Classic literature is like this beautiful Live Oak tree in Natchitoches, Louisiana: it lasts for hundreds of years, growing in beauty and complexity every time someone regards it.
If you are an avid reader, I clasp you to my heart, whatever and why ever you are reading—for pleasure, escape, knowledge, social concerns.
There are a myriad of good, and even mediocre, books and poetry that can keep us entertained, or give us vicarious experiences of unknown places and times, or inform our opinions on social issues. But what I am here to advocate, and why I have started this site, is that Classic Literature—truly Great Literature—is something different, something especially worth treasuring, preserving, learning about, experiencing, re-reading, and pondering.
The experience, the grace given to the mind and soul, is a larger, higher experience than that offered by the average popular novel or poem or drama, well-crafted though each may be. But let me take my own stab at it here. So here goes! Great works may present and explain something about their own times, but also observe something larger and lasting about the human condition.
A great writer has something specific to say, or perhaps, more typically, a big question to ask about the nature of the world as it was in the times of that writer.
But a great work also observes truths about the human condition as it occurs in any age. A great writer examines the world as she or he sees it and communicates consciously to the reader about those observations.
But in addition, a great work can also convey things a writer has observed unintentionally, unconsciously. If so, the intentional design of the work is well-formed enough to encompass whatever messages may be unintentional, so that the work feels like an organic whole, where all the parts belong. Great literature is based on ideas that are startling, unexpected, unusual, weighty. Great literature makes us see or think things we never did before.
The ideas underpinning the work challenge our accustomed categories and ways of thinking, putting minds on edge. We may agree, and also we disagree.
Some cherished beliefs are expressed and affirmed, making us feel less lonely. But also our assumptions are interrogated by what we read. We have to flex our minds, make them get bigger to try to understand everything we are reading. Great literature is fine art. As such, it is aesthetically marvelous. Either the style of a great work is incredibly interesting and beautiful, or the drama leaves us breathless, or the characters or scenes are so expertly drawn. We are lifted from our ordinary mode of being and given mental and spiritual refreshment from the high aesthetic experience of reading great literature.
Great literature is complex enough to offer us something new every time we read it, especially at different stages of our lives. Like all great art, great works are based contrast and tension—not just conflicting characters, but also conflicting ideas, images, and viewpoints, allowing room for readers to entertain all sides, not just one idea the writer may be featuring. According to many of these creeds, texts are just texts, of varying cultural value depending on political and social circumstances.
Classic literature, these theories argue, should be regarded with caution or even suspicion for its probable role in perpetuating socially unjust assumptions woven into the culture. Most literature we now regard as classic has been, and still retains the power to be, deeply subversive—and I mean subversive in the most positive way, granting us the ability to question outworn or unjust or too-small assumptions and to grow our minds and the quality of our thought.
Check out this recent article in The Telegraph that announces:. Then they translated the same texts into simplified modern language and scanned the volunteer readers again:. They also found that reading poetry triggered the autobiographical centers of the brain, where personal memories are, which encouraged people to re-evaluate their own past experiences.
Scientists have documented that reading boosts your brainpower. But not just any kind of reading. Mary Jane is a longtime literature lover who lived in the Cincinnati area for many years, then in central Louisiana for three years what a treat!
Maybe the problem of the imoact dint lay in his faults but by lack of creative thinking of the reader. Im actually felt so sorry for mister Howarth, i felt the need to comment back. Greetings, A teenager.
Great literature takes you places. It invites you to and carries you along on an endless journey of exploration and discovery and joys! Great literature is a study in human psychology see purple hibiscus , is an exploration in race relation say you are one of them , is a deep study in human emotions Emma Karenina , a visit to frustrated dreams Madame Bovary and is rich introduction to the history of the past and to historiography Half of a Yellow Sun — good literature is a thrill.
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While younger students may find them less accessible, older students and adults can be enlightened by reading them as part of a formal study, book club, or ongoing reading. To introduce younger readers to the classics, try using graphic novel versions, editions simplified for younger readers, or movie adaptations.
For older literature students, classics have a wide variety of expert information available about them, giving background information like how and why they were written, analyses of the text, and comments on lasting cultural impact.
Classics likely also have study guides that can assist learners in their basic understanding of the text, such as by explaining dated terms and references and providing study questions. Actively scan device characteristics for identification. Use precise geolocation data. Select personalised content. Create a personalised content profile.
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