The difficulty of reading

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Reading a classic novel is a research project; it is not an endeavor for the lazy. Stu White I agree with this thought. The lazy reader will find the classics difficult reading. Reading Manzoni is not easy, just as it is not easy to read many classics of the Middle Ages ( Decameron , Divine Comedy ), of the sixteenth century ( Orlando furioso , Gerusalemme liberata ), of the seventeenth century ( Lo cunto de li cunti ) and of the eighteenth century ( Dei delitti e delle pene ). The language, especially before the 19th century, was very different from the current one.


In this regard, in my opinion, a distinction must be made between the Italian literature of those periods and the foreign literature translated from the 19th century onwards. However faithful a translation may be to the original text, reading Caesar or Herodotus "live" is very different from reading their Italian translations. But why, I ask myself, should this Special Data difficulty slow down the reading of the classics, should it make today's readers desist from approaching classical literature? Reading the classics stimulates intelligence. I can't prove it, obviously, but forcing the brain to understand texts that are not easy to read is a training that will certainly be good for it, given that it is compared to a muscle. Read according to the patterns of new media Some argue that new technologies (tablets, smartphones) and new communication platforms (social networks, WhatsApp) have made us unaccustomed to reading books.



Or, better (or rather, worse !), they have accustomed us to certain reading patterns: a faster and more concise language a more direct and therefore lexically poor communication a language that is often more visual than textual (made up of more or less legitimate emoticons and abbreviations) very short sentences, often without any punctuation loss of many grammatical rules These patterns, in the long run, will be increasingly rooted in the minds of new readers, so much so that it will be impossible for them, or at least very unlikely, to be able to understand not only a classic, but any text more complex than the arid and superficial language favored from new media.