Which COUNTRY has produced the greatest literature?

I'm Chinese-Canadian so I've read extensively in Chinese and English with a decent background of reading some other (mostly European) languages in translation. How do we measure this? Should we go by "pound for pound" like in prize-fighting? Because it seems awfully unfair to compare China, which has such a long literary history to the United States, which has only been around for ~250 years.

China has a very impressive canon of poetry and philosophy but is somewhat disappointing in regards to fiction, so I don't know how high they would rank. America is very, very impressive in terms of literary output considering their short length of existence.

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Originally Posted by R.F. Schiller

I'm Chinese-Canadian so I've read extensively in Chinese and English with a decent background of reading some other (mostly European) languages in translation. How do we measure this? Should we go by "pound for pound" like in prize-fighting? Because it seems awfully unfair to compare China, which has such a long literary history to the United States, which has only been around for ~250 years.

China has a very impressive canon of poetry and philosophy but is somewhat disappointing in regards to fiction, so I don't know how high they would rank. America is very, very impressive in terms of literary output considering their short length of existence.

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I think it's more fair to think of different dynasties of China as different countries. Besides, it's probably best not to think of China as a continuum what with things like the Three Kingdoms and Warring States periods. Especially since modern Chinese has drifted so much from ancient Chinese that they wouldn't be intelligible to each other. Same goes for France and England. England isn't exactly an unbroken line from William the Conqueror what with the Plantagenets, Tudors, that Civil War, Cromwell etc. You might say the same of France before and after the Revolution. It's probably more equitable to compare literary output by things like language rather than by national borders and political structures.

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Originally Posted by mortalterror

I think it's more fair to think of different dynasties of China as different countries. Besides, it's probably best not to think of China as a continuum what with things like the Three Kingdoms and Warring States periods. Especially since modern Chinese has drifted so much from ancient Chinese that they wouldn't be intelligible to each other. Same goes for France and England. England isn't exactly an unbroken line from William the Conqueror what with the Plantagenets, Tudors, that Civil War, Cromwell etc. You might say the same of France before and after the Revolution. It's probably more equitable to compare literary output by things like language rather than by national borders and political structures.

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In the case of England, I do think it is accurate to speak of 'English Literature' (meaning literary works of all kind written in England, including essays, biographies and even perhaps scientific classics like Darwin's Origin of Species) as forming an unbroken line from Chaucer up to the modern day. Blake, for example, was hugely influenced by Milton and Milton was influenced by Shakespeare. The English themselves have traditionally dated their literature from Chaucer, and that 600 year body of writing is, so far as I can see, unbeaten. Other cultures and civilizations (Ancient Greece for example) have equalled it, but I'm not sure any have surpassed it.

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Originally Posted by WICKES

In the case of England, I do think it is accurate to speak of 'English Literature' (meaning literary works of all kind written in England, including essays, biographies and even perhaps scientific classics like Darwin's Origin of Species) as forming an unbroken line from Chaucer up to the modern day.

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I have no problem with this, but you would have to extend the courtesy of such genre expansion to other countries, so their lists would now include:

America: Mather, Thoreau, Emerson, Howells. Mill. W. James, Henry Miller, Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, August Wilson, David Mamet, Sam Shepard, Tony Kushner, Richard Feynman, Thomas Kuhn, Frederic Jameson, Cornel West, Barbara Johnson, John Hillis Miller, Pauline Kael, Brian Greene, Lionel Trilling, Douglas Brinkley, David Halberstam, Henry Louis Gates, John Carlos Rowe, Kenneth Burke, Cleanth Brooks, Northrop Frye, Stanley Fish, Jonathan Culler, Houston Baker, Judith Butler, Leslie Fiedler, Stephen Greenblatt, Irving Howe, Peter Mathiessen, F.O. Mathiessen, Edward Said

France: Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Gabriel Marcel, Maurice Merlau-Ponty, Georges Bataille, Antonin Artaud, Julia Kristeva, Jean Baudrillard, Jacques Lacan, Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, Paul Ricouer, Andre Breton, Luce Irigaray, Emmanuel Levinas

Germany: Schiller, Husserl, Heidegger, Jurgen Habermas, Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Horkheimer, Schopenhauer

A huge list of chinese writers, but of course, someone must bring the list of Roman writers...

