Why doesn't french literature have an undisputed grandmaster?

[Mr.lucifer]

For English, there is Shakespeare. For Spanish, there is Cervantes. For Italian, there is Dante. I could go on. French literature has produced many supreme works of art, but I am curious to why there is any universally agreed upon best of the best author.

[JCamilo]

They Kill kings for pastime. Not wearing a crown is a road to immortality there.

[free]

Maybe because thier king is art itself. If you proclaim one artist a king, it could cast a shadow on all other artists and might diminish the greatness of the art itself.

[cacian]

well that is only because it is hard to chose. one can make their minds up openly to whom they qualifyto be their grandmaster. let's call it freedom of choice. I elect Moliere. I enjoy his corruptible mind in putting down the classes to a piece of joke. that was when I was a teenager I thought he was the it. I would like to keep it that way. :D

[Lokasenna]

Voltaire and Hugo are pretty totemic...

[Kyriakos]

Most of the literatures do not have any figure who is the towering one in them. Of course some do, notably Greek (and rest of the western literature) with Homer being pretty such the start of it all.

German literature hardly has a similar figure, despite Goethe. Portuguese literature has Camoes and Pessoa, of two very different periods. Russian literature supposedly has Lermontov or Pushkin, but they are not as read by now as any of the main prose-writers of the 19th century literature of that country.

[JBI]

Racine's style is almost a foundation of "style" historically. If we want to call that totemic so be it.

The thing with France is the country is regional, culturally and linguistically. So language always has been regulated on the model of authors like Racine, who is the great stylist of the language.

In cultural terms, form has always been prevalent in French as aposed to English where Blank Verse dominated. Such a difference is pronounced in the writing from the Renaissance downward. In a sense, French literauture until the 20th century seems far more regulated to me than English Lit.

Now England had the benefit of restricting publishing to only London, as well as coming to maturity linguistically during an age of print. That means the language and culture were controlled from the beginning. Give also the fact that for the first few centuries of English lit there were incredibly paranoid, near fascist rulers in power, it's only natural to find a cultural alignment in thought and national character, if not in ideas. I guess in this case the Milton standard which morphed into the Dryden standard, was bound to stick. Even to the point when word play was deemed inappropriate or in bad taste.

[cacian]

and let's not forget Jean de La Fontaine for he was the master animalia. that short for anime and animals put together.
I still to this day remember ''le corbeau et le renard'' what would one do for a piece of cheese? crack the fox mind slying and get the crow singing madremia life is ria !!! amasing.
in fact it does make me think of Little Red Riding author Charles Perrault, the influence of la Fontaine on his writing are duly noted in this fable.
somehow a fox manages all.... well almost. the second version of Red Riding she manages out or spat out by the fox.

[PeterL]

I hate to tell you, but there is a lot of dispute about putting Shakespeare on a pedestal, so part of your premise is false.

[stlukesguild]

There may be a lot of disputes over putting Shakespeare on the top of the British pile... but not too many others have this problem.

[stlukesguild]

I would suggest that some literary traditions produced a figure who seemingly towers above the rest (Shakespeare, Goethe, Dante, Cervantes, etc...) but in part this centrality is owed to historical realities. Dante virtually established the "vulgar" common Italian language as something worthy of the greatest art and links it with the Greco-Roman heritage. Goethe brings German literature out of the shadow of French influence and establishes it as one of the major literary cultures of Europe. Cervantes is credited with the creation of the "novel" which has endless heirs across the whole of Europe. While Chaucer might be credited with creating the first masterpiece of English literature he virtually disappears from history for quite some time and has no major immediate heirs. Shakespeare and the King James Bible essentially establish "modern" English.

But France is not some anomaly. There would be plenty of debates as to the greatest Russian writer (although I suspect it would come down to a divide between Tolstoy and Pushkin). One can surely dispute who the greatest Greek writer was with Sophocles, Aeschylus, Euripides, and Plato all in the running with Homer. And who is the great American writer? Hawthorne? Poe? Whitman? Eliot? Faulkner? Melville? etc...

I think there would be a number of French writers in the running as the "Grandmaster" including: Montaigne, Racine, Moliere, Voltaire, Victor Hugo, Rousseau, Flaubert, and Baudelaire.

