Works Steve mentioned: - Aeschylus: The Oresteia trilogy: Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Eumenides; tr. by Robert Fagles - Sophocles: Antigone, Oedipus Rex - Euripides: Hippolytus, Medea - Aristophanes: Lysistrata - Plato: Crito, Euthyphro, Republic, Symposium, Apology - Aristotle: Poetics, Nicomachean Ethics; The Basic Works of Aristotle (Modern Library Classics, edited by Richard McKeon)
This series is just fantastic. I love your enthusiasm and I appreciate how confident you are that anyone can pick up any of these titles and jump right in. I have never heard anyone make these sound so accessible. Thank you and please keep going with the series!
One of my fondest reading memories is of spending one cold and gloomy Sunday curled up in bed with Fagles's Oresteia and a pencil. The introduction in the Penguin edition is incredibly illuminating. Thank you for these videos. :)
Oh Steve you are so sweet. To think we have enough friends we can convince to gather around and read Greek plays. If we did there would be no booktube. But it's a wonderful idea to think about. Thank you for continuing with this series!
Steve, I love this series! This is exactly what I have always wanted but never knew where to start. I know I have some catching up to do, I just watched Kit 1 & 2, but I know now I can read these literary works as I have always wanted to! I can't thank you enough for this. I am so looking forward to Kit #4!
Great list, Steve. I read all of the plays that you mentioned when in college. Of the few text books I kept over the years, the Greek playwrights are right there with Shakespeare. I just pulled them off the shelf and am looking forward to rediscovering.
Thanks to this video I read the plays you suggest, but this year I am reading all the Greek plays. It has been a wonderful journey, and I am nearing the end as there arevonly nine to go. I have a list of all the books you have suggested in this series and am reading them gradually and having great fun. I'm slowly reading Plato's "Republic" at the moment. I'm notetaking and rereading passages, so it's slow work, but satisfying.
Steve, curious if you've ever considered doing a series on the Western Canon beyond literature? What about the western canon of music? Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, and so on? What about the western canon of art? From DaVinci and Michelangelo to Vermeer and Rembrandt to Monet and Picasso?
I'm undecided between Chapman's and Pope's translations. Both seem poetic, elegant and beautiful, which I prefer over the more direct modern translations of the works. This Western Canon Kit is a great series and I look forward to traversing it chronologically up to modern day classics. Great job with the videos, very instructive and helpful!
hi Steve, thank you for these excellent starter kit videos. I am just about to start on the Bible (I was waiting to get a copy) and will then work my way through these books you mention. However could I please ask you to do a video of how you read, how you interact with what you are reading, examples of your annotations, etc, basically how you mark up your books as you read. I am only starting out doing this so I, along with many others here I am sure, would love to take any advice you can give to make my reading more rewarding and enjoyable and lasting. Thanks again. Tim
But wouldn't my method of annotating the books I read by unhelpfully specific to me? I mean, what interest could it possibly hold for somebody else, who'd surely annotate a book in their own way?
thanks Steve. Obviously each person has their own methods, i was just going to see yours to see if it would help me to improve my method. For example do you use symbols etc to show certain reactions, etc. How do you mark certain passages, summarise plot development or arguments in a book, and so on. thanks
It's been awhile, but I used to read plays all the time. Antigone and Oedipus Rex I read many years ago and loved! I recall seeing Patrick Stewart in Oedipus Rex on tv and he was great! I wonder if I can track that down on TH-cam anywhere? Could you list the titles and plays mentioned in this video in the description box to make it easier to look them up? Thanks, Steve! I love these videos!
Steve, thank you so much for doing this. As I’ve gotten into Victorian literature I realize their education and mine vary greatly. I’ve picked up various Greek and Roman works to try filling in the holes in my knowledge which will allow me to enjoy reading these works more without my iPhone close by to look up references to works I don’t know. (Strong cognitive dissonance when I come across things I don’t know 🤷♀️). This is just what I’ve been looking for.
I love this starter kit series! I'm writing everything down for future reference and is currently rereading the parts of the bible that I'm not overly familiar with.
