I came up with this because I learned from Tumblr that there’s apparently more than a hundred fanfics for The Epic of Gilgamesh on Ao3, and I think it’s poetic in a way how we’ve still never really gotten over the first story ever.
My answer would be Le Roman de Silence, from the early 1200s, which is about the adventures Silence, a boy who was born as a girl (that’s the author’s way of describing him)and who eventually becomes a knight. I just stumbled across it randomly but I fell in love with it after reading it the first time, and I think it’s beautiful how something 1000 years old can still be around and not have lost any of it’s capability for arousing our emotions.
I’ve loved the Epic of Gilgamesh since I read it in college. I also love both The Iliad and The Odyssey and am currently reading Emily Wilson’s translation of The Odyssey. But my all time favorite is Le Morte d’Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory.
Wasn’t he that rogue that raped and pillaged and then wrote his books in prison cause he got bored? Those were the most beautiful Arthur stories I read, I think