/lit/ - Literature

Cervantes
Proust
Joyce
Dante
Homer

>>11246673
Cervantes is up there.

>>11246673
Dante
Homer
Cervantes
Goethe
Tolstoy

>>11246683
Delusional

Rowling
Green
Seuss
Klar
Danielle Steele

Does Melville deserve a spot?

>>11246686
how? And how is it worse than >>11246678

>>11246673
Cervantes, Tolstoy, Woolf, Hugo, Dickens.

Bet people will bitch about the last two but their impact is undeniable gigantic.

>>11246696
Maybe in top 25.

>>11246673
The written result of the Homeric Tradition
Plato
Dante
Tolstoy
Joyce

Honorable mentions: OPs pic related, the Old Testament writers and the written record of the Hebrew oral tradition, Virgil, Ovid, the written result of the Anglo-Saxon bard tradition, Petrarch, Chaucer, Spenser, Cervantes, Milton, Donne, Sterne, Shelley, Keats, etc... Pynchon one day perhaps....

>>11246699
Not Hugo

>>11246736
Oh come the fuck on, he sold/sells crazy numbers, got still relevant themes and even most plebs are aware of his works. And just like with Cervantes, the original has some beautiful writing too.

>>11246699
>Woolf, Hugo, Dickens.
I get your point but these fuckers over Dante and Homer? Come one.

Including Shakespeare the top 3 would be:
Homer
Cervantes
Baudelaire

Shakespeare wouldnt even make it to the top 20
Shakespeare's relevance is not a result of his own genius, he's a result of anglo saxons shoving him into the western canon as a form of anglo saxon cultural imperialism
If he had been born in Austria or Bulgaria no one would talk about him nowadays any more than Moliere or Lope de Vega

Cervantes however wasn't particularly promoted by Spain, he succeeded in spite of Spain because his genius is to this day unmatched, and it was Spain's rivals who put him in the canon, organically, because he was undeniable.

>>11246745
>plebs + sales

>>11246778
Can't deny their greatness but I am just not a fan of poems.

>>11246788
It obviously had a huge factor but lasting for SO long should give Willy some credit too, cultural imperialism or not. And his best plays are up there with the greats.

>>11246788
>muh anglo memes
Have you ever actually read a critical work of Shakes?

OBJECTIVE

1. SHAKESPEARE
2. CERVANTES
3. DANTE
4. TOLSTOY
5. JOYCE

>>11246836
>JOYCE
Is the type of faggot who writes about writers. Granted, he does it very well but majority of his works are a meaningless masturbation sessions.

>>11246673
this is really easy:

Kafka
Joyce
Melville
Pynchon
Cervantes

Homer was a bard, he never wrote anything; Dante "wrote" an epic poem in three parts; Plato is a philosopher, and if we are including them then Nietzsche and Land are significantly more interesting and more delightful to read than Plato. Christfaggotry is not art, writing propaganda is not art.

done

>>11246939
>Kafka
>Melville
>greatest writes of all time
How embarrassing. I'm sure you've read The Trial and Moby Dick, but what about the rest of their respective ouvre? Hell-- Flaubert is more consistent.

>Homer was a bard, he never wrote anything
The consensus amongst scholars is that the Odyssey and the Iliad (along with the rest of the Trojan Cycle) as we know them today were most certainly written documents. Yes-- there was a Bardic tradition underpinning the composition. But this is an old "lol im informed" meme that needs to die hard. Not sure how your statement about Dante discredits his supremacy. I can tell by your dismissal of Plato that you've never really read him, or read him well enough. Republic tops War and Peace with its literary mastery. This is also a pretty common opinion amongst all philosophers, hence the famous adage.

>Land
Clever saving this for the last sentence. Would've stopped reading then and there if you'd have opened up with this.

>>11246673
Dante
Harold Hart Crane
Carlo Emilio Gadda
James Joyce
Either Tolstoj or Proust, but more Tolstoj than Proust

>>11246836
TOLSTOY didn't dig SHAKESPEARE to the point he didn't value him at all

>>11246889
Confirmed for either:

A) never read Joyce
B) never comprehended Joyce

Dilettante.

>>11247023
Writers' opinions of other writers matters little.

>>11247007
>The consensus amongst scholars is that the Odyssey and the Iliad (along with the rest of the Trojan Cycle) as we know them today were most certainly written documents. Yes-- there was a Bardic tradition underpinning the composition
how? there was no strong literary culture in Dorian Greece at all.
>I can tell by your dismissal of Plato that you've never really read him, or read him well enough
fucking die retard

jesus christ this board is awful

>durr Kafka isn't good
idiot

>>11246673
1) Joyce
2) Shakespeare
3) Proust
4) Dante
POWER GAP
5) Flaubert
6) Tolstoy

>>11246673
Sophocles
Lorca -his plays only-
Saint John of the Cross
Saint Augustine
Bataille

>>11247114
weirdest list I've ever read

>>11246673
I would say the following are the only ones really in the running:
>Proust
>Flaubert
>Joyce
>Tolstoy
>Dante
>Homer
>Virgil
>Milton
>Cervantes

If Kafka had lived longer and kept writing quality stuff he might have been up there, if Melville had more books at the quality of Moby Dick he might have been up there as well.

>>11247114
Hmm

post the god pasta

Tolstoy
Dostoevsky
Zola
Balzac
Goethe

>>11246673
ok. ok. wow. just. ok. here are the true rankings, and I would go as far as saying that the rest of fiction as a whole is a waste of time, and you're better off reading poetry or watching TV instead of reading authors who are not in this list


SUPREME MASTER GOD TIER: THE MASTER OF ALL IN THE KINGDOM OF GREAT WRITERS IN HUMAN HISTORY, AT THE TOP OF THE HIGHEST TOWER, MASTURBATING 10-15 TIMES PER DAY, AS THE HAND WITH WHICH HE WRITES ARTISTIC MASTERPIECES IS MORE SEXUALLY APPEALING THAN ANY ADONIS THE GODS CAN CONJURE
>Proust


VICE-SUPREME MASTER GOD TIER: THE ONLY WRITER DESERVING TO BE IN SAME ROOM AS THE SUPREME MASTER GOD
>Joyce


GOD TIER: OCCUPYING THE MARBLE CASTLE WITH THE SUPREME AND VICE SUPREME MASTER GOD
>Tolstoy
>Homer
>Dante
>Dostoevsky
>Shakespeare
>Flaubert


ANGELIC DEMON TIER: PATROLLING THE CASTLE WALLS OF THE GOD TIERS AND ABOVE, AND DOING THEIR BIDDING ACROSS THE UNIVERSE, CAPTURING AND PILLAGING ENTIRE PLANETS TO TURN INTO PLANET-SIZED "THE MATRIX"-TYPE BODY HARVESTING FARMS, BUT THEY HARVEST HUMAN FARTS INSTEAD OF ELECTRICITY, PACKED IN DIAMOND JARS, FOR THE FART-LOVING JOYCE AND PROUST TO HOLD UP TO THEIR NOSES AND SHIFT THEIR NOSES LEFT AND RIGHT ALONG THE RIM OF THE JAR LIKE SNIFFING A FINE WINE, THEN TAKING A HUMONGOUS INHALE AND ACHIEVING UNFATHOMABLE ORGASM, "AH, A 2017 RUSSIAN LUMBERJACK FART, GOOD YEAR" THEY SAY, NODDING THEIR HEADS AT THE ANGELIC DEMONS WHO DO THEIR BIDDING, THE ANGELIC DEMONS' HEARTS FILLED WITH JOY AT THE HONOR OF SERVING THEIR MASTERS
>Goethe
>Kafka
>Chekhov
>Dickens
>Morrissey
>Nabakov
>Melville
>Milton
>Cervantes
>Hesse
>Ambrose motherfucking Bierce
>Borges


HONORABLE DRAGON WORK CREATURE TIER: THESE WRITERS' SOULS HAVE POSSESSED THE BODIES OF DRAGONS WITH LIME GREEN FUR AND FLORESCENT TIGER STRIPES WHO BREATHE GAMMA RAY BURSTS AND CIRCLE THE SUPREME MASTER GOD'S KINGDOM BY THE MILLIONS, AND OPERATE AS A HIVE MIND, AND HAVE BEEN GENETICALLY MODIFIED WITH TARDIGRADE DNA TO SURVIVE IN SPACE AND EVEN BLACK HOLES, TO HONOR WORKS THAT I ENJOYED PERSONALLY BUT THAT MAY NOT BE AS JUSTIFIED ON AN ARTISTIC LEVEL BY CONSENSUS
>Pynchon
>Hemingway
>Foster Wallace
>Woolf
>George Eliot
>Balzac
>Roald Dahl

>>11247238
Why the Proust-Joyce switcheroo?

>>11247135
Probably the best list that’s been posted

>>11246673
Me
Frederick Neetsche
Arthur Schopenhauer
Jesus
Socrates

>>11246680
This.
>>11246689
You need to post Rowling at the bottom to make it a good jest, anon.
>>11246699
Dostoevsky>Tolstoy prove me wrong.

>>11247238
cringe

>>11247135
Agree with this 100%.

>>11247007
You read Plato in ancient greek? I disagree with you anyway, although its a wonderful text.

