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/lit/ - Literature

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18217044 No.18217044 [Reply] [Original]

ITT what novel is traditionally seen as the flagship of your country's literature. With this I'm referring to stories typically more than a century old, with a historical setting (even if it's a fictional story) and, usually but not always, nationalistic themes, though just being set in an important time period of your nation's history works too.

In the case of Argentina, that novel is 1894's "El gaucho Martín Fierro" (the gaucho Martín Fierro).
Notes:
>a gaucho is, basically, a cowboy
>Fierro means "piece of iron" but it can also be understood as "knife".

The story follows a typical gaucho, at a time when the government of Argentina was persecuting them because they were considered outlaws and criminals. The story seeks to be true to the way common rural people lived at the time, and shows the suffering the gauchos, and the people who lived in their communities, went through, due to poverty, abuse of authority and attacks by native American tribes.
The main character, Martín Fierro, gets into trouble with the law and if forced out of his home town, after which he travels along other border towns and eventually decides to get out of society and return to nature, going to what was known here as "El desierto" (literally "the desert", which wasn't actually a desert, the name refers to how it had no population aside from the natives).
The most famous scene in the book is a fight inside a tavern between the MC and a black man after Martín outright calls the man's wife a cow, with no provocation. He then says what are by far the most famous lines from the story:
"white people were made by god,
mulattoes by Saint Peter,
blacks were made by the Devil
to serve as Hell's fuel" (based)

A few years later a second part was released, titled "La vuelta de Martín Fierro" (the return of Martín Fierro").

At that time the government's policy towards gauchos became much more relaxed, seeking to integrate their communities peacefully.

In the second part, Martín Fierro returns from the desert back to society and finds that much has changed.
His wife became engaged with a new man after he left her, believing he was dead. Martín doesn't mind tho, he thinks it's okay and is happy that somebody took care of her.
The government authorities apologize to Martín for the way in which they treated him. He's forgiven from his past crimes and conscripted into the army and sent to fight the natives.
In battle he's captured by the natives, but ultimately he manages to escape from the native camp together with a woman that he rescues. There's a lot of descriptions about how the natives are violent savages as you can imagine.
He then goes back to another town with the woman, and there he meets the black man from the first book again. He apologizes to him and the two become friends.

Overall, Martín is a much more mature and respectful character in the second story, while on the original one he's very rash and agressive.

>> No.18217059

>>18217044
just noticed I'm a retard. The story was originally published in 1872 (and the second part in 1879).
I was mistaken due to the date on pic, but that's just the date in which that edition was published.

>> No.18217187
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18217187

>> No.18217414
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18217414

>> No.18217438

>>18217044
Either Os Sertões or Grande Sertão.
In poetry, Gonçalves Dias's mediocre epic I-Juca-Pirama.

>> No.18217444

>>18217044
I tried to read Martin Fierro, and it's mediocre popular poetry of little value. No idea why Borges liked it so much.

>> No.18217563

>>18217044
>The most famous scene in the book is a fight inside a tavern between the MC and a black man
So this is why the black guy wanted to kill him to avenge his brother in Ficciones.

>> No.18217565
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18217565

>>18217044

>> No.18217571

>>18217044
My only "country" is the Kingdom of God, and our book is the Holy Bible.

>> No.18217585
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18217585

>>18217571

>> No.18217595

>>18217565
Only actual piece of literature here

>> No.18218953
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18218953

In my case (Chile), I think that the most valuable literary work is the Gabriela Mistral one. Her poems are way more beautiful and elaborated than Neruda's shit.
She won a Nobel Prize in 1945.

>> No.18219146
File: 29 KB, 399x600, 51uxgQiyfCL._AC_UL600_SR399,600_.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
18219146

Pic related supposedly marked a clear shift in swedish literature and heralded the advent of the swedish language as we know it today. Not sure how many people have read it though, I don't think it's first in line when people read the classics in school and it's all very bound to a specific context and a specific time period. But it's often dubbed the first ''modern swedish novel'' penned by possibly sweden's most important writer, at least in the modern era. This cover makes little sense as the story is a sausage fest.

>> No.18219751

>>18217444
Borges didn't like it that much he preferred Ascasubi over Hernandez when it came to gaucho poetry

>> No.18219950

Os Maias - Eça de Queiroz
Nonetheless, I'm bitter that he is such a bourgeois.

>> No.18219962

>>18217044
White, P. Tree of Man.

VOSS IS SHIT.

>> No.18220284

>>18217444
Martin Fierro was the only story I skipped in Dreamtigers

>> No.18220657
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18220657

Probably this, I'd say.

>> No.18220664

FAUST
A
U
S
T

>> No.18222041
File: 683 KB, 1600x1145, Canada.gif [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
18222041

Jeez, I dunno. Any other Canadian anons care to chime in?

