/lit/ - Literature

>>4543795
>The narration is like when I would gather my action figures and have a war with them.

>tfw you will never speak in iambic pentameter and make multiple classical allusions using precise conceits when playing with actions figures

>>4543805
No, but seriously, the story lines behind my action figure wars was influenced by the illiad.

>tfw you read the Illiad at 8.

>>4543805
Oh and also

>muh poets terms. Fuck poetry. The simplest, and most useless form of writing,.

>better write this poem, bet it'll make a huge impact.

Yeah on sensitivities over analytical faggots who are devout of happiness and need to feel alive by reading shitty minute thoughts.

Didn't these fools ever hear of taking notes and making conclusions

>>4543795
1/100

>not knowing how to use tfw
>thinking that shit talking shakespeare amounts to an inflammatory thread
straight off the /b/oat

>implying play format isn't the highest format
>bitching about Shakespeare being more clever than you 2014

9/10, solid effort.

>>4543825
>>4543821
How is it not garbage. You literally have to study a subset of the English language in order to make sense of what he says and he uses such a ridiculous amount of his momentary context and slang that interpreting his works is literally a study.

It would be compared to someone writing a book in some local folk language or creole and expecting people to make the effort to understand you when you never made the effort to make yourself more widely understandable.

Shake truly was a pleb, living in the moment, writing, for the moment.

>>4543836

>Shake truly was a pleb, living in the moment, writing, for the moment.

>So long as men can breathe and eyes can see / so long lives this and this gives life to thee

the irony

>>4543836

>Shakey's books are difficult for me to read

>They must be bad

are you the edgy dark obscure patrician guy?

>>4543836
>when you never made the effort to make yourself more widely understandable
Uh... Just a thought, but this may be more to do with the passage of four centuries than Shakespeare deliberately trying to confuse you.

Also it's not that hard. Read moar.

Also plays are for watching. Watch them.

>>4543795
ITT: OP can't into English.

>>4543825
Obviously, but I've heard people say the same things seriously.
Sometimes it gets forgotten that he wasn't writing stuff to last through the ages. Londoners wanted plays, he wrote good ones, money was made.
Not all students have trouble with his plays, but many do. The dialect is so outdated it requires annotation, and plays aren't really meant to be read. You get a little stage direction, but it's mostly dialogue. Totally different from prose, where you get details that help you visualize things.
I can account for his continuing popularity on two points, as far as I see it. First, he tells good stories. Distinctive characters, interesting plots that include action, there's usually a romantic subplot, and there's often several levels of humor. Something for everyone. Secondly, like most of the literature schools push, Shakespeare's more famous plays are part of the cultural context. Classics of Western literature. Stuff you are expected to know as a mentally normal adult. For my part, I think that's valuable, that a society needs a certain set of shared reference points to provide identity.
Taste is subjective. OP will just have to get used to the fact that we don't care if he doesn't like something.

>>4543795
Just the fact that Shakespeare is widely regarded as the best playwright of all time, just goes to show how far theatre has come. In classical music, for example, Beethoven is widely considered the greatest composer. For although he wasn't the most popular at the time, or had his music played in the most courts, his music has survived the centuries to be considered the best classical music, by many critics.

>>4543962
Except that Shakespeare was both good enough and popular. This isn't some Beatles shit.

>>4544001
That scruffypasta isn't actually saying Shakespeare's bad, yo.

>>4543962
scaruffi pls

>>4543819
New Criticism analysis is one of my hatreds and my favourite playwright is Beckett; but even then dissing Will and poetry is shitty. In fact the precise reason I like poetry is that it is the words that you feel directly instead of having to analyse it; and Will is one of the best at that.

Schiller > Shakespeare
Not that Shakespeare is bad, no, but later others did things a lot more interesting and better.

>>4543795
what the fuck

I don't understand how native speakers can find Shakespeare hard to understand. I'm French, never went out of France, and Shakespeare is rather easy for me in English. And beautiful anyway - Shakespeare is the best and swiftly rapes every French poet, especially Hugo, even in translation. How can't you see that? Are your English-speaking countries now populated with mongoloids or what?

read hamlet

>>4544055
Shakespeare is taught in every high school in every country with english as a first language.

>Lots of people have to read Shakespeare in school.
>Lots of people, therefore, will dislike Shakespeare.

I don't know one person that hasn't had to read at least one shakespeare play.

>>4544064

I used to hate Shakespeare on the basis of being forced to read it in a high school setting. Tempest and Romeo and Juliet.

Then a few years later on my own, homeless on the streets with nothing better to do, I started to read Hamlet. Ho-Ho-Holy shit. He's fucking good. Uncanny. No wonder why he haunts so many good writers. He has style and he has a penetrating psychologic instinct.

I'm laughing back on the fact that we read such writers in high school. 99% of the students are in a fucking bubble that insulates them from the life struggles that give meaning and weight to their words. It's like asking a bunch of monkeys to analyze See Spot Run. You'll just get shit thrown at your face because fucking monkeys can't read and don't know why the fuck anyone would give a shit about a dog running.

Shakespeare's still good, but he's not my favourite renaissance playright, anymore. I might give that accolade to Marlowe, or the anonymous author of The Revenger's Tragedy.

