/lit/ - Literature

>>9933812
>Can we all just agree that Ulysses is better than anything Shakespeare wrote?
Not really, no.

>>9933812
you have to look at Shakespeare's Complete Works as one work. If you can say THAT is better than Ulysses, then okay. I'm liable to maybe agree with you if you said something substantial about Ulysses--even a paragraph's worth. As it stands, Shakespeare offers superiority because of his characters like Falstaff and Hamlet and Rosalind and on and on; the nigh-infinite interpretabiliity of all the plays (hell, I've gone threw Shrew and marked it up like hell [pages black and blue], and that was one of his earliest); the endless in-your-head interpretation a la Daedalus of Hamlet or Shrew or The Tempest and how a certain passage may apply to your life at any given time...

Ulysses is fucking phenomenal though. Everything that I wrote above can apply to it. Why do we have to say one is better than the other? Both are amazing. Joyce might not have accomplished what he accomplished without Shakespeare's existence, and we might not look at Shakespeare like we do without Joyce.

>>9933812
I've always thought that Shakespeare never actually wanted to write plays.

Imagine a meek, bookish kid with a weirdly shaped head born to moderately successful farmer/business man in a small village in 15th century England. Half the people in the town don't own any book besides the bible, and the oldest (surviving son) son of one of the prominent businessmen in town. His father (who was the son of another farmer) probably wanted him to take over the family business and farm, continue the tradition, make their family name. But Shakespeare didn't want any of that.

He wanted to write. He had a basic education in latin and classical works in public school, but, once that was finished, he was expected be like all other good little british boys and fill the shoes their father made for them. But all this young Shakespeare cares about, all he really enjoys, is writing.

So does he do? He leaves his hometown, his family, his WIFE, and takes his happy ass 150 miles south to London in THE YEAR 1590. 150 miles wasn't an easy trip back then. It was a commitment. He didn't dabble in it before becoming a playwright. It must've been a huge risk to move to London, where he (likely) knew nobody, with a vague hope of making a living with his writing.

So what did he do in London. A lot of people think Shakespeare joined the thriving London theatre scene. But was there a scene? Richard Burbage, the first Hamlet, the most popular actor of the era, was 4 years younger than Shakespeare, and didn't appear in the scene until Shakespeare had already been there for 5 years.

Did the great London theatre scene ascend independently from Shakespeare? Lord Chamberlain's Men wasn't founded until he was a 12 year veteran of the theatre scene. The most popular theatre at the time, the Globe Theatre, was built in 1599, and showed Julius Ceasar on it's opening night. The other great playwrights weren't even established before Shakespeare's plays were on stage. Thomas Kyd's "The Spanish Tragedy" was first preformed in 1592, by which time Shakespeare already established his own company.

Take all this in with how little we know about Shakespeare's life. Unlike almost every other great writer/thinker from the era, he left behind no letters. Not to his father, his wife, or his children. Hell, his kids grew up in Stratford-upon-Avon, 150 miles away from where he spent most of his time. He doesn't seem to have had very many near and dear people in his life.

So, who was Shakespeare? A kid from a small village in central England who found a passion, who left everything to go 150 miles away to pursue that passion, fanned the Elizabethan drama scene to its apex, and turned out comedy after comedy to keep his business afloat.

Shakespeare wasn't nobility. His father didn't bail him out. He literally carved a place for himself in the world. Imagine if he had the choice to choose a different medium.

>>9933812
Proust > Joyce > Shakespeare

>>9933812
>'Excuse me, superior work coming through.

>>9934829
Perhaps the constraints were the cause for his enormous creativity

>>9933812
You fucked up

>>9933812
JK Rowling is better than Joyce, so no.

>>9934848
I can't find any confirmation that Joyce borrowed directly from Moby Dick for the Eumaeus episode, but I'm absolutely convinced.

>tfw the yanks start that shite again about there being no Ulysses if not for Moby Dick

>>9934948

>Implying it isn't true

Stay mad, britcuck. Also, unless you're Irish, you have no claim to Ulysses either.

>>9934956
>Implying it isn't true
Sigh. I'll give you one more chance. Prove it beyond doubt.

>unless you're Irish, you have no claim to Ulysses either
What is the British Isles?

>>9934970
>implying it isn't obvious

Must feel bad to be such a pleb.

>>9934926
Doubtable. Can you show how? Moby Dick wasn't very popular then and in fact pretty obscure. Moreover, it was an American book, and American literature wasn't too big for the European intelligentsia of the time besides the biggest names then (Twain, Whitman).

None of us have claim to Ulysses or Moby Dick. This is a stupid argument.

>>9934983
>tfw the yank completely evades the challenge

>>9934987
That's what holds me back from fully believing it, but is it so far-fetched to to entertain the idea that as a great writer he is sensitive to the most subtle of influences in the literary world? Either Melville was a century ahead of his time (which is possible) or Joyce was integrating the same ideas and processes as Melville which borders on being unoriginal.

>>9935081
Melville was clearly a century ahead

>>9933812
No.

mother says i have a queer mind and have read too much. not true, read little, understood less.