#classical writers

[covenawhite66]

The Iliad and The Odyssey. Homer’s epic narratives deserve preeminence on their own literary merit but also for the influence that they’ve exerted in the three millennia since they were written.

The Holy Bible needs no justification and no explanation. Its absence would remove the very heart from Western civilization.

Virgil’s epic about the foundation of Rome itself. Although The Aeneid, as a work of literature, does not attain the literary heights of Homer’s epics, its influence outreached that of Homer during the early centuries of Christendom due to its being written in accessible Latin and not in the relatively inaccessible Greek.

Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas. It is no wonder that this great saint has been given the title of the Angelic Doctor. He is the preeminent philosopher and theologian in the entire history of Christendom, whose influence is immeasurable. One of his many seminal achievements was the integration of the thought of Aristotle into Christian philosophy, thereby baptizing Aristotle as Augustine had baptized Plato

Dante’s Divine Comedy, a work which brings together the Homeric and Virgilian Muses and baptizes them in the living waters of Thomistic theology and philosophy.

Finally, we must mention Shakespeare. Many of his individual works merit inclusion among the illustrissimi of Great Books and his corpus, taken as a whole and published as The Complete Works

[becomingvecna]

— David Cronenberg, Consumed

[bebx]

[weeby-monster-the-bastard]

watched beetlejuice beetlejuice today WHEN I TELL YOU I WAS FUCKING GIDDY AT THE FYODOR REF I MEAN IT also Dolores is HAWT (not as hot as my partner tho)

[lenainwonderland]

- Vladimir Nabokov

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

the fact that shakespeare was a playwright is sometimes so funny to me. just the concept of the "greatest writer of the English language" being a random 450-year-old entertainer, a 16th cent pop cultural sensation (thanks in large part to puns & dirty jokes & verbiage & a long-running appeal to commoners). and his work was made to be watched not read, but in the classroom teachers just hand us his scripts and say "that's literature"

just...imagine it's 2450 A.D. and English Lit students are regularly going into 100k debt writing postdoc theses on The Simpsons screenplays. the original animation hasn't even been preserved, it's literally just scripts and the occasional SDH subtitles.txt. they've been republished more times than the Bible

[academic-vampire]

𝔩𝔢𝔱’𝔰 𝔰𝔱𝔲𝔡𝔶 𝔱𝔬𝔤𝔢𝔱𝔥𝔢𝔯 𝔦𝔫 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔥𝔞𝔲𝔫𝔱𝔢𝔡 𝔩𝔦𝔟𝔯𝔞𝔯𝔶 🪶

[fromdarzaitoleeza]

Miranda July, The First Bad Man

[mysterieuxclairdelune]

I am jealous of those who think more deeply, who write better, who draw better, who look better, who live better, who love better than I.

-Sylvia Plath

[randomgirl005]

[dumblr]

“Oh, to be loved by a writer.”

[mysticpolin]

[academia-lucifer]

Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book.

— John Green.

[xxrrisxx]

When nobody wakes you up in the morning, when nobody waits for you at night, and when you can do whatever you want, what do you call it, Freedom or Loneliness?

Charles Bukowski

[joytri]

A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.

Robert Frost

[lenainwonderland]

- Sylvia Plath