/lit/ - Literature

Before Shakespeare, people were sitting around thinking all the best plays have already been written.

>>3960333
Yeah, the end of the world is right around the corner too.

>>3960387
Just like it has been for every inhabitant of every era of every civilization ever.

>>3960333
No and no.

>>3960342
To be fair, they had and have

>>3960390
Pic Related

Literature is language specific. As language evolves, there will always be scope for new works to exploit the new manner of speech.

Take hip hop, for instance. Three hundred years ago it would've been incomprehensible, today it ranks with Shakespeare in the annals of masterful use of English.

>>3960395
> Hip Hop ranks with Shakespeare
Easy on the b8 m8

>>3960416
EZ urself, m8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcLtFJsV-1o

>>3960395
Lel, hip hop is shit

>>3960416
Cool filename ROFL LOL

>>3960435

Rap is nothing but a bunch of thick lipped niggers bragging about things they don't have. Your example is no different.

>>3960464
>>>/pol/

>>3960464

Rap is a celebration of life.

"We count hundreds on the table, twenties on the floor. Fresh out of work, and looking for more. And I love it."

Meanwhile your forced melancholy is still not getting you laid.

>>3960464
>Rap is nothing but a bunch of thick lipped niggers bragging about things they don't have.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zab9a1mH-iw

>>3960471

Rap isn't celebration of life. It used to be powerful and political and now it's just commercialised insecurity and excess.

>>3960492

>never heard of immortal technique

>>3960492

Pining about a golden age doesn't get the ladies hot these days either.

>>3960492
KILLMUNATI
##@##
#/#\#
/###\

>>3960395
>Take hip hop, for instance. Three hundred years ago it would've been incomprehensible, today it ranks with Shakespeare in the annals of masterful use of English.

Probably the most retarded thing I have ever heard, I am litterally lost for words.

>>3960508
I hope you are joking.

>>3960508
it's supremely funny that you're criticising hip-hop for its supposed shortcomings in the use of language and you're hiding behind your 'loss for words' to come up with a valid counterargument

>>3960508
>litterally lost for words

Lol what?

To answer OP's question, we have no way of knowing. I don't think we have run out of shit to say though. We certainly have the skills and tools to create a masterpiece. Only time will tell

>>3960395
>Take hip hop, for instance. Three hundred years ago it would've been incomprehensible, today it ranks with Shakespeare in the annals of masterful use of English.

Top fucking LEL

>>3960333

Not all, but I wouldn't expect much from this generation.

>>3960517
>>3960517
First of all I don't need a counter arguement because it was a statement not an argument. I'm genuinely interested as to wether the guy who wrote that is thinking of specific rap songs or artists or rap as a whole, neither of which make any sense.

Why is Shakespeare better than rap lyrics? Do I really need to talk about the eternal and universal nature of the topics of shakespeares plays, the depth, accuracy and the realness of with which they are described and dealt with. The ebb and flow of his plays which lead from slow. intriguing beginings to climactic finishes.
What is rap but guys talking about the same subjects again and again without any depth. Do I really need to here someone brag about money and women, how boring.

>>3960565

Shakespeare's subject matter was equally dry - in fact it wasn't his. The beauty came in the presentation, which see today with artists like Ice Cube.

"I'm the type of nigger that is built to last; you fuck with me, I'll put my foot in your ass."

The subject, of course, is as old as time itself. But the crisp, succinct way of delivering it demonstrates a very rich understanding of what English can and cannot do.

>>3960565
>Why is Shakespeare better than rap lyrics?
>better
You lost right there, son.

>>3960595
Literally loling. You know children can make rhymes like that.

>>3960565
1. don't feed the troll
2. learn more about rap
3. >eternal and universal

You had one point to argue and you failed.

>>3960333
>has the best literature already been written?

Yes. One of the qualities of the best literature is that it must exist, which unwritten literature does not.

>>3960469
>>>/reddit/

>>3960494
>>3960471
>2013
>using "getting laid" as a way to judge success

Go back to /mu/ you nig

>>3960611

This demonstrates the greatness of the craft. He presents to you a verse and you say, "This is the veritable state of the English language. I could produce this verse, for there is nothing artificial within it."

Do not delude yourself into thinking that you, or a child, could have come up with such a verse on your own. Shakespeare painted didactic set pieces, Ice Cube paints still lifes. The fact that it is a accurate mirror of the world does not reduce its value.

>>3960471
i could not agree more

well put, old friend

is this the Mark Twain of our lifetime?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7Fy5w2klbg

>>3960628
Troll alert

>>3960595
You have to be kidding. Do you even read?

Rap is hedonist, lowest common denominator pleb muzak.

>>3960632

obviously. you're a complete retard if you didn't notice that from the 1st post.

