bogarde73 wrote on Mar 31
st, 2016 at 10:13am:
Some people may regard the classics as things like Plato or the Odyssey, but I am thinking about 19th century and some 18th century books here.
Australia has its own classics and I have mentioned some in other threads, authors such as Henry Handel Richardson, Miles Franklin, Kylie Tennant. And America has its classics, Mark Twain, Henry James etc. And there are translations of French classics like Balzac & Zola. I like Balzac in particular.
But I still prefer the English classics and one author, apart from Dickens of course, stands out for me and that's Trollope. And from his unbelievable production line I like the Barsetshire series best.
I'm listening to one now, Dr Thorne. I've got the books and read them, but listening is good too.
What I like about the classics is they show you that people essentially don't change much over time. The rules of society might change but really people's behaviour doesn't. There is continuity which has probably been there for hundreds if not thousands of years.
I don't think schools devote enough time to classics. They're difficult and the curriculum is full of bits of everything. And there is the cult of Shakespeare which I think is carried to extremes.
To my mind, kids would derive more understanding from a Dickens or Trollope novel than they would from Shakespeare, which they can't understand anyway.
The Barchester Chronicles (based on Trollop's The Warden and Barchester Towers) was made into a TV series by the BBC in the 1980s. It's a cracker.
Alan Rickmans as Obediah Slop(e), Sir Humphrey Appleby as the Archdeacon, Donal Pleasance as the Rev Harding, and the incomparable Geraldine McEwan as Mrs ("the Bishop thinks, and I agreeeeee with him") Proudie.
Love it. Just love it.
True, Trollope reads better than Dickens today. But otherwise I disagree about every other aspect of your post.