More books to add to my list. I have wanted to try the Greek playwrights for years now, so it looks like the time has come. I've read some Plato (hated The Republic; authoritarian nightmare, like most would be Utopias. Loved Apology of Socrates), and I have only read excerpts of Aristotle. I wish my Greek and Roman Stoics had made a larger impact on the Western World. Thanks again for doing this series; and for all the great vids that you share.
The Titus Andronicus comment 😂 so accurate. Very frustrating. I'm sure this is among the videos from this series I will be most excited about, I have a huge soft spot for the Greeks.
Maybe you can help me. We've adopted three cats, a mother and two sons. I've named the mother Jocasta and her favorite son Oedipus, Eddie for short. But the other son is a little more distant and quite scraggly looking. Any ideas for a name?
Great advice, Steve. The only thing I would add is that all the people you mention need to read with footnotes, or they won't be understood. I mention that because such editions as the University of Chicago's "Complete Greek Tragedies" have no footnotes at all, which is the equivalent (almost) of publishing Shakespeare without footnotes. Inexcusable. The Penguin Classics editions should suffice. Modern Library has a new edition of the tragedies out edited by Mary Lefkowitz and James Romm.
Won't be understood??? I beg to differ! If the Oedipus of Sophocles couldn't be understood without footnotes, the Oedipus of Sophocles would be a BAD play - and it's not, it's a great play. A group of four friends dividing up speaking parts and working their way through these plays will have no trouble at all understanding their power and nuance without any footnotes in sight - although I'll agree that such notes can be interesting along the way. Telling newcomers to this stuff that they won't understand it without footnotes? Ye gods!
There are tons of obscure allusions and references in all the Greek tragedies. Are you suggesting that the newcomers just ignore all that because a simple, clarifying footnote is too discouraging for them? In that case it would be better that they not read them at all and stick with Steve Alten's "Meg" novels and YA fiction.
The plays don't hinge on obscure allusions! My suggestion throughout this series isn't that newcomers ignore critical help - it's that such critical help isn't necessary to read and appreciate the power and immediacy of these works. I want to stress that NO part of the Western Canon is a gated community.
The trouble with Aristotle is that we only have his lecture notes and pretty much none of his final books worked into beautiful prose, like we have for Plato. That's at least what I heard. I even heard there are reports from around 2000 years ago from people claiming to have read Aristotle's final works and they said his writing and prose was amazing, in places maybe even greater than Plato! If true, this is another terrible loss that we do not have these books. (Okay i just Googled it and it's true, once people had dialogues and beautiful writings. Those books we read today when we study the works of Aristotle were never intended for general readership, and they still had such a massive influence in history! That is incredible! They must be the most influential lecture notes of all time! Imagine having merely the first drafts and lecture notes of another great writer like Plato or Shakespeare, and losing their final, greatest works!
Steve can I request a parallel video on the Sciences? Because, well you are Steve. And we need more nonfiction in booktube. My question is how do I read Democritus when I know what I know about science or worst Aristóteles 😱 on nature. Like a comedy of our history?
If you ever wonder about the mark you have made on the literate in your life (and I have no reason to believe that you *need* to), know this: six years after you made this recording, I am throwing ambivalence to the four winds and, after a lifetime of piddling around, diving deep into the Greeks and Romans. It's time.
Works Steve mentioned:
- Aeschylus: The Oresteia trilogy: Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Eumenides; tr. by Robert Fagles
- Sophocles: Antigone, Oedipus Rex
- Euripides: Hippolytus, Medea
- Aristophanes: Lysistrata
- Plato: Crito, Euthyphro, Republic, Symposium, Apology
- Aristotle: Poetics, Nicomachean Ethics; The Basic Works of Aristotle (Modern Library Classics, edited by Richard McKeon)
Thank you!
This series is just fantastic. I love your enthusiasm and I appreciate how confident you are that anyone can pick up any of these titles and jump right in. I have never heard anyone make these sound so accessible. Thank you and please keep going with the series!
