Lit Net Top Author?

[bazarov]

So, for people to stop arguing about unfair list because Flaubert is better then Dostoevsky; how come Crime and Punishment is above Madame Bovary ; name your top 5 authors. I will count it this time; so Dark Muse can rest a little bit :D Poet, novelist or drama - they all count.

The deadline is...one month, so it's Valentine's Day!

[Niamh]

Modern, Classic or a mix of both?

[optimisticnad]

yikes! i won't be able to sleep at night now! top 5? and you're counting? double yikes.

[bazarov]

Everyone!

My list:
1. Dostoevsky

and with no particular order:

2.Tolstoy,
3.Hugo,
4.Selimovic,
5. Krleža

[mortalterror]

1.Ernest Hemingway
2.Jean Racine
3.Ovid
4.Shakespeare
5.Dante

[Niamh]

Only 5?
Nutz......going to have to think

[LitNetIsGreat]

So, for people to stop arguing about unfair list because Flaubert is better then Dostoevsky; how come Crime and Punishment is above Madame Bovary ; name your top 5 authors. I will count it this time; so Dark Muse can rest a little bit :D Poet, novelist or drama - they all count.

The deadline is...one month, so it's Valentine's Day!

Your personal favourite top five or the top five authors you think are best?

[JBI]

Dante Alighieri
Jane Austen
Giacomo Leopardi
Emile Zola
T.S. Eliot


Notice, I didn't include Shakespeare, because I am sure he will make the top ten without me, given these boards. But Oh my god, five is so darn difficult. I keep thinking should Eliot go, should Zola go, is Leopardi to big a stretch - so many choices, though I doubt Leopardi places - I doubt he gets another vote but mine, despite being regarded as perhaps the second best poet in the Italian language.

[Thespian1975]

1 Shakespeare
2 Dickens
3 Agatha Christie
4 Conan Doyle
5 Hugo

[mortalterror]

Dante Alighieri
Jane Austen
Giacomo Leopardi
Emile Zola
T.S. Eliot


Notice, I didn't include Shakespeare, because I am sure he will make the top ten without me, given these boards. But Oh my god, five is so darn difficult. I keep thinking should Eliot go, should Zola go, is Leopardi to big a stretch - so many choices, though I doubt Leopardi places - I doubt he gets another vote but mine, despite being regarded as perhaps the second best poet in the Italian language.

I really wanted to put Eliot up, and if it was a top 6 he'd be there. But who am I going to displace? Shakespeare? Dante? I know they'll both make it in spite of my vote but I figured we were supposed to be honest and not just root for obscure figures we think ought to be better represented. As far as Leopardi goes, he's also sort of a bottom ten list figure for me, along with Calderon if I had the room. Honestly, I think you are more likely to get another Leopardi vote before I see another Racine. The dude is a second Shakespeare in the French language and nobody around here has heard of him.

If I had more familiarity with Firdawsi or Tu Fu I'd like to add them as well. As good as the Greeks are I doubt we'll see many of them. Chances are, this is just going to be another love fest for the Russians.

[Mopey Droney]

1. Charles Dickens
2. Marcel Proust
3. Henry James
4. John Steinbeck
5. Thomas Hardy

This is order of enjoyment, not in order of who I think is "best".

[JBI]

I really wanted to put Eliot up, and if it was a top 6 he'd be there. But who am I going to displace? Shakespeare? Dante? I know they'll both make it in spite of my vote but I figured we were supposed to be honest and not just root for obscure figures we think ought to be better represented. As far as Leopardi goes, he's also sort of a bottom ten list figure for me, along with Calderon if I had the room. Honestly, I think you are more likely to get another Leopardi vote before I see another Racine. The dude is a second Shakespeare in the French language and nobody around here has heard of him.

If I had more familiarity with Firdawsi or Tu Fu I'd like to add them as well. As good as the Greeks are I doubt we'll see many of them. Chances are, this is just going to be another love fest for the Russians.

That's why I didn't put Shakespeare, and I was debating replacing Dante as well. Like always on this board, prose > verse, English > rest of the world, but, Dostoevsky > English novelists, West > East (even in my post, but the problem is, most East-Asian cultures seem to associate more with the work than with the artist, and don't seem to embrace a figure-head cult as we do here).

I really wanted to put Zola on there, and also the French Canadian Anne Hebert, and a Latin American, probably Borges, amongst others, but really, five is quite difficult to negotiate.

I personally admit I don't particularly care for Racine. He has beautiful moments, as he was definitely the accomplished verse stylist of his time, but I think the classical grid which he stuck to, so adherent to Aristotelian structures, and French tastes (for instance, the five act structure being more pragmatic than one would think, given that aristocrats loved intermissions, and the chandelier's needed their wicks trimmed), not to mention that strict adherence to bienseance makes, I would think, Racine's range rather limited. I mean there are particularly moving moments of his that I have read, my favorite being Aricie's discovery of Hyppolyte's body after he has been destroyed by the Sea Beast, but the dependence on one plot line, and no action away from that line, nothing unrelated to the one setting, one direction, one thread of action, is troubling to me.

Of course, we must say what Racine is particularly good at - I would argue, he was an even greater master of time than Shakespeare was - his pacing, and compacting of action into one day, or a few hours, is particularly good. Also, like I said before, his language, and I would add, his formation of characters, and the way he manipulates his source material is fantastic, but even so I am troubled by him, as I am by Alexander Pope, and John Dryden, given that they are so cemented to the classical model that I feel their overcorseted, and rather limited.

[kelby_lake]

In no order...

1- F Scott Fitzgerald
2- Tennessee Williams
3- Charles Dickens
4- Franz Kafka
5- Vladimir Nabokov (sorry Austen!)

It's hard to know who to choose- some I've read one of their books and been impressed but I don't know what their others are like.

I assume you're choosing Eliot for his poetry because I read one of his plays and it was preety boring.
PS- I know Racine! We have some at home!

[mortalterror]

That's why I didn't put Shakespeare, and I was debating replacing Dante as well. Like always on this board, prose > verse, English > rest of the world, but, Dostoevsky > English novelists, West > East (even in my post, but the problem is, most East-Asian cultures seem to associate more with the work than with the artist, and don't seem to embrace a figure-head cult as we do here).

I really wanted to put Zola on there, and also the French Canadian Anne Hebert, and a Latin American, probably Borges, amongst others, but really, five is quite difficult to negotiate.

I personally admit I don't particularly care for Racine. He has beautiful moments, as he was definitely the accomplished verse stylist of his time, but I think the classical grid which he stuck to, so adherent to Aristotelian structures, and French tastes (for instance, the five act structure being more pragmatic than one would think, given that aristocrats loved intermissions, and the chandelier's needed their wicks trimmed), not to mention that strict adherence to bienseance makes, I would think, Racine's range rather limited. I mean there are particularly moving moments of his that I have read, my favorite being Aricie's discovery of Hyppolyte's body after he has been destroyed by the Sea Beast, but the dependence on one plot line, and no action away from that line, nothing unrelated to the one setting, one direction, one thread of action, is troubling to me.

Of course, we must say what Racine is particularly good at - I would argue, he was an even greater master of time than Shakespeare was - his pacing, and compacting of action into one day, or a few hours, is particularly good. Also, like I said before, his language, and I would add, his formation of characters, and the way he manipulates his source material is fantastic, but even so I am troubled by him, as I am by Alexander Pope, and John Dryden, given that they are so cemented to the classical model that I feel their overcorseted, and rather limited.

Here we differ, and I fear you are a little too modern in your tastes to correctly appreciate this period. It's precisely the way that his genius soars within the prescribed bounds that I find so attractive. He takes something that is already there and makes it better while conforming to all the conventions of his day. He reaches deep and finds his own originality, his own personality inside of a community. Racine or Shakespeare will take a well worn topos and make it purely their own. The man is re-writing Euripides and improving on every play. But then, I already love the classical period he's imitating and I believe in the unities.

When I was younger, I didn't like Pope, Dryden, Johnson, or Milton either for that matter. The Enlightenment was too dry, too old, too intellectual, the way the Romantics would later come to feel too wet, too young, too emotional. But when you look at what they were trying to do it's astonishing. If you judge them by their own artistic values, what they were trying to do, their level of achievement is very high.

