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Post by ringmasterrob on Nov 17, 2004 12:33:55 GMT
I have to agree with treasure island being a good book, I remember reading it a long time ago and enjoying most of what I read. Christmas Carol is a good novel, as are a lot of the adaptions that have been made of it, for both of the above books then The Muppet's own versions of them will certainly ensure they're not forgotten!
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Post by Naselus on Nov 17, 2004 22:54:58 GMT
I would love to know whether you have actually read any of the above books; if they were so poor, why are they called classics and taught at A Level and degree level? And why did everyone insist that the world was flat for years after it was proven otherwise, and why does the Pope claim condoms don't stop AIDS? Inertia is the key word here. People always claim old things are better. When you reach about thirty years old, you find it hard to learn new things and you start to resist them. How many of your grandparents can work a video recorder? I mean, properly work it, and set it and such like? Mine can't, but I suppose being dead works against them a bit. It's the same with all things, though. Older generations resist any new ideas, and continue to do so until they're mainly dead. It's how these things work. New scientific ideas are frowned upon until the generation that created them are about forty years old themselves, by which time there are much newer ideas to frown at and disagree with. The idea that 'it'll never catch on' is integral to the human psyche. Change upsets us. I like treasure island, and I don't mind A Christmas Carol that much either. But they aren't great literary masterworks, uneclipsable in their genius. They're just OK books, accorded far too much acclaim because they've been around since before anyone was born, so THEY HAVEN't CHANGED. I believe it was Douglas Adams who once said: Anything that exists before you're born is entirely normal and in keeping with the universe. Anything that come into existance between when you're five and thirty five is exciting and new and you can probably get a career in it. Anything that is invented after you're thirty five is confusing and completely against the natural order of things. It more or less works with people's reachion to anything, though. New books can't be good, because when they come out the only people who like them are under thirty five, so less than half the population. It takes another thirty five-odd years for them to be recognised, because by then all the people who disliked their new-ness have died and been replaced by the people who now like it. Unfortunately, these people are now so busy liking that they have to dislike the superior idea that has replaced it, as it's odd and complicated and not as good as the old thing, even though it does more things, is faster and better, and generally works better while taking up less space. As a natural effect of this, old ideas will have far too much support compared to newer things. In a way it's good, because only really, really good new things get recognition, but in other ways it's bad because it means we cling to the past even when stuff is utter cack. Monarchies, for instance. And Americans. Finally, to actually answer Liq's question, classic means old. That's what it means. That's ALL it means. It's had a coloquial meaning of 'good' attached over the years, but it just means 'old' in this case. Like 'classical studies'. Why is learning about Ancient Greek culture better than other studies? It's not. It's just older. And they've been taught at A-level because the people who write the A-level paper are all over forty years old. No-one qualifies to join the team that draws it up until they've had ten years of experience in the education system (not the ten years you lot have had, either; that's not experiece for some reason. No, you've all had your senses switched off completely while you've been at school, and thus know nothing at all of your surroundings), after the inevitable five-year degree course. So it's impossible to join it without being at leat 34. And why would a team want a strippling of 34 with them? Might bring crazy young ideas to the table. Hire Maureen, she's 43 and reliable, and writes off to complain about the word 'bottom' being used on the television. It's because the examiners are crap, the curriculum's crap, and, in case you've not heard, Liq, it's being scrapped. When it occurs that what they're teaching kids is completely irrelevant and of lower quality, perhaps then we'd have a WORKING education system. But probably not. And, as I mentioned elsewhere on the thread, I have read a number of the books. I heard they were 'classics', after all, and I wanted to see. Such a terrible disappointment.
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Post by Incubus on Nov 19, 2004 8:28:14 GMT
It's because the examiners are crap, the curriculum's crap, and, in case you've not heard, Liq, it's being scrapped. When it occurs that what they're teaching kids is completely irrelevant and of lower quality, perhaps then we'd have a WORKING education system. But probably not.
As you have probably not noticed, the system is NOT being scrapped because of poor performance in English (I'll have you know I received an A in English and Literature), but because the government have messed it up so much because they couldn't leave it alone.
Naselus, does your hatred of classic literature include shakespeare?
[Edit By RMR: Removed all the posts insulting Liquidus over the 'history' comment as it was turning into an inter-topic row about a minor grammatical error, apologies for mentioning it in the first place...]
