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/lit/ - Literature

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11509382 No.11509382 [Reply] [Original]

/lit/ tourist here. Who are some genuine contenders to this guy's throne? Throughout history, who can legitimately claim to be on par or even greater. Or is Billy simply the best writer of all time?

Bonus: which play is his finest? As an unwashed peasant and literary noob, from what I've read I'd say Othello.

>> No.11509397

>>11509382
Marlowe
Goethe
Joyce
Pynchon
And then literally nobody else.

>> No.11509424

no one will ever match him. he wrote all the plays that we need.

othello is a good choice. I would say king lear. but I think there are 9 that you could make a case for.

>> No.11509430

>>11509382
Euripedes, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Aeschylus

>> No.11509446
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11509446

>>11509397
>Pynchon
oh boy here we go

>> No.11509459

Homer still holds the throne symbolically.

Virgil
Hafez
Sophocles
Aristophanes
Aeschylus
Dante
Ben Jonson
Kit Marlowe
Moliere (but not really)
Cervantes
Joyce
My Dad

But let's keep it 100 - all things being equal, nobody can touch his complete oeuvre.

Lear is my favorite play, followed by Hamlet, Coriolanus, and Othello.

>> No.11509470

>>11509459
Post some of your dad's work

>> No.11509474

>>11509470
he's shy

>> No.11509484

>>11509382
shakespeare
-
homer
dante
-
sophocles, goethe, milton, virgil, aeschylus, cervantes, probably joyce

imo

>> No.11509490

>>11509484
This is a safe, reasonable hierarchy.

>> No.11509500

>>11509397
>>11509459
>Marlowe
I would genuinely appreciate someone explaining to me how this hack is associated with any of the greats. Is it just proximity? Shakespeare because they were contemporaries and Goethe because they both wrote a Faust? It's preposterous.

>> No.11509501

>>11509459
no one would call homer the greatest writer to have ever lived (though these days you'd have trouble finding someone call homer a real man at all). you make a good point with cervantes but the rest of those aren't in the same league.

another name to throw at OP: montaigne.

>> No.11509525

>>11509500
it is largely proximity. i was bullied into including marlowe by my anglophilic friend

>>11509501
thanks for acknowledging the inclusion of Cervantes. if i could re-do the list, i'd remove a couple of the greeks, milton, jonson / marlowe, and virgil. maybe add Milton, but only as an afterthought.

>> No.11509533

No one. Shakespeare literally invented the human

>> No.11509536

>>11509501
Another: Pushkin

>> No.11509537

>>11509525
meant to say i'd remove moliere, lol. mistype

>> No.11509538

OP here, thanks for the responses lads. This board seems to embrace its "mainstream" GOATs more than other boards. /mu/ is often cold on The Beatles, /v/ doesn't rate GTA too highly, /tv/ shit on the most acclaimed directors all the time, etc. I'm glad /lit/ is honest about Shakespeare being up there, I expected to be memed at by contrarians when I made the thread.

>> No.11509548

>>11509538
You're thinking of the wrong kind of mainstreams. /tv/ likes Kubrick, and /lit/ hates Rowling.

>> No.11509556

>>11509459
quit LARPING you raging faggot. Post proof of daddies signature with timestamp or gtfo

>>11509470
he’s pretending to be jackson pynchon for consistency’s sake
sure’s’ummer’n’ere

>> No.11509558

>>11509500
ben jonson rather liked him

>>11509525
no you're quite right in losing milton

>>11509536
i don't think so

>> No.11509563

>>11509548
If you google "who is the greatest [insert field here] of all time" and check the corresponding board, they're rarely in agreement with popular opinion, even that of critics and/or scholars.

>> No.11509564

>>11509500
>. Is it just proximity?
Yes, and discussion of the quality of his blank verse is actually a good way to find out who actually forms their own opinions

>> No.11509566

>>11509538
that is because Shakespeare is pseudstream and everyone on /lit/ is going up that stream

>> No.11509573

>>11509538
no you get a lot of that here as well

>> No.11509574

>>11509556
actually that didn't occur to me, lol. my dad is a struggling author who works for an online magazine

me and my brother put his name on "greatest author of all time" lists as a joke.

>>11509558
im glad u think i did good

>> No.11509623

>>11509538
/v/ and /tv/ are more into the pop side and pop criticism is awful so it's no surprise they reject them

It would be like /lit/ taking this seriously: https://web.archive.org/web/20080319074629/http://www.metacritic.com:80/books/bests/

>> No.11509631

>>11509574
damage control. post dad or gtfo.

>> No.11509661

>>11509558
No one influenced the modern Russian language more- not Tolstoy, not Dostoyevski, not a single Russian poet (you) can name. Just a fact.
What's weird in this is that Byron has a bearing on Russian letters similar to that of Shakespeare's on German.

>> No.11509709

>>11509661
well if we're talking about influence it would have to go to homer since he was the basis of all classical greek culture (and education), and when rome conquered greece, of all roman culture too. OP said 'the best'