What if I've already read some of the LitHum books?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Columbia University
21

<p>" but it cannot be greater than man"</p>

<p>sure, but you took trackster's 'us' to be humanity, i'm taking it as the people who study it, if it's greater than the people who study it, then there's something to learnt, there's probably a lot to be learnt, hence it must be studied and valued. I don't know why you would think he meant us=humanity, he was offended that a high school student would not see value in these texts, they are very valuable. Whether they're worth being studied depends on your opportunity cost, if you're going to spend the gained time from not reading lit hum books, coming up with a revolutionary theory on physics or climate change, heck lit hum is a complete waste of time, if it's taking a stat class for fun, lit hum could arguably be more valuable, truth is most people appreciate lit hum and CC only after they've studied it, and then realize that the cost paid (in time) is little for what they got out of it.</p>

<p>"Crime and Punishment focuses on minutia."</p>

<p>part of lithum, still very influential</p>

<p>"as opposed to the Illiad or something like the Lord of the Rings"</p>

<p>if the lord of the rings gets quoted in important texts over the next 100 years, then i'd vouch for putting it in the core, one studies the illiad not for it's cleverness or depth of thought, but for it's influence prevalent in texts, recognized as important, following it. same reason we study plato's republic. the illiad isn't neccessarily fun to read or very thought provoking, but i bet no-one after the lit hum course thinks it should be dropped, it was thought provoking for its time.</p>

<p>and being offended by someone else's being offended easily, is extremely petty, it's funny, but petty. trackster's being offended had a negligable impact on your life (or it should have had), so in complaining that he was being offended for these petty reasons, you showed yourself to be the same as him. and to feed the cycle of inherent contradiction, i said that i was offended because of you :)</p>

22

<p>
[quote]
if the lord of the rings gets quoted in important texts over the next 100 years, then i'd vouch for putting it in the core, one studies the illiad not for it's cleverness or depth of thought, but for it's influence prevalent in texts, recognized as important, following it. same reason we study plato's republic. the illiad isn't neccessarily fun to read or very thought provoking, but i bet no-one after the lit hum course thinks it should be dropped, it was thought provoking for its time.

[/quote]

actually, I was having this discussion with someone just last night. If there's one text from the last 75 years that may deserve being added to the lit hum core someday, it's probably portions of Lord of the Rings. Here's the argument: in creating his magnum opus, Tolkien essentially created the entire fantasy genre. He researched norse mythology and arthurian legend and all the other mythologies out there, and then created the races of elves, dwarves, wizards, orcs, and all the rest of the "dungeons and dragons" fantasy element. That all came from him, from his visions of this world dancing in his head, and all the movies and video games and novels and fantasy references since then have essentially borrowed his ideas. It's not just entertainment, it's a seminal work, and probably has discussable analogues to Dante with the descent into hell, or to Virgil.</p>

<p>I wouldn't boot any of the current texts to make room for it, except maybe To The Lighthouse, but it's worth the discussion.</p>