[Kyriakos]

Given that those ancient Greeks themselves mention Homer as the towering figure in the Greek world of literature, i think it speaks volumes about that question :)

And i wouldn't regard Goethe as something akin to the german Shakespeare; the german Shakespeare seems to be...Shakespeare. Their literature is way too fragmented, and most of the time its prominent authors are not even german (eg Kafka or R.Walser).
As an influence to foreign writers of note, Goethe again seems to be lacking. Many notable authors (Dostoevsky, Gautier, De Maupassant) have mentioned E.T.A. Hoffmann as a main influence. Kafka is often argued to have been keen on examining Goethe's work, and some sentences in his diaries along with a couple of travels signify that he was. But his work hardly is reminding one of Goethe. Moreover he had expressed more clear admiration of Kleist, and some less popular by now authors as well.

[JBI]

I would suggest that some literary traditions produced a figure who seemingly towers above the rest (Shakespeare, Goethe, Dante, Cervantes, etc...) but in part this centrality is owed to historical realities. Dante virtually established the "vulgar" common Italian language as something worthy of the greatest art and links it with the Greco-Roman heritage. Goethe brings German literature out of the shadow of French influence and establishes it as one of the major literary cultures of Europe. Cervantes is credited with the creation of the "novel" which has endless heirs across the whole of Europe. While Chaucer might be credited with creating the first masterpiece of English literature he virtually disappears from history for quite some time and has no major immediate heirs. Shakespeare and the King James Bible essentially establish "modern" English.

But France is not some anomaly. There would be plenty of debates as to the greatest Russian writer (although I suspect it would come down to a divide between Tolstoy and Pushkin). One can surely dispute who the greatest Greek writer was with Sophocles, Aeschylus, Euripides, and Plato all in the running with Homer. And who is the great American writer? Hawthorne? Poe? Whitman? Eliot? Faulkner? Melville? etc...

I think there would be a number of French writers in the running as the "Grandmaster" including: Montaigne, Racine, Moliere, Voltaire, Victor Hugo, Rousseau, Flaubert, and Baudelaire.

Linguistically I would say Shakespeare is not center - he invented a lot of words, sure, but Milton as a model was far more influential - in terms of drama, he did not really develop the form, in the sense of language or structure, therefore he is not even a model there.

The big book of English influence is probably the Bible, as a process first with the Geneva and finally culminating in the King James. Milton seems to have dominated poetry until Wordsworth more or less replaced him linguistically.

If we track the development of prose, we could put the authority at figures as diverse as Defoe, Walter Scott (who mastered the 3 volume published form that dominated until the end of the 20th century), Fielding, or any other number of authors.

Shakespeare dominated personality and esteem, that is for sure, but in terms of stylistic influence, we are not imitating his language, we are not even imitating his genre for the most part (how many dramas do people read between Shakespeare and Wilde anyway?). Much of his scholarship and development was actually in "fixing" his form and language. Both Alexander Pope, and Dr. Johnson included.

Shakespeare's influence is far less tangible in that sense. He is oft-quoted, as well as culturally significant, but is not particularly influential on genre development. He is like a form of language that developed in terms of his place in shaping the way people write. He created this space of thought and idea - this language of feelings that was less developed before him.

I guess in a sense that sense, Bloom was right in saying he invented a form of humanity - he created a sort of characterization seemingly "more real" than others before it - a sort of personality that transformed character. He is not the only one, but culturally, he is the one who resonated best. He is the master of changing the performance of literature to have a wider sense of consciousness.

Still, in terms of style, this did not really go down well. Call him a sort of Bach or whatever, not a developer of style, but a perfecter and innovator who synthesized various forms.

[Jassy Melson]

France has a literary master. His name is Flaubert.

[stlukesguild]

And i wouldn't regard Goethe as something akin to the german Shakespeare; the german Shakespeare seems to be...Shakespeare.

My guess is that most German literature aficionados would disagree with this. Shakespeare's impact upon German literature is largely through Goethe... and to a lesser extent, Schiller. Goethe himself began writing under the influence of the French... but early on recognized a far greater similarity between English literature and German. There is a great back and forth trade between the German, English, and French Romantic poets, novelists and story tellers, and philosophers. Goethe's Werther was among the first real works of literature with a cult following across Europe. His Faust was among the most influential works in all of literature. Among the works of art directly influenced or referencing Geothe's Faust we can include Franz Schubert's Gretchen am Spinnrade, Richard Wagner's Faust Overture, Felix Mendelssohn's Die erste Walpurgisnacht, Hector Berlioz's The Damnation of Faust, Robert Schumann's Scenes from Goethe's Faust, Gounod's opera, Faust, Franz Liszt's Faust Symphony, Modest Mussorgsky: "Mephistopheles' song of the flea", Louis Spohr's Faust, Arrigo Boito's Mefistofele, Ferruccio Busoni's Doktor Faust, John Adam's Doctor Atomic, Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus and Lotte in Weimar: The Beloved Returns, Stephen Vincent Benét's The Devil and Danile Webster, Bulgakov's The Master and Margaritha, etchings by Delacroix, even films such as F.W. Murnau's Faust, and István Szabó's Mephisto.

