Quote:
Originally Posted by Kretzer
Not necessarily. It depends how it is presented, I guess. I remember seeing Julius Ceasar with Marlon Brando (which, I think, uses the original text) at about that age. Even with rather limited English skills I was deeply imoressed.
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I said *read* Shakespeare or Homer, not watch a movie or a play based on those works. I'm fairly convinced that Shakespeare, Homer, and many classics are not fit for most 14-15 year olds. In my class *everybody* hated "Literature class", be it in Dutch, English, German or French, except for a select few who were good with languages and were trained readers already (of whom I was one, except for French, a language I hate even today and dropped as soon as could be).
That sort of stuff is too difficult for most people of that age, and they're not even interested in it. Who wants to struggle with old versions of languages, when even the modern versions are giving you enough problems; when even your native language (modern version) is hard for you? Who wants to read a 500 page long classic in old English (such as Canterbury Tales) when you're having difficulty with an early 20th century rendition of your native language (in this case, Dutch)? No one.
If you like to read stuff like this at 14/15, good for you. Still, you're the exception to the rule.
And is Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, often quoted as *THE* book of the 20th century, required reading, nowadays? I don't mean that you're allowed to read it for your literature list: I mean required to read, fail-your-exam-if-you-don't, like "A Midsummer night's dream", "Macbeth" and "Canterbury Tales" were for me. (Among others.) If it isn't, why not?