>>11247238
autism and shit taste pleb

>>11246673
Céline Proust Flaubert Giono Balzac
;^)

Joyce
Beckett
Goethe
Dante
Deleuze and Guattari

>>11246673
keats/shelley, dante, wallace stevens, joyce, me -- in ascending order of greatness

>Virgil
>Byron
>Flaubert
>Melville
>Shakespeare
no bully

>>11246673
Tolkien (father of fantasy)
Rowling (got a lot of kids in to reading)
The writer of Stoner (because that's one of the "serious" books I've read)
Orwell (great criticism of left wing totaliarism)
Eckhart Tolle (the power of now is the best self help book I've read)

Those are my greatest writers of all time me, granted I haven't read really any of the "classics".

>>11247007
please kill yourself

Are translations of Proust worth reading?

>>11247787
yes.

>>11247787
no

>>11246673
>Nietzsche
>DFW
>Homer
>Dostoyevsky
>Joyce

Honorable mentions:
>Goethe
>Nabokov

Haven't read Virgil or Dante, get over it. Kafka >>11247135 is a boring ass tedious bitch.

Looking forward to Pynchon and Proust, next on my list.

>>11247787
maybe

>>11246788
>no one would talk about him nowadays any more than Moliere
But Molière is literally on the same level as Shakespeare and should be in every top10.

>>11247776
This is the only honest answer in th thread, ergo ipso facto it's the best post.

>>11247847
pure, unfiltered, untaimed and unchained redditry

>>11247896
What Moliere should I read?

>>11247893
>>11247817
>>11247811
uhh.. how am i supposed to make up my mind with responses like these..?

>>11246683
>Non-Germans always putting Goethe over Schiller
Every fucking time.

>>11247955
As if
>they actually read Faust
>Actually read IJ
>Actually enjoyed TSZ
Get over yourself m8. I understand my list is devoid of the patrician nuggets of gold, but, I'm not far behind.

>>11247984
crabbit

>>11247988
Tbh your back-to-back digits are undeniably irritating me. I'm going to rage shit post tomorrow now: you are welcome.

>>11246673
Swift
Yeats
Joyce
Beckett
Flann O'Brien

>>11247996
croggit

>>11248012
fuck I slightly missed my dubs

>>11248012
Heh, botch, not that time. Trips confirms I'm actually gunna be on these top 5 lists one day.

>>11248006
continued:
Sterne
Maturin
Wilde
Goldsmith
Flaubert

>>11248018
way off the mark my dude
your meme magic is wick

>>11248006
heads know the superior Irish writers

though fuck Yeats

>>11247787
Moncrieff is art

>>11246678
Replace Joyce with Schopenhauer.

>>11247419
only on /lit/

>>11247263
He's a french-english bilingual going over his tiny head.

>>11247896
Hes not on the same level, he's way better
But it's been ages since I've heard anyone here talk about moliere, whereas you see Shakespeare every day

>>11247238
what an ugly looking post

>>11248130
i think he means works of prose

>>11246699
low quality bait

how can we have a good thread unless OP specifies whether we are talking about prosaists, poets, or free for all

Jackie Chan

>>11247238
Ambrose motherfuckin Bierce!

OBJECTIVE LIST. NEVER DENY.

GOAT
Biblical writers

TWELVE OLYMPIANS
Shakespeare
Dante
Homer
Cervantes
Tolstoy
Joyce
Goethe
Virgil
Dostoevsky
Rumi
Dickinson
Baudelaire

TWELVE TITANS
Proust
Dickens
Austen
Melville
Whitman
Twain
Kafka
Faulkner
Chekhov
Borges
Milton
Montaigne

DEMIGODS
Orwell
Woolf
Wordsworth
Blake
Beckett
Pessoa
Neruda
Moliere
George Eliot
TS Eliot
Yeats
Petrarch
Chaucer
Ibsen
Flaubert
James
Ovid
Sophocles
Mann

>>11247958
I honestly don't know if his plays are still great translated, but you can read any of them, they're all great in French.

>>11248723
This looks about right.

>>11248497
Not many people can read French on this board, plus it is easy to circlejerk on Shakespeare.

>>11248497
>>11247896
>>11246788
no

>that one kid who read a translation of faust and puts goethe in every one of his top author lists

>>11246678
>homer
>a writer

>>11248723
Kick yourself in the balls

>>11248723
Pathetic. You know jack shit about French lit. Where are Racine, Apollinaire, Ronsard, Verlaine, Villon, Vigny, Gautier Corneille, Rimbaud, Hugo, Balzac, Maupassant, Aragon, Stendhal, Céline, Chateaubriand, Valéry? In what world is Baudelaire two tiers above Flaubert and Molière? Montaigne is an essayist for heaven's sake. Go read some books.

>>11248723
Ok. Ok. Wow. Just... ok. You fucking piece of shit, trying to hijack MY copypasta (>>11247238 )?! Your titles have ZERO creativity. This can be explained by the utter dogshit taste you have in literature, seen in your rankings. The biblical writers? Seriously? Dickinson anywhere NEAR Joyce? Dickinson shouldnt even be allowed in the same solar system as Joyce. If Dickinson tried to fuck around in MY copypasta fantasy, a SWARM of hive minded space dragons would hold her down while an angelic demon rapes her with his spiky sandpapered demon dick and inject lava hot cum into her. The angelic demon cum would impregnate her with a demon child that would literally cannibalized Dickinson from the inside out. Get the fuck out of here with this weak copypasta and break your computer.

Any list without Goethe or Proust is a sham list.

>>11249006
All of the writers you mentioned as alternatives aren't very good, sorry.

>>11249030
delete this and turn off your router forever.

Dante and Homer are greater than Shakespeare, as well as Lope de Vega and Petrarch, but whatever. Let Anglos be Anglos and people be people.

>>11249030
Even ironically this is a deeply embarrassing post.

>>11248723
>Orwell
>Twain
>Austen

So is high school going for you, Jimmy boy?

Now seriously: I can't understand the idiocy of someone who pretends to make an 'objective' list in which half of the writers are Anglophones.

You don't go around making such lists if you cannot read *at least* six different languages.

>>11249006
yikes what a garbage list. none of those are as important as Baudelaire or Montaigne.

>>11249135
Shakespeare's scope and depth was far greater than either of those poets.

>>11249159
He knows that the English language is the greatest language of all time. Everyone knows this, it's commonly agreed upon by most professional linguists. If a work cannot be adequately translated to English, then it is not worth reading.

Here:

1 - Homer;
2 - Dante;
3 - Shakespeare;
4 - Plato;
5 - Cervantes.

That is my list based on literary consensus. I put Dante above Shakespeare because the bard's fame is in large part a Romantic fabrication which has little basis in reality, and in which British nationalism and the relative poverty of pre-Goethe German literature had a lot of influence. Shakespeare is too faulty and was not conscious of what he was doing, while Dante was a scholar and a complete craftsman, besides being a genius. Furthermore, Dante was more influential, both for creating the first vulgar book which was as read and admired as any Latin work, and for the fact that he laid the basis for the language of Petrarch, Leopardi, Manzoni and Montale. Dante was also a scientist and political theorist, which demonstrates a superiority of intellect which is one of the key reasons why the bard will never be able to compete with him. Shakespeare at his best is as good as Dante in his Inferno. Unfortunately for the Englishman, the Inferno is most certainly not Dante at his best, and in my opinion quite inferior to the Vita Nuova and even the Convivio, which is the greatest work of expository prose ever written. Now the second half of the Purgatorio is the most splendorous and celestial thing to have ever been conceived and built by man, alongside some specific passages from Homer and Plato.

>>11247114
i like it anon, keep it up

>>11249207
Shakespeare's scope and depth is dwarfed by Lope's 300+ sonnets, 500+ plays, and a bunch of poems, novels and novellas.

Shakespeare only wrote sonnets and plays (and a few verses), not even 50 plays, and we know for a fact 17 of those plays were at least tampered with by other authors, sometimes co authored

>>11249217
I hope everyone reads your crap post and realises that this is what obsessive nationalism and hero-worship can do to you. You have no serious literary opinions, just pointless biases.

>>11249235
scope =/= how many words a writer put on paper

>>11249216
Provençal was a much better language for poetry, as well as Latin and, very curiously, Friuli.

Some say Persian is also very beautiful, and Greek is supposed to be almost perfect. The Chinese have such an alphabet that gives them great advantage in the creation of metaphors and images.

You are a typical monolingual Anglo, or else a poor Latino suffering from severe inferiority complex.

In the end, English has two main qualities: it is very physical and rich in monosyllables. But other languages have other qualities, as cited above. Another example: Latin is even more concise than English (due to syntax, not abundance of monosyllables), and the combination of concision with word length gives it an extremely solemn sound, unequal to anything in English. Milton at his best sounds like average Latin.

>>11248023
Obvious jokey-joke-joke m8y

>>11249217
>laid the basis for the language of Petrarch, Leopardi, Manzoni and Montale
WOW! Dante really must be the best! WOAH! He laid the BASIS for them?! Holy shit

So many European pseuds in this thread. Any mention of Shakespeare triggers them so badly.

>>11249260
Shakespeare is outshone by any French playwright. Maybe if you ate more onions and drank less of the anglo-onions you'd understand.

>>11246673
Plato
Vyasa
Tyndale
Chuangtzu
Homer

>>11249262
Thanks for proving my point, Pierre

>>11249262
this

He's outshone by any French playwright, many Spanish playwrights, and a fair share of Italian and German playwrights

That does't mean he's bad, he's just not great when compared to actual greats

>ctrl-F Pushkin
>0 results

Embarrassing.