Goethe's Wilhelm Meister is cited by Schoepenhauer as one of the four greatest novels ever written. R.W. Emerson includes him in his essays as one of "six representative men" along with Plato, Napoleon, and William Shakespeare. Goethe has been translated by poets and writers such as Nerval, Emerson, Longfellow, Coleridge, T.S. Eliot, and Auden. His poems have been set to music... lieder... the quintessential German Romantic art form... more often than those of any other German poet. I think you greatly underestimate Goethe's centrality to German literature and culture as a whole.

Their literature is way too fragmented...

What is "fragmented" about German literature? Certainly it was a "latecomer" to the European scene... but beginning with Goethe and his generation German literature stands among the most influential in Europe: Goethe, Schiller, Novalis, Lessing, Holderlin, Heine, Buchner, Kleist, Hoffmann, Nietzsche, Rilke, Walter Benjamin, Sigmund Freud, Immanuel Kant, Albert Schweitzer, Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse, Paul Celan, Franz Kafka, Joseph Roth, Hermann Broch, Bertholt Brecht, Max Frisch, Friederich Durrenmatt, Paul Celan, Ingeborg Bachmann, Heinrich Boll, Gunter Grass, etc...

...and most of the time its prominent authors are not even german (eg Kafka or R.Walser)...

There was no nation known as "Germany" until 1871 and the unification of a majority of Germanic states under Prussia into the German Confederation. For most of history, what we think of as Germany was a loosely organized collection of independent states... sometimes collected under various Imperial guises (The Holy Roman Empire, etc...) Mozart, for example, was neither German nor Austrian, but rather technically a citizen of Archbishopric of Salzburg. When one speaks of German Art, Music, or Literature one speaks of the works by an individual who primarily spoke German, worked within the German tradition... and in the case of a writer... wrote in German. Kafka, by the way, was born in Prague, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and under Germanic rule. He considered German to be his mother tongue.

As an influence to foreign writers of note, Goethe again seems to be lacking. Many notable authors (Dostoevsky, Gautier, De Maupassant) have mentioned E.T.A. Hoffmann as a main influence.

See above... Goethe's influence remains far more reaching than Hoffmann's.

Kafka is often argued to have been keen on examining Goethe's work, and some sentences in his diaries along with a couple of travels signify that he was. But his work hardly is reminding one of Goethe.

Yet Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse, and others owe far more to Goethe than to others. One can remain the central figure of a literary tradition and not be a major influence on all.

[cafolini]

Linguistically I would say Shakespeare is not center - he invented a lot of words, sure, but Milton as a model was far more influential - in terms of drama, he did not really develop the form, in the sense of language or structure, therefore he is not even a model there.

The big book of English influence is probably the Bible, as a process first with the Geneva and finally culminating in the King James. Milton seems to have dominated poetry until Wordsworth more or less replaced him linguistically.

If we track the development of prose, we could put the authority at figures as diverse as Defoe, Walter Scott (who mastered the 3 volume published form that dominated until the end of the 20th century), Fielding, or any other number of authors.

Shakespeare dominated personality and esteem, that is for sure, but in terms of stylistic influence, we are not imitating his language, we are not even imitating his genre for the most part (how many dramas do people read between Shakespeare and Wilde anyway?). Much of his scholarship and development was actually in "fixing" his form and language. Both Alexander Pope, and Dr. Johnson included.

Shakespeare's influence is far less tangible in that sense. He is oft-quoted, as well as culturally significant, but is not particularly influential on genre development. He is like a form of language that developed in terms of his place in shaping the way people write. He created this space of thought and idea - this language of feelings that was less developed before him.

I guess in a sense that sense, Bloom was right in saying he invented a form of humanity - he created a sort of characterization seemingly "more real" than others before it - a sort of personality that transformed character. He is not the only one, but culturally, he is the one who resonated best. He is the master of changing the performance of literature to have a wider sense of consciousness.

Still, in terms of style, this did not really go down well. Call him a sort of Bach or whatever, not a developer of style, but a perfecter and innovator who synthesized various forms.

Excellent post. Thanks.

[cafolini]

And i wouldn't regard Goethe as something akin to the german Shakespeare; the german Shakespeare seems to be...Shakespeare.

