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Given that response, I will follow in Quark's wake, and cede the field. If you despise it all then what are you looking for here?
As Quark knows, I find the work of Dickens hard to love, and yet as Petrarch does with Faulkner, I make the effort to still read the novelist and appreciate what he was in the Victorian era without damning him--it resides in my love of scholarship for its own sake, which, as I've indicated, isn't for everyone. Since you love backpacking, maybe you should check out Stegner; his work deals with demythologizing the western frontier.
My response was not that I despised Dante. My response was that I do not respect the reasons given so far as to why I should like Dante. Why would I read something over again that I despise? What do you want out of exaggerating my statements? Thank you for the reading suggestion.
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Actually, in a dispute such as this... when one person with limited experience in the field is challenging the accepted judgment of the larger portion of experts in the field (academics, writers, and common readers in Virginia Woolf's sense of the term) the basis of proof is upon the person who is challenging the accepted values. Beside which, quite frankly Dante has no need forme or anyone else to defend him. His position in the canon of classic literature is quite secure regardless of the complaints of any number of high-school and college literature students.
Nope, it is always, always, always on those that would take the position you have. Is that the only way you can win, by creating boundaries that force those with an opposite opinion into a logical fallacy? The bolded part is exactly the problem, you are putting his work upon a god-like, untouchable pedestal, and no literature is that good.
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The utter bollocks is the sophomoric notion that any work of art exists in a vacuum or that its merits are solely measured on an individual basis. How is that even possible? To offer up a judgment of any individual work there must be some concept of what the standards for "good" and "bad" are. How are these standards developed if not in comparison. T.S. Eliot in his seminal essay, Tradition and the Individual Talent offered a view of the relationship of the writer to tradition and the influence of earlier writers:
No I feel that philosophy (which you have claimed The Divine Comedy to be), exists by itself and the only judge of it is yourself. Now after you have read enough philosophy and found what clicks with you then I suppose you will start comparing work, but until that glorious day each philosophy is on it's own uncompared. Fiction on the other hand does need comparison with other works, but really any fictional book that philosophizes too much will be dry and the characters will suffer for it. Since you have replaced the idea that the Western hemisphere is a monolithic entity with the same motivations, ideals, values, behavior, beliefs etc... and that all of these can be traced back to Dante with, that works can't be judged alone, as utter bollocks. Do you agree with the former? Could you please argue with your own words, I didn't realize that I was discussing the matter with T.S. Eliot.
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A work of art attains the status of a literary classic because of its impact upon (and the opinions of) subsequent writers, readers, critics, and other literary experts or academics. Your analogy with Das Kapital is completely misleading because Das Kapital has never been accepted as a major literary creation. Its influence was political, not literary. One might just as well suggest that Darwin's On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or Newton's Philosophić Naturalis Principia Mathematica are major works of literature because of their influence on the sciences.
The Comedia has attained a preeminent level of esteem as a work of literature among critics, literary academics, writers, and readers and yet you would argue that the work is grossly flawed or fails to meet certain standards based upon what? Your own personal opinion? We have all granted you that. No one can be made to like something. It is doubtful that they can even be convinced by logic into liking something. But you are not simply stating that you personally dislike the work... rather you are suggesting a range of flaws that suggest the fault is in Dante... and again this criticism is based upon what? Your own deep reading of literature?
I used Das Kapital as something revolutionary in general, as opposed to something revolutionary in literature. The point still stands. Not grossly flawed, I have never said that(really now, I have never seen so many strawmen outside of political discussion or the state of Iowa) but it did fail to meet my standards. Standards like fiction should be enjoyed for it's character, plot, and setting as opposed to it's philosophy. Philosophy texts should be judged on their philosophy and enjoyed for the ideas they present. Same for political theory. Haha, you say that as if you have presented logic into this thread. Nope I have said nothing beyond that I personally disliked the work, I have only criticised others interperation and the significance placed on it. I've yet to claim that Dante is to blame, but I reserve the possibility that he could be. I was curious as to why others like it. Moved them/meant something personal to them-excellent, it's a classic-poor, others liked it-poor, it was influential-poor. By whose standards should I judge things by, then? Yours? Great now if you could just get me a list of all the books that you have read, what you thought of them, and why you thought those things. Then we could get started.
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Really though you are expecting too much too soon, literature of this type just does not operate on that sort of level as I said before. It might be best to read a little more before taking on one of the cornerstones of Western literature. Just a suggestion like...
That's fair, I'm just beginning to doubt that literature of this type is worth the time.
