World Literature!

[kelby_lake]

What do you think are the best works or writers to come from each of these places? (and this isn't to do with birthplace, it's just where they wrote). If you are very knowledgable, you can talk about the progression of literature in one or more countries:

England
North America
Southern America
Italy
Spain
France
Russia
Germany
Canada
India
Japan
China
Iran/Aghanistan...(those type of countries, not good at geography)
North Africa
South Africa
Carribean
Iceland

:)

[thomas212]

Surely Brazil.....:D

What?

[JBI]

I'll just fill in EnglishCanada, because that's what I know best, and I'm sure other posters are far better versed in the literature of other countries.

Maybe I'll do French Canada after, if there isn't a Quebec poster to do it (who would probably be better qualified, notably Etienne or someone).


English Canada
19th century:
prose:
Susana Moody, Katherine Parr Trail
Poetry:
Archibald Lampman, Isabella Valancy Crawford.
Early 20th century
poetry:
A. J. M. Smith, Earle Birney, P. K. Page, E. J. Pratt, Dorothy Livesay (though I think she's going out of fashion), Al Purdy, Irving Layton, Margaret Avison, A. M. Klein, Phylis Webb, Gwendolyn McEwan, John Newlove, Milton Acorn (though he is out of fashion today), Leonard Cohen.

Prose:
Sinclair Ross, Hugh McLennan, Robertson Davies, NORTHROP FRYE (regarded as the first great Prose writer of Canada, and so far the mastermind behind Canadian literature), Harold Innis (I know, a non-literary guy, but he is essential), Sheila Watson, Timothy Findley, Mordecai Richler, Oh, and almost forgot! Margaret Laurence.

Late 20th century until today:
Poetry:

Margaret Atwood, George Bowering, Fred Wah, bpNichol, Michael Ondaatje, Anne Szumigalski, Jan Zwicky, Robert Kroetsch, Lorna Crozier, Roo Borson, Erin Mouré (publishes also under Erin Moure, which is a heteronym), Anne Carson, Joy Kogawa, George Elliott Clarke, Anne Michaels, Stephanie Bolster.

Prose:
Linda Hutcheon, MArgaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje, Robert Kroetsch, Joy Kogawa, Thomas King, Nino Ricci, Austen Clarke, Alice Munro, Douglas Glover, Jane Urquhart, Guy Vanderhaeghe, Rohinton Mistry, Aritha Van Herk.

And I left out the theatre tradition, but I am in no way confident in my expertise to venture into it.

edit: forgot Daryl Hine and Jay Macpherson from the poetry section of mid-contemporary.

[wat??]

I really like Russian literature.

[ericalauren]

I am quite fond of Spanish and Latin American literature and Luso-Brazilian literature. I hope that my Spanish and Portuguese skills improve so I can read the works in their original languages!

[bazarov]

Russian literature.

[jhonerliz]

Afro- Asian Literature

[promtbr]

In a continuing (blatant personal) agenda to see more discussion on this forum outside of Anglo-American Lit...

How about Japan. A lot of its literature is underated in IMHO.
Very little mention ever made but there are some pretty important voices, now more widely available in translation:

Haruki Murakimi (Nobel contender)
Kobo Abe
Yukio Mishima
Kenzaburo Oe (Nobel Prize Winner)
Natsume Soseki
Junichiro Tanizaki
Shusako Endo
Yusinari Kawabata (Nobel Prize Winner)
Kazua Ishigiro (Booker Prize Winner)

Nowifweretalkin19thcenturyitgoestotherussians...

[wessexgirl]

In a continuing (blatant personal) agenda to see more discussion on this forum outside of Anglo-American Lit...

How about Japan. A lot of its literature is underated in IMHO.
Very little mention ever made but there are some pretty important voices, now more widely available in translation:

Haruki Murakimi (Nobel contender)
Kobo Abe
Yukio Mishima
Kenzaburo Oe (Nobel Prize Winner)
Natsume Soseki
Junichiro Tanizaki
Shusako Endo
Yusinari Kawabata (Nobel Prize Winner)
Kazua Ishigiro (Booker Prize Winner)Nowifweretalkin19thcenturyitgoestotherussia ns...

Sorry promtbr, but I hereby claim Kazuo Ishiguro as one of our own, (British). He has lived here since he was a child and is a British citizen. Furhermore he is considered a very "English" author, particularly with "The Remains of the Day". Consequently, when I started a World Literature section in my Library, I didn't put him in it. He didn't need to be translated.

