fairly recently so I’m opting for another choice.).
Due to my personal schedule, I have posted the poll a bit early, but it will not be open for voting until
May 04, 2021 09:00PM PDT
https://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/2...
I jumped in with some Beowulf bibliography because people might be planning on reading it whether or not it is chosen, and, as I know from experience, the translation you read determines your experience to a remarkable degree.Or not so remarkable.
It is relatively short (just over 3000 lines), and available in excellent editions with glossaries and grammatical commentaries, so translating it looks easy.
On the basis of experience, treating it that way involves a confidence in one's own abilities and knowledge of the language I never came close to feeling while doing my own translation a few decades ago.
Besides the (few) passages that have resisted any consensus on understanding, the language of the poem is not only very old, but was very specialized, and formal, and coming up with a modern equivalent is a problem.
Some very good translations are in prose, which sort of sidesteps the full poetic issue, since without alliteration or meter it is possible to get the sense more exactly. But this sometimes becomes flat.
Some verse translations are so involved with imitating the meter, or using another one, that the translation looses track of the text, so you are reading someone's retelling, instead. Gummere's translation, which was mentioned, above, was the work of a competent enough Old English scholar, but he was an authority on medieval and modern ballads, and I think this shows through.
Some translations are downright weird.
William Morris seems to have felt that the appropriate language for rendering an Old English poem was Middle English, and he incorporated Old English words that remained in the language until around Chaucer's time, even thought they have long since been obsolete.
A.J. Wyatt, his authority for the poem, apparently grew alarmed as Morris turned his prose version into something that, as I mentioned earlier, almost needs access to the original to make complete sense -- or at least an extensive glossary. It was not a great success in 1895, and survived in major libraries mainly because it was included in his "Collected Works," but you wouldn't guess that from the number of Kindle editions of it.
Some efforts get very strange indeed. William Ellery Leonard decided to translate using not the actual Old English alliterative meter, but the Nibelungen stanza (i.e., that used in the Middle High German Nibelungenlied), which back around 1900 (or maybe earlier) had been theorized to be the most ancient Germanic verse form. (Mostly, I suspect, by Germans, who dominated the subject.)
Unfortunately, this survives (if it is a survival) in English in only one place, and that all-too-familiar: a nursery rhyme. "Sing a song of sixpence, a pocket full of rye, / four-and-twenty blackbirds baked in a pie....."
This yields (I remember the opening): "What ho! We've heard the glory / of spearmen, clansmen kings! / Their deeds of olden story, how fought the athelings!" (Athelings = nobles; an Old English word preserved for the sake of the rhyme).
It adheres pretty closely to the sense, most of the time, but in an extended reading aloud, the nursery association may keep breaking in. Some people find it hard to maintain a straight face, once it dawns on them what is going on.
Published in 1923, this translation was favorably received in many quarters. It had two deluxe illustrated editions, and was even anthologized, slightly abridged, in a college text (a sort of precursor to the Norton Anthology of English Literature)....
Besides the bilingual edition of Seamus Heaney's translation, there are a couple of other parallel text editions I think worth mentioning.The oldest, which I warn against, is Benjamin Thorpe's mid-nineteenth-century version, "The Anglo-Saxon Poem of Beowulf, the Scop or Gleeman's Tale, and the Fight at Finnesbug" (first edition 1855). It is, or recently was, in print. The modern edition omits his notes, glossary, and index, which in any case are obsolete in all textual questions and many points of translation. The modern edition (a reproduction from I think, his second edition) still prints the Old English text in short (half-)lines, rather than long lines, which about doubles the number of lines, and makes it necessary to do some arithmetic to find anything referred to elsewhere by the standard numbering.
I mention it only because it was put into print in paperback in, I think, the 1960s, and reprintings are still available new or used (see https://www.amazon.com/Anglo-Saxon-Po...)
Much better in every way is "Beowulf: A Dual-Language Edition" by Howell D. Chickering, from the 1970s. It is sort of in print (in limited quantities), but used copies are fairly inexpensive. It contains little in the way of technical helps to the reader, but does have some interesting comments. The translation is quite good, as I recall -- it came out while I studying Old English, and I am going by that initial impression, not some considered judgment. See https://www.amazon.com/Beowulf-Dual-L...