>>3960622

Hit a little too close to home, eh? Well, if you want to play the Byronic hero that's your call. Just don't feel indignant that some people choose to accept life, rather than reject it.

maybe it's floating here on the internet, maybe the best writer has already finished the best literature ever written and just uploaded it in a .pdf file 3 seconds ago
but he wasn't published by a well-known shit, so nobody will care until a fucking retard (>>3960333) discovers this genius writer and sucks his best butthole

Funny, nobody bothered to write a biography on Shakespeare until when? Huh, like 100 years after Shakepseare died. Yes, his plays are good and even back in the day he changed the game. But for the time it was still kind of a lower brow performance art. Nobody in the Romantic period gave a fuck about Shakespeare. But who knows, maybe in 400 years our descendants will be studying lil Wayne at Julliard.

Go back to your pastures, puritans.

>>3960640

>fallacies r fun

nothing about your post has to do with the original post anyway.

>>3960333
But I agree OP, it's the best. Moby-Dick transcends time. It's so good; it's spooky.

>>3960645
This. Anglofag are so busy sicking Shakespeare's dick that they never mention he was forgotten for about a century. His genius wasn't eternal, obvious or undeniable, it has only quite recently been discovered

Although I'd have to disagree on the bit about the Romantics. Some proeminent Romantics were jealous of Shakespeare.

>>3960333
Homer did it best.

Homer did it first.

>>3960645
The Romantic period? That's exactly when he was virtually fucking deified, dude.

>>3960658
>it has only quite recently been discovered

seriously? i mean, i guess if your definition of 'quite recently' is the middle of the 18th century, that's true. but by that definition, shakespeare himself is a fairly recent writer, so idk

>>3960565
You really don't know jack shit about hip hop, and I don't agree with any of you anyway.

>>3960682
Go back to /mu/ tripfag

Maybe some /mu/tants will agree with your shit opinions

>>3960658
>>3960662
> The Romantic period
Eh, I was thinking mostly Coleridge/Wordsworth type poetry, there really is no Shakespeare influence or tone there. And drama? What are some major plays written from then? I don't know...I'm looking it up now. I guess Byron has some.

But really when is the last time anyone put on a Romantic play? But that's a different argument all together.

>>3960645
>Niggers try to ascribe importance to their "muh dick, muh money, muh hoes" bongo rambling

>>3960707

Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo,
Aureli pathice et cinaede Furi,
Qui me ex uersiculis meis putastis,
Quod sunt molliculi, parum pudicum.
Nam castum esse decet pium poetam
Ipsum, uersiculos nihil necesse est,
Qui tum denique habent salem ac leporem,
Si sunt molliculi ac parum pudici
Et quod pruriat incitare possunt,
Non dico pueris, sed his pilosis,
Qui duros nequeunt mouere lumbos.
Vos quod milia multa basiorum
Legistis, male me marem putatis?
Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo.

>>3960713
How does Catallus have anything to do with this?

>>3960333
>has the best literature already been written?
>are we out of shit to say
This is the whine of all the ages.

>>3960707
>muh dick, muh money, muh hoes
Funny that sounds like a few different Marlowe plays.

>>3960719

Just pointing out that this "rambling" is part of an ancient and established poetical tradition. If you hate poetry, that's your freedom, but don't deny the facts.

>faggots not realising that hardcore rap is the closest to Nietzschean Affirmation in music

upper mid range lel

>>3960722
Don't compare Catallus to your shitty nigger rap.

>>3960723
No.

>>3960732
Yes.

>>3960730

Typical pleb mindset. Two thousand years from now another of your kind will be fetishising Dr Dre whilst neglecting contemporary practitioners of the craft.

Obvious trolling ITT but Kendrick Lamar writes some pretty good lyrics.

Look inside these walls and you see them having withdrawals
Of a prisoner on his way
Trapped inside your desire
To fire bullets that stray
Track attire just tell you I'm tired and ran away
I should ask a choir what do you require
To sing a song that acquire me to have faith
As the record spin I should pray
For the record I recognize that I'm easily prey
I got ate alive yesterday
I got animosity building
It's probably big as a building
Me jumping off of the roof
Is me just playing it safe

>>3960333
The masses have plenty to say.
The problem with modern literature is capitalism. The writers are so overly concerned with copy writing their works so that they can protect their money. It's not that everything has already been written but thinks to capitalism it has all been copyrighted.

>>3960645
ebin trol

to the guy giving rap its due, i love you

i think we can all agree that slam poetry is trash

>>3960763
Is copyrighting a bad thing?

Niggers gotta steal everything, don't they?

>>3960759
Ill agree with that. Kendrick is one of the few rappers I can listen to. His lyrics are beautiful, really.

Collect Calls and Dying of Thirst are incredible.

