Which COUNTRY has produced the greatest literature?

[Brendan Madley]

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.

[cuppajoe_9]

I'd say the largest volume of great literature has come from the British Isles, but that might just be because I'm an anglophone.

For consistency of great literature, it's hard to beat Russia. (Quick, name five lousy Russian authors. See?)

Per capita, Canada and Iceland do quite well.

Most of the convention defying of the past century seems to have come from the United States.

[Brendan Madley]

Yeah, I agree with Britain. I think, in regard to Russia, it's that they don't have too many writers so only the best get published, you know. I don't think America currently produces the best; I think their current turnout is rubbish.

[cuppajoe_9]

I haven't read anything written anywhere in the past decade or so that blew me away (Palahniuk is alright), but it's hard to beat T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein and Amy Lowell for sheer, unadulterated weirdness (unless, of course, you happen to be James Joyce). America has also produced the best feminist literature this side of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, in my opinion.

[Brendan Madley]

Try... ah, Jeffery Archer and Salaman Rushie - I think I spelt the latter right. But people like Clive Cussler... ah!

[olichka]

For consistency of great literature, it's hard to beat Russia.

It's true, particularly in the 19th Century, Russia produced a great number of excellent writers : Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Turgenev, Gogol, Chekhov, etc. who all had to say profound things about human nature and whose works are still well-known in the West and have been frequently used as a basis for other artistic productions such as films, theater, etc.

With regard to Brendan's comment that Russia doesn't have that many writers so that the best get published : they actually do have a lot, it's just that the best get published in the English-speaking world which is why the English--speaking world only knows a select number. Also many works deal with intensely Russian/local issues which may not be of interest internationally. But there are plenty of good/medium rate Russian writers that are published and appreciated in Russia.

By the same token when I lived in the USSR, I only knew a select # of American/Canadian/British authors, and it's only when I moved to Canada and started taking English lit. in high school that I became acquainted with a lot of interesting writers from the English world.

[Brendan Madley]

I agree with olichka, although I was refering to Russian writers currently.

To cuppajoe: I might be able to name 5 lousy Russians, but I haven't gotten into Russian literature much. Who would you consider 5 bad writers from Britain??

[F.Emerald]

Yeah, I agree with Britain.

By Britain do you mean England? I mean, I don't know about you, but I can't think of any particularly great or heroic Welsh, Northern Irish or even Scottish novelists.

I think it's fairly even until one compares the miniscule size of England with its contenders, (I think Russia and America), then it is England.

[kilted exile]

By Britain do you mean England? I mean, I don't know about you, but I can't think of any particularly great or heroic Welsh, Northern Irish or even Scottish novelists.


AHHHHHH!!!!!!!!! Sacriledge what of Scott,Stevenson, Conan Doyle for the novelists, and seeing as it is literature, how can we forget Burns (one of the few writers to have his own day which is celebrated worldwide)

Scottish Writers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_writers)

Scottish Novelists (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Scottish_novelists)

This is without even going into Welsh, N.Irish, or ROI before seperation.

[ennison]

Our understanding of foreign literature is limited by what has been translated if we are monoglot and if one is a metropolitan troglodyte ones horizons will be very limited indeed. There are hundreds of Russian writers but the overwhelming majority will never have been translated or will have been translated in very truncated form. There is definitely 'heroic' Welsh literature. There are numerous Northern Irish writers and Scots, well ... too many to bother enlightening one who probably aint very interested.

[Woland]

I didnt know Doyle and Stevenson were Scottish

Lets not forget the French.

Voltaire
Moliere
Dumas
Hugo
Flaubert
Baudelaire

Then into the 20th century

Camus
Sartre

[Brendan Madley]

By Britain I do mean, yes, the British Isles. And to add my 2 cents, I would say Shakespeare, Dickens, Chaucher, Scott, Austen, Archer, Doyle, Kipling, Buchyan, Defoe, Woolf, Conrad, Marlowe, Thackeray, Swift, Fielding, Bronte Sisters, Shelley, Stoker, Joyce, Disraeli, Gaskel, Collins, Carroll, Tolkien, Lewis, Rowling, Potter, Trollpe, Eliot and Hardy to name some British legends. True, many are English, but every Home Country has their own champions of literature.

[F.Emerald]

AHHHHHH!!!!!!!!! Sacriledge what of Scott,Stevenson, Conan Doyle for the novelists, and seeing as it is literature, how can we forget Burns (one of the few writers to have his own day which is celebrated worldwide)

Scottish Writers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_writers)

Scottish Novelists (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Scottish_novelists)

This is without even going into Welsh, N.Irish, or ROI before seperation.

Ok ok!...I suppose I was being biased. I didn't say there weren't a few. But it hardly compares to the cornucopia that England offers :)

I don't like Stevenson one bit. The only Scottish author I've enjoyed is Irvine Welsh, but 'Trainspotting', 'P*rno', 'Filth' etc wouldn't be considered as literature would they?

[kilted exile]

I wouldnt anticipate there being as many Scottish writers as English - the population is about one tenth of the size - but we have produced our fair share.

[Boris239]

I can also easily name 5 terrible Russian writers. In fact, if we look only at the 20th century, there is an enormous number of Soviet authors who were published only because they supported the communist party and wrote the "right" thing

[Ecurb]

Greece rules! Homer, after all, is the father of modern literature. Sappho practically invented modern poetry. Greek plays are still performed today.

Unfortunately (for me) I know next to nothing about modern Greek literature. But the English, Russians, French, Germans, Italians, and the rest of the West are surely indebted to Greek literature. Also, wasn’t the New Testament written in Greek?

[olichka]

I can also easily name 5 terrible Russian writers. In fact, if we look only at the 20th century, there is an enormous number of Soviet authors who were published only because they supported the communist party and wrote the "right" thing

That's true, a lot of the writers in the post--revolutionary period were published because they supported the Communist party, but not all of them were bad writers. For example, Alexei Tolstoy was a good writer with his own style. I find that his " Road to Calvary ", although in support of the regime is still an interesting book, and I wouldn't say that it smacks that much of the communist propaganda : it's actually rather objective.

There were also a lot of good writers who wrote satires, making fun of the new lifestyle and the new types of people that evolved after the revolutionary/Civil War period ( although not the regime ), but were still published :e. g. Ilf and Petrov ( " The Golden Calf " , "The Twelve Chairs ", etc. )

Also, Fadeev's " The Young Guard ", although definitely in support of the regime, is still a good book, ( even if just for young readers ) and, besides, it was about important and tragic events from a human perspective, and so cannot be viewed as just propaganda.

[Brendan Madley]

True, true, modern literature had it's foundings in the classic Roman and Greek literature. But then, and I might seem nieve, while Greece has done lots for literature, would you say it brought literature to a whole new level that later ages feeded off or did it add to current literature at the time and give later ages the step up to take literature to the next level? Sorry, a bit of a mouthful. The New Testament was written in Arabmic by all except perhaps Luke, who was Greek and wrote for a Greek audience about Jesus healing. A few others may also have done, but the majority wrote Arabmic. I also agree with the Russian statement, quite true.

[olichka]

I also agree with the Russian statement, quite true.

Brendan, what exactly do you mean by that ? With which statement re Russian lit. do you actually agree ? :confused: I'm curious to know !

[Boris239]

Ancient Greek authors without any doubts have heavily influenced modern literature. The modern Greeks have little in common with the Greeks from the times of Homer or Pericles- even the language is completely different.


[/I][/B]

That's true, a lot of the writers in the post--revolutionary period were published because they supported the Communist party, but not all of them were bad writers. For example, Alexei Tolstoy was a good writer with his own style. I find that his " Road to Calvary ", although in support of the regime is still an interesting book, and I wouldn't say that it smacks that much of the communist propaganda : it's actually rather objective.

There were also a lot of good writers who wrote satires, making fun of the new lifestyle and the new types of people that evolved after the revolutionary/Civil War period ( although not the regime ), but were still published :e. g. Ilf and Petrov ( " The Golden Calf " , "The Twelve Chairs ", etc. )

Also, Fadeev's " The Young Guard ", although definitely in support of the regime, is still a good book, ( even if just for young readers ) and, besides, it was about important and tragic events from a human perspective, and so cannot be viewed as just propaganda.

I'm not saying that all of the Soviet authors are worthless. In fact I did enjoy "The Young Guard", although Fadeev changed a lot in the real events to emphasize the role of the Party.

But some of the novels that were considered great are pure torture for me. I haven't read anything worth than Gorky's "Mother" with the possible exception of Chernyshevsky's "What to do".

[Brendan Madley]

What I mean was that quite a number of Russian authors were heralded as great during the Soviet era, just due to them supporting the Communist cause. That is not to say there were no good Russian authors at the time.

[sumalan monica]

I have studied in my Faculty almost all good works written by both american an english writers .I enjoyed a lot.But have you read Mircea Eliade ,Cioran,Or Sadoveanu?Good literature is a concept which was made by readers and critics alike.When you have read all -it is impossible,of course-teories about how to produce poetry and write the best paper about a given subject then ,you are allowed to have your own oppinion about literature
You know what is said-Only the uncultivated people think they have the knowledge of all.
Rebreanu` S quote-""yOU have to embrace your nature,to dedicate entirely in the moment of creation"

[Bii]

By Britain do you mean England? I mean, I don't know about you, but I can't think of any particularly great or heroic Welsh, Northern Irish or even Scottish novelists.

Yowch! By Britain, generally it is meant England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales. Scotland has certainly produced some excellent writers, Iain Banks immediately sprang to mind for me, what about Irvine Welsh?


For consistency of great literature, it's hard to beat Russia. (Quick, name five lousy Russian authors. See?)

Name five Russian authors.........?

I think it is difficult to give an answer to the question raised on this thread as I think in any country you only see the "best" produced from other countries so you only get a small sample. Personally I think the Japanese have a lot to add (not necessarily saying they are the best) but have only read a very small sample of Japanese produced fiction - Kazuo Ishiguro (yes I accept lives in Britain!) is excellent and Haruki Murakami produces some of the most fascinating modern literature around.

[Nightshade]

Sott was scottish wasnt he?
so was George Macdonald,
love thier work hummmmm wow Barrie as well, actually I knew that now he is authour of my all time FAVOURITE play.
and werent Byron and keats Irish? I think Shelly was too.
But nowadays modern english 'literary' novels just tend to be extremely wierd, and Ill take a candian writer over any other most days of the week, Australians for teenage literature though they are the best.
Good sci-fi fantasty tends to be americans though doesnt it? with a few notable exceptions... oh wait a minute what rubbish, I think countries and literature are pretty difficult to tie together now , becasue surley great minds are not stuck in a country so much as a culture and a country can have many cultrues and many countries can share a culture?:brow:
:D:D

[Woland]

I'm not saying that all of the Soviet authors are worthless. In fact I did enjoy "The Young Guard", although Fadeev changed a lot in the real events to emphasize the role of the Party.

But some of the novels that were considered great are pure torture for me. I haven't read anything worth than Gorky's "Mother" with the possible exception of Chernyshevsky's "What to do".

What to do doesnt sound like a very promising title.

Ive never read any Gorky but Ive heard some good things.

[EAP]

Pakistan, obviously.

[Pensive]

Pakistan, obviously.

I read Overcoat a few months ago and after reading it, I feel like agreeing with you. And Khol Do by Munto was also a deeply moving read. Some friends are recommending me Dastak Na Do as well. They say it's a really good book. I will try to get my hands on it.

Ishtayaq Ahmad's novels are interesting too. Very good, if he would stop being a preacher in Inspector Jamshaid series.

What a pity that there are no good translation of the works. And even if there would be translations, I think the books would be losing quite a lot in translated versions.

[Madhuri]

There are English writers of Pakistani origin too. Have you read anything by Bapsi Sidhwa? You can try 'The Crow Eaters,' its a nicely written book, on the life of a Parsi family. :) I dont think she resides in Pakistan anymore, but most of her books are about India and Pakistan, people and their lives, some even have the setting of partition time.

[Pensive]

There are English writers of Pakistani origin too. Have you read anything by Bapsi Sidhwa? You can try 'The Crow Eaters,' its a nicely written book, on the life of a Parsi family. :) I dont think she resides in Pakistan anymore, but most of her books are about India and Pakistan, people and their lives, some even have the setting of partition time.

Bapsi Sidhwa? The one who wrote God of Small Things? I have got this book, was thinking of trying it once I finish the book I am reading now a days.

[Madhuri]

No. 'God of Small Things,' is written by Arundhati Roy. She is an Indian writer.

Bapsi, is a writer of Pakistani origin. See here (http://hometown.aol.com/bsidhwa/biography.html) and here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bapsi_Sidhwa).

Do you remember a movie named 'Earth'? It was also made based on her novel Ice Candy Man (Cracking India), this movie and novel have the setting of the partition time.

I have read only one book of her so far 'The Crow Eaters' and saw the movie 'Earth,' and I liked both, I dont know, if you'll like these, but I think you'll find her books interesting.

[Schokokeks]

No. 'God of Small Things,' is written by Arundhati Roy. She is an Indian writer.

That's a very beautiful book. I did a project on it in high-school and liked it very much :nod:. You should not miss it, Pensy, I'm sure it suits your taste ;).

[Pensive]

No. 'God of Small Things,' is written by Arundhati Roy. She is an Indian writer.

Bapsi, is a writer of Pakistani origin. See here (http://hometown.aol.com/bsidhwa/biography.html) and here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bapsi_Sidhwa).

Do you remember a movie named 'Earth'? It was also made based on her novel Ice Candy Man (Cracking India), this movie and novel have the setting of the partition time.

I have read only one book of her so far 'The Crow Eaters' and saw the movie 'Earth,' and I liked both, I dont know, if you'll like these, but I think you'll find her books interesting.

I think I have read her name in the newspapers. The novels, by their title, seem very interesting. I will try to find and read any of her works.


That's a very beautiful book. I did a project on it in high-school and liked it very much. You should not miss it, Pensy, I'm sure it suits your taste.

I guess so. :) The title, God of Small Things is quite compelling. I will try it soon hopefully. (I have got lots of books on my reading list at the moment! :D)

[Madhuri]

I think I have read her name in the newspapers. The novels, by their title, seem very interesting. I will try to find and read any of her works.

She is quite famous and a good writer. If you are interested in reading about partition and all, then you must try her books.

Also, I would recommend books written by Amrita Pritam, Pinjar (Cage), she has written many other books too, and Train to Pakistan by Khushwant Singh.

If you arent so interested in history then maybe you can try Interpreter of Maladies, by Jhumpa Lahiri. Its a very good book of stories, I have read it several times and liked it immensly.

I think by now your reading list must have become enormous :p

:D

[bazarov]

It's an easy, almost rhetorical question for me...Russian literature, of course!

[olichka]

It's an easy, almost rhetorical question for me...Russian literature, of course!

And you, I believe, are Croatian ? What attracted you to Russian literature ? The fact that it's Slavic, or other aspects ?

[bazarov]

And you, I believe, are Croatian ? What attracted you to Russian literature ? The fact that it's Slavic, or other aspects ?
Yes, Boris informed you well.:) What attracts me??? Again a rhetorical question...:yawnb: After Father and Sons, Crime and Punishment, Dead souls, Kabanica(cloak, I think), Brothers Karamazov,...other books just keep coming! I've read all Dostoevsky's books, many Tolstoy's works and others, so I simply can't see how could any other literature be anywhere near Russian!
But hey, that's just my opinion!

[Idril]

After Father and Sons, Crime and Punishment, Dead souls, Kabanica(cloak, I think), Brothers Karamazov,...other books just keep coming! I've read all Dostoevsky's books, many Tolstoy's works and others, so I simply can't see how could any other literature be anywhere near Russian!
But hey, that's just my opinion!

I agree. Every now and then I make myself read something that isn't Russian, thinking I need to expand my horizons a little bit but I always come back to it and it feels oddly like coming home. I like the dark and sometimes oppressive feel to it, I love the deep insight into the human psyche, I love the political and social commentary and backgrounds that seem to permeate every Russian work whether it's pre-Revolutionary or post, I love the larger than life characters and the passion in which they live their lives. It's a culture very different from my own and I find it utterly fascinating.

[olichka]

I agree. Every now and then I make myself read something that isn't Russian, thinking I need to expand my horizons a little bit but I always come back to it and it feels oddly like coming home. I like the dark and sometimes oppressive feel to it, I love the deep insight into the human psyche, I love the political and social commentary and backgrounds that seem to permeate every Russian work whether it's pre-Revolutionary or post, I love the larger than life characters and the passion in which they live their lives. It's a culture very different from my own and I find it utterly fascinating.


Excellently expressed, Idril. That's exactly what I've thought myself ! In particular, I agree with your statement about the larger-than -life characters and " the passion in which they live their lives ". Quite often, the situations described in Russian works are quite ordinary, but it's the characters' passion to live them that makes them exciting and unique !

[emveedub]

Italy, England, Rome, Greece and Russia. Though I love American literature we haven't produced anything likely to be read in 300 years the way that Homer, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare and Dostoevsky are read today.

[chasestalling]

ali is the greatest, but many fight experts say that pound for pound marvin hagler was the greatest. pound for pound by which i mean a nation's literary culture in terms of length, breath and tradition, russia in its relative brief existence as a literary giant tops all european nations.

[kilted exile]

Ok, ok, I know off-topic: but Hagler? seriously? not Sugar Ray Robinson?

[ennison]

And Sugar Ray equates to .... which literary tradition?

[kilted exile]

And Sugar Ray equates to .... which literary tradition?

Not specifically literary, but still scholarly......he clearly relates to the sweet science

[Gibran]

Ancient Greece,India and China are unquestionably greatest countries several thousand years ago. Then Dante and Shakespeare throughout the following years. In 19th century I think Russia and France were the most attractive lit countries.

[Laindessiel]

Britain, yes.

[manolia]

Ancient Greek authors without any doubts have heavily influenced modern literature. The modern Greeks have little in common with the Greeks from the times of Homer or Pericles- even the language is completely different.

Well you are correct in the first point. We modern greeks are different in physiognomy from our ancestors. Our history explains why (400 years under Othoman occupation) but you are very much mistaken in the second point. The language is not completely different as you say. True enough it has evolved during the centuries but a greek like me can fully comprehend a text in ancient greek. And if one learns modern greek and then compares it with ancient can actually see where all the words come from. Moreover, ancient greek is taught in schools in greece so that the students get to know their language better.:)

[Inderjit Sanghe]

I think my vote would go to Russia-esp. 19th century Russian literature-Russia has an enormous variety of authors back then-guess it merely serves to prove Harry Lime's point that political despotism often causes a great degree of cultural development-we have satirists such as Gogol and Chernevskii and Goncharov poets such as Pushkin, short story writers such as Chekov (and Gogol, again) as well as writers of "epics"-whether "short epics" such as Lermontov or "longer epics" such as Tolstoi. And who can forget the great Dostoevskii or Turgenev? 20th century authors such as Nabokov, Pasternak, Solzhenitsyn and Bulgakov also deserve a mention.

Other great countries for literature include Italy (Morante, Moravia, Calvino, Eco, Primo Levi, Manzoni, Svevo, Boccaccio, Petrarch) and France. (Fourniet, Gide, de Beaviour, Sartre, Hugo, Flaubert, de Balzac, Stendahl, Laclos, Camus, Yourcenar, Proust.)

[Lioness_Heart]

Being English, I obviously tend to read more books in my own language tahn any other, but I think that for the last few hundred years, Britain has produced some amazing writers... and... Shakespeare... need I say more?

[somerickguy]

Has anyone mentioned GERMANY yet? Brecht, Goethe, Grass, Hesse, the two Manns (or should that be Menn?), and Nietzsche were no slouches.

Still, I think the good old U.S.A., melting pot of world cultures (including their literary traditions), has produced the best literature in the last 200+ years.

[Inderjit Sanghe]

German literature is good, though in my opinion it lags behind French and Russian literature-however if you included German speaking countries or writers i.e Czech, Austria, then Germany would easily be the equal of French and Russian literature-Musil, Walser, Kafka, Joseph Roth were all non-Germans who wrote in German.

I am not too sure about America's status as the greatest country for literature over the last 200 years-I am not really that big a fan of American literature, being a European in tastes, and with the exception of Faulkner's and Twain's novels, as well as "Catch-22", "The Invisible Man" and "Moby Dick", I can find little in American literature that measures up to Dostoevskii, Kafka, Flaubert, Shakespeare etc. I am not a big fan of other American heavyweights, such as Hemingway, Kerouac, Steinbeck, Fitzgerald and Hawthorne, and as de Tocqueville noted, American literature during the 18th and later on the 19th century wasn't great-only three novels from that time period come to mind, "Moby Dick", "The Scarlett Letter" and "Uncle Tom's Cabin", as well as Mark Twain's novels.

[bazarov]

Still, I think the good old U.S.A., melting pot of world cultures (including their literary traditions), has produced the best literature in the last 200+ years.


You're joking, right?

[JBI]

The literature that stuck the most with me is mostly Ancient Greek. Sophocles Euripides, Homer, Aristophones, Aristotle, Sappho, Hesiod, etc.

Then of course, there were some very excellent Latin writers, Ovid, Lucien, Virgil etc.

During the time between Normandy and the 100 years war, I would say French/Provencal were the most diminant in literature. The whole courtly love movement in Provence really saw the birth of some excellent lyric literature.

From there up until Elizabethan times, I would say Italian was very dominant in terms of literature in the western world. There were quite a few formidable poets coming out of Italy around 1300 and all through the renaissance, particularly Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarch, etc.

After that however, the world sort of shifted in my opinion to a more English.
During the Elizabethan period we saw the birth of a whole new literature; we had poets like Shakespeare, Donne, and Milton writing excellent works. But at the same time, there were also French writers like Moliere and Voltaire about to show their faces.

Now after all that? I would probably say the country that produced the best literature is probably the United Kingdom (specifically England). The quality work that has come out of England during and after the Elizabethan, through the Victorian period, and now into modern times has just been incredible.

France, Russia, Canada, The United States Italy, South America, and India also have some excellent writers, and with the new literary movements happening now may yet be in my opinion "The Country that has produced the greatest literature", but as it is, since most of my reading has been in English, and most of the books I have read that were originally written in English are from the British Isles, I would have to say The United Kingdom.

Note though, that I really didn't talk at all about Eastern literature since I am not very familiar with it. There are of course some excellent works that came out and are coming out of China, Japan, and other eastern countries, but the language barrier prohibited me from reading much into those works.

[EAP]

I am not too sure about America's status as the greatest country for literature over the last 200 years-I am not really that big a fan of American literature, being a European in tastes, and with the exception of Faulkner's and Twain's novels, as well as "Catch-22", "The Invisible Man" and "Moby Dick", I can find little in American literature that measures up to Dostoevskii, Kafka, Flaubert, Shakespeare etc. I am not a big fan of other American heavyweights, such as Hemingway, Kerouac, Steinbeck, Fitzgerald and Hawthorne, and as de Tocqueville noted, American literature during the 18th and later on the 19th century wasn't great-only three novels from that time period come to mind, "Moby Dick", "The Scarlett Letter" and "Uncle Tom's Cabin", as well as Mark Twain's novels.

Maybe you ought to read outside the box a bit. Here are fifteen American novels which are easily as good as anything written by the Dostoevsky's, the Kafka's or whatevers of the world and I barely read American novelists to begin with!

To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
Hyperion - Dan Simmons
A Storm of Swords - George R. R. Martin
Winter's Tale - Mark Helprin
Something Wicked This Way Comes - Ray Bradbury
It - Stephen King
The Dispossessed - Ursula Le Guin
The Left Hand of Darkness - Ursula Le Guin
Boys & Girls Together - William Goldman
The Haunting of Hill House - Shirley Jackson
Dune - Frank Herbert
Mary and the Giant - Philip K. Dick
Gateway - Frederik Pohl
Rediscovery of Man - Cordwainer Smith
Practical Magic - Alice Hoffman
The Runner - Cynthia Voight

[ennison]

How can anyone answer a question like this except out of ignorance of what has not been read. A lot of the time we are reliant on what others have said about even the small number of texts within the range of the languages in which we are literate. Look at the list of authors available in this site alone. How many of us have personal knowledge of most of them, even of half of them? The fellow Crawford in the list was a famous author in his day but seems to be relatively unknown today - perhaps deservedly.
I don't know much about Indian literature and am totally ignorant about Chinese and these two nations constitute a large proportion of the World's people. I don't think my ignorance is unusual.

[JBI]

Maybe you ought to read outside the box a bit. Here are fifteen American novels which are easily as good as anything written by the Dostoevsky's, the Kafka's or whatevers of the world and I barely read American novelists to begin with!

To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
Hyperion - Dan Simmons
A Storm of Swords - George R. R. Martin
Winter's Tale - Mark Helprin
Something Wicked This Way Comes - Ray Bradbury
It - Stephen King
The Dispossessed - Ursula Le Guin
The Left Hand of Darkness - Ursula Le Guin
Boys & Girls Together - William Goldman
The Haunting of Hill House - Shirley Jackson
Dune - Frank Herbert
Mary and the Giant - Philip K. Dick
Gateway - Frederik Pohl
Rediscovery of Man - Cordwainer Smith
Practical Magic - Alice Hoffman
The Runner - Cynthia Voight

George R. R. Martin was English the last time I checked. As for Frank Herbert's Dune, the novel itself was largely influenced by European literature (Including Shakespeare, who I know you loath). Half the books there are boring sci-fi (yes, I know not all sci-fi is bad, but you chose some of the more boring works, and aside from U.K. Leguin, I wouldn't have chosen any of those authors.)

Stephen King's It gets a large scope of reviews. My personal opinion on that novel (and most of King's work) is that he doesn't think before he writes. He wrote is his memoirs that he just writes, and doesn't think over what he is going to write before he begins. That conveniently leads to lame endings, and poor pacing/padding.


And P.S. last time I checked, most of those weren't written in the 19th century.

JBI

[Inderjit Sanghe]

Haven't heard of a lot of those novels to be honest, but to compare Stephen King with Dostoevskii or Kafka is ridiculous in my opinion. I guess such a list is very subjective, but I doubt whether many of those authors anywhere near as influential as many of the European authors listed.

[tantus]

First of all I think it's not distinguishable which nation possesses the most important man of letters.

But what is clearly distinguishable is that this list must have been some kind of ridiculous joke. There are dozens if not hundreds of authors who are highly preferable compared to those mentioned below.




To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
Hyperion - Dan Simmons
A Storm of Swords - George R. R. Martin
Winter's Tale - Mark Helprin
Something Wicked This Way Comes - Ray Bradbury
It - Stephen King
The Dispossessed - Ursula Le Guin
The Left Hand of Darkness - Ursula Le Guin
Boys & Girls Together - William Goldman
The Haunting of Hill House - Shirley Jackson
Dune - Frank Herbert
Mary and the Giant - Philip K. Dick
Gateway - Frederik Pohl
Rediscovery of Man - Cordwainer Smith
Practical Magic - Alice Hoffman
The Runner - Cynthia Voight

[EAP]

George R. R. Martin was English the last time I checked.

Your check was faulty. Check again, George R. R. Martin is American.

http://www.nndb.com/people/215/000044083/


As for Frank Herbert's Dune, the novel itself was largely influenced by European literature (Including Shakespeare, who I know you loath).

Sources, please. :) In any case it doesn't matter, Frank Herbert was most definitely an American national, whether his works were influenced by the Shakespeare or The Art of War doesn't matter in this particular context.


Half the books there are boring sci-fi (yes, I know not all sci-fi is bad, but you chose some of the more boring works, and aside from U.K. Leguin, I wouldn't have chosen any of those authors.)

Have you read those books which you term 'boring science fiction?' In case you have than that's fair enough, it's, at least, your educated opinion and I can respect that, in case you haven't though, striking with such broad brushes accomplishes nothing and summarily dismissing something one hasn't even read makes one kinda look like an idiot.


Stephen King's It gets a large scope of reviews. My personal opinion on that novel (and most of King's work) is that he doesn't think before he writes. He wrote is his memoirs that he just writes, and doesn't think over what he is going to write before he begins. That conveniently leads to lame endings, and poor pacing/padding.

