It’s August, we only have four and a bit months left till the end of 2024. How are you doing with your reading and life in general? I did a midyear review a few weeks ago. So here are the titles I’d like to get to in the next few months. I’m keeping three out of the four categories: English Classics, Shakespeare and his contemporaries, and drama.
English Classics
I have always been interested in seeing the context of individual literary works, and how the early writing influenced later ones. So in the next few months, I’m going to do some study on how fiction evolves and transforms over the centuries, especially from the classical period (the Ancient Greek and Roman), to the medieval period, to the English Renaissance.
From the classical period, the most well-known ones are Homer’s Illiad and The Odyssey, both of which I’ve read already. So the next one I’d like to try is The Aeneid by Virgil.
For the medieval period, I think it’s high time to find out more about King Arthur, one of the most famous British mythical and heroic figures. One author who famously wrote about Arthur and his knights is called Chretien de Troyes, who lived and wrote in 12th century France. Another author who told similar stories is the 15th-century English writer, Sir Thomas Malory.
For the English Renaissance, I’d like to take up the challenge of reading The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spencer.
In my mid-year review post I mentioned that the two major titles I want to tackle this year were The Canterbury Tales and Paradise Lost. I’ve done The Canterbury Tales but I decided to leave Paradise Lost for the time being and focus on the ones I just mentioned. You might be thinking where is Nicole going with her reading? She’s taking a weird and obscure path down through the world of English literature. If I find hidden gems, I’ll definitely report to you and share the treasure. I hope you’ll still be interested to come along. Plus I will still try my best to read some modern classics if Medieval and Renaissance stuff is not your cup of tea.
Shakespeare and his contemporaries
As I said, it’s already the middle of August, we only have four and a bit months left till the end of the year. I’ll be reading and discussing King Lear and Cymbeline in September as part of Shaketember 2024. I don’t think I’ll be able to read more Shakespeare after that. So do join us if you can. I will probably still watch more Shakespeare plays but will return to them properly in 2025. There are a couple of non fiction books about Shakespeare I’d like to read in the next few of months, Soul of the Age, which is a biography of Shakespeare, and How the Classics Made Shakespeare, both by Jonathan Bate. How the Classics Made Shakespeare is about how S and his works are influenced by Greek and Roman classics.
As part of my interest in seeing the context of Shakespeare’ works, one of my goals this year is to read his contemporaries’ works. I’ve only read The Duchess of Malfi so far and it’s brilliant. So I’ll do my best to read and watch Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe by the end of the year.
Drama
I haven’t got any shows booked for the second half of the year to watch in the theatre. Though I would love to watch School for Scandal, Pericles and As You Like It, the last one outdoor! in Stratford upon Avon this summer. The photos look gorgeous.
I made little progress so far this year in the Drama category, so I’d like to make up for it by the end of 2024. One of the goals of having a drama category is to try world literature. I would like to try The Oresteia by Aeschylus, Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen and Faust by Goethe.
The Oresteia is a trilogy of Greek tragedies written by Aeschylus in the 5th century BC.
Henrik Ibsen (20 March 1828 – 23 May 1906) was a Norwegian playwright and theatre director from the 19th century. As one of the founders of modernism in theatre, Ibsen is often referred to as “the father of realism” and the most influential playwright of the 19th century. I see his name in bookshops all the time and would like to try.
Goethe’s Faust is probably the most familiar between the three. It was written and published over a long period of time, from the 1770s to 1830s. I think it’s about the same guy in Marlowe’s Dr Faustus so would be interesting to compare and contrast.
I plan to try more radio dramas. Radio drama is a dramatized, purely audio performance. With no visual component, it depends on dialogue, music and sound effects to help the listener imagine the characters and the story. I listen to a lot of radio productions of Shakespeare’s plays and I trust the BBC to produce decent Radio Dramas, and they do, wonderfully! They produce so many titles as well, the hard thing is to choose which ones to listen to first.
I’m also curious about how to adapt a novel into a radio drama, so I might listen to a couple of novel dramatisations with this purpose in mind too.
Are you interested in any of the titles? If you’ve red any of the titles I mentioned and have any recommendations for helpful resources, especially for the ancient Greek and Roman classics and the medieval titles, please share with me.
A Day of Small Things 