Is it best to read older literary works (Paradise Lost, Dubliners,

>>9707920
Doesn't matter because you will reread them many times.

>>9707920
Moby Dick = not necessary
Paradise Lost = def. get footnotes
Dubliners = As a non-english native speaker I appreciated the footnotes (espacially all the irish stuff), if you are from the UK/Ireland you prolly wont need them(?)

>>9707920
Without. If you didn't live at the time when they were first published you'll only get a fraction of its impact anyway. Footnotes don't help because they're too dry to immerse the reader in the time. Like someone explaining a joke to you in a robotic voice.

>>9707971
But shouldn't understanding the text be important? I'm at a crossroads. I don't want to ruin the flow of the original text, but at the same time I want to understand most of what's going on. Maybe the best decision is to read without footnotes first, then revisit the text a second time with footnotes.

>>9708050
With Dubliners I read the short stories first then went through the footnotes afterwards. They're definitely mandatory, but don't let them distract you from the text.

Why wouldn't you get an edition with them anyway? You can always ignore them, but they are there if you want.

It's really more the value of the footnotes themselves, and would have to be looked into on a book by book basis. I read the norton critical edition of dubliners and they go overboard with footnoots sometimes for example, explaining really obvious stuff that doesn't need explaining. But then again, some of the critical/footnotes are informative