Shakespeare isn't the only Eliza-Jacobean playwright to ever exist, ever.

>>4544081

Marlowe more like Mar Blow

The Revenger's Tragedy more like A Rapist's Comedy

>>4544064
Same thing in France with Molière. The obligatory high school writer. But, although he's seen as politely boring, Molière is somewhat appreciated because 1) his French is today's French, thanks to the French Academy who normalized the language some decades before him, 2) he's comedic, hence more attractive for (stupid middlebrow) young people than sublime drama or deep tragedy. Racine or Corneille are more or less overlooked in high school for this reason.

>>4544094
We had to do L'Avare and Toute Ma Vie Sera Mensonge for A2 French.

Our version of L'Avare was definitely unmodernised, but the Troyat was fairly easy to read. The Moliere was somewhat dry, although it was comical in places.

>>4544081
Marlowe is superb, but not as varied as Shakespeare in language, construction and psychology... All his plays somewhat convey the same feeling.
I think that Cyril Tourneur represents the apex of bad taste. Good play, but weak language (by Jacobean standards) and really vulgar murders on stage. B movie aesthetics in the end. Shakespeare is always dignified in comparison.

>>4543795

Agree with OP almost completely.

Poetry is on par with rothko paintings or any of those 2deep paintings. Many of the people who make their own are on par with kids with crayons who try to copy abstract art. It's all crap.

As for Shakespeare, it's absolute topkek that the hype about him is self-perpetuating. People get told that he's the best and then they join the crowd.

>>4543795

You have to take in consideration how far ahead of his time he was, he was an incredible writer for his era, just think about how many fucking years his works have held water.

>>4544103
Even Twelfth Night? Not that I'm complaining, but what about that extended joke about (I think it was) Olivia's piss? Also, Falstaff.

>>4544099
L'Avare should be seen in Louis de Funès' version (it's a movie, not a play, but the original text of the play is nearly untouched). It's glorious, glorious.
Troyat? Wow, dated stuff. I didn't think this was read anymore.

As far as Anglo-centric literary authority goes, I'm still going to put the focus on Chaucer and the Gawain-poet pretty much every time.

Shakespeare doesn't really deserve ALL of the centrality of the canon which is bestowed upon him - not by a long shot.

>>4544113
>war literature
>french war literature
>prosaic french war literature

Nobody that knows what they're talking would say that Shakespeare wrote the best poems or stories. That's not what makes him great, its more to do with how he transformed the English language.

>>4544111
Didn't read Twelfth night. Shakespeare is vulgar sometimes, but these are only quickly forgotten accidents - much unlike a series of bloody murders on stage to end the play.
And Falstaff has depth and even a kind of mystery, beyond triviality.

>>4544124
>how he transformed the English language.
>not how he literally transformed human beings with his innovative characters

>>4544129
No, that distinction goes to Chaucer.

>>4544107
>being this mediocre
>actually enjoying it
it must unbearable to live with such a tiny mind, how do you deal with that?

>>4544107
Modernist Art is specifically meant to be non-representational. On the other hand poetry is a completely representational medium (unless you're thinking of Dadaist poetry). There isn't any comparison and the fact that you're making one proves your lack of knowledge.

>>4544146
did you mean non-figurative?
and just a friendly reminder that modernist poetry is a thing, and actually a pretty big thing.

>>4544147
We're talking about Shakespeare aren't we? Though some lines from Eliot also gives me a feeling equivalent to hearing some of the best music.

>>4544154
Yes, but you brought up Modernist art. I agree with you when you say that the guy you replied to was a complete fucktard, but I disagree when you say that one could not compare a poem to Rothko's art. I don't think Rothko painted an intellectualised form of art, I find his paintings just as sensual and shivery as Eliot's verses.

>>4544107

>Poetry is on par with rothko paintings or any of those 2deep paintings.

The poetic isn't limited to any specific medium. Poetic abstraction is the basis of all art. All of it. You say you hate poetry, but you revel in resonance of it constantly.

You say you hate poetry but you live for it.

>As for Shakespeare, it's absolute topkek that the hype about him is self-perpetuating. People get told that he's the best and then they join the crowd.

How can you say that you've uniformly written off poetry in the written measure yet still try to pass off opinions as though you're erudite on the subject?

His sonnets are famous for the nuance of his imagery, but his plays are what he's (rightly) more remembered for. His real gift was understanding human dynamics to such a degree that he was able to convey archetypal depictions of humanity so brilliant that his influence and importance as a very pillar of the craft stands alongside Commedia dell'arte through to fucking Sophocles for fucksake.

He is fucking everything to the English language you know-nothing blindly speculating newreader board tourist.

Go back to whatever hick board you came from.

>>4544162
To play devil's advocate, you might argue that having to resort to archetypal depictions of human nature is a facet of authorial inadequacy. Although, is it impossible to avoid being accused of 'establishing an archetype' when all you've done is create a character?

Also, best poem:

Orpheus with his lute made trees,
And the mountain tops that freeze,
Bow themselves, when he did sing:
To his music plants and flowers
Ever sprung; as sun and showers
There had made a lasting spring.

Everything that heard him play,
Even the billows of the sea,
Hung their heads, and then lay by.
In sweet music is such art,
Killing care and grief of heart
Fall asleep, or hearing, die.