It is among the most moving novels I have ever read and a masterpiece of pure storytelling. Stephen King's output varies in quality from sublime to utterly ****e and It, alongside the Dark Tower saga is easily his best work.


And P.S. last time I checked, most of those weren't written in the 19th century.

Yes. Relevence to the thread topic?


Haven't heard of a lot of those novels to be honest, but to compare Stephen King with Dostoevskii or Kafka is ridiculous in my opinion.

Well, that's your opinion. I think even Stephen King himself will agree with you, however I, and several others have derived far more enjoyment out of King's stuff than Kafka or Dostoevski.


I guess such a list is very subjective, but I doubt whether many of those authors anywhere near as influential as many of the European authors listed.

'Influential' is an interesting word. What exactly do you mean by influential? A novel like It, The Shining or Salem's Lot has probably entertained more people the whole canon of someone like Rilke put together. In Salem's Lots' case, it pretty much revived the whole horror genre of its own in the United States. Dune is cited by most people as the premier sci-fi work of its era, Hyperion combines all the qualities of the space opera sub-genre with the edigness and ideas inherent in social science fiction resulting in a story which not only packs a huge emotional punch but is thought provoking as well.

The influence of a book on people's lives can seldom be measured.

Inspiration is a strange thing and is found in the oddest of places - most literature students seem to measure the 'influence' of a book by the number of copycats it has or other literary works which directly ackowledge its influence. IMO, that's a very presumptious and erronous way of doing it.


And seriously, this thread amounts to nothing more than nationalistic wang-waving - naturally, like all controversial issues, it generates more discussions than other, meatier threads.

[EAP]

But what is clearly distinguishable is that this list must have been some kind of ridiculous joke. There are dozens if not hundreds of authors who are highly preferable compared to those mentioned below.

Such as?

[tantus]

Sorry mate, don't want to stay up all night... :)

What I wanted to say is: I just do not agree mentioning authors like stephen king in one line with Shakespeare, Goethe, Dostoevsky.. etc.

[EAP]

Stephen King is just one of the thirteen writers mentioned in the above list. I happen to disagree with your stance, but have you read, say Ursula Le Guin or Mark Helprin?

[Lyn]

This is totally subjective. You can't judge which country has the best literature unless you have at least, I dunno, ten languages and have read significant literary works from loads of countries. Now if I was a record holding languages genuis reader then maybe it would be possible. Another problem is that no-one can judge what the 'best' literature is, because that is dependant entirely on each persons individual view. I would, sorry to but in, be inclined to agree that Dostoevsky is better than Ursula le Guin, but then that depends on my definition of Good Literature. I'm willing to bet that Stephen King has sold more copies to modern readers than many of the classic authors, but Im not sure than popularity equals good. BUT ANYWAY Scotland's literature is obviously the best (only cos Ive read most of it!)

[Inderjit Sanghe]

'Influential' is an interesting word. What exactly do you mean by influential? A novel like It, The Shining or Salem's Lot has probably entertained more people the whole canon of someone like Rilke put together. In Salem's Lots' case, it pretty much revived the whole horror genre of its own in the United States. Dune is cited by most people as the premier sci-fi work of its era, Hyperion combines all the qualities of the space opera sub-genre with the edigness and ideas inherent in social science fiction resulting in a story which not only packs a huge emotional punch but is thought provoking as well

Yes, perhaps I am in this case being narrow-minded and elitist, but I put literary influence above all other influences, as I already mentioned such a thing is entirely subjective-but looking at the immense literary influence that Flaubert, Cervantes, Kafka, Dostoevskii etc. exerted I cannot help but think that they are, in their own way, more influential than say Stephen King.

[thuraiya]

what about Islamic literatures ?!!:( :(
In my opinion , I think Muslims has produced the greatest literature ((throughout time)) but alot of you have not read about this literatures yet ...
I don't know why ???
it is so nice...:) :)

[Matrim Cuathon]

Maybe you ought to read outside the box a bit. Here are fifteen American novels which are easily as good as anything written by the Dostoevsky's, the Kafka's or whatevers of the world and I barely read American novelists to begin with!

To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
Hyperion - Dan Simmons
A Storm of Swords - George R. R. Martin
Winter's Tale - Mark Helprin
Something Wicked This Way Comes - Ray Bradbury
It - Stephen King
The Dispossessed - Ursula Le Guin
The Left Hand of Darkness - Ursula Le Guin
Boys & Girls Together - William Goldman
The Haunting of Hill House - Shirley Jackson
Dune - Frank Herbert
Mary and the Giant - Philip K. Dick
Gateway - Frederik Pohl
Rediscovery of Man - Cordwainer Smith
Practical Magic - Alice Hoffman
The Runner - Cynthia Voight


Yes, perhaps I am in this case being narrow-minded and elitist, but I put literary influence above all other influences, as I already mentioned such a thing is entirely subjective-but looking at the immense literary influence that Flaubert, Cervantes, Kafka, Dostoevskii etc. exerted I cannot help but think that they are, in their own way, more influential than say Stephen King.


i havent read most of those but the ones i have are very good. Remember that becoming important in a literary sense is harder as time moves on. Although its still possible. ANd also think about the disadavantage of sci-fi. Sci-Fi is obviously a very different style of writing. authors are making up culture and technology as well as characters.
Still Hyperion and Dune are just as good as some of more classic works in my opinion and they also have many other values that the classics dont.

[Inderjit Sanghe]

[QUOTE][In my opinion , I think Muslims has produced the greatest literature ((throughout time)) but alot of you have not read about this literatures yet ...
I don't know why/QUOTE]

I am unsure as to whether by "Muslim" you mean "Middle-Eastern"-I have read "The Children of Gabalawi" by Mahfouz, and I liked it, still have to read his "Cairo Trilogy" though. I guess "Muslim" literature, sadly, is not very famous or available in Europe, which is sad I guess. Could you list some famous books?

[bluechaotica]

England
Ireland/Scotland
India
Russia

[Martian Poet]

Well, I might say Ireland, for I do feel that the greatest novel that I have yet read came from that country ("Ulysses", by James Joyce. Dublin, to be specific), and the same can be said for all of Joyce's works. But outside of Joyce and a few others, I can't really hold the argument of Ireland for too long.

Greece, perhaps? With the great trinity of philosiphers that came from the country (Socrates, Plato and Aristotle), who could argue? As well as two titans like Homer and Pericles. Russia indeed comes to mind with heavys such as Rand (my personal favorite Russian-born author, although she is generally considered an American author), Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Pushkin, Solzhenitsyn, etc.

France has produced some of the most amazing authors, as well. Victor Hugo, Claude Simon, Gaston Leroux, Alphonse de Lamartine, Voltaire, etc.

It is also hard to deny the power of American literature: Bradbury (One of my favorites ever), Steinbeck, Capote, Fitzgerald, Poe, Lovecraft, King, Frost, etc.

I don't know.
I just appreciate there is so much to chose from!

[ennison]

Well we will all have personal favourites based on what we know and that will be based on what we are capable of reading (Sometimes a bad translation or a weak translation can give us an incorrect appreciation of a writer's talents - translation is an art of its own). Sometimes we take it for granted that 'the canon' is the best but that is not always the case at all and I would agree that if you want to become a good reader then you should 'read out of the box' as I think someone said above. It's good to have a shared body of writers to think and talk about but there are many, many many others.
I am sure that King is a decent storyteller and probably has no false illusions of his own lasting contribution to literature

[starbuck]

Britain....hands down! As many scholars have argued there is no great American love novel like the British have. We dont get the gothic (well Poe) and love from any american author like we do with the Bronte's or the ultimate love story, Pride and Prejudice.

Americans do have their shiny places in science fiction and thrillers.

[Robert Jordan]

Too hard to say. Who's read literature from every nation?
From what I've read though, Russia. Although North America is not too shabby, either. Still, RUSSIA.

[srpbritlit]

Even though I have a burning passion for Brit Lit, one cannot deny that wonderful quality writing has been produced by not only English authors, but also American, ancient Greek, ancient Roman, Russian, and French authors! I am just an all around bibliophile, so everything is amazing!

[jon1jt]

American literature hands down. we can make a bonfire for all that Victorian literature, what a snore.

German philosophers surpassed even the Greeks, period.

[Niamh]

How can anyone answer a question like this except out of ignorance of what has not been read. A lot of the time we are reliant on what others have said about even the small number of texts within the range of the languages in which we are literate. Look at the list of authors available in this site alone. How many of us have personal knowledge of most of them, even of half of them? The fellow Crawford in the list was a famous author in his day but seems to be relatively unknown today - perhaps deservedly.
I don't know much about Indian literature and am totally ignorant about Chinese and these two nations constitute a large proportion of the World's people. I don't think my ignorance is unusual.

Yes i agree that its hard to chose one country over many when one has only read the literature of a few.


Well, I might say Ireland, for I do feel that the greatest novel that I have yet read came from that country ("Ulysses", by James Joyce. Dublin, to be specific), and the same can be said for all of Joyce's works. But outside of Joyce and a few others, I can't really hold the argument of Ireland for too long.


Only a few other that Joyce? Really? there are so many good Irish writers out there!
Seamus Heaney
W.B.Yeats
Padraig Colum
Gearge Moore
Patrick Kavanagh
Brendan Behan
J.M.Synge
Lady Gregory
Oscar Wilde
Oliver Goldsmith
Johnatan Swift
Bram Stoker
G.B.Shaw
Samuel Beckett
R.B.Sheridan
Sheridan LeFanu
AE (George Russell)
And Lets not forget Thomas Moore, one of the greatest ballad writers.
Brian Friel
Marina Carr
and this is to name a few!

[Aiculík]

And which coutries do you mean?

There are many small and neglected countries and nations. When I was in USA, nobody I met didn't even know where Slovakia is. In Paris, I stayed with one family for two weeks and French woman tried to explain to me how the toilet works. She thought that Slovakia was in Africa (though I'm white) and that I never saw it before. In Italy, people were shocked that in our capital there are "normal, painted buildings". Again, they probably thought we lived in trees... but no, Slovakia is beautiful, but not Lothlorien, I'm afraid. :D

My country (and almost all other countries in Central, East or South Europe) is almost invisible for people in other parts of the world. People in West Europe and USA don't even know we exist. So how could they possibly know our literature?

But that doesn't mean that we (and all those other countries as well) don't have good literature!!!

It means that today, "world literature" means American and British. With some others like Russian authors of 19th century (as if Russian literature ceased to exist after Tolstoy), and few authors from Frech, German and Italian literature. Occassionally (but that's very rare) authors from other countries.

That's so narrow-minded... :(

[Niamh]

And which coutries do you mean?

There are many small and neglected countries and nations. When I was in USA, nobody I met didn't even know where Slovakia is. In Paris, I stayed with one family for two weeks and French woman tried to explain to me how the toilet works. She thought that Slovakia was in Africa (though I'm white) and that I never saw it before. In Italy, people were shocked that in our capital there are "normal, painted buildings". Again, they probably thought we lived in trees... but no, Slovakia is beautiful, but not Lothlorien, I'm afraid. :D

My country (and almost all other countries in Central, East or South Europe) is almost invisible for people in other parts of the world. People in West Europe and USA don't even know we exist. So how could they possibly know our literature?

But that doesn't mean that we (and all those other countries as well) don't have good literature!!!

It means that today, "world literature" means American and British. With some others like Russian authors of 19th century (as if Russian literature ceased to exist after Tolstoy), and few authors from Frech, German and Italian literature. Occassionally (but that's very rare) authors from other countries.

That's so narrow-minded... :(

I know what you mean. People automaticly go for the countries they have read the most lit from. MAybe if more of the literature of Slovakia, Slovinia, Cech, Poland, Latvia, Romania etc where translated into different languages they'd begiven more consideration.

[Virgil]

And which coutries do you mean?

There are many small and neglected countries and nations. When I was in USA, nobody I met didn't even know where Slovakia is. In Paris, I stayed with one family for two weeks and French woman tried to explain to me how the toilet works. She thought that Slovakia was in Africa (though I'm white) and that I never saw it before. In Italy, people were shocked that in our capital there are "normal, painted buildings". Again, they probably thought we lived in trees... but no, Slovakia is beautiful, but not Lothlorien, I'm afraid. :D

My country (and almost all other countries in Central, East or South Europe) is almost invisible for people in other parts of the world. People in West Europe and USA don't even know we exist. So how could they possibly know our literature?

But that doesn't mean that we (and all those other countries as well) don't have good literature!!!

It means that today, "world literature" means American and British. With some others like Russian authors of 19th century (as if Russian literature ceased to exist after Tolstoy), and few authors from Frech, German and Italian literature. Occassionally (but that's very rare) authors from other countries.

That's so narrow-minded... :(

I know where Slovakia is. And I agree, this thread is extremely narrow minded. And I've expressed something similar earlier in this thread.

[Aiculík]

Although I must admit, I was thinking the same way until few years ago. Then I met one great man who opened my eyes. :)

Thanks to him, I discovered such great authors as Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov (Russian authors, always write together and are usually referred to as Ilf-Petrov), Haruki Murakami (A Wild Sheep Chase - excellent book), Nikos Kazantzakis (ever heard of Zorba the Greek?), Naguib Mahfous (Nobel Prize winner from Egypt), or Ismail Kadare (current Albanian author)

World is full of beautiful books. Don't deprive yourselves of beauty by reading always same few authors from always same few countries! Read, enjoy - and then you may judge, if you'll still feel like it.

I discovered I'm too humble to judge like this.

[GothMan]

Germany... :nod:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_literature

[manolia]

And which coutries do you mean?

There are many small and neglected countries and nations. When I was in USA, nobody I met didn't even know where Slovakia is. In Paris, I stayed with one family for two weeks and French woman tried to explain to me how the toilet works. She thought that Slovakia was in Africa (though I'm white) and that I never saw it before. In Italy, people were shocked that in our capital there are "normal, painted buildings". Again, they probably thought we lived in trees... but no, Slovakia is beautiful, but not Lothlorien, I'm afraid. :D

My country (and almost all other countries in Central, East or South Europe) is almost invisible for people in other parts of the world. People in West Europe and USA don't even know we exist. So how could they possibly know our literature?

But that doesn't mean that we (and all those other countries as well) don't have good literature!!!

It means that today, "world literature" means American and British. With some others like Russian authors of 19th century (as if Russian literature ceased to exist after Tolstoy), and few authors from Frech, German and Italian literature. Occassionally (but that's very rare) authors from other countries.

That's so narrow-minded... :(



Although I must admit, I was thinking the same way until few years ago. Then I met one great man who opened my eyes.

Thanks to him, I discovered such great authors as Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov (Russian authors, always write together and are usually referred to as Ilf-Petrov), Haruki Murakami (A Wild Sheep Chase - excellent book), Nikos Kazantzakis (ever heard of Zorba the Greek?), Naguib Mahfous (Nobel Prize winner from Egypt), or Ismail Kadare (current Albanian author)

World is full of beautiful books. Don't deprive yourselves of beauty by reading always same few authors from always same few countries! Read, enjoy - and then you may judge, if you'll still feel like it.

I discovered I'm too humble to judge like this.

I totally agree.:thumbs_up
I'm sorry that i'm quoting two entire posts but i agree with everything Aiculík says and i can't ommit part of it.

[bazarov]

And which coutries do you mean?

There are many small and neglected countries and nations. When I was in USA, nobody I met didn't even know where Slovakia is. In Paris, I stayed with one family for two weeks and French woman tried to explain to me how the toilet works. She thought that Slovakia was in Africa (though I'm white) and that I never saw it before. In Italy, people were shocked that in our capital there are "normal, painted buildings". Again, they probably thought we lived in trees... but no, Slovakia is beautiful, but not Lothlorien, I'm afraid. :D

My country (and almost all other countries in Central, East or South Europe) is almost invisible for people in other parts of the world. People in West Europe and USA don't even know we exist. So how could they possibly know our literature?

But that doesn't mean that we (and all those other countries as well) don't have good literature!!!

It means that today, "world literature" means American and British. With some others like Russian authors of 19th century (as if Russian literature ceased to exist after Tolstoy), and few authors from French, German and Italian literature. Occassionally (but that's very rare) authors from other countries.

That's so narrow-minded... :(

Good point.
My Geography and education in all are excellent; actually I've been in Bratislava before 4 years, nice town(don't ask me anything, I was my buddies and booze so I don't remeber too much:D ) but except Kundera and Hašek I can't name any Central Europe writers:( Also I'm aware that probably nobody here have ever heard for Šenoa, Krleža, Andrić(Nobel prize), Gundulić or Mažuranić, but that's how it is. I have heard for Pamuk 6 monts ago, for Marquez 1 year ago( I was asking an advice from a friend of my for another friend; firstly I asked:''Who? Is he a relative of Barca's Rafa Marquez? Is he dead? Never heard of him...'' She was shocked!), and I still don't know any African or Canadian author, Murabaki is only Asian...
Now I'm feeling dumb, actually!:bawling:
And yes, Pasternak, Nabokov, Solzhenycin and others are well respected post-Tolstoy's writers.

[Jamilah]

When we are talking about English literature then I would say the winner is Great Britain. When we're talking about world literature then I think it's harder to determine. The vast majority of educational systems (school, curriculum etc) was influenced/created by colonizers so the education in India, Pakistan, Middle East is very Euro-centric. While Anglo-Saxons have perfected the novel, the vast majority of cultures produced great works of Poetry and poetry was the primary means of expression and indeed it is still considered the highest form. Try Omar Khayam or Alama Iqbal. Then we begin to see the influence the "Orient" had on Western works of literature.

[hedbanger]

My country most definately. D<


And which coutries do you mean?

There are many small and neglected countries and nations. When I was in USA, nobody I met didn't even know where Slovakia is. In Paris, I stayed with one family for two weeks and French woman tried to explain to me how the toilet works. She thought that Slovakia was in Africa (though I'm white) and that I never saw it before. In Italy, people were shocked that in our capital there are "normal, painted buildings". Again, they probably thought we lived in trees... but no, Slovakia is beautiful, but not Lothlorien, I'm afraid. :D

My country (and almost all other countries in Central, East or South Europe) is almost invisible for people in other parts of the world. People in West Europe and USA don't even know we exist. So how could they possibly know our literature?

But that doesn't mean that we (and all those other countries as well) don't have good literature!!!

It means that today, "world literature" means American and British. With some others like Russian authors of 19th century (as if Russian literature ceased to exist after Tolstoy), and few authors from Frech, German and Italian literature. Occassionally (but that's very rare) authors from other countries.

That's so narrow-minded... :(

I've heard of Slovakia! I could even show you where it is! -pats back-

((PS: there are a lot of white people in Africa.))

[Midas]

Many nations become associated with particular characteristics. It originates from a basis of truth. Then, eventually it becomes stereotyped, then hyped, which causes, in some cases, an over-exaggeration. This does not mean that there does not, generally, remain an element of truth.

One also finds that when a nation is in dominance, economically, and militarily, it exerts its influence way beyond its borders both directly and indirectly. I mean that we all like to 'ape' that which is viewed as representing 'success', and power.

In the past it has been, in the main, Greece, Rome, Britain, and today it is the USA. Tomorrow.....?

However, history has moved in a way that permitted the English language, which itself evolved from many languages, to become the language most widely spread throughout the world. It is now understood, if only in basic form, by most reasonably educated people under the age of say 40.

Language is essential to good communication. It is this sophistication of communication that separated homo sapiens from the rest of the animal kingdom. As communication has advanced, so has mankind.

Most nations of great influence declined as their economies declined, and/or suffered conquest.

In Britain's case, its power and language were extended by building an entirely new nation. The American colonists built their new nation while the mother country remained in power, and was extending its power.

Even though, eventually, a break was almost inevitable, there always remained a strong attachment to their motherland. Many of its institutions like the basis of law, even some of the national songs, and the language,
were retained.

There has therefore been a continuity of the 'Anglo' influence. And, because of the supreme importance of language, this has extended the influence of 'English' literature.

I have tried to keep this as concise as possible so have avoided adding too much supportive material.

However, I will add something which I have included in another post, but I feel is relevant here.

Writing is painting a picture with words. The clearer we can paint that picture, the better the communication.

As the English language has evolved, at the same time as the nation's power was at its height it brought in the Industrial Revolution. This extended education - more people could write, more people could read. Printing the written word became easier, and cheaper.

To cut a very long story short, everything moved together to make the English language, the language of choice and which is still continuing to grow by natural means. Some foreign authors chose to write in English rather than their native language, and did a darn good job. One that immediately springs to mind is Joseph Conrad, whom I believe was Polish.

The English language has now considerably more words than any other. This gives the writer great choice in fine tuning his/her meaning. Or, if we accept that writing is painting a picture with words, then it offers far more shades of colour than any other 'paintbox'.

Footnote:

There is a constant danger with these types of questions for the emotions to blind reason, especially that inspired by nationalism. If we suppress these emotions, and think more clearly and take a broad view of history, we will see the interrelationship of nations.

Media, and the way history is taught, tends to inflame, and keep alive these
old conflicts, because it suits their agenda to do so. Sport also plays its part
by using 'national' rivalry to excite, and attract, crowds.

We are moving more than ever today, and settling in each other's country. Nation's that were involved in bloody wars a few years ago, are now together
as one in the EU.

It is time we kept 'nationalism' in its place. It has brought far too much death and destruction upon mankind. But, if conflict, death and destruction, is what you want, then keep it up - your wishes, I'm sure, will be answered.

I don't know if anyone out there has the answer. I find that when I post strange things happen such as

(1) Some sentences break up and move to a lower line before they need to do so.

(2) Even though I am 'logged in', when I click the submit button, it takes me to having to log in again. It does not appear to be any different if a short time, or long time, is involved. And it still shows 'logged in' at the top.

Any constructive answers will be appreciated.

There are some others, but those will do for now.

[aabbcc]

I cannot answer this question without realising that there is so much literature I am ignorant of, and that the only way I could answer the question would be relying far more on my personal preferences and experiences than on the 'ability' to objectively try to estimate which countris had produced the greatest literature.

I am 17 years old, I can read in barely a couple of languages, what the hell do I know about literature anyway?:crash: I certainly enjoy it and find great aesthetic pleasure in reading, I certainly intend to study it at university after I finish the damned last year of lycee, but there is no way to pretend I am able to discuss this.

Certainly, I can be culturally and nationally biased and go for Russian or Croatian literature, that would be the easiest, I can speak those languages natively and was educated in them, and have the full access to the literature written in those languages, not only to a selected few works I would be able to know through various translations, I am also culturally connected to those authors and their works because what they write about are not to me unknown cities, unknown themes, unknown socities I have never been to, so I can feel even more tied to them and thus allow myself the freedom to speak how those literatures must be the greatest in absolute...:D

That is basically what are most of us doing here. We speak out of cultural preferences and what is known to us, neglecting that there is much greater field of that which we do not know, and neglecting the delicate issue of translation and how the 'flavour' of the work is altered through it (Dostoevsky is Dostoevsky only in Russian, and no matter how good translations you might have - I read Dostoevsky also in English, Italian, Serbian and Croatian - those are just interpretations and other-Slavic ones are the closest one can go to Russian I suppose, still, those are tries to convey the original thought in the spirit of another language and culture, which gives automatically a different nuance to a work; each language is, in its essence, intranslatable, be it Russian or Croatian or Dutch or something else).

Another thing, classical Roman and Greek literature... As one of my classics professors told us in the class: "Imagine the entire, huge field of our literature; and now imagine that something happens, civilisation falls, and that out of the entire Russian literature what you have got left are selected works of Dostoevsky, one or two Tolstoy's works in fragments, a couple of novels of unimportant contemporary authors, selection of Esenin's poetry, one or two history of Russian literature which might include some excerpts from other authors, and a couple of poems by Zhukovsky and Tyutchev, and that one is to judge the entire Russian literature, centuries of Russian culture and lifestyle solely by those literary pieces. No Lermontov, no Pushkin, no dozens of important authors, very limited picture of what Russian literature was. That is what we have out of classical literature today."
Perhaps it is not the best comparison in the world, but the point it represents is still valid, and can be compared to the translation thing as well - the access you have got to other literatures is extremely limited, be it by the obstacle of language and huge fields of untranslated literature, be it by the fact that many works were simply swollen by the time and are not saved, as the case is with classical Roman/Greek literature.

So of course we can speculate, show off with the snippets of Latin and Greek we were taught at lycees, but the point is that we know so little about that lost world, that it is almost useless. Certainly, most of you have got to know Roman and Greek literature - but you have got to know Homer, Sophocles or Plautus, the very best-known representatives out of those. How many of you - who are not classical philologists - are acquainted with the works of Petronius, Apuleius, Callimachus or Menandar, or other of not-so-known classics, how many of you when I begin to recite "fainetai moi kenos isos theoisin" know what I speak, what meter was that written in (how many of you know how to read classical Roman/Greek literature which is not written in hexameter?) and whose verses are those? And how many of you could go on? That is my point, because if the answers to previous questions are no, you are simply not entitled to discuss how classical Roman/Greek literature is wonderful, greatest and whatnot, based on a couple of things you have read. I mean, neither am I, and I have been "blessed" by the wonders of solid old-fashioned classical education, and the more I know about it, the more I realise how I do not know the first thing about the world of thousands of years ago, and how what I have got to know from this world are just what remained, nothing more.:(

Same goes for pretty much any literature of any country in the world, bygone or contemporary. I do not know the first thing about German literature by having read 20ish works, in translations because I was never taught German, of the most known representatives of those, and I cannot name you five contemporary German authors off the top of my head. I just do not know German literature, end of story, regardless having read what I consider to be a decent number of it - the field is just so incredibly huge that, on the scale large enough, what I know of it boarders zero.

To conclude, the question assumes the knowledge greater than any of us here can have, and it is basically useless to pretend we know something or to try to answer it, by doing which we only demonstrate that we do not know what we speak of.
The only question we could debate would be which countries' literatures do we personally know and enjoy the most ;)

[ozbey]

Russia and France.

[Mortis Anarchy]

Personally, I think that every country has produced something that is really great and stands out in literature. I haven't read literature from every single country, but I have from a few and so far they are all really great. They each have something to offer. Russia has come up with some of the best pieces of literature known to man. I also think that the Europe in general has some of the best works ever. The USA has some spectacular works as does the rest of the Americas. I have read anything really from Asia...a few from the Middle East which were very good. I also think we have to look to Greece and Italy and the Middle East for establishing the foundation for a lot of great pieces of literature.

[stlukesguild]

I'm not certain that I (or anyone) can fairly answer this question with a limited mastery of languages. My own library is quite voluminous (around 3000 books) and quite "multi-cultural", but certainly the collection is skewed. Non-Western literature is small in size due largely to the limited access to good translations of Arabic, Chinese, Indian, and other non-Western lit. China, especially, has a culture that predates most if not all of the Western literary powerhouses. My focus is largely upon Western literature and certainly I have a goodly number of works from Greece, the Roman Empire, Italy, France, Germany, Russia, Spain, The United States and Latin America. There are also a good number of works from other countries (Poland, the Scandinavian nations, Portugal, Holland and Belgium, etc... In spite of all of this I find that over 1/4th of my entire collection is taken up by British literature... a far larger percentage than any other nation. One reason seems obvious: Britain's literary history is longer and more consistent than almost any other nation. While the contributions of the Greeks cannot be discounted, they virtually disappear from literary history by the time of the Roman Empire. If we count the efforts of the Roman Empire and the Italians as a single entity they certainly are quite formidable, but even they disappear with a few exceptions (Leopardi) until the 20th century resurgence (Pavese, Saba, Ungaretti, Lampedusa, Montale, Calvino). The much-vaunted Russians are limited (with few exceptions) to their contributions during the 19th and 20th centuries only. That places them somewhat as latecomers on the scene. Outside of Britain, the French probably make the best case for a nation with a long and consistent history of literary excellence. French literature is a major player from the middle ages (The Romance of the Rose, The Song of Roland, Francois Villion) until the present. Among the giants of French literature we find Rabelais, Corneille, Racine, Moliere, Voltaire, Rousseau, Daudet, Hugo, Zola, Montaigne, Gautier, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Proust, Verlaine, Genet, Camus, etc... But Britain... Britain's major contributions to world (or Western) literature begin's with Beowulf and then pick's up again with Chaucer, Bacon, Sir Thomas More, the great Renaissance poets (Spencer, Campion, Sidney, Daniel, etc...) Modern theater certainly begins with the British (Marlowe, Jonson, Kyd, Wycherly, Webster, and obviously Shakespeare. While there are several claimants to the position of "first novel" (Cervantes, Rabelais, etc...) the british are surely the most important in developing that art form during it's infancy: Richardson, Andrews, DeFoe, Smollet, Sterne, etc... The English Romantics are absolute giants among poetic history (Keats, Byron, Shelley, Coleridge, Blake, Wordsworth) and even the much-misrepresented Victorians produced Tennyson, Pater, Dickins, Stevenson, Hardy, Browning, etc... etc... And we haven't even touched on some of the absolute pinnacles: Milton, Johnson, Yeats, Joyce, etc...