Nowadays we tend to compose poems with an eye toward the entire text. We talk a great deal about form. Our units of composition are rather long, a novel, a page, or a paragraph instead of a single sentence. But at that time Pope was composing for the line. He had this idea that you could take any line from a great poet and his greatness would show. Line for line, he created more great poetry than any other English poet. This makes him very quotable, which is important to note as aphorisms were very popular at the time. T.S. Eliot agrees with me on this. I forget which one of his essays he mentions Pope in, but he held him in very high regard. Don't try to enjoy an entire poem of Pope's. That's almost impossible. They are not like a single perfect gem, but more like jewel encrusted bracelets.

As for Racine, I believe you may be judging him by a poor translation. As a person who reads a little French, and briefly tried to translate him myself, I recommend John Cairncross's translation, or failing that George Dillon's, or even Robert Bruce Boswell's. I do not recommend his most famous play Phaedra. I do recommend Andromache, Iphigenia, Athalia, or The Thebaid.

What makes Racine different from his contemporaries is his passion. He is a poet of love, and his characters are unconstrained and obsessive. They frequently can't control themselves for love, even knowing that it will lead to their doom. Here he departs from the Greeks, who cared almost nothing for love, and from his contemporaries who are often incredibly cerebral. There is nothing rational in his plays beside their design. You could say that he is a forerunner of the Romantics, but I think that he's more likely wedding his Greek structure with the courtly love poetry of the Renaissance. But his vision of love as destructive untempered passion is very different from my other favorite love poet Ovid, who has a more easy going attitude to his subject. Racine's vision of love is a dark one. Often the characters are caught up in abusive relationships beyond their control. Love triangles are not infrequent and the characters are pulled this way and that like puppets, although I think Racine is much more convincing than say Dryden was in his play All For Love.

I sometimes wonder if what makes a poet great might be their unique approach to the subject of love. Take the Italians for instance. Dante's poem is a wonderful treatise on sacred or platonic love. Petrarch is known for unhappy, unrequited love. Boccaccio and Cavalcanti are known for their celebrations of physical and sensual love. But perhaps I'm making too much where there is nothing. It is a pleasant thought though, if perhaps a touch errant.

[Thespian1975]

In no order...

1- F Scott Fitzgerald
2- Tennessee Williams
2- Charles Dickens
3- Franz Kafka
4- Ambrose Bierce
5- Jane Austen

It's hard to know who to choose- some I've read one of their books and been impressed but I don't know what their others are like.

I assume you're choosing Eliot for his poetry because I read one of his plays and it was preety boring.
PS- I know Racine! We have some at home!

No cheating now ;)

[Adagio]

In no order...

1- Victor Hugo
2- Charles Dickens
3- John Keats
4- Shakespeare
5- Charlotte Bronte

Five is certainly not enough.

[kelby_lake]

No cheating now ;)

Never actually read any Racine admittedly, I was showing off. However it is true that we have some at home :D

[Thespian1975]

Never actually read any Racine admittedly, I was showing off. However it is true that we have some at home :D

I meant you chose 6 authors.


1- F Scott Fitzgerald
2- Tennessee Williams
2- Charles Dickens
3- Franz Kafka
4- Ambrose Bierce
5- Jane Austen

[mortalterror]

I would think, Racine's range rather limited. I mean there are particularly moving moments of his that I have read, my favorite being Aricie's discovery of Hyppolyte's body after he has been destroyed by the Sea Beast, but the dependence on one plot line, and no action away from that line, nothing unrelated to the one setting, one direction, one thread of action, is troubling to me.

It's interesting that you should point that out while referring to Racine as unoriginal. Racine is following a play that had been done famously several times before. Euripides' and Seneca's versions of the play are both extant, but neither includes the character of Aricia. She is one of Racine's own particular touches. In Euripides' play, Hippolytus is an ardent follower of Artemis, the virgin goddess of the hunt, and he is punished by Aphrodite with a perverse love for not giving Aphrodite her due. His abstinence offends the gods and he is justly or unjustly punished. The inclusion of Aricia in Racine's version is a characteristic departure of his own invention, which allows him to set up one of his patented love triangles. When he adapted Euripides' Iphigenia at Aulis he includes another original character which allows him to craft an altogether different ending than the earlier version of that play.

What is great about this kind of following in a tradition and adapting the classics is the narrow range one has for departures. When the audience is already familiar with the tale, they are looking for a novel approach to the story, and each slight variation is amplified, imbued with a special meaning. That's why Euripides, Sophocles, Aeschylus, and Seneca can tell the exact same plot and each one is a masterpiece and totally different from the others. It's a little like the way that no two performances of a play can be the same. An emphasis is shifted. Something is changed. The movie The Godfather has the exact opposite moral from the theme in the book. The Merchant of Venice is an anti-semitic comedy, but when Al Pacino did it recently for the screen he made the character of Shylock sympathetic and it became a tragic warning tale. Racine is all about re-interpretation, and when you already know the plot the other details such as character, and language are pushed to the foreground.

It's like reading Chaucer and then reading Boccaccio. Boccaccio wasn't even the originator of most of his stories. While I was reading Apuleius' The Golden *** over Christmas I found two of Boccaccio's tales in the novel, which is also a source of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. However, Apuleius was already ripping off an earlier Greek novel of the same name by Lucian, and so on and so on. This is the format of all Greek literature. Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides derive their plays from stories in Homer. Then Ovid writes them down later and every writer of any worth tries his hand at them for two thousand years. They invite the comparison. It's like a rite of passage. Each new telling of the familiar text is like a new draft, or a new chapter in an ongoing conversation, and we are all connected like links in a chain to this vital and ongoing tradition. Isn't that beautiful?

A format is not restricting. It is liberating, for when everything is permitted nothing is extraordinary. We need certain boundaries in order to feel our liberty, in order to have something to push or measure our freedom against. Traditions and conventions give us license to test those traditions and conventions, to re-invent them, to define ourselves in relation to what is other. It gives direction and focus to what would otherwise be misshapen blurtings.

[Dark Muse]

1. Poe
2. Shakespeare
3. D.H. Lawrence
4. Jean-Paul Satire
5. Umberto Eco

[Jeremiah Jazzz]

1.James Joyce
2.Friedrich Nietzsche
3.Marcel Proust
4.William Shakespeare
5.Vladimir Nabokov

[prendrelemick]

Lets see, today my favourites are:-

Jane Austin
Shakespeare
Tolstoy
Tolkien
Homer

Next week who knows?

[LitNetIsGreat]

OK, after a little thought:

1 Shakespeare
2 Dante
3 Milton
4 Euripides
5 Homer

Beat that!

I have based my five on the grounds that they all must have more than one great work to their credit and that I have must read and studied them to some degree personally. I have thought about the translation issue but that is something that can't be helped and I didn't want to limit myself soley to those writing in English, though I have to include a Western bias, simply because this is what I have read.

I choose Euripides above Aeschylus and Sophocles as it seems to be Euripides offers a little more, is a little more experimental (though I am not an expert in this area) though maybe that has something to do with him coming a little later. Regardless of this I just seem drawn to Euripides more than the other two for some reason.

The rest stand on their own and need no explanation.

I realise there is no sole prose works on the list, if there had have been I would have included Austen, over Flaubert, for sheer consistency if for nothing else.

If it was for love alone I would have included Wilde and Keats.

[stlukesguild]

These lists are truly absurd and prove nothing but the tastes of those who participate... and I would almost think that these would change for each individual depending upon when they responded. My first two would never change... but I can certainly imagine replacing the next three with Aeschylus, Virgil, Spenser, Montaigne, Cervantes, Firdowsi, Tolstoy, or any number of others... but what the hell:

1. Shakespeare
2. Dante
3. Milton
4. Blake
5. Homer

By the way... do you really find Leopardi that great, JBI? I certainly admire what I have read... but I can't imagine placing him on any list of the 10 greatest writers ever... let alone 5.

[JBI]

It's interesting that you should point that out while referring to Racine as unoriginal. Racine is following a play that had been done famously several times before. Euripides' and Seneca's versions of the play are both extant, but neither includes the character of Aricia. She is one of Racine's own particular touches. In Euripides' play, Hippolytus is an ardent follower of Artemis, the virgin goddess of the hunt, and he is punished by Aphrodite with a perverse love for not giving Aphrodite her due. His abstinence offends the gods and he is justly or unjustly punished. The inclusion of Aricia in Racine's version is a characteristic departure of his own invention, which allows him to set up one of his patented love triangles. When he adapted Euripides' Iphigenia at Aulis he includes another original character which allows him to craft an altogether different ending than the earlier version of that play.

