Which literary period do you like most?

[Wilde woman]

Another to phrase the question is if you HAD TO study historical period(s) in literature, which one(s) would they be? I ask because it seems like the majority of discussion takes place around later periods, mostly 18th-20th century and, of course, Shakespeare. I am curious why that is (besides, perhaps, language difficulties). What do you find compelling about your pet period? Is it a genre of literature, a certain theme, or perhaps a particular writer?

I specialize in medieval/early modern literature and I know only of 2 or 3 other litnet members here who do the same. This thread was started partially to figure out why that is. And please forgive the obvious Anglophile bent of the periods I chose; I'm in an English department, so these were the most familiar division of historical periods for me.

Edit: I have deliberately excluded defining any particular period by specific dates, because I feel they're always controversial. I don't really want to get into any debates over if something is whether something is modernist or post-modernist, etc.

[Lord Macbeth]

I'd take either Renaissance/Elizabethan Lit., say starting with Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and The Divine Comedy and running through the works of Moliere, Spenser, Kyd, SHAKESPEARE (no guessing my favorite author between that and my profile name, eh? :p), Middleton, Decker, and ending around with John Milton and Paradise Lost or so, or else the period in Philosophy, at least, considered to be the birth and then continuation of Modern thought, from about the 1830s with Soren Kierkegaard to the 19th Century and The Decade of The Novelists to Marx, Ibsen, Tennessee Williams, Freud and, my favorite philosopher, Nietzsche (with Spinoza and Hume rounding out the Top 3 to give some analytic weight there as Nietzsche's likely the greatest philosopher in the literary style of philosophy and almost certainly the first great one) up to about Arthur Miller, Hemmingway, Kafka, 1984, Waiting For Godot, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, which was published/performed in 1968, I believe, so at that point that's one of the last works I truly love and also pushing the limits of what we can consider the Modernist-to-Existentialist era.

[Wilde woman]

I'll start.

I'm attracted to medieval literature because I have a weakness for epic poetry and chivalry (hence my attraction to legendary figures like King Arthur, Alexander, and Robin Hood). It is also a period in English history which is hugely multi-cultural and the linguistic landscape of Britain is constantly in flux, what with all the Scandinavian, Saxon, and Norman invasions. I find medieval languages fascinating because they're so unstable (in terms of orthography and dialect). Old English, Middle English, medieval Welsh and Irish, Breton, Old French, Italian, German, ecclesiastical Latin, Byzantine Greek...it's such a wonderful mix. You've also got the Gutenberg printing press, so you can begin to do things with the relationship between writers and their increasingly large audiences. So there's a fascinating relationship between the Latin Classics (since medieval writers didn't have access to the ancient Greeks) and the slowly-emerging modern world. (Usually Renaissance onwards is considered "modern" in amongst my department.)

Then when you add in the rise of Christianity and the Crusades, there are all sorts of interesting things going on in terms of spiritual and religious writing.

My interest in nineteenth century Romantic stuff is related because there was a resurgence of interest in medieval times and themes. I'm deeply interested in this emergent field, which my colleagues call "medievalism" - the study of the medieval field as perceived through post-medieval cultures and even modern pop culture.

In summary, it's such a rich cultural period and so many of our modern genres can be traced back to this formative time.

[Lord Macbeth]

I'll start.

I'm attracted to medieval literature because I have a weakness for epic poetry and chivalry (hence my attraction to legendary figures like King Arthur, Alexander, and Robin Hood). It is also a period in English history which is hugely multi-cultural and the linguistic landscape of Britain is constantly in flux, what with all the Scandinavian, Saxon, and Norman invasions. I find medieval languages fascinating because they're so unstable (in terms of orthography and dialect). Old English, Middle English, medieval Welsh and Irish, Breton, Old French, Italian, German, ecclesiastical Latin, Byzantine Greek...it's such a wonderful mix. You've also got the Gutenberg printing press, so you can begin to do things with the relationship between writers and their increasingly large audiences. So there's a fascinating relationship between the Latin Classics (since medieval writers didn't have access to the ancient Greeks) and the slowly-emerging modern world. (Usually Renaissance onwards is considered "modern" in amongst my department.)

Then when you add in the rise of Christianity and the Crusades, there are all sorts of interesting things going on in terms of spiritual and religious writing.

My interest in nineteenth century Romantic stuff is related because there was a resurgence of interest in medieval times and themes. I'm deeply interested in this emergent field, which my colleagues call "medievalism" - the study of the medieval field as perceived through post-medieval cultures and even modern pop culture.

In summary, it's such a rich cultural period and so many of our modern genres can be traced back to this formative time.

Arthur and Robin Hood...no love for Lancelot or Gawain? ;)

[Patrick_Bateman]

close between late 19th and 20th century but I went for 20th because Albert Camus lives there :)

[Babak Movahed]

I'm a modernist at heart. For me 20th century modernism is absolutely great! They change up the conventions of style, prose, themes and create this new concept of what is important and what isn't. A couple of great examples would be Ulysses or Mrs. Dalloway, in which nothing in particular actually happens but yet the stories are so renown because of much their style differs from the writers before them. Woolf kind of sums it up as most writers prior try to mirror real life by describing things around them, whether that be people, places or things. What the modernists begin to do is capture the inner mind of a person by using interior monologues and free indirect discourse. It was around this time period where Freud was being translated into English so we also see an abundance of writers influenced by Freudian ideas. I'm in no way shape or form devaluing other literary eras; in fact I'm quite a fan of romanticism, realism, and post-modernism, I'm simply stating my preference is all.

[Desolation]

I'm fond of some 19th century authors, but my favorite period would be the early to mid 20th century. Modernism, Surrealism, Existentialism, Beat, and Post-Modernism are my favorite genres.

[Scheherazade]

The more I read, the more I realise that I enjoy books written at the turn of 20th century (give or take couple of decades) in general, when there was still something noble and innocent. The WWI changed all that, of course, and I like books with that yearning as well.

[the facade]

I'm also studying in the English department of my local university and I've quite literally enjoyed the bits I got my hands on from all time periods, for different reasons. Still, I'm gonna have to go with 20th century modernism :)

[dfloyd]

I've tried to read them, but I find authors such as Philip Roth and Don DeLilo to be quite boring. Twentieth century modernism I can relate well to .... all except Virgina Woolf, whom I'm afraid of.

[stlukesguild]

Considering that the Renaissance/Elizabethan/Restoration period includes Dante, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Spenser, Donne, Herrick, Montaigne, Rabelais, Boccaccio, Chaucer (although arguably he's medieval), Milton, Racine, Moliere, Ronsard, San Juan de la Cruz, Calderón de la Barca, Lope de Vega, Castiglione, Machiavelli, Tasso, Petrarch, Cavalcanti, Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson, Philip Sindney, Walter Raleigh, Robert Burton, Thomas Brown, Henry Vaughan, Thomas Traherene, and a good number more, I'd be hard to find an era to match. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Dante, Montaigne, Milton, and Moliere alone make an ulmost unassailable grouping.