My guess is that most German literature aficionados would disagree with this. Shakespeare's impact upon German literature is largely through Goethe... and to a lesser extent, Schiller. Goethe himself began writing under the influence of the French... but early on recognized a far greater similarity between English literature and German. There is a great back and forth trade between the German, English, and French Romantic poets, novelists and story tellers, and philosophers. Goethe's Werther was among the first real works of literature with a cult following across Europe. His Faust was among the most influential works in all of literature. Among the works of art directly influenced or referencing Geothe's Faust we can include Franz Schubert's Gretchen am Spinnrade, Richard Wagner's Faust Overture, Felix Mendelssohn's Die erste Walpurgisnacht, Hector Berlioz's The Damnation of Faust, Robert Schumann's Scenes from Goethe's Faust, Gounod's opera, Faust, Franz Liszt's Faust Symphony, Modest Mussorgsky: "Mephistopheles' song of the flea", Louis Spohr's Faust, Arrigo Boito's Mefistofele, Ferruccio Busoni's Doktor Faust, John Adam's Doctor Atomic, Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus and Lotte in Weimar: The Beloved Returns, Stephen Vincent Benét's The Devil and Danile Webster, Bulgakov's The Master and Margaritha, etchings by Delacroix, even films such as F.W. Murnau's Faust, and István Szabó's Mephisto.

Goethe's Wilhelm Meister is cited by Schoepenhauer as one of the four greatest novels ever written. R.W. Emerson includes him in his essays as one of "six representative men" along with Plato, Napoleon, and William Shakespeare. Goethe has been translated by poets and writers such as Nerval, Emerson, Longfellow, Coleridge, T.S. Eliot, and Auden. His poems have been set to music... lieder... the quintessential German Romantic art form... more often than those of any other German poet. I think you greatly underestimate Goethe's centrality to German literature and culture as a whole.

Their literature is way too fragmented...

What is "fragmented" about German literature? Certainly it was a "latecomer" to the European scene... but beginning with Goethe and his generation German literature stands among the most influential in Europe: Goethe, Schiller, Novalis, Lessing, Holderlin, Heine, Buchner, Kleist, Hoffmann, Nietzsche, Rilke, Walter Benjamin, Sigmund Freud, Immanuel Kant, Albert Schweitzer, Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse, Paul Celan, Franz Kafka, Joseph Roth, Hermann Broch, Bertholt Brecht, Max Frisch, Friederich Durrenmatt, Paul Celan, Ingeborg Bachmann, Heinrich Boll, Gunter Grass, etc...

...and most of the time its prominent authors are not even german (eg Kafka or R.Walser)...

There was no nation known as "Germany" until 1871 and the unification of a majority of Germanic states under Prussia into the German Confederation. For most of history, what we think of as Germany was a loosely organized collection of independent states... sometimes collected under various Imperial guises (The Holy Roman Empire, etc...) Mozart, for example, was neither German nor Austrian, but rather technically a citizen of Archbishopric of Salzburg. When one speaks of German Art, Music, or Literature one speaks of the works by an individual who primarily spoke German, worked within the German tradition... and in the case of a writer... wrote in German. Kafka, by the way, was born in Prague, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and under Germanic rule. He considered German to be his mother tongue.

As an influence to foreign writers of note, Goethe again seems to be lacking. Many notable authors (Dostoevsky, Gautier, De Maupassant) have mentioned E.T.A. Hoffmann as a main influence.

See above... Goethe's influence remains far more reaching than Hoffmann's.

Kafka is often argued to have been keen on examining Goethe's work, and some sentences in his diaries along with a couple of travels signify that he was. But his work hardly is reminding one of Goethe.

Yet Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse, and others owe far more to Goethe than to others. One can remain the central figure of a literary tradition and not be a major influence on all.

This is one of the best of yours. Thanks so much.

[MorpheusSandman]

Linguistically I would say Shakespeare is not center - he invented a lot of words, sure, but Milton as a model was far more influential - in terms of drama, he did not really develop the form, in the sense of language or structure, therefore he is not even a model there.The thing about Shakespearean style is that there is no single Shakespearean style. Shakespeare seemed to adapt his approach to whatever characters and drama/comedy he was writing. We can say certain things about his style, that certain elements that crop up more frequently in Shakespeare than his contemporaries and predecessors. EG, his extensive use of soliloquys to reveal character psychology that is not obviously apparent from the drama itself, or his prolific use of rhetorical forms (over 200 are found in his plays, IIRC) and his love for particular ones like chiasmus and hendiadys. I would debate that Shakespeare didn't develop dramatic form; if anything, he seemed to despise the classical "rules" and didn't like to conform to any particular formal arrangement. So the idea that "anything goes" in drama at least partly comes from him.