What is great about this kind of following in a tradition and adapting the classics is the narrow range one has for departures. When the audience is already familiar with the tale, they are looking for a novel approach to the story, and each slight variation is amplified, imbued with a special meaning. That's why Euripides, Sophocles, Aeschylus, and Seneca can tell the exact same plot and each one is a masterpiece and totally different from the others. It's a little like the way that no two performances of a play can be the same. An emphasis is shifted. Something is changed. The movie The Godfather has the exact opposite moral from the theme in the book. The Merchant of Venice is an anti-semitic comedy, but when Al Pacino did it recently for the screen he made the character of Shylock sympathetic and it became a tragic warning tale. Racine is all about re-interpretation, and when you already know the plot the other details such as character, and language are pushed to the foreground.

It's like reading Chaucer and then reading Boccaccio. Boccaccio wasn't even the originator of most of his stories. While I was reading Apuleius' The Golden *** over Christmas I found two of Boccaccio's tales in the novel, which is also a source of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. However, Apuleius was already ripping off an earlier Greek novel of the same name by Lucian, and so on and so on. This is the format of all Greek literature. Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides derive their plays from stories in Homer. Then Ovid writes them down later and every writer of any worth tries his hand at them for two thousand years. They invite the comparison. It's like a rite of passage. Each new telling of the familiar text is like a new draft, or a new chapter in an ongoing conversation, and we are all connected like links in a chain to this vital and ongoing tradition. Isn't that beautiful?

A format is not restricting. It is liberating, for when everything is permitted nothing is extraordinary. We need certain boundaries in order to feel our liberty, in order to have something to push or measure our freedom against. Traditions and conventions give us license to test those traditions and conventions, to re-invent them, to define ourselves in relation to what is other. It gives direction and focus to what would otherwise be misshapen blurtings.

When I was talking about one plot, I didn't mean that he couldn't follow one plot, I meant that, by Aristotelian thought, a good play only has one plot line. Everything is centered around Phaedre. Even Aricia is just there to be a foil for Phaedre, and not to be an actual full, or even central character. The plot doesn't breathe, there are no sub plots, only one plot, as was the fashion. Aricia, I knew, was a Racine invention (having read Euripides's version, though not Seneca's), but really the problem I have is he doesn't allow for anything to not be part of the plot. The plot is so absolute, so demanding, as to disallow breathing.

O.K., one could say the same about Othello, but really, Shakespeare allows us the beautiful opening speeches from Othello, and the love scene at the beginning of the play - the play can breathe. Racine on the other hand trades that off for drama - makes everything so time-strained, which limits things, as much as develops things. I think my problem is I like a less fast paced, more reflexive story, and with Racine, I think, being drama, the action is too quick - too driven, too compact into too little time, if that makes any sense.

There don't seem to be any subplots in Racine. Even the romances in Andromache, and the triangles only enforce the central plot line, only build upon one idea, one direction. I think it becomes complicated, when quite frankly there are more than 3 actors on the stage, and more tools available, yet the structure is still following a 2000 year old model.

[Dark Muse]

These lists are truly absurd and prove nothing but the tastes of those who participate...

You know, it is just for fun, you needn't take everything so deathly seriously. If you are so against lists you needn't partake, but no need to be a humbug on everyone else for having a little fun.

[JBI]

These lists are truly absurd and prove nothing but the tastes of those who participate... and I would almost think that these would change for each individual depending upon when they responded. My first two would never change... but I can certainly imagine replacing the next three with Aeschylus, Virgil, Spenser, Montaigne, Cervantes, Firdowsi, Tolstoy, or any number of others... but what the hell:

1. Shakespeare
2. Dante
3. Milton
4. Blake
5. Homer

By the way... do you really find Leopardi that great, JBI? I certainly admire what I have read... but I can't imagine placing him on any list of the 10 greatest writers ever... let alone 5.

He sucks in translation - try picking up a real copy of the Canti - they are Eliot-dense, there is more to him than a few idylls, and some conversations. Quite frankly, he doesn't really translate well, and doesn't really sit well outside of his context. Certainly though, a lot of it has to do with my taste, but I wager your championing of Blake has the same thing to do with your taste. I still think though, that if more people were exposed to Leopardi, they would think better about poetry. These boards are so prosaic that poetry is often pretended to be liked, and never really embraced - I think the furthest we can get in a discussion is generally the standard "Ooh, that was lovely, he's soooo moving." etc.

Some things just don't translate.

[Mag Master 21]

In no order...

Steinbeck
Hemingway
Dostoevsky
Salinger
EDIT: After some thought, taking out Nietzsche and adding Brett Easton Ellis (also mentioned right below me)

[kilted exile]

Dickens
Sir Walter Scott
Vonnegut
Robert Louis Stevenson
Brett Easton Ellis

[Saladin]

1.Dostoevsky

The rest are in no particular order:

2. Shakespeare
3. Ibsen
4. Kafka
5. Hamsun

Two dramatists and three novelists - and of course two of them are norwegians...

:D

Ok, Shakespeare is in second place.

[Saladin]

I have a feeling that Dostoevsky and Shakespeare will be at top three when this list is finish. Hehe.

[mayneverhave]

1. Faulkner

2. Shakespeare

3. T.S. Eliot

4. Proust

5. James Joyce

Yes, I'm very fond of the early 20th century.

[andave_ya]

1. J.R.R. Tolkien
2. Fyodor Dostoevsky

Can I come up with my other three later?

[mortalterror]

When I was talking about one plot, I didn't mean that he couldn't follow one plot, I meant that, by Aristotelian thought, a good play only has one plot line. Everything is centered around Phaedre. Even Aricia is just there to be a foil for Phaedre, and not to be an actual full, or even central character. The plot doesn't breathe, there are no sub plots, only one plot, as was the fashion. Aricia, I knew, was a Racine invention (having read Euripides's version, though not Seneca's), but really the problem I have is he doesn't allow for anything to not be part of the plot. The plot is so absolute, so demanding, as to disallow breathing.

O.K., one could say the same about Othello, but really, Shakespeare allows us the beautiful opening speeches from Othello, and the love scene at the beginning of the play - the play can breathe. Racine on the other hand trades that off for drama - makes everything so time-strained, which limits things, as much as develops things. I think my problem is I like a less fast paced, more reflexive story, and with Racine, I think, being drama, the action is too quick - too driven, too compact into too little time, if that makes any sense.

There don't seem to be any subplots in Racine. Even the romances in Andromache, and the triangles only enforce the central plot line, only build upon one idea, one direction. I think it becomes complicated, when quite frankly there are more than 3 actors on the stage, and more tools available, yet the structure is still following a 2000 year old model.

The focus and stripping from the play of all non-necessities is why I prefer him to Shakespeare. That is how a good play should be written, as opposed to a novel, which our modern authors make a Christmas tree out of and hang all kinds of junk on. A play should be nothing but essentials. Take Hamlet for instance. In Aeschylus the play is about 1200 lines and has a third as many characters. The play within a play is 1000. Shakespeare's play ambles all over the place for four hours and to this day nobody knows what it's about. It's a good play, but do you really want them all to be like that? It's a lucky Frankenstein, a mismatched patchwork quilt, made of loose and disparate parts.

Drama is not like a novel where you can describe clouds, or go on a twenty page interior monologue through a character's past; so long as eventually you get back to the conflict. That's why I've found the drama more appealing in recent years. It knows what it is and it has a form, whereas with the novel we don't have any structure yet. The strength of a Shakespearean Sonnet is the confining structure: 14 ten syllable lines, iambic pentameter, ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. I've seen you talking about there being a twist 2/3's in and a point driven home in the concluding couplet; so I know you know what I'm saying. Each part of the sonnet has a point, has a purpose, has a task. Writing one is like building a house to code.

Choosing to write in verse at all is to put one's head under the yoke. The shackles of meter and the tyranny of a rhyme scheme are too much for most people, but what wonders are contained therein! There is no free verse in drama because one can't afford to look like one's just screwing around.

You don't like the brevity, the compactness, the clarity, the economy of every word. That may be why you don't like my favorite writer of all, Ernest Hemingway.