Having said that... I probably have more books from the late 19th century (especially poetry: Baudelaire, Gautier, Verlaine, etc...) and the 20th century (Kafka, Hesse, Mann, Calviono, Beckett, Borges, Paz, Garcia-Lorca, Rilke, Montale, Eliot, etc...)

[Kyriakos]

No mention of poor Robert Walser? :(

Although i like early 20th century works too, my favourite era is the 19th century.

[Lord Macbeth]

Considering that the Renaissance/Elizabethan/Restoration period includes Dante, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Spenser, Donne, Herrick, Montaigne, Rabelais, Boccaccio, Chaucer (although arguably he's medieval), Milton, Racine, Moliere, Ronsard, San Juan de la Cruz, Calderón de la Barca, Lope de Vega, Castiglione, Machiavelli, Tasso, Petrarch, Cavalcanti, Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson, Philip Sindney, Walter Raleigh, Robert Burton, Thomas Brown, Henry Vaughan, Thomas Traherene, and a good number more, I'd be hard to find an era to match. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Dante, Montaigne, Milton, and Moliere alone make an ulmost unassailable grouping.

Having said that... I probably have more books from the late 19th century (especially poetry: Baudelaire, Gautier, Verlaine, etc...) and the 20th century (Kafka, Hesse, Mann, Calviono, Beckett, Borges, Paz, Garcia-Lorca, Rilke, Montale, Eliot, etc...)

Right on, my friend, right on!

Modernists and Psot-modernists may be concerned with assailing the old school, but Dante and The Bard will never be undone! ;)

(No, I love you, Modernism...after Shakespeare himself Ibsen and Tennessee Williams are high on my list of favorite dramatists...POST-Modernism can just go in a bin as far as I'm concerned, don't care for the style at all...the latest work that I think is truly a lasting literary masterpiece in the theatre world is Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead from 1968. It's one of the few sticking points with one of my English professors and I, otherwise we get along great--he simply LOVES F. Scott Fitzgerald and The Great Gatsby, I find his writing style flat, his story cliche, and all the points about the book that have made it a so-called masterpiece owe more to artistic interpretation and "playing the literary game" as it were than to his actual talents.)

Looking at the poll it seems as though we have a rough correlation--almost without exception (HA, Post-Modernism...you're not fooling anyone HERE into thinking you can rank amongst the literature that's...actually literature) the further back we go the less the poll numbers are...

And I'm wondering--why?

There's the obvious, it's more recent, but really I do wonder if maybe there's a new teaching thrend in the schools that's pushing this...nothing wrong with some camus and Beckett, not at all, great writers, and Cummings and his ilk were brilliant poets, and I think T.S. Eliot is simply brilliant and one of the best ever, I have loved nearly all I've read of his (except for a scathing and somewhat mind-boggling critique of Hamlet he wrote...in it he criticizes what he sees as a lack of unity and form in the paly, that the character's tragic flaw should match adn marry with his downfall--but calls Hamlet's tragic flaw a supposed desire to re-connect or redeem his mother, when really it's...well, it's indecision, clear as daylight, that's his flaw, it's so well known--and he thinks Coriolanus, of all The Bard's tragedies, is the best, go figure...)

But why such an issue with that written before 1800?

Homer, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Euripedes, Virgil, Ovid, Chaucer, Dante, Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton...just for starters...

Why are we staying away from that group so much, especially when you can choose multiple periods?

I chose Elizabethan, Late 19th century and Modernism, so I dabbled a bit in both...why are so many staying away, ie, what don't you like/like less about the earlier periods?

Of Pre-1800 periods the Elizabethan era, unsurpirisngly, has the most with 4, and that's to be expected with arguably the best writer ever occupying that timeframe...

But only 4? Less thatn half voted for Shakespeare, Dante, Spenser, Milton, and all the rest in that era?

Not attacking here (well...I AM Lord Macbeth, so first I suppose it's in my nature to attack and second it'd be only natural to defend my author--but I digress) but...why?

[Dark Muse]

LOL Ok, so I ended up picking almost all of them. I could not help myself. I love history, and I love almost all time periods in history and I read books from and about a vast span of different time periods.

I am partial to works of mythology which is a long time passion of mine. I have been interested in mythology, ever sense I can remember just about. I also find the Middle Ages to be a fascinating period of time and I have a long standing love for the Renaissance as well.

I have more recently discovered a love for Victorian literature, and the 19th century in general, as well I have recently found myself quite enjoying 20th century works.

[hazelk]

Victorian England, two of my favourites, Jack Maggs - Peter Carey , Rose by Martin Cruz.

[mal4mac]

The poll is too much of a blunt instrument. For instance, the essays of Seneca are some of my favourite reading, but the Bible is not. So what do I do with Classical/Antiquity/Biblical?

[Wilde woman]

Chaucer (although arguably he's medieval)

Yeah, most English departments place him in the medieval period and then arguably focus too much on his works. That's one of the issues I have with lots of medieval departments. Chaucer is wonderful, but there is SO MUCH MORE out there. We're talking a span of roughly 1000 years, from the fall of the Roman empire up until the English Renaissance in the 1500s. I suppose the draw of Chaucer (and late medieval lit in general) is that it's more "English" - and heading towards modern English - than are some earlier authors. I am personally more interested in Chaucer's interaction and inspirations from Italy and how he reworked those for England and Middle English.


Chaucer, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Dante, Montaigne, Milton, and Moliere alone make an ulmost unassailable grouping.

Agreed. I have also seen the three big Italian poets - Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio - placed in medieval departments, as well as Machiavelli and Castiglione. There seems to be lots of debate about whether the Florentine Renaissance was late medieval or early modern.


But why such an issue with that written before 1800?

Yes, WHY? Most of you are saying why you like your period, but can you also explain why you shy away from the earlier stuff? I suspect that a lot of it has to do with language. It's true that the further back you go, you telescope away from modern English and have to deal with Elizabethan English (which technically is modern!) and then Middle English. And if you go from the Renaissance period back even further, it's almost imperative to be able to read in other languages. Is that the gist of it? Or do people have issues with the actual content?


The poll is too much of a blunt instrument. For instance, the essays of Seneca are some of my favourite reading, but the Bible is not. So what do I do with Classical/Antiquity/Biblical?

I knew this would come up! Well, I can't please everybody. Perhaps, I should have lumped Biblical with mythology, folklore, and antiquity...and given the Greco-Romans their own category (Classical)? Technically, the events and writing of the Old Testament did occur in antiquity. But New Testament stuff happened during and after the Classical period. Then again, their was plenty of ecclesiastical literature and saints' lives written in the medieval times. See my problem?

