Author Showdown: The International Literary League Tournament Nominations!

[Lord Macbeth]

A while back a few of us, from a few previous "Author Showdowns" had the idea to have a battle Royale for American writers from the South, North, Midwest, West, etc., wherein we would choose a team of writers from one region to go up against another.

So I' opening that up--and I mean REALLY opening it up.

A 32-nation/region bracket!
A 5-round competition!
A boost from 4 to 5 writers per nation/region!

It's the International Literary League Tournament!

RULES:

-Again, there will be 32 nations/regions represented. Now, due to the large number of worthy authors in some areas that just FAR exceed the limit of 5 per team, nations like America will be broken down into regions and THOSE will compete, ie, "American South" for, say, a team headed by Poe and other classically-Southern American writers, whereas Hawthorne might lead "America North." (This is NOT a US-centric policy here, I just don't know other nations well enough to break them into regions if they have so many or what those regions should be...for example, I'd imagine the United Kingdom qill need a few regional teams to get adequate representation, but aside from being the first to nominate Shakespeare for whichever team he qualifies for, I defer to the knowlege of the Literary Network's populace.) :)

-5 authors may occupy a team, consisting of:
*1 poet
*1 playwright
*1 novelist/epic poet (see below for details on that grouping)

And the other 2 slots are open to any combination of those fields.

-IF we allow "Nations of Antiquity" into the tournament--and I'll see how everyone feels about that first, I'm for it, plenty of deserving writers--we would then face the issue of there not being novels in such times, hence the epic poet caveat for such an arrangement; if it is said that "ALL poets of Nation X were epic poets!" then so be it, an allowance may be made and two poets may fill the slot, owing to the lack of novelists and the popularity of the epic form in that time.

-Nominations run from now until we fill our first 32 teams

-Once we have them, we'll hold a 1 day "seeding poll" where everyone will assign "points" to each of the 32 teams, 32 for those most favored, 1 for the least favored, etc., and these will be tallied and used for seeding.

-3-day polls will then proceed for each of the seeded matchups in the Round of 32, then 4 days for the Sweet 16, 5 for the Elite 8, etc.

-Last team last standing wins trhe ever-lasting glory of...a LitNet-poll victory!

;)

Nominations open, put together those teams! (And if 32's too many or too few, let me know, I think we have enough good writers to fill 32 teams, but it's not set in stone, I just thought that was a nice, easy number four a tournament like this.)

[Lord Macbeth]

Some nominations to start:

Team "American South":

Poet: Edgar Allan Poe
Playwright: Tennessee Williams
Novelist: Mark Twain
Others: William Faulkner, OPEN (Who? T.S. Eliot, I think, belongs elsewhere...who else?)

[Bustrofedon]

T.S Eliot got traded to England for a poet to be named later.

[Delarge]

I'd like to nominate:

"Team Denmark"

Poet: Adam Oehlenschläger
Playwright: Ludvig Holberg
Novelist: Henrik Pontoppidan
Others: Hans Christian Andersen & Soren Kierkegaard

[prendrelemick]

Team England - North of Watford.

Shakespeare. Playwright poet
Wordsworth. Poet
Charlotte Bronte. Novelist
Jeanette Winterson. Novelist
DH Lawrence. Novelist poet



If anyone objects to the North of Watford line, I don't mind shifting it just south of Stratford.:smilewinkgrin:

I include Jeanette because without her the team looked very dead.

[OrphanPip]

Ah I guess I could slap together some sort of Canadian group...

Playwright: Michel Tremblay
Novelist (but really a short fiction writer): Alice Munro
Poet, translator, verse-novelist: Anne Carson
Others
Literary Critic and cultural theorist, Northrop Frye.
Cultural theorist, Marshall McLuhan.


McLuhan and Frye aren't really artistic writers, but are probably the most influential, internationally, Canadian writers of the 20th century.

Only 3/5 alive* too!

[Bustrofedon]

Team England - North of Watford.

Shakespeare. Playwright poet
Wordsworth. Poet
Charlotte Bronte. Novelist
Jeanette Winterson. Novelist
DH Lawrence. Novelist poet

This squad is stacked. Reminiscent of Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and...hmmm...Tony Lazzeri.



If anyone objects to the North of Watford line, I don't mind shifting it just south of Stratford.:smilewinkgrin:


Yes, nice gerrymandering. :skep:

[Chilly]

Team Russia
Novelist: Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Poet: Alexander Pushkin
Playwright: Anton Chekhov
Others: Leo Tolstoy
and an open slot (Solzhenitsyn, Turgenev, Nabokov...I don't know who would be best...?)

[Chilly]

Team Scotland
Poet: Robert Burns
Novelist: Robert Louis Stevenson
Playwright: J. M. Barrie
Others: Walter Scott, Hugh MacDiarmid

[stlukesguild]

How is Poe... born in Boston, raised in Richmond Virginia (barely "south") and living and working between Baltimore and NYC a representative of the American South?