One of my fondest reading memories is of spending one cold and gloomy Sunday curled up in bed with Fagles's Oresteia and a pencil. The introduction in the Penguin edition is incredibly illuminating. Thank you for these videos. :)
Oh Steve you are so sweet. To think we have enough friends we can convince to gather around and read Greek plays. If we did there would be no booktube. But it's a wonderful idea to think about. Thank you for continuing with this series!
Valentina García I wonder could we do it online? My reading is not swell though, and I wanted to read those in my native language:)
Elena Makridina maybe Skype?
Just draft the nearest group of muscular teenage boys!
Another starter kit that makes me harken back to my high school and college reading life. I definitely want to revisit these again in the near future.
I absolutely adore this series! Every video is a joy to watch and very useful to me. Thank you so much for making them, long may it continue!
Steve, I love this series! This is exactly what I have always wanted but never knew where to start. I know I have some catching up to do, I just watched Kit 1 & 2, but I know now I can read these literary works as I have always wanted to! I can't thank you enough for this. I am so looking forward to Kit #4!
Great list, Steve. I read all of the plays that you mentioned when in college. Of the few text books I kept over the years, the Greek playwrights are right there with Shakespeare. I just pulled them off the shelf and am looking forward to rediscovering.
These western canon starter kits are wonderful! Please keep doing them!
Thanks to this video I read the plays you suggest, but this year I am reading all the Greek plays. It has been a wonderful journey, and I am nearing the end as there arevonly nine to go. I have a list of all the books you have suggested in this series and am reading them gradually and having great fun. I'm slowly reading Plato's "Republic" at the moment. I'm notetaking and rereading passages, so it's slow work, but satisfying.
Steve, curious if you've ever considered doing a series on the Western Canon beyond literature? What about the western canon of music? Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, and so on? What about the western canon of art? From DaVinci and Michelangelo to Vermeer and Rembrandt to Monet and Picasso?
You are such a generous man. You are a gift.
I have a tortoise named Aeschylus 🐢
I love this series! Keep it up!
I'm undecided between Chapman's and Pope's translations. Both seem poetic, elegant and beautiful, which I prefer over the more direct modern translations of the works.
This Western Canon Kit is a great series and I look forward to traversing it chronologically up to modern day classics. Great job with the videos, very instructive and helpful!
hi Steve, thank you for these excellent starter kit videos. I am just about to start on the Bible (I was waiting to get a copy) and will then work my way through these books you mention. However could I please ask you to do a video of how you read, how you interact with what you are reading, examples of your annotations, etc, basically how you mark up your books as you read. I am only starting out doing this so I, along with many others here I am sure, would love to take any advice you can give to make my reading more rewarding and enjoyable and lasting. Thanks again. Tim
But wouldn't my method of annotating the books I read by unhelpfully specific to me? I mean, what interest could it possibly hold for somebody else, who'd surely annotate a book in their own way?
thanks Steve. Obviously each person has their own methods, i was just going to see yours to see if it would help me to improve my method. For example do you use symbols etc to show certain reactions, etc. How do you mark certain passages, summarise plot development or arguments in a book, and so on. thanks
It's been awhile, but I used to read plays all the time. Antigone and Oedipus Rex I read many years ago and loved! I recall seeing Patrick Stewart in Oedipus Rex on tv and he was great! I wonder if I can track that down on TH-cam anywhere? Could you list the titles and plays mentioned in this video in the description box to make it easier to look them up? Thanks, Steve! I love these videos!
it was a BBC radio 3 broadcast,maybe.
Steve, thank you so much for doing this. As I’ve gotten into Victorian literature I realize their education and mine vary greatly. I’ve picked up various Greek and Roman works to try filling in the holes in my knowledge which will allow me to enjoy reading these works more without my iPhone close by to look up references to works I don’t know. (Strong cognitive dissonance when I come across things I don’t know 🤷♀️). This is just what I’ve been looking for.
Yay, so glad that your continuing this. :)
If you gathered some of your friends and did a reading of one of these for us that would be AWESOME!