But if I went through every literary period, we would have hundreds of choices on the poll. I personally think Restoration literature should be its own category. But should Gothic, Existentialist, or magic realism have their own categories?

[Dark Muse]

Yeah, most English departments place him in the medieval period and then arguably focus too much on his works. That's one of the issues I have with lots of medieval departments. Chaucer is wonderful, but there is SO MUCH MORE out there. We're talking a span of roughly 1000 years, from the fall of the Roman empire up until the English Renaissance in the 1500s. I suppose the draw of Chaucer (and late medieval lit in general) is that it's more "English" - and heading towards modern English - than are some earlier authors. I am personally more interested in Chaucer's interaction and inspirations from Italy and how he reworked those for England and Middle English.

I love the Middle Ages and I love to read about the time period both in fiction and non-fiction, but I am not actually familiar with very many midlevel literary works.

Could you through some recommendations my way?

[Whifflingpin]

Scheherezade: "The more I read, the more I realise that I enjoy books written at the turn of 20th century (give or take couple of decades) in general, when there was still something noble and innocent."

Me too, but do our preferred authors coincide also? Buchan, Chesterton, Conrad, Hope, Masefield, Maugham, Hugh Walpole....

[Lord Macbeth]

Yes, WHY? Most of you are saying why you like your period, but can you also explain why you shy away from the earlier stuff? I suspect that a lot of it has to do with language. It's true that the further back you go, you telescope away from modern English and have to deal with Elizabethan English (which technically is modern!) and then Middle English. And if you go from the Renaissance period back even further, it's almost imperative to be able to read in other languages. Is that the gist of it? Or do people have issues with the actual content?

But if I went through every literary period, we would have hundreds of choices on the poll. I personally think Restoration literature should be its own category. But should Gothic, Existentialist, or magic realism have their own categories?

Really?

Folks are put off by Elizabethan jargon? Bearing in mind that all statements of ease and difficulty are relative...THAT'S EASY! ;)

Even if you don't get it, though, you can still get the general gist of it, especially with comedies by Decker and Shakespeare, those are relatively modern and even easier to grab hold of than the tragedies, which are generally more hightened in their language and their allusions as tragedy is a heightened theatre from from comedy (which might cause a firestorm here, but bearing in mind I love both...I have to agree with Nietzsche on that, tragedy as done by the the Greeks and the Shakespeare/Kyd crowd really do seem to be of more artistic value...which is a position perhaps best left to another thread, but if anyone asks I'll give my best defense of my reasoning why.)

And it'd seem to me the further back you go the easier it should get, as really the stories themselves seem to become almost more primal and can bee seen as the roots of all that follows in literature--just because it's in Greek Homer is hard to follow? I find that hard to believe as The Iliad sets the tone for both epic poetry and war stories (and is one of the first great stories dealing with wrath if we consider Achilles) and then The Odyssey IS the template for nearly all travel stories to come in the West.

And you don't need to know Hebrew or even believe in the religions that follow from it to appreciate David and Goliath as the template for the "underdog vs. overdog" motif...




Also, I WOULD be in favor of counting Existential Literatre seperately, that's why I picked 20th Century, for Camus and Sartre and Samuel Beckett and Tom Stoppard...it just seems so different than the others it merits its own class...

[stlukesguild]

SLG- Chaucer (although arguably he's medieval)

Yeah, most English departments place him in the medieval period and then arguably focus too much on his works. That's one of the issues I have with lots of medieval departments. Chaucer is wonderful, but there is SO MUCH MORE out there. We're talking a span of roughly 1000 years, from the fall of the Roman empire up until the English Renaissance in the 1500s. I suppose the draw of Chaucer (and late medieval lit in general) is that it's more "English" - and heading towards modern English - than are some earlier authors. I am personally more interested in Chaucer's interaction and inspirations from Italy and how he reworked those for England and Middle English.

I would place Chaucer in the Renaissance for the simple reason that he strikes me as less insular or isolated and clearly open to outside influences drawing tales from France, India, and Italy (especially Boccaccio). Like Dante, he pushes the idea that the vulgar native language (English) is worthy of serious literature. Of course by the standards of the visual arts Shakespeare and later poets would not be considered part of the Renaissance but rather the Baroque... but literature, music, and the visual arts do not have the same stylistic divisions.

I don't think Chaucer is overrated... or rather not within the English-speaking world. He is the central writer after the Beowulf author and before Spenser (who is underrated) and Shakespeare. Within the whole of European literature I agree that Rabelais, Romance of the Rose, The Poem of the Cid, Ariosto, Boccaccio, Boiardo, Parival, Tristan, the Nibelungenlied, Beowulf, the Icelandic narratives, the great Arabic and Hebrew poets of Islamic Spain, etc... are deserving of far more attention... especially when most literature surveys seem to jump from Virgil and the Romans right to Chaucer with perhaps a brief survey of Beowulf or one of the "mystery plays" such as Everyman. The middle-ages, however, were far from being the "dark ages" that many portrayed them as being... starting with the Renaissance.

I might also note at this point that what we have all been discussing here is Western literature... the literary achievements of Italy, France, Germany, Spain, England, the United States, and a few other nations... which wholly ignores the brilliant achievements of the Arab and Persian cultures, India, China, and Japan... cultures that were as advanced or more so than the West during much of the period we are looking at.

Chaucer, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Dante, Montaigne, Milton, and Moliere alone make an ulmost unassailable grouping.

Agreed. I have also seen the three big Italian poets - Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio - placed in medieval departments, as well as Machiavelli and Castiglione. There seems to be lots of debate about whether the Florentine Renaissance was late medieval or early modern.

Dante has been the only one that I have seen debated... as a result of his scholasticism and his conservative takes on church and state... although he clearly argues for the need for a strong secular government separate from the control of the papacy. Dante's insistence upon the value of personal experience and opinions as well as his links with such clear Renaissance figures as Giotto reinforces my view of him as a major figure of the early Renaissance. Petrarch, Boccaccio, and certainly Machiavelli and Castiglione are almost the epitome of Renaissance writers.


But why such an issue with that written before 1800?

Yes, WHY? Most of you are saying why you like your period, but can you also explain why you shy away from the earlier stuff? I suspect that a lot of it has to do with language...

Or do people have issues with the actual content?

When you look at the voting it forms a graph in which popularity of each era increases the closer we get to the present... with the exceptions of the 18th century... which always seems to get no love... in art and music as well as literature. Post-Modernism is also less popular... but this is clearly because it presents some serious challenges to the reader... we are not even certain as to what work from the here and now is the best or what shall survive. I agree that the linguistic or formal structural issues are certainly one reason that the further we get from the present the less popular the literature becomes... but I also suspect there is the desire for writing that reinforces one's own view and experiences. Many can relate to Jane Austen's experiences with relationships, Dicken's, Tolstoy's, and Dostoevsky's realistic view of social issues, relationships, etc... Dante, Shakespeare, Homer, the Bible, etc... often present world views and experiences quite foreign to most. Personally, this is one of the things I most value about art... the manner in which it allows us to engage in a dialog with persons of different times, places, and experiences... not to negate the value of the artists here and now.

