/lit/ - Literature

>>15411839
Maybe for Anglos. The GOAT is Dante.

>>15411839
He's the GOAT no question. Nobody even comes close.

>>15411839
Even one of the lesser Shakespeare plays has more literary worth than anything ever written in Sub-Saharan Africa.

>>15411906
Shakespeare's plays were written by an African. An African woman whose works were attributed to a white man.

>>15411916
Terrible bait. Try again.

>>15411924
It worked on (You)

>>15411839
Certainly top ten among writers in English. His position within that ten is a matter of taste.

>>15411906
Even Jack Kerouac or Norman Mailer taking a shit, and wiping their ass has more literary worth Sub-saharan Africa.

>>15411839
For theater? In English? Yes. Without hesitation. When also compared to the great poets and writers of prose? He has the strongest argument. When expanded outside the English canon to include others? Plausible but ultimately unlikely. Can you earnestly place him above Ovid who Shakespeare borrowed so much from? Or above Cervantes?

>>15411839
He’s certainly one of them. On English, the only other writers who really come close are Melville and Joyce in terms of sheer aesthetic achievement. Melville is probably his best contender and, interestingly enough, his style wouldn’t exist without Shakespeare

>>15411841
>>15412031
correct takes. he is by far the English GOAT, but debatable otherwise

No his stories are weak for the most part, and as plays they aren't great. His command of the language is beyond impressive, and some of his characters are unbelievably written. I still prefer Melville or Milton.

>>15412081
>Melville
>the GOAT
Do faggots really...?

>>15412093
Good response, what an erudite young scholar you are... Now get off this thread and rot in help you servile faggot.

>>15412093
You wouldn't understand because you're not white.

>>15412100
>>15412099
He's not in any way the GOAT. Maybe for Americans but they are delusional.

>>15411839
Anglos overrate everything done by other anglos. Someone halfway innovative and talented pops up in their ranks and they have to praise them as the greatest ____ of all time. They did it with Dickens, the Beatles, Pink Floyd, and countless others who people think of as great but really, pumped out a lot of shit among the sorta good stuff. Shakespeare is pretty gimmicky. His style has certain major drawbacks. He can't be the greatest of all time because of how restricted into form he was, and how samey a lot of his plays were. How many people readily list a Shakespeare play as their favorite book? Rare, compared to other classic authors like Melville, Dostoevsky, or Joyce.

>>15412223
retard post

>>15411839
Shakespeare is an okay poet. Byron is GOAT.

>>15412230
I don't hate Shakespeare. I like him a lot. I hate how the dialogue around him presumes he's the greatest without any attempt to assess his worth. He has a fan base of sycophants

Who is your favourite author?
>William Shakespeare

Which of their works have you read?
>I have read almost all of his plays and most of his sonnets; from the poems “Venus and Adonis”, and “The Rape of Lucrece” I have just read some small strophes and verses.

Why do you love them so?
>His language is the most inventive, beautiful and awe-inspiring in the world. Hi is, by far, the greatest poet of all time. I have read almost all of the English poets, and of the poets of my native language (Portuguese), as well as Spanish poets. I have read the Italians (Leopardi, Dante), the French (I’m a Rimbaud fan), the Germans (Goethe, Heine, Schiller, Hölderin), the Greeks (Homer, Hesiod, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Sappho, Anacreon, Alcman, Pindar), the Latin (Virgil, Horace, Lucretius, Ovid), the Russians…hell, I have even read the Japanese (Ono no Komachi, Basho, Hitomaro, the folk songs of the kojiki and Man’yoshu), the Chinese (Li Bai and Du Fu) and the Indian (Kalidasa, Tagore, the ancient epics), always searching for the same metaphorical feast and imagistic orgy of Shakespeare’s work, but in vain: nobody has ever done the same with words. Nabokov is right when he says that “The verbal poetical texture of Shakespeare is the greatest the world has known, and is immensely superior to the structure of his plays as plays” and Stephe Booth: “Shakespeare is our most underrated poet. It should not be necessary to say that, but it is. We generally acknowledge Shakespeare’s poetic superiority to other candidates for greatest poet in English, but doing that is comparable to saying that King Kong is bigger than other monkeys. The difference between Shakespeare’s abilities with language and those even of Milton, Chaucer, or Ben Jonson is immense.”. This guys is the greatest master of language of all human history.