>>11249237
Can you even tell what my nation is?

Please tell me.

I hope you study the history of the appreciation of Shakespeare in Europe, and it's going to reveal some very harsh truths to you. Then I hope you read his plays with a serious eye rather than a worshipping one, and pay attention to his many mistakes, to his low-brow, television-like street humour, to his characters who suddenly change opinions and actions just so it can fit the story, to his bizarre lack of knowledge of such basic things as geography (available knowledge, mind you), to his young men who fight against beasts to impress the ladies (imitation of the stuff Cervantes was satirizing at the time and the Lazarillo de Tormes had long surpassed), to his kings who survive the harshness of climates and the pangs of abandonment just to die the most laughably ridiculous death in order to forcibly create the necessary pathos among his intellectually-deficient audience, to his unidimensional tragic lovers who die out of no fault of their own, to his witches that look like they came out of a children's story, and many other things too, which made such men as Voltaire, Tolstoy, Wittgenstein and Shaw heavily criticize him, and his contemporaries, including Milton, to see him as inferior to the playwrights of antiquity.

Shakespeare was a genius, and as you can see I have ranked him highly, but he was not the greatest artist in the history of literature, this is a lie, invented by the Romantics.

>>11249271
Zimbabwe

>>11247238

>>11249268
No need to invent things: there is no Italian or German playwrights who equal Shakespeare. But you are essentially right: Moliere, Racine, Lope de Vega and Calderon are at least his equals.

Literary fame is a curious thing, and Shakespeare's, I suppose, has come to stay, but now and then a lucid mind - Tolstoy's, Wittgenstein's, George Steiner's - will always appear to remind us of the truth.

But you should also remember, when discussing in these threads, that we read Shakespeare in the original, while most of the posters here don't have neither the French nor the Spanish to read Lope and Moliere, so their opinions are automatically invalidated by this single fact.

I suppose Shakespeare's choice of subjects also plays a part in his fame: we all know the Biblical and Roman characters of Racine, but few of us are familiar with old Danish history, so that Shakespeare looks a lot more distant and exotic, which is always a source of attraction, similar in a sense to the one caused by the Arabian Nights.

And notice that I haven't even mentioned the Greek and Roman playwrights! I haven't read them in the original, so I cannot comment upon their works. Same for Ibsen.

>>11249306
Ugh. People with a non-romance language as their first language are such morons.

>>11249243
>Provençal was a much better language for poetry, as well as Latin and, very curiously, Friuli.
Prove it you try hard pseud.

>>11249276
Indeed, I am a Zimbabwe nationalist, which is why I prefer Homer to Shakespeare. You have quite the intelligence inside this head of yours, and it must be confessed that I am very much surprised by your talent.

>>11249271
Dante's clumsy attempt to mix classical and christian mythology, petty inclusion of personal feuds, heavy-handed allegorical imagery, ill-thought out Lethe river scene, dull doctrinal preaching and, ultimately, narrow spiritual interests are why he can never have the modern relevance of Shakespeare or Goethe. Also please don't make dumb appeals to authority: Voltaire is the reason why France began to take an interest in Shakespeare, Tolstoy dismissed Dante even more harshly than he did Shakespeare, and Shaw considered King Lear the greatest tragedy ever written.

Why are Frenchies so insecure about their mediocre playwrights? You can't be good at everything.

>>11249319
How embarrassing

You’re forgetting the fact that Shakes could write both tragedy and comedy and have it be memorable unlike the likes of Moliere and Racine.

>>11246673
1. J.K. Rowling
2. Elizabeth Gilbert
3. Stephen King
4. Jonathan Lethem
5. Danielle Steel

>>11249271
>his low-brow, television-like street humour
That's because that nigga was one of the people, not some up-stuck cunt like the people who later tried to own his genius. Kinda like Jesus.

>kings who survive the harshness of climates and the pangs of abandonment just to die the most laughably ridiculous death
>who die out of no fault of their own
That's just life.

>to his witches that look like they came out of a children's story
That was like the point of them.

>>11249322
Good post.

>>11249317
Including Friuli there was sort of a joke comment, but I was indeed surprised by it's extraordinary musicality.

Anyway, here's some Provençal poetry, which I will assume you can more or less read without a need for translation:

''Tot quan es gela,
mas ieu no puesc frezir
qu'amors novela
mi fa'l cor reverdir;
non dei fremir
qu'Amors mi cuebr'em cela
em fai tenir
ma valor em capdela

Bona es vida
pus Joia la mante
quei tals n'escrida
qui ges non vai tam be;
no sai de re
coreillar m'escarida
que per ma fe
de mielhs ai ma partida.''

No such music in English. Never.

Here is some Latin:

''Verani, omnibus e meis amicis
antistans mihi milibus trecentis,
venistine domum ad tuos Penates
fratresque unanimos anumque matrem?
venisti. o mihi nuntii beati!
visam te incolumem audiamque Hiberum
narrantem loca, facta, nationes,
ut mos est tuus, applicansque collum
iucundum os oculosque saviabor.
o quantumst hominum beatiorum,
quid me laetius est beatiusve?''

>>11249306
>if you spoke another language then you would know that Shakespeare is overrated
Goethe was a great critic who also knew basically every literary language and he still considered Shakespeare to be the greatest playwright

>>11249123
>>11249200
lmao sure

>>11246699
Woolf
>fugg no

tolstoy joyce dante proust flaubert

>including poets

get out of my face

>>11249322
>Voltaire is the reason why France began to take an interest in Shakespeare

Yes, and? He repented, and got very mad at the exaltation of Shakespeare as the greatest genius of the world. He thought he was excellent, but not the greatest. I think the same.

>Tolstoy dismissed Dante even more harshly than he did Shakespeare

He was wrong in both cases, but it's good to have a contrarian voice now and then.

>Shaw considered King Lear the greatest tragedy ever written

I myself consider it one of the greatest, but I agree with Shaw that bardolatry is irrational.

>clumsy attempt to mix classical and christian mythology

Clumsy? How so? There is no contradiction there, and he acts very much in line with the style of scholastic thinking.

>petty inclusion of personal feuds

And personal loves too. There is much that is autobiographical in that work, and the same happens to any author.

>heavy-handed allegorical imagery

Heavy-handed if you are insensitive to beauty. Dante's imagery is one of his strongest aspects. It is not always allegorical (though, when it is, it is for a reason), and oftentimes is extremely physical:

''Io avea già il mio viso nel suo fitto;
ed el s’ergea col petto e con la fronte
com’avesse l’inferno a gran dispitto.''

>dull doctrinal preaching

It depends on what your interests are. If you prefer guys who fight lions to impress ladies, that's OK.

But I do suggest that you read Eliot's musings upon the matter. You might learn a thing or two.

>narrow spiritual interests

Empty criticism.

>>11246836

GOAL

UNO. SHOOKSPEARED
TOO. IL PUEDO IR AL BAÑO POR FAVOR
CHACHA. fuck dis bitch ass nigga
BINGO. BOYTOY HOMO
ZING. FART PEE PEE MAN

>>11249343
Goethe was also an inveterate Romantic who wrote a very flowery book about a rich boy who kills himself over a girl.

As I said, bardolatry is an invention of the Romantics, and the Germans contributed a lot to it.

>>11249363
Poetry is the finest form of literature. Novels are a pitifully degraded form for plebeians, designed to be accessible to brainlets.

If you disagree, your opinions are shit.

>>11246673
Coming at you with the unofficial official list.

GOAT (tied)
>Joyce
>Flaubert

Greats
>Cervantes
>John Kennedy Toole
>Dante
>Papa Hemingway
>Oscar Wilde
>Brautigan
>Tolstoy
>"Dosto"
>Kafka
>Melville
>Lowry
>Nabokov
>Milton
>Steinbeck (the ultimate pleb-filter)
>Faulkner
>Borges
>Emily Bronte

[powergap]
the rest

>>11249375
>Clumsy? How so?
Its unfocused and betrays the scholarly detachment that, for some reason, you consider so attractive in a poet. He appeals to two different worlds and so falls short of doing full justice to either.
> that is autobiographical
There's autobiographical and then there's self-indulgent namedropping. Dante choose the shallow and limiting latter option which means he must always accompanied by more footnotes than any other major poet.
>insensitive to beauty
The symbols at the beginning of the Inferno (the leopard etc.) are painfully unsophisticated to the modern ear and is a worse offence than lots of the silliness that Shakespeare was earlier accused of.
>Empty criticism
This is a discussion about humanity's greatest poets. A poet that concerns himself primarily with medieval spiritual transcendence can never achieve the universal scope and beauty of someone like Shakespeare who concerned himself with everything. He writes about a grieving mother, a bitter usurper, a lovelorn teenage boy, an oppressed savage etc. whereas Dante never really leaves his own strict perspective. This is not an empty criticism.
>depends on what your interests are
Truly great poetry should surely rise above personal interests, no?
>>11249385
>Dismissing Goethe

>>11246673
Honestly, I think the most someone could say is the five greatest English speaking or "Western" writers.

TITS OR GTFO

For prose

Joyce
Pynchon
Milton
Melville
Nabokov

I'm curious how other languages prose writers compare.

>>11249431
>>11249431
>He appeals to two different worlds and so falls short of doing full justice to either.

He does not. I find it amazing that you say so. Dante display both worlds, as well as their unique encounter, in the highest style ever conceived by mean, and with the highest precision of speech. Look how fewer adjectives and useless words he has in comparison with Shakespeare's often bombastic, Petrarchist rhetoric.