[thomas212]

True Wessexgirl.:D
I would like to add Yasushi Inoue to the Japanese Authors.

I have a weak spot for hybride literature,specialy expatriate writing in French,like Andrei Makine(Russian)Amin Maalouf(Libanese)Driss Chraibi(Morocoo).The two first are on the top of my favorite list and uses French like no others contemporan authors of French birth(IMO).

My other recent discovery are Hungarian Writers Like Sandor Marai and Miklos Banffy(They where counted is coming close to War and peace in my heart)

[JCamilo]

Ryonusuke Akutugawa as well.

[Amylian]

Surely Haruki Murakami of Japan is to be considered one who wrote classic novels. That's what I think.

[mortalterror]

England
In Drama: Romeo and Juliet
In Novel:A Tale of Two Cities
In Verse: Tom O' Bedlam or The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

North America
In Drama: A Streetcar Named Desire or Long Days Journey Into Night
In Novel: Moby Dick
In Verse: The Wasteland
In Short Story: The Snows of Kilimanjaro

Southern America
In Novel: A Hundred Years of Solitude
In Short Story: A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings

Italy
In Drama: Love For Three Oranges
In Novel: The Bethrothed
In Verse: Divine Comedy

Spain
In Drama: Life is a Dream
In Novel: Don Quixote

France
In Drama: Athalie
In Novel: Madame Bovary
In Verse: Flowers of Evil
In Short Story: Ball of Fat

Russia
In Drama: The Inspector General
In Novel: War and Peace
In Verse: Eugene Onegin
In Short Story: The Lady with the Dog

Germany
In Drama: Danton's Death

India
In Drama: Shakuntala and the Ring of Recollection
In Novel: 1984 or Kim
In Verse: Ramayana or The Cloud Messenger
In Short Story: Shooting an Elephant

Japan
In Drama: Chushingura
In Novel: Tale of Gengi

China
In Novel: Dream of the Red Chamber
In Verse: Song of the Wagons

Iran/Aghanistan...(those type of countries, not good at geography)
In Verse: Shahnahma

Carribean
In Verse: A Citys Death By Fire

[kelby_lake]

Good choices :)

[sixsmith]

I'm going to assume that the omission of Australia from your list is an oversight and not the result of the ongoing perception that we are a bunch of beer swilling, crocodile wrestlers.;)

In any case we’re quite young so it’s a bit thin on the ground when it comes to novelists and posterity might be an issue as many of our important writers are still alive. Patrick White (Nobel Winner) is undoubtedly Australia’s most critically respected novelist even if a lot of his work is going out of print. Personally I find him heavy going but “Voss” and “The Solid Mandala” are among his best. David Malouf (Booker nominated) is a beautiful stylist and a true master of the short story. “Remembering Babylon” might be his most renowned work internationally but his “Collected Stories” are well worth a look. Peter Carey (Booker winner) can take a lot of credit from moving Aus fiction away from realism and embracing satire and elements of magic realism. Not overly familiar with his work. Tim Winton (Booker nominated) is a guy who straddles the commercially viable/ critically respected divide. A little twee for my tastes though his novel “Cloudstreet” is often touted as a sort of definitive “Australian” work. Couple of decent poets apparently too but I cant say much about that. Oh and we have a fine literary/cultural critic in Clive James. Not too bad considering.

[mmaria]

England - John Goldsworthy, "Forsyte Saga"
Germany - Herman Hesse, "The Glass Bead Game", "Steppen Wolf", "Demian"; poet Rainer Maria Rilke
Hungary - Lajos Zilahy's novel "Ararat", poet Endre Ady

just to add some more beside the above mentioned ones.

[promtbr]

Sorry promtbr, but I hereby claim Kazuo Ishiguro as one of our own, (British). He has lived here since he was a child and is a British citizen. Furhermore he is considered a very "English" author, particularly with "The Remains of the Day". Consequently, when I started a World Literature section in my Library, I didn't put him in it. He didn't need to be translated.

Yes, as soon as I posted that I almost went back and edited Ishiguro out.
Still, with him out, point is Japan still has a potent list of underappreciated literary voices. (again as always, in my overprivileged opinion :D)

I have to check out the other Japanese authors posted, I'm unfamiliar with them.

