Which COUNTRY has produced the greatest literature?

[Simao]

Russian all the way. I read American lit and I really disliked it. I was dying of bordem trying to finish The Great Gatsby and I couldn't get through 30 pages of Mices and Men and I threw the book away. I liked a few American books though like Moby Dick and some of Dan Brown's (even though they aren't exactly books you would like to read twice). Maybe the problem is that there are too many love and romance novels which is really not my liking and that is why I liked russian lit more becasue even though there are stories of love but the conflict between the character and itself is so huge and broad that you might not even notice the minor love story in the book.
Let's just say that if you are on a deserted island, you would rather pick a few Russian novels with you rather than anything else.

[mortalterror]

that's not remotely fair! Eliot became a British subject, dropped his American citizenship and became an Anglican. He also wrote some of his major works in London. This clearly shows him as culturally British. He cannot be damned as an American, when he put such effort into distancing himself from the USA.

Einstein wasn't a Nazi, and he wound up in America, but I still think of him as German. Nabokov wasn't a bolshevik, but I still think of him as a Russian. What's important in determining nationality are people's formative experiences. Even when your body is in another country, your mind remains at home, and we retain certain relationships to the world, ways of thinking about objects or situations. Eliot doesn't move to Britain until he's 25 and by then, he's inescapably American. I think it's possible to claim dual citizenship, but to renounce your old associations is to divorce a part of yourself. Eliot doesn't stop being the person he was in the United States when he gains British citizenship. He rather adds something to himself. He becomes something extra. Personally, I think there's something very American about the way he chose to leave America. Beckett and Joyce chose to leave Ireland, and what's more Irish than that? Salmon Rushdie hasn't been to India in decades and he's still writing stories about his native land. Those childhood memories leave an indelible imprint that cannot be effaced by later experience. Neither a knighthood nor a new language can change the hand that holds the pen. Dante's town rejected him, Ovid's Rome forsook him, and they remained Roman and Florentine to the end.

...Horror and doubt distract
His troubled thoughts, and from the bottom stir
The Hell within him, for within him Hell
He brings, and round about him, nor from Hell
One step, no more than from himself, can fly
By change of place. -Paradise Lost, 4:18-23

If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast. -Ernest Hemingway

[Kafka's Crow]

Russian all the way. I read American lit and I really disliked it. I was dying of bordem trying to finish The Great Gatsby and I couldn't get through 30 pages of Mices and Men and I threw the book away. I liked a few American books though like Moby Dick and some of Dan Brown's (even though they aren't exactly books you would like to read twice). Maybe the problem is that there are too many love and romance novels which is really not my liking and that is why I liked russian lit more becasue even though there are stories of love but the conflict between the character and itself is so huge and broad that you might not even notice the minor love story in the book.
Let's just say that if you are on a deserted island, you would rather pick a few Russian novels with you rather than anything else.

Apart from the Dan Brown part I agree with almost everything in your post.

[Geraint]

Einstein wasn't a Nazi, and he wound up in America, but I still think of him as German. Nabokov wasn't a bolshevik, but I still think of him as a Russian.

Bolshevism and National Socialism were extreme political fads, over within a hundred years. The established church in Britain is almost half a millenium old, and fundemental to the culture. His decision to leave his American religion and join the British one is evidence of his decision

to divorce a part of [himself].

Personally, I think there's something very American about the way he chose to leave America.

How is leaving isolationist America to live in Europe American?

Dante's town rejected him, Ovid's Rome forsook him, and they remained Roman and Florentine to the end.

Eliot rejected America. The situation is totally different.

In my mind, the true experience of travel is formative. The head leaves home and becomes -breifly- a part of the rest of the world. Moving is just an extension of this, a decison by the head never to go home:

If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast. -Ernest Hemingway

[PeterL]

Bolshevism and National Socialism were extreme political fads, over within a hundred years. The established church in Britain is almost half a millenium old, and fundemental to the culture. His decision to leave his American religion and join the British one is evidence of his decision

How is leaving isolationist America to live in Europe American?

Eliot rejected America. The situation is totally different.