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Post by Naselus on Nov 19, 2004 9:02:34 GMT
As you have probably not noticed, the system is NOT being scrapped because of poor performance in English (I'll have you know I received an A in English and Literature), but because the government have messed it up so much because they couldn't leave it alone. No, the system's being scrapped because it was never any good. That's also why the government couldn't leave it alone. I recieved A's in both Englishs as well, you see, but I didn't do any coursework and spent most of my final year skiving off school. Now, that leaves us two alternatives. Either A) I'm the greatest literary mind since, well, ever or B) The system's shite. I like A), I really do, but I'm actually quite modest and not completely and totally delusional. I'm going to have to plump for B. I've been through GSCEs, and they are appallingly easy, the curriculum is, as mentioned, a big pile of pooh, and there's a terrible over-emphasis on these 'classics'. Thomas Hardy was not a good writer, yet my final year was apparently mainly dedicated to him. He was awful. His books are dull, dreary, unengaging and more useful as emergency toilet paper. Not a terrible poet (though still staggeringly dull), but a truly terrible writer. Oh, and by the way, you getting A's at GCSE English does nothing to vindicate the system. My getting A's kills it. Naselus, does your hatred of classic literature include shakespeare? Depends on the play. King Lear was terrible, but I liked Richard the Third (despite it being horrific propaganda). The comedies were awful, but that simply illustrates my point. Tastes change, comedy can be far bolder and, dare I say it, funnier now, and old works begin to pale. Since the 'comic relief' of the old times is now no longer funny, the plays become very sombre and dry. Midsummer nights dream and Romeo and Julliet bored me stiff, I'm afraid, though R+J was very original at the time and so we really have to give him some credit there. Merchant of Venice is racist trash of the kind we dismiss today without a thought (and yet simultaneously teach in high-school through this very play). Macbeth was alright, as were Julius Caesar and Othello. In fact, the Tragedies were the real good works. The Comedies are no longer funny, and are often racist and quite obviously so. The Histories are inaccurate, and paint Tudors in too fine a light (understandably, given the Bard's situation), while making all others out to be a bunch of disfigured mewling wankers. Also, the pace in all his works is slow and weak. I only really like Richard the Third because of the 'Winter of Discontent' speech. It's the tragedies that live through the generations, as tragedy can survive the changes in taste so much more easily than other styles. But you must admit, if you want to read something funny, do you read a Terry Pratchett book, or do you reach for Much Ado About Nothing? I know what I do.
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Post by Thanatos on Nov 19, 2004 22:13:48 GMT
I agree that people who deem anything "too old to be bad" are foolish and that it is to a large extent a matter of opinion; as I said, I found The Mayor of Casterbridge an excellent cure for insomnia. You, however, seem to consider things too old to be good, which is no better.
Yes, language changes. So what? As long as you understand it (which doesn't take a great effort for anything in modern English, i.e. 16th Century onwards) you can enjoy it however old it is, as I did The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, David Copperfield and Twelfth Night. If you happen not to enjoy them then that's fine, but don't lambast them as if their age made them incontrovertibly bad.
Your assertion that the classics "don't include the Greek works" is rather absurd given that things ancient Greek (and Roman) are the definition of "classics" in the strict sense of the word. I don't know where you get "translations of translations" from.
If your teachers took offence to your reading science-fiction or comedy, the more fool they. But the more fool you for reasons already given.
Calling these books clumsily written is even more ridiculous than your other generalisations, for, however much you dislike them, most of them are anything but, or they wouldn't have become 'classic' in the first place. Even the dull (to my mind) Casterbridge is a cleverly wrought novel.
As for the merits of comedy through the ages, it is true that comedy finds it harder to survive: puns, just as they are untranslatable from foreign languages (you should see some of the attempts in Penguin editions of Greek stuff), topicality disappears; comedies often have to be adapted, either in scenery and gestures or in the words themselves, but some things remain funny centuries on. I challenge you to go to a production of All's Well That Ends Well (actually that bit is a challenge, it's not performed all that often) and not laugh at the exchange between Helena and Parolles on the subject of virginity. Even in the realm of comedy, some things endure: just as tragedians from Aeschylus to Shakespeare and beyond address universal themes that hit home years on, so, going even further back than Shakespeare's comedies, Aristophanes uses something that, however sophisticated we consider our senses of humour, we can't help laughing at at in any era: jokes involving huge model phalluses. There is considerably more to Aristophanes than that, of course, but penis humour is certainly one of its more prominent features (insert joke here).