>There's autobiographical and then there's self-indulgent namedropping

As Pound said: it's all there, and you don't actually need the footnotes. You can read it without them. But anyway, he chose to write about reality, so he often had to use real figures, which means many of them were people he had met. Few of them are particularly mysterious if you know what you should know (Roman, Biblical, Italian and Church history, as well as scholastic philosophy and the history of science, i.e., common knowledge for people who wish to read poetry).
>The symbols at the beginning of the Inferno (the leopard etc.) are painfully unsophisticated to the modern

See that Borges talk on the metaphor.

>He writes about a grieving mother, a bitter usurper, a lovelorn teenage boy, an oppressed savage etc

That shows you haven't read Dante properly, because he also wrote about an infinite amount of characters, male and female, rich and poor, old and young, sinful and holy, ancient and contemporary, erudite and illiterate... The difference is that he needed much less space than Shakespeare to make them live forever.

Besides, I need to go to Law school right now, so goodbye.

>Truly great poetry should surely rise above personal interests, no?

Not necessarily, but in Dante's case it fortunately does, but you probably read it in translation (didn't read it) anyway, or else you were just blind to the poetry itself.

>Dismissing Goethe

No: calling him a German Romantic (although his classical leaning became a little more accentuated with time).

Remember Goethe's passion for Ossian?

>>11249479
>Pynchon
Read more than memes lmao.

>>11247290
>Dostoevsky>Tolstoy prove me wrong.

Read Tolstoy. He will prove it himself.

>>11248723

Put Tolstoy and Shakespeare on the GOAT and take the biblical writers out (only moment that compares to Shakespeare is the YHWH s speech from the Book of Job).

Put Chekhov on the twelve olympians.

>>11249322
>are why he can never have the modern relevance of Shakespeare or Goethe
What an utterly ignorant statement. Dante was one of the greatest rediscoveries of the XXth century. Joyce was deeply inspired by him and took him as the role model of a writer, Crane was deeply inspired by him and makes several references to him in his poems. Beckett sees him as a master and a deep source of inspiration. Borges was deeply inspired by him and even wrote a series of essays about him and he frequently said that he thought that the Comedy was the best book ever written. He was probably Pound's favourite poet and he was deeply revered by Eliot, by far the two most important poets of modernism. Malcom Lowry loved the Comedy so much that wrote a whole fucking book which allegorically references it. Montale constantly references Dante and his love for him. Mandelstam thought the Comedy was THE book and took it as a model of inspiration against the stalinist regime. Heaney, Merwin, and Pinsky all thought the Comedy was a supreme masterpiece. Walcott wrote a whole book influenced by Dante. Auerbach wrote a whole book analyzing the supposedly "heavy handed" allegorical imagery. Not to mention he spawned Bocciaccio and Petrarch which in turn are responsible for the renaissance and thus indirectly for half of western culture. And last but not least, the famous videogame Dante's inferno is a clearly inspired by him. Your criticism is insipid and juvenile, go away from this board and come back when you've grown a functioning frontal cortex.

>>11249431

I like you. I feel teh same about Dante: there is a great lack of humanity in his poem.

I dont like Goethe very much, though.

>>11249553
Do you know Italian?

>>11249489
>he also wrote about an infinite amount of characters
But they live and breathe only on Dante’s terms. They must always be related back to the divine purpose of the poem and so they never gain the true autonomy that Shakespeare’s creations do, and so they absolutely are not granted that same immortality.

>Look how fewer adjectives and useless words he has
Empty criticism. What’s actually achieved is more important.

>in the highest style ever conceived by men
Oh dear. You seem very keen on using bombastic language yourself.

>you don't actually need the footnotes
Some things really don’t hold much significance without context, though. Also I think the fact that so many readers feel the need for footnotes is a black mark on any claim for Dante’s universality.

>But anyway, he chose to write about reality, so he often had to use real figures
That’s quite the leap you’ve made there. But perhaps it would have benefitted a man who was deeply interested in reality to maybe avoid the inclusion of pagan mythological imagery.

>Few of them are particularly mysterious
Maybe you have a greater tolerance for obscure medieval Florentine politicians than I do.

>Besides, I need to go to Law school
Thanks for this relevant tidbit. Are you sure you weren’t just eager to tell me that you’re a law student?

>but you probably read it in translation (didn't read it) anyway, or else you were just blind to the poetry itself.
I gave the same harsh treatment to Dante that you gave to Shakespeare, it doesn’t mean I don’t still consider him a genius. But Dante chose to make religiosity his main and overarching concern and so I don’t think we can now in the modern world consider him as great as Shakespeare. And I’ve read him in Spanish-Italian parallel translation if that matters.

>Remember Goethe's passion for Ossian?
Yes and I also remember his passion for Dante. His tastes were broad and informed, whether they’ve aged well or not.

>>11249545
And your post proves what, exactly? That Dante is relevant? Of course Dante has always been relevant but Shakespeare and Goethe remain the two voices that speak now to the secular world - an influence that’s relevant to, but also beyond, just poetry. Also I didn’t say that all of Dante’s imagery was heavy-handed, I simply pointed out some of the missteps that I think Dante made and gave him the same harsh treatment that the other poster gave to Shakespeare.
>juvenile
And your post wasn’t? Get some self-awareness.

>>11249626
>And your post proves what, exactly?
That Dante IS one of the main influences behind XXth century literature, much more so than Goethe.
>And your post wasn’t?
no

>>11249638
To add: even the turban tipper Guenon wrote and was influenced by Dante.

>>11249582

Yes, I can read in italian. Slowly, but I can.

I used a bilingual edition and read three translations with it, two rhymed and one unrhymed (but with the literal meaning of each verse).

I really wanted to like Dante, but I cant. For me Shakespeare is vastly superior.

But that's just my opinion, not a exact science.

>>11249545
>Your criticism is insipid and juvenile, go away from this board and come back when you've grown a functioning frontal cortex.

I understand that Dante is respected and he deserves the honors he get. However, that anon is at least is making his own mind about things; you are merely making appeals to authority.

If appeals to authority are to be made, we can say that Tolstoy thought that Dante was boring. Since Tolstoy is greater than any of the names you mentioned, then we should take his criticism higher, don’t you think? (if we were only judging by appeals to great names).

Then there is the case that many of the names you mentioned were people that were deeply shy and introverted, hardly found of socializing and experiencing other human beings, and the art they produced somehow reflect this inexperience in human affairs: Borges, Beckett, Eliot, Pound, Crane are all on this team. Most of them are, too me, also deeply overrated. They seem more found of a highly complex structure and moral/philosophical theories sculpted in verse than in human characters and deeply realistic expositions of life.

>>11249582
I’m not him but what does the humanity of a poem have to do with reading a poem in the original?

>>11249638
If Goethe was the comment you were so offended by then why didn’t you just say that? Shakespeare was the crux of my post anyway.

>>11249333
>no John Green
>no Coleen Hoover
>no Mark Z Danielewski

>>11249641
>you are merely making appeals to authority
No you gaylord, I'm not saying "these writers thought Dante was good, therefore he was good" I was simply attacking the other anon's argument of Dante not being relevant to the modern age when he is in the top 3 influences in XXth literature. I was discussing his importance, which can be objectively studied.

>>11249669
I meant to post this not this Kant fuckface

>>11249659
Your post genuinely enraged me t b h
I'm going to eat

I can't speak for other great poets (I'm a monolingual brainlet), But I do love Shakespeare, and Elizabethan writing in general. The English language was never richer, more musical, and more flexible than it was back then, except for maybe during Chaucer's time. English is a wonderful amalgam of the Latinate and the Germanic, which is what makes it so unique. It sounds rather clunky in everyday speech but when skilfully set to a metre, it takes on a full and rich musicality. I wish euros would stop saying its ugly. It's not German.

Dante interests me because his worldview is so alien to my own. It's a distant goal of mine to eventually read him in the Italian. I really don't like reading poetry in translation. I was reading about how much gets lost even in translating the middle English of Sir Gawain (West Midlands middle English) into modern English, the Pearl Poet's dialect being inextricably tied to the metre, and the metre to the medieval atmosphere of the work.

>>11249669
His point was actually that Dante wasn't AS RELEVANT as Shakespeare in the modern world. Learn to read.

>>11249674

Too late. I’m already deeply offended by that Kant painting.

>>11249217

Shakespeare has:

>A greater capacity to create original metaphors than Dante (to be fair, Dante’s material was so strange itself – the other world – that he could not risk himself by constantly using metaphors to describe it, and that’s why he mostly use realistic language and similes over metaphors). I stand with Aristotle when he states that “The greatest thing by far [in poetics] is to be a master of metaphor; it is the one thing that cannot be learnt from others; and it is also a sign of genius, since a good metaphor implies an intuitive perception of the similarity in the dissimilar”;

>Many more characters than Dante, all of them more detailed (most of Dante’s characters are symbols, or caricatures, or small portraits that only shine for a small second; his small paintings of his contemporaries are, paradoxically, more interesting that Virgil or Beatrice, that are more symbolic and explanation-chorus-like vehicles for the plot to function);

>A greater variety of situations and themes;

>Capacity for the comic (all that Dante creates in this department is some crude humor with some devils in the Inferno);

>Realistic women (try to look for that in Dante);

>No personal credo influencing his dramas, no personal message altering the way his men and women should or shouldn’t act, and no moral evaluation rewarding or condemning them;

I don’t see how one can put Dante above Shakespeare.