Rebellion is a fundamental part of the American psyche; thus rejecting America is fundamentally American.

[mortalterror]

Bolshevism and National Socialism were extreme political fads, over within a hundred years. The established church in Britain is almost half a millenium old, and fundemental to the culture. His decision to leave his American religion and join the British one is evidence of his decision

So if he'd gone to London and become a Catholic, he'd be what: an Italian? If he'd become an atheist, would you strip him of his nationality? If he was an alcoholic does that make him a citizen of the world? We've got a lot of Jews in America but nobody considers them a fifth column for Israel. I don't see what the question of race, creed, or religion has to do with a person's national identity, but that might just be because I'm lucky enough to live in a country with religious freedom and tolerance.

If you want to argue what religion produced the greatest literature, then that's a different discussion. The question of a country's literary culture is a secular matter.

Over time, I suppose a person's sentiments may change. But they do not change over night, and I think that a conversion of national identity would take almost as many years living abroad as one has already piled up in one's native land. You make it sound like if any great novelist spent a weekend there on vacation you'd lay a claim to them. I'll split the difference with you. Eliot applies for British citizenship in 1927. That means Prufrock, The Wasteland, and The Hollow Men are all articles of American literature, and you guys can have full title to Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats free and clear.

[PeterL]

I have read most, if not all, of this thread, and there has been nothing that even approached being a definitive comment. There have been many assertions of opinions, but those were fundamentally about personal preferences. If someone prefers the Russian novels he has read to American novels that he has read, that means nothing more. That person might not like any Russian novels, except those that have already been read, and the converse is true for American novels. A much more useful exercise would be to determine what the best form of literature is, using only objectively verifiable criteria, then it would be possible to consider which examples of that form of literature were best.

[PeterL]

I agree with you, Peter. It's impossible to say which country produced the greatest literature. There is no definitive answer.

There will be when I become Emperor and command everyone to agree with me.

[PeterL]

But we haven't reached that time yet.

Not quite yet.

[Geraint]

that might just be because I'm lucky enough to live in a country with religious freedom and tolerance.

That was a bit rude. Are you american? I'm British.

I'll split the difference with you. Eliot applies for British citizenship in 1927. That means Prufrock, The Wasteland, and The Hollow Men are all articles of American literature, and you guys can have full title to Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats free and clear.

Done deal. Somewhere between The Hollow Men and Ash Wednesday Eliot becomes a Briton. So it was a British writer that received the Nobel Prize?

Rebellion is a fundamental part of the American psyche; thus rejecting America is fundamentally American.

So, anyone born in America is inescapably American? They either follow American culture, or are fundementally American by rejecting it? Seems something of a catch 22.

Also, I do agree that the discussion is far too subjective, and so probably doesn't have an answer.

[JBI]

You're all fools who think Eliot British. His style is very American, and doesn't reflect the English tradition of the time at all, but rather reflects a post-Whitmanian American tradition. That's like calling Anne Hebert a French poet, and not French Canadian, or calling Joyce Swiss, or some other silliness. He was definitely not English, despite his trying. Even his religious views seem to be an American's, regardless of his critique of American religion. He, to me at least, didn't seem to get what European religion is all about.

[Simao]

A much more useful exercise would be to determine what the best form of literature is, using only objectively verifiable criteria, then it would be possible to consider which examples of that form of literature were best.

I don't think you can find a purely objective answer for this thread anyways that is why some of the people here including me returned to our subjective view over this issue. I mean it is virtually impossbile to tell which is better because after all it is a matter of taste and if you don't like a novel some else will. I mean seriously, it sounds easy in theory but impossible in practice to tell which type of lit is the best.

[jenmcd]

You surely are joking.
Chaucer, Shakespeare, Hardy, Dickens, Wordsworth, Keats, Blake, Johnson, Jonson, Spenser, etc.

Irish literature, in the way that you portray it, seems to be a new phenomenon. The English tradition has stronger roots, and has, I would argue, a larger influence on modern (post-medieval) Irish letters than the Irish one. Either way, you missed Swift and Wilde.