Again, I find the idea of "the best of..." to be slightly absurd to a certain extent, although I also realize that the comparisons of country to country or culture to culture are merely an extension of the sort of comparisons from book to book or writer to writer. Nevertheless, my own personal favorites are from throughout the cultural spectrum: Dante, Shakespeare, Montaigne, Rousseau, Verlaine, Blake, Keats, Holderlin, Rilke, Proust, Kafka, Borges, Calvino, Milton, Hesse, Homer, Sterne, Baudelaire, Yeats, Emerson, T.S. Eliot, etc...

[ex ponto]

British literature,
then Russian, all in all.

[Ryduce]

I admit I'm a big Russian fan,but America has produced alot of quality literature.

Faulkner,Steinbeck,Vonnegut,Fitzgerald,Hemingway,T wain,etc.

[Etienne]

British literature,
then Russian, all in all.

Name me 10 French and 10 German authors you've read, for example.

Honestly, I believe only people who are ignorant about the matter can think about having an answer to the question.

[liberal viewer]

That can't be a serious question. I think that if literature has taught us anything is that Nationalism is one of the greatest tragedies that has been inflicted upon Mankind. I'd rather think of the greatest writers that have ever lived and still I'd be doing a disservice to a lot of truly great writers. But, of the top of my head, I'd include:
Homer
Sophocles
Sapho
Virgil
Horace
Seneca
Dante
The writer of Beowulf
Petrarca
Cervantes
Quevedo
Lope de Vega
Calderon de la Barca
Shakespeare
Donne
Milton
Blake
Keats
Balzac
Flaubert
Tolstoi
Dostoievksi
Chejov
Ibsen
Joyce
Faulkner
Hemingway
Eliot
Becket
Proust
Kafka
Gide
Lowry
Borges
Neruda
García Márquez
Larkin

As you can see, in my list there are writers from many nationalities, and who'd argue they aren't great writers? Do you see my point?;)

[ex ponto]

Name me 10 French and 10 German authors you've read, for example.

Honestly, I believe only people who are ignorant about the matter can think about having an answer to the question.

That's only my judgement based on my own knowledge. My judgement, my taste etc

[linz]

All countries all over the world have produced masterpieces, and all masterpieces are indispensable!

[JBI]

Most of the above German authors weren't German. Germany is a new country. Besides which, the only fair way to judge this is to say England, since Shakespeare outstrips everything before or after his time that I have yet come across. But he, of course, would find that a terrible answer, since he is a universal being, for all time and place, as Jonson put it.

[Etienne]

Most of the above German authors weren't German. Germany is a new country.

German as in German-speaking, and no Germany is not a new country, where did you get that notion? Which author that person mentioned under Germany were not German exactly?


Besides which, the only fair way to judge this is to say England, since Shakespeare outstrips everything before or after his time that I have yet come across.

You call that fair? Basically you judge a national literary achievement based on a single author, and based on what you (and especially have not) read.

[JBI]

The German Empire didn't really finish taking shape until 1871. Language isn't the deciding factor here, otherwise England, The U.S. And every other English speaking country, and English writer would be under the same category. Do we consider pre-War of Independence Authors to be British? What about pre-confederation authors for the rest of the commonwealth? Either way, like stated before, by country is one of the worst ways to categorize literature.

[Etienne]

The German Empire didn't really finish taking shape until 1871.

Huh... almost every European country didn't take definite shape until the end of WW2... that doesn't mean the country didn't exist...

So basically you are trying to say that Goethe wasn't German? :lol: I think that tu t'es mis les pieds dans les plats.


Language isn't the deciding factor here, otherwise England, The U.S. And every other English speaking country, and English writer would be under the same category.

Ok, so what would you call a polish-writing author under Russian or German occupation? I personally would call him a Polish author. And how do you call an Ukrainian author when Ukraine was part of Russia, and wrote in Russian? I call him a Russian author. Had he written in Ukrainian, I would have called him an Ukrainian author. It is a matter of language and culture, not a matter of where the boundary is set by the politics of the time.

Isn't Nabokov an American writer when he wrote in English in America? When Joyce wrote all across Europe - but not in Ireland - wasn't he still not a Irish author? It all comes down to language and culture.


Do we consider pre-War of Independence Authors to be British? What about pre-confederation authors for the rest of the commonwealth? Either way, like stated before, by country is one of the worst ways to categorize literature.

We're talking about a colony here, which is something completely different.

[JBI]

OK, then is Scotland part of England in this category? what about expats, do they count?

[AwayAloneAlast]

Because I live in the Anglosphere, I'd have to agree with England (and hey, for its population, little Ireland has produced even more!). When you have Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Keats, etc. to your credit as a country... well, nobody can really challenge you.

To be honest, though, that's only for verse. I am partial to verse, but among prose writers I can't say anyone outside of Joyce among my favourites wrote in English. The best prose writers are the Russians (Tolstoy and Dostoevsky cement it!) and the South Americans (Borges and Garcia Marquez, especially).

[Etienne]

OK, then is Scotland part of England in this category? what about expats, do they count?

:lol: It's not a precise science I'm trying to tell you, but you can count Scotland in or out, whatever you like. :lol:

About Expats, I gave the example of Nabokov, if Nabokov had written in Russian, he wouldn't have been an American writer, but since he also wrote in Russian when he was in Russia, then we could say he has two literary nationalities.

But why are we even going into precise points like this, there is no rule, just common sense... Goethe not German... The Pope is not Catholic, I am not me... whatever you want.

[stlukesguild]

JBI- If we follow your measure of what constitutes a nation, which is certainly correct, then there is no real Greek literature as Greece as a united nation was not a reality. Instead we should speak of Spartan, Athenian, and Corinthian literature. The same would hold true of Italian literature. Dante would not be Italian, but rather Florentine. Other writers would be Roman, Milanese, Venetian, etc... The usual standard is to place each writer (or other artist) under the culture of his or her language. Austrian writers/composers/artists are usually listed as "German". Language is probably the best standard of division for placing artists within a certain culture because the political divisions of Nations are always subject to change. What was German one day (Lorraine and Alsace) is French the next. The composer, Jacques Offenbach, born in Cologne is considered a French composer due to the fact that he was French speaking, worked mostly in France and was clearly influenced exclusively by French musical culture. The painter, Matthias Grunwald worked for much of his career in Colmar, Alsace, but as a German-Speaking artist working in province that was largely German-Speaking and influenced mostly by German artistic conventions he is listed as a German painter. Joseph Conrad is rarely imagined as a Polish writer in spite of the fact that he did not speak English fluently until he was already in his twenties. His writing, however, was in English and influenced by (and influenced) British literature more than anything else.

The United States, Australia, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil are commonly considered as separate from their parent culture due to the vast physical separation, the fact that they were established as independent nations well into and past the era of Nationalism, and also thanks to great difference in history and culture. Ireland's history in inextricably intertwined with that of England as part of Great Britain as is Austria and even the German-speaking parts of the former Czechoslovakia in ways that are not true of the US and Britain. The culture in the United States has been greatly impacted by the contributions of sources (Spanish/Hispanic, African, French, East-European, Jewish) that make for a culture quite removed from that of the original parent country. A writer in Brazil or Argentina is part of a culture that includes influenced quite foreign to that of their parent cultures of Spain and Portugal.

To a certain extent this is all semantic. Art should be universal or able to speak to the human experience regardless of culture. On the other hand... I believe that the various cultures... even down to regional... can lend to art a variety that is far more interesting than an ideal Anglo-American Disney/McDonalds Imperial internationalism.

[Etienne]

When you have Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Keats, etc. to your credit as a country... well, nobody can really challenge you.

So you think.

[Il Penseroso]

I wonder whether or not the people who are arguing so adamantly for one particular National literature as dominant over all others have actually read those other literatures in their native languages.

[stlukesguild]

...among prose writers I can't say anyone outside of Joyce among my favourites wrote in English. The best prose writers are the Russians

Of course that is, by your own admission, personal preference. I would not be so quick to discount the British/English contributions to prose: Robert Burton, Samuel Richardson, Daniel DeFoe, Lawrence Sterne, Samuel Johnson, Edward Gibbon, James Boswell, Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, Joseph Conrad, Walter Pater, Robert Louis Stevenson, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, D.H. Lawrence, Samuel Beckett, etc... Certainly Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and even Checkov are towering figures that may not have been surpassed by any single contribution of prose in English (which is debatable) but to ignore the wealth of the British contribution as a result would not be unlike suggesting that the Spanish contribution to Modernism in art outweighs that of the French on the basis of the fact that no single French Modernist surpasses Picasso.

When you have Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Keats, etc. to your credit as a country... well, nobody can really challenge you.

Of course France has Rabelais, Montaigne, Rousseau, Moliere, Hugo, Rimbaud, Baudelaire, Proust... no slouches there.:lol: And the Germans have Goethe, Holderlin, Novalis, Nietzsche, Kafka, Rilke, Hesse, Mann... again, not without some real genius. And what do we really even know of Chinese literature considering that little of its vast body of literature has even been translated... to say nothing of the level of the translation... into most Western languages?

[JBI]

Huh... almost every European country didn't take definite shape until the end of WW2... that doesn't mean the country didn't exist...

So basically you are trying to say that Goethe wasn't German? :lol: I think that tu t'es mis les pieds dans les plats.



Ok, so what would you call a polish-writing author under Russian or German occupation? I personally would call him a Polish author. And how do you call an Ukrainian author when Ukraine was part of Russia, and wrote in Russian? I call him a Russian author. Had he written in Ukrainian, I would have called him an Ukrainian author. It is a matter of language and culture, not a matter of where the boundary is set by the politics of the time.

Isn't Nabokov an American writer when he wrote in English in America? When Joyce wrote all across Europe - but not in Ireland - wasn't he still not a Irish author? It all comes down to language and culture.



We're talking about a colony here, which is something completely different.
I'm unsure whether we are agreeing or disagreeing here. You just prove my point that you cannot go by country, since countries didn't take definite shapes until later. If Germany didn't exist in Goethe's time, and the German culture wasn't the same when he lived, as it was in 1871, and we are unsure of whether he would have approved of it or not (seeing as that sort of answer is impossible), than how can we label him as such.

The way I see it, we can only categorize him based on his movement. Thereby, we can compare movements, his being Weimar Classicism, and Shakespeare's being the English Renaissance. Otherwise we won't ever agree.

Either way it is pointless; as stated above, this thread makes no real sense, seeing as these authors didn't even categorize themselves as such.

[Etienne]

I'm unsure whether we are agreeing or disagreeing here. You just prove my point that you cannot go by country, since countries didn't take definite shapes until later. If Germany didn't exist in Goethe's time, and the German culture wasn't the same when he lived, as it was in 1871, and we are unsure of whether he would have approved of it or not (seeing as that sort of answer is impossible), than how can we label him as such.

Germany DID exist in Goethe's time, that's what you don't understand. You keep bringing that 1871 and talk about a "definitive" shape, which is completely unrelated, and which was not definitive at all, just like England's shape was not definitive in Shakespeare time, and like Russia's shape was not (and far from it) definitive in the times of Pushkin, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. Basically, your argument makes no sense. 1871 was only the unification, or reunification of German "states", unification that existed before 1814 under the name of Holy Roman Empire, as an official name, but still Germany - what's in a name?

[JBI]

By your logic, what nationality does Gogol fit into?

[AwayAloneAlast]

Of course that is, by your own admission, personal preference. I would not be so quick to discount the British/English contributions to prose: Robert Burton, Samuel Richardson, Daniel DeFoe, Lawrence Sterne, Samuel Johnson, Edward Gibbon, James Boswell, Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, Joseph Conrad, Walter Pater, Robert Louis Stevenson, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, D.H. Lawrence, Samuel Beckett, etc... Certainly Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and even Checkov are towering figures that may not have been surpassed by any single contribution of prose in English (which is debatable) but to ignore the wealth of the British contribution as a result would not be unlike suggesting that the Spanish contribution to Modernism in art outweighs that of the French on the basis of the fact that no single French Modernist surpasses Picasso.

I gotta admit I'm not much of a fan of those guys you listed. Dr. Johnson is awesome, I'll give you that, as are Conrad, Joyce, and Beckett, but I've never been able to get into many of the others. The style just isn't my thing... I prefer the styles of, as I said, the Russians and South Americans.


Of course France has Rabelais, Montaigne, Rousseau, Moliere, Hugo, Rimbaud, Baudelaire, Proust... no slouches there. And the Germans have Goethe, Holderlin, Novalis, Nietzsche, Kafka, Rilke, Hesse, Mann... again, not without some real genius. And what do we really even know of Chinese literature considering that little of its vast body of literature has even been translated... to say nothing of the level of the translation... into most Western languages?

Again, a lot of guys on that list, though commonly considered greats, just aren't my thing. I'll give you Nietzsche and Kafka, though; both are muy bien :)

[Etienne]

By your logic, what nationality does Gogol fit into?

In a previous I gave an example of him without using his name. It is Russian literature because he wrote in Russian, had he written in Ukrainian, he would have been an Ukrainian writer. One can always consider him an Ukrainian writer if he wants...

But will you admit that saying Goethe is not German (sic!!) was completely talking through your hat?

[marakatsu]

It's stupid to claim a nation's literature superior to others. Literature is not monolithic, there's always influences that goes criss-crossing across the borders of culture. Without Dickens, we wouldnt have Tolstoy as we know him. Marcel Proust attributed his use of time to George Eliot's techinque. I think its better to judge works individually

[E.Kant]

It's stupid to claim a nation's literature superior to others. Literature is not monolithic, there's always influences that goes criss-crossing across the borders of culture:thumbs_up . Without Dickens, we wouldnt have Tolstoy as we know him. Marcel Proust attributed his use of time to George Eliot's techinque. I think its better to judge works individually
I do agree with you , but each author's work can be considered with regard to his country ..
Comparing English literature to French literature doesn't mean , in my opinion ,
that Proust never took care of George Eliot's technique :)

[PeterL]

It's stupid to claim a nation's literature superior to others. Literature is not monolithic, there's always influences that goes criss-crossing across the borders of culture.

True, but it's good sport.

[kilted exile]

OK, then is Scotland part of England in this category?

Only if we also count:

Canadian as American
All Central & South American (excluding Brazil as Spanish)
Australian as New Zealand


There are I believe subtle differences between Scottish & English literature, which may be difficult to place for outsiders to the countries. For such a small country, Britain has more distinct regional differences than countries many times larger - this comes out in all aspects of culture, including the literature

[Dori]

A book of mine, The Politically Incorrect Guide to English and American Literature by Elizabeth Kantor, Ph.D., says "We're in luck: Michelangelo's Pieta and Beethoven's Fifth Symphony don't need any tranlation, and we can read Shakespeare in the original. Nobody can touch the English when it comes to literature, just as nobody beats the Germans in music or the Italians in the visual arts. (Some wit has pointed out that the French are second-best at everything.)"

[Etienne]

A book of mine, The Politically Incorrect Guide to English and American Literature by Elizabeth Kantor, Ph.D., says "We're in luck: Michelangelo's Pieta and Beethoven's Fifth Symphony don't need any tranlation, and we can read Shakespeare in the original. Nobody can touch the English when it comes to literature, just as nobody beats the Germans in music or the Italians in the visual arts. (Some wit has pointed out that the French are second-best at everything.)"

I find it very funny that it's always Shakespeare the justification for such judgment (but never talking about the Victorian era :lol: ). I am in the opinion that if you took away Shakespeare from England, England would become a Black Hole.

[stlukesguild]

Some wit has pointed out that the French are second-best at everything.

Close... but I think I'd almost have to go with the Italians for the second-place in Music.:lol:

[Eric Cioe]

I can see two countries at the forefront for me:

Germany. Mann, Goethe, Hesse, and Kant if you're going to include philosophers.

America. Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Steinbeck, Willa Cather, Thoreau, Poe, Melville, Twain, Eliot, James, and some more personal ones for me like Ted Roosevelt, Jim Harrison, and Olaf Swenson.

[Dori]

I find it very funny that it's always Shakespeare the justification for such judgment (but never talking about the Victorian era :lol: ). I am in the opinion that if you took away Shakespeare from England, England would become a Black Hole.

The book also cited "...other Elizabethans, the seventeenth-century poets including Milton, and the Romantic poets..." It continued to say "And they've got competitive entries in all the other categories, too---from the epic (The Faerie Queene, Paradise Lost) and the romance (Malory's Morte d'Arthur) to the essay (Bacon, Addison and Steele, Dr.Johnson)."


I can see two countries at the forefront for me:

Germany. Mann, Goethe, Hesse, and Kant if you're going to include philosophers.

America. Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Steinbeck, Willa Cather, Thoreau, Poe, Melville, Twain, Eliot, James, and some more personal ones for me like Ted Roosevelt, Jim Harrison, and Olaf Swenson.

If you were to include German philosophers, you might also say Schopenhauer, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Marx, and last but certainly not least, Nietzsche. However, I wouldn't include philosopers in a debate about literature.

I think the area that American's most excel at is the short form (short stories and poetry). A few more Americans that come to mind: Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Hawthorne, Whitman, etc.

[Etienne]

The book also cited "...other Elizabethans, the seventeenth-century poets including Milton, and the Romantic poets..." It continued to say "And they've got competitive entries in all the other categories, too---from the epic (The Faerie Queene, Paradise Lost) and the romance (Malory's Morte d'Arthur) to the essay (Bacon, Addison and Steele, Dr.Johnson)."

Yes but did she have any argument? I mean I can enumerate a lot of great authors in many languages and from many cultures too.

[Kafka's Crow]

As far as the influence is concerned, the French thought and Literature has stronger influence in spite of the linguistic advantage that British Literature enjoys. Although the Troubadour poets wrote before Chaucer and Villon was influential in his own time, the French influence became very observable in works of people like Montaigne and the neo-classical debates between Boileau, Perrault and Fontenelle which provided the tension which erupted into a revolution during the next century; the age of Diderot, Voltaire and Rousseau, the brilliant 19th century novelists, les symbolistes the exceptional 20th century writers, the whole existentialism debate, the postmodern theorists like Derrida, Lyotard. Foucalt, Deleuze, the contemporary theorists like Badiou and the future, secure in the hands of younger French philosophers like Quentin Meillassoux who is already established as Badiou's most able pupil. The French literature may not 'seem' as great as English Literature because of the linguistic difference still this difference can not hide the influence of the French thought on literature through the ages. Come on, even Edgar Allen Poe is more influential than any English poet. The great flowering of Irish literature in last 100 years has strong links with France. Apart from Yeats (but Maud Gonne was educated and brought up in France!), not many of the major figures in Irish Literature show much of British influence. Bernard Shaw and Wilde looked to France for naturalism. Wilde called Gautier 'the most fascinating of modern poets.' Huysmans' À rebours is the single most significant influence on The Picture of Dorian Gray. People like George Moore, Beckett and Joyce looked straight to France for inspiration bypassing the huge land-mass that separates Ireland form France, i-e England. If looked closely, the revolutionary French spirit has been the driving force behind the Western Literature for at least 300 years. English has the linguistic advantage, the real game is played in France, that is where the ideas come from which inspire writers everywhere.


The book also cited "...other Elizabethans, the seventeenth-century poets including Milton, and the Romantic poets..." It continued to say "And they've got competitive entries in all the other categories, too---from the epic (The Faerie Queene, Paradise Lost) and the romance (Malory's Morte d'Arthur) to the essay (Bacon, Addison and Steele, Dr.Johnson)."



If you were to include German philosophers, you might also say Schopenhauer, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Marx, and last but certainly not least, Nietzsche. However, I wouldn't include philosopers in a debate about literature.

I think the area that American's most excel at is the short form (short stories and poetry). A few more Americans that come to mind: Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Hawthorne, Whitman, etc.

... and don't forget Stone-cold Steve Austen!

[stlukesguild]

As far as the influence is concerned, the French thought and Literature has stronger influence in spite of the linguistic advantage that British Literature enjoys.

A stronger influence upon whom? Subsequent French writers? Certainly the lyrical poetry tradition travels from France to Britain... but then again... it comes to France initially from Italy. Undoubtedly French literature has had a major impact upon the literatures of other nations but I think you are seriously underestimating the influence of British literature.

Although the Troubadour poets wrote before Chaucer and Villon was influential in his own time, the French influence became very observable in works of people like Montaigne and the neo-classical debates between Boileau, Perrault and Fontenelle which provided the tension which erupted into a revolution during the next century; the age of Diderot, Voltaire and Rousseau, the brilliant 19th century novelists, les symbolistes the exceptional 20th century writers, the whole existentialism debate, the postmodern theorists like Derrida, Lyotard. Foucalt, Deleuze, the contemporary theorists like Badiou and the future, secure in the hands of younger French philosophers like Quentin Meillassoux who is already established as Badiou's most able pupil.

It is fascinating that French literature has such great schools of theorists. It may be the reason they seemingly lack those highly original outsiders who couldn't give a rat's a** about theory and rules. Derrida, Lyotard, Foucault. God! Give me Joyce or Faulkner or Kafka or maybe even Steven King!

The French literature may not 'seem' as great as English Literature because of the linguistic difference still this difference can not hide the influence of the French thought on literature through the ages.

What is this linguistic difference that disguises the superiority of French literature? French literature and culture in general are undoubtedly hugely influential upon the whole of Western civilization... especially when you consider the fact that France and England long stood as the two dueling cultural and artistic superpowers of Europe. I wouldn't be so quick to underestimate the British contribution or influence. Certainly Schiller and Goethe didn't when they turned to British writers as models for the development of German literature. The novel... perhaps THE central literary form for two and a half centuries or more certainly owes far more of its development to British writers such as Richardson, DeFoe, Goldsmith, Sterne, Fielding, Smollett, on through Scott, Austen, Dickens, Hardy, and Joyce than it does to French contributions. Its been suggested that without Shakespeare British literature could not compete... as if he were a single isolated towering figure... but where is the French epic poet that could surpass Spencer, Chaucer or Milton? Edgar Allen Poe is more influential than any English poet? Give me a break. Where is the poet that had more impact than Wordsworth upon his era? As for the link between the great Modern Irish writers and French literature... certainly this is undeniable. As the center of the development of Modernism France and French writers clearly impacted writers from Ireland as well as England, the United States, Spain, Germany, Russia, etc... If you believe that these influences were far more important than those offered up by the great examples of writers within the native cultures and languages of Ireland, Spain, Germany, etc... however, you would be sadly mistaken. You are also ignoring the question of influence over quality. Huysmans may have been the major influence upon Wilde (arguable) but Wilde is certainly a better writer. T.S. Eliot may have been deeply enamored of Valery Larbaud and St, John Perse (enough to have translated the latter)... but neither poet even begins to approach Eliot's level of achievement.

If looked closely, the revolutionary French spirit has been the driving force behind the Western Literature for at least 300 years.

Yeah.:rolleyes::nod: By the way... it is always interesting to hear speak of the French revolutionary spirit while ignoring the fact that the Revolution and establishment of a Democratic form of government in America preceded it by quite some time... instigated, by British colonists. It also ignores the fact that Britain had implemented certain limitations upon the rule of the Monarchy through the establishment of a Parliament for quite some time.

English has the linguistic advantage, (again... with this "linguistic advantage"?) the real game is played in France, that is where the ideas come from which inspire writers everywhere.

Yeah.:rolleyes: And France has been leading the music scene and still leads in the visual arts, right?:lol:

[Etienne]

It is fascinating that French literature has such great schools of theorists. It may be the reason they seemingly lack those highly original outsiders who couldn't give a rat's a** about theory and rules. Derrida, Lyotard, Foucault. God! Give me Joyce or Faulkner or Kafka or maybe even Steven King!

I'm not sure what you mean by that... are you saying that no French author "went out of theory?". And what's with comparing philosophers and theoricians to authors?


What is this linguistic difference that disguises the superiority of French literature?

I think he means that English language, mostly through America, is more international, and therefore gives English Literature a greater exposure, which is completely right. Although saying French literature is superior to English is really comes down to a matter of interest more than any objective reasoning.


French literature and culture in general are undoubtedly hugely influential upon the whole of Western civilization... especially when you consider the fact that France and England long stood as the two dueling cultural and artistic superpowers of Europe.

I'm afraid that France has been much more a "cultural superpower" of Europe in history, but mostly due, again to a greater exposure, same as English right now. French was the "universal" language of Europe for a long time, just like now English is the "universal" language. Paris was literally the cultural capital of Europe for a while.


The novel... perhaps THE central literary form for two and a half centuries or more certainly owes far more of its development to British writers such as Richardson, DeFoe, Goldsmith, Sterne, Fielding, Smollett, on through Scott, Austen, Dickens, Hardy, and Joyce than it does to French contributions.

I would disagree here, from Rabelais to Proust going by Balzac, Diderot and Flaubert, the influences are absolutely comparable.


Its been suggested that without Shakespeare British literature could not compete... as if he were a single isolated towering figure...

Perhaps you are referring to me, but that's not what I meant at all, I was just tired of people thinking they get the last word just by throwing the name of Shakespeare around.


but where is the French epic poet that could surpass Spencer, Chaucer or Milton?

You are right that French's epic literature is not as prominent, there has been a couple of half-success, the greatest French epic is probably Hugo's Légende des siècles, which I have not read, but is said to stand up to the greatest epics.


Edgar Allen Poe is more influential than any English poet? Give me a break. Where is the poet that had more impact than Wordsworth upon his era?

I believe Baudelaire, for example, had a much greater influence.


Yeah.:rolleyes: And France has been leading the music scene and still leads in the visual arts, right?:lol:

What do you mean by that? France influence in both music and visual art is historically of a primary importance...

Music:
Berlioz, Bizet, Debussy, Offenbach, Saint-Saëns to name a few. (but I know much less in this field, France does hold a great place though)

Visual arts:
Doré, Cézanne, Rodin, Monet, Renoir, Gaugin, van Gogh, Matisse, Chagall, Duchamp, etc. Not to mention that it has been a "meeting ground" for many other artists (I'm thinking about Picasso and Dali on top of my head).

I don't want to turn this in a France vs England debate, only I feel there is a lot of ignorance which leads to hasty conclusions. For example, when all I knew about literature was what I learned in school, I thought France had a so much greater contribution to literature than any other. Before I came to these forums, I'll admit, I always found English contributions relatively poor, except for a few names, but then, so many people are very much stuck with English language literature here (in general it is quite international, but you can tell that most people are English speaking), and I learned a lot about English literature and I realized that I thought that only because I didn't know enough.

I believe that if many among you would frequent, say a literature forum in French (or German, or Italian, or Spanish), and learn about it's richness, you would have a different opinion, as much of a culture's richness is not very visible from the exterior. I mean how many people have read Rabelais? I've made a search on the forums and beside the times where I mentioned it, the name of Rabelais has been mentioned barely a few times, and his works are not even on the website! But it is a towering figure of French literature! That's in great part why I'm trying to make the forum book-club read to be Rabelais.

I'll give an example: How many people have said that Russian haven't produced anything bad, but have produced less literature? The thing is, from Pushkin onward, there was probably as much literature as anywhere else and many bad writers in the lot: we just don't know about it because Russian culture is relatively remote, and most of it is not translated, or translated in smaller editions. Great Russian writers are relatively unknown in the West, that doesn't mean that they don't exist, that they are not geniuses and that in Russia they are not heroes.

I am not saying either that people are ignorant and I know so much more, it's only being a matter of being conscious of and admitting what we do not know.

[Eric Cioe]

If you were to include German philosophers, you might also say Schopenhauer, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Marx, and last but certainly not least, Nietzsche. However, I wouldn't include philosopers in a debate about literature.

