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23 voters
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Classical Books
Showing 1-50 of 9,861
The Odyssey (Paperback)
by (shelved 461 times as classical)
avg rating 3.86 — 1,295,146 ratings — published -800
The Iliad (Hardcover)
by (shelved 359 times as classical)
avg rating 3.94 — 540,351 ratings — published -750
Pride and Prejudice (Hardcover)
by (shelved 290 times as classical)
avg rating 4.30 — 5,031,829 ratings — published 1813
The Aeneid (Kindle Edition)
by (shelved 266 times as classical)
avg rating 3.88 — 149,534 ratings — published -19
The Great Gatsby (Paperback)
by (shelved 210 times as classical)
avg rating 3.93 — 6,165,496 ratings — published 1925
Metamorphoses (Paperback)
by (shelved 207 times as classical)
avg rating 4.10 — 81,316 ratings — published 8
Jane Eyre (Paperback)
by (shelved 195 times as classical)
avg rating 4.16 — 2,425,091 ratings — published 1847
To Kill a Mockingbird (Paperback)
by (shelved 192 times as classical)
avg rating 4.26 — 7,146,964 ratings — published 1960
The Picture of Dorian Gray (Paperback)
by (shelved 179 times as classical)
avg rating 4.13 — 2,018,991 ratings — published 1890
Wuthering Heights (Paperback)
by (shelved 171 times as classical)
avg rating 3.89 — 2,306,538 ratings — published 1847
1984 (Paperback)
by (shelved 169 times as classical)
avg rating 4.21 — 5,797,423 ratings — published 1949
Romeo and Juliet (Mass Market Paperback)
by (shelved 158 times as classical)
avg rating 3.74 — 2,898,139 ratings — published 1590
The Republic (Paperback)
by (shelved 151 times as classical)
avg rating 3.97 — 234,160 ratings — published -400
Animal Farm (Mass Market Paperback)
by (shelved 147 times as classical)
avg rating 4.03 — 4,837,595 ratings — published 1945
Frankenstein (Paperback)
by (shelved 137 times as classical)
avg rating 3.92 — 2,018,475 ratings — published 1818
Crime and Punishment (Paperback)
by (shelved 134 times as classical)
avg rating 4.29 — 1,167,657 ratings — published 1866
Little Women (Little Women, #1)
by (shelved 132 times as classical)
avg rating 4.18 — 2,551,554 ratings — published 1868
Oedipus Rex (The Theban Plays, #1)
by (shelved 132 times as classical)
avg rating 3.73 — 244,619 ratings — published -429
Sense and Sensibility (Paperback)
by (shelved 127 times as classical)
avg rating 4.09 — 1,348,582 ratings — published 1811
Meditations (Hardcover)
by (shelved 127 times as classical)
avg rating 4.27 — 385,405 ratings — published 180
Antigone (Theban Plays, #3)
by (shelved 121 times as classical)
avg rating 3.69 — 184,979 ratings — published -441
Dracula (Paperback)
by (shelved 121 times as classical)
avg rating 4.03 — 1,555,976 ratings — published 1897
The Catcher in the Rye (Paperback)
by (shelved 119 times as classical)
avg rating 3.80 — 4,025,300 ratings — published 1951
The Count of Monte Cristo (Paperback)
by (shelved 118 times as classical)
avg rating 4.34 — 1,090,858 ratings — published 1846
The Oresteia: Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Eumenides (Paperback)
by (shelved 117 times as classical)
avg rating 4.02 — 48,807 ratings — published -458
The Histories (Paperback)
by (shelved 110 times as classical)
avg rating 4.01 — 57,474 ratings — published -430
Hamlet (Paperback)
by (shelved 107 times as classical)
avg rating 4.03 — 1,094,801 ratings — published 1601
Emma (Paperback)
by (shelved 105 times as classical)
avg rating 4.05 — 1,027,457 ratings — published 1815
Lord of the Flies (Paperback)
by (shelved 104 times as classical)
avg rating 3.71 — 3,328,269 ratings — published 1954
Anna Karenina (Paperback)
by (shelved 100 times as classical)
avg rating 4.11 — 972,502 ratings — published 1878
Of Mice and Men (Paperback)
by (shelved 100 times as classical)
avg rating 3.90 — 2,965,459 ratings — published 1937
A Tale of Two Cities (Paperback)
by (shelved 99 times as classical)
avg rating 3.88 — 1,036,972 ratings — published 1859
The Oedipus Cycle: Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone (Paperback)
by (shelved 98 times as classical)