Oh, and I'm with you on Leopardi. He is better than Blake.

[JBI]

You see, that's the point though - you are so fixed on Aristotle's notion of drama, that you have a "this is how it is supposed to be" notion. I think the opposite. I think more along the lines with Maesterlinck, a playwright who I don't particularly like, but who wrote some interesting essays. The drama should be more about the subtle, quieter things, than the epic, heroic things. It all comes down to taste though. I think Hamlet better because the ambiguity allows for a wider range of impression, and the depth allows for more reaction with the reader/viewer. Racine on the other hand seems so fixated on one path that it is hard to bend around him.

[Virgil]

1. Dante
2. Shakespeare
3. Homer
4. William Faulkner
5. Joseph Conrad

[eyemaker]

1. Dostoevsky
2. Tolstoy
3. Maugham
4. Shakespeare
5 Chaucer

[mortalterror]

You see, that's the point though - you are so fixed on Aristotle's notion of drama, that you have a "this is how it is supposed to be" notion. I think the opposite. I think more along the lines with Maesterlinck, a playwright who I don't particularly like, but who wrote some interesting essays. The drama should be more about the subtle, quieter things, than the epic, heroic things. It all comes down to taste though. I think Hamlet better because the ambiguity allows for a wider range of impression, and the depth allows for more reaction with the reader/viewer. Racine on the other hand seems so fixated on one path that it is hard to bend around him.

Well that is a very contemporary, a very recent point of view, that has no bearing on how plays were actually constructed for the majority of history. That thinking comes out of the naturalism movement, which emphasized small everyday details, plebian characters, and realism. From that tradition you get Chekhov and Ibsen. You get Strasburg and Stanislavski. This kind of writing and acting will produce a Hedda Gabler proficiently enough, but you can never get an Oedipus. In our theater we have many fishmongers but few kings. Arthur Miller bemoaned that the American theater did not have the actors to do a decent version of Electra and I agree.

[Dr. Hill]

1. Dostoevsky
2. Wilde
3. Tolstoy
4. Turgenev
5. Gogol

[stlukesguild]

JBI... I'll have to trust you on your assertion that Leopardi is much better in the original Italian than in translation... or rather that he sucks in translation. But then again... that would leave you open to arguments that any number of other writers are far better than we imagine... but that they merely suck in translation.:D Of course... I have no doubt that the original language is always to be preferred... but I am not so quick to dismiss the merits of translation out of hand.

Nevertheless... I questioned your pick of Leopardi knowing your current and recent fascination with him because it would seem one might easily argue that he is but one of any number of Romantic/Post-Romantic lyric poets any one of which (including Shelley, Byron, Keats, Wordsworth, Holderlin, Heine, Hugo, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Whitman, Dickinson, Tennyson, Rilke, Garcia-Lorca, etc...) may be marvelous (at times), and any one of which might arguably be put forth as a favorite... but on par with Shakespeare or Homer? Doubtful. I could probably argue that Blake is something larger than a mere lyric poet... but your point is fair. I should most probably have gone with Goethe... but I didn't think of him, for some reason, at the time.

[Pewnut]

1. Shakespeare
2. Dickens
3. Dostoevsky
4. Poe
5. Steinbeck

[mortalterror]

Nevertheless... I questioned your pick of Leopardi knowing your current and recent fascination with him because it would seem one might easily argue that he is but one of any number of Romantic/Post-Romantic lyric poets any one of which (including Shelley, Byron, Keats, Wordsworth, Holderlin, Heine, Hugo, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Whitman, Dickinson, Tennyson, Rilke, Garcia-Lorca, etc...) may be marvelous (at times), and any one of which might arguably be put forth as a favorite... but on par with Shakespeare or Homer? Doubtful. I could probably argue that Blake is something larger than a mere lyric poet... but your point is fair. I should most probably have gone with Goethe... but I didn't think of him, for some reason, at the time.

I'll be very disappointed if Goethe does not make the list. He's better than Leopardi. I don't think there's much doubt about that. But he's a little like Virgil or Milton: easy to appreciate and difficult to actually enjoy. So far, it looks like Nietzsche, a philosopher, is going to garner more votes than any of the former trio. Considering how much JBI claims to love Eugene Onegin I'm surprised he didn't float Pushkin for inclusion in the pantheon of great poets who are underrepresented.

[Bumbeli]

Dostoevsky
Proust
Shakespeare
Tolstoy
Joyce

[JBI]

I'll be very disappointed if Goethe does not make the list. He's better than Leopardi. I don't think there's much doubt about that. But he's a little like Virgil or Milton: easy to appreciate and difficult to actually enjoy. So far, it looks like Nietzsche, a philosopher, is going to garner more votes than any of the former trio. Considering how much JBI claims to love Eugene Onegin I'm surprised he didn't float Pushkin for inclusion in the pantheon of great poets who are underrepresented.

I was torn between Pushkin and Jane Austen in truth, I had him in my original list, but I doubted again he would get another vote, being what these boards are - people here seem to be able to appreciate derivative work that builds off of Pushkin, but not Pushkin himself for some reason. In truth, I felt my list needed a little more prose in it, so I put Austen over Pushkin, and Eliot over Pushkin was perhaps a mistake, but I've been reading Eliot non-stop for the past two months, reading the Quartets about once a day, and I couldn't shake him out of my head.

If the list was ten people, I probably would have added Pushkin, would definately have added Baudelaire, Zola, maybe Flaubert, maybe Virginia Woolf, maybe Faulkner, but really 5 and even 10 is very hard to negotiate. Goethe though, I find doesn't really give me what he gives others - perhaps it's the translations, but I suspect it is my modern and postmodern perspective cutting in at his classical fascination.

[TheFifthElement]

Angela Carter
Paul Auster
Haruki Murakami
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Halldor Laxness

and 2 of those are still alive!

[Riesa]

oh, Fifth, Halldor Laxness is incomparable, he is also one of my top five.

[Kafka's Crow]

Dostoevsky
Shakespeare
Beckett
Tolstoy
Proust


Now Dostoevsky's most formidable rivals come together in my list: Tolstoy and Shakespeare. Let's see where it leads to.

[sytalls]

Great thread! And Goethe makes my list. I'll put him first, although really these aren't ranked in order of preference. I'd be changing the order every few days.

1. Goethe
2. Dostoevsky
3. Thomas Hardy
4. Tagore
5. John Dickson Carr

[LitNetIsGreat]

Hardy seems to be making these lists quite a lot, I have a lot of time for Hardy especially with the likes of Jude and Tess, but for me his earlier works didn’t come close to this level of intensity, he's not consistant enough. I would personally choose Austen over Hardy for British prose due to her tight consistently across all of her works including Northanger Abbey. There would be several others to make the list before Hardy in British prose too I would put in Woolf, Emily Bronte, on the strength of one novel alone, perhaps Lawrence and maybe even my old friend Wilde. There maybe a case for Hardy in the top 25, maybe, but not in the top 5 surely?

[bazarov]

In no order...

1- F Scott Fitzgerald
2- Tennessee Williams
2- Charles Dickens
3- Franz Kafka
4- Ambrose Bierce
5- Jane Austen




No cheating now ;)

kelby_lake; that's six authors, you have Dickens and Williams both on 2nd place :D


You know, it is just for fun, you needn't take everything so deathly seriously. If you are so against lists you needn't partake, but no need to be a humbug on everyone else for having a little fun.

Exactly!


1. J.R.R. Tolkien
2. Fyodor Dostoevsky

Can I come up with my other three later?

Yes, of course.

[Gretchen]

1. Goethe
2. Hugo
3. Tolkien
4. Moliere
5. Shakespeare

[TheFifthElement]

oh, Fifth, Halldor Laxness is incomparable, he is also one of my top five.

There is something about his work isn't there? I've only read one, The Atom Station and will read more, but I already am sure that he's one of my favourites.

[kelby_lake]

I meant you chose 6 authors.

Whoops :blush: I'll go back and change it!

EDIT:
In no order...

1- F Scott Fitzgerald
2- Tennessee Williams
3- Charles Dickens
4- Franz Kafka
5- Vladimir Nabokov (sorry Austen!)

