Consider this an official call for submissions to the upcoming Bookworms Carnival, which I am hosting!

But before I get to details about the carnival I’m hosting, make sure you send something in to the current carnival. It’s easy: just select one of your most recent reviews and send it to bookwormscarnival at gmail dot com. Do it ASAP! As in right this minute. Details here.

The subject for the carnival I’m hosting is Really Old Classics, which I’m interpreting as classics written before 1600 (i.e., pre-Shakespeare). This post has some pointers for what I’m looking for as well as some ideas of what works you could review (or already have reviewed).

• Send in a link to your post(s) by August 14, 2009 to rebecca at rebeccareid dot com with Bookworms Carnival in the subject line.
• Because this is a blog carnival, your submission does need to be a review on a blog. However, you don’t have to have strictly a books blog to participate. A relevant entry from any type of blog would count.
• I’m specifically looking for reviews, but I may accept general posts discussing favorite really old classics or the importance of really old classics if it may add to a discussion of the genre. I also will accept general nonfiction that is criticism or reading aids to a really old classic. (For example, I’m reading a “companion” volume as I study The Arabian Nights. A review of the companion like that could count for this carnival.)
• I’m looking for works written before 1600, but the translator can be a modern one. For example, Gilgamesh was written a long time ago, although many modern translations were done long after 1600. Because the original work is a “really old classic,” those modern translations still count, even if they are rather modern!
• Depending on how many posts I receive, I’m happy to accept more than one post per blog. If you submit more than one, let me know which one you’d prefer. In the unlikely event that I receive too many posts (which I’d love to be the case), then I’ll only post one of yours.
• If you haven’t read or reviewed anything lately, look through your archives for something you may have read and reviewed in the past.
• You could read excerpts of something and write a review (or your thoughts) about it as classic literature.

Here are some ideas of works that might count. This is, of course, not comprehensive. Anything originally written before 1600 will count.

• The Epic of Gilgamesh
• Homer’s Iliad or Odyssey
• Confucius’ Analects
• Any play by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, or Aristophanes
• Herodotus
• Thycydides
• The Art of War by Sun-tzu
• Plato or Aristotle
• The Bhagavad Gita; The Bible; The Koran
• Saint Augustine’s The Confessions or City of God
• The Pillow Book by Sei Shonagon
• The Tale of the Genji by Lady Murasaki
• The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
• The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri
• The Canterbury Tales by Geoffry Chaucer
• The Arabian Nights (aka The Thousand and One Nights)
• Machiavelli’s The Prince
• Any essay by Michel de Montaigne
• Any play by Christopher Marlowe or his contemporary, pre-Shakespeare

As I said, this list is not comprehensive. I just hope that it inspires you to find something that you can submit or to find something that you might review in the coming month. I’d really like to celebrate the really old classics with this carnival!

Thanks ahead of time for joining in.