I might say those others, but I was making the list for myself. Schopenhauer is interesting and so are Nietzsche and Hegel, and I guess Schelling is fine insofar as he is related to Goethe, but Marx or Fichte do nothing for me. Kant was only mentioned ... well, come look at how much of my ink, blood, and tears of frustration are in my copy of the first Critique.

I don't pretend to be able to make any sort of objective list, because I don't believe that this question could be answered objectively. Lots of countries have put out fine books by fine authors. Reasonable people can disagree about the good books from any given country. The ones I listed were ones that particularly resonated with me. I can't speak for anyone else, which is why I only included people that have had a big influence on my life.

[JBI]

German philosophy (philosophy here referring to philosophers, not writers who have philosophical depth) is, I would argue, unquestionably superior to English, however, This argument is futile. To argue along the lines of influence, would mean two things. The only possible source for most influencial, is either Israel (or Canaan as it was then) or Greece (insert alternate birthplace of choice). By far the two strongest works, in terms of contribution, are the Book of J, and The Iliad/odyssey. Next to those, only Aristophanes, Aeschylus, and Montaigne stand as possible candidates.

The history of literature is no doubt built on the backs of giants, but none of them could really have worked with out the previous ones (or most of them at least). It is fair to say that Cervantes worked without the help of Shakespeare. However, it is not possible to say that Cervantes worked alone.

The only fair way to judge this (and I don't think this is really fair) is to compile a list of books written by that country worth mentioning (meaning with significant value, and significant status in terms of contribution and authenticity) and to see which list is longer.

The reason names like Shakespeare get shoved around so much, is because he is regarded as the best man of English letters. Next to him, I don't think anyone has had such a profound affect in earning such high critical acclaim (he is the most preformed playwrite, and most quoted man in English, which is the biggest western language). That being said however, he isn't all of literature, or all of English literature.

If we are making piles, I'm afraid America would probably win, due to its vast population. Though I wonder if I can consider Pound or Eliot to be American.

[Eric Cioe]

Though I wonder if I can consider Pound or Eliot to be American.

Eliot grew up in the Midwest and studied at Harvard. That sounds pretty American to me. Pound grew up in Idaho ... end of story. ;)

[Erichtho]

This thread could be utterly laughable if it wasn't for the ignorance, arrogance and presumptuousness that pervades many posts here. :(

Already the title is highly misleading, because countries - as has been mentioned before - are not a deciding factor when it comes to categorising literature, but rather the language one writes in, since this is what sets our boundaries and possibilities in expressing ourselves literarily.



I'm afraid that France has been much more a "cultural superpower" of Europe in history, but mostly due, again to a greater exposure, same as English right now. French was the "universal" language of Europe for a long time, just like now English is the "universal" language. Paris was literally the cultural capital of Europe for a while.

Indeed, French used to be THE language of diplomacy for a long time, thus it was expected of every educated person to speak it and French literature was very popular all over Europe. I'm sure its influence was and is in Germany much greater than that of British literature, and also in Russian literature I constantly find references to French authors and works.



I don't want to turn this in a France vs England debate, only I feel there is a lot of ignorance which leads to hasty conclusions. For example, when all I knew about literature was what I learned in school, I thought France had a so much greater contribution to literature than any other. Before I came to these forums, I'll admit, I always found English contributions relatively poor, except for a few names, but then, so many people are very much stuck with English language literature here (in general it is quite international, but you can tell that most people are English speaking), and I learned a lot about English literature and I realized that I thought that only because I didn't know enough.

Seconded. I have made very similar experiences. Going from what I learnt in school, I could be thinking that German literature far tops that of any other nation. Only when I registered here I noticed that English literature isn't as poor as I thought.

Everybody here jugdes out of his very limited, often too narrowminded experience with literature, and especially if you are only able to read in one language you have hardly any chance to touch more than the surface of an other nation's literature.
I would like to know of those who have given a concrete answer how well-read they really are in anything but their national literature.

[Abraxas]

The thing is, from Pushkin onward, there was probably as much literature as anywhere else and many bad writers in the lot: we just don't know about it because Russian culture is relatively remote, and most of it is not translated, or translated in smaller editions.

This is interesting. I would have answered the topic by saying that I consider Russian and German literatures to be the greatest, but that's in fact, probably, because the authors of that language which I have read are only the greatest of their countries, since the others aren't translated (or the translations are difficult to find). So my opinion is necessarily warped...

Anyhow, I too am of the opinion that you can't say that one country produced better literature than others: our vision is too culturally-oriented, for one thing (I haven't seen many people extolling Japanese literature, even if you can find wonderful writers and poets there). And deciding on the "best" literature also boils down to the belief in a sort of "national genius", whereas there's been a lot of contamination between countries, as has already been pointed out. And it's difficult to decide which country had more influence, if you take only Britain and France: during the eighteenth century, I think that English authors were the inspiration for French ones (Diderot was cited here, but he was very much influenced by British thought). At the end of the nineteenth, it seems to have been rather the reverse (and Huysmans was the main inspiration behind Dorian Grey). And during the modernist period, lots of American and British authors came to live in France, so I suppose they both inspired and were inspired by French literature.
Even Shakespeare didn't create ex nihilo (rather the contrary, since he was more than heavily inspired by Classical authors, Petrarch, Montaigne, other humanist authors, and some of his British predecessors...). Although I suppose one could argue that it is what an author makes of his influences that counts...


If we are making piles, I'm afraid America would probably win, due to its vast population. Though I wonder if I can consider Pound or Eliot to be American.

I'm not sure America would win, since its literature is far more recent -how many great authors do you find there before the nineteenth century, after all? And no, Pound and Eliot are more European! like Henry James or Poe, for that matter...

But if you're looking at contemporary literature, it might "win"... although the Brits aren't half bad either. The French are rather rotten nowadays (maybe because there have been too many theorists?).

[Kafka's Crow]

I have always maintained that anglocentrism is an anathema. There is a huge big world outside the reach of the English language. Japan, China, the Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Africa, India.... If we know only one language, it does not entitle us to deny the existence of the other cultures and their achievement. I am shocked to hear that remark about the inferiority of the French novel! And the visual arts, don't even go there, I'd say. I am sure most of these posters believe that Hollywood is the hallmark of good cinema. I bet none of them know anything about the French cinema.

I wrote some remarks about Persian poetry in 'Poetry' section, I am sure they would shock many here, but rest assured there are more people in the world who know many of the Persian poets than even Wordsworth who enjoys a wast following among the speakers and students of English language and literature. I live in London and I know English people who never heard of Wordsworth and who think that Lord of the Rings is only a series of action movies. Ignorance knows no borders nor is it limited to nationalities. Art is the knowledge of human expression, not national expression. Every nation produces great artists and writers at one time or another in its history. Our task should be to go above these small distinctions and look for the best in every culture, understand it, love and pass it on to the future generations as art is the heritage of the whole humanity, not some nation, linguistic group or country.

[Kafka's Crow]

I agree. Pound and Eliot are American, not just by birth or nationality, but with regard to their work as well.

Eliot disowned America, America disowned Pound. 'Nuf said!

[stlukesguild]

Etienne... In no way would I underestimate the French literary contribution... or its contributions to culture in general. I don't think, however, that it is so easy (as Kafka's Crow seemed to have suggested) to prove that French literature is clearly superior to the British contribution. My opinion is not formed by any sentiment of nationalism as I am American and have no problem with admitting that French, British and any number of other nations far supersede the American contribution to the arts. I agree that France stood long as perhaps the leading cultural powerhouse of Europe... due to British isolationism and hostility toward France. This would seem to go against KC's assertion of a British linguistic advantage. Even Goethe's early works are influenced more by French models than English.

As for the various art forms... I certainly agree that Rabelais stands along side Cervantes as one of the greatest precursors of the novel. Certainly the French contributions to the development novel in the 19th rank along side of the British and Russians. Personally, I actually prefer Proust to Joyce but I would probably need to agree that he was THE towering figure of Modernism. In spite of Diderot, Les Liaisons dangereuses, and Rousseau's Julie, I don't think the French contribution to the early development of the novel can match that achieved by DeFoe, Sterne, Fielding, Richardson, Smollett, etc... In theater both nations have their strengths with Shakespeare throwing the whole thing. Poetry...? I would take the early British (Spencer, Donne, Herbert, Herrick, Melville, Sidney, Marvell, Marlowe, Daniel, Traherne, and Shakespeare) over the French (Ronsard, duBellay, and the rest of La Pléiade)... but then again I must admit that I am limited to what has been translated... and translated well... and this was not a period that is well represented in English translation. Romanticism in poetry I would give to Britain and Germany hands down (in spite of Victor Hugo) but certainly the situation is reversed with poetry of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Baudelaire is almost certainly the central poet there. Essay? Non-Fiction? Montaigne and Voltaire vs Boswell and Johnson and Burton... Diderot vs Gibbon... but this all grows tiring, does it not... and proves, if anything, that the decision is certainly not a clear hands-down choice of France over Britain... or vis-versa. Personally... I am glad to have both... and all the rest.

As for my comments on music and the visual arts... trust me, I have no illusions of British (or American for that matter) dominance in either field. My comment was directed at KC's comment about the "real game" being played in France. One often gets the feeling that many have failed to recognize that Paris is no longer the center of the art world. French hegemony of the visual arts probably does not begin until J.L. David... in spite of Poussin, Le Nain, Champaigne, etc... Before that time it was Italy and to a lesser degree, the Netherlands. France certainly dominates the visual arts from David until the Second World War. Now? New York and London and Germany... with a growing influx from Asia. Besides... French Modernism should be forever damned thanks to the contribution of Duchamp who is almost single-handedly responsible for the plethora of Conceptual crap that now infests the art scene.:sick: Music? I don't think that's even close: Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms, Schubert, Schumann, Wagner, Haydn, Gluck, Handel, Johann Strauss, Richard Strauss, Schoenberg... Between France and Britain? No comparison. What can the British muster to counter Ravel, DeBussy, Faure, Bizet, even Offenbach? Vaughan Williams? Of course they do have the better orchestras.:D

I believe that if many among you would frequent, say a literature forum in French (or German, or Italian, or Spanish), and learn about it's richness, you would have a different opinion, as much of a culture's richness is not very visible from the exterior. I mean how many people have read Rabelais? I've made a search on the forums and beside the times where I mentioned it, the name of Rabelais has been mentioned barely a few times, and his works are not even on the website! But it is a towering figure of French literature! That's in great part why I'm trying to make the forum book-club read to be Rabelais.

I agree completely. Clearly I read non-English language literature in translation out of the selfish desire to find as much worthy of reading as possible... but I also read it in order to open myself up to other cultures. I am adamantly against the notion of reading merely as a means of reinforcing my own culture or prejudices. It bothers me when the argument about the greatest Romantic poet ignored any contributions of Schiller, Novalis, Holderlin... even Goethe or Hugo. To make a sweeping statement about the centrality of early Modernist French or English poetry ignores the huge contributions made by American and Spanish writers... to say nothing of the Russians. And certainly... unlike music or painting... much of one nationalities literary contribution is "lost in translation"... or lost because there is no translation. We can always find Dante and Homer and Virgil... but there are almost no translations of the great Spanish poets and playwrites from the so-called "Golden-Age". I just recently came across a decent new translation of the Spanish poet Gongorra.

Cheers.:wave:

The only fair way to judge this (and I don't think this is really fair) is to compile a list of books written by that country worth mentioning (meaning with significant value, and significant status in terms of contribution and authenticity) and to see which list is longer.

No... I don't think that would work. It ignores the relative importance of each "significant artist". If we were to compare German and Spanish painting in the 20th century, for example, the "significant" German painters would probably well outnumber the Spanish... but then again... Picasso has probably had a greater influence than all of them combined. We'll have to come up with another plan.:D

I wonder if I can consider Pound or Eliot to be American.

If Poussin is still French, in spite of all his years in Rome, and Picasso is still Spanish in spite of having lived most of his adult life in France and Stravinsky is Russian despite his years in France and America, then Pound and Eliot are American.

If we are making piles, I'm afraid America would probably win, due to its vast population.

Actually... wouldn't it then go to China who has the upper hand in terms of both population and age of its culture?

[JBI]

If we are making piles, I'm afraid America would probably win, due to its vast population.

Actually... wouldn't it then go to China who has the upper hand in terms of both population and age of its culture?

No, because we are somewhat ethnocentric here on this board, and pretty much limited to only Western Literature. Quick name 20 Chinese authors worth mentioning. I reckon you will have a far easier time naming 20 American ones.

[Kafka's Crow]

No, because we are somewhat ethnocentric here on this board, and pretty much limited to only Western Literature. Quick name 20 Chinese authors worth mentioning. I reckon you will have a far easier time naming 20 American ones.

Exactly! You call it ethnocentric, I call it anglocentric. Same thing. How many read Faulkner, compare it with the number of people who read Anita Desai or Rabindranath Tagore or Arundhutti Roy or Gao Xingjian (a French, yes French, Nobel Prize winner who writes in Chinese!) We are talking about big countries here. India has the second largest publishing industry after the US. It caters entirely for the gigantic domestic market whereas a large chunk of American books are printed for export. What do these billions of people read?

[JBI]

Exactly! You call it ethnocentric, I call it anglocentric. Same thing. How many read Faulkner, compare it with the number of people who read Anita Desai or Rabindranath Tagore or Arundhutti Roy or Gao Xingjian (a French, yes French, Nobel Prize winner who writes in Chinese!) We are talking about big countries here. India has the second largest publishing industry after the US. It caters entirely for the gigantic domestic market whereas a large chunk of American books are printed for export. What do these billions of people read?

Still Chinese is one of the hardest languages to be able to read, and perhaps the hardest to write in (I can't even create legible Latin Characters). Unless you specifically go to school to study these languages, it is rather unlikely that you will come across the literature written in them.

I know that a new poetic translation of the Mahabharata is underway, but still, no one really has time to read a 12000 page epic. I think it is fair to say that the easiest languages to learn by a European are other European languages, simply because they have the same root. To even begin to conquer the other side of the Canon is to undertake a feet for a lifetime. I can't think of anyone who has conquered both to such a degree that they became an authority on both sides.

[Etienne]

but this all grows tiring, does it not... and proves, if anything, that the decision is certainly not a clear hands-down choice of France over Britain... or vis-versa. Personally... I am glad to have both... and all the rest.

Then we might agree I believe, my point is very much the futility of such judgments.


French Modernism should be forever damned thanks to the contribution of Duchamp who is almost single-handedly responsible for the plethora of Conceptual crap that now infests the art scene.

Duchamp is not so much responsible, as he did great works, and his "ready-made" was more meant as a joke, "take something and declare it a work of art". Some people just took it too seriously...

However that reminded me a funny quote of Dali about Picasso: "Picasso is responsible for the generalized ugliness of contemporary art." Haha, I do like Picasso in general however, just not his stupid pottery paintings... ugh..

[Dori]

Yes but did she have any argument? I mean I can enumerate a lot of great authors in many languages and from many cultures too.

No, she didn't. What I enclosed in my previous post was all she had to say on the topic, though I'm sure she could have said more if she felt the need to (the information was supplied as a side note, separated from the main text).


... and don't forget Stone-cold Steve Austen!

:lol: I failed to mention him! :lol:


No, because we are somewhat ethnocentric here on this board, and pretty much limited to only Western Literature. Quick name 20 Chinese authors worth mentioning. I reckon you will have a far easier time naming 20 American ones.

You're right. After Sun Tzu, I don't think I could name even one Chinese author (whether (s)he was worth reading or not!).

[Eric Cioe]

Exactly! You call it ethnocentric, I call it anglocentric. Same thing.

Is that necessarily a bad thing? I feel pretty connected to American writers because mostly they're talking about the world that I know. You call it anglocentric, I call it having a sense of identity with your countrymen.

[mortalterror]

A side by side comparison of mostly European literature

Greece, Rome, Italy, England, France, Germany, Russia, Other
Epic
The Odyssey, The Aenead, Jerusalem Delivered, Paradise Lost, The Franciad, ? , ?, The Lusiads
Short story anthologies
Aesops Fables, The Metamorphoses, The Decameron, Canterbury Tales, La Fontane's Fables, Grimm's Fairytales, Anderson's stories
Comic novel
?, Satyricon, Orlando Furioso, Catch-22, Gargantua and Pantagruel, ?, ?, Don Quixote
Comic play
Lysistrata, The Pot of Gold, Love For Three Oranges, The Importance of Being Ernest, Tartuffe, Leonce and Lena, The Inspector General,
Tragic play
Oedipus Rex, Thyestes, ?, Hamlet, Phaedra, Faust, ?, The Doll House, Fuente Ovejuna
Novel
?, ?, The Betrothed, Tom Jones, Madame Bovary, Sorrows of Young Werther, War and Peace, Dream of the Red Chamber, Tale of Genji,

I don't know what I'd compare The Divine Comedy to, and yes I know Tom Jones probably belongs under the comic novel heading. But as you can see, most cultures labor in the same fields, and each produce miraculous fruits.

If you want to compare golden eras, then England and Spain had theirs around the reign of Queen Elizabeth. France had a similar period of prominence during the reign of Louis XIV. Germany was strongest during Goethe's time, and Russia came into it's own in the nineteenth century. However, the French and English weren't much behind the Russians in the nineteenth century either. Italy had it's big period in the thirteen hundreds. Greece and Rome were biggest in the clasical period. They all tend to pass the torch and no one stays on top of the heap for long.

Russian XIX, French XIX, English XIX
War and Peace, The Red and the Black, A Tale of Two Cities
Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary, The Scarlet Letter
Crime and Punishment, Les Miserables, Moby Dick
Dead Souls, ? , Huckleberry Finn
The Brothers Karamazov, Chartrehouse of Parma, Middlemarch
Chekhov's short stories, Maupassant's short stories, Poe's Short Stories
Fathers and Sons, Old Goriot, Barchester Towers?
the analogy starts to break down here but...
Eugene Onegin , Germinal , Ivanhoe
Oblomov ,Notre Dame de Paris ,Great Expectations
A Hero For Our Time, ?, Pride and Prejudice, Wuthering Heights, and Jude the Obscure

Even if you believe that Russia gets the better of this fight, that's because we're mostly just comparing novels and short stories. If you include the poetry and drama of the period, then Russian begins to shrink in the face of the English and French powerhouses. However, I am not well versed either in poetry, or the Eastern literatures so I can't make further comparisons. I've heard that China's Tang dynasty was something special. I've read Tu Fu, Li Po, Wang Wei, and Po Chu-i who were all excellent, but beyond that I couldn't say. What I've read of Iran's Shahnama was pretty good too and probably deserves a place beside the Odyssey or the Mahaberata. Would you rank the Faery Queen with them? Should we include history, philosophy, and essays? From what I can tell, literature and high culture in general tends to be the history of people having enough economic prosperity to feed and house themselves so they want other things and turn to luxuries. The better educated they are, the more prosperity there is, with this comes more leisure to read and write and so better books.

Then there's the problem of which leisure pursuits get emphasized in wealthy societies. During the centuries when Italian and German literature is weaker than France and England's their music was much better, so things have a way of evening out, especially in the long term.

[kelby_lake]

Probably England or maybe America.

[JBI]

Is that necessarily a bad thing? I feel pretty connected to American writers because mostly they're talking about the world that I know. You call it anglocentric, I call it having a sense of identity with your countrymen.

Canadians primarily read English and American novels, with the French Canadians reading French literature primarily, with some native works mixed in.

Despite this however, Canada is one of the most multi-cultural countries in the world. It would make sense that at least works written in Canada should be read, if not works showing the heritage and traditions of other nations, whose immigrants make up a vast amount of the Canadian population.

In Europe there are similar things occurring, thanks to the easing of boarders because of the E.U, there are more immigrant workers in non-native countries. With this, there should be the opening up of all European literature, not just the native one. Considering so many Europeans decide to take on another language, it would make sense that they would expand that way at least.

The point I'm trying to make is that, we can't with Chinese literature. Chinese doesn't translate, and is extremely difficult to learn. Most people will never know Chinese, but most people will learn English. Therefore, when piling, everyone knows English, it being the second language of most of the world, and very few who post here know Chinese. None of us will be able to defend that canon, therefore it is inevitable that the discussion is between European countries, primarily Russia England Germany and France. France, of course, gets thrown around, since too much is lost in translation. Russia gets over represented because of people's fascination with Dostoevsky, and German generally gets unmentioned, despite a major contribution, and perhaps the greatest contribution in non-fiction.

England, and the United States end with the most exposure because everyone here speaks English. We can all agree on the greatness of certain English authors, but we all don't know many of the French, or German ones. Russia is no where close to these, since their only mentionable literature begins with Pushkin, and they seem to have ebbed under Soviet rule. Either way, when piling a list, everyone will know the great American authors, and great English poets and play-writes, and even novelists, but none will know the Chinese ones better than these, and none will even mention India. The fact that you believe anglocentricism is good has nothing to do with the outcome.

[Luce]

I think that Italy and France have both produced great literature and I don't think Britain has produced the best literary work; it surely has produced a lot, but the literary tradition of Italy can certainly rival it.

[kandaurov]

The point I'm trying to make is that, we can't with Chinese literature. Chinese doesn't translate, and is extremely difficult to learn. Most people will never know Chinese, but most people will learn English. Therefore, when piling, everyone knows English, it being the second language of most of the world, and very few who post here know Chinese. None of us will be able to defend that canon, therefore it is inevitable that the discussion is between European countries, primarily Russia England Germany and France. France, of course, gets thrown around, since too much is lost in translation. Russia gets over represented because of people's fascination with Dostoevsky, and German generally gets unmentioned, despite a major contribution, and perhaps the greatest contribution in non-fiction.

Too true (especially the part on Russian and German lit, spot on!). And, like you, I also think that it's both inevitable and harmless that we are somewhat Western-Literature centered. Okay, it's the globalization era, but do we have to be intimate with the literature from every country in the face of this planet? I think it's kind of hypocritical to say that you know literature from this and that continent and that one too, unless, of course, you have a deep understanding of the culture the literature's inserted in. I'm only well acquainted with portuguese, english, american and german culture, therefore I read the literature from these countries. Sure, I like to expand my horizons every once in a while, but if I read a book from the Phillipines now, without having a clue about the Phillipines whatsoever (I'm not even sure I spelled the blessed country's name right), can I really say I've read it like I would have read, say, an English novel?

[barbara0207]

Too true (especially the part on Russian and German lit, spot on!). And, like you, I also think that it's both inevitable and harmless that we are somewhat Western-Literature centered. Okay, it's the globalization era, but do we have to be intimate with the literature from every country in the face of this planet? I think it's kind of hypocritical to say that you know literature from this and that continent and that one too, unless, of course, you have a deep understanding of the culture the literature's inserted in. I'm only well acquainted with portuguese, english, american and german culture, therefore I read the literature from these countries. Sure, I like to expand my horizons every once in a while, but if I read a book from the Phillipines now, without having a clue about the Phillipines whatsoever (I'm not even sure I spelled the blessed country's name right), can I really say I've read it like I would have read, say, an English novel?

I agree with most of what you and JBI said. Translation is certainly an issue, especially where poetry is concerned. But with prose it's a bit easier.

And I do not think that you have to have a deep insight into a culture before you can read its literature. Perhaps it's the other way round - literature might get you interested in a culture, might give you a better understanding of a country and its people.

[SleepyWitch]

I don't think you can really answer this question at all (which country has produced the greatest literature), because ppl base their judgments about this on a variety of different criteria.
for example, when I was doing a year abroad in England I took a course on "The European Novel" and the teacher compared Dickens's Great Expectations with Stendhal's The Red and the Black and also veered off on a general discussion of French vs. English Literature (including Madame Bovary). Although they didn't say it directly, most students + the teacher kinda agreed that English Lit was better than French Lit, because Dickens had a happy ending and was more moralistic than Flaubert and Stendhal. They were all kinda shocked not only because Flaubert dared to write about adultery around the same time that English Lit had to mention such things very indirectly and be judgmental about them, but also because he wrote about adultery at all, no matter in which time period.
:confused: so, their decision was based on morality, not on how good the writing was. Of course, if you think it's the job of literature to have happy endings, be non-committal and preach morals, English Lit is definitely the best in the world. But that's a very narrow definition of literature, isn't it?

[Geraint]

I can't think of any particularly great or heroic Welsh, Northern Irish or even Scottish novelists.

How can you discuss great literature, and then discount the country that produced Dylan Thomas?

[JBI]

I don't think you can really answer this question at all (which country has produced the greatest literature), because ppl base their judgments about this on a variety of different criteria.
for example, when I was doing a year abroad in England I took a course on "The European Novel" and the teacher compared Dickens's Great Expectations with Stendhal's The Red and the Black and also veered off on a general discussion of French vs. English Literature (including Madame Bovary). Although they didn't say it directly, most students + the teacher kinda agreed that English Lit was better than French Lit, because Dickens had a happy ending and was more moralistic than Flaubert and Stendhal. They were all kinda shocked not only because Flaubert dared to write about adultery around the same time that English Lit had to mention such things very indirectly and be judgmental about them, but also because he wrote about adultery at all, no matter in which time period.
:confused: so, their decision was based on morality, not on how good the writing was. Of course, if you think it's the job of literature to have happy endings, be non-committal and preach morals, English Lit is definitely the best in the world. But that's a very narrow definition of literature, isn't it?
Not all people read like that. Shakespeare highest acclaimed works both feature quite nihilistic endings. The super anti-cathartic ending of Lear which drew so much distaste until really the 20th century, when people finally understood what he was talking about, and the nihilistic ending of Hamlet, which seems to make everything in the play seem hopelessly pointless (desired effect). In terms of morality, the English tradition of poetry seems to have a large tradition of poems designed to convince a virgin woman to sleep with a man. I don't think that is very moral.

French and English cannot really be compared if they aren't both read in the original, I am afraid, because French prose in English seems rather clumsy and clunky, relative to the way it flows in French. The idiom seems completely different in accurate translations, and the inaccurate translations cannot be judged.

[jenmcd]

It has to be Ireland - Joyce, Beckett, Yeats, Kavanagh, O'Casey, Bernard Shaw.... I rest my case.

[thelastmelon]

It has to be Ireland - Joyce, Beckett, Yeats, Kavanagh, O'Casey, Bernard Shaw.... I rest my case.

If a list of a couple of great novelists is what it takes, then why not Sweden: Selma Lagerlöf, Vilhelm Moberg, Astrid Lindgren, August Strindberg, Per Lagerkvist, Hjalmar Söderberg, Karin Boye, Moa and Harry Martinsson...

I don't think it's possible to say that a certain country has produced "the greatest literature". I don't think it works to compare the authors and countries with one another.

[JBI]

It has to be Ireland - Joyce, Beckett, Yeats, Kavanagh, O'Casey, Bernard Shaw.... I rest my case.

You surely are joking.
Chaucer, Shakespeare, Hardy, Dickens, Wordsworth, Keats, Blake, Johnson, Jonson, Spenser, etc.

Irish literature, in the way that you portray it, seems to be a new phenomenon. The English tradition has stronger roots, and has, I would argue, a larger influence on modern (post-medieval) Irish letters than the Irish one. Either way, you missed Swift and Wilde.

[Geraint]

In the past, I disowned a lot of things American in favor of my husband's country, but that can't change the fact that I still am, and always will be, American. Same with Eliot and Pound. Americans all.

that's not remotely fair! Eliot became a British subject, dropped his American citizenship and became an Anglican. He also wrote some of his major works in London. This clearly shows him as culturally British. He cannot be damned as an American, when he put such effort into distancing himself from the USA.

[Simao]

Russian all the way. I read American lit and I really disliked it. I was dying of bordem trying to finish The Great Gatsby and I couldn't get through 30 pages of Mices and Men and I threw the book away. I liked a few American books though like Moby Dick and some of Dan Brown's (even though they aren't exactly books you would like to read twice). Maybe the problem is that there are too many love and romance novels which is really not my liking and that is why I liked russian lit more becasue even though there are stories of love but the conflict between the character and itself is so huge and broad that you might not even notice the minor love story in the book.
Let's just say that if you are on a deserted island, you would rather pick a few Russian novels with you rather than anything else.

