Which COUNTRY has produced the greatest literature?

[Etienne]

British literature,
then Russian, all in all.

Name me 10 French and 10 German authors you've read, for example.

Honestly, I believe only people who are ignorant about the matter can think about having an answer to the question.

[liberal viewer]

That can't be a serious question. I think that if literature has taught us anything is that Nationalism is one of the greatest tragedies that has been inflicted upon Mankind. I'd rather think of the greatest writers that have ever lived and still I'd be doing a disservice to a lot of truly great writers. But, of the top of my head, I'd include:
Homer
Sophocles
Sapho
Virgil
Horace
Seneca
Dante
The writer of Beowulf
Petrarca
Cervantes
Quevedo
Lope de Vega
Calderon de la Barca
Shakespeare
Donne
Milton
Blake
Keats
Balzac
Flaubert
Tolstoi
Dostoievksi
Chejov
Ibsen
Joyce
Faulkner
Hemingway
Eliot
Becket
Proust
Kafka
Gide
Lowry
Borges
Neruda
García Márquez
Larkin

As you can see, in my list there are writers from many nationalities, and who'd argue they aren't great writers? Do you see my point?

[ex ponto]

Name me 10 French and 10 German authors you've read, for example.

Honestly, I believe only people who are ignorant about the matter can think about having an answer to the question.

That's only my judgement based on my own knowledge. My judgement, my taste etc

[linz]

All countries all over the world have produced masterpieces, and all masterpieces are indispensable!

[JBI]

Most of the above German authors weren't German. Germany is a new country. Besides which, the only fair way to judge this is to say England, since Shakespeare outstrips everything before or after his time that I have yet come across. But he, of course, would find that a terrible answer, since he is a universal being, for all time and place, as Jonson put it.

[Etienne]

Most of the above German authors weren't German. Germany is a new country.

German as in German-speaking, and no Germany is not a new country, where did you get that notion? Which author that person mentioned under Germany were not German exactly?

Besides which, the only fair way to judge this is to say England, since Shakespeare outstrips everything before or after his time that I have yet come across.

You call that fair? Basically you judge a national literary achievement based on a single author, and based on what you (and especially have not) read.

[JBI]

The German Empire didn't really finish taking shape until 1871. Language isn't the deciding factor here, otherwise England, The U.S. And every other English speaking country, and English writer would be under the same category. Do we consider pre-War of Independence Authors to be British? What about pre-confederation authors for the rest of the commonwealth? Either way, like stated before, by country is one of the worst ways to categorize literature.

[Etienne]

The German Empire didn't really finish taking shape until 1871.

Huh... almost every European country didn't take definite shape until the end of WW2... that doesn't mean the country didn't exist...

So basically you are trying to say that Goethe wasn't German? I think that tu t'es mis les pieds dans les plats.

Language isn't the deciding factor here, otherwise England, The U.S. And every other English speaking country, and English writer would be under the same category.

Ok, so what would you call a polish-writing author under Russian or German occupation? I personally would call him a Polish author. And how do you call an Ukrainian author when Ukraine was part of Russia, and wrote in Russian? I call him a Russian author. Had he written in Ukrainian, I would have called him an Ukrainian author. It is a matter of language and culture, not a matter of where the boundary is set by the politics of the time.

Isn't Nabokov an American writer when he wrote in English in America? When Joyce wrote all across Europe - but not in Ireland - wasn't he still not a Irish author? It all comes down to language and culture.

Do we consider pre-War of Independence Authors to be British? What about pre-confederation authors for the rest of the commonwealth? Either way, like stated before, by country is one of the worst ways to categorize literature.

We're talking about a colony here, which is something completely different.

[JBI]

OK, then is Scotland part of England in this category? what about expats, do they count?

[AwayAloneAlast]

Because I live in the Anglosphere, I'd have to agree with England (and hey, for its population, little Ireland has produced even more!). When you have Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Keats, etc. to your credit as a country... well, nobody can really challenge you.

To be honest, though, that's only for verse. I am partial to verse, but among prose writers I can't say anyone outside of Joyce among my favourites wrote in English. The best prose writers are the Russians (Tolstoy and Dostoevsky cement it!) and the South Americans (Borges and Garcia Marquez, especially).