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5291/5451818995_bb13d3f482_b.jpg

[Virgil]

How is Poe... born in Boston, raised in Richmond Virginia (barely "south") and living and working between Baltimore and NYC a representative of the American South?

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5291/5451818995_bb13d3f482_b.jpg

I think Poe did consider himself southern. Virginia may have been on the border with the northern states, but it's identity in the 19th century was deeply southern. Richmond was the capital of the succeeding south. And Maryland, though on the north in the civil war, had much more of a southern culture than not. Politically it was on the north, but culturally it was definitely sympathetic to the south. Plus Poe's gothic style inspired many southerners, now called southern gothic.

[JCamilo]

Then he could be french... (Poe gothic is more linked to Hawthorne and Washington Irving than anything else...)

[Virgil]

Then he could be french... (Poe gothic is more linked to Hawthorne and Washington Irving than anything else...)

The themes of vengeance, love to a cousin, drunken states, extreme emotions, Euro-centric romanticized nobility were very much in the American Southern culture of his time. Poe learned the craft of story writing from Hawthorne and possibly Irving, though I'm not familiar with that link, but culturally Poe was very south.

[the facade]

My suggestions for TEAM SWEDEN:

Playwright: August Strindberg
Novelist: Hjalmar Soderberg
Novelist/Poet(?): Par Lagerkvist
Others: Selma Lagerlof, Astrid Lindgren

[JCamilo]

Everyone loved cousins at that time :D

We can find links and themes similar to Emerson (Poe rationalism, despite his anti-transcendentalism), Melville (from the white color horror, humor, psychological narrative etc), Mark Twain (scientific ideas such as ballon trips), Whitman (Democracy)... and there goes. Poe belongs anywhere.

[stlukesguild]

I think Poe seems Southern simply because his Gothic manner is so influential upon the Southern Gothic style of Falukner, O'Connor, McCarthy, etc... Of course he was equally influential upon the French, and so perhaps he should be French... and what of his impact upon Latin-American literature? An honorific Latin-American?:lol:

[Virgil]

Everyone loved cousins at that time :D

We can find links and themes similar to Emerson (Poe rationalism, despite his anti-transcendentalism), Melville (from the white color horror, humor, psychological narrative etc), Mark Twain (scientific ideas such as ballon trips), Whitman (Democracy)... and there goes. Poe belongs anywhere.

Well, that's because they were all 19th century American and obviously similarities. But I'm pretty sure Poe identified with the South culturally.


The Southern Literary Messenger was a periodical published in Richmond, Virginia, from 1834 until June 1864. Each issue carried a subtitle of "Devoted to Every Department of Literature and the Fine Arts" or some variation and included poetry, fiction, non-fiction, reviews, and historical notes. It was founded by Thomas Willis White who served as publisher and occasional editor until his death in 1843.

White hired Edgar Allan Poe in 1835 as a staff writer and critic. Others involved with the periodical included Matthew Fontaine Maury and Maury's kinsman Benjamin Blake Minor. It ended in June 1864 in part due to Richmond's involvement in the American Civil War.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Literary_Messenger



The Southern Literary Messenger was the most important periodical published in the South and, in spite of occasional troubles, one of the most successful. It was for this magazine that Poe first launched what was to be a lifelong career as an editor and magazinist.
http://www.eapoe.org/works/EDITIONS/mslm001.htm


Poe, Edgar Allan 1809-1849, Writer. The South's most renowned literary artist of the 19th century spent most of his productive years as a struggling journalist in large northern cities. Born on 19 January 1809, in Boston, Mass., Poe was the second child of David and Elizabeth Arnold Poe, both active theatrical performers on the East Coast of the United States. His father mysteriously disappeared in 1810, and after his mother's subsequent death, in December 1811, he became the foster son of John Allan, a prominent Richmond, Va., tobacco merchant who gave Poe many childhood advantages. In 1826 he attended the University of Virginia, leaving after only a few months to join the United States Army...
Thoroughly trained in the classics and in the rhetoric and aesthetics of the Scottish common-sense school of philosophers, Poe was, according to the critic Robert D. Jacobs, indeed a southerner by temperament and inclination. Many of his formative years were spent in the southern cities of Richmond and Baltimore, the latter being the home of his blood relatives. Choosing a literary career after the death of his foster father, Poe began to contribute critical reviews to the Richmond Southern Literary Messenger in 1835 and later became its editor for two years. He married Virginia Clemm, his cousin who was less than 14 years old, in 1836....
Poe believed his art—all art—should be evaluated by international, rather than national or regional, standards, but he was, nonetheless, frequently identified at the time with the South. He did not defend his region's politics or social customs, like other antebellum southern writers, but his lyricism was common to southern poets. Raised a Virginian, Poe sometimes posed as the southern gentleman, even if transcending regionalism in his work.
http://docsouth.unc.edu/southlit/poe/bio.html

I think that pretty much settles that. :wink5:

[JCamilo]

Correct if I am wrong, but the guy saying he is southern, is talking aobut him living in north states? And that his contribution to the southern herald lasted a few weeks?

