Why Modern Literature Stinks | Episode LXXXIV

In the final chapter of Climbing Parnassus, Tracy Lee Simmons distinguishes between the "skills" and the "content" arguments for classical study, and says that the skills argument is in fact the stronger. Content, Simmons says, can be learned by reading translations - or even from scanning Wikipedia (or asking A.I.!). What is irreplaceable about true classical study is the formation of the mind and the skills acquired from long years of intense training in reading and writing in Greek and Latin. The death of this educational program caused European literary culture to rot, just as critics and poets like W.H. Auden, T.S. Eliot, and C.S. Lewis had warned: they were the last generation to receive this education, and so it should be no surprise that they were the last generation of Anglophone writers even to approach greatness.

Tracy Lee Simmons' Climbing Parnassus: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781933859507

New Humanists episode on Albert Jay Nock: https://newhumanists.buzzsprout.com/1791279/episodes/10528217-should-everyone-be-educated-episode-22 

J.R.R. Tolkien's Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics: https://jenniferjsnow.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/11790039-jrr-tolkien-beowulf-the-monsters-and-the-critics.pdf

Plato's The Last Days of Socrates: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780140449280

Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780393320978

ALI's Latin for Kids program: https://ancientlanguage.com/latin-for-kids/

New Humanists is brought to you by the Ancient Language Institute: https://ancientlanguage.com/

Links may have referral codes, which earn us a commission at no additional cost to you. We encourage you, when possible, to use Bookshop.org for your book purchases, an online bookstore which supports local bookstores.

Music: Save Us Now by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com