What's your favorite piece of classical literature?

Through the Looking-Glass

 

If you ask me to define classical literature it is going to be published way before things where I could easily still find someone today that remembers them being published -- the two examples in the OP are from the late 1930s*. Even the 1800s is pushing it somewhat and I would go pre industrial revolution/age of steam, and I could see arguments for pre Gutenberg's press (mid 1400s) which also typically corresponds to the end of the middle ages.

*what counted as a new book back then was odd as well. I have a few books (re)published in the 60s that ponder the greater staying power of things published around then in the opening notes. Or if you prefer the first Game of Thrones book was published in 1996 and is still considered contemporary.

In my case I am going to be thinking Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome and the aftermath of those for most of mine. In which case the Aeneid (the Roman answer/counterpoint to the Iliad) would be mine, though some of the batshit stuff from elsewhere will put in an appearance (I love mythology and folklore, less keen on the Christian stuff but that tends to be because it was rammed down my throat for decades in school, though if we do go looking at the real history of it all then I am more interest). Because I am a nerd then Beowulf will be noted in this despite it possibly being outside the period known as Classical antiquity (some 1000 years from a bit after BCE 500).

 

Erm...does Orwell's 1984 count? Or HP Lovecraft's work?

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Bram Stoker's Dracula are also pretty readable. As is Stevenson's Dr Jekyll & mr Hyde.

 

I’ve enjoyed Shakespeare throughout my life quite a bit, and recently began studying the Epic of Gilgamesh and it’s history and nuances.

 

Dunno if it counts, but animal farm and 1984 by George Orwell

 

How much "classical"?
With "classical" I think about at the ancient works as Aeneid, Kojiki, The Egyptian Book of the Dead, the whole Plato and Aristotele's works.
Witch "classic" I think at Jung, Francis Scott Fitzgerald, Tolkien, Kant, Nietzsche, the Grimm brothers, Thomas More, Shakespeare, Gabriele d'Annunzio, Luigi Pirandello, Giacomo Leopardi, Dante Alighieri, Boccaccio, Petrarca...

 

That one book by King Solomon that curses you.

 

The Great Gatsby got me into reading. First book I actually liked reading and I read it in one sitting

 

Indeed if this counts, same. Love this book. The 1945 movie is also really good even today.

 

Herman Melville - The Whale (1851)

 

Not really, no.
I've read a bunch of the german classics, both in school and just out of interest, like Faust, Nibelungs, some Kafkas, many I'm to lazy to look for a potential english title.
Few of them captured me, Faust a little, but most other things, no... and I wouldn't wanna reread any of them.

The ones I liked were all much more recent and usually childrens literature. Like Brothers Lionheart, Momo or Peter Pan.

Haven't read a lot recently at all

 

"The Brothers Karamazov" by Dostoyevsky
"The Captain's Daughter" by Pushkin
"Mozart & Salieri" by Pushkin

 

John Steinbeck is great, i have to read east of eden but the stuff i've read of him so far is great