Finally, there is a translation by a Korean scholar, "Beowulf in parallel Texts," by Sung-Il Lee, which does include technical and other aides to the reader (2017). It had a favorable response from qualified critics: I have yet to make any use of it myself. There is a reasonably (I think) priced Kindle edition, as well as more expensive hard copies. NOTE: the Kindle edition does not present the text on facing pages, but interleaves blocks of Old English with the translation.)
See https://www.amazon.com/Beowulf-Parall...
On English translations in general, see the (incomplete) list, which does not distinguish bilingual editons, at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...
All you guys are swooning over Beowulf, but I'm going to vote for The Mayor of Casterbridge. I like Hardy, and this one I haven't read yet.
Ian wrote: "I jumped in with some Beowulf bibliography because people might be planning on reading it whether or not it is chosen, and, as I know from experience, the translation you read determines your exper..."I plan to read it regardless so I appreciate the comments. I’m curious if there is an Old English primer you would recommend for someone who just wants a bit of familiarity with it before diving into a bilingual edition?
Genni wrote: " I’m curious if there is an Old English primer you would recommend for someone who just wants a bit of familiarity with it before diving into a bilingual edition? ..."Yes. And I was just assembling the information on it, after taking a look at my notes for an old list I posted on the old Amazon Discussion Boards (or Forums, I don't recall which incarnation, and they are gone beyond recall, anyway).
The only downside is that it is Kindle only, and not everyone likes reading from a screen. But it is easy to search for just that bit of information you can't quite remember right now.
"Drout's Quick and Easy Old English," by Michael D.C. Drout, Bruce D. Gilchrist, and Rachel Kapelle. See
https://www.amazon.com/Drouts-Quick-E...
This began as a course book by Michael Drout (yes, the same Drout who edited "Beowulf and the Critics"), under the title of "King Alfred's Grammar," which may still have a ghostly on-line existence, but is not available under that name. In either incarnation, it is aimed at getting the beginning student up and reading Old English texts as soon as possible.
I have no idea how well this works in practice; apparently well enough for Drout to stick with it. Decades ago, I got started on standard grammars, which emphasized depth of knowledge, a good deal of which I never really absorbed.
But I found Drout's approach a very good review.
I think that it will make a good start, and, used with a bilingual edition, it should be sufficient to make out how Old English works. And sometimes whether the translation sounds right to you.
Of course, it doesn't come with a full dictionary.
So in other places, you will still have to depend on the translator, and the editor or critic whose view is being followed.
This is not a criticism of Drout's book. I think that you can learn to read a lot of Old English texts from it. And even with "Beowulf," there are lines like 'Thaet waes god cyning,' and 'Beowulf is min nama' that actually do mean 'That was a good king" and "Beowulf is my name."
But the poem is studded with rare words, and words, or compounds, that are unique in the corpus of Old English, and has some unusual grammar (not that I could ever tell without a commentary) apparently limited to poetry. Nothing for a purely introductory book to get into.
(It is no wonder that "Beowulf" gave early nineteenth-century scholars fits, and that their immediate successors preferred, for the most part, not to mention that it was very good poetry, or maybe didn't notice themselves. Until the appearance of some of the twentieth-century editions, mainly Klaeber's in the English-speaking world, parts of it were very hard going for the novice, and even the more experienced scholar.)
Drout has quite a few lecture titles on Audible.com under the Modern Scholar series, including, The Modern Scholar: The Anglo-Saxon Worldhttps://www.audible.com/pd/The-Modern...
I do not have that particular title but several others by him and found them very entertaining and informative.
I also found: Drout's Quick and Easy Old English
Ian wrote: "Genni wrote: " I’m curious if there is an Old English primer you would recommend for someone who just wants a bit of familiarity with it before diving into a bilingual edition? ..."Yes. And I was..."
Thanks so much for the info (and David, also).