Milton is a good counter-example because, compared with Shakespeare, Milton DOES have a very identifiable and particular style that one can (attempt to) emulate, and something like Paradise Lost (and most of the shorter poetry) is very highly structured both internally and externally. Milton seemed to plan everything out beforehand in much greater detail than Shakespeare, whose plays show a lot of signs of improvisation and somewhat thoughtless revision (hence many of the dramatic contradictions and loose ends). However, despite this contrast, I have to believe that for almost every English poet/dramatist that reads Shakespeare there is some, at the very least, subliminal influence. Sometimes it's more conscious, such as Keats being inspired by Shakespeare's sensuous imagery in the sonnets. I have to believe, though, that even Milton was inspired by Shakespeare's approach to character when creating Satan.

[JBI]

The thing about Shakespearean style is that there is no single Shakespearean style. Shakespeare seemed to adapt his approach to whatever characters and drama/comedy he was writing. We can say certain things about his style, that certain elements that crop up more frequently in Shakespeare than his contemporaries and predecessors. EG, his extensive use of soliloquys to reveal character psychology that is not obviously apparent from the drama itself, or his prolific use of rhetorical forms (over 200 are found in his plays, IIRC) and his love for particular ones like chiasmus and hendiadys. I would debate that Shakespeare didn't develop dramatic form; if anything, he seemed to despise the classical "rules" and didn't like to conform to any particular formal arrangement. So the idea that "anything goes" in drama at least partly comes from him.

Milton is a good counter-example because, compared with Shakespeare, Milton DOES have a very identifiable and particular style that one can (attempt to) emulate, and something like Paradise Lost (and most of the shorter poetry) is very highly structured both internally and externally. Milton seemed to plan everything out beforehand in much greater detail than Shakespeare, whose plays show a lot of signs of improvisation and somewhat thoughtless revision (hence many of the dramatic contradictions and loose ends). However, despite this contrast, I have to believe that for almost every English poet/dramatist that reads Shakespeare there is some, at the very least, subliminal influence. Sometimes it's more conscious, such as Keats being inspired by Shakespeare's sensuous imagery in the sonnets. I have to believe, though, that even Milton was inspired by Shakespeare's approach to character when creating Satan.

These become less exemplary when you read other Elizabethan dramatists. He did not really invent with language, though one can see a progress through his works. His mode is clearly that of the Elizabethan dramatists. He did not "invent" form, as he is copying a neo-classical dramatic form, hence why every single one of his plays has the exact same structure. His "problem plays" seem the most innovative, if not the most well-liked, yet even those are not absent from other authors of the time period. Rhetorically, or structurally speaking, or even linguistically speaking, I am sure we can find much of Shakespeare in Marlowe alone. My idea is that, though he is influential, and one of the greatest authors of world literature, he did not invent in form or language, but merely developed and cultivated forms already established.

This being said, as I mentioned above, he adds a new level of character consciousness to his works, even his sonnets, which is not there really in other authors. Shakespeare also has a single adaptive metaphor running through his entire opus basically putting the theater behind everything - the so called "all the world is a stage". Even his sonnets can be read as a sort of rhetorical performance (and should be read as such, given theories of literature of the time). This is his innovation. It is not in language (though he mastered the current language to such a skill as to pull it off), and it is not in genre (he didn't bend the classical model as much as you claim. Others did far more).

Perhaps this is less apparent to monolingual, or monocultural readers - English, in terms of its poetic and prosaic language, was relatively developed as far as it would go before 1800 by 1550. Wyatt and Surrey pretty much created, or adapted the forms that would dominate English for 300-odd years. Sonnets - they pretty much crafted them, Sidney then would take them to a popular audience. Blank verse - Surrey's translation of Virgil exemplifies this, and it didn't change much even until today. Couplets have been there since Chaucer, but don't come into fruition until really Dryden (a reader of Chaucer) adapted them with his current French influence. The couplet still as a form had been dominant in the renaissance, even in Shakespeare, and never disappeared. The only real development in such a form was the addition of triplets for punch, exemplified by Pope.

So what did really develop? Well, in terms of prose - Bacon seems the first major essayist, in the vein of Montaigne, who could perhaps be counted as the great prose developer even in English. But such forms did not really alter from the classical ideals of Cicero or even the later Petrarch (whose Latin essays are as influential, and I would say even better than his poetry). Linguistically, the form seems to have been developed long before Shakespeare, and not changed much. The extant cultural pamphlets and such from the English Renaissance would say as much - it is a classically related form that solidified itself around the ballooning city of London, where Latin prose writers such as Erasmus, More, etc. materialized into a protestant sort of vernacular culture by the time of Henry the 8th. The mass corpus of religious, and polemic works in this style testifies to its tradition - from classical debate to the street preacher. The progress of various 16th century Bibles really illustrates this quite well, as do the cultural commentaries by puritans and others. Prose as a standard was basically carved out early and solidified itself into the biblical language of the King James (a basic synthesis), which even today is the pinnacle of English prose.