[DanielBenoit]

I'm a little shocked that the Renaissance has only six votes. If one is to consider it to start around Chaucer and Dante and end around say Milton (if one accepts Eliot's observation that Milton's negative influence destroyed his beloved 'Metaphysical Poets').

Indeed, it seems that we don't have nearly as many great poets from the time after during the Enlightenment, which produced far more great musicians, scientists and philosophers.

The late 19th and early 20th century most certainly is popular because of the fact that the themes Kafka or many of the modernists explored were quite prophetic of their times and the postwar world.

Postmodernism is understandably unpopular because of its excessive cleverness and irony, sometimes to the point of nihilism. That said, the period has undoubtably produced a good deal of great writers, with even some works to rival that of High Modernism. That said, I have yet to read a postmodern poet that has been truly memorable (though that may be from lack of experience).

Btw, I was wondering if any of you would classify Beckett as postmodern or of a very late High Modernism?

[.Kafka]

20th century. Without an inkling of doubt.


I'm a little shocked that the Renaissance has only six votes. If one is to consider it to start around Chaucer and Dante and end around say Milton (if one accepts Eliot's observation that Milton's negative influence destroyed his beloved 'Metaphysical Poets').

Indeed, it seems that we don't have nearly as many great poets from the time after during the Enlightenment, which produced far more great musicians, scientists and philosophers.

The late 19th and early 20th century most certainly is popular because of the fact that the themes Kafka or many of the modernists explored were quite prophetic of their times and the postwar world.

Postmodernism is understandably unpopular because of its excessive cleverness and irony, sometimes to the point of nihilism. That said, the period has undoubtably produced a good deal of great writers, with even some works to rival that of High Modernism. That said, I have yet to read a postmodern poet that has been truly memorable (though that may be from lack of experience).

Btw, I was wondering if any of you would classify Beckett as postmodern or of a very late High Modernism?

It's difficult to classify any literature under the broad header/pretext of a movement. But within the context and limits of post-modern theory, that is predominately: Lyotard, Derrida, Foucault, Jameson, most of Beckett's writing is characterized by themes that have retrospectively been articulated as post-modern. 'Krapp's Last Tape' is perhaps the truly first post-modern play. I disagree with you on your statement defining the post-modern. Most atrocious contemporary writers dabbling in the post-modern are not familiar with literary theory, analytical terminology, and the genealogy of history, as such they produce mediocre works that appear "clever" and "ironic", like Rushdie and Ellis. Much "true to theory" and noteworthy post-modern literature is not nihilistic, but existentialist, and I begin to wonder what the difference is any more. Take Marquez or Faulkner. Anti-post-modern sentiments are emerging within the U. States and within Europe as a result of a strong dislike and misinterpretation of the variability of post-structuralism, of Barthes, and of Baudillard's theory of the chaos of semiotics - the unreliability of signs. Essentially, the West is primarily concerned with the integration of Other cultures - emigrants. Moreover, writers of the last century cannot be read conventionally, two world wars occurred - Levinas, Cioran, Camus, all were deeply torn...modern critics are still struggling with Enlightenment ideals of interpretation.

[Aragorn Elessar]

Difficult to say, but Mythology/Folklore may have been my favorite. It is very old, and I like that. It has inspired countless authors - probably the most influential period of literature. But I also like Anglo-Saxon and 18th century. All of the periods have at least a few good literary works.

[stlukesguild]

I disagree with you on your statement defining the post-modern. Most atrocious contemporary writers dabbling in the post-modern are not familiar with literary theory, analytical terminology, and the genealogy of history, as such they produce mediocre works that appear "clever" and "ironic", like Rushdie and Ellis.

Do you honestly believe that the study of literary theory and familiarity of analytical terminology is essential to the development of a good or great writer... or artist in any field for that matter?

Anti-post-modern sentiments are emerging within the U. States and within Europe as a result of a strong dislike and misinterpretation of the variability of post-structuralism, of Barthes, and of Baudillard's theory of the chaos of semiotics - the unreliability of signs.

My experience has been that most people who dislike Post-Modernism have never read Barthes, Baudrillard, post-structuralist theory... heard of them... or even care in the very least. Perhaps if anything, they will point out that such mental masturbation... placing theory and academic disputes at the heart of artistic concerns is what leads to a literature that says absolutely nothing to most readers.

Moreover, writers of the last century cannot be read conventionally, two world wars occurred...

And your point is? You imagine that artists throughout the whole of history have not been continually confronted with horrors and atrocities that challenged all that they valued?

[Emil Miller]

When it comes to the 19th century, my preference is for French writers. Although I have read some Dickens, Trollope, Gissing and sundry other 19th century English authors, for some reason most writers of English that I prefer are all 20th century, but nothing beyond WW11 which, to my mind, was a watershed in writing just as was WW1. Apart from Graham Greene, George Orwell, Eric Ambler, William Golding and Eric Linklater, most of whom were writing before 1945, I don't remember having read read any post-war novelists of note.

[.Kafka]

Do you honestly believe that the study of literary theory and familiarity of analytical terminology is essential to the development of a good or great writer... or artist in any field for that matter?


I think you can answer that for yourself. If not: in literature, yes it is imperative and absolutely essential, in art and in music, not so much. If you disagree, that is fine, but go read a few more books.

My experience has been that most people who dislike Post-Modernism have never read Barthes, Baudrillard, post-structuralist theory... heard of them... or even care in the very least. Perhaps if anything, they will point out that such mental masturbation... placing theory and academic disputes at the heart of artistic concerns is what leads to a literature that says absolutely nothing to most readers.

I'm speaking of the academics, such as Turner, Callinicos, Eagleton, etc who are intimately acquainted with the movement and all its nuances, not "most people".

And your point is? You imagine that artists throughout the whole of history have not been continually confronted with horrors and atrocities that challenged all that they valued?

Not on the scale that occurred in this last century. More people died in the last century than in the collective history of mankind. Conventional warfare was abandoned as was conventional morality. The impact of Darwinism, Freud, and Marx epitomized in new discourses, tensions, paranoias, techniques, and doubts, amongst many other things. The Soviet Revolution of 1905 was the first of its kind. The stream of consciousness method was perfected by many high modernists such as Mansfield, Eliot, Joyce, Faulkner, etc. Pick up Levinas, Derrida, Cioran, or Zizek and you will not need to ask me such silly questions. The way we we read, empathize, identify, and associate, has changed.

[mortalterror]

Chaucer, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Dante, Montaigne, Milton, and Moliere alone make an ulmost unassailable grouping.

