Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Liberated from chronological parochialism

Responding to an interviewer's questions, Suzannah, of the site "In Which I Read Vintage Novels," explains the advantages of reading such books:
Three benefits of vintage/classic fiction:
  1. The homeland of many, many classic novels is Christendom, unlike the majority today.
  2. After all this time, the greats are established and the chaff has been forgotten (although there is also the thrill in discovering forgotten greats).
  3. You become a time-traveler, able to look at life from the perspective of an author of some other time period. As a result you become able to recognise the attitudes of different time periods, and are liberated from chronological parochialism. Revisionist history fails to entrance you: instead, you learn from the horse's mouth how people really thought and lived and felt in the time of the Caesars, in medieval Europe, in Victorian Britain, in World War I.
In Which I Read Vintage Novels: Interview - Fiction and Nonfiction

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