>>11247974
The anglosphere do that.
Italian here, Schiller is our favorite german writer

>>11249349
>he doesn't realize that Baudelaire is the most important poet of the nineteenth century.
>he doesn't realize that Montaigne helped create the literary essay and was its greatest practitioner - thus turning nonfiction into an art form
>he actually thinks that Racine and Moliere are anything beyond limited parochial writers who do little and say even less and are only remembered by frog nationalists and professional contrarians.
>he's a fucking retard

>>11249342
Is that the best you could find?

>>11249709
Which I proved wrong.

>>11247135
Why no Dostoevsky ?

>>11249545

Are you religious? A christian?

>>11247776
w-whoa

>>11249545
Joyce preferred Shakespeare

>>11246673
Not proust.

>>11249819
I would assume he's not religious but rather, amphetaminated.

>>11249235
quality>quantity

>>11249819
No I don't like organized religion my spirituality is close to that of an Hart Crane or a Walt Whitman but strictly speaking I'm a spinozist fedoratipper

>>11249838
>but strictly speaking I'm a spinozist fedoratipper

Better this than to be a modern day alt-right Christian conservative.

>>11249847
I don't really care about modern debates about religion to be completely desu. They're mostly sordid chatter.
>>11249832
>amphetaminated
Caffeine'd to be more precise

>>11246788
lol kys
shakespeare best poet
joyce best novelist

>>11249864

Tolstoy is better than Joyce, desu

>>11249864
>shakespeare best poet
lmfao the things I have to read on lit

>>11249864
Joyce is the #2 GOAT but he is not a really good novelist

>>11249876
and gogol is better than tolstoy

>>11249852
Caffeine is the best drug in the world.

>>11249325
this
sad! @ the anti-shakesgod pseudery itt

>>11246673
Dylan
Dylan
Dylan
Dylan
Dylan

>>11248130
no

>>11249270
>ctrl-F Pushkin
>see this
At least something

>>11247961
read them and find out faggot

>>11246673
1) Flann O’brien
2) Dante
3) Sappho
4) Kierkegaard
5) Borges

>>11250286
Utterly based

>>11249545
>Your criticism is insipid and juvenile, go away from this board and come back when you've grown a functioning frontal cortex.
you never gave me your favorite songs in the joyce thread mr. autist anon :(

>>11249781
He’s intelligent and wrote about interesting things but he’s not a good stylists. All the ones I listed are both genius in their own way and impeccable writers.

>>11246673
>there are people on /lit/ who think Homer was a writer

>>11246673
I put Proust at number one.

>>11251241
have you read him in French

>>11251249
Yes, I'm Belgian.

1. Rimbaud
2. Joyce
3. Hölderlin
4. Proust
5. Dostoevsky

P.S: Shakespeare sucks.

>>11251249
>>11249582
Why do people ask this question all the time?

>>11250007
Can you explain what you mean, anon?

I know a bunch of you wont agree but I think Steinbeck's prose is amazing and comfy. One of the best for me.

Proust
Flaubert
Tolstoy
Lin

>>11251420
why don't you like billy the bard

Borges
Joyce
Chekhov
Eliot
Neruda

>>11251257
Hello, fellow French speaking Belgian.

>>11246788
Patrician taste

>>11246673
Melville
Dostoevsky
Proust
Cervantes
Homer

>>11249006
>I just had a French literature 101 and can name all the writers out of my book without having read any of their work

Amazing how quick ESLs are to trip over each other trying to dunk on the Bard. Have yet to see a single cogent refutation of Shakespeare being near or at the summit itt.

>>11252827
Fine strawman you've got there, monoboy.

No one said Shakespeare is not a great playwright, we all know he's near the summit. But so are Moliere and Racine, as well as Lope de Vega, Sophocles, Euripides, Aeschylus and Aristophanes. The problem is that some people seem to think he's the greatest of all, and that this is undisputed, which is wrong: it is very, very disputable, and a strong case can and will be given for Homer, Virgil, Dante or even Cervantes.

Dante
Homer
Edgar Allan Poe
JRR Tolkien
James Joyce

>Homer
>Dante
>Dosto
>Jacke Cha-
SHIT

>>11252876
>No one said Shakespeare is not a great playwright

Nice strawman:
>>11246788
>>11249268
>>11249262
>>11249235
>>11252753
>>11249135

>>11248970
This
Educate yourself, nibba.

>>11246715
>Donne, Sterne, Shelley
pick none

>>11249588
>Are you sure you weren’t just eager to tell me that you’re a law student?
kek. im glad someone else picked up on this pseud

me

1. Sophocles
2. Basho
3. Goethe
4. Flaubert
5. Morrison

1. Shakespeare
2. Dante
3. Ovid
4. Voltaire
5. Nietzsche

Fight me

>>11253060
None of that means he's not great. You clearly cannot read.

Let us take just one example:

>Shakespeare is outshone by any French playwright.

Well, how does that signify Shakespeare is not great? I personally think that Henrik Ibsen, whose works I very much enjoy, is quite easily outshone by Moliere and Racine. However, that doesn't mean I don't think he's great. In fact, I believe he was perhaps the best playwright of his age.

Or another example:

>Shakespeare wouldnt even make it to the top 20

That still leaves it implicit that Shakespeare is a genius, so much so that he would be among the 50 greatest writers of all-time, otherwise the guy would simply have said he wouldn't even make it to the top 50, instead of using the top 20.

And he also said:

>If he had been born in Austria or Bulgaria no one would talk about him nowadays any more than Moliere or Lope de Vega

Which likely means he thinks Shakespeare is as great as Moliere and Lope, playwrights who are usually ranked among the most important of all.

I must admit you had a nice try, monoboy, but you can't fool me nor anyone else, except for other monoboys like you.

>>11253214
Most autistic post I've seen in a long time. Yikes.

>>11247007
>Cervantes
How embarrassing. I'm sure you've read Don Quixote, but what about the rest of his ouvre? Hell-- Flaubert is more consistent.

>>11253214
Literally retarded post.

>>11249588
>But they live and breathe only on Dante’s terms. They must always be related back to the divine purpose of the poem and so they never gain the true autonomy that Shakespeare’s creations do, and so they absolutely are not granted that same immortality.

What Dante? Do you even know there are two Dantes - the poet/theologian and the character? And are you sure Dante the character is always related back to Dante the poet/theologian's purpose, are you sure that he does not fight against it, are you sure that he is not revolted?

And even if it is true that all of Dante's characters relate back to their divine purposes, do not all of Shakespeare's characters relate back to their human purpose, i.e., death's eternal rest? Is that not the case even with his ghosts?

And more: what is wrong giving something a non-natural purpose? Why is purpose-in-God worse than purpose-in-death? Why does it make for poorer aesthetic creations? Are you entirely sure that it does? Gee, all of Bach's works were dedicated to God! I guess he must be worse than Mozart then.

What you are doing is, essentially, to say that Shakespeare's characters are richer because they are not stuck in the theological framework, but you forget that they are stuck in nature's framework (don't forget that in literature even magic has rules), which leads to nowhere except death, and is therefore nihilistic. This, by the way, is the exact reason why Steiner believes Shakespeare ultimately fails: he is ammoralistic, and, therefore, gives no answer to the questions, and does not try to give one, he is a skeptic, and this might very well be fine if we are discussing things intellectual, but it is not fine if you step outside of your house at least once and behold the world. Then, Shakespeare becomes a lie, and Dante - like Homer, Confucius, Plato, Cicero, Augustine, Tolstoy, Eliot, and even Wilde - suddenly becomes more viable.

Finally, are you also aware that the same stuff you wrote about Dante's characters can be said about Abraham and Isaac? Are you aware that you have just said that Noah and Job just don't have the 'same immortality' as the unforgettable... Mercutio?

>Empty criticism. What’s actually achieved is more important.

Style is the means by which meaning is presented. If the style is ridden with rhetoric, meaning becomes obscured. Dante - and also Villon, Chaucer - had a less rhetorical style than Shakespeare, who was a legitimate child of Petrarchism, the non-Dantesque Italian movement which lead to an overflow of rhetoric in Renaissance poetry.

>>11249588
>Some things really don’t hold much significance without context, though. Also I think the fact that so many readers feel the need for footnotes is a black mark on any claim for Dante’s universality.

Universality in art can mean two things: i) everyone can read it; ii) it has something to tell to everyone who bothers to understand it. The second type has nothing to do with the first.

Joyce and Pound are more obscure than Dante. So would be Homer, if we hadn't inherited his tradition. Dante's language is very clear, and the only obscurities are in the prophecies. Other than that, his characters speak for themselves. There are historical figures, but you can get to know them in a book, just like I always go to the encyclopedia before reading a Shakesperian historical play.

But anyway, being easy to read has nothing to do with universality in any aesthetically relevant way.

>That’s quite the leap you’ve made there. But perhaps it would have benefitted a man who was deeply interested in reality to maybe avoid the inclusion of pagan mythological imagery.

No, for that adds great beauty to the book, besides creating a literary dialogue with the traditions of the past, including such names as Homer (whom Dante didn't read) and Ovid.

Anyway, Dante's book has also a political aspect to it, and so he had to insert historical figures, in order to talk to them and express his views of them, because, unlike Shakespeare, he was a man of the world, even becoming the most important elected politician in the most important city of the West for a couple of months, and he had views about the world, so he didn't hide himself behind a profusion of masks and the easy-way-out of skepticism.

