Not to be a pretentious asshole but yes there is a problem with people no longer reading the classics. A lot of the YA literature romance novel crowd perpetuates the myth that the classics are inherently boring and stuffy and there’s nothing you can relate to or learn by reading them. And they’re not. These beautiful universal things we enjoy, comedy, romance, tragedy, family strife, they’re still so poignant centuries after they’re written.
Truer words were never said 👍
I’ve read classics since I was young and I agree with you totally 👍
Also, reading them critically can help to understand how people in the past thought and to recognize the different ways discrimination can happen at a narrative level and how prejudice can blind even smart observant people (for example, both Giovanni Verga and Luigi Pirandello were definitely great intellectuals and understood human condition well but they were misogynists like many men of their era too).
And one can discover how minorities managed to write their own texts, just look at Sappho, Hroswitha, Kassia, Murasaki Shikibu and Hildegard Von Bingen, and the first examples of feminist literature, like “The blazing world” by Margaret Cavendish and “The faerie queene” by Edmund Spenser or fairytales like “The Snow Queen” by Andersen and “Alibaba and the forty thieves” and “Tatterhood”.
And authors of any genre can find interesting ideas and inspiration in it too, just look at the strange countries and planets invented by Lucian in the “True history” or the bizzarre adventures featured in Ancient Greek and Roman novels and Medieval Chivalric literature or in fairytales, and how ancient some tropes and stories actually are, for example in the Shahnameh by Ferdowsi that collects ancient materials from Preislamic Iran there’s a version of “Rapunzel” and the “Vis and Ramin” by Gorgani presents many elements of “Tristan and Iseult” while being older than the latter and one of the many tales of “The Seven princesses” by Nizami of Ganja presents an older version of “Turandot”, and how many tales were very different from the modern interpretation and versions, like many older fairytales belonging to the “Snow White” type don’t feature a wicked stepmother but an abusive mother.