Finally, a very important point: classics become classics for a reason. The Iliad, the first extant work of western literature, survived for decades or centuries before anyone even wrote it down, and has endured to this day. This is the most extreme example (simply by virtue of being the oldest) but consider why this and others survive so conspicuously: a lot of people think they're good, and not just old people, or there'd be very few students of literature in our universities. You are under no obligation to like them, but to decry them so universally and to deny their many objective qualities - their skilful construction, the themes they address - is pig ignorance and blind prejudice.
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Post by Incubus on Nov 20, 2004 19:36:35 GMT
Kig Lear is reputed to be the most brilliant play that Shakespeare wrote (and the hardest to understand. I should know - I'm studying it for A level). The language of the characters (especially the Fool) is incredibly difficult, but once you have studied the text and found out what the meaning is (like I have) you will have a quite different view. Theatre comedies and tragedies in Shakespeare's time are VERY different to our interpretation. Comedy basically meant that it had a good ending, nothing more (and vice-versa). Might I also add a reply to Naselus' interpretation of Classics. If it basically means old, why are some select new films in the cinema immeadiately labelled as classics? You can't really class them as old... (the same goes for books)
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Post by Naselus on Nov 20, 2004 22:01:19 GMT
Things are now labelled as classics when brought out because of a corruption of the true meaning. It's a sterling example of language changing.
I did understand Lear, but I didn't like it. I will always hold Hamlet to be his best.
Unless you are reading them in the original Greek, you are reading translations of the 12th-century translations (rendered very inaccurately in Latin by scholars at the time) of the Greek Works.
As for the survival of The Illiad and the Oddessy, that is uncertain. Not only are there the errors made in the original translation, there may be further changes from the times before they were written down. Among other things, the Trojan Horse is now believed to be an earthquake caused by Posedon, and Achilles' famous heel wasn't his heel.
More importantly, these works HAVEN'T survived in their original form. The Illiad may not be anything like the story it started out as; it could be as far from where it began as Oh Brother Where Art Though? is from the Oddessy. Stories are changed through translation, and studies by pychologists have shown just how enormous that change cn be. Ever wondered how the Japanese can actually follow the stories in a Manga cartoon? It because the story makes far more sense in the original language.
By modern standards, the great 'classics' of english literature ARE clumsy. Due to the changes in language things can be stated succinctly in a fashion unthinkable even 100 years ago. Just because the words mean the same is nothing; sentence structure has been changed hugely over the last century and it's now permitted to do things entirely differently and much more efficiently.
I should also like to assert that I don't consider things too old to be good. I started on this argument simply by counselling that too much effort is put into claiming that old books MUST be good, and through my own tendancy to play devil's advocate now seem to be putting the case for modern books over the old. I've already shown that there are old works that I like; but my original point is still valid. You admitted that you dislike many of these untouchable books, that R+J is dull, however it has that same 'sacred cow' status that, once earned, may never be lost. I disagree. These books must be re-evaluated, but our schooling system believes them untouchables and unsurpassable.
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Post by Thanatos on Nov 21, 2004 0:18:51 GMT
"Unless you are reading them in the original Greek, you are reading translations of the 12th-century translations (rendered very inaccurately in Latin by scholars at the time) of the Greek Works."
Sorry, but that's absolute rubbish. There have been many translations from the original Greek long since the twelfth century, and more are always being published.
"there may be further changes from the times before they were written down."
Obviously; that's the nature of oral poetry. However, we'd better not get into this as there are too many problems, not the least being that of who Homer was (or were).
"Among other things, the Trojan Horse is now believed to be an earthquake caused by Posedon, and Achilles' famous heel wasn't his heel."
You're missing the point. Whether 'Homer' was historically accurate or not (the answer being "no") is totally irrelevant (to this discussion).
"More importantly, these works HAVEN'T survived in their original form. The Illiad may not be anything like the story it started out as"
In this respect Homer's works are the exception, not the rule. Just about all other extant classical works (the only possible exceptions I can think of are Hesiod's poems, and I'm not sure there) came down to us in written form. In any case, even if it differed from the original, if indeed there was a single definitive original, the written versions of the Iliad and Odyssey that we know and which the post-'dark age' Greeks knew can hardly be insignificant.