[mona amon]

Without thinking about it too much, my favourite authors in alphabetical order-

1. Austen

2. Bronte (Charlotte)

3. Dickens

4. Tolstoy (Though I've read only two of his works)

5. Shakespeare

[johann cruyff]

Okay, here's my top 5:

Selimović
Krleža
Kafka
Pushkin
Dostoevsky

If I had one more space available, it'd probably go to Danilo Kiš.

[Lust Hogg]

In no Order
1. Dickens.
2. Franz Kafka .
3. Albert Camus.
4. Joseph Conrad. (talent vastly under appreciated)
5. Dostoevsky.

[Cellar Door]

JRR Tolkien
Virginia Woolf
Sylvia Plath
Ernest Hemingway
Anne Sexton

but a few of my favorites...

[kiz_paws]

My list:


Dostoevsky
Hesse
Wilde
Dickens
Shakespeare
Dang, its hard to chose!

[Petronius]

Let's see...

1. Nabokov
2. Fowles
3. Marquez
4. Caragiale (to add some of my own culture's flavour)
5. Sienkiewicz (for good memories)

[Dori]

Dostoevsky
Pushkin
Shakespeare
Nabokov
Hugo

[stlukesguild]

It seems as if Dostoevsky has become the Ayn Rand of the current era... the cult figure for teens and twenty-somethings.:D

[Dori]

It seems as if Dostoevsky has become the Ayn Rand of the current era... the cult figure for teens and twenty-somethings.:D

Indeed! :D

[Niamh]

There is a serious lack of Modern writers in here!

William Butler Yeats
John Millington Synge
Elizabeth Gaskell
Eoin Colfer (because i think he is a great kids writer!!!)
Douglas Adams

[promtbr]

It seems as if Dostoevsky has become the Ayn Rand of the current era... the cult figure for teens and twenty-somethings.:D

Having grown up in the Ayn Rand ( :sick: ) era, I never thought I would live to see the day ( :thumbs_up )


While I do love these list threads , this one has gotten a bit vague and sloppy, as the OP didn't really make it clear. Half are posting their current "flavor of the day" favorite authors, and some are posting who in there humble (or not so humble ;) ) opinions are the top five authors....

Ohwell, I'll play too..

Who I think? feel? TODAY are the 5 BEST Authors, not necessarily my FAVORITE :D :

Above Category: Shakespeare
2. Dostoevsky
3. Beckett
4. Kafka
5. Elliot

You see, Dante is not in there, as I have not read him YET, Cervantes is not in there I have'nt read Don Quixote in 30 yrs (and have little memory of it)
and he probably should be....


TOMORROW:
1 Shakespeare
2. Dostoevsky
3. Beckett
4. ?
5. ?

[johann cruyff]

It seems as if Dostoevsky has become the Ayn Rand of the current era... the cult figure for teens and twenty-somethings.:D

Well then we're making progress, it seems, since those two are incomparable.

[Mopey Droney]

It seems as if Dostoevsky has become the Ayn Rand of the current era... the cult figure for teens and twenty-somethings.:DI don't know how pervasive the Ayn Rand love used to be, but I'm a freshman in college and it seems everyone I know has two unfortunate copies of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead sitting in their dorm room bookshelves (who knows how many have actually read it--often times the book is only within a few feet of an Obama poster), while only a few read Dostoevsky. Still, if what you say is the case, Dostoevskian fanboyism is undeniably an improvement over the Ayn Rand cult.

[The Atheist]

#1 (Bazarov won't need me to fill this one in.)

#2 Aesop

#3 Jonathan Swift

#4 Ben Elton

#5 Tom Sharpe

[Tallon]

No order.

Hemingway
Steinbeck
Orwell
Fitzgerald
Dostoyevsky

[jon1jt]

It seems as if Dostoevsky has become the Ayn Rand of the current era... the cult figure for teens and twenty-somethings.:D

I agree with that, luke...I often wonder though if they're actually reading them given the length factor. What Rand had going for her is the number of small books that summarize her big ones. :D

[LitNetIsGreat]

#1 (Bazarov won't need me to fill this one in.)

#2 Aesop

#3 Jonathan Swift

#4 Ben Elton

#5 Tom Sharpe

Ben Elton? Tom Sharpe? You are joking, yes? Ben Elton above Shakespeare?

[The Atheist]

Ben Elton? Tom Sharpe? You are joking, yes? Ben Elton above Shakespeare?

No, I am certainly not joking.

[Zee.]

Shakespeare is overrated.

[Dori]

Shakespeare is overrated.

:eek:

Take it back!

[Zee.]

No way. Half the people I talk to about Shakespeare these days don't even know why they like him. They only do because they're expected to.

[stlukesguild]

Shakespeare is overrated.

Yeah... an Mozart sucks too.:rolleyes:

Give me a break.

[Dori]

No way. Half the people I talk to about Shakespeare these days don't even know why they like him. They only do because they're expected to.

Oh, I see. 99% of the people I talk to about Shakespeare call me a freakin' nerd.

And then they laugh when a character says, "What's the matter, ho?" As if it was Shakespeare in da hood.

[stlukesguild]

Half the people I talk to about Shakespeare these days don't even know why they like him. They only do because they're expected to.

Limajean, you're 17. Half the people you talk to probably haven't read Shakespeare... except when it was required for school.

[Dori]

Half the people I talk to about Shakespeare these days don't even know why they like him. They only do because they're expected to.

Limajean, you're 17. Half the people you talk to probably haven't read Shakespeare... except when it was required for school.

Such is my experience. :(

[JBI]

Half the people I talk to about Shakespeare these days don't even know why they like him. They only do because they're expected to.

Limajean, you're 17. Half the people you talk to probably haven't read Shakespeare... except when it was required for school.

What does 17 have to do with it - the majority of people don't read literary (and I use the term loosely) books. For instance, my mother has only read 4 Shakespeare plays, most of which at school in her teenage years, and my father hasn't read any in English.

[stlukesguild]

Certainly you are correct in that few people... even as adults... ever develop a serious love of literature... and put forth the effort demanded to attain something of a expertise in the field that would make their opinions worthy of consideration. Of course the percentage of those with more than a rudimentary degree of experience in literature while still in their teen years is certainly even smaller. Of course there was Rimbaud... Keats... DeQuincey... Milton... and perhaps even yourself, JBI. But such are great exceptions, are they not?

[Zee.]

Just because I don't appreciate Shakespeare as much as you do, doesn't mean I haven't read a lot of literature..
and I have. Not everyone LOVES Shakespeare. Whether you've read a lot of literature or not.
Yes, i'm 17. So what. What does age have anything to do with it? in my case, nothing. You don't even know me.

You're making assumptions about me because I said I don't like Shakespeare. I'm not stupid, i'm not "uncultured" i'm not whatever you may be thinking because I don't appreciate much of Shakespeare's work. How much and what literature I have read has nothing to do with my liking of Shakespeare. Period. Your comments were insulting and quite unpleasant. You must greatly underestimate your follow man if you are so willing to pass me off with a comment like " You're 17 ". I know what you implied - it was pretty uncalled for. Like I said, age means very little these days. If you can't understand that then that's your problem, and your loss.

Literary snobs...
give me a break.

I know plenty of people who have brilliant minds and they don't enjoy much of Shakespeare's works. But I guess they're just "17" right?

I didn't say he wasn't good at what he did. I just do not enjoy his work.

[Zee.]

Also the comment about "half the people ... " i've spoken to, haven't read Shakespeare.

Where do you get this from?
What gives you the right to make such a comment - based on what fact? air?

[Dori]

Just because I don't appreciate Shakespeare as much as you do, doesn't mean I haven't read a lot of literature..
and I have. Not everyone LOVES Shakespeare. Whether you've read a lot of literature or not.
Yes, i'm 17. So what. What does age have anything to do with it? in my case, nothing. You don't even know me.

You're making assumptions about me because I said I don't like Shakespeare. I'm not stupid, i'm not "uncultured" i'm not whatever you may be thinking because I don't appreciate much of Shakespeare's work. How much and what literature I have read has nothing to do with my liking of Shakespeare. Period. Your comments were insulting and quite unpleasant. You must greatly underestimate your follow man if you are so willing to pass me off with a comment like " You're 17 ". I know what you implied - it was pretty uncalled for. Like I said, age means very little these days. If you can't understand that then that's your problem, and your loss.

Literary snobs...
give me a break.

I know plenty of people who have brilliant minds and they don't enjoy much of Shakespeare's works. But I guess they're just "17" right?