Aside from Dante and Chaucer being medieval writers, I'd have no problem pitting that group against Homer, Virgil, Ovid, Horace, Aristophanes, Aeschylus, Euripides, Sophocles, Sappho, Anacreon, Valmiki, Vyasa, the writers of the Bible, the Egyptian Book of the Dead, and the Rig Veda in antiquity, or Firdawsi, Tu Fu, Li Po, Po Chu-i, Wang Wei, Nizami, Jayadeva, Sadi, Rumi, and Hafiz in the middle ages.

[Sebas. Melmoth]

In the run up to 2000 postmodern critical theory and criticism had a good head of steam: it was catching on, and people were coming to grips with it--actually using it in university English and history classes.

Unfortunately, along with everything else (historically, politically, etc.) 911 seems to have turned the tide on postmodernism in theory and critique.

Post-911 ushered in what I've termed hypercapitalistic-neoprimitivism--not only in politics, business, and society, but in the dumbed-down lack of critical thinking at university. (IMO)

[.Kafka]

In the run up to 2000 postmodern critical theory and criticism had a good head of steam: it was catching on, and people were coming to grips with it--actually using it in university English and history classes.

Unfortunately, along with everything else (historically, politically, etc.) 911 seems to have turned the tide on postmodernism in theory and critique.

Post-911 ushered in what I've termed hypercapitalistic-neoprimitivism--not only in politics, business, and society, but in the dumbed-down lack of critical thinking at university. (IMO)

How has post-modern theory "run out of steam" after 9/11? By "hypercapitalistic-neoprimitivism" do you mean just simple neoliberalism? Because I do not see any vast difference between the two. How can you generalize that critical thinking has diminished in universities because of 9/11 without providing any substantial research/evidence? How is the event and the phenomenon interconnected? And to what extent can they be? Do you mean American universities, or European ones, or Arabic ones, or Chinese ones? How can standards of and methodologies in academia have been "dumbed down" because of 9/11? Are you consciously being naive?

[OrphanPip]

Postmodernism is best associated with sophistry and obfuscation than with critical thinking.

[stlukesguild]

SLG- Do you honestly believe that the study of literary theory and familiarity of analytical terminology is essential to the development of a good or great writer... or artist in any field for that matter?

I think you can answer that for yourself. If not: in literature, yes it is imperative and absolutely essential, in art and in music, not so much. If you disagree, that is fine, but go read a few more books.

Somehow I doubt that literary theory and criticism were essential to the oeuvre of Shakespeare, Baudelaire, Dante, Tolstoy, or Dickens. While writers, being highly literate people, undoubtedly read and consider examples of literary criticism... perhaps more so over the past century... I doubt that literary theory, criticism, or the largely esoteric ramblings of academics has a great an impact formatively upon a writer as do examples of other writers and the actual practice of writing.

Within the visual arts there are certainly those artists who study art theory and art criticism... and utilize such in an effort to promote their efforts through so-called "art speak"... but one recognizes that most of the truly central figures of the last century couldn't have given a rat's a** as to what Clement Greenberg, Harold Rosenberg, Arthur C. Danto, etc... had to say. Academics and critics often assume that they are far more important and influential than they actually are... mistake their role as authoritative rather than interpretive. DeKooning used to speak of how all the great Abstract Expressionists used to sit around the bar reading Clement Greenberg (the most influential art critic of the day) and laughing at what a moron he was.

My experience has been that most people who dislike Post-Modernism have never read Barthes, Baudrillard, post-structuralist theory... heard of them... or even care in the very least. Perhaps if anything, they will point out that such mental masturbation... placing theory and academic disputes at the heart of artistic concerns is what leads to a literature that says absolutely nothing to most readers.

I'm speaking of the academics, such as Turner, Callinicos, Eagleton, etc who are intimately acquainted with the movement and all its nuances, not "most people".

Again, these academics are but a small... and perhaps least significant portion of that part of "most people" who are passionate readers and who will impact what writing survives and what doesn't. Perhaps first in importance are subsequent generations of writers and readers.

And your point is? You imagine that artists throughout the whole of history have not been continually confronted with horrors and atrocities that challenged all that they valued?

Not on the scale that occurred in this last century. More people died in the last century than in the collective history of mankind.

Actually, that's a common fallacy:

http://blog.ted.com/2007/09/11/steven_pinker/

If we look at the Black Death from c. 1350-1400 we find the world population falls from 450 million to 350-375 million. That's nearly a death rate of 35% (and went as high as 60% in Europe... and 90% in some cities). World War II caused an estimated 60 million deaths... out of a world population of 2.4 billion. An equivalent death rate to the Black Death would have meant some 750 million deaths. The Inquisition, which ran for several centuries has been credited for anywhere between 600,000 and 5-million killed including some 40,000 burned as witches. The 30-Years War reduced the population of the German states by between 15 and 30%... with much higher number in certain cities and even more deaths attributed to outbreaks of disease such as dysentery, cholera, typhus, and a resurgence of the bubonic plague. The estimate for the total casualties of the war is as high as 11 million deaths. The An Shi Rebellion in the mid-8th century in China resulted in an estimated 33 million deaths. The Mongol invasions of Eastern Europe and the Middle-East some 30 million, the Napoleonic Wars some 3.5- 6.5 million deaths, while the European colonization of the Americas resulted in some 10-million+ deaths. In each instance we are dealing with losses to a population far smaller than that which existed in the 20th century.

Conventional warfare was abandoned as was conventional morality. The impact of Darwinism, Freud, and Marx epitomized in new discourses, tensions, paranoias, techniques, and doubts, amongst many other things. The Soviet Revolution of 1905 was the first of its kind. The stream of consciousness method was perfected by many high modernists such as Mansfield, Eliot, Joyce, Faulkner, etc. Pick up Levinas, Derrida, Cioran, or Zizek and you will not need to ask me such silly questions. The way we we read, empathize, identify, and associate, has changed.

Again, this is but a naive notion not unlike that of the teenager who cannot fathom that his or her parents might have experienced all that he or she finds so traumatic. How was the collapse of Islamic Spain and the expulsion and forced conversion of the Jewish and Muslim populations under the Inquisition... the Reformation... the Fall of Rome... the Fall of Constantinople... the Mongol Invasions... etc... not every bit as traumatic to those involved and to the artists and writers of the time as the conflicts of the 20th century? Conventional warfare? What was that? History is laden with examples of conquerors slaughtering the conquered... men women and children... perhaps only pausing enough to rape the women before killing them. Perhaps if there was a special trauma of the 20th century it was the shock in recognizing the inherent capability for violence and destruction by a supposedly civilized population. The artists of the middle ages and the Renaissance would have grown up in full recognition of the fragility of life and mankind's propensity for violence and cruelty to his or her fellow man. Modernism began with the illusion of "better living through science and technology" and the belief that Utopia was just around the corner.