>Maybe you have a greater tolerance for obscure medieval Florentine politicians than I do.

Obscure if you have little knowledge of history. Florence in Dante's day was as rich, if not richer, than Shakespeare's England, and yet Shakespeare's historical plays have dozens of figures from even before that time, when England was even poorer, and who are even less relevant, except they weren't for you particularly, because you had a more Anglicized than Italianized education.

>Thanks for this relevant tidbit. Are you sure you weren’t just eager to tell me that you’re a law student?

The building itself is called 'Law school' and whenever I go there I say 'I am going to Law school'.

>But Dante chose to make religiosity his main and overarching concern

Overarching? Maybe. Main concern? Are you sure?

>and so I don’t think we can now in the modern world consider him as great as Shakespeare

So we cannot consider the Bible as great as Shakespeare? Even though it speaks to many more people in a much deeper level while having the very highest degree of literary quality - and in different languages - as well as having being the source of a great quantity of Western art, from Augustine to Chagall and from Da Vinci to Philip Roth?

>>11253218
>>11253283
Refuting you is autism and mental retartation? Then you must be twice an autist and twice a retard.

>>11253221
lol it's all good you raging faggot, unlike, yknow, typee or elmo or any of his other shit books that contributed to his obscurity while alive, or kafka's waste-of-space microfiction

>>11253346
>I guess he must be worse than Mozart then
He was. Stopped reading right there. You fail to understand the scope of anon's claims.

>>11253346
>What Dante?
Freshman English Class in here or what? You're not gonna wiggle your way out with this one.

>>11253346
>Do you even know there are two Dantes
They are both united in the end, their duality is reconciled.
>relate back to their human purpose, i.e., death's eternal rest
Only insofar as real human beings are bound by this also.
>all of Bach's works were dedicated to God
Religious dedication in music is a vastly different thing to a theological basis for an epic poem.
>which leads to nowhere except death, and is therefore nihilistic
Please don't abuse terms like this. Aristotle wasn't very convinced of an afterlife either, was Aristotle a nihilist? Shakespeare chose to deal with characters on their own immediate and earthly terms which is what is so penetrative about his characters' anguishes - it can't be dismissed as nihilistic. Compare Hamlet's secular and mysterious suffering with Dante's time in the 'dark wood' - which is more compelling to the modern reader? Shakespeare, whom you rightly identify as a skeptic, chose always to remain with the present and humanistic material that he had at hand and I consider this a great strength.
>gives no answer to the questions
This is the mark of great art though and I actually think you're cheapening Dante's own work with this point. Shakespeare in his moral ambiguity and refusal to defer to final answers charges the world and its events with a new depth and richness. We don't go to Shakespeare for didacticism, instead we go to be reacquainted with ourselves and see the confusion that comes with that raised into poetry.
>becomes more viable
Sorry but are we talking about poetry or car engines? You and I seem to have a very different view on what poetry is for. For me the word "viable" is not one to be used here.
>can be said about Abraham and Isaac
These are not literary figures though. Most of their immortality came from the fact that many consider them real and historical figures that literally communicated with God. Its impossible to say how much the quality of their literary presentation is responsible to their immortality.
>as the unforgettable... Mercutio
This is called cherrypicking.
>being easy to read has nothing to do with universality
Difficulty and obscurity are very different things. I doubt many people consider Shakespeare a particularly easy read, either.
>unlike Shakespeare, he was a man of the world
I would argue the absolute opposite. Dante was a chaste, cloistered away exiled scholar and it really shows in his attempt at these answers that you love so much. How much authority do his answers for a small medieval city-state hold now for us in the 21st Century?
>easy-way-out skepticism
Here we’ve hit that fundamental difference of opinion again. Art is not primarily for answers. Dante devoted entire treatises to his political views, his poetry isn’t doing anything new with those ideas. What good does Terza Rima do them?

>>11253516
>who are even less relevant
Shakespeare’s use of myths and history are just a jumping-off point though. Knowledge of the actual historical context usually detracts from Shakespeare, whereas with Dante the context is the only thing that lends weight to some of his conversations with the damned and saved.
>Main concern? Are you sure?
I’d be interested to know your own take on this.
>speaks to many more people in a much deeper level
The majority of those people, I’d assume, believe it to be the word of God and for that reason primarily it has had far greater reach than any work of mere ‘literature’ could achieve. I think you’re using a lot of false equivalences.

>>11253366
>So we cannot consider the Bible as great as Shakespeare? Even though it speaks to many more people in a much deeper level while having the very highest degree of literary quality - and in different languages - as well as having being the source of a great quantity of Western art, from Augustine to Chagall and from Da Vinci to Philip Roth?

I for one consider Shakespeare vastly superior to the Bible. If I had to choose to save either The Bible or Shakespeare's complete works from oblivion I would save Shakespeare any day.

For me there is only one moment in the Bible where we get the same level of poetic exuberance that Shakespeare presents us all the time, and that moment is in God's thundering speech out of the storm at the end of The Book of Job. No wonder Job is thought by many to be the summit of the Bible's writing: for once the bone-dry tone of most of the Bible is beeing infused with metaphors and colorful imagery.

Most of the Bible is written in an a dry and undetailed way, in a arid language, similar to that of legal documents. The exceptions are the wisdom books and some of the prophets, but then even those books cant compete with Shakespeares beautiful language.

There is also the case that the real propeller for the appreciation and diffusion of the Bible is the fact that people belong to that religion; people believe that it is the word of God and that there is a new life and an eternal paradise to be won by anyone who venerate and follow these commandments. There is no rigorous and unbiased evaluation of the aesthetic and artistic merits of the Bible; is the same thing that muslims do with the Koran. The people influenced by such books are thinking more with their stomachs and intestines than with their logical mind: it is an appeal to the fear of dying, to the desire of not losing those you love, to the insecurity caused by the possibility of all things being transient and meaningless.

Also, imagine what your book - in case the Bible - can do if you have all the machinery of the State of Rome to employ it as a flag and spread it across the world with the help of gold, fire and sword. You can practically promote any book in this way.

Had Homer - just choosing an old source here, contemporary to the begginings of the Old Testment - been considered sacred scripture and he would be much more highly estimated than the Bible, for his writing is better than anything we find in the Bible (with the exception of a few excerpts from Job).

I'm not as balls deep into /lit/ to give a five greatest of all time, but the five greatest I've read are:

Faulkner
Lucretius
Pynchon (sorry)
Burroughs
Ovid

>>11247029
>>11247007
>>11246678
>>11246788

If You're interested in the ACTUAL scholarly consensus about the Homeric Cycle, the main conclusion is that a Homer was a profession like a bard, taught to recite stories in a particular style. Many scholars speculate that the frequent repeated passages in the Illiad were filler of sorts to give the person reciting time to think of What would happen next. Also, one of the other big clues to the dating as to when certain characters were added comes from contextual clues that mark time period. For example, scholars are fairly certain that Odysseus was one of the first characters added due to his more archaic armour, and that Achilles was one of the most recent additions, due to his more modern armour

>>11253798
>I'm not as balls deep into /lit/ to give a five greatest of all time, but the five greatest I've read are:

I say the same, but, from those I read:

>Shakespeare
>Tolstoy
> Chekhov
>Gabriel García Márquez
>Melville

Tolstoy
Mann
Broch
Balzac
Musil

>>11253849
You added nothing to the conversation. This is common knowledge. The argument is whether it was written down at some point or not. The designation "Homer" is too contentious to be settled, and at best you offered that initial middling statement which is one of many theories about the Homeric question.

>>11253214
lol seething

>>11253371
None of that is refuting , it's an attempt to walk back and justify other anons' posts because you got called out on your strawman.

>>11253516
Good post.

Tolstoy
Dosto
Chekhov
Flaubert
Euripedes

>>11254362

I have never read Balzac. Was thinking on starting with Lê Peré Goriot.

What are the things you like in Balzac? I remember that Tolstoy said that there was no doubt Balzac was a genius, and to me such a compliment from one of the greatest writers of all time says a lot.

>>11253346
One of the worst /lit/ posts ever, congratulations.

Honestly Guimarães Rosa

>>11255387

Não força. Shakespeare e Tolstói são melhores do que ele.

>>11255324

I wouldn’t say that. I was one of the anons who was disagreeing with him, it he at least put effort into that post, and he is clearly a well read anon.

>>11255398
It's one of the worst precisely because he's well-read enough to write something so treacherously stupid.

>>11255324
He at least had enough self-respect to stop replying to everyone and leave the thread lol

>>11255434
FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK

Not your "classical" poets by any means, but a lot of the first world war poets might possibly change your perception of beauty.

Especially Wilfred Owens and Isaac Rosenberg.

Easy!

Spenser
Donne
Milton &
Hopkins
(Excluding Shakespeare.)

>>11255391
vai à merda

>>11257054

;)

>>11246673
I think if we accept the truth that Shakespeare was a collective, we can include them in the top five.

>>11258057
citation needed

>>11255251

I feel that Balzac was the first novelist to embrace the Historical Man.

>>11253516
not him but I recommend you read Bloom's chapter on Dante in the western canon, you seem to be too much of a literalist and it's really illuminating for dispelling that kind of reading

>>11253498
There are two Dantes, one is quite humane and often repulsed, to the point of physical dismay, by what he sees in God's plans, the other is a rigorous theologian who comprehends that laws are laws. If you have not paid attention to this, then you either did not read Dante, or else you read it in translation, and a bad one at that. To give you an example that most readers know by heart:

``Mentre che l'uno spirto questo disse,
l'altro piangëa; sì che di pietade
io venni men così com'io morisse.

