/lit/ - Literature

>>2538639
>Lastly... to those arguing one row over the other: how does one row fulfill these qualities better than the other? Surely the majority opinion would say the bottom row is "better"... but doesn't the top delight?
What is one trying to do vs. another? Is Harry Potter trying to do the same thing as Ulysses? Or, better said, was Rowling setting out to do the same thing that Joyce was setting out to do w/ Ulysses?
No. Rowling was trying to write a children's story. She did, she sold millions. Joyce was trying to write a new modern epic, using history and a reservoir of literature, philosophy, and language studies as a source for his novel.
Simply put: each book on the list has different aims, and to compare them generally and come up with anything interesting and complex is pretty much impossible. That's not to say that parts of them can't be compared to different parts. The wordplay, the styles, the devices, etc.: that forms the grist of comparative lit.

>delight?
What's the difference between "delight" and "entertain"? Not any, ostensibly. And so, as it's been said, it all comes down to entertainment, although the more you study lit and the more and more serious you get about it, the more it takes to entertain you. I'm trying to curtail that shitty D&E subjectivism image here.