Which COUNTRY has produced the greatest literature?

[Pierre Menard]

Definitely FRANCE !

I don't think it's possible to say 'definitely' any country.

[hannah_arendt]

Definitely FRANCE !

Why France?

[nooshi]

I am so shocked that no one named the persian literature here!! Iran or the same persia, has the greatest literature in the whole world. It is not even compatible with european literature. Go and have some research about it.

Have your say as to which nation has produced the greatest literature throughout time, whether it be Rome and Greece with the old classics or Britain with Shakespeare and the Victorian writers.

[Whosis]

England's Shakespeare is generally considered by professors to be the best. However, in recent years, it has been said that American authors continue to beat out British authors, which is not entirely true. James Joyce was considered the best novelist of the 20th century with Ulysses. You have to give England credit for inventing the language.

[mal4mac]

England's Shakespeare is generally considered by professors to be the best. However, in recent years, it has been said that American authors continue to beat out British authors, which is not entirely true. James Joyce was considered the best novelist of the 20th century with Ulysses. You have to give England credit for inventing the language.

Joyce was Irish.

I'm British, but I can't think of any modern British author who can match Roth or Bellow. Martin Amis places Bellow above all other modern authors, but I can't think of a top American author or critic who praises a British author so highly. I have to go back to the likes of Conrad, Hardy and Kipling before I can think of anyone matching these American greats. Maybe it's a loss of Empire thing, we just haven't the energy or ambition any more!

[Poetaster]

I'm British, but I can't think of any modern British author who can match Roth or Bellow.

What about Ian McEwan?

[DystopianGypsy]

Russia, by far! Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Tergenev, Chehkov! Need I say more? This, however, is just aesthetic preference, not an objective submission of any kind of logical line of thinking.

[stlukesguild]

Russia, by far! Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Tergenev, Chehkov! Need I say more?

Yes. You would need lots more. Britain can field Shakespeare, Milton, Chaucer, Blake, Joyce, Dickens, Keats, Spenser, Wordsworth, Sterne, etc... France has Hugo, Baudelaire, Rousseau, Montaigne, Rimbaud, Proust, Ronsard, Moliere, Racine, Voltaire, Genet, etc...

Russia has been a major player in literature for all of 200 years... at most. France and Britain for far longer.

The reality is that most of us can only speak of the literature we are familiar with... and largely that which we can read in its native tongue. The same is true of the above claim for Persia which suggests little more than nationalistic jingoism. Persia, undoubtedly has a rich literary heritage: Omar Khayyam, Ferdowsi, Daqiqi, Attar, Rumi, Hafiz, Sana'i, Sadi, Nizami, and the Thousand and One Nights. But little is translated beyond these major works... and little past the "classical" eras. One might make similar claims for India and China most certainly, but also Japan. The idea that Persian literature surpasses the whole of Europe... or Asia... is simply ridiculous... and ignorant. I wouldn't even make such a claim for the Austro-Germans with regard to classical music... and they surely have a far larger claim to such a hegemony than any single national/linguistic group with regards to art or literature.

[Whosis]

United Kingdom is what I was looking for as far as a nationality for James Joyce. Huh. Maybe that means he's an Irish author and not an English author. So strange.

[nooshi]

I am was not familiar with persian ( I am Bulgarian) but after I read the translation of Khayyam, I started to learn! Then I feel like I am born again. I gave my life to literature reading from east to west.. First, I agree with you about the translation... There is no enough translation for Persian classic books.. Actually there is NO translation for some of them ( Saeb Tabrizi, Parvin etesami and etc.. ). The only translated works are those you mentioned but compared to European, because I am quite familiar, Persian literature is far better and richer. Also you find totally different styles which makes it so interesting. For me, it is so exciting to read a beautiful story based poem which comes back to 100 to 700 to thousands years ago and it is filled with cultural thoughts and beautiful picturing of that era... each book was a gift of life for me and I am so sorry that I did not start reading Persian literature sooner. There is another problem about it and that is their government that wants to remove anything which is not islamic and only keeps the works that came after Islam to persia. So their government does not try hard to get other nations become more familiar with the rich literature, I think there are more events and tributes about rumi and hafiz outside Iran in comparison to inside or if it is not like that, others do not hear about it and this is so sad. One thing that was so sad is that no one even mentioned Persian in this topic! The literature which is the best in many people's thought! Even if you don't agree with that, at least one person had to mentioned that! this means the members should educate themselves more about one of the greatest literature in the world.

Russia, by far! Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Tergenev, Chehkov! Need I say more?