[mortalterror]

that's not remotely fair! Eliot became a British subject, dropped his American citizenship and became an Anglican. He also wrote some of his major works in London. This clearly shows him as culturally British. He cannot be damned as an American, when he put such effort into distancing himself from the USA.

Einstein wasn't a Nazi, and he wound up in America, but I still think of him as German. Nabokov wasn't a bolshevik, but I still think of him as a Russian. What's important in determining nationality are people's formative experiences. Even when your body is in another country, your mind remains at home, and we retain certain relationships to the world, ways of thinking about objects or situations. Eliot doesn't move to Britain until he's 25 and by then, he's inescapably American. I think it's possible to claim dual citizenship, but to renounce your old associations is to divorce a part of yourself. Eliot doesn't stop being the person he was in the United States when he gains British citizenship. He rather adds something to himself. He becomes something extra. Personally, I think there's something very American about the way he chose to leave America. Beckett and Joyce chose to leave Ireland, and what's more Irish than that? Salmon Rushdie hasn't been to India in decades and he's still writing stories about his native land. Those childhood memories leave an indelible imprint that cannot be effaced by later experience. Neither a knighthood nor a new language can change the hand that holds the pen. Dante's town rejected him, Ovid's Rome forsook him, and they remained Roman and Florentine to the end.

...Horror and doubt distract
His troubled thoughts, and from the bottom stir
The Hell within him, for within him Hell
He brings, and round about him, nor from Hell
One step, no more than from himself, can fly
By change of place. -Paradise Lost, 4:18-23

If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast. -Ernest Hemingway

[Kafka's Crow]

Russian all the way. I read American lit and I really disliked it. I was dying of bordem trying to finish The Great Gatsby and I couldn't get through 30 pages of Mices and Men and I threw the book away. I liked a few American books though like Moby Dick and some of Dan Brown's (even though they aren't exactly books you would like to read twice). Maybe the problem is that there are too many love and romance novels which is really not my liking and that is why I liked russian lit more becasue even though there are stories of love but the conflict between the character and itself is so huge and broad that you might not even notice the minor love story in the book.
Let's just say that if you are on a deserted island, you would rather pick a few Russian novels with you rather than anything else.

Apart from the Dan Brown part I agree with almost everything in your post.

[Geraint]

Einstein wasn't a Nazi, and he wound up in America, but I still think of him as German. Nabokov wasn't a bolshevik, but I still think of him as a Russian.

Bolshevism and National Socialism were extreme political fads, over within a hundred years. The established church in Britain is almost half a millenium old, and fundemental to the culture. His decision to leave his American religion and join the British one is evidence of his decision
to divorce a part of [himself].


Personally, I think there's something very American about the way he chose to leave America. How is leaving isolationist America to live in Europe American?


Dante's town rejected him, Ovid's Rome forsook him, and they remained Roman and Florentine to the end.
Eliot rejected America. The situation is totally different.

In my mind, the true experience of travel is formative. The head leaves home and becomes -breifly- a part of the rest of the world. Moving is just an extension of this, a decison by the head never to go home:


If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast. -Ernest Hemingway

[PeterL]

Bolshevism and National Socialism were extreme political fads, over within a hundred years. The established church in Britain is almost half a millenium old, and fundemental to the culture. His decision to leave his American religion and join the British one is evidence of his decision

How is leaving isolationist America to live in Europe American?

Eliot rejected America. The situation is totally different.


Rebellion is a fundamental part of the American psyche; thus rejecting America is fundamentally American.

[mortalterror]

Bolshevism and National Socialism were extreme political fads, over within a hundred years. The established church in Britain is almost half a millenium old, and fundemental to the culture. His decision to leave his American religion and join the British one is evidence of his decision

So if he'd gone to London and become a Catholic, he'd be what: an Italian? If he'd become an atheist, would you strip him of his nationality? If he was an alcoholic does that make him a citizen of the world? We've got a lot of Jews in America but nobody considers them a fifth column for Israel. I don't see what the question of race, creed, or religion has to do with a person's national identity, but that might just be because I'm lucky enough to live in a country with religious freedom and tolerance.

If you want to argue what religion produced the greatest literature, then that's a different discussion. The question of a country's literary culture is a secular matter.

Over time, I suppose a person's sentiments may change. But they do not change over night, and I think that a conversion of national identity would take almost as many years living abroad as one has already piled up in one's native land. You make it sound like if any great novelist spent a weekend there on vacation you'd lay a claim to them. I'll split the difference with you. Eliot applies for British citizenship in 1927. That means Prufrock, The Wasteland, and The Hollow Men are all articles of American literature, and you guys can have full title to Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats free and clear.

[PeterL]

I have read most, if not all, of this thread, and there has been nothing that even approached being a definitive comment. There have been many assertions of opinions, but those were fundamentally about personal preferences. If someone prefers the Russian novels he has read to American novels that he has read, that means nothing more. That person might not like any Russian novels, except those that have already been read, and the converse is true for American novels. A much more useful exercise would be to determine what the best form of literature is, using only objectively verifiable criteria, then it would be possible to consider which examples of that form of literature were best.

[PeterL]

I agree with you, Peter. It's impossible to say which country produced the greatest literature. There is no definitive answer.

There will be when I become Emperor and command everyone to agree with me. :)

[PeterL]

But we haven't reached that time yet. ;)

Not quite yet.

[Geraint]

that might just be because I'm lucky enough to live in a country with religious freedom and tolerance. That was a bit rude. Are you american? I'm British.


I'll split the difference with you. Eliot applies for British citizenship in 1927. That means Prufrock, The Wasteland, and The Hollow Men are all articles of American literature, and you guys can have full title to Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats free and clear.
Done deal. Somewhere between The Hollow Men and Ash Wednesday Eliot becomes a Briton. So it was a British writer that received the Nobel Prize? ;)


Rebellion is a fundamental part of the American psyche; thus rejecting America is fundamentally American.
So, anyone born in America is inescapably American? They either follow American culture, or are fundementally American by rejecting it? Seems something of a catch 22.

Also, I do agree that the discussion is far too subjective, and so probably doesn't have an answer.

[JBI]

You're all fools who think Eliot British. His style is very American, and doesn't reflect the English tradition of the time at all, but rather reflects a post-Whitmanian American tradition. That's like calling Anne Hebert a French poet, and not French Canadian, or calling Joyce Swiss, or some other silliness. He was definitely not English, despite his trying. Even his religious views seem to be an American's, regardless of his critique of American religion. He, to me at least, didn't seem to get what European religion is all about.

[Simao]

A much more useful exercise would be to determine what the best form of literature is, using only objectively verifiable criteria, then it would be possible to consider which examples of that form of literature were best.

I don't think you can find a purely objective answer for this thread anyways that is why some of the people here including me returned to our subjective view over this issue. I mean it is virtually impossbile to tell which is better because after all it is a matter of taste and if you don't like a novel some else will. I mean seriously, it sounds easy in theory but impossible in practice to tell which type of lit is the best.

[jenmcd]

You surely are joking.
Chaucer, Shakespeare, Hardy, Dickens, Wordsworth, Keats, Blake, Johnson, Jonson, Spenser, etc.

Irish literature, in the way that you portray it, seems to be a new phenomenon. The English tradition has stronger roots, and has, I would argue, a larger influence on modern (post-medieval) Irish letters than the Irish one. Either way, you missed Swift and Wilde.

Of course Irish literature is a new phenomenon - when most of the writers you mention were alive Ireland was basically a peasant society colonised by the British. Also my list was not intended to be comprehensive. In addition to Wilde and Swift I could add Maria Edgeworth, Sheridan Le Fanu, Oliver Goldsmith, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Elizabeth Bowen, Brian Friel, Benedict Kiely, Mary Lavin, Bernard MacLaverty, Eugene McCabe, John McGahern, Edna O'Brien, Sean O'Faolain, Liam O'Flaherty, James Plunkett, Somerille and Ross, James Stephens, William Trevor, Colm Toibin, Sebastian Barry, Brendan Behan, Jennifer Johnston, Thomas Kilroy, Frank McGuinness, Synge, John Banville, Dermot Bolger, Kate O'Brien, Seamus Heaney...I'll stop before this gets boring but its not a bad list for a country of 4 million people on the edge of Europe. Of course the concept of 'literature' arose and was developed in the UK but I would argue that Irish writers have taken this and run with it like no other nationality in the 20th and 21st centuries. I also feel Irish writing and appreciation of writing is in a very healthy state today. Irish writers have won the booker in 2 of the last 3 years. Our theatres are not full of musicals and you would certainly never find a novel by Jordan at the top of our bestseller list.


You surely are joking.
Chaucer, Shakespeare, Hardy, Dickens, Wordsworth, Keats, Blake, Johnson, Jonson, Spenser, etc.

Irish literature, in the way that you portray it, seems to be a new phenomenon. The English tradition has stronger roots, and has, I would argue, a larger influence on modern (post-medieval) Irish letters than the Irish one. Either way, you missed Swift and Wilde.

Of course Irish literature is a new phenomenon - when most of the writers you mention were alive Ireland was basically a peasant society colonised by the British. Also my list was not intended to be comprehensive. In addition to Wilde and Swift I could add Maria Edgeworth, Sheridan Le Fanu, Oliver Goldsmith, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Elizabeth Bowen, Brian Friel, Benedict Kiely, Mary Lavin, Bernard MacLaverty, Eugene McCabe, John McGahern, Edna O'Brien, Sean O'Faolain, Liam O'Flaherty, James Plunkett, Somerville and Ross, James Stephens, William Trevor, Colm Toibin, Sebastian Barry, Brendan Behan, Jennifer Johnston, Thomas Kilroy, Frank McGuinness, Synge, John Banville, Dermot Bolger, Kate O'Brien, Seamus Heaney...I'll stop before this gets boring but its not a bad list for a country of 4 million people on the edge of Europe. Of course the concept of 'literature' arose and was developed in the UK but I would argue that Irish writers have taken this and run with it like no other nationality in the 20th and 21st centuries. I also feel Irish writing and appreciation of writing is in a very healthy state today. Irish writers have won the booker in 2 of the last 3 years. Our theatres are not full of musicals and you would certainly never find a novel by Jordan at the top of our bestseller list.

[PeterL]

So, anyone born in America is inescapably American? They either follow American culture, or are fundamentally American by rejecting it? Seems something of a catch 22.



If you were born as a human, you wouldn't expect to change that condition during your life, would you?


I don't think you can find a purely objective answer for this thread anyways that is why some of the people here including me returned to our subjective view over this issue. I mean it is virtually impossbile to tell which is better because after all it is a matter of taste and if you don't like a novel some else will. I mean seriously, it sounds easy in theory but impossible in practice to tell which type of lit is the best.

Personally, I do not believe that objectivity is possible.

[1n50mn14]

Objectivity is impossible, being human, but I'll give this my best shot:

In my own, PERSONAL view, I believe Britain has produced the MOST good quality writing. I don't beleive that means that the very best piece of literature ever written necessarily came from Britain- it simply means to me that the most (quantity, not quality) good quality literature came from there.

I'm really enjoying a lot of up and coming Canadian authors right now.

Really, you can't compare- nobody has read every work ever written from every country, people's tastes differ, and it's nearly impossible to compare works ranging from Neo Classical to the Modern and Alternative literature genres.

[mortalterror]

And I think that subjectivity is ridiculous. The people who espouse that retarded doctrine have almost nothing to contribute to the discussion. If you get hung up on the impossibility of proving anything, you never try to find out what can be known. If you stubbornly persist in thinking that you can't learn anything from comparing and contrasting your thoughts with other people, then you will never learn.

In questions such as these, the answer is unimportant. What is of paramount importance is that we grapple with the problems the questions raise to improve our understanding of the issues along with our own innate ability to reason critically. That subjectivist attitude, "Nothing is wholly knowable, or perfectly provable, so what's the point in asking questions" is counterproductive and ultimately defeatist.

While it may be arrogant to suggest that you have a better grasp of an issue or concept than another person, it is far more arrogant to suppose that just because a concept or problem is beyond you that no one could possibly have any relevant information which bears upon this topic. May I also suggest, that you bring the full powers of your subjectivist minds to bear on the concept of subjectivism and admit that in some cases, with reason and experience, something is knowable.

When somebody tells me that their opinion is subjective, what I interpret that to mean is that they are admitting their own incapacity to distinguish merit from flaw, reason from error, and truth from fiction. As an objective person, I have no choice but to weigh that consideration accordingly when I access their judgement. If your opinion does not stem from experience and careful analysis of texts, then you are right: people should take what you have to say lightly.

The minute that you submit to subjectivity, you number yourself among the stubbornly blind and the willfully ignorant. Stop your ears with wax. Draw blinders over every window. Let no light into that brain of yours and rest in darkness. Woe to you, for the opinions of the unteachable are no different from those who have never been taught.

[mortalterror]

Oh, Sweets, please. Don't use words like "retarded," okay? You don't need to. You're too intelligent and present too convincing an argument. I don't think I'm retarded nor do I think I've nothing to contribute to the conversation, however, I do believe in subjectivity - to a degree. Of course there are rules that govern good writing and someone who is aware of those rules can tell good writing from sloppy writing. In that way, writing is truly objective.

I apologize. That was a poor choice of words. I would never say that a person is retarded. I meant that the idea was retarded. Merriam-Webster defines the word as:

1. to slow up especially by preventing or hindering advance or accomplishment, impede
2. to delay academic progress by failure to promote.

I do see the prevalence of subjectivity as the reason why writing is still regarded as a craft and not as a science. It acts in a retrograde motion to the accumulation of facts and knowledge, because it assumes that there are no facts and knowledge to be accumulated. The way it's taught in schools is bizarre and pathological. When I see an educator, or some other intelligent person espouse this belief I want to scream.

The chain of thought that originated in skepticism begins, so I believe, in Socrates: a man who claimed that nothing was knowable, but who nevertheless was constantly engaging people with questions about what they knew. He used his skeptical inquiry not as a basis for shutting down argument as moderns so often do, not as an end of conversation, but as a starting point for minutely observing pre-concieved notions, and examining issues in greater detail than had been done previously.

Descartes, probably the father of our modern philosophy, after admitting that all he could know was that he was thinking uses that as a springboard to build an entirely new and unique philosophy, from which we derive, in part, the scientific method.

Scientists base all of their knowledge on theories and hypotheses because no idea is assumed ever to be proven. Even the most ancient scientific theories are open to testing, falsifiability, and peer review; but our cars still run, electricity heats our houses, gravity remains in effect.

Through the ages, the principles of good writing have been tested time and again, and I have no problem with a continued debate about their properties and how they work. What I have a problem with is when people declare some sort of hazy relativism to be a reason for silencing the debate and declaring other peoples opinions to be unfounded and without merit no matter what their qualifications.

Petrarch's Love is in the process of getting her Ph.D. in Renaissance literature. SaintLukesGuild and Virgil have each devoted decades to the study of books and writing. Who are these people to tell them that they have wasted their lives, chasing a dragon they can never catch?

[PeterL]

And I think that subjectivity is ridiculous. The people who espouse that retarded doctrine have almost nothing to contribute to the discussion. If you get hung up on the impossibility of proving anything, you never try to find out what can be known. If you stubbornly persist in thinking that you can't learn anything from comparing and contrasting your thoughts with other people, then you will never learn.

In questions such as these, the answer is unimportant. What is of paramount importance is that we grapple with the problems the questions raise to improve our understanding of the issues along with our own innate ability to reason critically. That subjectivist attitude, "Nothing is wholly knowable, or perfectly provable, so what's the point in asking questions" is counterproductive and ultimately defeatist.

While it may be arrogant to suggest that you have a better grasp of an issue or concept than another person, it is far more arrogant to suppose that just because a concept or problem is beyond you that no one could possibly have any relevant information which bears upon this topic. May I also suggest, that you bring the full powers of your subjectivist minds to bear on the concept of subjectivism and admit that in some cases, with reason and experience, something is knowable.

When somebody tells me that their opinion is subjective, what I interpret that to mean is that they are admitting their own incapacity to distinguish merit from flaw, reason from error, and truth from fiction. As an objective person, I have no choice but to weigh that consideration accordingly when I access their judgement. If your opinion does not stem from experience and careful analysis of texts, then you are right: people should take what you have to say lightly.

The minute that you submit to subjectivity, you number yourself among the stubbornly blind and the willfully ignorant. Stop your ears with wax. Draw blinders over every window. Let no light into that brain of yours and rest in darkness. Woe to you, for the opinions of the unteachable are no different from those who have never been taught.

Does all that mean that you expect you accept your opinions as objectively true?

If yes, then please prove the truth of your assertions.

[Inderjit Sanghe]

In terms of originality it is somewhat difficult to argue against France, especially in the last 150 or so years. Yes, England probably has the deepest literary culture out of any country-Shakespeare, Milton, Marlowe, Donne, Fielding and Sterne, but France has been the trailblazer in terms of literature for the last 150 years. Part of it is cultural-after all, English and American novelists were culturally very restricted in the 19th century. Tocqueville once quipped that America had no literature to speak of, though he wrote this not long before the emergence of Poe, Hawthorne, Melville, Emerson and Whitman. Though none of these authors, with the possible exception of Emerson and Hawthorne, ever really achieved widespread recognition during their lives in their own country. Poe was hugely influential in France and Russia; his works were revered by Baudelaire, the Parnissian's and Mallarmé and he also influenced Dostoevskii, but he was ridiculed in American literary circles, who regarded his popularity in France as being something of an aberration.

America has produced a lot of brilliant and original writers in the 20th century-Henry James, Baldwin, Heller, Salinger, Faulkner, Auster, Roth, Kerouac, Fitzgerald. But, yet again, a lot of these writes either migrated to France or Europe (Baldwin, James) were enormously influenced by French or European literature (Heller was influenced by Hašek and Dostoevskii, Kerouac by Proust and Rimbaud and Salinger by Buddhism) or were more popular in France than in America. (Faulkner) Many of America's greatest writers seem as or more influenced by the works of foreign writers than say French or English literature.

English literature, especially during the Victorian period, was extremely limited in terms of subject matter and content, unlike say the much 'freer' moral scope of French literature. One cannot imagine a Madame Bovary or a Verlaine in Victorian literature, which is full of clichéd and artificial happy endings-a criticism which Toltsoi made in Anna Karenina and too limited by the narrow moral mores of Victorian society and as result English literature was condemned to a century of literary banality, with a few bright sparks intermittently interspersed in-between. (Austen, George Elliot, Dickens, the Bronte's.) But the roots of English literature still run deep; writers such as Scott and romanticist poets were hugely influential on the continent, especially in the establishment of 19th century Russian literature Lermentov, Pushkin etc.

French literature however, constantly tries to reinvent and revolutionize literature. Flaubert can be considered as the father of modernity, Balzac of the city-novel, Baudelaire and Rimbaud transformed the romantic-centric view of literature, Proust transformed the art of writing and the Nouveau Roman the art of writing itself. Even Joyce's revolutionary stream-of-consciousness writing owes its influence to Dujardin. (Though Gide claimed it in fact originated from English language writers such as Poe and Browning.) France also boasts of a whole host of other brilliant and original writers and poets-Victor Hugo, Verlaine, Huysmans, Genet and Queneau, if you reckon in terms of quality rather than quantity, in originality rather than sheer numbers, then French literature comes out on top. Beckett, one of most original English language writers of all time, wrote most of his best work in French. Paris was and is the mecca for all great writers.

[JBI]

I don't argue the fact that Paris was once the mecca for all great writers, but I don't think it still is. I can't think of one truly great contemporary writer who chooses to live in Paris. Okay, yes, Milan Kundera.

There's Toni Morrison in the US
Doris Lessing in England
John Banville in Ireland
William Trevor in Dorset
Edna O'Brien in England
Jose Saramago in the Canary Islands (only because he had to flee Portugal)
Mario Vargas Llosa in London and Peru
Gabrielle Garcia Marquez still in Colombia, I think
etc, etc.

But not many in Paris, not anymore.

I'll be happy to say I'm wrong if you can list some, however, maybe you're talking about the past one hundred fifty years, not just living writers. In that case, I agree, they all seemed to flock to Paris.
The American poetry scene seems to have flocked more around London than Paris. You are merely thinking the lost generation of novelists. The majority of authors weren't so traveled, and even Joyce only settled in Paris later. Proust can be said to be in Paris, but so what? Proust never left his house anyway (there is an anecdote that he and Joyce both met at a party, neither having read each other's work. I find that funny). There is no literature capital, since every copy of a book is essentially as valuable as the next. With art work there needs to be a museum or collection somewhere, but with literature, there needs to be nothing but a volume in some store or library.

[tractatus]

Agreed to Antiquarian, as I know, Paris is not a mecca yet, at least for known writers. But not because of 'replaced' with another place, it is just the world no need any mecca for many reason. Again, there could be some centers for some arts, but hardly to turn into a temple as in old times.

[Seabird111]

I vote England.

[JBI]

Agreed to Antiquarian, as I know, Paris is not a mecca yet, at least for known writers. But not because of 'replaced' with another place, it is just the world no need any mecca for many reason. Again, there could be some centers for some arts, but hardly to turn into a temple as in old times.

Actually, artists still seem to move around. It is not sensible, or economical to create any form of exhibit or show in a small town, or unvisited area, therefore it is only common that artists will move to Urban areas. Theatre is still dependent upon this, as is education. Most writers these days are educated to some degree, therefore will naturally bunch together. You wonder about all the people who met at Harvard at the beginning of the 20th century. The greatest poets of their time, all in the same place. It isn't just astounding, it is ridiculous that they all were there, with each other. Then again, I don't think anyone could have taken any class with Ezra Pound without recognizing his eccentric genius. I have him on recording reciting one of his poems, and the guy was crazy as hell even from a young age.

Either way, no one city is better than the other. Paris was very big in the modernist movement, but one could flip to Florence, or Rome for older times. Even Troyes had a boatload in the middle ages.

[Brasil]

Hi, I'm from Brazil and this is my first message. I'm student and professor of portuguese grammar and literature. Sorry for my english.

From the beggining of the Literature.
Epic poems: The greeks have the ILIAD, which gave rise to the Odyssey, both Homer's poems. Latter, The Aeneid by Virgilio (latin poet) basicly followed the same way of Homer's write. Then, Luís de Camões, maybe the greatest portuguese poet, wrote OS LUSÍADAS (The Lusiads), inspired by Virgilio's poem. In addition, Camões was inspired also by the historical facts of the great navegations of the portuguese people, which discovered a new route to India. So, the greeks began the epic poetry and the literature as well. In addition, the old greeks were pioneers of the theatre and the lyric poetry. So, looking in this way, the greeks were the greatest, cause they started the literature as we know today.

However, is important to describe some other amazing books and names:

Ancient India: Mahabharata (specially the text called Bhagavad Gita)
Ancient Greece: Homer, Esquilo, Sofocles, Aristofones, Euripedes...
Ancient Rome: Aeneid, by Virgilio;
Italians: they have the DIVINE COMEDY, by Dante Alighieri (father of the italian language) and also Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374) father of the Sonetto (poem form);
Portuguese poets: Luís de Camões (Renaissance) and Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935) are two very important poets, not only for the portuguese people.
English theatre: William Shakespeare (most of specialists indicate Shapespeare as the greatest writer for theatre)
Spanish: DON QUIXOTE, by Miguel de Cervantes (most of specialists indicate this one as the greatest novel of all time);
Brazilian novelist: Machado de Assis (maybe the most important);
Brazilian poet: Carlos Drummond de Andrade (one of the most famous).

There are two criterion to answer the question:

Criterion 1- the number of persons which speak a language determine which is the most important literature in the world:

1º- Chinese (the mandarin is the greatest language spoken in the world);
2º- English;
3º- Spanish (Spain and most part of Latin America speak spanish, the 3ª most spoken language in the world);
4º- Hindi-urdu;
5º- Portuguese (Brazil, Portugal, Angola, Moçambique, Guiné-Bissau, Cabo Verde, East Timor, etc. Portuguese is the the 5ª most spoken language in the world))
6º- Arabian, Russian, Japanese, French.


Criterion 2- The number doesn't matter, really important is the acceptance and influence of the work in the world:

1°- The greeks, because they were the pioneers in lyric poetry (word sung), theatre (word played) and epics (word told);

2º- Spain (for Quixote by Cervantes), England (for Romeo and Juliet, and Hamlet by Shakespeare), Italy (for the Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri);

3º- Portugal (for the Lusiads by Camões and Os Maias by Eça de Queiroz); France (Rimbaud, Vitor Hugo, A. Dumas, Flaubert, Exupéry), Brazil (Machado de Assis, Paulo Coelho, C. Lispector, João Cabral de Melo Neto, Mário de Andrade, Carlos Drummond...)

4º- Russia (Dostoievski, Tolstoi);

5º- Germany (Goethe), Ireland (Oscar Wild), USA (E. Allan Poe), and the arabian stories.

6º- Chineses (Lao Tzu, Sun Tzu...) and Indians.

I've tried to indicate only the epic poetry and the novels. In this case I've not considerated the Philosophycal texts as Literature (althoug I love philosophy).

[Janine]

England and Russia seem to have been very prolific at producing literary works of great quality, but I don't think we can single any country out as "the best."

Antiquarian, I agree with you on your last line, how can one single out any country to be the 'best'?



My personal favorite is England, though I'm of Russian ancestry.

Like you my personal favorite is England, but that is just what appeals to me. I feel that their theater excells as well; but they can lay claim to Shakespeare. How can one top that?

Brasil, yes welcome to the forum, as Antiquarian so aptly expressed it - the place where "we literature junkies like to hang out"...nothing closer to the truth. Enjoy browsing around and getting to know the forum and it's nice members.

[JBI]

Brasil, you listed for major countries minor writers. Poe is hardly even a good thing to come out of America. He is more important to French letters, I would argue, than to American. Wilde is a great Irish writer, but Yeats would be a better pick. For America, Whitman is generally considered the kingpen, with Melville, Faulkner, Frost and Emily Dickinson coming close if not being offered up. Dumas and Hugo are also, hardly the best writers France has produced. Moliere, Montaigne, Proust, and Baudelaire most definitely should be in there.

Your knowledge of Chinese literature is perhaps the worst on the list, ranging to two minor non-fiction writers in their canon. Du Fu and Li Po are as powerful poets as any the west have cooked up, and should not be dismissed because of arrogance.

You also forgot Iraq, Which we could argue started literature with Gilgamesh.

Also, who forgot about Japan in there?

Or Canada?

Or any other country for that matter.

You completely disregarded the most important book outside the Greek canon ever written. Clearly the Hebrew Bible written in Canaan (now Israel) would be just as important as the Iliad. If we are going with influence, this clearly is equal to the whole Greek Canon.

Hell, one could argue almost any country, and prove it. All you have to do is believe certain works to be the best. If I think Steven King writes gold, I can argue America, since that leaves about 200 hastily written works by the "genius".

[JBI]

Also, Anti, don't forget that Rome was built in Italy, can we count it? If we can count Greece, can't we count Italy? Either way, no one called on Leopardi or Montale, two of the most important poets of all time. Not to mention Dino Campana, Ugo Foscolo, or Giuseppe Giocchino Belli to name a few.

[Brasil]

The Arabian stories: One Thousand and One Nights, The Adventure tale of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, Sinbad the Sailor.

Lebanon: Kahlil Gibran

Greece: Homer, Hesiodo, Esquilo, Sofocles, Aristofanes, Euripedes

Italy: Dante Alighieri, Petrarca, Horacio, Virgilio

Portugal: Luís de Camões, Eça de Queiroz, Fernando Pessoa

Spain: Miguel de Cervantes, Afonso el Sabio

France: Alexandre Dumas, Victor Hugo, Jules Verne, Voltaire, Molière, Rimbaud, Baudelaire

England: Shakespeare, William Blake, T. S. Eliot, George Orwell,

Russia: Dostoievski, Tolstoi

Brazil: Machado de Assis, Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Paulo Coelho, Monteiro Lobato, Jorge Amado, Vinicius de Moraes

Ireland: Oscar Wild, Bram Stoker

USA: Edgard Allan Poe, Mark Twain

Chile: Pablo Neruda

Germany: Goethe, the Grimm Brothers

South Africa: J. R.R. Tolkien

Japan: the HaiKai poems, specialy by Matsuo Basho

China: the philosophers (Lao Tzu, Sun Tzu, Confucius)

India: the book Mahabharata (specially the text called Bhagavad Gita)

Maybe, in the future, we can also include all the philosophers and the religion books as well.