Of course Irish literature is a new phenomenon - when most of the writers you mention were alive Ireland was basically a peasant society colonised by the British. Also my list was not intended to be comprehensive. In addition to Wilde and Swift I could add Maria Edgeworth, Sheridan Le Fanu, Oliver Goldsmith, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Elizabeth Bowen, Brian Friel, Benedict Kiely, Mary Lavin, Bernard MacLaverty, Eugene McCabe, John McGahern, Edna O'Brien, Sean O'Faolain, Liam O'Flaherty, James Plunkett, Somerille and Ross, James Stephens, William Trevor, Colm Toibin, Sebastian Barry, Brendan Behan, Jennifer Johnston, Thomas Kilroy, Frank McGuinness, Synge, John Banville, Dermot Bolger, Kate O'Brien, Seamus Heaney...I'll stop before this gets boring but its not a bad list for a country of 4 million people on the edge of Europe. Of course the concept of 'literature' arose and was developed in the UK but I would argue that Irish writers have taken this and run with it like no other nationality in the 20th and 21st centuries. I also feel Irish writing and appreciation of writing is in a very healthy state today. Irish writers have won the booker in 2 of the last 3 years. Our theatres are not full of musicals and you would certainly never find a novel by Jordan at the top of our bestseller list.

You surely are joking.
Chaucer, Shakespeare, Hardy, Dickens, Wordsworth, Keats, Blake, Johnson, Jonson, Spenser, etc.

Irish literature, in the way that you portray it, seems to be a new phenomenon. The English tradition has stronger roots, and has, I would argue, a larger influence on modern (post-medieval) Irish letters than the Irish one. Either way, you missed Swift and Wilde.

Of course Irish literature is a new phenomenon - when most of the writers you mention were alive Ireland was basically a peasant society colonised by the British. Also my list was not intended to be comprehensive. In addition to Wilde and Swift I could add Maria Edgeworth, Sheridan Le Fanu, Oliver Goldsmith, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Elizabeth Bowen, Brian Friel, Benedict Kiely, Mary Lavin, Bernard MacLaverty, Eugene McCabe, John McGahern, Edna O'Brien, Sean O'Faolain, Liam O'Flaherty, James Plunkett, Somerville and Ross, James Stephens, William Trevor, Colm Toibin, Sebastian Barry, Brendan Behan, Jennifer Johnston, Thomas Kilroy, Frank McGuinness, Synge, John Banville, Dermot Bolger, Kate O'Brien, Seamus Heaney...I'll stop before this gets boring but its not a bad list for a country of 4 million people on the edge of Europe. Of course the concept of 'literature' arose and was developed in the UK but I would argue that Irish writers have taken this and run with it like no other nationality in the 20th and 21st centuries. I also feel Irish writing and appreciation of writing is in a very healthy state today. Irish writers have won the booker in 2 of the last 3 years. Our theatres are not full of musicals and you would certainly never find a novel by Jordan at the top of our bestseller list.

[PeterL]

So, anyone born in America is inescapably American? They either follow American culture, or are fundamentally American by rejecting it? Seems something of a catch 22.

If you were born as a human, you wouldn't expect to change that condition during your life, would you?

I don't think you can find a purely objective answer for this thread anyways that is why some of the people here including me returned to our subjective view over this issue. I mean it is virtually impossbile to tell which is better because after all it is a matter of taste and if you don't like a novel some else will. I mean seriously, it sounds easy in theory but impossible in practice to tell which type of lit is the best.

Personally, I do not believe that objectivity is possible.

[1n50mn14]

Objectivity is impossible, being human, but I'll give this my best shot:

In my own, PERSONAL view, I believe Britain has produced the MOST good quality writing. I don't beleive that means that the very best piece of literature ever written necessarily came from Britain- it simply means to me that the most (quantity, not quality) good quality literature came from there.

I'm really enjoying a lot of up and coming Canadian authors right now.

Really, you can't compare- nobody has read every work ever written from every country, people's tastes differ, and it's nearly impossible to compare works ranging from Neo Classical to the Modern and Alternative literature genres.