E caddi come corpo morto cade.``

Repulsion, as I said.

>>11253218
>>11253283
>>11254586
>>11254586
>>11254598
I claimed no one said Shakespeare was not great. Then came a guy and quoted all of those posts. However, none of those posts said Shakespeare was not great, but merely pointed out that he was not the greatest. In fact, when they talked about Shakespeare, as I showed, they usually grouped him among authors whom many people consider very great, like Moliere.

You merely called me an idiot and didn't point out what was wrong with my posts.

Maybe your reasoning is about the tone. Maybe you think the tone of those posts was too dismissive of Shakespeare. However, tone means nothing. My own tone in this discussion has been somewhat dismissive of Shakespeare, and yet I love him, I memorize him, I download Globe Theater productions of his plays because they are not staged in my city and I watch them, I buy complete sets, and rare 18th century copies, I translate his sonnets into Portuguese and more. Shakespeare is certainly among my favorite authors, but he was not a better poet than Dante, despite his larger output

Therefore, the tone of those posts does not mean the posters believe Shakespeare is not great. Maybe they even do, but those posts are not sufficient to prove it.

>>11250286
I don't care if this is bait. I support the bold number one pick. Flann O'Brien is the tits.

>>11253516

>They are both united in the end, their duality is reconciled.

But it stays there. The fall in book five stays there.

>Only insofar as real human beings are bound by this also.

No. Hamlet's actions are started by a phantom's appearance; The Tempest's plot depends on a magician's plans; Macbeth has the witches and so on. Shakespeare was either very superstitious, which was completely common back then, or else he decided to please his superstitious audience. He used the supernatural as a plot device - in fact, he used many things as mere plot devices, often weirdly so -, and this use of it I believe is inferior to that of Dante, who saw in the supernatural something absolutely real in a very deep spiritual sense, based on scholastic philosophy and theological studies, and therefore was able to make it much more real to the reader.

>Religious dedication in music is a vastly different thing to a theological basis for an epic poem.

Fine. So what about the St. Matthew Passion? Will you deny it has a theological basis? Will you accept the opinion that it can only be fully enjoyed by Christians? Will you deny that a suspension of disbelief is possible? It does not seem impossible to me, as I am an atheist and that remains my favorite piece of music, and has been so for about a decade now.

Maybe you will say that the Passion as I hear it is just the notes, that it excludes the religious ideas in the text. But I reply to you that Dante can also be heard as mere word-music, master artisanship, even in his most obscure passages. He can be, certainly, and I do often hear him like that, abstracting away the meaning and taking lessons from the form itself, an aspect in which only Petrarch, Verlaine and Ruben Dario seem to me to have equaled him, among the poets I've read. Remember T.S. Eliot's first encounter with Dante? Well then.

But of course, after you've heard him as word-music and enjoyed it, you can always find out the meaning, which you not always can with Shakespeare, because he uses too many unnecessary words, as playfully shown by Basil Bunting's 'corrections' of the sonnets.

>>11258749
>Please don't abuse terms like this. Aristotle wasn't very convinced of an afterlife either, was Aristotle a nihilist? Shakespeare chose to deal with characters on their own immediate and earthly terms which is what is so penetrative about his characters' anguishes - it can't be dismissed as nihilistic.

Ariatotle had a philosophy. What was Shakespeare's philosophy? He didn't have one, and this is one my problems with him, one that I don't expect you to agree with but that I expect you to understand, in order to see why our views about literature are most likely impossible to reconcile. I quote Steiner:

''Where is there a Shakespearian philosophy or intelligible ethic? Both Cordelia and Iago, Richard III and Hermione are instinct with the same uncanny trick of life. The shaping imagination which animates their 'spectacular' presence is beyond good and evil. It has the dispassionate neutrality of sunlight or of wind. Can a man or woman conduct their lives by the example or precepts of Shakespeare as they can, say, of Tolstoy? Is the 'creation of words', even at a pitch of beauty, musicality, suggestive and metaphoric originality scarcely accessible to our analysis, really enough? Are Shakespeare's characters, at the last, more than Magellanic clouds of verbal energy turning around a void, around an absence of moral substance? ''

Unfortunately I do not have the essay at hand, nor could I find a full version online, so I cannot quote more from it.

Shakespeare dealt with his characters, and dealt with them in such a varied manner that he never dealt with himself, and never exposed what he himself thought about the world, and if you look for a philosophy behind the sonnets and other non-theatrical work it is all so unoriginal and often inane that Petrarch is undoubtedly deeper. Shakespeare is not an intellectual master, but merely an expository one: he shows you the ideas without giving you any, he offers no complete outlook on life. He is not a person, but a collection of masks.

> Compare Hamlet's secular and mysterious suffering with Dante's time in the 'dark wood' - which is more compelling to the modern reader? Shakespeare, whom you rightly identify as a skeptic, chose always to remain with the present and humanistic material that he had at hand and I consider this a great strength.

The fact you use the word 'secular' to contrast Hamlet's situation with Dante's time in the selva oscura is an indication that you do not know what the scene signifies, for it is a secular one. His salvation by Virgil - philosophy - is secular salvation. It's only his salvation by Beatrice - theology - that is a religious one. This is all very standard interpretation, accepted by Dante's own son and hinted at by the very poet himself.

Now I don't know which one of the sufferings is more compelling to the reader. I suppose Harry Potter's sufferings?

>>11258759

>This is the mark of great art though and I actually think you're cheapening Dante's own work with this point. Shakespeare in his moral ambiguity and refusal to defer to final answers charges the world and its events with a new depth and richness. We don't go to Shakespeare for didacticism, instead we go to be reacquainted with ourselves and see the confusion that comes with that raised into poetry. Sorry but are we talking about poetry or car engines? You and I seem to have a very different view on what poetry is for. For me the word "viable" is not one to be used here.

Fundamental disagreement about the art of poetry and its relation to philosophy and thought. No discussions will change that. Useless to talk further.

>These are not literary figures though. Most of their immortality came from the fact that many consider them real and historical figures that literally communicated with God.

Again, we come to the St. Matthew Passion problem. I do, however, belief in suspension of disbelief as the method with which to work. We have to do it all the time. We also do it when seeing witches in Shakespeare, and seeing a ghost in Hamlet. You read as if those things were true, even though you know they are not. The same must be done with Dante, and with any other author who writes fiction, and I would say, expanding on an old comment by Bertrand Russell, that it should even be done with philosophers, as it helps us give a more charitable interpretation to the ideas being discussed.

Nevertheless, you seem to prefer Shakespeare over Dante for a simple reason: Shakespeare is modern, Dante was not. I believe this is a fault in your own ability to read Dante, however, rather than in Dante himself. Furthermore, there is so much in Dante that belongs to what is eternally human that I honestly believe he is often more modern than Shakespeare, though I will not expand on this.

>This is called cherrypicking.

Macbeth then. Still not as deeply admired and felt as Jesus Christ or Moses, even if we only count it among the unbelievers.

Hitler
Churchill
Barack Obama
Ta-Nehishi Coates
God

>>11258775
>Difficulty and obscurity are very different things

Dante is only rarely obscure, in the prophecies. He is not obscure at all otherwise. As Pound said, I believe it was in Guide to Kulchur, you might think it is difficult, but in reality it is all there, everything. Provided you read it carefully, and have some of the knowledge that should be expected from you (and even this is not essential), he tells you everything. If the world he lived in went on to become little-known by his successors in time, that is not at all Dante's problem, and does not influence his greatness.

I remember an anecdote I once read in a book (by X.J. Kennedy?) about a poet who went somewhere in the Pacific Islands to teach T.S. Eliot, and was caught by surprise when people failed to see what was so interesting about The Waste Land. They were smart, they were curious, so why didn't they get it? Turns out that, here near the Equator, there are no seasons as Europeans know them, so The Waste Land didn't make much sense, and the author had to give a short weather lesson before the students could understand the poem. Does that make T.S. Eliot a lesser poet? I don't think so. No artist should be limit himself to self-explanatory work.

But then again, maybe we disagree about that. Maybe we disagree about what 'greatness' is. I believe it's in the text and in the ability of the author to convey what he wants, as well as in the richness of that which he wants to convey, but maybe you believe it's also in the context, and that Dante being considered obscure by a bunch of 21st century readers whose existences and cultural ranges he couldn't predict somehow influences his greatness as a poet. Well then. No discussions will change this.

>>11258789
I agree with everything you said but TS Eliot actually requires a fuckton of pre reading before you can fully get the Waste Land

>>11258803
*before you can even start to get the waste land
actually

>>11258803
Only if ur a bitch

>>11258789
>Dante was a chaste, cloistered away exiled scholar

Then you could probably read a biography of his. Dante was very much a man of the world, participating in the high-society circles of Firenze (where he met Guido and others), becoming a famous politician, including once acquiring the most prestigious elective job in Firenze, which back then probably richer than the England of Elizabeth I. He was an important figure. He and Papa Boniface actually knew each other. Then he was exiled for participating in a political movement, then traveled widely throughout Italy (the America of the day, being richer than most other Western countries, if not all), met many a famous lord and became good friends with them, and died after getting malaria during yet another travel. He was soldier too, and even spent some time in Paris. The reason why there are so many political figures, so many political commentaries in Dante's works is that it was all entirely concrete for him, all part of his life, all things he knew and felt, and about which he had to write, just like James Joyce wrote about Dublin and Juan Rulfo about the Mexican heat and violence, because those were the things they truly knew.