I left that intentionally for Mortal Terror... our native Roman/Latin aficionado. I'm admittedly less knowledgeable and less enamored of Roman culture than he... unless we're talking architecture or the Byzantine.

Oh, in that case...

254-184BC Plautus- The Pot of Gold
195-159BC Terence- The Brothers
106-43BC Cicero- Dream of Scipio
100-44BC Caesar- The Gallic War
86-35BC Sallust- The Catiline Conspiracy
84-54BC Catullus- Poem 107
70-19BC Virgil- The Aeneid
65-8BC Horace- Odes
59BC-17AD Livy- History of Rome
55-19BC Tibullus- Elegies
50-15BC Sextus Propertius- Elegies
43BC-17AD Ovid- Metamorphoses
4BC-65AD Seneca- Thyestes
23-79AD Pliny the Elder- Natural History
27-66AD Petronius- Satyricon
34-62AD Persius- Satires
35-100AD Quintillian- Institutes of Oratory
39-65AD Lucan- Pharsalia
40-104AD Martial- Epigrams
45-96AD Statius- Thebaid
55-138AD Juvenal- Satires
56-117AD Tacitus- Annals
61-112AD Pliny the Younger- Letters
69-130AD Suetonius- Lives of 12 Caesars
95-165AD Appian- Roman History
121-180AD Marcus Aurelius- Meditations
125-180AD Apuleius- The Golden ***

As for China

Qu Yuan (340-278BC) and Song Yu (290-223BC) Chu Ci
Tao Qian (365-427) Poems
Xu Ling (507-583) New Songs From the Jade Terrace
Li Bai (701-762) Tianmu Mountain Ascended in a Dream
Du Fu (712-770) The Song of the Wagons
Han-shan (730-850) Cold Mountain Poems
Han Yu (768-824) Essays
Bai Juyi (772-846) Song of Unending Sorrow, Song of the Lute Player
Yuan Zhen (779-831) Biography of Ying Ying
Li Houzhu (937-978) Poems
Su Shi (1037-1101) Poems
Li Qingzhao (1084-1151) Poems
Guan Hanqing (1225-1302) Injustice to Dou E
Bai Renfu (1226-1306) Rain on the Paulownia Tree
Wang Shifu (1250-1307) Romance of the Western Chamber
Ma Zhiyuan (1250-1321) Autumn in Han Palace
Shi Nai'an (1296-1372) Water Margin
Gao Zecheng (1305-1368) Romance of the Lute
Luo Guanzhong (1330-1400) Romance of the Three Kingdoms
Wu Cheng'en (1500-1582) Journey To the West
Tang Xianzu (1550-1616) The Peony Pavilion
Feng Menglong (1574-1645) Stories to Awaken the World
Lanling Xiaoxiao Sheng (1610) Jin Ping Mei
Pu Songling (1640-1715) Strange Tales From a Chinese Studio
Wu Jingzi (1701-1754) The Scholars
Cao Xueqin (1715-1763) Dream of The Red Chamber
Yuan Mei (1716-1798) Poems
Shen Fu (1763-1825) Six Records of a Floating Life
Liu E (1857-1909) The Travels of Lao Ts'an
Lu Xun (1881-1936) Ah Q - The Real Story
Qian Zhongshu (1910-1998) Fortress Besieged