>>3960759
>I PRAY MY DICK GET BIG AS THE EIFFEL TOWER
>SO I CAN FUCK THE WORLD FOR SEVENTY-TWO HOUR!

yep, that Kendrick sure is smart

>>3960763
>It's not that everything has already been written but thinks to capitalism it has all been copyrighted.
bull fucking shit
you can make legitimate arguments as to how capitalism is bad for art, but 'everything has been copyrighted!' is really not one of them.

>>3960759
Slick Rick is still the greatest storyteller.

"Once upon a time, not long ago, when people wore pyjamas and lived life slow..."

>>3960793
Meh. Listen to Sing About Me/Dying of Thirst. Reply when you do

>>3960672
Yeah, that's my point. Shakespeare is a recent writer who had been forgotten and was recently rediscovered. Stating that he is "eternal" without any serious argument in this context seems pretty reckless to me.

Actually I don't see why we would need him to be eternal. He's still relevant to our day, and he has been for more than two centuries. That should be enough.

>>3960759
O, reason not the need! Our basest beggars
Are in the poorest thing superfluous.
Allow not nature more than nature needs,
Man’s life’s as cheap as beast’s. Thou art a lady.
If only to go warm were gorgeous,
Why, nature needs not what thou gorgeous wear’st,
Which scarcely keeps thee warm. But, for true need—
You heavens, give me that patience, patience I need.
You see me here, you gods, a poor old man,
As full of grief as age, wretched in both.
If it be you that stir these daughters' hearts
Against their father, fool me not so much
To bear it tamely. Touch me with noble anger.
And let not women’s weapons, water drops,
Stain my man’s cheeks! No, you unnatural hags,
I will have such revenges on you both
That all the world shall—I will do such things—
What they are yet I know not, but they shall be
The terrors of the earth. You think I’ll weep?
No, I’ll not weep.

Jesus fuck, get out >>>/pol/

We get it, you're insecure in your masculinity so you cling to intellectual (in your mind) aggression and dominance as a new way to feel like men, but aren't smart enough to actually pull it off, so you just reference narratives you were fed by the media and the public schools, about intellect being something divorced from the proles, something for asocial fucks. So when no one likes you, it's because you're too smart, because you read shakespeare, and everyone around you is too stupid to understand it because muh wrong generation, because we've all become stupid. if you were alive in a better time, they'd like you. it's not your fault.

learn some fucking shit /pol/, and stay the fuck out of boards where the discourse is somewhere above dystopian novels and racial slurs

>>3960793
that song was about what it's like to be a teenager filled with misdirected aggression and bravado
he was playing a character, he plays lots of characters
maybe you're the stupid one if you can't understand that

>>3960809
dry high school shit

>>3960813

Counter shit-posting is still shit posting

>>3960817
meta-counter-shit-posting is still more useless than vanilla shit posting

I'm going to write the novel that defines this generation.

CRH

>>3960813
If rap is so genius (so genius in fact that the entire school system of multiple western and aglophone countries are too stupid to appreciate just how genius they are) why aren't we studying rap lyrics in school?

>>3960809
And I move like the Coupe through traffic
Rush hour GT Bent': roof is absent
Your bitch present with the music blastin'
And she keep asking, "how it shoot if it's plastic?"
I tell her, "you see if your boy run up"
She sat back and cut the Carter back up, oh fa sho
Ay Big Mike: they better step they authority up
Before they step to a sergeant's son. I got army guns
You niggas never harming Young
Fly Wizzy, my opponent's done. I'm done talking
And I ain't just begun, I been running my city like Diddy, you chump
I fly by you in a foreign whip, on the throttle with a model; bony bitch
Pair of phony tits, her hair is long and shit, to her thong and shit
Well here we go, so hold on to this, let's go!

>>3960841
we are retard

>>3960844
Who is? And were are you from?

>>3960841
1) if you can't see why a state intent on maintaining existing forms of institutional repression wouldn't teach about rap music, you're a fucking idiot

2) schools don't teach any music lyrics, not even the ones you consider intelligent

>>3960854
kent, kings, cirencester royal agricultural, gloucestershire, salford

england

>>3960862
And what rap lyrics are they teaching in school exactly? Lil wayne? Abit of Jay-z?

>has the best literature already been written?
>dissolves into a shitstorm about rap

I'd say yes.

Nice work or collective cross-trolling here. You sure are committed, or maybe some of you are samefagging in different sides of the fight ?

Anyway, kudos to the decent posters for trying to save the thread. Since the conversation is about rap right now, do you guys think it's the last (or one of the last) still popular form of poetry ? The genre was hardly ever popular, but at least the poets had the consideration of the ruling class. Now it seems nobody cares about poetry stricto sensu having an influence on the powerful, instead of that we have popular form of music with somewhat versified lyrics and a shitload of amateur and professional poets in circle-jerking in college. It's an interesting shift, really.