I didn't say he wasn't good at what he did. I just do not enjoy his work.

Oh dear, lima, chillax, will ya?
stlukesguild is a good man, not a literary snob.

[Zee.]

Okay, fine, alright. I'll take the literary snob comment back because unlike some people - i'm not going to assume.


I just don't like it when people pass judgements on me without getting to know me.
And then when people do get to know me, they act surprised or something.
I don't get it. But I don't get people, so there you go.

[Zee.]

Also i don't need to chill out.. relax.. chillax, whatever the heck it is.

I'm just defending myself, like anyone else would.

[kilted exile]

Perhaps it would be better if you gave a reasoned response as to why exactly shakespeare sucks or is overrated.

With so many people & also the fact you still really new to the forum there is little way to know people & so we end up having to judge them by their comments and info available from the profile & unfortunately there are a number of 17 y.o kids who are like StLukes suggests - if you dont wnat to be taken for one of them it would be benificial to provide reasoning.

[Zee.]

I think his writing is fantastic, very clever and quite brilliant.

But I never found his work entertaining like many others did. It didn't capture my attention or made me feel a way someone who writes that beautifully should.


Perhaps people should hold back from expressing their judgements until I give my reasoning. My age has nothing to do with who I am.

[kiz_paws]

Well, I don't want to get into the thick of a heated battle, but lima, when you posted that you felt that Shakespeare was 'overrated', well that may get under the skin of a lot of people here. And, as Kilted has pointed out, when there is a new poster with only a few posts that we can get to know them on, well a reasonable backup to such a statement would be in order. To maybe fill others in on why you felt that he was overrated, ya know?

Just my two bits worth. :)

[Dori]

I think his writing is fantastic, very clever and quite brilliant.

But I never found his work entertaining like many others did. It didn't capture my attention or made me feel a way someone who writes that beautifully should.


Perhaps people should hold back from expressing their judgements until I give my reasoning. My age has nothing to do with who I am.

Permit me to defend stlukesguild here. (Let it be known that I waiver in my defence, for I am more a friend to limajean. Nonetheless, this conflict needs resolving.)

Though I must admit that stlukesguild's comment, "And Mozart sucks too. Give me a break," was a tad provocative, I don't think he was judging you much at all. He referred to your age because most 17 year olds, that is, the people you talk to about Shakespeare (the assumption that you talk mostly to those who are your own age is logical here), haven't read him, unless it was mandated that they do so. He didn't say anything like, "You're 17, and as such you don't know what you're talking about." His judgements, I believe, targets the people you talk to about Shakespeare, not you.

My goodness, this topic has been severely thrown off track.

[Zee.]

Look, I can see that most people are going to disagree with me and clearly can not see nor understand my point. Yes I am 17. Perhaps I should stamp that on my forehead to prevent anyone engaging in any form of literary discussion with me. My point is, my age has little to do with who I am. I can understand and do acknowledge the stereotypes associated with my age and literature, but before that be applied to me, I ask that all of you who are judging me - make an attempt to gain insight in to my character and try to dissociate yourself from the age group that I belong to. Before passing me off as just another 17 year old who spits on Shakespeare's work.

And no Dori, I have to disagree with you. I think there was a strong sense of " Oh, she's just another 17 with little understanding of literature " due to my comment about Shakespeare.

Now, on my opinion of Shakespeare. That is just it, an opinion. And why should I not be entitled to it? it may get under the skin of a few of you, but that is inevitable. It is the beauty of free expression and discussion. Also, my comment about him being overrated I feel has been blown out of proportion and though I have not explained what I meant - I feel that comments were made in attack before I had the opportunity to explain myself, or, with the exception of Kilted, anybody asked me for my reasoning.

I do not disagree that he was a genius. He was a brilliant writer who I do agree, many can not live up to. I think I should have been more specific. When it comes to entertaining, I believe this is where his work falters. His work does not engage me. The tragedy does not make me feel sympathetic, and the comedy doesn't make me laugh. So in that sense, yes to me, he is overrated. But I do not dare to argue that he wasn't a brilliant writer.

But I do argue that maybe we should all be a little more open about people's opinions.
I know I have a lot to learn. I understand that. But I think we all do - no matter our age.

[kiz_paws]

I do not disagree that he was a genius. He was a brilliant writer who I do agree, many can not live up to. I think I should have been more specific. When it comes to entertaining, I believe this is where his work falters. His work does not engage me. The tragedy does not make me feel sympathetic, and the comedy doesn't make me laugh. So in that sense, yes to me, he is overrated. But I do not dare to argue that he wasn't a brilliant writer.

Well ok then :)

For age -- this makes no nevermind in my world, just so you know, kay?

And yeah, EVERYONE is entitled to their opinion, you are correctamundo. :nod:

BUT: we should all get back to Baz's thread now -- this has greatly dented his intention, je suppose...

[Zee.]

I've probably come off quite rude and stubborn. My apologies if I have.
I am a fighter, and I get quite worked up when it comes to discussions/debates.

I sometimes lack the ability of being able to express myself properly - for lack of a better word. It leads to great misunderstanding. So i'm sorry if I offended any of you. And I take responsibility for the misunderstanding - if any. I didn't explain my opinion very well, if at all.

[mayneverhave]

But I do argue that maybe we should all be a little more open about people's opinions.
I know I have a lot to learn. I understand that. But I think we all do - no matter our age.

This is slightly dangerous. On a normal scale, we would not except the opinions of an 8 year old concerning anything (unless the given 8 year/old was some William James Sidis type prodigy), and for good reason - their mind is underdeveloped and they simply have not had the time to accumulate the knowledge that a 45 y/o or even a 20 y/o would have.

That being said, on the surface, in dealings with a 17 on an intellectual level, we must be careful. Even you must admit that the average 17 year old doesn't have the working knowledge of literature that a college age student might have. Not that they can't, but that we must show preliminary caution - That's it.

Aside from that, age matters not, and now my only fault with you is in your dislike of Shakespeare.

[Dori]

BUT: we should all get back to Baz's thread now -- this has greatly dented his intention, je suppose...

Agreed. I think we can just tell Baz to skip page 6 when he counts. :D

And just so you know, lima, my comment, "Take it back!" was meant in jest.
Even though I treasure Shakespeare's work, I was only trying to be comical. :)

[Zee.]

mayneverhave,
Yes, I agree. Like I said in my earlier post. I understand and acknowledge the stereotypes associated with my age. But I have been well educated and experienced in my - so far, short life - more than most people three times my age.

I understand that I have to fight my way out of that stereotype and not expect to be looked upon differently until I do. But it is hard sometimes. Like I said, I am quite often misunderstood.

I know Dori :)

[JBI]

Meh who cares if she doesn't like Shakespeare. That is her loss - let's move on - people are entitled to opinions, and I doubt anything you will say will budge her's. As for Shakespeare - it's not as if he is short of votes or admires on this thread.

[stlukesguild]

limajean... when you make sweeping proclamations that go against the general consensus of experts in the field in which you are speaking without offering the least rational or basis for your opinion... and when you react in a blatantly emotional manner to a perceived slight... you seem to be playing right into what many may imagine to be the stereotype of the age group that you are so passionate to disassociate yourself with. I will venture that at age 17 I had read far more literature than the average teen... and probably a good deal more than a majority of adults. In spite of that, I will openly admit that my knowledge and my understanding of literature was far less than it is today for the very fact that I have had far more time to read... to gain further experiences in the field. Perhaps you are an exception to the majority of 17-year-olds (and you will notice that my original post was directed at the average 17-year-old and admitted to exceptions); perhaps you already have read deeply and are experienced not only in Shakespeare, but Donne, Spenser, Jonson, Wyatt, Sidney, and Traherne as well. Perhaps you have already earned your Masters Degree and are working upon your Doctorate. Of course were that at all true I would expect something a bit more in depth than "Shakespeare is overrated."