I was looking for JBI's Chinese Canon and found this list I made breaking down top ten works by language.
Ancient Greek
1.Homer- Iliad 2.Aeschylus- Orestea 3.Sophocles- Theban Plays 4.Euripides- Bachae 5.Aristophanes- Lysistrata 6.Hesiod- Works and Days 7.Apollonius of Rhodes- Argonautika 8.Sappho- Poems 9.Callimachus- Poems 10.Anacreon- Poems
Latin
1.Virgil- Aeneid 2.Ovid- Metamorphoses 3.Horace- Odes 4.Seneca- Thyestes 5.Petronius- Satyricon 6.Catullus- Poems 7.Statius- Thebaid 8.Apuleius- The Golden *** 9.Lucan- Pharsalia 10.Juvenal- Satires
English
1.Shakespeare- Hamlet 2.Milton- Paradise Lost 3.Chaucer- Canterbury Tales 4.Spenser- Faery Queen 5.Dickens- Tale of Two Cities 6.Wordsworth- Poems 7.Eliot- The Wasteland 8.Melville- Moby Dick 9.Shelley- Poems 10.Hemingway- The Old Man and the Sea
French
1.Baudelaire- Flowers of Evil 2.Flaubert-Madame Bovary 3.Hugo- Les Miserables 4.Racine- Phaedra 5.Moliere- Tartuffe 6.Balzac- Pere Goriot 7.Rabelais- Gargantua and Pantagruel 8.Proust- In Search of Lost Time 9.Maupassant- Short Stories 10.Dumas- The Three Musketeers
Russian
1.Tolstoy- War and Peace 2.Dostoyevski- The Brothers Karamazov 3.Pushkin- Eugene Onegin 4.Chekov- Uncle Vanya 5.Turgenev- Fathers and Sons 6.Goncharov- Oblomov 7.Lermontov- A Hero For Our Times 8.Gogol- Dead Souls 9.Bulgakov- The Master and Marguerita 10.Pasternak- Dr. Zhivago
Italian
1.Dante- Divine Comedy 2.Tasso- Jerusalem Delivered 3.Petrarch- Canzoniere 4.Boccaccio- Decameron 5.Leopardi- Cantos 6.Ariosto- Orlando Furioso 7.Manzoni- The Bethrothed 8.Calvino- If On a Winters Night a Traveler 9.Foscolo- Last Letters of Jocopo Ortis 10.Boiardo- Orlando In Love
German
1.Gothe- Faust 2.Kafka- Metamorphoses 3.Holderlin- Poems 4.Rilke- Sonnets to Orpheus 5.Mann- Death in Venice 6.Brecht- Threepenny Opera 7.Hesse- Steppenwolf 8.Buchner- Danton's Death 9.Hoffman- Short Stories 10.Schiller- William Tell
Farsi
1.Firdawsi- Shahnameh 2.Rumi- Masnavi 3.Hafiz- Divan 4.Nezami- Layla and Majnun 5.Sa'di- Rose Garden 5.Khayyam- Rubaiyat 6.Attar- Conference of the Birds 7.Jami- Yusuf and Zulaykha
Sanskrit
1.Vyasa- Mahabharata 2.Valmiki- Ramayana 3.Kalidasa- Sakuntala and the Ring of Recollection 4.Jayadeva- Gita Govinda 5.Anonymous- Panchatantra 6.Bhartrhari- Śatakatraya
Chinese
1.Xueqin- Dream of the Red Chamber 2.Cheng'en- Journey to the West 3.Guanzhong- Romance of the Three Kingdoms 4.Various- Complete Tang Poems 5.Various- Classic of Poetry 6.Su Shi- Poems 7.Anonymous- Plum in the Golden Vase 8.Jinzi- The Scholars 9.Shifu- Romance of the Western Chamber 10.Nai'an-Water Margin
Japanese
1.Shikibu- Tale of Genji 2.Various- Manyoshu 3.Basho- Poems 4.Mishima- The Temple of the Golden Pavilion 5.Soseki- Kokoro 6.Murakami- A Wild Sheep Chase 7.Shonagon- The Pillow Book 8.Kenko- Essays in Idleness 9.Anonymous- Tale of the Heike 10.Akutagawa- Rashomon
Spanish
1.Cervantes- Don Quixote 2.Calderon- Life is a Dream 3.Neruda- Poems 4.De Vega- Fuente Ovejuna 5.St John of the Cross- Poems 6.Marquez- 100 Years of Solitude 7.Anonymous- Lazarillo de Tormes 8.Gongora- Poems 9.Rojas- Celestina 10.Borges- Short stories
Portugese
1.Camoes- Lusiads 2.Pessoa- A Little Larger than the Entire Universe
Scandinavian (I know it's several languages)
1.Ibsen- The Doll House 2.Strindberg- Miss Julie 3.Various- Kalavala 4.Hamsun- Hunger 5.Anderson- Short Stories 6.Dinesen- Out of Africa

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Originally Posted by mortalterror

Oh, in that case...

