What from classic literature has aged well?

You all know the feeling; your high school Lit teacher makes you read what is said to be one of the greatest classics of all time, and when you get finished, you say, "Why was this so great?"

So let's challenge ourselves with the opposite:

What works of classic literature HAVE aged well?

OR

What aspects of works of classic literature have aged well?

I'm afraid that I'm not entirely confident of what counts as "classic" literature: in particular, does Shakespeare count?

If Shakespeare counts, then I'm inclined to include Othello, which remains a favourite story of mine—in large part, admittedly, because of the character of Iago.

@Ars I don't see why it wouldn't, unless you were arguing it was classic theatre instead but pretty sure they count as classics.

edited 30th Jul '14 10:58:38 AM by phantom1

Yep, plays count.

I was unsure simply because "classic" could be taken to refer to the classical era—ancient Greece and so on, thus excluding Shakespeare. In all fairness it's often enough made broader than that, including Shakespeare and the like. (And sometimes it's made broader still, including more modern works like The Great Gatsby and so on.) In short, I wasn't sure which definition was being used, and so checked whether my answer fitted.

edited 30th Jul '14 4:25:47 PM by ArsThaumaturgis

In my opinion, Crime and Punishment has great pacing and characterization, even compared to contemporary novels. In the first chapter, the main character is described as wearing an unusual hat, only to for him to worry that memorable clothes could be a liability when he commits the crime he's planning. It stood out to me because classics often include lengthy descriptive passages that don't contribute to plot or characterization.

@Thaumos Ah I thought the context of reading them in English class etc made it more clearly the other sort of classics (Though I did read The Odyssey in English once)

edited 30th Jul '14 6:47:26 PM by phantom1

Nothing with Shakespeare. Nothing. Not interested in arguments or debates about that so don't start one. I'm not taking part.

Bram Stoker's Dracula, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes and Henry James' The Turning Of The Screw on the other hand, have. Seeing as how they form the basis for all modern mystery, detective and horror fiction in the western canon.

The first half of Drakula holds up well. The second half becomes an idiot plot.

Also, I'd argue that Drakula isn't particularly relevant to modern horror. It's a very 1897 Christian horror novel, and the degree to which modern fiction's view of the vampire departs from Stoker's reflects how much horror sensibilities have changed. Drakula is much more a late product of its brand of horror than the basis of a new, more modern one.

Lovecraft is much more influential to modern horror (And is a good example of classic literature that, other than a few dated aspects, has aged very well).

And speaking of detective novels... Edgar Allen Poe is 50/50. Some of this stuff is still really good, some of it is entirely tedious. Dupin, despite being the original Sherlock Homes, is definitely the inferior one (I'm guessing Poe never actually heard an orangutan before, or else he wouldn't have people mistaking it for Italian).

Mark Twain and Leo Tolstoy hold up very well.

@Phantom: I read The Great Gatsby in English class (I don't think that we had a separate "Literature" class).

In all fairness, however, I think that I simply missed the mention of Literature class. ^^;

Building on Tam's mention of important works, I think that I'd be inclined to induct Tolkien and Leiber in the list of "classic" authors if we're updating it: They're arguably two of the more important roots for modern fantasy writing.

I think Le Morte D Arthur still remains the definitive Arthurian rendition for its level of detail alone. The stories have a certain level of fictional world detail that would almost rival Tolkien.

However, it suffers from a lack of internal consistency (which is due to Mallory collecting various stories of Arthur instead of writing his own version).

Master and Margarita. Makes you love the Devil.

edited 31st Jul '14 8:15:19 PM by KlarkKentThe3rd

Goethe's Faust has aged wonderfully, but most translations of it have not.

@Ars Ah fair enough I could see how that would be ambiguous then. We did in Grade 12, but there wasn't enough kids in my year he went for it . Grade 12 was also when I read The Great Gatsby I'm not sure how I feel about the level of cynicism in it.

Most of Mark Twain's stuff is still witty and fascinating today.