avg rating 4.00 — 72,482 ratings — published -450
The Epic of Gilgamesh (Paperback)
by (shelved 98 times as classical)
avg rating 3.76 — 124,983 ratings — published -1800
Macbeth: Moment by Moment (Paperback)
by (shelved 97 times as classical)
avg rating 3.89 — 1,059,839 ratings — published 1623
Medea (Paperback)
by (shelved 97 times as classical)
avg rating 3.96 — 91,459 ratings — published -431
Lysistrata (Paperback)
by (shelved 95 times as classical)
avg rating 3.86 — 55,066 ratings — published -423
Fahrenheit 451 (Mass Market Paperback)
by (shelved 95 times as classical)
avg rating 3.97 — 3,007,938 ratings — published 1963
History of the Peloponnesian War (Paperback)
by (shelved 92 times as classical)
avg rating 3.95 — 41,698 ratings — published -411
Les Misérables (Mass Market Paperback)
by (shelved 89 times as classical)
avg rating 4.22 — 867,903 ratings — published 1862
The Metamorphosis (Mass Market Paperback)
by (shelved 87 times as classical)
avg rating 3.91 — 1,574,878 ratings — published 1915
The Divine Comedy: Inferno - Purgatorio - Paradiso (Hardcover)
by (shelved 81 times as classical)
avg rating 4.09 — 180,520 ratings — published 1304
The Symposium (Paperback)
by (shelved 81 times as classical)
avg rating 4.09 — 96,194 ratings — published -380
Inferno (Kindle Edition)
by (shelved 80 times as classical)
avg rating 4.03 — 214,003 ratings — published 1321
The Old Man and the Sea (Hardcover)
by (shelved 78 times as classical)
avg rating 3.82 — 1,383,233 ratings — published 1952
Great Expectations (Paperback)
by (shelved 78 times as classical)
avg rating 3.80 — 897,852 ratings — published 1861
Brave New World (Paperback)
by (shelved 77 times as classical)
avg rating 3.98 — 2,162,683 ratings — published 1932
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Adventures of Tom and Huck, #2)
by (shelved 74 times as classical)
avg rating 3.83 — 1,356,227 ratings — published 1885
Persuasion (Paperback)
by (shelved 74 times as classical)
avg rating 4.15 — 813,783 ratings — published 1817
Beowulf (Paperback)
by (shelved 70 times as classical)
avg rating 3.51 — 358,349 ratings — published 950
“Let me posit 2 other divisions. The 1st is somewhat nebulous & entails some generalizations. I state that Shakespeare- despite claims for his universality- was a very limited thinker- at least thematically; although similar themes would often be twisted anew with metaphor & image. But compared to the aforementioned other sonneteers Shakespeare demonstrates a near tunnel vision in range of themes (let’s put aside the question of his own Shakespearean sonnet form). Even worse, he seemed to be obsessed with running said themes into the ground. In the sonnets there are only a handful of broad themes- with only occasional overlap. They are: beauty, sleep/dreams, love/friendship, despair/ parting, art/the Muse, &, of course, death. The riposte: But isn’t all Art about these things? Well, yes & no. Yes, in a broad sense, but no in the sense that Modern Poetry’s superiority to Classical or non-Modern [a term I prefer to pre-Modern because any number of poets today still write this type of poetry & it seems silly to label these contemporaries pre-anything!] poetry is its very multi-layered approach to these themes & relegating them to sub-themes at service to portraits of people, events, & moments. This is all dramatic technique centuries ahead of Shakespeare & while his best sonnets survive this his worst are telltale in their failure’s being tied to their time.”
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“Those who like to interpret historical facts symbolically may recognize in this the spirit of a specifically "modern" conception of the world which permits the subject to assert itself against the object as something independent and equal; whereas classical antiquity did not as yet permit the explicit formulation of this contrast; and whereas the Middle Ages believed the subject as well as the object to be submerged in a higher unity.”
― Meaning in the Visual Arts
― Meaning in the Visual Arts
