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After reading this NYTimes article about literature teaching you social skills, Bwog quickly brainstormed compiled through much effort the complete set of life-lessons first-years will glean from LitHum.
Iliad: Sometimes when people get angry they kill people.
Odyssey: Non cosi fan tutte.
Histories: People lie to make their stories better.
Oresteia: Systems of law are helpful.
Oedipus: Oedipus can’t see she’s just not the girl for him
Medea: Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Some actions have harsher opposite reactions.
Lysistrata: Men just want to fuck.
Symposium: Wine loosens lips.
Bible: People interpret things differently.
Aeneid: Nationalism, man.
Confessions: We’re all inherently greedy.
Inferno: Go to hell, asshole.
Decameron: People like having sex.
Montaigne: Go to a doctor when you’re sick.
King Lear: Sibling rivalry is real.
Don Quixote: Imagination is not real.
P&P: It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. Similarly, it is a truth universally acknowledged that a single woman must be in want of a man in possession of a good fortune.
C&P: People will go way out of their way to justify their actions.
To the Lighthouse: Sometimes, you’re just a Q.
What Columbia students do every single day courtesy of Shutterstock
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@Anonymous You don’t have to take a course on Montaigne to know that his life lesson is pretty much the opposite… He hates doctors…
@Go Sparknotes Go. As little lit hum as I read last year, I’m just proud of myself for understanding the taglines for each book!!
@Symposium invention of pedophilia
@Anonymous People who read the classics are smarter and have better empathy and social skills
@Anonymous http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/shouts/2013/09/great-books-modern-subtitles.html
@the lesson of lysistrata is not that all men want to fuck. did you even read it? lysistrata is only able to convince the women not to have sex because she’s implied to have incredible and possibly magical powers of persuasion (which she uses to persuade both men and women) – she has to bind them with a very detailed oath and even then they’re pretty much champing at the bit to get back in bed. ancient greek convention held that women were /more/ sex-crazed and uninhibited than men.
like i know this is just a lazy listicle to fill space and all of these are super-simplifying but COME ON
it’s one thing to be simplistic (“Nationalism, man”) and another to just be wrong :(
@classics major Chill.
@classics major I am the biggest wimp because I can’t leave a rude comment anonymously without feeling bad about it :(
Sorry, anon. You’re totally right! I just want us all to relax and be happy and get along and and and okay I’ll go back to writing papers now.
@ballerinadalek The message is more like: Behold the power of the V…….to be funny.