Darkwinner's Literature Analysis

Quick internal links:
Star Wars
William Shakespeare
Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken"
List of Children's Books

There are 3 reasons why you'd want to study literature:

1. You're taking a class, and the teacher is making you do it.

2. You're an artist and you know that by studying the best of previous artist will allow you to stand on their shoulders. It's alot easier to build on what's come before than to reinvent the wheel. To build on what's come before, you have to understand and study it.

3. You're someone who likes to be entertained. Yes, you might have to work at it a bit first, but the classics are enjoyable, and worth that initial hurdle.

Think of it this way: It's 2 AD, and your name is Fred and you speak Classical Latin. A time machine from the future deposits from 2000 AD an American Latin teacher (named Mr. Piller) and a TV/VCR combo (with a power generator.) Also it comes with copies of Seinfield, Friends, Star Wars and (insert your favorite popcorn entertainment here.)

Mr Piller is a boring teacher. But if Fred can learn English from Mr. Piller, he gets to enjoy Seinfield and Star Wars (and all the other great entertainments of today, and he also avoids the bad things, like the Friends clones that lasted one season before cancellation, and the low budget Indiana Jones wannabe's).

It's a lot of work to learn modern English, but there's quite a bit of benefit as a result.

The point of this parallel is that if you put a little bit of work into understanding older English for the classics, you get to enjoy the best works from that peirod. And once you get over that initial hurdle, the classics are quite entertaining.

The List

Poetry

Edgar Allan Poe
Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken"

Prose

Sir Arthur Connan Doyle
Douglas Adams
JRR Tolkien
CS Lewis
JK Rowling
Nancy Drew
The Hardy Boys

Drama

William Shakespeare

Musical Theater

Gilbert and Sullivan
Rogers and Hart
Rogers and Hammerstein
Cole Porter
Ira and George Gerschwin
Meredith Wilson (The Music Man)
Irving Berlin
Stephen Soundheim
Andrew Lloyd Webber

Television

I Dream of Jenie
Bewitched
Brady Bunch
I Love Lucy
The Honeymooners

Family Ties
The Cosby Show
Night Court

Transformers
GI Joe
He Man

Star Trek
Remington Steele
Knight Rider
A-Team

Film

Casablanca
Star Wars
Indiana Jones
Back to the Future
Terminator

Comic Books

X-men
Spiderman
Batman
The Sandman
Justice League of America

Calvin and Hobbes
The Far Side

Philosophy

Descartes The Art of War by Sun Tzu The Bible The Koran The Torah Aristotle Socrates

Movies

Star Wars

Godfather Trilogy
Indiana Jones Trilogy