Aside from Dante and Chaucer being medieval writers, I'd have no problem pitting that group against Homer, Virgil, Ovid, Horace, Aristophanes, Aeschylus, Euripides, Sophocles, Sappho, Anacreon, Valmiki, Vyasa, the writers of the Bible, the Egyptian Book of the Dead, and the Rig Veda in antiquity, or Firdawsi, Tu Fu, Li Po, Po Chu-i, Wang Wei, Nizami, Jayadeva, Sadi, Rumi, and Hafiz in the middle ages.

Another words... you could beat the combined efforts of Shakespeare, Dante, Chaucer, Milton, and Montaigne (writers from c. 1300-1650) from Italy, France, and England if you could choose writers from across the globe from the 5th century BCE through somewhere around 1000 CE?

[.Kafka]

Somehow I doubt that literary theory and criticism were essential to the oeuvre of Shakespeare, Baudelaire, Dante, Tolstoy, or Dickens.

Not essential to Baudelaire? Are you familiar with his "Painter of Modern Life"?

Again, these academics are but a small... and perhaps least significant portion of that part of "most people" who are passionate readers and who will impact what writing survives and what doesn't. Perhaps first in importance are subsequent generations of writers and readers.

So you think Derrida is insignificant? He is an overwhelming minority.

The 19th and 20th centuries were much more interconnected - Information Age. Modern warfare - artillery, incendiary devices, gunpowder, carpet bombs, atomic bombs, etc.

Again, this is but a naive notion not unlike that of the teenager who cannot fathom that his or her parents might have experienced all that he or she finds so traumatic.

Do not patronize me.

Perhaps if there was a special trauma of the 20th century it was the shock in recognizing the inherent capability for violence and destruction by a supposedly civilized population.

Look at Rome.

[stlukesguild]

Somehow I doubt that literary theory and criticism were essential to the oeuvre of Shakespeare, Baudelaire, Dante, Tolstoy, or Dickens.

Not essential to Baudelaire? Are you familiar with his "Painter of Modern Life"?

Yes, I read Baudelaire's essays years ago. I am also aware that his most important influences were not critics or academics but rather other writers: Poe, Flaubert, De Quincey, Victor Hugo, Gautier, Nerval... as well as artists such as Delacroix and Courbet and the composer, Richard Wagner.

So you think Derrida is insignificant? He is an overwhelming minority.

Do you honestly imagine that a critic unknown to the vast readership of literature will have any real impact in the long run upon the course of literature? There are but a few critics... or philosophers mistaken for literary theorists... over the whole of literature that have survived... Johnson, Ruskin, Hazlitt, Emerson... and unlike Derrida, they could actually write in a readable manner.

The 19th and 20th centuries were much more interconnected - Information Age. Modern warfare - artillery, incendiary devices, gunpowder, carpet bombs, atomic bombs, etc.

And? So you would suggest that because the writer living in a comfortable suburban house in the American Mid-West somewhere has access to televised images of the carnage in Vietnam or Iraq that this in any way trumps the experience of the writer living in Paris during the Reign of Terror or Germany during the 30 Years War... or pretty much anywhere in Italy during the Renaissance... where death... violent death was an intimate and almost daily experience?

Again, this is but a naive notion not unlike that of the teenager who cannot fathom that his or her parents might have experienced all that he or she finds so traumatic.

Do not patronize me.

Your argument begs for as much. You are asserting this notion that somehow the artists and writers of the last 100 years have been exposed to events far more traumatic and horrific than those experienced by their predecessors... but history does not support this view.

Perhaps if there was a special trauma of the 20th century it was the shock in recognizing the inherent capability for violence and destruction by a supposedly civilized population.

Look at Rome.

I'm not quite sure what Rome has to do with the shock experienced by those in the 20th century who were of the belief that theirs was an eminently civilized culture moving rapidly toward a Utopia wrought by human ingenuity, science, and technology. The naive faith in the future (and rejection or even ignorance or the past) would suggest a culture that would not ever have thought that the lessons of the past had any relevance for the realities of the present.

[oshima]

I enjoy 19th century realist novels like Madam Bovary or The Idiot just as much as the next person, and it is true that Shakespeare and Milton wrote eternally relevant works. However, I think people like James Baldwin, Richard Yates, and Nabokov have just so much power, relevance, and insight in their prose that for me Modern and post-modern literature contain the tittles and authors that I keep coming back to over and over again. Also, insightful books about our current ways of living in the world like Daniel Quinn's Ishmael, while not always fitting the category of "literature" as it is traditionally thought of, can change our worldviews and challenge the contemporary zeitgeist.

[mortalterror]

Aside from Dante and Chaucer being medieval writers, I'd have no problem pitting that group against Homer, Virgil, Ovid, Horace, Aristophanes, Aeschylus, Euripides, Sophocles, Sappho, Anacreon, Valmiki, Vyasa, the writers of the Bible, the Egyptian Book of the Dead, and the Rig Veda in antiquity, or Firdawsi, Tu Fu, Li Po, Po Chu-i, Wang Wei, Nizami, Jayadeva, Sadi, Rumi, and Hafiz in the middle ages.

Another words... you could beat the combined efforts of Shakespeare, Dante, Chaucer, Milton, and Montaigne (writers from c. 1300-1650) from Italy, France, and England if you could choose writers from across the globe from the 5th century BCE through somewhere around 1000 CE?

I italicized my remarks above; so you can clearly see that I am speaking of two distinct eras. Antiquity is anything from the invention of writing around 3400BC (but for my purposes 1250BC will do) to about 500AD and the middle ages fall between 500AD and 1350AD.

If you consider that the world population is only about 50million people at my beginning antiquity date and is some 300 million at the end some 1700 years later, I'd say that an equivalent number of people lived and died and wrote as the 500-600 million people living for 350 years in your Renaissance period. Besides, most of my names come from Greece 700BC- 400BC when it's population was about 4million. Fair is fair. You act like I'm taking some big advantage with time, when you have major advantages in population and no one said you had to restrict yourself to just those countries. If you have more names, bring it on.

I'm giving you Dante and Chaucer gratis. However, I'm of the opinion that Homer is a match for Dante, Ovid for Chaucer, Virgil for Milton, Aristophanes for your Moliere, Plato for Montaigne, Aeschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles for Shakespeare, Racine, and Calderon, Petronius for Cervantes, Plautus for Rabelais, Seneca for Marlowe, Valmiki for Spenser, Horace for Donne, Sappho for Petrarch, Anacreon for Ronsard, Apollonius of Rhodes for Tasso, etc. and I've still got the Bible, and the Mahabharata. I win.

[stlukesguild]

I'm giving you Dante and Chaucer gratis. However, I'm of the opinion that Homer is a match for Dante, Ovid for Chaucer, Virgil for Milton, Aristophanes for your Moliere, Plato for Montaigne, Aeschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles for Shakespeare, Racine, and Calderon, Petronius for Cervantes, Plautus for Rabelais, Seneca for Marlowe, Valmiki for Spenser, Horace for Donne, Sappho for Petrarch, Anacreon for Ronsard, Apollonius of Rhodes for Tasso, etc. and I've still got the Bible, and the Mahabharata. I win.