He was not chaste at all. He had a wife, kids, and it is rumored that he also had many lovers, in many places, including after his marriage. Some people also say he wrote a poem that could be considered somewhat pornographical back in the day, and he was certainly and appreciator of the Roman de La Rose. There is much that is erotic in the Vita Nuova and the Rime.

Now... Well, to be quite frank, I will stop here. My comments are already so large that it is very annoying to post them in full, and you do not know anything about the life of Dante and seem to have gotten most of your knowledge either out of popular impressions people have of him or out of very light reading. There is also now a profusion of trolls who insist upon quoting me and spreading insults, but who add very little substance to the argument. Furthermore, we have fundamental disagreements about the relationship between thought and literature, but that would be another discussion. For these reasons, I will stop here, even though I have left some of your later points unanswered.

>>11258659
Curious. I was just thinking about At Swim-Two-Birds. I consider translating it into my language, but I am probably too lazy to translate longer works. I am a lyric poetry man myself. Flann O`Brian is not known here, even though Jorge Luis Borges, if I remember correctly, loved his book.

>>11246673
I thoroughly enjoyed this thread.

>>11259081
why? lol

>>11246678
fpbp, assuming that Shakespeare would be on the list if he were allowed to be on it

Homer
Baudelaire
Borges
Kafka
Woolf

>>11258759
Very good post. Shakespeare's lack of a hard philosophy is one of the reasons Shaw and Tolstoy couldn't stand him. Its also why he's so popular. His emptiness can be filled by all kinds of ideologies. The most you could say about Shakespeare that he was as close to a nihilistic writer as one could get - certainly closer than any other major writer.

>>11258749
>a magician's plans; Macbeth has the witches
Shakespeare is using these as dramatic devices though, and his skepticism makes it doubtful that he had a literal belief in the existence of such things. The point I was making about Dante is that when we see angels and devils in the work we are seeing their depiction by a man who, outside of their literary use, believed he was showing some kind of spiritual truth. We, as secularists, are making a suspension of disbelief that the poet himself was ultimately not making. I find this to be a distancing factor.
>make it much more real to the reader.
Dante's conviction absolutely makes the work more passionate but I'm not sure about "more real." Basing something on scholastic philosophy and theological studies gives an unreality and a medievalism to lots of aspects.
>Dante can also be heard as mere word-music, master artisanship
And that is what I appreciate most about Dante (in the original) - but this isn't enough. But obviously here we disagree on what else Dante brings.
>too many unnecessary words
To be fair the sonnet is a rigid format and was fairly new in Shakespeare's time. And I think in the case of the plays we need to hear the characters' voices perhaps more than is absolutely necessary. You probably could trim down a lot of the wordage but something resembling Dante's terse style is just not desirable for a genre whose success relies entirely upon an audience feeling they have a grip on the characters and need to be with them and hearing them for longer than someone like Dante would need to keep us with them. I don't think its a damning criticism.
>He is not a person, but a collection of masks
I see this a great compliment, especially for a playwright. But anyway, we've discussed the motives of poets and we won't agree on it. What exactly is the profound life philosophy of Homer? Or Virgil? Does this disqualify them from greatness? Seems like an interesting essay though.

>>11259313
>is secular salvation
This is a pedantic point, I think. The misery of the wood comes primarily from sin which only philosophy in the theological tradition, as Dante knew it best, could solve - hence why we see Plato and Aristotle placed firmly in Limbo. Virgil himself is partly reconciled with Christianity which is why he is able to communicate with the pilgrim. It is not secular.
>Harry Potter's sufferings?
You seem to have a contempt for the term 'reader' or 'modern reader.' I suppose we disagree on the importance of relevancy for a canonical poet, perhaps because I'm talking about performative art I see it as more important.
>He was not chaste at all
I was given an incorrect impression of Dante's life by a bad student lecturer in a minor course I took then. Thanks for the information.
>Again, we come to the St. Matthew Passion problem
I don't really see how your response relates to what I said here.
>Still not as deeply admired and felt as Jesus Christ or Moses
Jesus wasn't a character in the same sense, though. The gospels are not literature in the same way.
>went somewhere in the Pacific Islands to teach T.S. Eliot
This is an enjoyable anecdote but I don't think it quite works here. When we read Dante in the same geographical and cultural region in which he wrote I think many people feel a certain distance from him. Obviously if you take any European artwork to a distant region there will be some very stark confusions, I don't think this is saying very much about the obligation of the reader, though. This has nothing to do with being self-explanatory.
>existences and cultural ranges he couldn't predict
This thread, to me, is more about how we perceive the great writers and what importance they hold for us. Its a mutual relationship between reader and writer and for various that (we can't agree on) I don't think Dante can hold quite the same importance for us, as impressive as his poetic genius may be.
Its not about a guessing game so that writers can try and speak as far into the future as possible, and the question of 'ranking' is almost just as much a comment on Western culture as it is on the poetry itself. I remember Carlyle writing interestingly on this subject somewhere. I don't think we'll agree on this, however.

>>11259316
and for various *reasons that

>>11259266
Tolstoy couldn’t stand Dante either, though.

>>11249264
>Chuangtzu
absolutely based

>>11259266
>”No man will ever write a better tragedy than Lear."
- Shaw

>>11252796
I'm French you utter fag

>>11246673
Dostojewski
Kafka
Me
Joyce
Milton

>>11253214
kind of upsets me that we browse the same board

>>11246673
Homer
Socrates
Diogenes
Gautama Buddha
Jesus Christ

>>11260415
>writers
>jesus christ
>socrates

i hope this is bait

>>11259871
Irrelevant.

>>11258647
Autism

>>11246673
1. Homer
2. Dante
3. Cervantes
4. Dumas
5. Shelley
I feel like these are pretty important... probably cause I have read them before. It's really hard to cut down to 5.

>>11246696
imo yes as the token novelist

>>11246788
You just made this up though lol
Shakespeare 'The Bard' is largely a result of German Romanticism anyway

>>11249537
Isaiah has truly great literary moments, more than Job.

>>11253371
Dude as a neutral...youre being autistic.
Enough with the petty national pride, no real scholar cares at all. I've only ever seen this on /lit/

>>11258819
please dont translate anything, youre so autustic, youre instincts are so bad, youll fuck everything up

>>11261730
rude

>>11261903
That was quite rude lol
However it does have some merit - petty nonsense about 'writer A is better than writer B is better than writer C' is some teenage jibberish. Its not likely somebody with these views is going to be a good translator/scholar.

>>11247974
>schiller shills
bug surprise

>>11247114
truly based

>>11247135
>no Ovid
only think missing imo

Angelou
Morrison
Hughes
Douglass
Diddy

Once again, only insults and dismissive comments, but no intellectual work. Very ridiculous.

>>11261710
What national pride? This is the second time people tell me I am guided by nationalistic feelings to prefer Dante over Shakespeare, and yet you do not know what my nation is.

I do have Italian blood, but I also have British blood, and I am neither Italian nor British, so...

>>11260444
Irrelevant.

>>11261730
Sure thing, I am very convinced, thanks.

>>11261915
Debates about the superiority of this or that author have always been very common, and debates about classes of authors too, such us the old debates between modernity and antiquity which caused a lot of heat in the old salons. Or take the important and peculiar processes of reevaluation of authors, which is very important in criticism. You do not seem to know much about the history of literary criticism, nor do you seem to have read about this subject in any particularly wide way.

Once again, only insults and dismissive comments, but no intellectual work. Very ridiculous.

I had said I would cease replying, and yet, coming here after quite a few hours away due to mere curiosity, I notice my comments still trigger you in a very deep, personal, and emotional manner, so much so that you have to distribute insults against me. I wonder why.

>>11263117
>I do have Italian blood, but I also have British blood, and I am neither Italian nor British
la creatura...

>>11246673
Proust Joyce Musil Pynchon
with Hegel above all of them

>>11263136
That's Italian for 'The creature'! Very good!

ITT: People who pretend to read these authors to look intelligent

>>11261939
Ovid is trash compared to Virgil and Homer, he’s so far below them.

Why does everyone keep listing Homer? I'm reading the Illiad and it's utter shit. I've been lied to. He constantly repeats the same sentences over and over again, needs to constantly mention the family tree of random soldier, basically no story, no beautiful prose. Have anyone here read it?

>>11265245
It's a joke, because Homer never wrote anything. For instance, none of the people listed in >>11260415 are writers.

>>11251211
Dosto is a great stylist and the greatest stylist is Celine.

>>11246678
>>11246683
>>11246788
>>11247847
>>11248723
>>11249217
>>11249264
>>11252758
>>11259235
>>11260483
All citing Homer with decent writers but maybe they only name him because of his fame wich I don't understand despite him being one of the first literary work of the west>>11265264

>>11255251
Le père Goriot is great, I also live la duchesse de Langeais . Balzac strength is that he was able to paint his society through his books on a scale never seen before.

Cao Xueqin (author of Hongloumeng) . It is truly a masterpiece of literature but I don't think many here are interested in Chinese literature.

>>11246673
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Charles Dickens
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Jane Austen
Homer

>>11248080
how dare u

>>11256465
This. England has poetry in its veins.