Quote:
Originally Posted by khalleron
'None of them' is not a helpful opinion.
An opinion on a book you've never read is completely worthless.
I can understand not wanting to get out of your comfort zone, but not wanting anyone else to get out of your comfort zone is just strange.
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khalleron, no offense, but I feel like the "none of them" posts are perfectly valid because the OP already raised the issue of how worthwhile this whole exercise is with his points about women and minorities being excluded from the traditional classics cannon.
I feel like we're spiraling into a similar black hole as the Extended Warranties discussion and that anything further will be just an endless repetition of
yes it is no it isn't back and forth. My request would be to put the people whose opinions you don't feel are valid in this thread on mental killfire instead of continuing to argue about how you don't think they should be posting in this thread.
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Back on topic,
DMB, I disagree with your assertion that you
learn a lot about women and slaves through the eyes of the Greek classics. There are glimpses in some places, but for the most part I do not think the view of the disenfranchised is well-represented.
I would very much like to read (or write) a version of the Clytemnestra story where her murder of Agamemnon is presented more sympathetically than it is in The Odyssey. I mean, the man
murders her daughter, goes off to war for years leaving her to fend for herself, and brings home a concubine when he finally decides to show back up.
Not a jury in the world would convict that poor woman, but when Agamemnon's ghost relates all this to Odysseus, her POV is so completely obscured that the only way we can get to it at all is basically through fan fiction rewrites. Sure, you can call that "modern analysis" or whatever, but it's still basically up to the reader to find something of value in that, which is fine if that's what you're going for, but my recommendation to the OP is to actually read something that portrays the plight of the disenfranchised more overtly than that --
Hence my suggestion of American short story classics. We've got lots of really good ones written by women and African Americans that can really hit home and which I consider to be more stirring and emotionally touching than the average classic. Since we're offering our subjective opinions and all.