There are A LOT of "hybrid" emigre/ expatriot authors that are hard to categorize. US lays claim to Nabakov, yet he wrote and published a good percentage of his works in another language and another country.

[Emil Miller]

India
In Drama: Shakuntala and the Ring of Recollection
In Novel: 1984 or Kim
In Verse: Ramayana or The Cloud Messenger
In Short Story: Shooting an Elephant


Am I missing something here? Why is Orwell's 1984 and Shooting an Elephant
listed under India?

[kelby_lake]

Remember, people, it's not to do with the place that you were born, it's the culture you belong to.

[mortalterror]

Remember, people, it's not to do with the place that you were born, it's the culture you belong to.

I think it's safe to call Kipling and Orwell Anglo-Indian, as they were both born in India to parents who had either been born or raised there themselves, though they spoke English and preserved it's customs. It's worth noting that both men returned to the site of their birth for several years in their teens to early twenties to work: Kipling as a journalist, and Orwell as a policeman. You find in their work a preoccupation with British imperialism, otherness, a split national identity, which sets them apart from the other British writers of their time. Indeed, much of the famous work of either author is situated in that region: Kim, The Light that Failed, The Man Who Would Be King, and Gunga Din, for Kipling, Shooting an Elephant, A Hanging, and Burmese Days in the case of Orwell. They are obviously not working out of the same tradition as Thackery, Dickens, Trollope, Hardy, and Eliot. There's a whole different tone and thought process going on there, which I think is comparable to the Irish tradition in the way that it is vaguely different from the British, uses the same language, but actually defines itself in opposition to British culture.

[Emil Miller]

I think it's safe to call Kipling and Orwell Anglo-Indian, as they were both born in India to parents who had either been born or raised there themselves, though they spoke English and preserved it's customs. It's worth noting that both men returned to the site of their birth for several years in their teens to early twenties to work: Kipling as a journalist, and Orwell as a policeman. You find in their work a preoccupation with British imperialism, otherness, a split national identity, which sets them apart from the other British writers of their time. Indeed, much of the famous work of either author is situated in that region: Kim, The Light that Failed, The Man Who Would Be King, and Gunga Din, for Kipling, Shooting an Elephant, A Hanging, and Burmese Days in the case of Orwell. They are obviously not working out of the same tradition as Thackery, Dickens, Trollope, Hardy, and Eliot. There's a whole different tone and thought process going on there, which I think is comparable to the Irish tradition in the way that it is vaguely different from the British, uses the same language, but actually defines itself in opposition to British culture.

Although Orwell was born in India, he did not return there after education in England. He joined the Imperial Indian Police and was stationed in Burma where he wrote Shooting an Elephant. Unlike Kipling, Orwell could not be described as Anglo-Indian and his writing, apart from Burmese Days, is orientated towards England. Even when writing about 1930s Paris, or Barcelona during the Spanish civil war, the writing expresses an English point of view.

[blazeofglory]

France and Russia had greater geniuses than the rest of countries as far as we speak of modern literature. Russian literature for instance dazzle the rest with the works of great literary figures like Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Gorky, Chekhov and the like and French literates is enriched with giant literary figures like Voltaire and Rousseau.

But when it comes to ancient literature it goes to Indian literature and Indian Sanskrit literature is a vast reservoir of literature. The world still i snot able to birth masterpieces of literature like the Mahabharata. This is unbeatable and insuperable in its beauty, elegance, theme, philosophy.

It dazzles the rest of literature. No language can have a match for Sanskrit, a language, so scientific and grandiloquent, matchless and superb.

[wat??]

What about Hugo for France?

[JCamilo]

yeah, I am a huge fan of Voltaire, a central figure when alive, probally more relevant than his works allow him to be, but reducing french literature to Rousseau and Voltaire, while they are just opening some doors for the XIX century, considerable more brilliant (which ends with the modernists in the XX) a damnable great list of writers is a bit too much...

[weltanschauung]

brazil:
machado de assis, guimarães rosa, rubem fonseca, clarice lispector, manuel bandeira, alvaro de azevedo, carlos drummond de andrade, millôr fernandes

portugal:
fernando pessoa, eça de queiroz, mário de sá carneiro

argentina:
jorge luíz borges

[mortalterror]

Although Orwell was born in India, he did not return there after education in England. He joined the Imperial Indian Police and was stationed in Burma where he wrote Shooting an Elephant. Unlike Kipling, Orwell could not be described as Anglo-Indian and his writing, apart from Burmese Days, is orientated towards England. Even when writing about 1930s Paris, or Barcelona during the Spanish civil war, the writing expresses an English point of view.

