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.
Gotta give it to The Odyssey. Not only is it a great lyrical epic, but it closes out with one of the great endings of all time.
Read it for a class a year ago and absolutely loved it! Such a great story and the language is gorgeous. I also think it would make for a great tv adaptation. An HBO show would be absolutely killer.
I was doing a second reading of it on the commute to work and I had this kind of amazing realization. I came across some passage (I forget which now), but it stopped me in my tracks and I said to myself “This guy is talking about my life!” Great stories can cross the gulf of time.
I was doing a second reading of it on the commute to work and I had this kind of amazing realization. I came across some passage (I forget which now), but it stopped me in my tracks and I said to myself “This guy is talking about my life!” Great stories can cross the gulf of time.