Yes. You would need lots more. Britain can field Shakespeare, Milton, Chaucer, Blake, Joyce, Dickens, Keats, Spenser, Wordsworth, Sterne, etc... France has Hugo, Baudelaire, Rousseau, Montaigne, Rimbaud, Proust, Ronsard, Moliere, Racine, Voltaire, Genet, etc...

Russia has been a major player in literature for all of 200 years... at most. France and Britain for far longer.

The reality is that most of us can only speak of the literature we are familiar with... and largely that which we can read in its native tongue. The same is true of the above claim for Persia which suggests little more than nationalistic jingoism. Persia, undoubtedly has a rich literary heritage: Omar Khayyam, Ferdowsi, Daqiqi, Attar, Rumi, Hafiz, Sana'i, Sadi, Nizami, and the Thousand and One Nights. But little is translated beyond these major works... and little past the "classical" eras. One might make similar claims for India and China most certainly, but also Japan. The idea that Persian literature surpasses the whole of Europe... or Asia... is simply ridiculous... and ignorant. I wouldn't even make such a claim for the Austro-Germans with regard to classical music... and they surely have a far larger claim to such a hegemony than any single national/linguistic group with regards to art or literature.

[stlukesguild]

You would be surprised to discover that there are more than a few members here who have championed Persian and Arabic literature here over the years. Quite some time back we had a member who was fluent in Farsi... and I believe Arabic as well to a certain extent. When asked to give our choices for the 50 or 100 greatest books or writers, a number of members (myself included) have placed Firdowsi and the Shahnameh, the Thousand and One Nights and several others writers and books quite high on our list. Personally, as a visual artist, I am quite fond of Persian/Turkish/Arabic/Byzantine/Mughal/Arab-Andalusian arts and culture (which all weave in and out of each other). I have made any number of posts recognizing the achievements of these cultures here. Having said that, I have no illusions that any single national/linguistic body of literature can be deemed to surpass that of all others... except in one's own personal opinion... and the more one reads... the more likely one will discover the incredible richness and wealth of literary achievements across all eras and cultures.

[WICKES]

It's hard to think of a country that beats England overall. Russia and France would probably beat England on the novel alone, but when you add in poetry, essays and drama I'd nominate England. James Joyce (no friend of the English) once said that the 3 greatest figures in literature were, for him, Shakespeare, Shelley and Wordsworth.

Chaucer, Shakespeare, Donne, Milton, The King James Bible, Blake, Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, Keats, Coleridge, Dickens...the list is endless. When you also consider how small England is, its cultural/ literary inheritance is extraordinary. Rather than being arrogant and boastful about this, the English seem oddly indifferent, even embarassed. When I look at my own bookshelves they are dominated by English writers: Huxley, Waugh, Wodehouse, Lawrence, Dickens...

I think Martin Amis once said that the two nations/ cultures to have produced the greatest body of poetry were Persia and England- odd when you consider how different the two places are (one a cool, damp island, the other a large desert country). Sadly, England seems to have totally lost confidence. I guess because it has been replaced as the dominant English-speaking culture by the USA.

[Poetaster]

For me, and this is purely my own personal opinion, it has to be Ancient Greece. Sorry to be boring, and I could be wrong technically, but I do think that's true.

[ajvenigalla]

Britain, France, the United States, Russia

[Pike Bishop]

I'm pretty much in agreement with Ajveigalla

1. America: Melville, Faulkner, James, Emerson, Poe, Twain, Whitman, Hawthorne, Dickinson, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Hughes, Pound, Eliot, Stevens, Stein, Bishop, Williams, R. Lowell, Baldwin, Roth, DeLillo, Pynchon, McCarthy, Morrison, Rich, Dick, Auster, Gibson, Plath, A. Lowell

2. Britain: Chaucer, Shakespeare, Marlowe, Marvell, Donne, Milton, Carlyle, Blake, Byron, Shelley, Wordsworth, Keats, Eliot, Austen, Dickens, Swinburne, Waugh, Greene, Rushdie, Mitchell, Auden

3. France: Montaigne, Moliere, Racine, Rousseau, Stendhal, Balzac, Flaubert, Rimbaud, Verlaine, Mallarme', Proust, Camus, Maupassant, Sand, Baudelaire, Bergson, Valery, Genet, Bataille, Barthes, Derrida, Cixous, Robbe-Grillet

4. Russia: Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Gogol, Turgenev, Bulgakov, Lermontov, Akhmatova, Mayakovsky