[Brasil]

Maybe Tolkien was not a great writer, but surely his influence on cinema, popular music, cartoons, etc... is on thing to consider. The same thing we can say about Edgard Allan Poe and Mark Twain.

In the other hand, we have the wonderfull Miguel de Cervantes! Don Quixote is enough to put Spain in the top of the list.
The same thing I could say about the Divine Comedy by italian genious, Dante Alighieri.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry is a very influent figure until now, however there are a lot of better writers in the world, but they are not so influent as Exupery.

So, what is the criterion:
the quality of the work?
the global influence of the work?

There are rich books not very known and poor book very influents in the popular culture (things not always stay together)

And what about the Brazilian poets (Castro Alves, Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Vinicius de Moraes, João Cabral de Melo Neto, Manuel Bandeira) and novelists (Machado de Assis, Paulo Coelho, Monteiro Lobato, Jorge Amado)???
I hope someone know about them.
I know all the Brazilian writers are well known by the french people, the italians, russians... but I think the anglophonics don't know very much.

[JBI]

Poe's influence is exaggerated. Tolkien may be influential, but he isn't good. He simply isn't worthy of mention as a writer, since everything that he wrote is mediocre, and everything he influenced is mediocre for the most part. For Poe, he had more affect on French authors than he did at home, and compared to his contemporaries, had barely any.

Honestly though, the only remotely good thing Tolkien wrote was his criticism on Beowulf, which, in my opinion, was quite basic, and not even that great. It is worth reading, but it is not Nobel Prize material. His original work, is boring at best, unreadable at worst. His poetry, is just dreadful (even critics who like the book can't defend that).

I'm for quality of work as the criteria, but we cannot accurately judge unless we read in the original. Especially not poetry, which seems to be the dominant form up until 1880 or so.

[JBI]

By the way, the best Canadian writer (in terms of international critical acclaim) is Robertson Davies. The best Canadian poet (in my opinion anyway) is Anne Hebert, the French-Canadian lyric poet, who ranks (in my opinion) as high as any of her contemporaries from any other country. Mistery also can be considered Canadian, for India I think Tagore would be the obvious massive choice, in addition to their epic poets, and Salman Rushdie.

P.S. Anti, half the people you said are dead are alive, and half the ones you said are alive are dead.

[JBI]

Maybe Tolkien was not a great writer, but surely his influence on cinema, popular music, cartoons, etc... is on thing to consider. The same thing we can say about Edgard Allan Poe and Mark Twain.

In the other hand, we have the wonderfull Miguel de Cervantes! Don Quixote is enough to put Spain in the top of the list.
The same thing I could say about the Divine Comedy by italian genious, Dante Alighieri.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry is a very influent figure until now, however there are a lot of better writers in the world, but they are not so influent as Exupery.

So, what is the criterion:
the quality of the work?
the global influence of the work?

There are rich books not very known and poor book very influents in the popular culture (things not always stay together)

And what about the Brazilian poets (Castro Alves, Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Vinicius de Moraes, João Cabral de Melo Neto, Manuel Bandeira) and novelists (Machado de Assis, Paulo Coelho, Monteiro Lobato, Jorge Amado)???
I hope someone know about them.
I know all the Brazilian writers are well known by the french people, the italians, russians... but I think the anglophonics don't know very much.

Anglophones don't know much about literature from other countries. It's a shame really, but I guess in America and I know for certain in Canada, language learning is not a priority, like it is in other countries. I know in many European countries most people speak a verity of languages, here there is less emphasis unfortunately. And lets be honest, reading foreign literature in translation isn't much fun. Especially if it is poetry.

[Kafka's Crow]

When we mention other countries, and countries like Iran, India, the sub-continent etc, we realise how useless this thread actually is. These countries have bodies of 'literatures' in different regional and national languages, specially the sub-continent where cultural changes are so strong every few hundred miles that even languages transform into totally different languages, not just dialects. All these languages have their own bodies of literatures. You mentioned Tagore, his work is in Bangalese, a regional language though spoken by millions. Then there is the huge body of the category called 'Indian Literature in English.' A friend of mine has a whole library full of these works only and there are literally thousands of books in it. Starting from the great grand-sires of Indian literature in English language, RK Narayan and GV Desani the list of these writers is as long as any country could boast although the genre is hardly a hundred years old. Then there is the Indian diaspora and the Indian writers abroad, people like Mistry. Rushdie's writings show a huge influence of the sub-continent myths, tall-tales and fables. This is only one country. Most languages have great literary masterpieces but we can not appreciate them because of the linguistic constraints. Most of us can read only one language, i-e. English. Guess which literature is repeatedly labeled as the 'greatest'? Students and lovers of literature should know better than to throw around superlatives thoughtlessly.

[Brasil]

JBI,
yes, I agree with you. My knowledge about chinese literature is restrict to the philosophers. It's because I apreciate very much the oriental philosophy. Unfortunately, I still don't know the chinese poets.

Antiquarian,
I totally agree with your sugestions. I belive we still forgot someone in the list. It is hard to remember all the names.

JBI,
Here in Brazil people only speak Portuguese, there is not much focus in the study of foreign languages. However, some people apreciate to study languages. I speak english, italian, spanish and a little of french. That knowledge of languages doesn't help me in my job, but I have fun when I study languages and compare the gramatical structures.
I usually read a foreign novel in my natural language, portuguese. But when I want to read some foreign poetry, I try to find a bilingual edition. So, friendly, I say to you try the same.
How to compare two things if you still don't know second thing?


A little about Brazilian literature:

Castro Alves, the "poet of the slaves", was one of the first abolitionists in Brazil, on XIX century.

Machado de Assis founded the Brazilian Academy of Letters in 1896.

Vinicius de Moraes, poet and diplomat, best remembered for his words in Bossa Nova songs. The girl from Ipanema is just one of the Vinicius (poet) and Tom Jobim (musician) works.
Vinicius has books and several poems.

Paulo Coelho, the "wizard", is a Brazilian novelist. His books have appered on bestsellers list of UK, USA, Greece, Romania, Bulgaria, Russia, Cuba, Poland, Lithuania, France, Germany, Iran, Canada, Italy, Israel, Finland, Serbia. He is the all time best-selling Portuguese language author.
Madonna (singer) and Bill Clinton (ex-president) are fans of his work.

Thanks for all

[Inderjit Sanghe]

Tolkien may be influential, but he isn't good. He simply isn't worthy of mention as a writer, since everything that he wrote is mediocre, and everything he influenced is mediocre for the most part

I fail to see how Tolkien can be classified as 'mediocre'-he was one of the greatest and most important writers of the 20th century, it is also nice to see that you have so deftly categorized Tolkien's influence under the label 'mediocre' too.

As for his not being Noble Prize worthy-I guess I would I agree, it being a cesspit of mediocrities, of platitudinous writers and pseudo-philosophers and all of that nonsense

Poe, like Melville, was more influential outside of American than in it. That is the problem of American literature, not of Poe or Meville.

Kafka's Crow-yes India has produced a host of great writers, but there is still no truly great, revolutinary Indian writer, no Indian Joyce or Tolstoi.

[Brasil]

The Brazilian poet Carlos Drummond de Andrade (1902-1987) usually wrote his poems without rhymes and fixed forms. So, everyone can understand, does not need to be a speaker of the Portuguese language.

See the beautiful structure of the poem bellow (translated by me). It talks about the mismatch between lovers:

Quadrilha
John loved Teresa that loved Raimundo
that loved Maria that loved Joaquim that loved Lili
that loved no one.
John went to the United States, Teresa to the convent,
Raimundo died of disaster, Maria remained alone,
Joaquim comited suicide and Lili married J. Pinto Fernandes
that had not entered into the history.

Now, read the poem again from the last verse to the top, making the construction of the relationships between lovers. You're going to understand the determinism mechanicist at the poem:
Lili married J. Pinto Fernandes, consequently, Joaquim (who loved Lili) was desolated and comited suicide.
Maria (who loved Joaquim) remained alone, because Joaquim comited suicide and Raimundo (who loved Maria) died of disaster.
Teresa (who loved Raimundo) went to the convent because she remained with no lover (Raimundo died) and John (who loved Teresa) went to the USA.

Observation: The title of this poem refers to a popular dance in Brazil, which
consists in a constant change of partners (remember that the poem talk about mismatch between lovers).

P. S: The change of partners (is not at the sexual sense). It is just a constant moviment in the dance, there's no body contact, basicly just hands in hands. I said that just to discard misunderstood, cause unfortunately, some foreign people thinks brazilians are a sexual people.

Another detale at the poem: Everyone at this poem shows their first names, except Lili and J. Pinto Fernandes.
J. Pinto Fernades is the only person who has family name at the poem. Futhermore, he hides his first name. Why? It give us a clue that J. Pinto Fernandes is a powerful man, a influent person, with a powerful family name. When the poet says "J. Pinto Fernandes that had not entered into the history" he keenly indicated that Lili married Mr. Fernandes just because he is rich (social climbing, interest).
Everyone at this poem has real names (John, Teresa, Raimundo, Maria, Joaquim), but Lili is a codename (or nickname). Lili is not a real name (it's like Bill for William) so she hide her identity (in other words, Lili does not have courage to face life, to face people, so she married for social interest).

[Kafka's Crow]

I fail to see how Tolkien can be classified as 'mediocre'-he was one of the greatest and most important writers of the 20th century, it is also nice to see that you have so deftly categorized Tolkien's influence under the label 'mediocre' too.

As for his not being Noble Prize worthy-I guess I would I agree, it being a cesspit of mediocrities, of platitudinous writers and pseudo-philosophers and all of that nonsense

Poe, like Melville, was more influential outside of American than in it. That is the problem of American literature, not of Poe or Meville.

Kafka's Crow-yes India has produced a host of great writers, but there is still no truly great, revolutinary Indian writer, no Indian Joyce or Tolstoi.

The problem with Indian or Persian achievement lies in the main literary genre. Both nations have a huge number of great poets. Literature failing to take the commercial turn, which produced great novelists in Russia and the West, comprises mainly of great poetry. In last four centuries the greatest Indian poetry was written in Urdu, a language derived from Persian, Arabic, Hindi and Turkish. Like its mother-languages, Urdu is not easy to translate into any other language, specially English. Then there is the question of the various schools of Urdu poetry, Delhia and Lucknow being the two major schools. Then there is the post-partition flowering of this tradition in Pakistan and the continuous development of Urdu literature on the Indian side, specially in and around Delhi. You see, there are circles within circles. Cultures are not easy to label and nor are cultural manifestations in art and literature. Literature still being a very, very non-commercial, artisan activity in most of the world, we never come across best-seller writers as there is no marketing-machinery involved. People throw Tagore's name around, but he is just a drop in an ocean of creativity. India has a huge domestic market for books (bigger than China and the UK, second only to the US in terms of the number of books printed), a national best-seller is as good as an international bestseller elsewhere. Thus an absence of marketing and 'professional' writers, pure literary creativity mostly circling round verse and difficulty, complications involved in transferring poetic elements in a work from one language to another and a lack of a dynamic aspiration towards international stardom are few of the many, many factors that contribute towards having no Tolstoi or Joyce in India or other countries. Will Joyce still be Joyce if he is translated in, say, Tamil or Bengalese?

Poetry is notoriously difficult to translate. Firdausi's Shahnama or Epic of the Kings (in English you need three words to translate the single Persian word!) has many virtues that can not be transferred to any other language. It is about Persian history, about things purely Iranian. It is amazing that it has not a single Arabic word and the language is as purely Persian as one could imagine. Anybody who understands Persian would tell that many Arabic words made home in Persian language since the advent of Arab conquerors over 1300 years ago, so much so that 'pure' Persian stopped existing over a thousand years ago. How do you convey this main artistic aspect of a great work in English?

[mortalterror]

I think that Brasil mentioned something about how the country with the most people would logically have the best literature. On it's face, this looks like a safe assumption, but there are so many other factors that determine whether an artist will create a work of greatness.

You have to consider the number of people inside of each country with basic literacy, the capacity to either read or create such a work. Throughout most of history, literacy has been confined to the upper classes and certain countries had larger populations of upper classes than others. Also, we have to consider the prevalence of wealth in the world, specifically how it translates into education and leisure. If Dante were working 80 hours a week at a steel mill, he wouldn't have had the time to pen his Comedy. Lastly, I think you have to consider the publishing infrastructure of a country, the ability it has to make a profit for it's authors, and sustain them like any other natural resource. If Shakespeare couldn't sell his plays, then he would have gone into his father's glove making business. Society needs to support it's writers, either financially, or culturally in educational emphasis.

Even though America has a very high literacy rate, it is handicapped in two major ways. 1) It's educational and economic emphasis is on business, math, and science. 2) It does not have a long history from which to build on.

Likewise, any analysis of major literary trends would have to emphasize older more stable countries with longer more homogeneous languages. The average person might put 2 and 2 together and conclude that China has been a large semi-homogeneous state for longer than anywhere else, therefore it would be a reasonable assumption that they would have the greatest well of literature. However, three major concerns must be addressed before we award the prize to China. 1)China actually has three or more major languages. 2)China breaks up and reassembles itself every couple of hundred years. It gets invaded, say by the Mongols or the Japanese, and it's individual racial/cultural make-up changes. This happens all over the world. For instance , the people we now know as the Germans did not inhabit that patch of land they now hold until sometime after the Roman Empire fell. One must consider Diaspora and exodus, the scattering of the tribes and migration of people. 3) Thirdly, China does not begin writing longer works of literature until about 1300 for some reason. Their forms emphasized short works, and often restricted serious writers to poetry. When we compare world literature the tendency is to compare longer works, as more difficult and worthy of admiration. Taken this way, China's history of longer compositions is only about as long as any of the Romantic languages.

Then there's the question of India. How do you compare it's drama to that of Greece when their concept of tragedy does not exist until the modern period? One country is working in poetry at the time another's highest achievements are in the novel. It's only a recent phenomenon in our current globalized era that we have so much overlap. It might be more fruitful to compare modern literatures than ancient ones, especially when faced with societies that no longer exist.

[Brasil]

I'd like to ask anyone, which is the best translation:

translation 1 -
John loved Teresa that loved Raimundo
that loved Maria that loved Joaquim that loved Lili
that loved no one.

transtation 2 -
John loved Teresa who loved Raimundo
who loved Maria who loved Joaquim who loved Lili
who loved no one.

I intented to make it means:
John loved Teresa,
Teresa loved Raimundo,
Raimundo loved Maria,
Maria loved Joaquim,
Joaquim loved Lili,
Lili loved no one.

[Brasil]

Sorry, I have had problems in my posts. I could not delete.
I'll try to make no confusion next time.

Thanks

[Brasil]

The poem says "Lilli loved no one".

So, there is no doubt that she married for social climbing and money interest (see my post before to understand).

[Brasil]

Maybe "Lili" can be "Lilith", the rebel, the first woman, the symbol of fatal woman.
(see the Legend of Lilith on Kabbalah)

[JBI]

The second one. Refresh the page after you post to make sure you don't double post.

As for India not having a Tolstoi or Joyce, what do Tolstoi and Joyce represent? In both countries, the more central figure of national development in literature would be Pushkin for Russia, and Yeats for Ireland. India has far more writers, who influence Indian literature, than any other country (they have one of the oldest traditions, and one of the oldest cultures (albeit existing in various forms and languages).

As for longest, single, unchanging culture, Japan I would think is up there. They had the most solid government structure (despite outside aspects and ages) in the world. Their line of emperors is the longest, and their people are practically all from the same ethnic group. Should we count them?

Hell, we aren't even factoring in Indigenous north/central/south American letters into the equation. Inuit oral tradition and weaving pre-dates all these literatures. Do we count that? What about Cave scratchings?

Somehow the continent of Africa has alluded almost all mention. How much of their oral tradition can we count? If we can count Homer, can we count other oral poets' work?

[JBI]

I fail to see how Tolkien can be classified as 'mediocre'-he was one of the greatest and most important writers of the 20th century, it is also nice to see that you have so deftly categorized Tolkien's influence under the label 'mediocre' too.

As for his not being Noble Prize worthy-I guess I would I agree, it being a cesspit of mediocrities, of platitudinous writers and pseudo-philosophers and all of that nonsense

Poe, like Melville, was more influential outside of American than in it. That is the problem of American literature, not of Poe or Meville.

Kafka's Crow-yes India has produced a host of great writers, but there is still no truly great, revolutinary Indian writer, no Indian Joyce or Tolstoi.
How is Tolkien one of the most important writers of 20th century literature. His influence extends only to epic fantasy literature in the English speaking world primarily. He himself is hardly original, and only started to become the Tolkien we think we see now in the 60s and 70s because of his counter-culture themes. His career actually ebbed for a while throughout the 80s and 90s before the movies got launched. Compared with the influence of someone like Beckett, or Nabokov. I won't even get started with Faulkner, or Borges, both of which were 100x more influential. The problem with Tolkien is this whole Emperors New Clothes situation where people mistake it for a classic, and therefore don't tear into it. Lets be honest, the only thing it really influenced was Tolkienian knock-off fantasy, Tolkienian detracting fantasy, and the large dumping of mediocre movies into major cinema.

Poe's short stories seem to be his greatest achievement, which are alright, and lack originality, but his poetry can only be called meh. A meh achievement of American literature, which is so rich in poetic history that it disservices itself by constantly teaching Poe in classrooms. His best poems seem like a Shellean Byron. I knockoff of Shelly in the style of Byron. The result: a bunch of so-so simplistically rhyming, predictable, dull, horror pieces designed to scare children.

Melville was all but gone from literature until the 20th century resurgence. That still doesn't make him less important. He seems to still be one of the most important American writers, pushing at novelists like McCarthy, and Thomas Pynchon. Even so, his influence is small relative to other authors, but he still seems to be more enduring.


I would also like to toss into the mix a question: what if the poet is only valued within his country. I know many Italian poets even are read by the whole country, but hardly get read, except by scholars, outside of their borders. A good Example is Leopardi who seems to be unknown in the English speaking world, but is considered the best Lyric Poet before Montale in Italian, as is taught to all school-kids at the age of 17 as part of standard literary coverage.

[mortalterror]

I've tried to work this out mathematically. I figured that someone ought to try to model and quantify this debate somehow and lift it out of the realm of abstract speculation. I'm not totally happy with my results, because I lack hard data, and I feel I'm probably leaving something out; but I believe I'm on the right track here, trying to quantify certain variables and their relationships. Any criticism which could lead to a more accurate model would be appreciated.

Factors
1.Total population (# of people who have ever lived in the country) - rate of infant mortality
2.Percent Literate
3.Percent of literate that become writers
4.Percent of writers capable of creating masterpieces
5. # of Productive Years
5a)average lifespan
5b)-years to maturity
5c)-years of apprenticeship (learning the craft)
5d)rate of debilitating illnesses
6.Frequency of output, time per masterpiece
7.Chance of continued or universal relevance

P x L x W x M x Y x F x R = N or number of masterpieces

Let's say that a sample country has a population of 100 million, with 96% literacy, 1/1,000 people become writers, 1/10,000 writers produce masterpieces, each working at the top of their ability for a 20 year career, producing a single top level work every ten or so years, and then 1 out of every 5 masterpieces has an enduring significance for all of humanity. Then the probability that that country has created a masterpiece would be 3.84. That's 3 or 4 works of genius on the highest level of achievement.

However, for these numbers to work, we'd have to know just how many people have lived in a given country since it's foundation. This could be quantified through census data, as could the number of writers in that country, the life expectancy, and infant mortality rates. We'd have to take the average of life expectancy over time, the same as we would have to average the literacy rate which has taken a marked climb in recent years, but I do believe that such work is feasible, especially for estimating more recent trends as the data would be more accurate. Most of the hard data we'd require didn't start to get taken down until the late middle ages, but if we redefine our definition of a country that shouldn't cause too many problems. For instance one might say that after the Revolution France became a new nation under a new charter, constitution, and brand new form of government. We do the same thing when we consider the USA separately from it's founder Great Britain.

My estimated literacy rate of 96 percent is a little high for places outside of the first world. You can see a map of basic literacy around the world here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Literacy_rate_world.svg . In some parts of the world, literacy is still below 50 percent. I don't believe we should count oral history, or at least not in the same category as we do literary accomplishment. Partly because I don't know how such a thing could be quantified and tested.

Some other ways we might test world masterpieces is to see what people are actually reading. The U.S. and many other nations compile data about how many copies are printed of every book that gets published in their domain. We might consult all of the nations on record and see how many versions of Homer have been sold within each territory relative to Virgil. Popularity is one value, which is not to imply that it is the only criterion we should use for analysis. I'm open to any other ideas people might have as to how to go about this, but I think that the more useful ideas would be the verifiable, observable, demonstrable, and measurable ones. For instance, I've long thought that a lot of this debate could be satisfied by taking large groups of people into a lab and letting them read various books while hooked up to an EEG scanner.

[Brasil]

I did not intend to say "the biggest population in the world has the best literature".

But, maybe, the biggest population in the world has the biggest literature in numbers".

I know Brazil has bigger editorial market than Italy, for example. It means Brazil has more books, but not necessarily the best books.

As I said on my first post, I think the Greeks have the best literature. However, Dante, Shakespeare or Cervantes could be at the first place.

Again, what is the point: the number of books or the influence of the work?

[Erichtho]

Not to interrupt you all, but...



Again, what is the point?

Could someone please tell what it would mean if we really could give an exact answer, by using mortalterror's methods or any other...if we were to say: Iceland's literature stands above all, its literary body is definitely the best? Would it mean anything? Would it change our reading/writing customs? What would such a result cause?

I don't really see the sense of this thread other than showing-off and promoting one's own ignorance...

[PeterL]

Maybe the other way around: the fewest disagreements about the literature would be the best way to decide whence the best literature has come. For that reason, I nominate the Duchy of Grand Fenwick as the country that has produced the world's best literature, because no one has ever complained about the literature from there.

[JBI]

Made up countries don't count, sorry PeterL

[stlukesguild]

Kafka'sCrow... I don't know if I would lay the "problem" with a lot of Non-Western literature upon the genre, but rather upon the dearth of good translations. This, itself, is undoubtedly due to the fact that there are fewer western writers/translators of real ability who have elected to learn a language from Asia or the Middle-East or Africa as opposed to a second European language. This, undoubtedly, has both grown out of the Western attitude to Non-Western cultures and contributed to it. Personally, I have long been interested with the art and culture of the Asia and the Middle-East ever since first becoming enamored of the visual arts of those cultures. Certainly the ideal would be to master the language of any body of literature that one wishes to explore in greater depth... but unless one limits oneself to just a few cultures and languages then translation becomes a necessary evil. I have long been greatly inspired by Middle-Eastern art: Persian, Turkish, Moorish, Arabic, etc... but unfortunately there is a definite shortage of good (to say nothing of great) translations of even the most central texts. Only recently have we had the acclaimed new translation of the Shahnameh by Dick Davis which I have been reading while researching the stunning illuminated manuscripts which illustrated this epic poem. Certainly it will fall short of matching the original in almost every way... but then again the same could probably be said of the greatest translations of Dante into English, Shakespeare into Russian, or Cervantes into French. As I stated earlier, I can only hope that translations from Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Middle-Eastern languages become more common as their ties with the West become ever more important. Much of the nonsense spewed about the Middle-East as a result of the current war in Iraq reveals just how limited our concepts are of a very complex collection of cultures.

[JBI]

I'm with you StLukes. Perhaps the greatest living poet is Adunis, who comes from Syria.

[Brasil]

In anglophonic literature I also apreciate the Arthurians tales, not the facts, but the legend of Camelot and King Arthur. I love knight tales.

And what about H.G. Wells? What do you all think about his work?

[Inderjit Sanghe]

As for India not having a Tolstoi or Joyce, what do Tolstoi and Joyce represent? In both countries, the more central figure of national development in literature would be Pushkin for Russia, and Yeats for Ireland

I am not talking about 'representation'-if there is such a thing, I am talking about actual quality, India has not produced a novelist of the quality of Joyce or Tolstoi (as examples), it has not, in my opinion, produced a world-class, brilliant and original writers in the class of say Joyce or Tolstoi. The assetion that it has produced many fine writers, such as Rushdie, Anita Desai, Tagore, Rohinton Mistry and Vikram Chandra is true, but Indian culture on the whole is a vacuum which has produced few geniuses, with the exeption of Satajit Ray. Indian Cinema is abysmal (modern 'Bollywood' Indian cinema that is, not small-scale Indian indie flicks), Indian television is as banal as Indian cinema and its modern music scene is hardly great either.

The problem in talking about ancient 'Indian' culture is that there wasn't any. India is nothing but the arbitary agglomeration of colonial interests (as shown by the mess of it's current day politics) and it would be far better to talk about regional ancient Indian literary themes.


How is Tolkien one of the most important writers of 20th century literature. His influence extends only to epic fantasy literature in the English speaking world primarily. He himself is hardly original, and only started to become the Tolkien we think we see now in the 60s and 70s because of his counter-culture themes. His career actually ebbed for a while throughout the 80s and 90s before the movies got launched. Compared with the influence of someone like Beckett, or Nabokov. I won't even get started with Faulkner, or Borges, both of which were 100x more influential. The problem with Tolkien is this whole Emperors New Clothes situation where people mistake it for a classic, and therefore don't tear into it. Lets be honest, the only thing it really influenced was Tolkienian knock-off fantasy

I still don't understand how Tolkien is a 'mediocrity' apart from the usual tedentious yawn-inducing condescenions about fantasy etc. etc.

Tolkien was as original as any of the authors you quote-unless you are talking about his legendarium borrowing heavily on various Nordic myths. Tolkien is as brilliant writer as any of the above. Feel free to explain in more detail why you dislike him. As for the Emperors New Clothes analogy-it can be used for any classic book.

[Brasil]

I love Jostein Gaarder, from Norway.
Sophie's World is great!

[mortalterror]

If I had to name the most overrated writer ever, I would name James Joyce. Say what you want about Tolkien, at least his books are readable. People around here have as inflated an opinion about Joyce's Ulysses as the average person on the street has about Tolkien's Ring trilogy. They are both misguided in their judgements.

Don't get me wrong. Many years ago, when I read The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers, I thought they were poorly written and boring; but then the movies came out and I found that I actually enjoyed them quite a bit. I had to figure that there was something in the novels that I had missed the first time around and I raised my opinion accordingly.

I still had some misgivings about the plot and the conflict; so I mentioned them to a friend who was an enthusiast of the series and she put me straight. Sauron is not the antagonist. The ring is. Once I realized that the conflict was all internal, and that the books were about temptation, personal integrity, and that the the exterior conflicts were all manifestations of an inward turmoil, I had to give credit were credit was do. Tolkien had done some pretty fancy adaptations of a universal monomyth.

Now, I'm not saying that The Lord of the Rings is as good as it gets. Obviously, it does not deserve the same consideration as a Hamlet or a Divine Comedy, but I will acknowledge that it does deserve some minor place in the canon. I'd argue for including The Rings and removing Ulysses from academia at least. As smart as Joyce was, his stuff is all intellectual masturbation and inaccessible to a wide cross section of readers. That really has to be taken into consideration when deciding what is and is not a classic. Does the work have merit, and can it even be read without too much difficulty? Those are possibly the two most important questions when determining artistic worth. However much scholars and writers push to have his work enshrined, the common readers will have none of him and that will be that. When a book ceases to be read by the public at large, it loses it's vitality, and ceases to be a true classic. It becomes an eccentricity of a peculiar sect, a cultish icon that has no bearing on the society at large. Some of Ulysses is good but difficult. Most is simply difficult. It's a shame that a man with so much talent should throw it all away writing such indecipherable drivel. You look at Dubliners and it's perfectly comprehensible. But I'd place Yeats or Wilde above Joyce in a second if I had to choose the greatest Irish writer.