Is there a translation you'd recommend? I'd like to read it and I don't know any German.

edited 2nd Aug '14 9:58:20 PM by WarriorEowyn

Walter Kaufmann's translation is generally considered the gold standard, but it only covers about 75% of the play, maybe even less given some of the longer scenes at the end. I've heard that the Arndt and Luke translations are both exceptional in different ways, but the general rule of thumb is that modern translations are preferable to the earlier Victorian ones. (The latter treat the text like something from the Elizabethan era, which is completely inappropriate for a play written as much as a parody of Romanticism as a mediaeval tragedy.)

Faust is a parody? Tell me more.

It's actually more what one might call a deconstruction, but not in the shallow "but what if it were in REAL LIFE, huh?!" sense so much as the Jacque Derrida "meanings, meanings everywhere" sense—specifically, of the moral tragedy and the Romantic tendency to idolise the past. Faust speaks in flowery Romantic poetry with lots of intricate rhymes and metres and expresses lots of Byronic angst, and Mephistopheles is just relentlessly sarcastic about it; the Witches' Sabbath scenes are packed with caricatures of literary and intellectual figures of the day; there is a whole stretch of the play set in ancient mythic Greece and written in Homeric and Sophoclean poetic schema; and the beginnings and endings of both parts outright spit in the face of tragic conventions, with gusto, whether through metafiction (the introduction), soul-crushing nihilism (the end of Part One), or a total rejection of the inevitable "bad end" for the wretched protagonist (the finale). No sacred cow of the movement or the era is left standing.

edited 11th Aug '14 2:41:54 AM by JHM

Pretty much all classics have aged well. If they hadn't, they wouldn't be classics.

Specific works offhand: Antigone, Don Quixote, The Count of Monte Cristo.

Don't be so general. Pretty much everyone agrees that Shakespeare has not aged well, and he can't be the only one to not age well.

Who is this everyone of which you speak?

To the contrary, Shakespeare is usually considered one of those writers who has stood the test of time.

You mean you read Shakespeare and weren't totally underwhelmed by him?

Just touching briefly, Romeo and Juliet suffers from a lot of problems like Diabolus ex Machina and general contrivedness.

edited 21st Aug '14 1:19:25 PM by WaxingName

"Pretty much everyone"? But Shakespeare is undoubtedly the most staged Western playwright in the world. His works are the basis of countless adaptations, loose and faithful. He is taught in universities and high schools (clearly those who write the curricula are fond of him!). How can "everyone" agree with your opinion?

Conversely, though Romeo and Juliet is on of my least favourite Shakespearean plays, I still like his other works.

Disliking Shakespeare's plays on the basis that you didn't enjoy reading them is like disliking a film because you didn't like reading the screenplay. The fact that so many people do like them purely on the basis of reading them is an indication of how good they are. I personally would be incredibly bored by reading screenplays even of films that I like.

They're meant to be watched. If you think you don't like Shakespeare, at least try to find some well-reviewed films of his works and watch them before you decide that. Both the Kenneth Branagh and the Joss Whedon versions of "Much Ado About Nothing" are great fun.

Seeing the plays on the stage is also fantastic, but going to a good performance is more difficult and expensive than renting a movie; better a good film than a poor stage production.

"Hamlet" is one of my least favourites, though; I don't know if that has something to do with the play, or the effect of reading and analyzing it at a high-school level ("Romeo and Juliet" is another common high school one). My favourites are "King Lear", "Julius Caesar", "Richard III" and the aforementioned "Much Ado".

But there's a case for saying that Shakespeare hasn't aged well, in that modern audiences value different things than Elizabethan audiences did - for example, we generally value some degree of realistic development of relationships, whereas in Shakespeare it's typical for characters to meet and fall in love before exchanging a dozen words. And the changes in the English language over the last 400 years create an additional challenge, although the writing remans exceptional.

edited 21st Aug '14 6:03:03 PM by WarriorEowyn