Learning English literature

Oh Christopher Marlowe. I enjoyed a few of his plays. I recommend his one about the merchant in Malta.
That's a very bold play.
"...for religion
Hides many mischiefs from suspicion."


In school we read Beowulf and then the first chapter or so of Paradise Lost. I can't get into that one as a whole but the first two chapters are sublime. The encounter between Satan and Death--I don't think that can be filmed.

We read some Dickens I think but I can't remember it. Unfortunately, because it was Canada we had to endure the suffering that is Margaret Lawrence--and read two of her books. Awful.
In grade 12 I had a teacher who was a descendant of Tennyson and he really got into the literature reading. I think he read some Dante out loud.

He told the class --never marry someone who is less intelligent than you are because the difference will one day come to mean a lot.

I had him as homeroom teacher so he was the last teacher I saw at school before it ended and I was there alone and told him I really enjoyed his class and would continue with literature after that.
He seemed pleased to hear it.


I never read Frankenstein in school--I think we read part of Gulliver's Travels. There's a text book which covers John Donne and Chaucer--we read some of the Tales--not the whole work.

I don't have a problem with the older style of writing but it certainly helps to know something about Greek mythology because it gets referenced a lot in such works.
Shakespeare is hard to read without having notes on hand to explain some references.
 
Ah the pitfalls of reading classic literature with some lack of historic knowledge! A Christmas Carol, Scrooge is visited by the ghost of Christmas yet to be. Tiny Tim has passed, and yet...

IMG20211208091041-01_copy_1024x753.jpeg

Then I remembered that in the old days bodies were kept in the house prior to burial.
 
AE35Unit said:
Ah the pitfalls of reading classic literature with some lack of historic knowledge! A Christmas Carol, Scrooge is visited by the ghost of Christmas yet to be. Tiny Tim has passed, and yet...

View attachment 84552
Then I remembered that in the old days bodies were kept in the house prior to burial.
Click to expand...
They still are in lots of places. You carry the coffin from the front room/kitchen out to the hearse, etc.
Hard to have a proper wake if the departed is not present.
 
Hmmm…

Sounds like you don’t enjoy any of all this so it’s begs the question why do you even want to? Is it some misplaced sense of obligation?

I’d say read Dickens and just let stuff you don’t understand slide. Reading is an immersive experience and every time you stop to look something up or re-read a sentence, you’re taking yourself out of the fun part of reading. I bet you’d have a better overall sense of the story than the piecemeal details.
 
AE35Unit said:
Oh I've tried reading an Oscar Wild book, Picture of Dorian Grey. Bored me to tears. Please tell me he has written better!
One author I have enjoyed is Jack London, White Fang and Call of the Wild, just brilliant.
Also enjoyed Lord of the Flies by William Golding.
Click to expand...

Try Oscar Wilde's short stories instead (I particularly like The Happy Prince, and The Nightingale & the Rose). Or one of his plays. The Importance of Being Earnest is really good. (The Picture of Dorian Gray is his only novel, by the way).

Does it matter if you don't understand every word of something? As long as you get the gist?
 
Don't expect to understand everything you read in a story that is almost 150 years old. There will be turns of phrase and words that would have been understood back then, but which will have little or no meaning to the 21st Century reader who doesn't have an understanding of Victorian England. Remember Dickens was writing about contemporary Britain (usually London) and so he would have used phrases that his readers would have been familiar with. And most of his writing was done in serials printed in newspapers, and so he was widely read by rich and poor alike.

But (as has been mentioned) it isn't likely that any words or phrases you aren't familiar with cannot be understood from the context of the sentences surrounding it. And even if they are , it is unlikely to affect your understanding or appreciation for the story as a whole.

As has also been mentioned, never read a book simply because it is regarded as a classic and you therefore feel obliged to do so. Read what the story is about, try the first two or three chapters, and if it hasn't grabbed you by then - move on to something else.

I would also recommend reading HG Wells , especially War of the Worlds. It helps to read science fiction, because (unlike much of Dickens work) it wasn't about real places and events, and so is much more easily understood.

