On Reading Widely: Are You Stuck on One Shelf?

Expand into the Classics

In addition, become familiar with the plots of William Shakespeare’s plays. Know the characters from Charles Dickens’ novels. Read the novels of influential authors like Lewis Carroll (the literary reference in the third quote above is from Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland), Agatha Christie, Louisa May Alcott, C. S. Lewis, and J. R. R. Tolkien. Acquaint yourself with these stories that have influenced Western culture. You might even find it enjoyable.

I'd recommend you expand your time horizon and begin your classics reading with the Greeks and Romans. Much of what you read in Western literature (especially Shakespeare) borrows heavily from the Greek and Roman classics.

Here's a recommended list of Greek and Roman classics I worked through, and I commend it to you.

I’m not sure if it was a bit of anti-intellectualism, or a misguided concept of ‘worldliness,’ or what, but we really neglected the classics in the Christian high school I attended. I do recall a lot of antipathy toward Shakespeare also, from some… too much murder, crime, sexual humor seemed to be the gist. It wasn’t a majority view in those circles. The majority view was more like “Shakespeare? Why would that be important?”

I just picked up an Audible of Dante’s Divine Comedy. Never read until now, though I’ve read summaries and analyses. This one is translated by Clive James. I wasn’t aware there were so many translations! Depending on what translation you go with, it can be a bit hard to read without some footnotes to clarify some of the references and allusions. The Clive James retains poetic structure, though I don’t know how faithful he is to the original.

Inferno really makes you appreciate grace. Dante—and apparently most medieval Christians—did not understand what grace fundamentally is. But there is a keen sense of justice and frank acceptance that God’s holiness means He can judge any way He pleases, including unbaptized babies, in Dante’s tale.

Also interesting how Dante viewed the great Greek thinkers and the Greek classics.

Aaron,

I read Dante and Chaucer as part of an honors English class in (public) high school. Although I was an English major at PCC, we did not read these classics or any Greek / Roman literature except for Antigone by Sophocles. PCC's English major basically covered the 16th Century through the 19th Century.

One of my English profs did read excerpts of Beowulf from the old English. That was his Ph.D. specialization. So, that was cool to listen to. But, we never read Beowulf for class.

I tried to write my senior English research paper on the poet Dylan Thomas, but my proposal was rejected for the reasons you cited above (i.e. a misguided concept of ‘worldliness’). I had to write it instead on Melville's Billy Budd.

One of my favorite classes at BJU was British Literature. I think I did two semesters of that maybe. It was a great gap filler for all the lit we didn’t get in high school.

In fairness to my HS, they had an English aptitude problem. The range of grammar and writing skills was really wide, but they didn’t have the staff for advanced English, let alone literature. So Adv Eng was a class several of us did in the back of the room independently while the rest of the class reviewed pretty basic grammar.

In retrospect, a lit. course would have been much better. We could have just sat there and read. The Adv English was not very advanced either. I remember it being really easy… so, a waste of time. Of course, as a teen, I was quite content with anything easy!