From my understanding of Spanish, I believe de Vega and Cervantes pretty much took over the language, quite visibly. From my understanding further prose novelists in Spanish almost necessarily were required to play with Cervantes' form and language, as a sort of proto-vernacular work that took hold of the entire form itself. English seems to lack this.

As for Italian, even in the time of reunification in the 19th century, not even 20% of the country could speak the new standard dialect rooted in Dante's Florentine language. Italy, being divided for the vast majority of its history (it seems only united in the 19th century, whereas the last time this was so was when? Roman times?) had the centrality of one linguistic force, Dante, who even wrote about it. There are only a handful of poets before Dante, and most of them were working in Florence. A few dialect works exist, but Dante clearly became the mode. It's that reason that Tasso, Ariosto, Petrarch, and Boccaccio all use this idiom. Nothing exists as an equivalent in English where, given the nature of politics on the islands, publishing throughout the renaissance was legally restricted to London within the islands. The fascist like culture of Tudor England basically created a necessity to write in a specific language. Italian writers, in contrast, wrote in Dante's Italian not for political reasons, but for cultural reasons.

I can do something similar for France, where I could more or less prove that the court Dramas created the language, more or less, that would be the literary standard. Given the linguistic variety in the old world, particularly in France, Spain and Italy, we can see the general power of certain figures in dominating the linguistic and cultural development of literature and form.

Such a mode is echoed in other cultures.

For instance, in China, the classical form and model has been central to debates and composition. By the 10th century Du Fu was placed squarely in the center of Shi form poetry. All debates and poetry afterward seems to be a discussion of his place - should we emulate him, given his superiority in language and form, or should we try to innovate, and lose his form, and therefore create an inferior work? This debate is actually an ongoing one, that was prevalent from the 9th century all the way down until the 19th, with more authors opting for imitation than innovation.

In prose, the Chinese after the 10th century held Qin-Han texts up as the standard, ignoring about 600 years of development of new styles, in favor of neo-classicism. Basically this meant emulating a form perhaps 2000 years older than the text you are writing. All writers would be familiar with the older works, and this basically created a prose that was universal throughout the country, allowing an educated person in 1900 to not see a difference between his work, and works from thousands of years ago - linguistically there was little development past the 10th century in formal writing. This is what we call a cultural model - and manuals were written constantly from the Song dynasty onward teaching people how to specifically emulate these forms - including rhyme manuals teaching people how to write poetry, that though did not rhyme then, rhymed during the Tang dynasty.

In Japan something similar but more complex happened. The first move was to emulate Chinese workers, namely poetry, which is something which continued down to the modern period. Writing with Chinese grammar, chinese readings of characters, and on Chinese-influenced themes. The second was to emulate Japanese, namely classical authors. These all matured around the 10th and 11th centuries and became standards that went down for a thousand years. When we think of the Tale of Genji as the first novel, we are only seeing it through our perspective as foreigners, we could also call it - the Standard by which Japanese authors would be forced to work. The creation of traditions leaves a long shadow on the followers, who are almost necessarily forced to work within these conventions. East Asia had it worse, given the massive influence of Chinese works from 1000BCE down to 800AD. These works pretty much dominated East Asia and Vietnam, and continue to.

As anglophones we perhaps don't see this - in terms of writing, the majority of the English world is the same. In terms of language, even the weird dialects of England and Ireland are written as modern English (on the Renaissance example). We don't see the tradition of isolation. The Stuarts, followed by the Glorious revolution in England (with all their anti Irish and anti-Scottish wars) pretty much did away with dissenting voices and dialects in the mainstream. For the London scene, the language has not really changed in 400 years. Walter Scott played with some other traditions, but for the most part, English people have been only focused on the published language of standard English. This is the same even in the US, where, despite the deliberate changes of spelling and pronunciation, people still write more or less the same language that Shakespeare had written.

Now, when we teach this we tend to hold up specific authors, namely Shakespeare. But he neither invented nor really developed this. It was there before him, and there after him. He just is a sort of teaching link between the illiterate language of school-children and the similar, yet more difficult and removed language of the Renaissance (mostly for vocabulary choices and nuances in language, and not for grammar, or even style).

Now, if we call Johnson the inventor of the language for writing the first successful standard dictionary with pronunciation, we would be lying, saying he merely recorded. Such is the case with Shakespeare too.