[Brasil]

"I like this book, he likes that..." it's not a reason for a war.
I don't mind if somebody says "Tolkien is a poor writer" or "Exupéry is just for children and misses".
I can apreciate all books, from all contries. Does not matter if it's famous or not, lyric or not, rich literature or not. The world would be boring if all books were always the same thing.

See this beaufiful text bellow:

If Sharks were Men

"If sharks were men, they would build enormous boxes in the ocean for the little fish, with all kinds of food inside, both vegetable and animal. They would take care that the boxes always had fresh water, and in general they would make all kinds of sanitary arrangements. If, for example, a little fish were to injure a fin, it would immediately be bandaged, so that it would not die and be lost to the sharks before its time. So that the little fish would not become melancholy, there would be big water festivals from time to time; because cheerful fish taste better than melancholy ones.

"There would, of course, also be schools in the big boxes. In these schools the little fish would learn how to swim into the sharks' jaws. They would need to know geography, for example, so that they could find the big sharks, who lie idly around somewhere. The principal subject would, of course, be the moral education of the little fish. They would be taught that it would be the best and most beautiful thing in the world if a little fish sacrificed itself cheerfully and that they all had to believe the sharks, especially when the latter said they were providing for a beautiful future. The little fish would be taught that this future is assured only if they learned obedience. The little fish had to beware of all base, materialist, egotistical and Marxist inclinations, and if one of their number betrayed such inclinations they had to report it to the sharks immediately.

"If sharks were men, they would, of course, also wage wars against one another, in order to conquer other fish boxes and other little fish. The wars would be waged by their own little fish. They would teach their little fish that there was an enormous difference between themselves and the little fish belonging to the other sharks. Little fish, they would announce, are well known to be mute, but they are silent in quite different languages and hence find it impossible to understand one another. Each little fish that, in a war, killed a couple of other little fish, enemy ones, silent in their own language, would have a little order made of seaweed pinned to it and be awarded the title of hero.

"If sharks were men, there would, of course, also be art. There would be beautiful pictures, in which the sharks' teeth would be portrayed in magnificent colors and their jaws as pure pleasure gardens, in which one could romp about splendidly. The theaters at the bottom of the sea would show heroic little fish swimming enthusiastically into the jaws of sharks, and the music would be so beautiful that to the accompaniment of its sounds, the orchestra leading the way, the little fish would stream dreamily into the sharks' jaws, lulled by the most agreeable thoughts.

"There would also be a religion, if sharks were men. It would preach that little fish only really begin to live properly in the sharks' stomachs.

"Furthermore, if sharks were men there would be an end to all little fish being equal, as is the case now. Some would be given important offices and be placed above the others. Those who were a little bigger would even be allowed to eat up the smaller ones. That would be altogether agreeable for the sharks, since they themselves would more often get bigger bites to eat. And the bigger little fish, occupying their posts, would ensure order among the little fish, become teachers, officers, engineers in box construction, etc.

"In short, if sharks were men, they would for the first time bring culture to the ocean."

Bertold Brecht

[PeterL]

Made up countries don't count, sorry PeterL

All countries are made up; none is a natural thing.

[JBI]

I am not talking about 'representation'-if there is such a thing, I am talking about actual quality, India has not produced a novelist of the quality of Joyce or Tolstoi (as examples), it has not, in my opinion, produced a world-class, brilliant and original writers in the class of say Joyce or Tolstoi. The assetion that it has produced many fine writers, such as Rushdie, Anita Desai, Tagore, Rohinton Mistry and Vikram Chandra is true, but Indian culture on the whole is a vacuum which has produced few geniuses, with the exeption of Satajit Ray. Indian Cinema is abysmal (modern 'Bollywood' Indian cinema that is, not small-scale Indian indie flicks), Indian television is as banal as Indian cinema and its modern music scene is hardly great either.

The problem in talking about ancient 'Indian' culture is that there wasn't any. India is nothing but the arbitary agglomeration of colonial interests (as shown by the mess of it's current day politics) and it would be far better to talk about regional ancient Indian literary themes.



I still don't understand how Tolkien is a 'mediocrity' apart from the usual tedentious yawn-inducing condescenions about fantasy etc. etc.

Tolkien was as original as any of the authors you quote-unless you are talking about his legendarium borrowing heavily on various Nordic myths. Tolkien is as brilliant writer as any of the above. Feel free to explain in more detail why you dislike him. As for the Emperors New Clothes analogy-it can be used for any classic book.

Original is what sense? Have you read his primary texts? in terms of originality it is best to contrast him with someone who drew from the same sources, the great Opera composer and librettist, Richard Wagner. Wagner's version is primarily about the conflict between the characters. He had borrowed more aspects of the plot from other sources than Tolkien had, but had created genuine characters, and believable conflict within his fantasy world. Wagner's Ring is character driven. Each character is a representation of his society, and the plot creates a commentary. Wagner's Wotan, compared to Gandalf is cruel, selfish, flawed, brutal, lecherous, violent, yet at the same time, shares the wisdom in common. He is far more believable than his Tolkienian equal in the sense that he has negative qualities, and personal flaws.

Tolkien on the other hand relied primarily on plot. His characters too are primarily borrowed, but his plot is more original (though in no way original). His prose is mimicking the texts he drew on as well, being both archaic and boring. His characters act according to the necessity of the plot, being where they have to be for the sake of everything working out. They have no personalities, and often stop at the most bazaar times to do the most predictable things.

If we take this even further, we can argue on the merits of Tolkien. He may have influence, but to what end? What exterior affect does he have, beyond the realm of fantasy literature? Did he advance prose to a new level the way Joyce did? no. Did he advance the genre of fantasy beyond where it had been before? many would answer yes, but since if you read his primary sources, you can see that he really created nothing that had not been done before, sometimes way before, we can only answer one way, No. Is reading him enjoyable? no, many readers, even fans, agree his prose is dreadful. His most favorable critics can in no way defend the verse he wrote (I am reluctant to call it poetry).


Tolkien is in no way even close to equal to his contemporary writers. Not by a long shot.

Either way, Tolstoi and Joyce were influential, but they were not central figures of a national literary movement. Joyce, though always writing about Ireland, was more away from there than there. Tolstoi had less of an affect than Pushkin (the fact that Pushkin seems his biggest influence, especially for the early works which he is most famous for, proves this). India's philosophy seems to have taken the west at many angles, even leading to the rise of free love during the 1960s. You are ignorant in the sense that you only look at novelists, and ignore poetry writers, and non-fiction writers.

[mortalterror]

Joyce didn't take English prose to a new level. He introduced certain fads and trickery into writing which don't actually make reading his books more enjoyable for all of their so called "originality". People like Hemingway and sometimes Faulkner took English prose to new levels in practical, reproducible ways, which Joyce's prose doesn't. Da Vinci might have envisioned the helicopter but it was the Wright brothers who actually got us off of the ground. Joyce is a pie in the sky intellectual who's more concerned with how he thinks prose should work than with how it actually does. To this day there are a lot more Hemingway and Faulkner followers than there are Joyces. They are the ones with living legacies.

[JBI]

Joyce didn't take English prose to a new level. He introduced certain fads and trickery into writing which don't actually make reading his books more enjoyable for all of their so called "originality". People like Hemingway and sometimes Faulkner took English prose to new levels in practical, reproducible ways, which Joyce's prose doesn't. Da Vinci might have envisioned the helicopter but it was the Wright brothers who actually got us off of the ground. Joyce is a pie in the sky intellectual who's more concerned with how he thinks prose should work than with how it actually does. To this day there are a lot more Hemingway and Faulkner followers than there are Joyces. They are the ones with living legacies.

Footnotes please. I would like to know exactly what backing in the reading of Joyce in context provided this outburst. Either way, just look at the influence of Joyce on Faulkner. Also, I would challenge the notion that Hemingway has had a bigger influence. Keep in mind that both Deconstruction, and many other schools of thought also evolved out of reading Joyce, not to mention the profound affect he had on people like Borges, Eco, and Woolf.

[Inderjit Sanghe]

.
Original is what sense? Have you read his primary texts? in terms of originality it is best to contrast him with someone who drew from the same sources, the great Opera composer and librettist, Richard Wagner. Wagner's version is primarily about the conflict between the characters. He had borrowed more aspects of the plot from other sources than Tolkien had, but had created genuine characters, and believable conflict within his fantasy world. Wagner's Ring is character driven. Each character is a representation of his society, and the plot creates a commentary. Wagner's Wotan, compared to Gandalf is cruel, selfish, flawed, brutal, lecherous, violent, yet at the same time, shares the wisdom in common. He is far more believable than his Tolkienian equal in the sense that he has negative qualities, and personal flaws.

As Tolkien said in relation to Wagner, a somewhat tenous link, the similarities start and end with the rotundity of the rings. :)

When you talk about 'genuine' and 'believable', I do not understand what you mean, such abstractions are merely parochial laws to reflect arbitrary definitions of character "believability"-taking to extremes, or even moderately, it leads to mediocre Maupaussant naturalism, realism and other such gash. So, according to your logic, so long as a character exhibits negative characteristics then he becomes what you would call "realistic"-a ridiculous, Dostoevskiaan form of characterisation.

To say that Gandalf does not have what you would call "personal flaws" also denotes a clumsy reading of the text. He is, or can be, grumpy and sharp-tongued-yes he does not commit mass rapes like every literary character seemingly should do, but he not without his flaws of judgement (in relation to Saruman) and of action. He is, by the way, the wisest character in the Lord of the Rings, so that would go someway in explaining why he is so "good" morally. He is no less believable than say, Charles Bovary or Leopold Bloom, sexual idiosyncrasies aside

The contention that Wagner is able to create a character which "represents society" is equally banal-how can an abstractive work of art, create characters who, magically, represent a whole group of people? Art is art and life is life, classifying people or races via art is a ridiculous way of looking at things.
Works which rely on 'great ideas', the cant of Kant etc. are often tendentious and platitudinous in the extreme.


Tolkien on the other hand relied primarily on plot.

So?


His characters too are primarily borrowed, but his plot is more original (though in no way original).

:lol:

Even when Tolkien is original he is not original? Fantastic!


His prose is mimicking the texts he drew on as well, being both archaic and boring.

Archaic-yes, boring-thay is your own opinion. As for mimicking texts-does Joyce not do that for a large part of Ulysses? Flaubert, Ibsen, sports journalism, romance novels etc. Joyce's pastiches are parodic but that does not take away from the fact that many of the greatest writers write in a similar way to predecessors and contemporaneous writers, Katherine Mansfield mimics Chekov but that doesn't make her short stories any less brilliant.


They have no personalities, and often stop at the most bazaar times to do the most predictable things.

Thank your for informing me about the proliferation of Turkish markets in Middle-Earth a fact which I was hitherto unaware of.


They do have personalities actually, multi-faceted ones, they are there is you read them close enough. Frodo fails in his quest, Boromir tries to steal the ring, Sam and all other hobbits are by and large ignorant and narrow-minded, though essentially charming, Saruman falls, the two main heroic 'races' in Tolkien's myth, the Numenoreans and the Noldor, were both arrogant. (their greatest strength and weakness)

The men in Middle-Earth are no more or less realistic or true-to-life than any characters in other novels, or, as Tolkien said, they do not represent anything which men cannot and do not aspire to in the "real world". It is no more or less realistic than say the perpetual eruditity of Stephen Dedalaus.

Tolkien is a very good writer, a very good describer, especially of nature; some of his passages are magnificently beautiful, LoTR is interspersed with passages of aesthetic beauty.


Did he advance the genre of fantasy beyond where it had been before? many would answer yes, but since if you read his primary sources, you can see that he really created nothing that had not been done before, sometimes way before, we can only answer one way, No

He pretty much created the modern fantasy lit. movement, yes he was influenced by "older legends" but he was able to rework them to his own ends-just as Joyce was able to rework Dujardin's concepts in Ulysses-to say that he created nothing original is to reduce novels to the bunkum of great ideas, in which case what did Joyce create, being uninterested in them?

He created a new way of writing and describing worlds of inventing races and characters and languages. Tolkien was brilliant linguist and fictional creator-his oeuvre contained a variety of new languages, of races, states and history. Tolkien created an entire world in that mediocre brain of his.


no, many readers, even fans, agree his prose is dreadful

Oh please. I never knew fans enjoy reading terribly written books. Tolkien was a philologist and had a fine prose style.

[Inderjit Sanghe]

Either way, Tolstoi and Joyce were influential, but they were not central figures of a national literary movement. Joyce, though always writing about Ireland, was more away from there than there. Tolstoi had less of an affect than Pushkin

Of course Pushkin was more influential than Tolstoi-he was at the forefront of the Russian literary movement. Pushkin is a brilliant poet, he was famous more for his verses than his prose, and he was enormously influential to both contempary writers and poets (Lermentov and Gogol) and great Russian poets and writers further down the line-Dostoevskii, Tolstoi, Nabokov, Block, Mandelstam and the rest, but I still think Tolstoi is the superior artist, as well as being more "Russian" than Pushkin who was influence by non-Russian writers such as Scott and Byron. Tolstoi's ability to create a 'Russian novel', so to speak, owed much to Pushkin's influence and creation of Russian literature. (He was far more 'Russian' than say Turgenev or Dostoevskii, howevermuch the latter derided European influences.)


People like Hemingway and sometimes Faulkner took English prose to new levels in practical, reproducible ways, which Joyce's prose doesn't. Da Vinci might have envisioned the helicopter but it was the Wright brothers who actually got us off of the ground. Joyce is a pie in the sky intellectual who's more concerned with how he thinks prose should work than with how it actually does. To this day there are a lot more Hemingway and Faulkner followers than there are Joyces. They are the ones with living legacies.


Hemingway, though a great short story writer, was not much of a novelist. To compare him, or Faulkner, to Joyce is like creating a tennis amauter to a Grand Slam champion-Joyce's prose is inventive, brilliant and outstanding, more so than Hemingway or Faulkner.

His stream-of-consciousness and interior monologue techniques, although borrowed, revolutionzed literature and how characters were supposed to think and speak. In terms of novelistic influence it would be difficult to look beyond Tolstoi, Flaubert and Proust in terms of more influential novelists.


India's philosophy seems to have taken the west at many angles, even leading to the rise of free love during the 1960s. You are ignorant in the sense that you only look at novelists, and ignore poetry writers, and non-fiction writers.

Associating 'free love' with a sexually conservative country like Indian is tenous. Yes Indian philosophy influenced Western European thought (i.e. Schopenhaeur) and the kama sutra, but neither of those trains of thought are actually relevant in modern India, and besides anything else labelling such things as "Indian" is a misnomer since 'India' as a nation-state is a modern creation-there was no India when they were written, like there was an England when Shakespeare or Chaucer wrote. India preached a lot of wisdom, though it rarely practices it-it is a Western myth to believe that it does-Pankaj Mishra's "The Romantics" hilariously satircizes Western misconceptions of India.

Yes I am only dealing with fiction as this is a discussion on literature.

[JBI]

Look. Each character in Lord of the Rings is no different than in the beginning of the novel. The whole plot is a quest to become nothing. It is circular, ending where it began, with the only thing that happens is that some characters die. Comparing Joyce's Leopold Bloom to Gandalf is ridiculous. Gandalf always shows up when you expect him to be the least expected (he shows up when he is least expected so often, that he creates a loop of expectation). Knows everything about everything, and yet does nothing. His flaws go as far as to forcing him to save the day. He is less round than even a Dumbledore. He is not a character, but simply a walking textbook, who happens to have useless magic to throw into the mix, which never seems to save the day.

The whole "the similarities and differences end with both rings being round" argument was used by Tolkien to dissuade comparison between the two works. Everyone can see exactly where Tolkien grabbed from, if they have read the primary sources (I would love to know which ones you have read, in order to better understand what sort of argument you can possibly be creating). Having read the primary sources, you can easily nitpick exactly who and what everything in Tolkien is. I would love for you to give me an example of exactly why Tolkien should a) be read, when more people find him boring than not, and his fan base is solidly built on the rare exception of people, who only read within one genre. Give Tolkien to an adult who read him in his/her youth, and I would love to see the results. His prose, even you admit is terrible. He stated there are no lessons in his books, and no form of allegorical connection with our world. His characters are flat by any standards (perhaps Wagner's are also flat, but a) they have more emotions, and b) they grow) and his plot was borrowed. What does he have to offer? Why does he deserve to be read? What does anyone get from reading Tolkien besides a) bordom, or b) escape from reality, which is not the purpose of literature.

and off the record, yes, more people desire to read Maupassant's characters than Tolkien's. The reason why is because they are characters, and not cut-outs. You betray your lack of knowledge of him by naming him a naturalist, when he clearly wasn't even consistently realist. (many of his works rely on fantastical and spiritual elements).

Leopold Bloom is a far more developed character than Gandalf. There is no doubt in that, simply because we know his thoughts, we know he varys, we know he has inconsistent views, we know he likes certain things, and hypocritically doesn't like others. We even know his dietary desires. What we know about Gandalf, is that he occasionally scorns the boys, has an indefinite amount of knowledge, which never seems to do anything, and likes to smoke a pipe.

Charles Bovary too is very developed in comparison. His character has roots, his actions always seem justified, and yet the justifications are just implied, and his character changes, and reacts. You don't get that in Gandalf.

Did you even read the books? To me it seems like you are just a movie fan, who read a Wiki summary and thinks he knows the secrets. Anyone who has read the books, and other books by his contemporaries, can clearly see his prose is rubbish. Archaic borrowing cannot be justified by the fact that others borrow styles. The book is archaic, because Tolkien had some fantasy in his head of being one of his dead authors, and writing in their language. It adds nothing but boredom, and it serves no purpose other than to try and make an unauthentic book seem authentic. If we compare it to, lets say, Eco's language in The Name of the Rose, that he mixes with Latin, and other Vernacular, we can see who clearly knows the use of language. Tolkien's language is boring, his poetry terrible, and his detail over-done. He provides family trees where names will do, and insists on describing every detail of something before moving on. Why should he be read? You tell me.

[JBI]

Faulkner, in terms of readability, is definitely the best of those all. Most of Hemingway's works are already period pieces, or on the road to become them. Joyce simply didn't write enough to outdo Faulkner though, but he is still quite important, and an excellent writer. People just don't seem to get that just because they don't like a book, doesn't mean it is a bad book. I personally don't like many novels which I rate highly. My personal aesthetic has nothing to do with the quality of the work, but rather it has to do with what I read.

[Niamh]

If I had to name the most overrated writer ever, I would name James Joyce. Say what you want about Tolkien, at least his books are readable. People around here have as inflated an opinion about Joyce's Ulysses as the average person on the street has about Tolkien's Ring trilogy. They are both misguided in their judgements.

Don't get me wrong. Many years ago, when I read The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers, I thought they were poorly written and boring; but then the movies came out and I found that I actually enjoyed them quite a bit. I had to figure that there was something in the novels that I had missed the first time around and I raised my opinion accordingly.

I still had some misgivings about the plot and the conflict; so I mentioned them to a friend who was an enthusiast of the series and she put me straight. Sauron is not the antagonist. The ring is. Once I realized that the conflict was all internal, and that the books were about temptation, personal integrity, and that the the exterior conflicts were all manifestations of an inward turmoil, I had to give credit were credit was do. Tolkien had done some pretty fancy adaptations of a universal monomyth.

Now, I'm not saying that The Lord of the Rings is as good as it gets. Obviously, it does not deserve the same consideration as a Hamlet or a Divine Comedy, but I will acknowledge that it does deserve some minor place in the canon. I'd argue for including The Rings and removing Ulysses from academia at least. As smart as Joyce was, his stuff is all intellectual masturbation and inaccessible to a wide cross section of readers. That really has to be taken into consideration when deciding what is and is not a classic. Does the work have merit, and can it even be read without too much difficulty? Those are possibly the two most important questions when determining artistic worth. However much scholars and writers push to have his work enshrined, the common readers will have none of him and that will be that. When a book ceases to be read by the public at large, it loses it's vitality, and ceases to be a true classic. It becomes an eccentricity of a peculiar sect, a cultish icon that has no bearing on the society at large. Some of Ulysses is good but difficult. Most is simply difficult. It's a shame that a man with so much talent should throw it all away writing such indecipherable drivel. You look at Dubliners and it's perfectly comprehensible. But I'd place Yeats or Wilde above Joyce in a second if I had to choose the greatest Irish writer.

Well said.

[Kafka's Crow]

Literature is both objective and subjective. Of course some writers are better than others. However, I think Joyce, Hemingway, and Faulkner can all be placed on the same level. Personally, I don't like Hemingway, but he's still a great writer. I do like Faulkner and Joyce, and I really don't see that Joyce's prose is any more inventive or original than Faulkner's. Or even Hemingway's, for that matter. Sure, I don't like him, but that's the subjective part. Objectively, he was a superlative writer.

Blasphemy pure and simple. You can not name any novelist in the same breath as Joyce, objectively, that is. Subjectivity is your personal affair and doesn't mean much in the outside world. There is only one Joyce, there was Proust before him and Beckett after, nothing else is!

[Kafka's Crow]

What I like in Joyce is his command of language. It melts in his hands, he is a wordsmith, so is Beckett. They can make simple words do wonders and be creative and inventive if simple language fails. This is taking language beyond itself, putting it under so much creative pressure that it transforms. These writers are for listening to, get a good audio book version, something from Nestor Audio Books. BBC serialised an excellent reading of Ulysses as well. I have these gems in my huge collection:

http://www.naxosaudiobooks.com/northamerica/30912.htm

http://www.naxosaudiobooks.com/northamerica/729212.htm

http://www.naxosaudiobooks.com/northamerica/25312.htm

A good reader brings out the quality of language. These books are for reading aloud and listening to. I think Cyril Cusack is the best audiobook Hamlet ever and he is the best Stephen Daedalus as well:
http://www.amazon.com/James-Joyce-Audio-Collection/dp/1559946091

For BBC Ulysses:
http://www.amazon.com/Ulysses-BBC-Radio-Presents/dp/0553471635

[JBI]

Objectivity is not the word, since everything objective is useless. Things only become useful when they become subjective. (note, I stole this from Descartes) There needs to be a degree of subjectivity, but the subjectivity must vary from personal aesthetic to all other interpretations. It is not enough to just provide your view on a work, you must look for other views, and then attack every view from every thinkable angle to create a general consensus.

[JCamilo]

While I think Joyce fullfilled the Romance in levels that no one else even got close to it, I would not put him to fight with Faulkner about who produced better books. Shakespeare was amazing but a few writers produced better tests than him, Dom Quixote is nowhere perfect but who knows...

Anyways, Tolkien is a good writer my opinion. His best book is not Lord of the Rings, but Silmarillion. His merit is writing an epic - when the age of epics was supposed to be dead - in prose. He used geography and language (the fictional one he created) like few others. But that is all. His characters are indeed static (I would argument that in epic narrative characters are walking steryotipes like Tolkien's) and he showed a limited domain of narrative techniques even being a intelectual guy that dominated as schoolar all of those.
Joyce??? Geez, tricks and tiques, the guy was a walking master of literature - knowledge, references, languages and techniques put together in two ambitious (and sucessful) books. Not easier to be copied but Finnegans Wake is a shadow that covered all romancists after him. Plus, just like the Comedia, it is was just Good. Simple as that.

[JBI]

IF you knew anything about epics, as a genre, you would not have posted that. The Lord of The Rings is not an epic. It doesn't even come close to being an epic.

[Kafka's Crow]

Lord of the Rings is a fantasy and a series of famous movies (a book for "I have seen the movie"-type of folks). I can't stand fantasy literature and I think we have a separate forum for this kind of writing. I have read The Hobbit though, excellent stuff for children.

[JBI]

Fantasy as a concept isn't bad. In practice however, it suffers from lack of creativity, mediocre writing, and cliché plots/characters. It seems to be in league with most of the other major genres, in the sense that they have set up such definite genre borders that they are having trouble/are not desiring to tear them down. Fantasy is still a selling power, however, which will probably bring about a couple good authors writing in it. Le Guin is readable, that for sure, as is Roger Zelazny. The problem is however, all those thick 1000 page 10 book series "epics" that tell nothing, and waste trees.

In terms of google fights, I was playing around, and nothing seems to even phase American literature in terms of hits. That, of course, is fun, but means absolutely nothing.

[_Shannon_]

By Britain do you mean England? I mean, I don't know about you, but I can't think of any particularly great or heroic Welsh, Northern Irish or even Scottish novelists.

.

What about RL Stevenson or Sir Walter Scott? Or Dylan Thomas or Robert Burns? :confused:

[Kafka's Crow]

CS Lewis was from Northern Ireland.

[JBI]

CS Lewis was from Northern Ireland.

He wasn't a good author though. Pseudo-Christian allegory with somewhat privative morals, and misogynist themes.

[JBI]

Wales has produced, also, many fine poets writing in the original. Unfortunately, Welsh doesn't translate well at all.

[Kafka's Crow]

He wasn't a good author though. Pseudo-Christian allegory with somewhat privative morals, and misogynist themes.

Oh how very Shakespearean! For one minute I thought you were talking about TS Eliot! Any way, I haven't got much love for Lewis although I respect his erudition and try to ignore his Christian bias because it tends to offend my atheistic bias. Such clashes scare critical judgment away. I have heard the movie was blatantly Christian. Apparently its sequence, Prince Caspian will be out later this week. My boy read the whole Narnia series when he was 7. It was strange seeing him sitting down reading the huge mammoth of a book.

[Kafka's Crow]

Wales has produced, also, many fine poets writing in the original. Unfortunately, Welsh doesn't translate well at all.

Dylan Thomas was Welsh, though he wrote in English.

[Inderjit Sanghe]

Look. Each character in Lord of the Rings is no different than in the beginning of the novel

Actually no they are not. Your inept reading of the text is your problem, not a problem of the text itself. The four hobbits-Frodo, Merry, Pippin and Sam all change during the novel-they "grow up", so to speak, become wiser away from their 'ignorant' hobbit roots.


Knows everything about everything, and yet does nothing. His flaws go as far as to forcing him to save the day. He is less round than even a Dumbledore. He is not a character, but simply a walking textbook, who happens to have useless magic to throw into the mix, which never seems to save the day.[QUOTE]

Again your reading is ignorant-Gandalf does not know everything about anything, he was essentially a Angelic spirit spent to Middle-Earth to help them battle against Sauron, in becoming 'humanized' he lost a great deal of his prior foresight and powers. As for him "doing nothing"-that is his role, to help and guide not to coerce, to understand minds and not to dominate them, that is his personality. He was sent to offer the inhabitants of Middle-Earth guidance, not to make their choices for them. As for him being 'useless' it is untrue-he kills the Balrog and drives away the Nazgul on several occasions.

[QUOTE]The whole "the similarities and differences end with both rings being round" argument was used by Tolkien to dissuade comparison between the two works. Everyone can see exactly where Tolkien grabbed from, if they have read the primary sources (I would love to know which ones you have read, in order to better understand what sort of argument you can possibly be creating). Having read the primary sources, you can easily nitpick exactly who and what everything in Tolkien is

I haven't read them. Or heard Wagner. Reducing authors to their 'primary sources' is a narrow-minded way of approaching literature.


Give Tolkien to an adult who read him in his/her youth, and I would love to see the results. His prose, even you admit is terrible.

Oh, ho, ho, such witty casuistry. Putting words that don't exist into my own mouth! Great work there. I said his style could be considered archaic and said that if you found his prose boring then that was your opinion.


[stated there are no lessons in his books, and no form of allegorical connection with our world/QUOTE]

That is because essentially there are no lessons in books. What lessons do you seek exactly? Art is art and life is life, books with 'lessons'-existentialism blah blah etc. etc. are so tendentious that is an effort to get through them. Allegory is another banality in literature, another insidious form of propaganda used by myopic Naturalists, Realists and other such trash.

[QUOTE]) escape from reality, which is not the purpose of literature

All great books, as Nabokov stated, are fairy tales, literature in essence is an 'escape from reality', to say that literature can only be what your parochially define it as being is just plain silly.


Leopold Bloom is a far more developed character than Gandalf. There is no doubt in that, simply because we know his thoughts, we know he varys, we know he has inconsistent views, we know he likes certain things, and hypocritically doesn't like others. We even know his dietary desires. What we know about Gandalf, is that he occasionally scorns the boys, has an indefinite amount of knowledge, which never seems to do anything, and likes to smoke a pipe.


