/lit/ - Literature

NOT my diary desu

>>23367976
Pointless question desu but the ones that spring to mind:
Christopher Tietjens from Parade’s End is very smart. Hamlet and Odysseus are I suppose common literary models of smart characters. And since Goethe is often listed as one of the highest IQ literary figures of all time there’s an argument to be made for any of his protagonists who are based on him: eg. Wilhelm Meister. Stephen Dedalus deserves a mention too.
I assume there are loads of genre fiction books with genius protagonists, like Sherlock Holmes, but I feel that a lot of literature tends not to emphasise this even when they must have been written by very smart people? Parade’s End is an example where the genius (verging to autistic/savant-level) of the protagonist is actually stressed heavily but it’s also written quite convincingly, even though I doubt that Ford would have called himself as smart as Tietjens.

>>23367976
Mia Luna Tearmoon.
The Great Sage of the Empire, the Benevolent Saint, the Careful Schemer.

For me, one of Henry James' magnificent bastards. Maybe Osmond or the princess in The Golden Bowl
>>23368010
Shakespeare deals with high intelligence so well.
Brutus is higher iq than everyone around him but, realistically, authentically, fails to see how dangerous Antony is - he can't comprehend how the plebs won't think all it through like smart people like himself.

>>23368081
Yes, maybe because Shakespeare’s also listed as extraordinarily high IQ although those historical scores seem a bit bogus to me. I agree with Henry James certainly, very much more showing than telling how his characters are intelligent, which I suppose is what I meant by how literature tends not to emphasise it explicitly. His characters never seem to do anything except get into deeply complicated relationships with other characters, which I personally think is a sign of high intelligence, certainly modelled after James’ own type of extraordinary interpersonal sensitivity, but it’s a very different vision of intelligence from the typical genius in genre fiction/pop culture.

>>23367976
Raskolnikov

>>23367976
Sherlock Holmes

>>23367976
.

Melmoth

>>23368328
/thread

>>23367976
The third karamazov brother