/lit/ - Literature

Anyone else love Chaucer? Any other readers of Middle English books or fans of Gower or Langland?

-Beowulf: Not even English, really
-Chaucer: Canterbury Tales was a direct ripoff of the Decameron. The stories are actually identical
-Shakespeare: Many of his works were a synthesis of older stories (Hamlet, for example, was taken from old Icelandic sagas) His authorship of any of the plays attributed to him is debatable, and the poems attributed to him are definitely not all his. Regardless, his writing is not as deep and profound and you've been told.
-Dickens: John Grisham of his day. Noteworthy that his books were published in several installments. The critics of his time understood that he was a hack.
-George Orwell: A lifelong Communist but relented towards the end of his life. Keep that in mind when you read Animal Farm. His whole body of work is one big contradictory mess

It's ironic that the greatest work of English literature, the King James Bible, is a translation of an ancient text authorized by a Scotsman.

I'll start

The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
Everything ever written by Shakespeare
The Canterbury Tales
Poems by Lord Byron


(DO NOT DARE POST ANYTHING BY DICKENS, HE WAS A HACK)

Just sayin'

more like Geoffrey TOSSER, amirite?