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.

  • skwycklBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    I used to love Homer’s Odyssey and the Metamorphoses by Apuleius, but recently I have also switched to more medieval stuff and I must say I love Ysengrimus.

  • whoisyourwormguy_BEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    For people wondering if they should read the epic of Gilgamesh, it has a bromance at the level of Achilles and Patroclus but just a bit more. Enkidu and Gilgamesh.

  • DueMaternalBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    I’ve been a sucker for the Epic of Gilgamesh ever since I first watched Fate/Stay Night. It has to be that.

  • ChewbaccafruitBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Don Quixote. I didn’t ever think a 500 year old book would make me have to set it down because I was laughing so hard, but there ya go.

  • ksarlathotepBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    I mean there’s a lot of old literature I appreciate. In that I admire the work, and I believe the author was a genius in their time, and I’m fascinated by the historical and artistic importance of the work. But if we’re talking literature that I unambiguously enjoy reading, not because I’m learning something or appreciating something but because the artistry just gets me and I enjoy myself, I would say the oldest is The Robbers by Friedrich Schiller, published 1781.