Lit Net Top Author?

[bazarov]

So, for people to stop arguing about unfair list because Flaubert is better then Dostoevsky; how come Crime and Punishment is above Madame Bovary ; name your top 5 authors. I will count it this time; so Dark Muse can rest a little bit Poet, novelist or drama - they all count.

The deadline is...one month, so it's Valentine's Day!

[Niamh]

Modern, Classic or a mix of both?

[optimisticnad]

yikes! i won't be able to sleep at night now! top 5? and you're counting? double yikes.

[bazarov]

Everyone!

My list:
1. Dostoevsky

and with no particular order:

2.Tolstoy,
3.Hugo,
4.Selimovic,
5. Krleža

[mortalterror]

1.Ernest Hemingway
2.Jean Racine
3.Ovid
4.Shakespeare
5.Dante

[Niamh]

Only 5?
Nutz......going to have to think

[LitNetIsGreat]

So, for people to stop arguing about unfair list because Flaubert is better then Dostoevsky; how come Crime and Punishment is above Madame Bovary ; name your top 5 authors. I will count it this time; so Dark Muse can rest a little bit Poet, novelist or drama - they all count.

The deadline is...one month, so it's Valentine's Day!

Your personal favourite top five or the top five authors you think are best?

[JBI]

Dante Alighieri
Jane Austen
Giacomo Leopardi
Emile Zola
T.S. Eliot


Notice, I didn't include Shakespeare, because I am sure he will make the top ten without me, given these boards. But Oh my god, five is so darn difficult. I keep thinking should Eliot go, should Zola go, is Leopardi to big a stretch - so many choices, though I doubt Leopardi places - I doubt he gets another vote but mine, despite being regarded as perhaps the second best poet in the Italian language.

[Thespian1975]

1 Shakespeare
2 Dickens
3 Agatha Christie
4 Conan Doyle
5 Hugo

[mortalterror]

Dante Alighieri
Jane Austen
Giacomo Leopardi
Emile Zola
T.S. Eliot


Notice, I didn't include Shakespeare, because I am sure he will make the top ten without me, given these boards. But Oh my god, five is so darn difficult. I keep thinking should Eliot go, should Zola go, is Leopardi to big a stretch - so many choices, though I doubt Leopardi places - I doubt he gets another vote but mine, despite being regarded as perhaps the second best poet in the Italian language.

I really wanted to put Eliot up, and if it was a top 6 he'd be there. But who am I going to displace? Shakespeare? Dante? I know they'll both make it in spite of my vote but I figured we were supposed to be honest and not just root for obscure figures we think ought to be better represented. As far as Leopardi goes, he's also sort of a bottom ten list figure for me, along with Calderon if I had the room. Honestly, I think you are more likely to get another Leopardi vote before I see another Racine. The dude is a second Shakespeare in the French language and nobody around here has heard of him.

If I had more familiarity with Firdawsi or Tu Fu I'd like to add them as well. As good as the Greeks are I doubt we'll see many of them. Chances are, this is just going to be another love fest for the Russians.

[Mopey Droney]

1. Charles Dickens
2. Marcel Proust
3. Henry James
4. John Steinbeck
5. Thomas Hardy

This is order of enjoyment, not in order of who I think is "best".

[JBI]

I really wanted to put Eliot up, and if it was a top 6 he'd be there. But who am I going to displace? Shakespeare? Dante? I know they'll both make it in spite of my vote but I figured we were supposed to be honest and not just root for obscure figures we think ought to be better represented. As far as Leopardi goes, he's also sort of a bottom ten list figure for me, along with Calderon if I had the room. Honestly, I think you are more likely to get another Leopardi vote before I see another Racine. The dude is a second Shakespeare in the French language and nobody around here has heard of him.

If I had more familiarity with Firdawsi or Tu Fu I'd like to add them as well. As good as the Greeks are I doubt we'll see many of them. Chances are, this is just going to be another love fest for the Russians.

That's why I didn't put Shakespeare, and I was debating replacing Dante as well. Like always on this board, prose > verse, English > rest of the world, but, Dostoevsky > English novelists, West > East (even in my post, but the problem is, most East-Asian cultures seem to associate more with the work than with the artist, and don't seem to embrace a figure-head cult as we do here).

I really wanted to put Zola on there, and also the French Canadian Anne Hebert, and a Latin American, probably Borges, amongst others, but really, five is quite difficult to negotiate.

I personally admit I don't particularly care for Racine. He has beautiful moments, as he was definitely the accomplished verse stylist of his time, but I think the classical grid which he stuck to, so adherent to Aristotelian structures, and French tastes (for instance, the five act structure being more pragmatic than one would think, given that aristocrats loved intermissions, and the chandelier's needed their wicks trimmed), not to mention that strict adherence to bienseance makes, I would think, Racine's range rather limited. I mean there are particularly moving moments of his that I have read, my favorite being Aricie's discovery of Hyppolyte's body after he has been destroyed by the Sea Beast, but the dependence on one plot line, and no action away from that line, nothing unrelated to the one setting, one direction, one thread of action, is troubling to me.

Of course, we must say what Racine is particularly good at - I would argue, he was an even greater master of time than Shakespeare was - his pacing, and compacting of action into one day, or a few hours, is particularly good. Also, like I said before, his language, and I would add, his formation of characters, and the way he manipulates his source material is fantastic, but even so I am troubled by him, as I am by Alexander Pope, and John Dryden, given that they are so cemented to the classical model that I feel their overcorseted, and rather limited.