Now that you have offered a degree of reason behind your evaluation of Shakespeare, allow me to challenge it, if you will. You have stated that Shakespeare is overrated... this assumes that his reputation far exceeds his merits. You suggest that you personally do not find him entertaining. Fair enough... but then what actually amounts to "entertaining" according to your standards? I would suggest that what is entertaining to me covers a broad spectrum. I find a sort of intellectual pleasure in work that is challenging. Like the next guy, I can also appreciate marvelous narrative twists and turns. Shakespeare's greatest strengths do not lie in the invention of narrative (most of which were borrowed) but rather in the invention of characters and in the language. In English, only Milton... and perhaps Spenser... approach Shakespeare in his marvelous use of the language. No one approaches him in the invention of characters who have a depth and complexity that makes them almost human. Certain writers, such as Cervantes or Sterne have a few major characters that rival those of Shakespeare. Shakespeare has a legion of such characters. The drama of Shakespeare is the development of these complex characters with often conflicting motivations who reveal themselves through their thoughts (in the form of monologue or dialog) in response to the exterior conflict or drama in which they act out their roles.

[Zee.]

limajean... when you make sweeping proclamations that go against the general consensus of experts in the field in which you are speaking without offering the least rational or basis for your opinion... and when you react in a blatantly emotional manner to a perceived slight... you seem to be playing right into what many may imagine to be the stereotype of the age group that you are so passionate to disassociate yourself with. I will venture that at age 17 I had read far more literature than the average teen... and probably a good deal more than a majority of adults. In spite of that, I will openly admit that my knowledge and my understanding of literature was far less than it is today for the very fact that I have had far more time to read... to gain further experiences in the field. Perhaps you are an exception to the majority of 17-year-olds (and you will notice that my original post was directed at the average 17-year-old and admitted to exceptions); perhaps you already have read deeply and are experienced not only in Shakespeare, but Donne, Spenser, Jonson, Wyatt, Sidney, and Traherne as well. Perhaps you have already earned your Masters Degree and are working upon your Doctorate. Of course were that at all true I would expect something a bit more in depth than "Shakespeare is overrated."

Now that you have offered a degree of reason behind your evaluation of Shakespeare, allow me to challenge it, if you will. You have stated that Shakespeare is overrated... this assumes that his reputation far exceeds his merits. You suggest that you personally do not find him entertaining. Fair enough... but then what actually amounts to "entertaining" according to your standards? I would suggest that what is entertaining to me covers a broad spectrum. I find a sort of intellectual pleasure in work that is challenging. Like the next guy, I can also appreciate marvelous narrative twists and turns. Shakespeare's greatest strengths do not lie in the invention of narrative (most of which were borrowed) but rather in the invention of characters and in the language. In English, only Milton... and perhaps Spenser... approach Shakespeare in his marvelous use of the language. No one approaches him in the invention of characters who have a depth and complexity that makes them almost human. Certain writers, such as Cervantes or Sterne have a few major characters that rival those of Shakespeare. Shakespeare has a legion of such characters. The drama of Shakespeare is the development of these complex characters with often conflicting motivations who reveal themselves through their thoughts (in the form of monologue or dialog) in response to the exterior conflict or drama in which they act out their roles.


I don't mind discussing this with you, but i'd prefer to do it out of this thread. I've 'hijacked' it enough.

[The Atheist]

Whoa. What happened here?


Yes, i'm 17. So what.

Well, I'm about to turn 50 and I agree with you.

I actually thought your answer was what the thread was about - our individual choices rather than conformation to literary establishment rules.


Perhaps it would be better if you gave a reasoned response as to why exactly shakespeare sucks or is overrated.

Boring? Irrelevant to the 21st century? Anti-Semitic?

If you need more, start a thread, in which I will gladly participate!


This is slightly dangerous. On a normal scale, we would not except the opinions of an 8 year old concerning anything (unless the given 8 year/old was some William James Sidis type prodigy), and for good reason - their mind is underdeveloped and they simply have not had the time to accumulate the knowledge that a 45 y/o or even a 20 y/o would have.

Patronise much?

To me, in respect of literature, any reader's perspective is as valid as another - if they can read and understand, so be it.

I haven't changed my opinion on Shakespeare since I was 16/17, and I've read a hell of a lot more books since then. If anything, the diverse and brilliant range available to us in 2009 makes the place of Shakespeare in literature today quite laughable, in my opinion.

But as I said, that would require a new thread so Baz can get back on his numbers. I imagine that Billy-boy will come out on top, or second to Dostoevsky, by the looks of the votes so far, so the result will reflect a majority view, but it won't make it the right view.

Edit: in fact, I've started a new thread myself, here (http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?p=664675#post664675), so come one and all...

[stlukesguild]

To me, in respect of literature, any reader's perspective is as valid as another - if they can read and understand, so be it.

Come on. That has to be the dumbest thing I've read here in a long time. The perspective of anyone who can read is just as valid as any other? Does that apply to other discipline's as well? My medical opinions are just as valid as those of my doctor? My opinions on quantum physics are just as relevant as those of Stephen Hawking? In every field there are those who invest a great more in terms of effort, time, experience, etc... It would seem that the opinions of those generally hold more weight. This is not to say that they themselves always agree... nor that at times they are not wrong. In my own field I doubt I am going to consider the opinion of someone with next to no experience in art with the same degree of weight as I might the opinion of another artist or an art critic.

[The Atheist]

The perspective of anyone who can read is just as valid as any other? Does that apply to other discipline's as well? My medical opinions are just as valid as those of my doctor?

No, it's an invalid analogy. Bring that to the Shakepeare thread, although we had that as a subject recently, because it doesn't belong here.

[Niamh]

Mod Note
Can we please return to the topic of this thread which is "Lit Net Top Author". Any more off topic posts that disregard another members opinion, which they are entitled to, shall be removed. The Athiest has opened another thread for this discussion, please continue it there.
Niamh

[bazarov]

:lol: Please, respect others opinion! Someone respects your ''like list'', you can at least respect his ''dislike list''.

[bazarov]

#1 (Bazarov won't need me to fill this one in.)



Dan Brown?! No....

[_Shannon_]

Hmmm, this is a hard one. Is it who we think are the top 5 most important, or the top 5 we most enjoy, or the top 5 we think are the "best"??

I guess I'll sort of hybrid my list (though it's in no particular order):
1. Flaubert
2. Dickens
3. Dreiser
4. Faulkner
5. Twain (had to have somebody whose name didn't start with an 'F' or a 'D')


Though I am thinking that Henry James, and Tolstoy, and Stendahl ought to be on there....and there are some modern writers who I adore like Richard Russo and Tim O'Brien and Oscar Hijuelos...and I am sure that Proust will be on there once I don't have mushy, mommy-of-small-children brain and get to read him.

[bazarov]

So, more couple of days are in front of you. Post your votes!

[PoeticPassions]

Oh this is way too difficult... I mean, Dostoevsky is one of my favorites... but is he the best? what constitutes best? Maybe Joyce, in his genre (stream of consciousness) is the best? Or Fitzgerald in his style and prose? Dostoevsky for his psychological realism... Shakespeare for sure is part of the great writers. And Milton, Steinbeck, Dreiser oh my! goodness, I can't make a choice.

Just going to stick with Dostoevsky because I have read all of his novels and most of his short stories, and as such feel like I have the best knowledge of his work. Ok. that's it. My vote is locked in.

[Mag Master 21]

1. Steinbeck
2. Dostoevsky
3. Salinger
4. Hemingway

[bazarov]

Voting is closed; results today or tomorrow. Close at the top, as expected.


EDIT: IGNORE THIS POST

[mortalterror]

You can stop counting any time you choose, but I have to question the validity of the poll if you stop at 39 voters out of a possible 57,000. The top books list had at least twice as many votes cast before it got shut down, and I think it was a more representative sample. Two thirds of the posts here are just conversational.

[bazarov]

I did say it will be closed on February 14th, check start of the thread (30 days ago). Also, check when did last 3 posters post. If you really want, you can still vote, but if there is no interest, I see no point. I would like more voters, of course.

P.S. Believe me, Shakespeare is 2 votes in front of Dostoevsky; do you really think I want to close it like that? :D

[Niamh]

You should keep it open for a few months to give more people a chance to vote. LitNet book went on for a long time before it was comprised.

[JBI]

I disagree - you should close it - I would think most people who were here at the creation of the thread have already voted. The LitNet top authors should reflect LitNet top authors, not those of the random people who pop in here, leave their results, and leave. All the LitNetters who are frequenters, I would think, have already voted anyway.

[bazarov]

I agree mostly with JBI, but the truth is also that some members with huge number of posts haven't voted. Don't know why...Maybe solution would be to make it sticky so everyone can see it?