And of course there is similarities, it was with them "Poe" dialogued. Souther Gothic is something after him.

[Chilly]

How about Team Dublin
Poet: William Butler Yeats
Novelist: James Joyce
Playwright: George Bernard Shaw
Others: Oscar Wilde, Samuel Beckett

[prendrelemick]

I was just about to mention that Ireland would be a major contender.

England. South of watford

Jane Austin. Novelist
John keats. Poet
Charles Dickens. Novelist
Agatha Christie. Novelist (best selling ever) Playwright (Longest run ever)
Alan Ayckbourne. Playwright.



Not a real team but a thought.

Allan Bennett
Jeanette winterson
Ted Hughes
JB Priestly
The Bronte sisters,

Were all born within 12 miles of my house.

[Wilde woman]

Is this limited to modern nations? Cuz I'm thinking Team Italy could be pretty epic if we could draw from medieval to modern Italy:

Poet: Petrarch (or Leopardi)
Playwright: Goldoni (or Pirandello)
Epic poet: Dante (or Ariosto)
Novelist/literary critic: Umberto Eco
Fabulist: Italo Calvino
Philosopher: Machiavelli

I know that's more than five, but I'm just brainstorming.

[Bustrofedon]

IRichmond was the capital of the succeeding south.

Alas, they seceded but did not succeed. ;)

Team Chile:
Poet-Pablo Neruda
Novelist- Roberto Bolaño
Playwright- Ariel Dorfman??
Bench-Gabriela Mistral, Nicanor Parra

Struggling at playwright but strong poetically. I wish there was room for Vicente Huidobro. If I find that Mistral, Parra or Huidobro wrote a play Dorfman gets cut.

[Three Sparrows]

Team North in U.S.A.
Poet: Emily Dickinson
Novelist: Herman Melville
Playwright: Eugene O'Neil
Others: Sinclair Lewis, Nathanial Hawthorne.

First of all, O'Neil is defined as an American poet, not an Irish one. He was born in New York. I just thought I would point this out since he appears in my anthology of Irish playwrights. Also, I am not positive on all authors having lived in northern states, however, I did the best I could. Feel free to change the list or add corrections.

[Desolation]

Team France

Novelist: Marcel Proust
Poet: Arthur Rimbaud
Playwright: Antonin Artaud
Philosopher/Novelist: Voltaire
Other: Jean-Paul Sartre (philosopher/novelist/playwright)

[Chilly]

I was just about to mention that Ireland would be a major contender.

England. South of watford

Jane Austin. Novelist
John keats. Poet
Charles Dickens. Novelist
Agatha Christie. Novelist (best selling ever) Playwright (Longest run ever)
Alan Ayckbourne. Playwright.



Not a real team but a thought.

Allan Bennett
Jeanette winterson
Ted Hughes
JB Priestly
The Bronte sisters,

Were all born within 12 miles of my house.

It could become Team Yorkshire.


Poet: Ted Hughes (or Andrew Marvell because I checked Wikipedia and saw that he was also from Yorkshire)
Playwright: Alan Bennett
Novelist: Charlotte Bronte
Others: Emily Bronte, J. B. Priestly

I think that we could split up England into four or five different teams if we really worked at it.


Here's an idea for Team Spain:
Novelist: Miguel de Cervantes
Playwright: Pedro Calderón de la Barca
Poet: Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer
Others: Federico Garcia Lorca, Lope de Vega

I don't really know who would be best though. I used my limited and inexperienced knowledge, plus that of the Literature Network forums and Wikipedia to figure it out

[Virgil]

Correct if I am wrong, but the guy saying he is southern, is talking aobut him living in north states? And that his contribution to the southern herald lasted a few weeks?

And of course there is similarities, it was with them "Poe" dialogued. Souther Gothic is something after him.

Poe was southern. Trust me. I've known it going way back.

[JCamilo]

America does not even have south. Its too fat, west or western only.

[prendrelemick]

Germany anyone?

[prendrelemick]

It could become Team Yorkshire.


Poet: Ted Hughes (or Andrew Marvell because I checked Wikipedia and saw that he was also from Yorkshire)
Playwright: Alan Bennett
Novelist: Charlotte Bronte
Others: Emily Bronte, J. B. Priestly

I think that we could split up England into four or five different teams if we really worked at it.




You are right of course. My North of Watford team was a desperate attempt at Gerrymandering.

The traditional north/south line is from The Wash to The Bristol Channel. Then the Midlands would be from there up to Sheffield, and the True North everything above. As for East/West divide it would be a broken, complicated line, and I am already losing the will to live.