254-184BC Plautus- The Pot of Gold
195-159BC Terence- The Brothers
106-43BC Cicero- Dream of Scipio
100-44BC Caesar- The Gallic War
86-35BC Sallust- The Catiline Conspiracy
84-54BC Catullus- Poem 107
70-19BC Virgil- The Aeneid
65-8BC Horace- Odes
59BC-17AD Livy- History of Rome
55-19BC Tibullus- Elegies
50-15BC Sextus Propertius- Elegies
43BC-17AD Ovid- Metamorphoses
4BC-65AD Seneca- Thyestes
23-79AD Pliny the Elder- Natural History
27-66AD Petronius- Satyricon
34-62AD Persius- Satires
35-100AD Quintillian- Institutes of Oratory
39-65AD Lucan- Pharsalia
40-104AD Martial- Epigrams
45-96AD Statius- Thebaid
55-138AD Juvenal- Satires
56-117AD Tacitus- Annals
61-112AD Pliny the Younger- Letters
69-130AD Suetonius- Lives of 12 Caesars
95-165AD Appian- Roman History
121-180AD Marcus Aurelius- Meditations
125-180AD Apuleius- The Golden ***

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Great suggestions, Mortal, but was there some reason you left out Polybius, Plutarch, and Josephus? True they wrote in Greek rather than Latin, but so did Marcus Aurelius, who made it onto your list. Also, why only Catullus 107? Why not his greatest hits: 2, 3, 5, 7, 13, 16, 58, etc? Aw heck, why not all of them?

It's nice to see that you have included the perennially underrated historian Appian of Alexandria (another Greek writer), but in that case, why not Cassius Dio/Dio Cassius (depending on when you went to school)? Neither is entirely satisfactory, but both are worth reading. And you don't mention Ammianus Marcellinus, who was twice the historian that either Appian or Dio Cassius were; likewise Procopius, again, since writing in Greek shouldn't leave you out of the club.

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Originally Posted by Pompey Bum

Great suggestions, Mortal, but was there some reason you left out Polybius, Plutarch, and Josephus? True they wrote in Greek rather than Latin, but so did Lucan and Marcus Aurelius, who made it onto your list. Also, why only Catullus 107? Why not his greatest hits: 2, 3, 5, 7, 13, 16, 58, etc? Aw heck, why not all of them?

It's nice to see that you have included the perennially underrated historian Appian of Alexandria (another Greek writer), but in that case, why not Cassius Dio/Dio Cassius (depending on when you went to school)? Neither is entirely satisfactory, but both are worth reading. And you don't mention Ammianus Marcellinus, who was twice the historian that either Appian or Dio Cassius were; likewise Procopius, again, since writing in Greek shouldn't leave you out of the club.

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I didn't include Polybius, Plutarch, and Josephus because I didn't want to get into a fight over what category they fit in: Greek or Roman and in Josephus' case Jewish literature. I dropped Arrian and some others too. As far as I'm concerned, Greece was a province of Rome after a certain point but that's a discussion for another time. Besides, I didn't want to get greedy like some Brits do claiming T.S. Eliot. They can have him after 1927 when he get's British citizenship. Ash Wednesday and Four Quartets are British but The Wasteland, Prufrock, and Hollow Men are American. I cut the poet in two, like Solomon.

Why didn't I include Cassius Dio? Shameful to say, I've never read him. Ammianus Marcellinus and Procopius were omitted because I'm less interested in the later periods and I felt I'd already made my point with my first 27 examples. I didn't include Boethius or Augustine either. Besides, it's not necessary to be exhaustive with these lists. That's why I didn't feel the need to add Ennius, Silius Italicus, or Aulus Gellius.

Are you sure that Lucan's Pharsalia isn't Latin? Are you thinking perhaps of Lucian the Greek satirist?

I chose Catullus 107 because it's my favorite of his. Sometimes I'm more fond of minor works than majors. With Ezra Pound I'm more in love with Make Strong Old Dreams Lest This Our World Lose Heart, or the Nightingale than I am even of Hugh Selwyn Mauberley.

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Originally Posted by mortalterror

I didn't include Polybius, Plutarch, and Josephus because I didn't want to get into a fight over what category they fit in: Greek or Roman and in Josephus' case Jewish literature. I dropped Arrian and some others too. As far as I'm concerned, Greece was a province of Rome after a certain point but that's a discussion for another time.