Seeing as how Orwell's father goes to India for the Opium Department of the Indian Civil Service when he's eighteen and stays there forty years until retirement, one might imagine the Blairs had roots there. They would have had friends, family, ties to the community. George Orwell's mother Ida Mabel Limouzin spent the first twenty odd years of her life in Burma where her father had a company. She doesn't leave until she's thirty. It would be facetious and disingenuous to simply shrug off this multi-generational connection with India, that the Blairs had, which formed the social background and colored the upbringing of Eric Blair as he grew up.

As for Orwell not returning to the land of his birth, I can understand you not knowing that Burma was a part of the British Raj and administered as a province of India until 1937. That's an honest mistake. I mean, how could a man be expected to keep track of all the land that Britain's lost over the years: the USA, Canada, Australia, India, Ireland, Hong Kong, just to name a few. Are you sure you still own the island? They haven't ceded it away to someone while you slept? Maybe you ought to go check.

[Emil Miller]

Seeing as how Orwell's father goes to India for the Opium Department of the Indian Civil Service when he's eighteen and stays there forty years until retirement, one might imagine the Blairs had roots there. They would have had friends, family, ties to the community. George Orwell's mother Ida Mabel Limouzin spent the first twenty odd years of her life in Burma where her father had a company. She doesn't leave until she's thirty. It would be facetious and disingenuous to simply shrug off this multi-generational connection with India, that the Blairs had, which formed the social background and colored the upbringing of Eric Blair as he grew up.

As for Orwell not returning to the land of his birth, I can understand you not knowing that Burma was a part of the British Raj and administered as a province of India until 1937. That's an honest mistake. I mean, how could a man be expected to keep track of all the land that Britain's lost over the years: the USA, Canada, Australia, India, Ireland, Hong Kong, just to name a few. Are you sure you still own the island? They haven't ceded it away to someone while you slept? Maybe you ought to go check.

Well I did state that when Orwell went to Burma it was as an employee of the Indian civil service so, yes, obviously there was a connection with the Raj. However, George Orwell never liked his father, as is mentioned in one of his essays, and apart from Burmese days I do not recall his writing about India except possibly in the broadest terms .Therefore, it would seem that India did not loom large in Orwell's thinking no matter how it affected his parents.

As for your question concerning who owns this island, the obvious answer for those who live here is that nobody knows. As from 1945 onwards, Socialists and weak Conservative governments have destroyed British nationality either deliberately or by default. Now anyone from even the furthest corners of the earth can, and do, live here without question.

[thomas212]

Bravo Brian Bean.

One can go for a easy show of school bench erudition and been caustic about England,still choosing 1984 as representative of Indian literature does not break two leg to the duck.

Margueritte yourcenar for the lovers of beautifull prose.

[blazeofglory]

What about Hugo for France?

Of course Hugo is insuperably great.

[Etienne]

Ok I'll for France for fun, some authors would fit in more than one category, I put them in only one though...

I'll start with the 15-16th Century
prose: Rabelais, Montaigne, de Navarre
verse: Villon, Ronsard, du Bellay, Marot

In brief:
Montaigne - Essays
Marguerite de Navarre - Heptameron
Rabelais - Gargantua and Pantagruel
Villon - The Testament

17th Century
prose: d'Urfé, de Lafayette, de Bergerac, Pascal, Saint-Simon, La Rochefoucauld
verse:de la Fontaine, Boileau, Malherbe
drama: Corneille, Racine, Molière

In Brief:
Honoré d'Urfé - L'Astrée
Cyrano de Bergerac - The Comical History of the People of the Moon and the Sun
Pascal -Pensées
la Fontaine - Fables
Corneille - Le Cid
Racine - Andromarque, Phèdre
Molière - Everything
Boileau

18th Century
prose: Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau, de Sade, Montesquieu, Lesage, Laclos
verse: (hmm...)
drama:Beaumarchais, Marivaux