You're giving me Dante and Chaucer... although arguments can easily be made for counting them among the Renaissance considering that both follow Giotto, commonly seen as the starting point of the early Renaissance. And in return you are able to draw from the literature of the entire known world from the birth or writing to the fall of Rome... and still you insist on making such exaggerated claims for some of your writers? I'll grant you Homer as a rival to Dante, Ovid for Chaucer, Virgil for Milton, Plato for Montaigne, Horace for Donne, and perhaps even Valmiki for Spenser... although I doubt that either of us has read enough by Valmiki to make a real comparison. But Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides for Shakespeare, Racine, and Calderon? maybe if their complete oeuvres were intact... but in the present state you would need all three Greek playwrights for Shakespeare alone (perhaps the Bible might be a better match) leaving Racine and Calderon. Sappho for Petrarch? Petronius for Cervantes? I know you love your classical writers... but you are certainly asking us to stretch on these comparisons.

But lets add a few more:

Shakespeare
Dante
Chaucer
Montaigne
Cervantes

and...

Boccaccio
Thomas Malory
Giovanni Pico della Mirandolla
Joanot Martorell and marti Joan de Galba- Tirant lo Blanc
Machiavelli
Christine de Pisan
Francois Villon
Shotetsu
Torquato Tasso
Ludovico Ariosto
Matte Boiardo
Sidney
Spenser
Ben Jonson
Erasmus
Thomas More
Sir Francis Bacon
Baldasare Castiglione
Rabelais
Lazarillo de Tormes
Thomas Nashe
Sir Walter Raleigh
Christopher marlowe
Thomas Kyd
Samuel Daniel
Lope de Vega
Thomas Dekker
Thomas Campion
Michael Drayton
John Davies
Thomas Wyatt
Luis Camoes
Richard Crashaw
george Herbert
Michelangelo Buonarotti
Robert Herrick
Thomas Carew
Sir John Suckling
Richard Lovelace
Hernry Howard
John Dryden
John Donne
Henry Vaughan
Thomas Hobbes
Andrew Marvell
Thomas Traherne
Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke
William Wycherley
Mary Sidney
Daniel Webster
Sir Thomas Browne
Leonardo Da Vinci
Antonio Vasari
Izaac Walton
Robert Burton
Du Bellay
Pierre Ronsard
Louise Labé
Agrippa d'Aubigné
François de Malherbe
Jean Racine
Pierre Corneille
Jean de La Fontaine
Molière
Blaise Pascal
René Descartes
Baruch Spinoza
Clément Marot
Amadis de Gaula
The Arabian Nights
Jorge Manrique
Garcilaso de la Vega
Fray Luis de Leon
San Juan de la Cruz
Luis de Gongora
Lope de Vega
Francisco de Quevedo
Leon Battista Alberti
Benvenuto Cellini
Luigi Pulci
Matsuo Bashō

Seriously, I would almost go with the medieval period for Non-Western literature considering the achievements of the Chinese, Japanese, Persians, Arabs, and Hebrew and Arabic writers in Islamic Spain during this period... but I am limited to what is translated and it is difficult to garner a clear picture of a great majority of literature beyond the West.

Now we only need to wait for JBI to drop in from his tour of China to make his claims for the literature of classical China and Canada.

[mortalterror]

You're giving me Dante and Chaucer... although arguments can easily be made for counting them among the Renaissance considering that both follow Giotto, commonly seen as the starting point of the early Renaissance.

I've never thought of Giotto as the starting point of the Renaissance. As a more literary minded person, I date the beginning of the Renaissance from Petrarch, the first humanist and classical scholar instrumental in the revival of learning. Dante's work I see as a summa, a summing up of all medieval thought. When all's said and done, I just feel funny placing Milton in the same bin as him, 'cause I don't think they are doing any of the same things.

From a purely chronological point of view, Chaucer came after Petrarch and Boccaccio who are clearly Renaissance men, no bones about it. But his writing style is archaic, and England had yet to experience the awakening movement that had barely left Italy by that time. When we talk about the Renaissance as a way of life, a style, or a movement of ideas we must understand that it took time for those ideas and customs to travel and then adapt to a new soil. The middle ages weren't just over one second and then the next the Renaissance was everywhere.


I'll grant you Homer as a rival to Dante, Ovid for Chaucer, Virgil for Milton, Plato for Montaigne, Horace for Donne, and perhaps even Valmiki for Spenser... although I doubt that either of us has read enough by Valmiki to make a real comparison.

Granted.


But Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides for Shakespeare, Racine, and Calderon? maybe if their complete oeuvres were intact... but in the present state you would need all three Greek playwrights for Shakespeare alone (perhaps the Bible might be a better match) leaving Racine and Calderon.

I'd actually thought of that when I was making the comparison and decided that though Shakespeare wrote 37 plays and we have what 42? of the Greeks, only about 8 of Shakespeare's plays are top notch. Some of them are duds. Aeschylus is a great match content and stylistic-wise for the Bard of Avon, but of his 7 surviving plays only four of them are really awesome. So let's say there's a debit to Shakespeare for 4 plays in the balance, okay. Racine pretty much just re-wrote a dozen of Euripides plays so they are a great match. Sophocles and Calderon are more similar than you might think, because both men draw their strength from tight plotting or dramatic structure. I've read ten plays by Calderon, of his 120, and only seven of Sophocles 123 survive. I'm working under the assumption that those ten plays were his best (since they are the only one's translated), and that Sophocles 7 best plays were the ones which survived the tooth of time. Life is a Dream is far and away Calderon's best play, equal to let's say Antigone or Oedipus at Colonus. Essentially what we are comparing is the best output of one writer with the best of another, and their dregs hardly factor into it. In total, I'd say the ancients are a little short on plays but not by much. I'll make up the difference with Kalidasa.


Sappho for Petrarch? Petronius for Cervantes? I know you love your classical writers... but you are certainly asking us to stretch on these comparisons.

Why do you think Sappho isn't as good as Petrarch? There's not much Sappho, but the last time I checked Petrarch's Canzoniere isn't a very thick book, and we aren't prizing him for his African epic. If you want, you can have the rest of the classical Greek lyric poets, Alcman, Pindar, Simonides, etc. As for Petronius, he's much funnier than Cervantes; but just to show you what a nice guy I am, I'm throwing in Apuleius as well, if that will make you happy.