Other authors, like those of the Modern Hebrew canon had to quite simply create a new language. That is why Bialik and Agnon don't read like the Bible - they created new languages, with at times idiosyncratic vocabulary, and in Bialik's case, non standard pronunciation (modern Hebrew is based on Spanish Hebrew, not on Germanic Hebrew). In English I cannot find such a domineering movement in Shakespeare.

[SilvanDitties]

Why not include Rabelais or Balzac in the conversation? I believe almost all French literature of the 19th century had some influence from his Human Comedy cycle.

[Kyriakos]

I have only read Balzac's "The Unknown masterpiece" (and some fragments from other works). The Unknown masterpiece, in my view, is a very good story, but like with many other authors Balzac also seems to be unable to construct a story that is not having to be based on "feet of clay" (as Flaubert wrote about Zola's "Nana"). So even though that story by Balzac has in my view a very important thematology, it still is mostly made out of platitudes and useless - even verbalistic- sentences and metaphors about adolescent love.

[JCamilo]

You must include all of them, France really kill kings. They are a little different from europe. The National Writer is a bit of nationalism (Cervantes popularity is a decadent option in the sense he pretty much "denied' by spain while alive and became popular during spain decline, Dante pretty much the same, he was a national writer of a nation he pretty much invented in his mind and would only became alive centuries after, Goethe was alive when he became a symbol of german raising intellectuality but then again it was an argument against France and England, Shakespeare explodes in the XIX century his spirit probally keen to the upcoming british empire. All of those modes, an attempt to have a relation like Virgil -Rome) but France seems to praise their whole culture and not the individual over the country and unlike the other countries, France is more stable: italy and spain had a decline, England and Germany are late players, but France is there, rival to each of those culture in each genre and style. They replace a king for another, a genre for another. Even Voltaire, probally the most dominant intellectual of europe while alive and that in a way seems to join strengths of all previous french writers (From Racine to Montaigne, Pascal to Rabelais) was shunned in the previous century and it was so natural that french gave us Baudelaire or Victor Hugo as anti-voltaires..

[JBI]

You must include all of them, France really kill kings. They are a little different from europe. The National Writer is a bit of nationalism (Cervantes popularity is a decadent option in the sense he pretty much "denied' by spain while alive and became popular during spain decline, Dante pretty much the same, he was a national writer of a nation he pretty much invented in his mind and would only became alive centuries after, Goethe was alive when he became a symbol of german raising intellectuality but then again it was an argument against France and England, Shakespeare explodes in the XIX century his spirit probally keen to the upcoming british empire. All of those modes, an attempt to have a relation like Virgil -Rome) but France seems to praise their whole culture and not the individual over the country and unlike the other countries, France is more stable: italy and spain had a decline, England and Germany are late players, but France is there, rival to each of those culture in each genre and style. They replace a king for another, a genre for another. Even Voltaire, probally the most dominant intellectual of europe while alive and that in a way seems to join strengths of all previous french writers (From Racine to Montaigne, Pascal to Rabelais) was shunned in the previous century and it was so natural that french gave us Baudelaire or Victor Hugo as anti-voltaires..

What do you make of the religious conflicts and the dialects outside of Paris?

[cafolini]

Excuse me, important. Robert Bales, a US staff sergeant who slayed 16 Afghan civilians gets judged by a military court and gets sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.

[JCamilo]

What do you make of the religious conflicts and the dialects outside of Paris?

Do you mean the Protestant catholic conflicts? Or Filipe war with Rome? I gues they are all reflexes of the formation of France National State.

Well, Richelieu and Louis XIV period is pretty much a period of political centralization and of course, cultural. In a way, Richelieu is the responsable for France as "the continental european state" and his work is pretty much ending the religious conflict (or reducing it to a minimal level). They are the idea of being french (when they take from italians the classical culture as their own, even being more catholic than rome at some point). Paris is pretty much a spoonge absorving influences, the idea of Court is for this, you can say "democratic" in a way. Paris is more the idea of France, not all france. Besides Moliere and Villon, there is many more big french authors before XIX born in Paris?