Charles Bovary too is very developed in comparison. His character has roots, his actions always seem justified, and yet the justifications are just implied, and his character changes, and reacts. You don't get that in Gandalf

I think that you have a problem with reading what other people write. I said he is no less 'believable' as a character. Yes we do get to hear the thoughts of Bloom and Flaubert, but that is a case of the specific writers style than anything. How is hearing about how Bloom likes liver any different from hearing that Gandalf likes a smoke, a 'dietary habit' of Gandalf. Yes, Joyce is essentially a better writer than Tolkien, his language and syntax is far beyond any other English language writer that is Joyce's main strength.

In relation to your point you claimed that Gandalf is less believable than the Wagnerian character because he was "good"-I point out that in all essence characters such as Bloom and Charles Bovary are also "good" characters who, by your definition are unrealistic, that by your logic we should have in the place of the incompetent Charles, a angry husband seeking vengeance, rather than telling Rodolpe that he forgives him. I am not saying that a jealous husband is any more 'realistic' than a non-jealous one, I am using your logic to show that it is flawed in terms of interpreting characters.

Gandalf's justification lies in his own personality and his own mission, he was a guide, he helped people make their decision-he certainly did not have an infinite supply of knowledge.


Did you even read the books? To me it seems like you are just a movie fan, who read a Wiki summary and thinks he knows the secrets.

Wow-first I am somehow ignorant of Indian culture and now I am hack reader. Thanks. To me you are narrow-minded and arrogant, but that doesn't matter I forgive you.


He provides family trees where names will do, and insists on describing every detail of something before moving on

I thought Tolkien doesn't go into any detail? What is wrong with going into detail? Wasn't it a good thing that we hear about Bloom's dietary habits?


Why should he be read? You tell me.

Your reading problems are now reaching monumental levels. I already explained in a paragraph in my previous post why he deserves to be read. He writes beautifully, yes he writes 'archaically', but I do not find that as aesthetically displeasing as you do. That is life, opinions are like asses, everybody has one, though Tolkien does not have by any means an abysmal writing style. His descriptions of nature are beautiful, he has many 'profound' moments in his novel (in terms of philosophy), his characters are not as static as you would assume, especially in the 'Silmarillion', which contains, in my opinion, some of the most interesting characters in fiction and his creation of a whole new world is magnificent. The ending of LoTR was, for me, one of the most touching moments in literature. LoTR is by no means medicore in terms of language or theme, or those short passages with illimunate a book.

Tolkien deals with many important issues in relation to life, if that is what turns you on. His thoughts on power and on death, the main theme of the book, on the power of love, are profound.


[Anyone who has read the books, and other books by his contemporaries, can clearly see his prose is rubbish./QUOTE]

Clearly. And it keeps topping lists of 'Greatest Book of All Time' because....

[QUOTE]Oh how very Shakespearean! For one minute I thought you were talking about TS Eliot!

:lol:

Speaking of Shakespeare, did you hear about that the students from a Jewish school who refused to read him because they felt he was anti-semitic? Honestly, you couldn't make it up....

[Inderjit Sanghe]

What I like in Joyce is his command of language. It melts in his hands, he is a wordsmith, so is Beckett. They can make simple words do wonders and be creative and inventive if simple language fails. This is taking language beyond itself, putting it under so much creative pressure that it transforms. These writers are for listening to, get a good audio book version, something from Nestor Audio Books. BBC serialised an excellent reading of Ulysses as well. I have these gems in my huge collection

Well said. Ulysses is an absolutely brilliant book, far better than anthing Faulkner ever wrote. I don't have much time for Faulkner, I have never been able to read any of his novels, he may very well be a great writer, though he is not for me.

[Kafka's Crow]

Well said. Ulysses is an absolutely brilliant book, far better than anthing Faulkner ever wrote. I don't have much time for Faulkner, I have never been able to read any of his novels, he may very well be a great writer, though he is not for me.

I was forced to read As I Lay Dying as a part of coursework at the uni and to be honest, I am yet to read a more repulsive book. I have The Light of August and Absolom Absolom but after reading the first book, I have absolutely no desire to read anything else by Faulkner. There are better Southern writers, though not as prolific but, most of the other Southern greats are better than Faulkner. I found even Walker Percy more interesting and dedicated a good few months of my life to his writings.

[JBI]

I'm sorry, there is no use arguing with fixed minded philistines who have not even read the primary sources, which essentially means they are not authorities on anything Tolkien related. Try reading Joyce without catching the allusions, it's the same thing, only Joyce's allusions act as deliberate allusions, whereas Tolkien's are masked in new names, and propagated as originals by his fans.

Your "so what" argument doesn't phase anything. You have offered no contrary statements, and alluded the strongest points I have made, as a way of wiggling out of admitting Tolkien is a) a mediocre author, in terms of style and mechanics, b) he wasn't original at all, and c) he wasn't as influential as many of his contemporaries.

If you say something is "as developed" and I say something is more developed, I am not saying you are saying they are less developed, I am yelling at you for putting them on par. If I say Salman Rushdie is as good as Nora Roberts, I am putting them on par, which is greatly lowering Rushdie, or greatly raising Roberts. The result, the response I gave you.

Read what I write before hastily commenting please, and next time provide evidence from the text. The whole Gandalf being sent back is further explained in the Salimarillion (sp?) so I hear, and therefore does not count as being part of The Lord of the Rings. References to further books do not count is arguing over the merits of one books (I refer to the rings as one, because they seem to be written as one).

I have read The Rings, and many of the sources that inspired the rings (albeit, not in the original, but still) and have drawn the comparisons. I have also read Tolkinian contemporary authors, and studied them in depth. IF you have done the same, you would know how silly your argument sounds. If you haven't, then I guess you have no right to comment. Don't worry I forgive you.

[JBI]

And P.S., calling on Nabokov as a critic for anything is a dangerous move. He may have been a good writer, but his criticisms don't measure up, especially when you look at which authors have been accepted into the canon that he greatly criticized, such as Dostoevsky. And another note on that comment, Fairy Tales have morals a), and b) are potentially more in depth about humanity than any other text if they stem from an oral tradition.

[JCamilo]

IF you knew anything about epics, as a genre, you would not have posted that. The Lord of The Rings is not an epic. It doesn't even come close to being an epic.

Bah! An Epic was a narrative and deeds of Hero or significant events for the formation of a nation. Tolkien had this exactly intention to create his stories and while you may argue he wasn't a good writer, but dismissing his knowledge of epic poetry to pretend he didn't know what he was talking about is another thing.
As I said, there is everything needed for epic in the Silmarilion and lord of the rings (Dom Quixote however is not an epic, it is a mockery of heroism) and was build like one, except using prose as source.

Your comentary about Nabakov - a very good critic by the way - makes no sense. Just because he had a rabid hatred against Dostoievisky ? Tolstoi also had. Borges disliked Sammuel Becket. Ezra Pound dismissed Finengan's Wake, Virgil and little more. Virginia Woolf dismissed Joyce and Robert Louis Stevenson. Voltaire dimissed Shakespeare. Harold Bloom had no idea who Guimaraes Rosa is. T.S.Eliot dispesed Poe (who is usually dispaised by most of north-american critics). Oh, well, humanity...

[_Shannon_]

I was forced to read As I Lay Dying as a part of coursework at the uni and to be honest, I am yet to read a more repulsive book. I have The Light of August and Absolom Absolom but after reading the first book, I have absolutely no desire to read anything else by Faulkner. There are better Southern writers, though not as prolific but, most of the other Southern greats are better than Faulkner. I found even Walker Percy more interesting and dedicated a good few months of my life to his writings.
I'd give Faulkner another go - Sanctuary is so incredibly unlike As I Lay Dying...and much more like reading Jim Thopson or Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett. LOL!

The book I have most hated reading was Love in The Ruins I kept wanting to throw it against the wall each time I picked itup and read for any amount of time....

I do not like Jane Austen--technically she is brilliant and one of the best of the best--however I don't care one iota about any of her characters or plots (more like non-plots to me)...however, I keep slowly plunging my way though her books...just because I feel like I ought to keep trying to "get" her. I figure there is some reason everyone thinks she is so amazing and that I wanted to have read more of her, so that I could make better assesment.

[Inderjit Sanghe]

I'm sorry, there is no use arguing with fixed minded philistines who have not even read the primary sources, which essentially means they are not authorities on anything Tolkien related

Har! There you have it, philistine, eh? Do you know why I have not read the primary sources? Because I have other things to do in my life than read. Really. Honestly. I am not joking! I guess this shows my inherent lack of culture, but there you go, I am just a vulgar little so-and-so, a jejunish reader who is nothing compared to you, Leviathian scholar, whoever-you-are, I have not actually met you, apart from some tentative discussions on books, but you sure as hell have shown me up for the sententious vulgarian that I am. I thank you!

I have read LoTR quite a few times, I think I know the books a lot better than yourself, I did not know reading original sources is the primary qualification for a Tolkien scholar. I will keep that in mind.

I am also close-minded because I have an opinion which differs from yours, heaven forbid, though I understand minds such as yours have little patience for minds such as mine, or minds different from yours etc etc.


Try reading Joyce without catching the allusions

I tried my friend, I tried, alas, I do not know what you mean about 'without catching the allusions', I do now know how you know so much about what I think about Joyce. I love him for his language in the main as well as for his rather wondrous collection of dirty jokes and scenes , ponderous philistine that I am!
You know what, JBI, you crack me up!


a) a mediocre author, in terms of style and mechanics, b) he wasn't original at all, and c) he wasn't as influential as many of his contemporaries.



It is a bit hard to argue against your original point-I think that Tolkien is a great writer, his prose is fine, his story exciting, irreverent and beautiful in turns, his plot is interesting and original and I like his characters. I think he has many beautiful passages and 'ideas' in his books: that sometimes love and bravery are all that is needed to conquer evil, that sometimes you don't need to achieve any kind of solid victory to fight evil and that the act of defiance itself is enough, Faramir's statement about loving the freedoms that are defended by violence and not the violence itself, that utterly beautiful description of Sam's realisation upon seeing the stars that evil is ephemeral and limited and that there is a high beauty forever beyond it's reach, the final passage of LoTR in which Frodo and co. drift away from Middle-Earth forever. I admire his ability to create new languages and histories, a new world even. I love his detailed descriptions of nature.

The second statement-by your logic, few authors are truly original.

The final one-perhaps you are right in relation to influence in 'intellectual' circles.



The whole Gandalf being sent back is further explained in the Salimarillion (sp?) so I hear, and therefore does not count as being part of The Lord of the Rings. References to further books do not count is arguing over the merits of one books (I refer to the rings as one, because they seem to be written as one).


Actually, if you read LoTR close enough you will realise that it is hinted at there. It may have been commented upon in the appendix briefly, I don't have to books in front of me so I cannot say. It is referred to explicity in 'Unfinished Tales', much of which couldn't be put in the appendix because it would have been far too much info. to publish.

Just because it is outside of LoTR doesn't make it irrelevant-it is a piece of secondary material which allows you to pick up more information on the characters.


Don't worry I forgive you.

Forgive me for what? Not reading the original sources? Er...thanks....


And P.S., calling on Nabokov as a critic for anything is a dangerous move. He may have been a good writer, but his criticisms don't measure up, especially when you look at which authors have been accepted into the canon that he greatly criticized, such as Dostoevsky

Nabokov is, and always will be, my main guide for reading books. Dostoevskii is over-rated. He wrote a lot of completely banal stories-C&P, The Idiot and The Devils are stand outs. So what it he didn't like him? Most writers didn't like some other great writers, what is your point? So what if an author is 'accepted into the canon' (whatever that means)-does that automatically make him a great writer and immune from criticism?

Nabokov is a brilliant critic, he reads books for what they are rather than making them into something they are not. Kind of like Robbe-Grillet's comments about critics reading Kafka for rather simplistic allegorical purposes, rather than appreciate Kafka for the brilliance of his images, stories and characters.


And another note on that comment, Fairy Tales have morals a), and b) are potentially more in depth about humanity than any other text if they stem from an oral tradition

1. What the hell does "in depth about humanity" actually mean?
2. He didn't mean fairy tales in that way, he merely used it as an analogy i.e. all great novels are fictional works, pieces of make believe.

As I said before, JBI, you really do crack me up. Maybe you think you are some kind of mind-reader to have come up with such arbitrary assumptions about individuals who you have never met, with the exception of a few tentative literary discussions.

[JCamilo]

I think reading Tolkien primary sources (which include Lewis Carroll, the One Ring was born meaningless and as a child's story) is good but does not stop you from the appreciation of the story. It will show that Tolkien and Wagner had similar influences and place then in the history of literature. It won't say much about the quality of the work however.

JBI have some reason about Tolkien originality if we read originality as creating something totally anew (instead of the correct re-creating something as new). Tolkien, and Tolkien reckons it, is using a lot of material to create a mythological past for "His" own England. He borrows from a lot of sources and hardly anything he uses cann't be found in other stories, at least the prototypes. Discussing it is silly, because the same can be said about Joyce, it is in the form of narration that Joyce is something new. Tolkien is not. His linguistic work helped him to use the modern (at his time) visions about language to build up his world and some may claim that was something new, but that would be all.
I would like to point that his narrative is not that wonderfull, but his description is - caused by Tolkien care to build up a background for his characters rather than developing them and setting them aloof in his world. Tolkien is in my opinion limited as writer but far from being just one of those guys from the best-seller crop just following a given formula. His books are not inside the formula for best-seller and their popularity can not be linked for the same reason Dan Brown is popular. But trying to measure him with Joyce will do not good for Tolkien's image.
As fantasy go, the two greatest writers of Fantasy of our century are Borges and Kafka. The formula of magical reality in our reality is considerable more powerful and meaningful that the building of paralel realities, however this is not that important.

[JBI]

Bah! An Epic was a narrative and deeds of Hero or significant events for the formation of a nation. Tolkien had this exactly intention to create his stories and while you may argue he wasn't a good writer, but dismissing his knowledge of epic poetry to pretend he didn't know what he was talking about is another thing.
As I said, there is everything needed for epic in the Silmarilion and lord of the rings (Dom Quixote however is not an epic, it is a mockery of heroism) and was build like one, except using prose as source.

Your comentary about Nabakov - a very good critic by the way - makes no sense. Just because he had a rabid hatred against Dostoievisky ? Tolstoi also had. Borges disliked Sammuel Becket. Ezra Pound dismissed Finengan's Wake, Virgil and little more. Virginia Woolf dismissed Joyce and Robert Louis Stevenson. Voltaire dimissed Shakespeare. Harold Bloom had no idea who Guimaraes Rosa is. T.S.Eliot dispesed Poe (who is usually dispaised by most of north-american critics). Oh, well, humanity...

It is not an epic because it does not concern his contemporary societies desires and ideals. That is the key ingredient of epics, not length, or adventure, but rather that they contain the image of what was idealized, and thought excellent by the population of its region in its time period. No, Tolkien's elves don't do that.


To Inderjit Sanghe


Your comments of "I think he is original even though I have not read the sources he drew upon" essentially negate your entire argument. I won't even go into finer detail nitpicking, because as you admitted before, you are no authority. If you have not read the originals, how can you dare even begin to talk about originality.

I brought Joyce up there to explain, essentially, that without knowing about the Hamlet he was discussing, or the Bible he comments upon, many parts are unintelligible.

And, if they didn't make the book, they are not part of the book. Appendixes thrown together after Tolkien's death, or at the ebb of his life, don't count as part of the book. If the book is written in appendixes written after the fact, it does not count. Alluded to helps no one.

Either way, you are adamant in believing Tolkien to be a prose genius, which even his fans can't seem to support. I am certain his boring details, which are frivolous, and unimportant to the story, greatly make his style sub-par. I can back that up with quotes if you really want, I have an text in front of me which I am ready to cut at.

[JCamilo]

No sense. Tolkien had to fought to not allow people to interpretate his books as an alegory of Second War and he was as basis of the Hippie Movement as Doors of Perception. He did concerned his contemporary society and ideals. Even if that was beyond Tolkien intention.

[JBI]

The Hippie movement came after him, and only semi-hit. Compare that to Virgil's status amongst the romans, or the Homeric conception of Arete, or the religious nature of the Comedia, or even the pagan idealism of Beowulf. All those books capture their time periods beliefs and desires. Tolkien was semi-misinterpreted by a small number, and accepted (not nearly as well as many of his contemporaries keep in mind). The fact that the hippie movement that took him on was in the US and not England essentially proves this. It was coincidental that his ludditism corresponded with anti-war Marxist beliefs. If you examine other angles, he clearly is quite conservative, and even goes against many ideals of the Hippies who accepted him, especially in regard to his pro-aristocratic nature.

[Brasil]

The latin culture is very rich in traditional forms of poems (lyric and epic) and dramatic texts (tragedie, comedy, parody) as well.
The spanish, italian and portuguese literatures are rich in greek-latin inheritance.
That is intrinsic in the language and inside the cultures of Italy, Spain, France, Portugal, Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Chile...
Francesco Petrarca (who developped the sonnet form) is just one example.

For the complete version of the text:
http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?t=34862&page=3

For everyone in São Paulo or who goes to São Paulo:
Visit the Portuguese Language Museum, at the Luz Station.
Know more:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Museum_...guese_Language
(in english)

[JCamilo]

The Hippie movement came after him, and only semi-hit. Compare that to Virgil's status amongst the romans, or the Homeric conception of Arete, or the religious nature of the Comedia, or even the pagan idealism of Beowulf. All those books capture their time periods beliefs and desires. Tolkien was semi-misinterpreted by a small number, and accepted (not nearly as well as many of his contemporaries keep in mind). The fact that the hippie movement that took him on was in the US and not England essentially proves this. It was coincidental that his ludditism corresponded with anti-war Marxist beliefs. If you examine other angles, he clearly is quite conservative, and even goes against many ideals of the Hippies who accepted him, especially in regard to his pro-aristocratic nature.

The hippie movement came one decade after him, they are exactly the generation that read the LoTR. The Homeric texts are mostly than likely "writen" with decades of difference and same the books of the Comedia, you can not safely argue that any effect of the book was in less than 10 years.
Plus, comparing the influece or status is silly - All those guys were more important than Tolkien and Eneid, Iliad, Odissey are all superior to anything Tolkien wrote. But that is a matter of quality and not style.
The hippie movement in america took him? Great, because the hippie movement is American. Meanwhile, Tolkien was just the most popular author of his homeland? Mis-interpreted is a bit of a joke - That is like saying everyone interpreted Dante correctly. I doubt so.


It was coincidental that his ludditism corresponded with anti-war Marxist beliefs.

So, are you saying that aspects of Lord of the Rings represented vallues of his period. Good.
Anyways, Goethe was accepted as part of the german nationalistic movement although he was not exactly that, Voltaire was wrongly taken as democratic by the revolutionary. Tolkien was conservative (I would say most of the Epics and myths are) in England? When the world was a rather conservative ? Churchill and all?
The basic thing is your deffinition of Epic is not usefull at all. Kafka never wrote an epic, neither Jorge Luis Borges, neither Shakespeare and they "or adventure, but rather that they contain the image of what was idealized, and thought excellent by the population of its region in its time period." (In Kafka case the anti-epic, because The "Ire" of Achilles was not what was considered excellent by the greek mindset) but imagine Kipling. Or Anatole France. And there goes, several styles of literature do such thing and you need to add the narrative about an hero or occurance that deals with what you said.
Anyways, I think you are being slighty exagerated about Tolkien (tolkien fanboyism may be annoying, as it is trying to bring Joyce Down to defend him) because Tolkien themes are kind of universal (friendship, companionship, pacifism during the world wars) and he was of course creating a epic story for his fictional world (which was a mirror of what he saw the past of england), which could be the solution for epic when the genre was basically dead except in exagerated hollywood productions.

Tolkien didn't invented the genre fantasy, the fictional fantasy universe, the heroes basic story, the german/celtic re-telling of myths nothing of that is often labeled to him but then most of the "creators of moderm genres" (Poe, Verne, etc) didn't created them at all.

[JBI]

That isn't the argument, and you know it. None of the authors you mentioned have written epics. Epics by definition need to represent societal values, The Lord of the Rings does not. It is simply a novel liked by a generation by accident. Nothing more. There is no epic about it, besides its laborious length. True epics have not been around since Milton (I would argue since before that, but Milton is generally considered the last true Western epic), and the Lord of the Rings doesn't break the trend. Even Wordsworth's Prelude isn't considered to be a true epic, and it was far more significant than the Lord of the Rings. You do not know what epic is, if you believe the rings are an epic. length isn't the only thing in the equation. Scope isn't the only thing, and adventure isn't the only thing.

Tolkien brought nothing beyond a center ground to fantasy literature. Lord Dunsany had already written a removed world romance, the Germanic north had already written most of Tolkien before he even put his pen down. His style is borrowed. His characters are regarded by most serious readers as flat. He may have created something interesting, but he clearly is not a major author. He is merely a cultural phenomenon which has survived by being raised on a cultural pedestal by the inhabitants of many a parents' basement. The ring is almost the same as Star Trek, or Star Wars, except that it evolved from a book, and not a T.V. show. That is the only difference.

[JCamilo]

That isn't the argument, and you know it. None of the authors you mentioned have written epics.

And that is the root of the argument, altough they have no writen epics they wrote books that would suit your definition of epic. And even, are you going to say that Balzac novels didn't represent societal values.
The epics are not just what you define as epic, you must include all the definition that was presented here.


Epics by definition need to represent societal values, The Lord of the Rings does not.

As I said several non-epics do present societal values. And it is arguable that LoTR does not apresent any societal value.


It is simply a novel liked by a generation by accident. Nothing more.

Accident have nothing to do with that. Even Dan Brown have a reason to be popular.



There is no epic about it, besides its laborious length. True epics have not been around since Milton (I would argue since before that, but Milton is generally considered the last true Western epic), and the Lord of the Rings doesn't break the trend.

Actually, Gonçalves Dias wrote I-Juca Pirama in the XIX century and this is regarded as an epic. Baudelaire classificated Victor Hugo Les Miserables as an epic (because of the Social scope of his work), Anthony Burgess classificated Ulisses as an epic... I would agree that true epics are in poetic form and not prose.


Even Wordsworth's Prelude isn't considered to be a true epic, and it was far more significant than the Lord of the Rings.

I do not understand it at all. I am not arguing the significance of Tolkien while compared to names like Wordsworth. But you talk as if only epic literature have importance.


You do not know what epic is, if you believe the rings are an epic. length isn't the only thing in the equation. Scope isn't the only thing, and adventure isn't the only thing.

Agree it is not the only thing but you are falling to accept that Tolkien literature was relevant for the society he lived in and dealt with themes that were dear in the after-wars. Anways, if W.H.Auden call it an epic I accept I do not know what an epic is.


Tolkien brought nothing beyond a center ground to fantasy literature. Lord Dunsany had already written a removed world romance, the Germanic north had already written most of Tolkien before he even put his pen down.

Agree, but that is irrelevant. Borges is one of the most inovative writers of XX century and he lists Carlyle, Kafka, Macedonio Rodrigues, Chesterton, etc as people who did all that he did (and with truth) before him. It is the how it was done that matters. (I Agree, Tolkien was nowhere as great as other names but nowhere as bad to be labeled as just a copy-and-paste)


His style is borrowed. His characters are regarded by most serious readers as flat.

I think that is irrelevant. It is not like Sherazade, one of the most important female characters of all literature is deep and it is not like Voltaire created deep characters altough he still a great writer.


He may have created something interesting, but he clearly is not a major author.

Yes, he is not a major author. I would say he is in the limit where a few other authors inhabit such as Conan Doyle, Dumas, Anatole France or Lovecraft.


He is merely a cultural phenomenon which has survived by being raised on a cultural pedestal by the inhabitants of many a parents' basement. The ring is almost the same as Star Trek, or Star Wars, except that it evolved from a book, and not a T.V. show. That is the only difference.

Now, here is the exageration. Analyse the style of Tolkien, dense and confuse, losing his time in the geography rather the action. He is sometimes old-dated and in his book he used a few characters (Tom Bombadill for example) that are not "sympathic" at all, the excess of music in his book and some chapters (Such the last one) clearly anti-climatic ending.(Not to mention in Silmarilion, writen in such style that the listing of names and dates abound). He became popular despite writing without using the formula for a best-seller - if tolkien deliever the script of Lord of the Rings to any publishing house today they would never put it ahead. It is much more authoral and unlike the other two, hardly writen to be a marketing success. If he managed to get such fanatism , years before those two mass media sucess, you must seek in his book the reason not in the market.

[JhKreisler]

[QUOTE=cuppajoe_9;324052]I'd say the largest volume of great literature has come from the British Isles, but that might just be because I'm an anglophone.

For consistency of great literature, it's hard to beat Russia. (Quick, name five lousy Russian authors. See?)

Isn't that because lousy authors aren't so famous, because they're lousy...

[dfloyd]

comes from The United States. I refer you to the American Declaration od Independence and the United States Constitution.

[eric.bell]

Conrad

Conrad's native tongue was not english; he learned english in his early 20's.

[eric.bell]

I would say that it is unfair to say that any particular country has written the best literature - maybe if one were to narrow it down a bit and say best novelists or best poets or best essayists or best playwrights, et cetera, then one might begin to be able to make a decent decision.

[saturnine]

That really has to be taken into consideration when deciding what is and is not a classic. Does the work have merit, and can it even be read without too much difficulty? Those are possibly the two most important questions when determining artistic worth. However much scholars and writers push to have his work enshrined, the common readers will have none of him and that will be that. When a book ceases to be read by the public at large, it loses it's vitality, and ceases to be a true classic. It becomes an eccentricity of a peculiar sect, a cultish icon that has no bearing on the society at large.
Is that not what is gradually happening with literature (& even reading) in general? The number of people who actively read, let alone read literature, have dwindled (outside of classrooms - at least in the U.S.). Therefore people who do read, especially literature, are more accurately described as "Literature Aficionados" or some such eccentricity (peculiar sect) rather than the common man/woman of society at large.

What then of the classics? Would you say that Homer is still read by the public at large? Is this a sign that what we consider as classics no longer speak to the average 21st century person? Or are people becoming indifferent to or too distracted to care about the art & wisdom contained within literature? Perhaps I am only viewing the times in which I live & breathe, failing to see a larger pattern that has been repeated since history began? Or do they retain their vitality, regardless of the public's reading appetite, if taught in schools?

I apologize for the late post & not adhering to the topic, but it seems this thread has covered lesser discussions.

[Il Dante]

Determining which nation has produced the best literature is difficult, because in order to do that one must have read every book, poem, essay, play, and sacred book of Greek, Hebrew, Latin, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Mongolian, Vietnamese, Malay, Thai, Hakka, Dravidian, Hindi, Bengali, Bihari, Oriya, Punjabi, Gujarati, Sindhi, Nepali, Kashmiri, Dogri, Tibetan, Mizo, Meitei, Kayah, Karen, Jingpho, Burmese, Bodo, Tamil, Hmong, Sundanese, Javanese, Cham, Tagalog, Formosan, Nicobarese, Kuy, Mon, Arabic, Khmer, Khasi, Persian, Uralic, Ainu, Uzbek, Uyghur, Tatar, Turkish, Kyrgyz, Azeri, Afrikaans, Xhosa, Zulu, Zwazi, Venda, Tsonga, Pedi, Shona, Malagasy, Sango, Kinyarwanda, Tigrinya, Somali, Swahili, Arabic, Nahuatl, Albanian, Armenian, Spanish, Portuguese, Lithuanian, Latvian, Welsh, Breton, Cornish, Gaelic, English, Manx, German, Swedish, Finnish, Danish, Dutch, Icelandic, Norwegian, Kurdish, Ossetian, Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, Czech, Slovakian, Slovenian, Aragonese, Corsican, French, Galician, Italian, Leonese, Norman, Occitan, Romanian, Sardinian, Silesian, Macedonian, Montenegrin, Serbian, Estonian, Hungarian, Basque, and several others.

Fortunately, I have done this and know these languages inside and out. Thus, based upon my expertise, I can definitely say that the greatest literature is that written in Malagasy. Second, Silesian. Third, Italian. Fourth, Zulu. And fifth, Ukrainian.