I've been planning to read Decameron not only because of the befitting times but because I've really enjoyed Dante's Inferno and Purgatorio but disatisfied with some aspects of the Paradiso. I've heard that Bocaccio revered Dante but also was his main critic. It would be interesting to compare the two authors before I forget Dante's book. So, I'm planning on reading the Decameron even if it doesn't get the votes, but I'm having trouble choosing the translation. I have Rebhorn, McWilliams, Musa in mind. Any recommendations?
Borum wrote: "I've been planning to read Decameron not only because of the befitting times but because I've really enjoyed Dante's Inferno and Purgatorio but disatisfied with some aspects of the Paradiso. I've h..."I would love to read the Decameron again. I can't help you with the translation, I only own an old german one.
The Decameron may be seen as a satire to Divine Comediy - hence its nickname "I'Umanna Comedia".
While the Divine Comedy explores the sacred God-human relationship, the Decameron explores the profane human-human relationship. I've also enjoyed Inferno and Purgatorio but I found Paradiso beautifully boring - a kind of elaborate lyrical onanism.
I'm pretty sure Dante and his Beatrice would would have been outraged by the Decameron.
Thank you to the 14 members that have voted so far. If you have not voted yet there is still time. The poll will end: May 11, 2021 08:59PM PDThttps://www.goodreads.com/poll/list/1...
I have only just come to this so sorry to have missed the poll. I would like to read some TS Eliot. His philosophy and religion are very much aligned with Dante's. I have spent every day of lockdown with Dante's Inferno (very apt really) and am producing an adaptation as part of the celebration of the poet's 700th anniversary to come out later this year. The Divine Comedy is one of those ones which need to be on the list of 100 before you die (it was on David Bowie's and Oscar Wilde's). Despite the pain and suffering conveyed within, it is actually full of friendship, love and humour and these things are often overlooked. Dante gives us some tips for how to live our lives well, the most important one being to work together to achieve a strong and stable society.
Hi Hilary. Sorry you missed the poll this time around. I hope you will join us on our next read and vote in the next one.In the meantime Please feel free to read and comment on our 2015 discussion of some of TS Eliot's work
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/group...
And the same goes for our 2018 discussion of Dante's Divine Comedy
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/group...
Poll Results and the next TWO readsWe will reading Beowulf first and The Decameron next.
After a brief discussion with regard to moderator availability as well as the apparent popularity of both works by votes and comments, the moderators hope that reading both books with a slight change in order is acceptable to everyone.
We hope you will join us in reading Beowulf first, followed by the usual two week interim read and then The Decameron. The Beowulf translation discussion may begin as soon as next week to help members decide on which editions to obtain and the discussion of the work itself will start on June 2nd.
R W W% Book
9 21 36% The Decameron
8 20 34% Beowulf
4 12 20% The Mayor of Casterbridge
3 5 8% The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge
1 1 2% Great Expectations
The Beowulf translation discussion may begin as soon as next week to help members decide on which editions to obtain and the discussion of the work itself will start on June 2nd...."I'm jumping in a bit early because I'm not sure how long a current (low) price I just noticed will last.
S.A.J. Bradley's Anglo-Saxon Poetry from the Everyman series is now available in a Kindle edition for $3.99, as against about $23 dollars for the paperback (new: if a copy is available). There are also very inexpensive used copies, on which someone might want to take a chance, some with free delivery.
The print book runs to 628 pages, and contains translations of pretty much all the Old English verse that is worth reading, with summaries of the rest. The translations are quite reliable, although the diction is a little too modern for my taste (An example from early in "Beowulf" is "communal property," for "folc-scare."
I also disagree with some of his choices of alternative translations, preferring positions held by other scholars, but I don't see that as an obstacle. (In the example above, the strictly literal translation would be the unhelpful "folk-share," which might mean several other things, as described in the commentary in Klaeber's Beowulf, the most recent full edition.)
In case someone is debating spending more money to get an Old English text of Beowulf, there is a free option, at least for Mac, iPad, and iOS users, which, unlike those offered in some Kindle books, is actually modern (well, mid-twentieth-century).There is a six-volume series of the "Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records," originally published from the late 1920s to the mid-1950s by Columbia University Press: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-S...