[kelby_lake]

In no order...

1- F Scott Fitzgerald
2- Tennessee Williams
3- Charles Dickens
4- Franz Kafka
5- Vladimir Nabokov (sorry Austen!)

It's hard to know who to choose- some I've read one of their books and been impressed but I don't know what their others are like.

I assume you're choosing Eliot for his poetry because I read one of his plays and it was preety boring.
PS- I know Racine! We have some at home!

[mortalterror]

That's why I didn't put Shakespeare, and I was debating replacing Dante as well. Like always on this board, prose > verse, English > rest of the world, but, Dostoevsky > English novelists, West > East (even in my post, but the problem is, most East-Asian cultures seem to associate more with the work than with the artist, and don't seem to embrace a figure-head cult as we do here).

I really wanted to put Zola on there, and also the French Canadian Anne Hebert, and a Latin American, probably Borges, amongst others, but really, five is quite difficult to negotiate.

I personally admit I don't particularly care for Racine. He has beautiful moments, as he was definitely the accomplished verse stylist of his time, but I think the classical grid which he stuck to, so adherent to Aristotelian structures, and French tastes (for instance, the five act structure being more pragmatic than one would think, given that aristocrats loved intermissions, and the chandelier's needed their wicks trimmed), not to mention that strict adherence to bienseance makes, I would think, Racine's range rather limited. I mean there are particularly moving moments of his that I have read, my favorite being Aricie's discovery of Hyppolyte's body after he has been destroyed by the Sea Beast, but the dependence on one plot line, and no action away from that line, nothing unrelated to the one setting, one direction, one thread of action, is troubling to me.

Of course, we must say what Racine is particularly good at - I would argue, he was an even greater master of time than Shakespeare was - his pacing, and compacting of action into one day, or a few hours, is particularly good. Also, like I said before, his language, and I would add, his formation of characters, and the way he manipulates his source material is fantastic, but even so I am troubled by him, as I am by Alexander Pope, and John Dryden, given that they are so cemented to the classical model that I feel their overcorseted, and rather limited.

Here we differ, and I fear you are a little too modern in your tastes to correctly appreciate this period. It's precisely the way that his genius soars within the prescribed bounds that I find so attractive. He takes something that is already there and makes it better while conforming to all the conventions of his day. He reaches deep and finds his own originality, his own personality inside of a community. Racine or Shakespeare will take a well worn topos and make it purely their own. The man is re-writing Euripides and improving on every play. But then, I already love the classical period he's imitating and I believe in the unities.

When I was younger, I didn't like Pope, Dryden, Johnson, or Milton either for that matter. The Enlightenment was too dry, too old, too intellectual, the way the Romantics would later come to feel too wet, too young, too emotional. But when you look at what they were trying to do it's astonishing. If you judge them by their own artistic values, what they were trying to do, their level of achievement is very high.

Nowadays we tend to compose poems with an eye toward the entire text. We talk a great deal about form. Our units of composition are rather long, a novel, a page, or a paragraph instead of a single sentence. But at that time Pope was composing for the line. He had this idea that you could take any line from a great poet and his greatness would show. Line for line, he created more great poetry than any other English poet. This makes him very quotable, which is important to note as aphorisms were very popular at the time. T.S. Eliot agrees with me on this. I forget which one of his essays he mentions Pope in, but he held him in very high regard. Don't try to enjoy an entire poem of Pope's. That's almost impossible. They are not like a single perfect gem, but more like jewel encrusted bracelets.

As for Racine, I believe you may be judging him by a poor translation. As a person who reads a little French, and briefly tried to translate him myself, I recommend John Cairncross's translation, or failing that George Dillon's, or even Robert Bruce Boswell's. I do not recommend his most famous play Phaedra. I do recommend Andromache, Iphigenia, Athalia, or The Thebaid.

What makes Racine different from his contemporaries is his passion. He is a poet of love, and his characters are unconstrained and obsessive. They frequently can't control themselves for love, even knowing that it will lead to their doom. Here he departs from the Greeks, who cared almost nothing for love, and from his contemporaries who are often incredibly cerebral. There is nothing rational in his plays beside their design. You could say that he is a forerunner of the Romantics, but I think that he's more likely wedding his Greek structure with the courtly love poetry of the Renaissance. But his vision of love as destructive untempered passion is very different from my other favorite love poet Ovid, who has a more easy going attitude to his subject. Racine's vision of love is a dark one. Often the characters are caught up in abusive relationships beyond their control. Love triangles are not infrequent and the characters are pulled this way and that like puppets, although I think Racine is much more convincing than say Dryden was in his play All For Love.

I sometimes wonder if what makes a poet great might be their unique approach to the subject of love. Take the Italians for instance. Dante's poem is a wonderful treatise on sacred or platonic love. Petrarch is known for unhappy, unrequited love. Boccaccio and Cavalcanti are known for their celebrations of physical and sensual love. But perhaps I'm making too much where there is nothing. It is a pleasant thought though, if perhaps a touch errant.

[Thespian1975]

In no order...

1- F Scott Fitzgerald
2- Tennessee Williams
2- Charles Dickens
3- Franz Kafka
4- Ambrose Bierce
5- Jane Austen

It's hard to know who to choose- some I've read one of their books and been impressed but I don't know what their others are like.

I assume you're choosing Eliot for his poetry because I read one of his plays and it was preety boring.
PS- I know Racine! We have some at home!

No cheating now