But lets add a few more

Shakespeare- Aeschylus and Kalidasa
Dante- Homer
Chaucer- Ovid
Montaigne- Plato
Cervantes- Petronius and Apuleius
Milton- Virgil

Luis Camoes- Statius
Boccaccio- Aesop
Calderon- Sophocles
Thomas Malory- Hesiod
Torquato Tasso- Apollonius Rhodius
Spenser- Valmiki
Ben Jonson- Terence
Francois Villon- Catullus
Rabelais- Plautus
Lazarillo de Tormes- Lucian
Christopher marlowe- Seneca
John Donne- Horace
Molière- Aristophanes
Jean Racine- Euripides
Ludovico Ariosto- Lucan
Antonio Vasari- Plutarch
Baldasare Castiglione- Cicero
Benvenuto Cellini- Xenophon
Matte Boiardo- Gaius Valerius Flaccus
Robert Herrick- Homeric Hymns
Luigi Pulci- Silius Italicus
Shotetsu- Qu Yuan
Sidney- Tibullus
Lope de Vega- Demosthenes
Pierre Corneille- Menander
Jean de La Fontaine- Martial
Sir Walter Raleigh- Juvenal
Thomas Wyatt- Sextus Propertius
george Herbert- Isaeus
Andrew Marvell- Theocritus
John Dryden- Callimachus
Michael Drayton- Lysias
Sir John Suckling- Herodotus
Robert Burton- Aulus Gellius
Pierre Ronsard- Anacreon
San Juan de la Cruz- Archilocus
Thomas Campion- Isocrates
Izaac Walton- Thucydides
Giovanni Pico della Mirandolla- Mencius
Machiavelli- Livy
Erasmus- Epictetus
Thomas More- Marcus Aurelius
Sir Francis Bacon- Pliny the Younger
Thomas Hobbes- Plotinus
Blaise Pascal- Confucius
René Descartes- Pythagoras
Baruch Spinoza- Aristotle
Christine de Pisan- Aeschynes
Thomas Nashe- Hypereides
Thomas Kyd- Lycurgus
Thomas Dekker- Sudraka
Richard Crashaw- Dinarchus
Thomas Carew- Polybius
Richard Lovelace- Quintillian
Hernry Howard- Dionysus of Halicarnassus
Henry Vaughan- Appian
Thomas Traherne- Diogenes Laertius
Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke- Caesar
William Wycherley- Euclid
Mary Sidney- Galen
Daniel Webster- Josephus
Sir Thomas Browne- Pliny the Elder
Du Bellay- Pausanias
Louise Labé- Tacitus
Agrippa d'Aubigné- Suetonius
François de Malherbe- Sallust
Joanot Martorell and marti Joan de Galba- Tirant lo Blanc- Heliodorus
Clément Marot- Strabo
Amadis de Gaula- Longus
Jorge Manrique- St. Augustine
Garcilaso de la Vega- Cassius Dio
Fray Luis de Leon- Longinus
Luis de Gongora- Persius
Francisco de Quevedo- Arrian
Leon Battista Alberti- Nonnus
Samuel Daniel- Macrobius
John Davies- Theophrastus
Michelangelo Buonarotti- Ptolemy
Leonardo Da Vinci- Cornelius Nepos
Matsuo Bashō-(not unless he was already an accomplished poet by age 6.)
The Arabian Nights-(definitely medieval)

I've matched you name for name and I still have: The Shih Ching, the Tao Te Ching, the I Ching, Art of War, Records of the Grand Historian, the Bhagavad Gita, the Upanishads, the Rig Veda, the Lotus Sutra, Poems of Bhartrhari, the Panchatantra, Epic of Gilgamesh, Enuma Elis, the Epic of Erra, the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the Zendavesta, the Talmud, the Mahabharata, and the Bible!

[Wilde woman]

As more people have responded to the poll, my suspicions have been confirmed. 50% for 20th century! I didn't expect quite so many modernists, but I'm more surprised by how few people picked the Renaissance. And probably the biggest surprise for me is that 18th century and post-modern are neck-and-neck. I understand the aversion to the 18th century, but I thought more people (esp. here) would like postmodernism and all its crazy (nonsensical to me) theory.


Folks are put off by Elizabethan jargon? Bearing in mind that all statements of ease and difficulty are relative...THAT'S EASY! ;)

Even if you don't get it, though, you can still get the general gist of it, especially with comedies by Decker and Shakespeare, those are relatively modern and even easier to grab hold of than the tragedies, which are generally more hightened in their language and their allusions as tragedy is a heightened theatre from from comedy...

Hey, you're preaching to the choir. I love early modern stuff. I posed the question to others here who like the more modern stuff (post 18th-century onwards). I was simply speculating that the "heightened" language (as you called it) of Elizabethan English might be something that discouraged modern readers from attempting anything reading literature from the Renaissance or earlier.


but I also suspect there is the desire for writing that reinforces one's own view and experiences. Many can relate to Jane Austen's experiences with relationships, Dicken's, Tolstoy's, and Dostoevsky's realistic view of social issues, relationships, etc... Dante, Shakespeare, Homer, the Bible, etc... often present world views and experiences quite foreign to most. Personally, this is one of the things I most value about art... the manner in which it allows us to engage in a dialog with persons of different times, places, and experiences...

I think you have a good point here (and I agree with your personal viewpoint as well), but if this is the case then why do Shakespeare, Dante, and Homer continue to be so popular? Or is it perhaps that academia continue to force these writers down students' throats, against their will? Is it academia - which keeps churning out book after book of criticism on these authors - the sole force which keeps everyone reading these authors?


I would place Chaucer in the Renaissance for the simple reason that he strikes me as less insular or isolated and clearly open to outside influences drawing tales from France, India, and Italy (especially Boccaccio). Like Dante, he pushes the idea that the vulgar native language (English) is worthy of serious literature.

Yes, but the movement towards vernacular literature is not purely a Renaissance movement. Lots of late medieval writers wrote in the vernacular. My area of specialty is Middle English, so the vast majority of the works I'm interested in are written in the vernacular...does that make Gower, Langland, Lydgate, or the Gawain poet Renaissance instead of medieval writers? And just as Chaucer was influenced by outside influences, I feel many of the Middle English writers were engaged in dialogue with French, Italian, German, and Celtic sources, although they probably would not openly admit it in their works. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight has clear Celtic influence in the character of the Green Knight and the beheading ceremony. And the late medieval Arthurian writers clearly knew the the French versions of the romances.


I don't think Chaucer is overrated... or rather not within the English-speaking world.

I didn't say he was overrated; I simply think he has (deservedly) been considered one of the great Middle English writers for a long time and that there is room for medievalists to study more than just him.

Yes, the poll is skewed towards European (and English) literary movements, but I addressed that in my first post. I don't have the knowledge to construct a more global poll. Apologies.

[Pryderi Agni]

As a specialist in early modern literature, I like Renaissance and Romantic literature, along with a purely amateurish interest in ancient literature.

[mortalterror]

As more people have responded to the poll, my suspicions have been confirmed. 50% for 20th century!

Check again. Your total comes to over 200%.