I'm done responding, I don't want to be the one responsible for getting this thread closed. Thanks for the petty insult, though.
I'm done responding, I don't want to be the one responsible for getting this thread closed. Thanks for the petty insult, though.
Both countries have produced exceptional novelists, and ultimately this is a subjective matter of taste, such as whether the Bordeaux or the Cabernet is the better wine. In the matter of my own opinion, I would have to say American merely because my favorite writer, William Faulkner, happens to be an American. However, I am not possessed of sufficient hubris to believe that such is an absolute, and there are numerous British authors whose work I adore as well.Originally Posted by Brendan Madley
If I had to point to one and actually say that one is better, I'd have to go with British literature, for the sheer reason of history if nothing else. America's voice has only been around for a little over a hundred years or so, so we didn't really get to contribute much until post 1850-or-so; everything up until then is really written with a European voice. Just having Milton alone helps put Britain over the US. Maybe a more fair comparison would be British and American literature post 1850.
Petty insult? You land with your cape flapping, so I suggest it's an act. And then you resort to string of explicatives? You have to be kidding.
How would you describe your reaction?
M&M let it go, I just noticed something....
Stlukes
Stuntpickle
As our friend musicology would say... no coincidence...
The Hugo poem needs a bit of context to be appreciated, it is part of a collection, Rayons et Ombres (rays and shadows), that is structured a bit like Blake's songs of innocence and experience.
This poem is the start of the Light/rays section, and presents us with a sort of optimistic view of the poet, one where the poet is able to help us understand and act as guide, the Star of Bethlehem being the ultimate metaphor from the quoted poem. This contrasts with the later poems in the collection, like Oceano Nox, that are about how the poet can deal with what is unknown, what we are ignorant of.
As such, the poem is probably better compared in its conception to Shelley's aesthetic view than Coleridge. However, even with the comparison to Coleridge, the poem is quite different. For one, it is structured as a dialogue, the beginning of the poem wasn't quoted, but it contains an argument against the utility of the poet, while the later part of the poem tries to refute that argument and make the claim for the poet as prophet, which will then be elaborated upon in the later poems of the collection.
I'm not much of a Hugo fan though.
Last edited by OrphanPip; 08-31-2011 at 05:53 PM.
"If the national mental illness of the United States is megalomania, that of Canada is paranoid schizophrenia."
- Margaret Atwood
Oh. My. God. You just blew my mind.
Borges is an excellent critic. Quite better than Eliot, because, put frankly, Borges capacity of interpretation and to find something new on old works is much superior than the capacity of Eliot. No wonder, many of the "professional critics", carry Borges under their arm. And it is hilarious to think he is anything but very competent to talk about the romantic poets. Any know of his love towards Blake, that he was fascinated by Ode to a Nightingale (the poem that taught him what poetry is), Coleridge Kubla Khan and literary biographia, Byron poetry and, albeit this is veiled, he liked Wordsworth a lot. Only reggarding Shelley I have seen him without some enthusiams. Yet, he, as people who study french litterature deeply consider Hugo first and foremost a poet. And a great one.
Yes... Borges is a giant among critics... and a critic who approaches literature as a lover of reading and not with some political/social agenda unrelated to the subject at hand. As an author he blurs genre: short story, poetry, mystery, science-fiction, history, fiction, criticism. Speaking of himself in his classic collection, Dreamtigers, Borges declares, "Few things have happened to me, and I have read a great many. Or rather, few things have happened to me more worth remembering than Schopenhauer's thought or the music of England's words." This is not a critic unfamiliar with English poetry. He profoundly admires Shakespeare. But he also recognizes the brilliance of Cervantes invention of Don Quixote and the Comedia. Borges wrote an entire collection of essays on the Comedia.
Eliot, in many ways, was the dominant critical voice of Anglo-American Modernism... both as a poet and a critic. It is Eliot who pushes for the recognition of Donne and Marvell and the Metaphysical poets over the Romantics... although he clearly owes much to the Romantics. It is also Eliot... along with Pound... who argue for the aesthetic superiority of Dante over Shakespeare. Joyce argued that he would choose Shakespeare... and undoubtedly I would give Shakespeare's oeuvre the nod over Dante's. But I give the Comedia the nod as the single greatest work of Western literature... something that no single play of Shakespeare can match. I also agree with Borges and Bloom that the characters of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza equals... and probably surpasses any single character of Shakespeare. They are able to live outside the confines of the very narrative in which they were invented in a manner that not even Shakespeare can surpass.
Beware of the man with just one book. -Ovid
The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.- Mark Twain
My Blog: Of Delicious Recoil
http://stlukesguild.tumblr.com/
It's all part of the grand government conspiracy to brain wash us through anonymous internet post into believing that the Earth is actually spherical and not the centre of the universe.
"If the national mental illness of the United States is megalomania, that of Canada is paranoid schizophrenia."
- Margaret Atwood
Oh dear - what with the name-calling and the snide asides, I fear that this thread is going the same way as the ultimately fractious In Nomine Patch debate.
Interesting that all heated threads are arguments about canons ...
Pretty much like football, except of course, the argument is about balls.
Well, at least Mr. Pickle has passed his Paradox Interactive posting number of 9.
Actually I thought this thread was more like this
As we can see from the statistics, it is rather irrelevant whose "art" was better - Dante clearly had a bigger appendage than Shakespeare - but Victor Hugo is the undisputed greatest....
No need to thank me, its why I'm here.
Poor South Korea. Japan is quite surprising, though.
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