>> No.18222088

Si era un cowboy yankee llamado Tom Iron hoy te decían que Hernández era como un Homero moderno. Ellos se lo pierden.
Based thread

>> No.18222097

>>18217571
Martín Fierro is a very christian book.

>> No.18222143

>>18218953
neruda is a hack, de rokha and mistral are a thousand times better

>> No.18223840

>>18222143
based

>> No.18223876
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18223876

>>18218953
>>18223840
>>18222143
The bests are
>Nicanor Parra
>Jorge Teillier
>Pedro de Oña
>De Rokha
>Mistral

>> No.18224014
File: 11 KB, 197x256, ds.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
18224014

>>18223876
Not Nicanor Parra, he was just a shitposter.

>> No.18224068
File: 27 KB, 310x500, 51I9nRzG3WL._AC_SY780_.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
18224068

I have not read it.

>> No.18224702

Probably Ulysses, considering its thought of as literally the best novel that there has ever been on Earth and all.

>> No.18224712

>>18224014
He was great as both a shitposter and a poet

>> No.18224745

Moby Dick
you all can't compete

>> No.18224795
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18224795

Hard to pick a single one, consider this fag was dropping international bangers left and right back when. It's probably Peer Gynt though, let's be honest.

>> No.18224961
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18224961

>>18217044
Fuck niggers and pampaniggers.

>> No.18224985

harry potter

>> No.18225033
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18225033

>>18224745
There will be those who will say moby dick, but absalom absalom captures the self destructive cycle of american history and politics better than no others. Reading this book made me fully accept that we will never improve and have always been the same. No one hates america more than the american

>> No.18225043

>>18217444
>>18220284
cringe

>> No.18225240

>>18222041
anne of green gables is the best we're going to get

>> No.18225284

>>18217187
This and fuentes' terra nostra and del paso's palinuro de méxico

>> No.18225339

>>18225033
Powerful book, anon. I think that this book more than the sound and the fury is faulkner at his peak.

>> No.18225345

>>18220657
What?
>>18220664
This. Recently reread Faust 1 for the first time after school and I was not impressed. Felt kind of pieced together. The premise amazing, but the execution was off. Some rhymes were pretty basic, too.

>> No.18225352

>>18219962
>VOSS IS SHIT.
filtered

>> No.18225358

>>18217044
Unfortunately Brazil has no "national epic". No writer has managed to condense such a heterogeneous country in a literary work. There are regional epics such as O Tempo e o Vento.

>> No.18226000
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18226000

>> No.18226512

>>18225345
Musil is Austrian, Goethe is German.

>> No.18226656
File: 44 KB, 352x500, 526769-352x500.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
18226656

>>18217044
Pan Tadeusz, one of the last great European epics.

>> No.18226670

>>18225358
Os Sertões by Euclides da Cunha?

Or Iracema by Alencar?

>> No.18226706
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18226706

>>18225358
brazil's national epic took the form of a human being

>> No.18226796

>>18226512
Oh my...

>> No.18226917
File: 157 KB, 500x737, 5af42c7a75f81.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
18226917

>>18226656
Pan Tadeusz, one of the most boring pieces of literature out there, hundreds of pages of single poem, mystery story, following dozens of noblemen as culminating in few events one of which is rising against russian occupants. Most of the pages center around founa, flora, dislike between two families which began when somebody shot somebody else helping russians, erotic relationship between tangential characters. It cartainly wouldn't be that bad (reading it in some cold winter evening vis à vis fireplace feels fantastic) if not for the athmosphere surrounding Mickiewicz, whom is traditionally considered the greatest and thus all other trully remarkable artist suffer lack of memory in national mind.

>> No.18228207

No one in Scotland knows anything about Scottish literature so I just have to give a list of influential ones.

The Acts and Deeds of William Wallace was the most sold book in Scotland apart from the bible until the late 1800s
The Works of John Duns were very important for mediaeval thinking
The Poems of Ossian translated by Macpherson created Romanticism

>> No.18228779

>>18225345
Im inclined to say you were filtered, but then again Faust II is required to grasp Goethe's immense work. Obviously they don't read that in schools, as the retards there won't even understand the most basic of the many themes Faust I had. Also if you wanna go deeper I recommend Jochen Schmidts Work on Faust.

>> No.18228780

>>18226512
No difference, arbitrary borders don't define a people and a culture

>> No.18228861

>>18217044
I'm French. My literature doesn't have a flagship, it has a whole fleet. And currently that fleet is all sunk.

>> No.18228888

>>18225358
Doesn't Grante Sertão count?

>> No.18228976

One of Shakespeare's histories I suppose. I'd say Richard II but I think most would say Henry V. But a case could be made for the Faerie Queen or Canterbury Tales.