The text (but not the valuable critical notes and textual commentary) was later included in the down-loadable Oxford Text Archive series (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_...).
The emendations were marked in bold print, but the originally readings are, obviously, not supplied. It may differ a bit from the text a given translation was using, but in the case of Beowulf it should be very similar.
The Text Archive version was at one time available, free, on Kindle -- or at least I have a Kindle copy from way back. It is no longer there, but is available on the Apple BOOKS app (formerly iBooks).
Unhappily, Books is not available on platforms other than Apple's iOS/iPad and MacOS, but the file is ePub, and can be read on other applications -- you may be able get someone else to download it as a file. It may also be available from other ePub distributors, although I haven't found any in a cursory search. (If I do, I will report back later).
Unfortunately, it seems that it cannot be downloaded directly from the Oxford Text Archive site, which seems to require an intermediary institution to create an account (although I may be wrong about this: in any case, you can see https://ota.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/reposit...)
Ian, thank you for this information. However, we would appreciate it if you can wait until Wednesday when we will be posting the translation folder to begin the discussion on translations. Thank you in advance for your cooperation.
Seems like two interesting reads have been picked for the upcoming discussions! I’m particularly looking forward to the Decameron which has been on my TBR for years, but wouldn’t mind another pass at Beowulf either.
Ian wrote: "S.A.J. Bradley's Anglo-Saxon Poetry from the Everyman series is now available in a Kindle edition for $3.99, as against about $23 dollars for the paperback (new: if a copy is available). There are also very inexpensive used c.."Looks like a great anthology, thanks for the tip Ian. I managed to get an used copy at a ridiculously low price.
You posted in here so many valuable information regarding Beowulf, It would be great if you would transfer those posts to the Beowulf discussion next week for a better visibility.
David wrote: "...In the meantime Please feel free to read and comment on our 2015 discussion of Dante's Divine Comedy..."Hilary -- The 2012 discussion of The Inferno seems to start here, although how to find the background, reading plan, and successive segments is not intuitively obvious to me this moment. A little scratching will be productive if you are interested enough to search a bit. We discussed The Comedia in its three separate segments.
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
(Laurel led us through each of these units. Some of the links to other resources, especially visuals, seem to no longer be valid. I did a number of them for the WC discussions here; they were fun to collect and I suspect the basic resources (Princeton, Dartmouth?, ...) are still available online, perhaps expanded and re-presented by now, some with new host locations even.)
PS -- just spotted this: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
Lily wrote: "PS -- just spotted this: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/........."As we embark on two great ancient reads (Beowulf and Decameron) and hopefully entice some new participants to join WC discussions, let me recall this memory from Eman, this board's founder, when The Comedia commenced:
#4 "The problem, I can already see, is not going to be finding resources to help with reading the text, but is going to be wading through the extreme amount of supplementary material that's available to find the must useful items that can be absorbed in the time available.
"In my own case, and maybe others will feel the same way, I'm going to find it a challenge to keep focused on my own direct relationship with the text and not get overwhelmed with the views of the dozens of experts who have written so extensively about the work. I need to keep in mind that many people, particularly the original readers, have read the text without any assistance from experts and have still found it compelling and of great value. I do think that some background will be helpful, particularly in understanding the historical environment which Dante presumably expected his readers to know, and the personalities who were also well known to his readers but are unknown to any modern non-scholar.
"But where and how do I make the decision to stop consulting the vast amount of material available and start relying on my own reading of and interaction with the text? Is anybody else pondering the same question?"
Everyman, trained in the St. John's College traditions, firmly encouraged all of us to engage with the text itself, using (simply?) the life knowledge we each already possessed.
Lily wrote: Everyman, trained in the St. John's College traditions, firmly encouraged all of us to engage with the text itself, using (simply?) the life knowledge we each already possessed. "Hear Hear! And I was just thinking that to understand the context of The Decameron that we would all have to know what it's like to take shelter from a deadly pandemic.