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Okay, but you're going to have a hard time doing that with Marcus Aurelius. :) Rome was a dominium with two major languages (at least), so I'll let those who wrote in Greek into my canon in any case.

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Originally Posted by mortalterror

Ammianus Marcellinus and Procopius were omitted because I'm less interested in the later periods

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Do yourself a favor and check out Ammianus Marcellinus sometime (available for free and in English at Gutenberg, btw), who is only writing in the 4th century anyway. He was a Latin writer who was trying (and rather succeeding) to emulate Tacitus. And his history features the career of the perennially fascinating Julian the Apostate. Procopius is fun, too.

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Originally Posted by mortalterror

Are you sure that Lucan's Pharsalia isn't Latin? Are you thinking perhaps of Lucian the Greek satirist?

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Yes, my bad. I meant Lucian of course. Thank you, I've fixed it. Lucian wasn't a Greek, by the way, but an ethnic Assyrian (born in a part of Roman Syria now in Turkey) who rambled the Roman world as far as Gaul, entertaining people with his loopy sense of humor. As a native of the Roman east, though, he was of course a Greek speaker (and probably a Syriac speaker, too--he confesses at one point to knowing a "barbarian" language).

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Originally Posted by mortalterror

I chose Catullus 107 because it's my favorite of his.

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I like it, too. Catullus is usually either such a smooth talker or (in his other typical mood) such a raging force of nature that it is enjoyable sometimes just to find him being reflective.

Thanks you for your comments. I'm rereading Plutarch and Livy at the moment and loving every moment. :)

I am my own country! And I produce the greatest literature!

Trinidad and Tobago. If you live in a country with a name that sounds THAT COOL, you tend to become a writer. (On a per capita basis, of course.)

The problem with much of Chinese literature is two fold; firstly, it is far vaster than the entirety of Western literature up until the modern age, in terms of volume, which is countered by the incredible publishing industry in China which makes it too available. Secondly, much of it is repetitive and dull, and unsifted, so if you want to find the 20 chestnuts within the collection of 1000 poems, you kind of have to do so yourself, since nobody really does selections.

The general problem with Chinese fiction is it is quite repetitive, and hardly put any emphasis on evolution or development. So to take the common critical axiom as each dynasty having its own representative genre - Han Fu (rhyme prose), Tang Shi (verse), Song Ci (songs), Yuan Qu (arias), and Ming-Qing novels - we still must acknowledge that each succeeding dynasty published more of every form than the dynasties that preceded it. So that Fu writing was most prolific under the Qing Dynasty, as were poems, songs, and arias.

So how do we evaluate? Do we say by necessity of being first, the former pieces contain a higher achievement? Or do we do the logical thing, like marxist scholarship suggests, that the genre develops and comes to fruition over time? Or is it just a mere question of fashion, which never had any real driving force encouraging innovation.

The fact of the matter is, most of Chinese literature is dry and boring. Most of the issues discussed are dry, and the contexts removed. It has not fared well in the modern era, as it is increasingly removed from modern life, which is a combined experience of modernity and western modes of thought (western in the sense of modern science).

As for pound for pound though, as far as I'm concerned, with China you have two choices; China was established as a republic in 1911 and as a Communist republic in 1949. That being said the classical language has not been a language of composition since that time.

As for the classical language itself, it was commonly used for historical, poetical, and religious documents throughout the East and Southeast Asian world until the 20th century. It is as much the Vietnamese Latin as it is the Japanese scholarship language. As such, we can say the classical period through the Han, when the vast majority of East Asian texts came to fruition, and the tradition established itself, is similar to the period from Ancient times through medieval times in Europe and the near-East. Japanese culture is a response to this, and the significant dynasties of Korea and Vietnam all made sure to choose a Tang Dynasty ancestor the establish legitimacy (the two major dynasties being founded by persons with the surname Li 李 as similar to the Tang Emperors). This identity as the dynastic inheritors of Chinese culture is interesting, particularly when their were rival foreign and regional claimants in the body of land which is now China throughout the duration of this history. The Song Dynasty was hardly a Northern dynasty like the Tang itself, and the Mongol and Manchu dynasties that followed it were hardly composed of an ethnic Chinese tradition. For the entire region, rather classical Chinese was the language of bureaucracy and history (including ghost stories which were collected as history, and medical texts, and religious texts), while vernaculars began to emerge.