April fool's day is OK for deadline?

[Tsuyoiko]

Dostoevsky :thumbs_up

I know I'm supposed to pick five, but he's my whole top 5 :blush:

[bazarov]

Excellent!

[Jassica]

1)A.S.Pushkin
2)Jane Austen
3)E.M. Remarque
4)Charlotte Bronte
5)J.R.R. Tolkien

Oh, it was difficult choice

[iCherry]

Jassica, agree, really diffucult)
Here is mine
1) Pushkin (no doubts)
2) Lermonov
3) Bradbury
4) Conan Doyle
5) Yesenin

P.S. Jess, why no Yesenin in your list?

[subterranean]

I agree mostly with JBI, but the truth is also that some members with huge number of posts haven't voted. Don't know why...Maybe solution would be to make it sticky so everyone can see it?

April fool's day is OK for deadline?

Is this mean the voting is not yet close?

[Jassica]

P.S. Jess, why no Yesenin in your list?
I wrote only writers, not poets) (Pushkin I wrote as writer)
Don't know, why...

[bazarov]

You can still vote.

[phoenix151]

There seems to be some confusion about whether the voting is closed or not - but here is goes anyway.

1) Jack London
2) John Steinbeck
3) Herman Hesse
4) Charles Dickens
5) Saul Bellow

[subterranean]

Fictions and classics are dominating the vote.

-Thomas Hardy
- C.S. Lewis
- Umberto Eco
- Oscar Wilde
- Thorton Wilder

My nominations is now closed!

[windowfriend]

C.S. Lewis or G.K. Chesterton. Both are incredible--I can't believe how many genres they excelled in.

[Zee.]

I'll vote for Faulkner

[Gladys]

I can't go past Henrik Ibsen and, at the risk of seeming parochial, Patrick White. Followed by Dostoevsky, Emily Bronte and Shakespeare.

[Lord Bas]

Camus
Dostoevsky
Tolstoy
Nabokov
Gogol

[wat??]

1. Dostoevksy
2. Turgenev
3. Aleksander Solzhenitsyn
4. Kurt Vonnegut
5. J.D Salinger (So what if he hardly published anything.)

[Bellrosk]

Virginia Woolf
Thomas Hardy
Elizabeth Gaskell
George Orwell
James Joyce

Cliche I know, but I guess you could say that the bigger writers are the most effective and influential ones and thus the better ones?

[Scheherazade]

I will nominate the authors whose works I can read without any complaint:

Shaw
Faulkner
Steinbeck
Wilde

[subterranean]

I will nominate the authors whose works I can read without any complaint:

Wilde

:thumbs_up


Has anyone nominate Kafka?

[Shruti Amar]

Hello! Friends This is Shruti From India

1.Shakespeare (both for his sonnets and dramas)
2.Jane Austen
3.Bamkinchandra chatterjee(Bengali writer)
4.John keats
5.Amarnath (Maithili writer) Maithili is my regional language.



Being a lover of literature I very well know that literature is so must vast and varied that its creators cannot be confounded in a list.Here I am writings the name of those artists who have touched me beyond my soul.In English only from spenser ,shakespeare to shelly and wordsworth,from swift and pope to austen and eliot there is neverending series of writers . It is very difficult to judge and decide the best among them.I am here only giving name of those with whom I feel linked.
I am from India and in India there are a large number of language.And every language has its own literature.But most of the good works remains hidden.I feel that these writings are nice .They are interesting
and present the life and culture with beautiful craftmanship.But unfortunately most of the lovers of literature are unable to relish its taste .Anyway it is very nice writing to u guys.I feel u should also write me and advice me.

[ksotikoula]

I vote for my personal beloved ones authors:

Brontes (I know I am cheating here ;), but if I had to choose Charlotte is my all time favorite author)
Steinbeck
Austen
Hardy
Marques

[Gladys]

Has anyone nominate Kafka? Ah! He slipped my mind.

[bazarov]

Yes, Kafka is nominated.

[adwara1]

Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky

[bounty]

So, for people to stop arguing about unfair list because Flaubert is better then Dostoevsky; how come Crime and Punishment is above Madame Bovary ; name your top 5 authors. I will count it this time; so Dark Muse can rest a little bit :D Poet, novelist or drama - they all count.

The deadline is...one month, so it's Valentine's Day!

i know i am way past february 14th but id say:

1. charles dickens
2. james fenimore cooper
3. robert louis stevenson
4. mark twain
5. tie between john steinbeck and arthur conan doyle

and i pick them, not so much because im intimately knowledgeable about what it means to be a "great author" or the "best writer", but rather, that i enjoy their books so much.

[jcjp]

As am I-- yet:

1. James Joyce - the accomplishments of Ulysses and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man are extremely difficult to ignore-- despite finnegans wake. I've already rambled on about him enough...

2. Dostoevsky - objectively the BEST writer I have ever seen. His styles range hugely from The Brothers Karamazov (my personal favorite work of his) to Notes from the Underground to everything in between (Crime and Punishment and a slew of others); yet he isn't #1 in my mind because he doesn't have the sheen, the polish that Joyce does in his writing. I could spend weeks upon weeks dissecting any point in Brothers Karamazov yet I could spend the entirety of my life studying Joyce and still not entirely understand it.

3. Marcel Proust - by FAR the most philosophical and in-depth writer I have ever seen, yet he doesn't make too much of a point in his entire series of novels (perhaps that's the point; it's so incredibly long that you end up right back where you started), hence why he's not higher.

4. Walt Whitman - you may hate me for picking a rather obscure (well, by top 5 standards) author but to me he represents poetry in its own true, unbridled form. Unimpeded by laws of poetry and or reason, his style just seems to intrinsically flow from page to page: a style I envy.

5. Vladimir Nabokov: Lolita is a fabulous work that is often misunderstood by idiotic professors who focus on how manipulative HH is rather than how inherently sad his entire situation is (lover dying at such an earlier age, etc...).

huh, who woulda known: three of my picks are in the 20th century...

[PabloQ]

1. F. Scott Fitzgerald
2. Shakespeare
3. Ernest Hemingway
4. Sinclair Lewis
5. Frank Norris

[Alyoshka]

My five picks in no order:

F. Dostoevsky
E. Hemmingway
L. Tolstoy
P. Roth
H. Murakami

Was I too late?

[MissScarlett]

I'm too late too, but:

1. Marcel Proust
2. Shakespeare
3. D.H. Lawrence
4. Thomas Hardy
5. Jane Austen

[bazarov]

You're not late; just keep posting.

[eyemaker]

When are you going to post the final List baz? :) I'm quite excited:D

[dodoshady]

James Joyce

[Gladys]

James Joyce Having just read 'The Dead' from 'Dubliners', I can appreciate your nomination.

[mortalterror]

I got tired of waiting for Bazarov to post the scores; so I went and tallied them myself. As of right now, here is how things stand.

1.Dostoyevski (25)
2.Shakespeare (24)
3.Dickens (12)
4.Tolstoy (9)
5.Steinbeck (9)
6.Hemingway (7)
7.Austen (7)
8.Proust (7)
9.Hardy (6)
10.Nabokov (6)
11.Joyce (6)
12.Hugo (5)
13.Dante (5)
14.Kafka (5)
15.Tolkien (5)
16.Faulkner (5)
17.Bronte, Charlotte (4)
18.Homer (4)
19.Wilde (4)
20.Pushkin (4)
21.Eliot (3)
22.Fitzgerald (3)
23.Salinger (3)
24.Marquez (3)
25.Selimovic (2)
26.Krleza (2)
27.Doyle (2)
28.Keats (2)
29.Poe (2)
30.Lawrence (2)
31.Eco (2)
32.Milton (2)
33.Ellis (2)
34.Vonnegut (2)
35.Stevenson (2)
36.Ibsen (2)
37.Conrad (2)
38.Turgenev (2)
39.Gogol (2)
40.Murakami (2)
41.Beckett (2)
42.Goethe (2)
43.Camus (2)
44.Woolf (2)
45.Hesse (2)
46.Gaskell (2)
47.Orwell (2)
48.Twain (2)
49.Racine (1)
50.Ovid (1)

[JBI]

Wow, that was uninteresting :p Thanks for the work though.

[bazarov]

Unbelievable. Mortal, you were the one who wanted this thread to stay opened for months; remember?

[bazarov]

closed