I love this starter kit series! I'm writing everything down for future reference and is currently rereading the parts of the bible that I'm not overly familiar with.
More books to add to my list.
I have wanted to try the Greek playwrights for years now, so it looks like the time has come.
I've read some Plato (hated The Republic; authoritarian nightmare, like most would be Utopias. Loved Apology of Socrates), and I have only read excerpts of Aristotle.
I wish my Greek and Roman Stoics had made a larger impact on the Western World.
Thanks again for doing this series; and for all the great vids that you share.
"as opposed to putting it off" ... blushes... guilty... off to bookdepository
The Titus Andronicus comment 😂 so accurate. Very frustrating. I'm sure this is among the videos from this series I will be most excited about, I have a huge soft spot for the Greeks.
Maybe you can help me. We've adopted three cats, a mother and two sons. I've named the mother Jocasta and her favorite son Oedipus, Eddie for short. But the other son is a little more distant and quite scraggly looking. Any ideas for a name?
No Herodotus or Thucydides? I know you already gushed about Herodotus for Nonfiction November.
Nope! We're doing the very bare-bones basics here, so the two enormous history books got left on the cutting room floor!
Steve Donoghue not any more:) Some of us has a tendency for eavesdropping:) Thank you for reminding me.
Thank you:)
The 2020 Daily Penguin series brought me here
Great advice, Steve. The only thing I would add is that all the people you mention need to read with footnotes, or they won't be understood. I mention that because such editions as the University of Chicago's "Complete Greek Tragedies" have no footnotes at all, which is the equivalent (almost) of publishing Shakespeare without footnotes. Inexcusable. The Penguin Classics editions should suffice. Modern Library has a new edition of the tragedies out edited by Mary Lefkowitz and James Romm.
Won't be understood??? I beg to differ! If the Oedipus of Sophocles couldn't be understood without footnotes, the Oedipus of Sophocles would be a BAD play - and it's not, it's a great play. A group of four friends dividing up speaking parts and working their way through these plays will have no trouble at all understanding their power and nuance without any footnotes in sight - although I'll agree that such notes can be interesting along the way. Telling newcomers to this stuff that they won't understand it without footnotes? Ye gods!
There are tons of obscure allusions and references in all the Greek tragedies. Are you suggesting that the newcomers just ignore all that because a simple, clarifying footnote is too discouraging for them? In that case it would be better that they not read them at all and stick with Steve Alten's "Meg" novels and YA fiction.
The plays don't hinge on obscure allusions! My suggestion throughout this series isn't that newcomers ignore critical help - it's that such critical help isn't necessary to read and appreciate the power and immediacy of these works. I want to stress that NO part of the Western Canon is a gated community.
The trouble with Aristotle is that we only have his lecture notes and pretty much none of his final books worked into beautiful prose, like we have for Plato. That's at least what I heard. I even heard there are reports from around 2000 years ago from people claiming to have read Aristotle's final works and they said his writing and prose was amazing, in places maybe even greater than Plato! If true, this is another terrible loss that we do not have these books. (Okay i just Googled it and it's true, once people had dialogues and beautiful writings. Those books we read today when we study the works of Aristotle were never intended for general readership, and they still had such a massive influence in history! That is incredible! They must be the most influential lecture notes of all time! Imagine having merely the first drafts and lecture notes of another great writer like Plato or Shakespeare, and losing their final, greatest works!
Steve can I request a parallel video on the Sciences? Because, well you are Steve. And we need more nonfiction in booktube. My question is how do I read Democritus when I know what I know about science or worst Aristóteles 😱 on nature. Like a comedy of our history?
If you ever wonder about the mark you have made on the literate in your life (and I have no reason to believe that you *need* to), know this: six years after you made this recording, I am throwing ambivalence to the four winds and, after a lifetime of piddling around, diving deep into the Greeks and Romans. It's time.
Plato's Republic is 1 day's worth of reading? Are we talking about the same Republic...the same Plato? I...am...devistated.