[Etienne]

OK, then is Scotland part of England in this category? what about expats, do they count?

It's not a precise science I'm trying to tell you, but you can count Scotland in or out, whatever you like.

About Expats, I gave the example of Nabokov, if Nabokov had written in Russian, he wouldn't have been an American writer, but since he also wrote in Russian when he was in Russia, then we could say he has two literary nationalities.

But why are we even going into precise points like this, there is no rule, just common sense... Goethe not German... The Pope is not Catholic, I am not me... whatever you want.

[stlukesguild]

JBI- If we follow your measure of what constitutes a nation, which is certainly correct, then there is no real Greek literature as Greece as a united nation was not a reality. Instead we should speak of Spartan, Athenian, and Corinthian literature. The same would hold true of Italian literature. Dante would not be Italian, but rather Florentine. Other writers would be Roman, Milanese, Venetian, etc... The usual standard is to place each writer (or other artist) under the culture of his or her language. Austrian writers/composers/artists are usually listed as "German". Language is probably the best standard of division for placing artists within a certain culture because the political divisions of Nations are always subject to change. What was German one day (Lorraine and Alsace) is French the next. The composer, Jacques Offenbach, born in Cologne is considered a French composer due to the fact that he was French speaking, worked mostly in France and was clearly influenced exclusively by French musical culture. The painter, Matthias Grunwald worked for much of his career in Colmar, Alsace, but as a German-Speaking artist working in province that was largely German-Speaking and influenced mostly by German artistic conventions he is listed as a German painter. Joseph Conrad is rarely imagined as a Polish writer in spite of the fact that he did not speak English fluently until he was already in his twenties. His writing, however, was in English and influenced by (and influenced) British literature more than anything else.

The United States, Australia, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil are commonly considered as separate from their parent culture due to the vast physical separation, the fact that they were established as independent nations well into and past the era of Nationalism, and also thanks to great difference in history and culture. Ireland's history in inextricably intertwined with that of England as part of Great Britain as is Austria and even the German-speaking parts of the former Czechoslovakia in ways that are not true of the US and Britain. The culture in the United States has been greatly impacted by the contributions of sources (Spanish/Hispanic, African, French, East-European, Jewish) that make for a culture quite removed from that of the original parent country. A writer in Brazil or Argentina is part of a culture that includes influenced quite foreign to that of their parent cultures of Spain and Portugal.

To a certain extent this is all semantic. Art should be universal or able to speak to the human experience regardless of culture. On the other hand... I believe that the various cultures... even down to regional... can lend to art a variety that is far more interesting than an ideal Anglo-American Disney/McDonalds Imperial internationalism.

[Etienne]

When you have Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Keats, etc. to your credit as a country... well, nobody can really challenge you.

So you think.

[Il Penseroso]

I wonder whether or not the people who are arguing so adamantly for one particular National literature as dominant over all others have actually read those other literatures in their native languages.

[stlukesguild]

...among prose writers I can't say anyone outside of Joyce among my favourites wrote in English. The best prose writers are the Russians

Of course that is, by your own admission, personal preference. I would not be so quick to discount the British/English contributions to prose: Robert Burton, Samuel Richardson, Daniel DeFoe, Lawrence Sterne, Samuel Johnson, Edward Gibbon, James Boswell, Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, Joseph Conrad, Walter Pater, Robert Louis Stevenson, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, D.H. Lawrence, Samuel Beckett, etc... Certainly Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and even Checkov are towering figures that may not have been surpassed by any single contribution of prose in English (which is debatable) but to ignore the wealth of the British contribution as a result would not be unlike suggesting that the Spanish contribution to Modernism in art outweighs that of the French on the basis of the fact that no single French Modernist surpasses Picasso.

When you have Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Keats, etc. to your credit as a country... well, nobody can really challenge you.

Of course France has Rabelais, Montaigne, Rousseau, Moliere, Hugo, Rimbaud, Baudelaire, Proust... no slouches there. And the Germans have Goethe, Holderlin, Novalis, Nietzsche, Kafka, Rilke, Hesse, Mann... again, not without some real genius. And what do we really even know of Chinese literature considering that little of its vast body of literature has even been translated... to say nothing of the level of the translation... into most Western languages?