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Post by Naselus on Nov 21, 2004 16:27:02 GMT
Actually, much of the ancient Greek stuff was written down only second- or third-hand. Socrates' work was all written by Plato, for example, and it was generally common for the pupil to write the work of the teacher; presumably with their own thoughts colouring the matter. This is particularly true of the Philosophers, as their method was to converse at length with one another and then what is written comes later. This also means that Socrates probably didn't agree with Plato quite so much as he seems to, and might offer an explaination as to why Plato's work has such a thoroughly different flavour in his later years. How many copies of the Illiad and Oddessy exist from two thousand years ago? How many do you think were re-translated from the Latin version once the originals fell apart? I doubt that we have any of the older texts in complete form, and the fact that they were written in Phoenician alphabets (or possibly even in the syllabic Linear B script that pre-dates the Olympics) in a version of Greek that Aristotle would have thought defunct suggests we might not have the most solid claim. Merely to translate them into the archaic Greek of the rise of the Romans is a mighty task, let alone from there into a modern language. My point over the Horse and the heel is not one of historical accuracy; though the Illiad does tend toward a decent level, and is geographically excellent. Instead, I'm pointing toward the slips and trips in translation. The great big wooden horse could simply be a mis-translation of Posedon, who could conjour himself as a giant horse, by some bungling scholar. Finally, there's the continued obsession with translating into prose. It shouldn't be done, and often changes the fundemental text in order to hold the rhyme. While the push of the story remains the same, the translation itself colours the book just as much as the original texts. Of course, if you've read it in the original ancient Greek, in the Phoenician alphabet (or linear B as the case maybe), then I take it all back.
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Post by Thanatos on Nov 21, 2004 23:00:25 GMT
Yes, the earliest manuscripts we have for most classical literature are medieval, but you're missing the point: they were preserved in the original Greek. The Romans didn't just translated everything into Latin - all educated, upper-class Romans learnt Greek and studied Greek literature. That which we still have we still have because it was preserved in Greek by Romans, Byzantines and medieval monks.
You miss the point about what you call "Socrates' work" - it was nothing of the kind and is never studied as such but as Plato's work about Socrates. This, along with that of of Sophocles, Aeschylus, Euripides, Lysias, Herodotus, Xenophon, Thucydides and just about any other Greek (or Roman) author you care to name whose work does survive were preserved in their original form. Yes, the earliest manuscripts we have were written down second-hand (and then some), but that does not make them "translations of translations", as you asserted earlier, merely copies of copies.
"How many do you think were re-translated from the Latin version once the originals fell apart?"
None. Absolutely none. For the simple reason that the Romans made their own copies of the Greek.
"Finally, there's the continued obsession with translating into prose. It shouldn't be done, and often changes the fundemental text in order to hold the rhyme."
Eh? You seem to contradict yourself there. Why would prose translations rhyme? Verse translations these days are written in blank verse. Older (much older) ones sometimes tried to render it in, say, rhyming iambic pentameter, such as this rather dreadful example from Pope's (not the Pope's) translation of the Odyssey:
"I am Ulysses Laertiades, The fear of all the world for policies."
But those generally used today are in blank verse. I prefer prose translations myself.
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Post by Naselus on Nov 22, 2004 10:05:17 GMT
As it happens, a great deal of stuff is studied under the name of Socrates even though none of it was penned by his hand; and it's total falisy to say that it's always called 'Plato's work about Socrates'. Much of it is still accredited to the teacher without any mention of who finally wrote it down, since large areas of it are in total contradiction of Plato's own views. The ones usually attributed to Plato on Socrates are the ones that back up the younger man's works, and Socrates is believed to have had little or nothing to do with it (it seems that Plato was not above putting words in his teachers mouth to use his fame).
I fear I've not missed the point, actually; The re-copyings were translations in themselves as the stories were altered with the passing of time and the addition of copying errors. Not to mention that Rome fell an awfully long time before the medieval scholars started their work. My main point with this is that you cannot possibly claim that a piece first laid to tablet 2700 years ago has come to you in perfect form with any great degree of seriousness; it'd be nice to think so but the chances are not exactly high, and modern experts put no more than a 60% claim for accuracy in. (Hawkes, 1988)
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