Now that I've read this it seems like most books reference at least one of these myths.
>>23979962Would you recommend the penguins edition?
>>23979972Well it's the one that was at my local library, so sure.
Ezra Pound wrote that Arthur Golding's translation of Metamorphoses was the single greatest work of literature in English, and he suspected that Shakespeare shared this opinion.
>>23980743Too old. You'll miss much of the meaning because nobody knows these archaic formulations>OF shapes transformde to bodies straunge, I purpose to entreate,>Ye gods vouchsafe (for you are they ywrought this wondrous feate)>To further this mine enterprise. And from the world begunne,>Graunt that my verse may to my time, his course directly runne.The standard ebooks version leaves something to be desired though>Of bodies changed to various forms I sing:>Ye gods, from whom these miracles did spring,>Inspire my numbers with celestial heat,>Till I my long laborious work complete;>And add perpetual tenor to my rhymes,>Deduced from Nature’s birth to Caesar’s times.
>>23979962Currently reading through this and it's a fascinating read. It's basically an Ancient Greek encyclopedia
>>23980848The 2nd one makes perfect sense to me. But I don't really understand the first one already.> (for you are they ywrought this wondrous feate)I have no idea what this means. "For you are they"?>Graunt that my verse may to my time, his course directly runne.Who is "his"? The verse? Needlessly confusing
>>23979962>>23980852I've bought it this week. Is this just a poetry summary of the greek/roman mythology? If that's the case, then the bibliotheca mythologica of Apollodorus came before.
>>23980858It also includes a story about Caesar at the end, but I haven't finished it yet; I'll try to by the end of today (my attention span is still healing from years of vidya).
>>23980848Not too old at all. It might be hard for an ESL who hasn't read much Elizabethan era literature, but it's certainly easier to dive into than Chaucer, Gower, or Layamon.
>>23980918It's not just the words, but the expressions and phrasing as well. Unless you read a heavily annotated version, you just won't get what it's saying. 1500s idioms are often opaque. Some words meant completely different things than they do now, which will make you misunderstand yet think you understand, which is even worse than not understanding.
>>23980848The Penguin Golding modernizes the spelling. It’s perfectly readable
>>23980848>>23980918It's middle English lmao, hardly even the same language
>>23980961get gpt to translate it into discord ebonics tho lmao
>>23980961I'm sorry for your never being taught the Saxon tongugeIn all seriousness, it takes a maybe three days tops to become aquanted with Middle English
I'm a complete dumbass but I muscled my way through middle scots. Hearing people say Ovid is unreadable and even Shakespeare is just baffling
>>23980996>yo imma talk bout shapeshiftin n wild transformations, ya feel? >ay gods, slide thru n bless up (y'all the ones who made this crazy stuff pop off) >help me out wit this grind. from day one, >let my bars flow clean all the way thru time, no cap.
>>23980848Good bait this almost got me
>>23979962There's a reason people say start with the Greeks
>>23981006>>23980961I'll respond to this bait. Both of these anons are wrong. Arthur Golding did not write in Middle English; he wrote in Early Modern English. His writing is no harder to parse than Shakespeare's, and in fact I'd say it's largely easier. The poets I listed (Chaucer, Gower, and Layamon) on the other hand, did write in Middle English. No, learning Middle English is not as simple as a three day romp, though many people who scan a few lines of Chaucer's, not knowing that his relatively accessible verse is largely due to his dialect, often have a misplaced confidence in their ability to understand him and other Middle English poets.
More or less unrelated but for reasons I can‘t remember I picked up the Horace Gregory translation and strongly advise nobody do the sane. Nearly unreadable.
>>23981063At this point I think Shakespeare's English is a form of later middle english; most people cannot understand him.>No, learning Middle English is not as simple as a three day rompIt depends what era it is from, but I said becoming acquainted with it would take only a some three odd days (reading it aloud really helps). Of course, becoming well versed in it takes time, but this is mostly by engaging with more and more texts.
>>23981022ngl tho this fire tho fr fr yeeeeeeeeeeeeesh
>>23981159>At this point I think Shakespeare's English is a form of later middle english; most people cannot understand him.I think it's important to remember that, as English speakers, we are about twice as far away from Shakespeare today than he was to Chaucer. Chaucer was already beginning to become a bit too tough for casual reading then (see Dryden's comments on Chaucer, Spenser's deliberately archaic verse...). With that in mind, I think it's perfectly understandable that the average person would struggle with Shakespeare. I'm still convinced that most students today would be able to read his plays so long as they weren't taught by lazy teachers which just encourage them to give up and read No Fear Shakespeare versions, however.