>>3960884
just wanna say that it's a shit thread, anyone who seriously thinks that all the best stuff has already been written is basically one of those teens who only listens to dadrock and complains about modern music because they're too lazy to listen to the good stuff. (this also applies to 99% of people who think rap is trash)

so i really don't consider it a loss that this thread was lost to a conversation about rap.

as for your topic, i feel like it's less that poetry got smaller, and more that it got quieter, or that it was never really loud. poets still have the consideration of the ruling class because a lot of them are from the ruling class. colleges are full of aimless spoiled rich kids, and a lot of them like poetry

>>3960333
Only one way to find out.

Spanish rap with references to literature: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p56-RRcsGKw

>>3960616
All literature exists. Saying it doesn't because it hasn't been written is like saying the Pythagoras theorem didn't exist before buttfuck BC.

I'm writing a pretty damn good book, if I can be honest.

>>3960333
No, we've barely scratched the surface.

>>3960910
>colleges are full of aimless spoiled rich kids, and a lot of them like poetry

But are they the one who will matter latter on ? It seems that, compared to Ancient Greece for instance, where Homer was an absolute reference everywhere for the ruling class, poetry is now only (and very unsubtly) waved and shaked asa the symbol of a well-learned man, without ever being discussed in debt. And we also have to consider that the professional poets that matter in the field are relevant only to others poets and a handful poetry aficinados.

Long story short, I have the feeling poetry in the traditional sense has been reduced to a mere consumption product while, on the other hand, there might be genuine artistry involved in rap and other popular genres. I wonder if that will ever have an observable influence on people's behaviour. I heard that during the first month of the Egyptian uprising, a rapper nicknamed "the general" was considered the voice of the movement, and that his lyrics had contributed in taking people to the streets.

Seems alot of people only think of rap as shallow and brain-dead genre. There's alot of that too ofcourse, but there are some good rappers too.
Eyedea has good lyrics. Check out birth of a fish. Most of his songs are well written, they're poetic.

>>3960789
>still thinking that duplication is removal

felt like adding this to the discourse here, albeit a bit satirical

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Q5cB3T9LhA

>can't spell crap without RAP
>music is like candy throw out the RAPPERS
Aye yo, I saw my man the other day he say he need a handout
Said he had some live and some boy but it ran out
His partner had a number, but connections didn't pan out
And every road he dialed was looking like the same route
Told him he could blame it on the cocaine drought
Since the boys got arraigned and all the names came out
Now I don't know nobody dealing, sitting on the steps by the library building
Busted him a short and I asked about his children,
Told me he ain't seen 'em since they momma tried to kill him
Laughed and told the homie I forgot about that shit
She caught you in the crib rollin off in a fat bitch
Tried to pull the heater but you hid under the mattress
And jumped out the window butt naked, it was classic.
I paused cuz the homie wasn't laughing with me
So I tried to switch the topic up causally
He exhaled smoke and threw his hat in the street
Said, "playa I don't understand what happened to me
Remember how I used to live extravagantly? white Jay’s, scuff-free, with immaculate steez?
White Jays, scuffed 3s, with immaculate ease
Stacked Gs, cop keys like they was practically free
Now I'm scrambling these streets with this raggedy tee"
I was puzzled by his feelings of inadequacy
Then I saw the track mark when he pulled back on his sleeve
Yea, my homie got a habbit it seems
Sad, cuz I kinda wanna dap him and leave
But I been down the some road so I put it on front street
Then he stepped back like he wanted to punch me
Told him, sit down, it's been a minute since we hung out
Apologized for bringing out the fact that he was strung out
Caught me off guard, and I know that lifes hard,
But I really hate to see the homie in the graveyard
Cuz all I wanna do is see my people live large,
I always try to see my people better than they are

He told me he would he would clean up, said it was a promise
Looked me in my eyes to imply that he was honest
But I know that I would lie too, back when I was on it
So even though I nodded I was feeling broken hearted
He the homie though, regardless, so I know I gottAnnotatea trust him
Told him I won't bring it up in any more discussions
Then I hit him with some ones, probably bout a dozen
He told me he was staying with his auntie and his cousin
But I saw the bitch later and she told me that wasn't
Told me if she saw him she would snitch him to the government
Said he on some foul shit, she ain't even love him
I was bugging, I know he on the needle how she talking hopeless
Told me that he was evil, he didn't have emotions
Said they found his babies with their throats slit, and he the culprit
I'm like, oh shit, step back, how she go against blood like that?
That's the homie from the way back,
Looking at the stars like, "what they fuck could make you say that?
Naw love, I can't even play that."
It's hard to light a smoke when you trying to breathe,
Cuz deep down I know she ain't lying to me
Cuz deep down I know she ain't lying to me…

>>3963192
I'm a little breathless too.