Lily wrote: "from Eman, this board's founder, when The Comedia commenced. . ."In my own case, and maybe others will feel the same way, I'm going to find it a challenge to keep focused on my own direct relationship with the text and not get overwhelmed with the views of the dozens of experts who have written so extensively about the work. . ."I agree with most of the sentiment here. I especially like the comment about the original audience getting a lot of out of the work before extrinsic sources were even available, even though some first editions of great books were panned or misunderstood.
I also feel Adler sheds much common sense on the question.
AIDS TO READINGI also feel the need to point out again the irony that any form of discussion of a work becomes part of the very extrinsic reading in the most contentious category of commentary. I do not see how we can both prize great discussions which we certainly do, while simultaneously depreciating extrinsic sources which must include those same prized discussions.
Any aid to reading that lies outside the book being read we may speak of as extrinsic. By “intrinsic reading” we mean reading a book in itself, quite apart from all other books. By “extrinsic reading” we mean reading a book in the light of other books. . .There are good reasons for our having insisted up to now on your primary task as a reader—taking the book into your study and working on it by yourself, with the power of your own mind, and with no other aids. But it would be wrong to continue insisting on this. Extrinsic aids can help. And sometimes they are necessary for full understanding. . .It is a common-sense maxim of reading that outside help should be sought whenever a book remains unintelligible to you, either in whole or part, after you have done your best to read it according to the rules of intrinsic reading.
Van Doren, Charles; Mortimer J. Adler. How to Read a Book (A Touchstone Book) (p. 168). Touchstone. Kindle Edition.
Is it helpful to look a list of extrinsic sources, again from Adler.
I. Relevant experience - two types.I will now dismount the soapbox I borrowed from Tamara's fairy tale discourse. :)
a. Common although not necessarily universal experience.
b. Special - I suggest many of Ian's posts belong in this category. A better example would be Neil deGrasse Tyson commenting on a read of Relativity: The Special and the General Theory by Albert Einstein. Who wouldn't like that?
II. Other books - i.e, syntopical reading, comparing and contrasting ideas between books. E.g., Demons::P&P
III. Commentaries and abstracts - Adler provides the most caution for this category, and I suggest our discussions mostly fall into this category, along with the usual list of critical works.
IV. Reference books, i.e., dictionaries and encylopedias.
David wrote: "I also feel the need to point out again the irony that any form of discussion of a work becomes part of the very extrinsic reading in the most contentious category of commentary. I do not see how we can both prize great discussions which we certainly do, while simultaneously depreciating extrinsic sources which must include those same prized discussions."But I think these are different types of discussions. There's nothing wrong with graduate level academic discussion and commentary. There's a lot to be said for it, actually. The question is if this group is the place for it.
I think if we wish to be true to the spirit in which Everyman formed the group, we have to be conscious of what distracts from the experience of the common non-academic reader. In most cases the original audience for what we read was just this -- everyday people, just like the thoughtful people who wander into the group today.
On some level we have to agree that we are the same people now as they were then, or extrinsic interpretation is really necessary. But I don't think we really are that different. What makes these book "Great" is that they can still be encountered by everyday people without academic qualifications, and without the use of academic aids. I think this group has proved that, over and over again.
For those waiting for The Decameron, the discussion is currently scheduled to begin on Aug. 11, 2021.
How are you planning to organise the discussion for The Decameron? It might be challenging as we have 100 short stories. The most sensible way would be to split it into ten weeks corresponding to the ten days. We would still have 10 stories per week, but most days are revolving around the same theme.
Classics and the Western Canon
Books mentioned in this topic
Klaeber's Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburg (other topics)Anglo-Saxon Poetry (other topics)
Drout's Quick and Easy Old English (other topics)
Demons (other topics)
Demons (other topics)
More...
The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy
The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling by Henry Fielding
Beowulf by Unknown
The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Silas Marner by George Eliot
The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge by Rainer Maria Rilke
Schedule
Apr 28 - May 4 P&P Week 4 Next read member discussion
May 5 - May 11 P&P Week 5 Next read Poll
May 12 - May 18 P&P Week 6 Next read run-off Poll if needed
May 19 - May 25 Interim Read 1 Aquire book week 1
May 26 - Jun 1 Interim Read 2 Acquire book week 2
Jun 2 - Jun 8 2021 Third Read Discussion Begins