Whom would you recommend them to?
>Anybody with even remote poetical/language interests. Also romantic comedies fans and drama fans.

>>15412223
Beyond the insult of putting Dostoevsky beside Melville, Joyce and Shakespeare, it isn't uncommon for people to list a Shakespeare play in their favorite works. The problem is the question is often phrased as 'favorite book'. Though I don't think this type of survey is even that relevant to determine the greatest authors or work, Norton published a book surveying 125 contemporary writers on their 10 best 'books', and Shakespeare earned the 2nd most points based on the ranking system (Tolstoy was 1st).

>>15412223
How many people list a Melville book as their favorite (other than Moby-Dick)? Literally no one.

>>15412317
TBK is Hillary Clinton's favorite book. It counts, even if dosto was no master of prose. Congrats on the data, shows that I just have talked about this with an unusual group of people
>>15412386
Literally the number 1 book on this site a couple of times, do I don't know what you're getting at. There are (less frequent) fanboys of the confidence man (which I've only heard of when people reference it as their favorite) and Bartleby

>>15412429
>Literally the number 1 book on this site a couple of times, do I don't know what you're getting at.
I said other than Moby-Dick. Also, Shakespeare's works counts as one book, that's how they were published for the first time.

>>15412457
I don't see any good reason to omit Moby dick when talking about Melville. It's like omitting catcher in the rye when talking about Salinger.
>Shakespeare's works count as one book because of publishing history
Why? You can buy overpriced paperbacks of individual Shakespeare plays anywhere. Even if publishing history has some merit, people talk about Shakespeare's plays as separate works, they were written as separate works. Hamlet isn't judged the same way as Titus andronicus.

>>15412525
>I don't see any good reason to omit Moby dick when talking about Melville. It's like omitting catcher in the rye when talking about Salinger.
It's not about omitting. It's about showing that Melville was a one-hit wonder while Shakespeare was a more complete and varied artist. Remove Moby-Dick from Melville's works and what do you have? Something good, something decent, but not something great. Meanwhile you can remove Hamlet, or Macbeth or whatever work you want and Shakespeare still stands on his own. In fact some of his plays are lost yet he's just as strong.

>>15412317
You are the midwit that said
>How many people readily list a Shakespeare play as their favorite book
Many people who write or are interested in literature beyond the genre-fiction of Dostoevsky list a Shakespeare play in their favorite works, so much so that he was the 2nd most picked author in the survey.

>>15412565
On what planet is Dostoyevsky genre fiction? What genre? Are you about to run that Brothers karamazov is a murder mystery because there's a murder after 500 pages of character development?

>>15412222
Quads of truth >>15412099 is an unfunny faggot

>>15412589
>dostoevsky
>character development
pick one

This is pretty much the only thing I have ever seen anyone agree about on 4chins across all boards. So much so that there is never even people pretending to be retarded or irony in these threads. It's kind of scary.

>>15412634
*everyone

>>15412634
what is?

Much nearer to GOAT than overrated.

>>15412614
A point so wrong I'm kinda just baffled by it. What do you think character development is?
Anyway, I don't think I made the main point clear. When someone says Melville is the greatest author of all time, it's because Moby dick is their favorite book at they time. Dosto tbk. Joyce Ulysses. DFW infinite jest. Rowling Potter. Same pattern. Yada yada. But when Shakespeare comes up, folks crown him the greatest, and they don't even really like his stuff. They think bullshit like "he invented drama" or "he told every story there is to tell" or some other blatantly untrue thing. I hate those people more than I respect his actual literary fans

>>15412682
so based.

>>15412682
Who gives a shit about the faggot normies you've encountered? Shakespeare is the GOAT regardless of normie opinion. Fucking pleb. Don't even @ me.

>>15412682
But that isn't true beyond high school or undergrad pseuds. Even with Shakespeare's disadvantage of having more great works compared to most great writers his works are still chosen. In the survey I mentioned, Hamlet was 6th and King Lear was 17th; however if you collect these works together Shakespeare is the 2nd favorite author, only behind Tolstoy, both of which were significantly ahead of the 3rd favorite (Joyce).