The first vernacular was actually written Japanese, which more or less in the early stages was confined to the lowest forms of literature, though are now highly esteemed. Something like the Tale of Genji is not a masterpiece in the sense of Virgil when it was released; it was a piece of female literature, restricted to a court writing not Japanese poetry (the language of love and occasional poems, not formal works) but actually mediocre Chinese works.

Slowly, however, vernaculars did emerge, so that by the Yuan dynasty you already had some forms of an intelligible Chinese written vernacular based on Pekingese. These vernaculars also had less written forms, or exact forms based on other languages, which are still somewhat preserved in local Chinese operas. In Vietnam and in Korea by the 15th century these vernaculars were emerging fast; faster than even China itself. However, the major genres, the ones that were esteemed, were still written in classical Chinese well into the 20th century, including novels, poetry, and the like. In Vietnam, for instance, poetic conventions around the four seasons abound throughout the verses, despite the complete lack of those seasonal Changes, or even those seasons in the tropical Vietnamese climate.

China, as such, is more like the last standing empire, than the long tradition it preaches itself to be. If you wish to draw a history of Chinese literature, that is, the literature of the country of China, the earliest date should be 1911; everything else is not Chinese, but the remnants of classical traditions and various imperial and conquering dynasties.


This is a general answer to the assumptions of a grouping of China as a single country with 5000 years of history. The irony of the fact is that most places in the world, including China have more than 5000 years of cultural history, whereas the area of China, in terms of written history, has about 3500 years or less, far fewer than the oldest near-Eastern civilizations. In addition to this fact, the formed Chinese language, which came about a little bit later than that, was far less sophisticated or useful than the more practical alphabetic languages developed in the Near-Eastern ancient world (this is in response to the myth that Chinese characters are pictographs, which they aren't, but rather are a representation of a sound which is used to connote a meaning, or an ideograph). This language has developed much like, lets say, the language of Sanskrit or of Ancient Sumerian into modern forms over thousands of years. A fluency in modern Chinese does not let you even approach classical texts in modernized forms (that is, the editions received by way of Han dynasty editors and so forth) and even specialized knowledge in the received textual language will not give you the requisite skills to approach unearthed or original inscribed documents. The vast majority of texts published in China, in classical language, or in unearthed language, are highly glossed edited and reformed into modern Chinese scripts. The same is true of books most people read, which are almost always accompanied by a translation into the modern vernacular (with most of the textual difficulties and problems omitted). Even with these glosses, the Classical language is highly different, and the pronunciation of key words and phrases - virtually all the characters - are completely different from even their forms 100 years ago. That is, with the exception of Tang poetry and subsequent literature based on Tang rhymes, there are few dialects that maintain the sound of the so called Ancient Chinese texts. Tang poems can be more or less reconstructed, and are read with more accurate rhymes in a highly standardized literary form of major dialects, particularly Cantonese. Most classical Chinese writers in the following dynasties, however, were writing poems that rhymed perfectly, that is, in a language they couldn't pronounce or speak, but merely "knew" was correct by means of memorizing rhyme tables. They couldn't read their poems out loud in the intended language until linguistic reconstruction in the 20th century.


So what's a country then? If the question was which language, it perhaps would have worked more, but which country is problematic to say the least. Confucius was not from China, as China didn't exist at the time he was alive. Shakespeare was English, but perhaps not British. Was Dante Italian? Well, 500 years of history seems to disagree with this point.

Willy S was English and European. As a geographical area he was born within the British isles but on its own that doesn't make him British. Nigel Farage would deny he was European

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Originally Posted by mortalterror

. Besides, I didn't want to get greedy like some Brits do claiming T.S. Eliot. They can have him after 1927 when he get's British citizenship. Ash Wednesday and Four Quartets are British but The Wasteland, Prufrock, and Hollow Men are American. I cut the poet in two, like Solomon.

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OK, but we're having WH Auden back!

Personally I see T S Eliot as an anglo-American. It's not a bad group to be in. Christopher Hitchens identified himself as one, and you could make a case for Winston Churchill, Henry James and Ezra Pound among others.