It's Friday, which means it's perhaps time for another Let's Talk Bookish post courtesy of Book Nook Bits and Dinipanda Reads, and as it was a freebie week in terms of themes, I wanted to write a post on why classic literature still matters.
As I'm an English major, I obviously got a certain weak spot for classic literature, even if I didn't necessarily enjoyed reading all the texts I had to go through while at university. It doesn't mean I didn't appreciate them, it just mean some of them weren't within my personal taste, which is a huge difference.
Before anyone starts complaining that classic literature is high brow and all that - authors wrote for the masses of their time and it's partially due to their works being studied in school, and for that matter, at university, that a lot of people make the high brow connection. For instance, just the title of Shakespeare's "Much Ado About Nothing" contains a joke, as the word "nothing" referred to, among other things, a specific female body part during that time period (yup, Shakespeare made a vagina joke in the title of one of his plays).
Classics have after all stood the test of time, and they're often about universal themes such as love, loss, and redemption. Reading such books could make us gain more empathy, compassion, and a lens through which we can look at our own lives and the world around us, and learn how to appreciate the complexities of the human condition. Reading classics could also give us perspective on our own struggles and make sense of our experiences. They also challenges our intellect, forces us to think a bit more, improve our vocabulary and writing skills, increase our knowledge about culture and history, and in general, become more well-rounded individuals.
Classics are in a sense works that hasn't exhausted what they've got to say. Just to reference Shakespeare again, but this time with Romeo and Juliet. With a modern lens, one could argue that Romeo and Juliet is about (teenage) Insta-love, miscommunication, and how teenage stupidity could ruin multiple lives (and in some cases, end lives).
In this time and era where everything happens at the speed of light, classics forces us to slow down, think, and enjoy the nuances. One can't speed read through Germinal by Émile Zola, or for that matter, only read the dialogue, as you'd miss out on a lot. An added bonus is that your reading comprehension would grow as a result of slowing down and reading classics.
There's also something about appreciating literary artistry, recognising literary roots, and connecting with timeless ideas. Of course, not all classics are for everyone. While a sci-fi lover might appreciate H. G. Wells, romance lovers might be drawn to Jane Austen. It's the right book for the right reader, just as with more contemporary works.
Just so it's said - I'm not saying all contemporary literature is bad, as there's plenty of good literature out there regardless of when it was published, but I do think classics are a bit under-appreciated nowadays. The school system and how literature is taught doesn't help in a lot of cases, but that's another discussion.
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