/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.14474304]

The biggest loss in literary history is that chaucer never got to complete the canterbury tales

[Anonymous No.14474311]

>>14474304
What about the library of Alexandria?

[Anonymous No.14474352]

>>14474311
Caesar did nothing wrong.

[Anonymous No.14474635]

>>14474311
All the Greeks were wrong anyways. Like we need more Platonic bullshit.

[Anonymous No.14475866]

>>14474635
most of the lost works were in opposition to platonic thought.

[Anonymous No.14476295]

>>14474304
Edmund Spenser only got to finish half of The Faerie Queene.

[Anonymous No.14476314]

Would Cardenio and Love's Labors Won be top tier Shakespeare or be his shit plays everyone ignores?

[Anonymous No.14476336]

>>14474304
Vergil never finished the Aenied. He was so embarrassed about having published without polishing it that he wanted it burned.
This loss is far more immense than a collection of stories about farting and cucks.

[Anonymous No.14476468]

>>14476314
>we were robbed of shakespeare's take on cervantes
GOD
DAMN
IT
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

[Anonymous No.14476492]

>rhyming couplets

[Anonymous No.14476617]

>>14474311
Filled to the brim with tranny garbage

[Anonymous No.14476726]

>>14474304
The biggest loss to literature was the Dissolution of the Monasteries. There were probably dozens of Old English manuscripts that got trashed and are now lost forever

[Anonymous No.14476825]

Dostoevsky died and couldn't finish the The Brothers Karamazov.
Mervin Peake had dementia and couldn't finish the Gormenghast novels.
There are some short stories and, probably, a whole novel from Isaac Babel hidden in a forgotten NKVD bunker.
The Spaniards literally destroyed everything the natives of the New World wrote.
Uncountable Greeks plays and Chinese novels that just disappeared in the sands of time.

[Anonymous No.14476835]

>>14476825
>natives
>wrote

[Anonymous No.14476848]

>>14474304

[Anonymous No.14476875]

>>14476835
>Two of the primary architects of the Aztec empire were the half-brothers Tlacaelel and Montezuma I, nephews of Itzcoatl. Moctezuma I succeeded Itzcoatl as Hueyi Tlatoani (or king) in 1440. Although he was also offered the opportunity to be tlatoani, Tlacaelel preferred to operate as the power behind the throne. Tlacaelel focused on reforming the Aztec state and religious practices. According to some sources, he ordered the burning of most of the extant Aztec books, claiming that they contained lies. He thereupon rewrote the history of the Aztec people, thus creating a common awareness of history for the Aztecs. This rewriting led directly to the curriculum taught to scholars, and promoted the belief that the Aztecs were always a powerful and mythic nation—forgetting forever a possible true history of modest origins.

>In 1562 he ordered an inquisition after hearing that some Roman Catholic Maya were continuing to worship pagan idols. Several thousand Indians were tortured to obtain “confessions,” and about 200 were killed during the process. As a result, at least 40 Maya codices (books written in Mayan) and 20,000 Maya religious images were burned.

[Anonymous No.14477795]

>>14474304

Schopenhauer never completed his translation of the first Critique into English

[Anonymous No.14477885]

>>14474304
Not even the best English writer of the period.

[Anonymous No.14477918]

>>14476726
There's a Superman fan comic where he goes back in time and visits the Monasteries before the manuscripts were destroyed. It's much better than whatever you're imagining right now, probably. It's called Silver Age Superman, by Ed Pinsent and Mark Robinson.

[Anonymous No.14477957]

Philip K Dick's first novel is lost, probably forever. I mean... it's probably not that great. But still. It was Gulliver's Travels fanfiction.

[Anonymous No.14477960]

>>14474304
i thought the fact that it doesn't end is part of the joke, like the locked groove at the end of sgt.pepper

[Anonymous No.14477961]

>>14477957
>It was Gulliver's Travels fanfiction.
I would have been happier not knowing that this had been lost.

[Anonymous No.14477971]

>>14477960
no, he just died

[Anonymous No.14478021]

>>14476875
Natives knew how to destroy things for themselves. Muslims were doing the same thing in Spain not too long ago, probably greater islamic literature was lost there too.

[Anonymous No.14478053]

>>14476295
This is by far a greater loss than Canterbury Tales

[Anonymous No.14478061]

>>14477885
Who’s better? The Pearl Poet is dreary and two-dimensional compared to Chaucer. He’s unbeaten in his movement from genre-to-genre, his use of irony, his wit. In writing characters, only Shakespeare can compare - just look at the Wife of Bath, for God’s sake!

[Anonymous No.14478067]

>>14476825
All much more devastating than the haha funny fart cuck book. I’ve heard that BK was supposed to be the much shorter introduction to a more in-depth book. I really want to read the book that the fucking Brothers Karamazov was just the introduction for.

[Anonymous No.14478076]

>>14477960
>>14477971
In fairness, Chaucer realised quite early on that he wasn’t going to finish, so you could say that some of the stylistic choices he made were made in the knowledge of the Tales ending without completion.

I’ve always found it hilarious that after he died, a number of people tried to write fanfic endings and insert them into the Tales. The Tale of Beryn, for example, gives a poorly-written but nice resolution to the first leg of the journey, which describes the pilgrims finally arriving in Canterbury and going about their business, as well as gettin up to a few hijinks.

[Anonymous No.14478079]

>>14478061
>The Pearl Poet is dreary and two-dimensional compared to Chaucer.
wew lad
shakespeare isn't from the same period either.

[Anonymous No.14478094]

>>14478079
I never claimed that Shakespeare was from the same period, just that Chaucer matches him when it comes to writing impelling characters.

What do you actually enjoy about, say Gawain and the Green Knight? No doubt it’s a lovely tale, and well-told. But the characters themselves are flat - Gawain is noble yet slightly underhand and cowardly at times, the Green Knight is just mythical and all-powerful. There is some dimension, yes, but there’s nowhere near the same mastering of rhetoric and irony that Chaucer takes from Boccaccio. The Pearl Poet and Chaucer are simply incomparable.

[Anonymous No.14478117]

>>14478094
You're comparing apples to oranges in terms of content. Gawain isn't some bawdy comedy, and you're forgetting his other works such as Pearl.
Maybe it's personal taste, but I find old alliterative poetry to be much more enjoyable to read than rhyming verse.
It's a shame that we dropped the style, it was quite unique in the world.

[Anonymous No.14478138]

oh no we missed out on more fart jokes

[Anonymous No.14478139]

>>14478117
I think it was you who made the first comparison, anon. But I agree, it is hard to compare them, and much of it is down to personal taste. From a purely technical perspective, I would maintain that Chaucer has more skill as an author and a poet, however (even if his lyricism isn’t quite as beautiful). It’s worth remembering too that Chaucer never considered The Tales to be his masterpiece, instead preferring Troilus and Crysede, which is more in-line with poetic traditions of the time, and thus a more useful comparison.

[Anonymous No.14478141]

>>14478117
The style still exists, write something great in it and spark others to follow in your footsteps.

[Anonymous No.14478157]

>>14476295
a big shame, good thing we still got 74 cantos

[Anonymous No.14478616]

>>14476726
>dozens
Try hundreds. Some Victorian collector filled a library with them (which then burnt down) nearly taking ALL of what we had left with them.

[Anonymous No.14478637]

>>14478138
Filtered, only a pseud can't appreciate good low brow and only a pseud would focus on the low brow and ignore things such as wife of bath and the knight's tale