Status Updates From The Western Lit Survival Ki...

"Sade writes like the Ayn Rand of sexual violence." insane burn. jawdropping. i'd kill myself

"Rousseau is one of those artistes who rapturously extols the ennobling effect of manual labor, which he has never done, and is not offering to do."

no mention of diderot's softcore nun porn... sad

"To read Clarissa requires the patience God gave a sea sponge"

"[Samuel] Richardson was the opposite of a man's man. All his life, he preferred the company of women and the manners of women; he sincerely believed they were morally superior to men. Women loved Richardson back ... This love was platonic, but Richardson didn't mind..."

would estrogen have saved him. would estrogen have saved him

"It is hard not to enjoy Crusoe's steady mastery of his island" DOUBT! X TO DOUBT! IT WASN'T HARD AT ALL!

"The difference between Corneille and Racine is that Corneille came first and Racine is also a town in Wisconsin."

WISCONSIN MENTIONED!

"Harold Bloom has called [Aphra] Behn a 'fourth-rate playwright.' This is very unfair: Aphra Behn is a second-rate playwright. Also way cooler than Harold Bloom."

"It's hard to escape the conclusion that Shakespeare meant this play as an attack on anti-Semitism" [sic].

IS IT????

"Not everyone can honestly say that they enjoy King Lear, but if you don't enjoy Twelfth Night, shoot the director."

hmm. okay i think if your goal is to humorously but genuinely summarize othello you have to say the words racism and black more than once. "othello is an idiot plot there's no reason for othello to believe iago" Address Me 🐘

rating spenser as more accessible than shakespeare is crazy. no he is not

"[Marlowe's Dido play] was probably coauthored by Thomas Nashe, which would explain the part where a man has sex with a woman."

"Spenser, whose work could be used as a form of birth control"

“It’s a curious fact that the more challenging a work of literature is, the more likely the reader is to fall asleep facedown in its pages. Conversely, even the most scornful reader of Dan Brown effortlessly stays awake through his books.”

NOT ME!!! I WAS FIGHTING FOR MY LIFE READING THAT SHIT!!!

"Apparently, [Vergil] spent his life writing books in a room by himself. Biographical tradition depicts him as shy, sickly, and gay. However, those biographers may simply have been speculating based on the fact that he wrote poetry."

CATULLUS INVENTOR OF HTE GIRLFRIEND

"Romans shared our basic frivolity: there was no smut too low for them, and no complaint too trivial. They loved sarcasm, gossip, and actors. In fact, by the time of the Silver Age, Romans are not just Americans, but actually New Yorkers."

this is true i was there

“Many of the writers we will meet in the coming pages learned these dead languages at ages as young as five. Now they are dead themselves. Was it worth it? We may never know.”

it’s giving philomena cunk

“Paradise Lost is a work of acknowledged genius. It is also about as much fun as being trapped in a freezer.”