In brief:
Voltaire - Candide, Zadig, L'Ingénu
Marquis de Sade - Justine

19th Century
prose: Hugo, de Lautréamont, Balzac, Flaubert, Gautier, de l'Isle-Adam, Zola, Maupassant, Stendhal, Dumas, Mirbeau, de Staël, Sue, Sand, Huysman, d'Aurevilly, Mérimée
verse: Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Mallarmé, de Nerval, Lecomte-de-Lisle, Verlaine, Vigny, Musset, Lamartine
drama: Rostand, Jarry

In brief:
Hugo - Contemplations, Les Misérables
Baudelaire - The Flowers of Evil
Balzac - Old Goriot
Zola - Germinal
Stendhal - The Red and the Black
Flaubert - Madame Bovary, Bouvard and Pecuchet
Mallarmé - The Afternoon of a Faun
Rimbaud - A Season in Hell
de Lautréamont - The Cantos of Maldoror

20th century:
prose: Beckett, Proust, Gide, France, Barrès, Mauriac, Saint-Exupéry, Perec, Queneau, Bataille, Celine, Sartre, de Beauvoir, Colette, Camus, Gary, Genet, Martin du Gard, Duhamel, Alain-Fournier, Ramuz, Giono, Larbaud, Malraux, Robbe-Grillet, Butor, Simon, Sarraute, Yourcenar, Cohen, Le Clézio
verse: Valery, Breton, Eluard, Apollinnaire, Saint-John Perse, Aragon, Tzara, obs, Cendars, Desnos, Char, Ponge, Cocteau, Césaire,
drama: Ionesco, Pagnol, Anouilh, Artaud

In Brief:
Beckett - L'Innomable, Waiting for Godot
Proust - In Search of Lost Time
Gide - The Counterfeiters
Saint-Exupéry - Terre des Hommes, The Small Prince
Perec - Life: A User's Guide
Celine - Travel to the End of the Night
Camus - The Stranger
Gary - The Roots of the Sky
Cohen - Belles du Seigneur
Valery - M. Teste, Charmes
Breton - Nadja
Eluard - Capitale de la douleur
Apollinnaire - Alcools
Aragon - The Peasant of Paris, The Unfinished Novel
Ionesco - La cantatrice chauve

[Pecksie]

I will fill in South America, where I was born and live :)

For me the best (classic) writers, in no particular order, are:

Writers of fiction (mainly):

Jorge Luis Borges (Argentina)
Julio Cortázar (Argentina)
Juan Carlos Onetti (Uruguay)
Horacio Quiroga (Uruguay)
Mario Vargas Llosa (Peru)
Jorge Amado (Brazil)
Silvina Ocampo (Argentina)
Ernesto Sábato (Argentina)

(and yes, García Márquez is a deliberate omission)

Writers of poetry (mainly):

Pablo Neruda (Chile)
Alejandra Pizarnik (Argentina)
Olga Orozco (Argentina)
Julio Herrera y Reissig (Uruguay)

[crystalmoonshin]

English- Charles Dickens (A Tale of Two Cities)

American (North)- Mark Twain (A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, The Prince and the Pauper)

American (South)- Pablo Neruda (Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada)

Italy- Umberto Eco (Baudolino, The Name of the Rose, Foucault’s Pendulum)
Machiavelli (The Prince)

Spain- Miguel de Unamuno, Gustavo Becquer

France- Alexandre Dumas (The Man in the Iron Mask, The Three Musketeers)
Antoine de Saint Exupery (Wind, Sand, Stars; Le petit prince)

Japan- Natsume Soseki (Kokoro, Botchan)
Yukio Mishima (Thirst for Love)
Osamu Dazai (The Setting Sun)

China- Chao Xuejin (Dream of the Red Mansions)

I still have to read a lot to know more about the literature of other countries. I’m now reading Nabokov’s “Lolita” since I often see it being discussed here on Litnet.

[jinjang]

I wonder how you can even compare unless you know well all the languages in the world.
I read many great books in Korean which are mostly untranslatable. I am sure there are so many books left untranslated from all over the world. Translated books are hard already to be the best sellers. We read about other people of different culture written mostly in English like Kite Runner, Reading Lolita. Three cups of tea is an exception. I would take any recommendation of a well-translated books from different countries.

You missed Korea in your list.:)

[Carrolb2]

Japan:
Basho and Issa wrote the perfect poetry for sitting under a tree on a warm spring day.
The Tale of Genji is also amazing (although I'm sorry to say I've only ever had the time to read abridged versions)