Why Read the Classics?

By Dr. Tai-Chun Ho
Norton Anthology
 Edith Hamilton’s Mythology:
Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes
 The Classic Project

https://events.eslite.com/2020/160415-classicproject/read/index.html
 What is a “classic”?

“A work of literature, music, or art of

acknowledged quality and enduring significance or
popularity. In extended use: something which is
memorable and an outstanding example of its
kind.”
"classic, adj. and n." OED Online, Oxford University Press, June
2020, www.oed.com/view/Entry/33880. Accessed 4 September
2020.
 What is “classical”?
“Classical may refer specifically to the periods
considered to represent the greatest flowering of
both ancient Greek (Attic Greek of the 4th and 5th
cent. B.C.) and Latin (1st cent. B.C. to 2nd
cent. A.D.) language and civilization, but frequently
refers more generally to the literature and writers of
Greek and Roman antiquity as a whole.”
"classical adj. and n." OED Online, Oxford University Press,
June 2020, www.oed.com/view/Entry/9306169. Accessed 2
September 2023.
 What is a ‘classic’?
• “A classic is something that everybody wants to have
read and nobody wants to read.”—Mark Twain (1900)
• “A classic is a book that doesn't have to be written
again.” —Carl Van Doren (1950)
• “A classic is a book which has never exhausted all it
has to say to its readers.”
• “Classics are books which, the more we think we
know them through hearsay, the more original,
unexpected, and innovative we find them when we
actually read them”—Italo Calvino, Why Read the
Classics.
 Why read classics such as the epics of Homer,
Virgil and Dante as well as the books of the Bible?

• Classical Greece and Christianity are the two major

sources of Western literature
• They are the foundational texts of Western Literature
• They constitute the great traditions of Western
Literature
 Italo Calvino (1923-1985)

-Invisible Cities (1972)

-If on a winter’s night a traveler (1979).

-‘Why Read the Classics’

(published in New York Times 1986)
Reflecting on the books/classics
you’ve read

1. What books/classics have you’ve read and

enjoyed?
2. What inspired you to read?
3. Some consider classics boring and difficult.
Can you think of why?
 Think about why reading the classics as
an English major

1. What is your definition of a classic?

2. What are the classics of European or English
Literature?
3. What are the challenges/benefits of reading
the classics (selected by the editors of Norton
anthology) as an English major?
4. What makes a classic for you?
A brief look at the transformation of Ulysses
across the centuries:
Homer, Virgil, Dante, Tennyson and Joyce

Homer (8th century B.C.E)

His Greek counterpart is Odysseus, the King of Ithaca, who
fights during the Trojan War, and only returns home after 10
years of wandering. The word ‘Odyssey’ has come to mean
an arduous journey.
 Virgil (70-19 B.C.E)

In the Aeneid, the Roman poet Virgil imagined

that his culture was founded by Aeneas a Trojan
prince who survived the Trojan War, Aeneas.

In rewriting Homer’s epics, Virgil turns Ulysses,

the Greek cunning hero into an dishonest enemy
of Aeneas.
 Dante (1265-1321)

In Dante’s epic poem, The Divine Comedy, Dante

cast Virgil as his guide and reworked classical epic
for Christian Europe.

In Inferno 26, Dante depicts the last journey

undertaken by Ulysses, during which he passed the
Pillars of Hercules and sailed the forbidden sea until
his ship was suddenly swept away by a whirlwind.
 Dante’s Inferno 26

“Brothers, I said, who through a hundred thousand

perils have made your way to reach the West,
During this so brief vigil of our senses
that is still reserved for us, do not deny
yourself experience of what there is beyond,
behind the sun, in the world they call unpeopled.
Consider what you came from: you are Greeks!
You were not born to live like mindless brutes
but to follow paths of excellence and knowledge.”
 Alfred Tennyson (1809-92)
‘Ulysses’ (1842)

We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we ar

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

The borrowing of Tennyson’s Lines from
Ulysses at London 2012 Olympics
 Joyce’s Ulysses

The modernist Irish Novelist

James Joyce called his great
novel Ulysses (after the Latin
rendition of Odysseus’s
name), even though it was set
in Dublin, Ireland, in1904.