/lit/ - Literature

>but him he killed on the ground
>slashing off his arms with a sword, lopping off his head
>and he sent him rolling through the carnage like a log
Holy shit, why did I think this was boring in high school? Is all ancient literature this brutal? What’s the point of reading anything other than homer when it’s this good?

I've just finished reading the Iliad and I'm frankly surprised that it doesn't end with the burning of Troy. Where do we get the story of the Trojan horse then? It's barely mentioned in the Odyssey (I've read it first, don't judge me please). So what's the source of that particular story? The cyclic poets? Or is Odyssey really the only one? It's revered as such an iconic moment in literature that it's kinda weird to find out that Homer didn't even write about it extensively.

Why are academics such arrogant pricks?
This Fagler faggot really spoiled an important part of the story in the first 3 pages of his translators preface and then went ahead and summarized the whole fucking plot in the second page of the introduction. I don’t even want to keep reading.

Fuck this shit, I swear I will never read another intro again.

>>16873985
Rollin for this

I started reading the Iliad in the German Voß translation and got to book 3 until I decided to switch translations as I couldn't tell what was going on most of the time. And holy shit, the English translations are actually enjoyable and so much easier to understand (including Pope). No wonder nobody reads Homer here.

Fagle or lattimore?

>it's a Nestor interrupts the speaker to go on a 10 page monologue about how things were back in his day episode
Absolutely based

I'm halfway through and so far it's nothing but listing off every irrelevant person who died in battle and who their parents were, with the occasional divine intervention. Am I being memed on?

>>13287114
>muh ships
There. Saved you 1,000 hours

Okay, so something struck me last night. As we all know, if you can't condense your thoughts down to a five word sentence, you don't really understand what you're trying to say. Now, two great examples of thinkers not knowing their own thoughts are Homer (specifically in the Catalog of Ships aka. Iliad) and Hegel in PoS.
Both of these works and their ideas stretch far beyond the acceptable limit of five words to express their ideas. How hard is it to say, "there were many ships," and "everything is rational" respectively? Now, seeing as I understand these people better than themselves, I am offering this refinement or, more aptly, a synthesis of their thoughts.
If we accept the Catalog of Ships > 5 words and Phenomenology of the Spirit > 5 words, then it would seem, for all intents and purposes, the Catalog of Ships = Phenomenology of the Spirit, at least in regard to being incoherent ramblings.
With this, we can safely combine these works and create a new name; "Catalog of Spirit," "Phenomenology of (the) Ships," "Phenomenology of Catalogs," or "Catalog of Phenomenology."
However, seeing the natural equality in these works, the title "Phenomenology of Phenomenology," or "Catalog of (the) Catalogs" are also valid.
And from this understanding we should see that the synthesis between, "there were many ships" and "everything is rational," yields either "there was everything" or "every ship is rational." But seeing as all these are all saying the same thing, it is just as well to say, "everything is ships."
So, what you should get from this is that if you write something you don't understand down and pass it off as an intelligible point, someone much smarter than you after your death will make you look like a fool.

Good day.

>>13273857

>>13269313
>muh catalog of ships

>>13254704

>>13219287
Beastialty

>>13214786
The Illiad

Something something boats something something boring something something who likes this? Something something literary merits something something not even a real guy

ok this shit slaps

24. It's good when it's good but there's a lot of fluff. I understand that during its time it was also presented as mini history lessons so there's a lot of (for us) unnecessary passages. The beautiful, powerful chapters are extremely fun and I can't believe how much we owe to the Greeks.

>>13081353

What an absolute load of drawn-out, overspecific, repetitive bullshit. I made it 12 books into this pile of garbage and realized that Edith Hamilton's 30-page summary was just as good. I'm now reading actual philosophy and enjoying myself. How the fuck are the Homeric poems actually some people's favorite books?

So this was basically just Avengers of the ancient world right? A plethora of heroes with zero character development, acts that aren't humanly possible. I am seeing a lot of similarities.

What a bunch of drama queens

Am I a brainlet if I had a tough time reading this? Some parts were easier to follow (battles, Paris/Helen drama), but the stuff with the gods was confusing and dull so I ended up skimming pages at a time. I swear I read Hamilton's Mythology beforehand.

Was it all worth killing each other over some thot? I understand that Iliad is more than that but come on really?