As for Shakespeare, I have always said that his (their?) work should never be read to be fully appreciated, but watched played out for real. Could you fully understand the popularity of Star Wars by reading the film script? The reading (in my opinion) should come after you've watched it live, because then you can pick up on some of the dialogue you may have missed, or cross refer it to gain a better understanding. Again though, if you have no interest in Shakespeare don't read it because you feel you ought to. There's too much fiction out there that you will enjoy to waste time on that which you don't.
 
Phyrebrat said:
Hmmm…

Sounds like you don’t enjoy any of all this so it’s begs the question why do you even want to? Is it some misplaced sense of obligation?

I’d say read Dickens and just let stuff you don’t understand slide. Reading is an immersive experience and every time you stop to look something up or re-read a sentence, you’re taking yourself out of the fun part of reading. I bet you’d have a better overall sense of the story than the piecemeal details.
Click to expand...


I agree, although it is fun sometimes to understand the context of what is being said.

For instance I was interested to see (in Richard III) that 'hedgehog' was used as a form of insult. Having read up on it, (from one source) it appears that any creature that's body is closer to the ground than the sky is also farther from Heaven and God's good graces.
 
AllanR said:
If your able, instead of reading, go see it preformed.
Click to expand...
This I heartily recommend - we muddled through a fair few Shakespeare plays at high school via our Scots brogues and it was pretty dismal as 14-15 year olds that have no training in theatre! (Although I do remember enjoying the tragedies.) However actually seeing any of the plays by competent actors instantly transforms them and I could follow and enjoy the dialogue as if they have been miraculously translated by some alien technology.

They are not really supposed to be read like books, although I am sure there are many that do get a great deal of joy taking that route; they are to be experienced on the stage.
 
AllanR said:
If your able, instead of reading, go see it preformed.
Click to expand...
Seeing a Shakespeare play well-performed is an eye-opening experience. For me, it was seeing a very good troupe of actors from a local university. There was an energy that was electrifying, and because they understood what they were saying and that informed the way they spoke their lines I understood, too.

But live performances can be expensive, I know. I was able to see the plays I just mentioned because someone gave my father the tickets. Over the years after that, I went to see other performances in other places when I could scrape together the money. When I was old enough to have a relatively well-paying job I even went with my best friend to see the Royal Shakespeare company in two plays when they were touring the US.

These days, however, one need not leave ones home to see Shakespeare well-acted. Many of the streaming services include among the movies they offer some that are dramatizations of Shakespeare plays. There is something lost because it's not a live performance, but on the other hand, there is also the opportunity to see some of the greatest Shakespearian actors of our era acting the iconic roles.
 
Last edited:
Agreed; Laurence Olivier's Richard III is mesmerising (even though he does take liberties with the script). Kenneth Branagh's Henry V is also well worth a watch . If you want something a little more modern , then Ian McKellan's Richard III set in a fascist 1930s-era fascist Britain is a more modern (and more understandable interpretation of the play.

But as Teresa says, watching the real thing is the way to go. Funnily enough I paid decent money to get an upper seat in one of the wonderful pop-up Globe theatres a few years back, but far the more entertaining and value for money was the much cheaper 'groundlings' area, where you are positioned below the stage level. Quite often the actors will use groundlings as part of the play (for instance as trees in Macbeths's Dunisane forest, or picked to play the role model in Hamlet's 'what a piece of work is man' speech.

It's also very difficult (when reading from a book) to realise just how much humour (in particular irony) there is in Shakespeare. Only when you watch actors playing out the roles do you realise that not everything that is spoken is done so at face value.

The second best alternative to watching it live (and better than watching a movie version) is to see a recording of a stage play acted out on tv. Amazon Prime (and moreso BritBox) are two places to watch some of the finest actors of our time tread the boards.

Most of the stories you know, many of the phrases you've heard and a fair percentage of the words you read and write have their basis in Shakespeare.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Thread starter Similar threads Forum Replies Date
M Will learning a new language interfere with the ones you already speak? Science & Nature 17
M On learning and false memories Science & Nature 5
S (Found)Sci fi plot - Learning packs on back of neck, teen flees city Book Search 4
S Sources for learning about Sailing ships Writing Discussion 19
Vertigo Major advance in machine learning Science & Nature 20

Similar threads


Back
Top