[MorpheusSandman]

These become less exemplary when you read other Elizabethan dramatists. He did not really invent with language, though one can see a progress through his works. His mode is clearly that of the Elizabethan dramatists. He did not "invent" form, as he is copying a neo-classical dramatic form, hence why every single one of his plays has the exact same structure... Rhetorically, or structurally speaking, or even linguistically speaking, I am sure we can find much of Shakespeare in Marlowe alone. My idea is that, though he is influential, and one of the greatest authors of world literature, he did not invent in form or language, but merely developed and cultivated forms already established.I don't really want to get too deeply into this as it's been too long since I've read most of the relevant studies on the matter, but I think one fallacy you're making is overlooking innovation because of a lack of absolute invention. Most every example of fictional "invention" we have is merely "innovation" in disguise, an author taking what some previous author had done to some extent and casting it in a new light. Shakespeare certainly invented many words, but outside of that, I only feel safe in saying he innovated the forms and language that was already out there, but I also think he innovated on every level. That one can find "much of Shakespeare in Marlowe" is rather irrelevant, as one can usually find much of any author in another. We tend to exaggerate the differences. I have read a good chunk of Elizabethan literature, including all the plays of Middleton, Marlowe, many from Johnson et al, and while there is much quality in all of them, it's only in Shakespeare where I feel I'm getting all of the qualities of the others, plus some extras thrown in that I don't seem to find anywhere. It's not always easy to put one's finger on those things either. It's often like hearing a certain turn of phrase in music and just having a fleeting glimpse that "this sounds different than what I've heard." If you listen to Mozart his genius was really in amalgamating all contemporary styles with the best of the past; AFAIK, you can't point to a single "invention" in his music, yet the massive amalgamation makes it seem different and better; a new dish made from too many ingredients to identify. I feel that in Shakespeare; it seemed he threw every ingredient possible into his plays. Invention? Perhaps not, but encompassing enough to feel like it.

[mortalterror]

I believe in France Victor Hugo is the primary figure of their canon, and I can definitely see why. He created masterpieces in every literary medium just like Goethe did in German. Before him, based on the criticism I've read, Racine was the major player. I think the confusion arises from English readers not being familiar with Hugo's poetry and drama, and thus missing the full scope of his achievements.

Looking over the most popular languages:
In China it's either Du Fu or Cao Xueqin, in Spain it's Cervantes, English it's Shakespeare, Arabs have the Koran, Indians have Vyasa, the Portuguese have Camoes, Russians have Tolstoy, Japanese have Murasaki Shikibu, German's have Goethe. I'm not sure who is big in Javanese, the Vietnamese like Nguyen Du, search me as far as Korea goes, the French love Hugo, the big names in Urdu are Amir Khosro, Kabir, and Mirza Ghalib, in Persia Ferdowsi is the star, Turkish I don't know, maybe Fuzuli, for Italian it's Dante, and down the list at Greek we have Homer. The rest I have no idea who's the boss.

Goethe's Werther was among the first real works of literature with a cult following across Europe.
I'm not so sure of that. Petrarch's Canzoniere and Ariosto's Orlando Furioso both circulated quite freely during the Renaissance. I could be wrong but my impression was that Cervantes Don Quixote, and the medieval romances got around too, particularly the matters of Britain and France. I'm reminded of how part of Tristan and Iseult shows up in the Icelandic Grettis Saga.

[JCamilo]

Yes, Hugo is even a respected more as poet than novelist, but that is the thing about him, all those National Writers have something in commun, which is that they are like flags for outsiders. Shakespeare turns to be what is england to many, Cervantes spain, etc. They made their name outside and Hugo is a bit the other way. Even Racine. Even some of the small guys you mention, like Camoes... 99% of the world probally think Lusiadas is the only written work in portuguese. The way i see there is only 2 french writers that break this ,Rousseau and Voltaire. But one is more ideas than good writing. And the other cannt be taken seriously even by himself.

Of course, took centuries for Shakespeare or Dante status to be safe, so maybe Victor Hugo poetry may break on and his status grow even bigger. Maybe this brings a reason why France has such "even" culture in the international scenary, without a central representative author. French replaced latim as the language of those with high culture, so their culture, not just a specific writer, was studied and the language was well know, which probally reduced the need of translator and translations, which may have reduced their impact outside a limite sphere.

[lichtrausch]

Japanese have Murasaki Shikibu

I think Natsume Soseki is more prominent. He's very influential and also played a large role in establishing modern Japanese as the literary language of Japan (for the previous 1000 years it was classical Japanese and classical Chinese).

[JBI]

I think Natsume Soseki is more prominent. He's very influential and also played a large role in establishing modern Japanese as the literary language of Japan (for the previous 1000 years it was classical Japanese and classical Chinese).

Both are decadent form artists - one, is a master of "women's script" which at first was rejected by serious male readers, the second is a modernist, who is outside, or breaking with the tradition. The problem with East Asia is the Anthology has always been more important than the individual artist. This is even more true of Japan, that from early on anthologized groups of poets rather than single collected works as the norm.