Thread: Reading Classical Literature

For all my life, classical literature has appealed to me the most. I love reading Dostoevsky, Twain, and many of the other heavyweights. However, I am beginning to think my reading choices have hindered my writing. Many people have told me I write in a style that is too poetic. I tend to include WAY too much in my stories. I know that this style was much more acceptable back in the days of Dostoevsky. Could my reading choices be a cause of this problem I have? Should I start reading more modern literature?

In my opinion, you tend to write in the same style of the books that you read. I personally like classical literature too but now most modern literature does not reflect the style of classical literature. You should read some modern literature in the genre that you tend to write because those styles are more acceptable in this era than the classical literature. I don't know why that is but that is how the publishing industry is.

I think you would do well to write as the person you are, in the style you like. I like poetic too. And I like detail, but mostly if it has to do with people, life, and not furniture or lace. Can't say as I liked some of the classics, in fact, some drove me to distraction, but I think they introduced them long before I was ready to read them. I think they'd make more sense to me now.
Good idea to see how some things are being written now, but I also think there are more people than you know that would appreciate what you have to say and how.
If I cannot be true to myself, I might as well quit now, that is how I feel, at any rate.
I have a favorite writer and I met her, Robin Hobb. I took a book to have signed and she wrote, 'A very strange book' but it was a very important book to me. I wanted her to know it resonated, and so chose that one.

I'd heavily favored certain types of reading also, then branched out. Now I read just about everything. I still prefer a wordsmith, but I also value the storytellers too. You can't go wrong with reading more. Read everything!

I much prefer storytellers to wordsmiths, but a combination is of course the best.


My advice is to read widely. Maybe you'll find that modern or genre reading will improve or just change your writing in ways you like. Maybe you won't. But you can't know if you don't try.

Thanks for the advice guys. If any of you want to critique my piece in the fiction forum feel free

A bit of a culture shock here.

When I saw 'classical literature' mentioned in the title of the post I immediately assumed Homer, Plutarch, Plato, Cicero, et al. The more modern authors mentioned are, of course, important, and there are long lists of writers of the past three centuries whose work ought to be read. But shouldn't the term 'classical' be reserved for those works that have stood that test, not of a hundred, two hundred years, but of a thousand, two thousand, years?

Took me aback, too.
Maybe we could call those "vintage".

Personally, I'm striving for "mint".

Originally Posted by garza

A bit of a culture shock here.

When I saw 'classical literature' mentioned in the title of the post I immediately assumed Homer, Plutarch, Plato, Cicero, et al.

But shouldn't the term 'classical' be reserved for those works that have stood that test, not of a hundred, two hundred years, but of a thousand, two thousand, years?

Shouldn't that be called ancient literature? I think you are probably just joking, or would like a debate on what the word 'classical' means.

Nooooo that's what the term "classical literature" refers to. "Ancient" would be far previous to that.
Does anybody around here ever try just a quick, simple, painless google check before contradicting people?

Originally Posted by lin

Nooooo that's what the term "classical literature" refers to. "Ancient" would be far previous to that.
Does anybody around here ever try just a quick, simple, painless google check before contradicting people?

No, life's too short. If I'm wrong then I'm wrong. I'll get over it.

Spider8 - I'm not joking. At my house 'classical literature' meant what was produced during the golden age of Greek and Roman literature. You should read some of it. You might learn something.

As lin says, 'ancient' refers to the really old literature such as the Gilgamesh Epic.

I think the best way to develop a distinct writing style is to write directly from one's experience. Writing a journal and poetry out of sharply observed and deeply felt 'happenings' on a daily basis will naturally develop your individual powers of expression.

Without reading widely and deeply, I believe it is difficult for a person to develop the skills needed to write successfully.

And giving it further thought, I have realised that the Euro-centric definition of 'classical literature' is too narrow. There is a vast, and, unfortunately, little appreciated literature from the far East. Only a few writers, and from them only a few works, are familiar to most western readers.

A big problem is language. While courses in Latin and Greek are common in colleges, universities, and now on the Web, and while these languages are closely related to our commonly used modern languages and thus fairly easy to learn, ancient Chinese or Khmer would pose a severe stumbling block to anyone wanting to study the classics of the East in the original language.

And, again unfortunately, there are few really good translations. Classical Latin can be rendered in modern Spanish painlessly, and into English with little loss. But the classical literature of the East is in languages whose very linguistic foundations are, literally, a world removed from our western way of thinking and writing. There are many translations of Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching, but my Chinese friends tell me that none of them quite express the original intent. They suggest that by reading every translation I can find I can, in my mind, approach near to the correct ideas, though to try and express them in English would simply indicate that I do not truly understand.

'After all,' they say, 'the Way that can be named is not the true Way.'

They suggest that by reading every translation I can find I can, in my mind, approach near to the correct ideas,

I'm not sure that would help. 'The Way', at least as far as I understand it, is beyond correct and incorrect, beyond ideas. It is something more like the background against which ideas and language itself occur.