Why do a few nations dominate literature?

[Anonymous No.18128358]

Most classics seem to come from United States, England, France, Germany, and Russia. What's up with that? I'm mostly referring to novels but it somewhat applies to poetry and plays.

[Anonymous No.18128384]

>>18128358
>Ignores the East Asia's contribution to Literature
Read more before you make a shit thread. .

[Anonymous No.18128404]

>>18128384
Such as?

[Anonymous No.18128482]

>>18128404
uhh... that sagely old chinaman who drops mindblowing gems like: respect your parents

[Anonymous No.18128493]

>>18128384
Time to get to terms with it.

[Anonymous No.18128499]

>>18128482
You get what you pay for hermanos

[࿇ C Œ M G E N V S ࿇ !KNDY/Ar.iI No.18128604]

>>18128358
>Most classics seem to come from United States, England, France, Germany, and Russia.


...

IT SEEMS SO TO YOU, BECAUSE YOU ARE IGNORANT, AND WITH YOU ARE MILLIONS OF OTHERS, BUT, ACTUALLY, MOST LITERARY CLASSICS ORIGINATE FROM THE GRÆCOROMANSPHERE, AND FROM THE HISPANOSPHERE.

[Anonymous No.18128641]

>>18128604
ok sure buddy

[࿇ C Œ M G E N V S ࿇ !KNDY/Ar.iI No.18128647]

>>18128641


YES, I AM OK, AND SURE, THANK YOU, BUT I AM NOT YOUR «BUDDY».

[Anonymous No.18128649]

>>18128647
We are all buddies here.

[Anonymous No.18128655]

>>18128358
What the fuck do you know about the literature from rest of the world you western ignorant retard

[Anonymous No.18128658]

>>18128647
BASED CAPS LOCK GIGACHAD

[Anonymous No.18128669]

>>18128655
I expected you guys to say "yeah only white men can write good literature" but now I'm getting all these people defending "eastern" lit?

[Anonymous No.18128683]

>>18128669
Just a hand full of samefagging salty ethnics unable to deal with reality. Just wait and they will either spam retarded confucius tier stuff or try to derail the thread. Just ignore minority posters.

[Anonymous No.18128684]

>>18128669
we'll shit on you for being a retard firstly before being racist

[Anonymous No.18128732]

>>18128684
What a gentleman you are.

[Anonymous No.18128743]

>>18128604
Shush, spic pederast.

[Anonymous No.18128768]

>>18128358
The US have not really made any remarkable contributions to literature.

[Anonymous No.18128775]

>>18128669
>only white men

But at least 3 of the top 5 English authors from the 19th century were females

[Anonymous No.18128820]

>>18128775
Imagine believing this.

[Anonymous No.18128899]

>>18128358
>Most classics seem to come from United States
BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

[Anonymous No.18128917]

>>18128358
>classics seem to come from United States
Kek

[Anonymous No.18128948]

>>18128358
Because the “classics” are the classics of those nations lol. If you go to Japan they have different classics.

[Anonymous No.18128971]

>>18128358
>is suprised western classics come from western countries

[Anonymous No.18129033]

>>18128669
Eastern lit is good desu, I've only read Mishima so far though

[Anonymous No.18129042]

>>18128775
Kek, everyone knows f*males can't write they can hardly read

[Anonymous No.18129052]

>>18128669
Eastern lit? You didn't even fucking name Italy, Ireland, Spain and Southern America, you dumb illiterate.

[Anonymous No.18129093]

>>18129052
Spain and Italy are just French satellites and Ireland is just an English satellite. Name one good novel that came out of South America

[Anonymous No.18129134]

>>18129093
>Spain and Italy are just French satellites
>Ireland is just an English satellite
So you should say "the romance sphere" and "the anglosphere". We are talking about literature, not politics.

>Name one good novel that came out of South America
I can name more than one. Ficciones, One Hundred Years of Solitude, 2666, Paradiso, The Labyrinth of Solitude, Terra Nostra, Palinuro de México, etc

[Anonymous No.18129142]

>>18128358
Of those countries, Russia makes a miniscule share. You would be better putting Italy or even Spain.

[Anonymous No.18129152]

>>18128358
That's just because your monolingual. Spanish literature is the best there is yet barely any of it is translated

[Anonymous No.18129167]

>>18128358
>classics
>muttland
??????

[Anonymous No.18129170]

>>18129134
Man I didn't actually expect you to reply and with so many too, thanks I'll check them out!
Yeah I was originally going to reply that op probably meant "anglosphere" and "romancesphere" by naming the most well know countries like when people say NY to mean USA, but then I thought it might trigger people to say satellites since that implies subordination so I just said it like that for the keks

[Anonymous No.18129212]

>>18128358
>What's up with that? I'm mostly referring to novels but it somewhat applies to poetry and plays.

only the western world is interested in the arts, most oriental people see the arts as stuff that doesn´t enrich the soul

[Anonymous No.18129223]

>>18129142
I think he meant Europe in general. I have never seen a thread dedicated to the 1001 Arabian Nights or the Gathas, but there've been hundreds of threads which discussed Spanish lit at length. Keep in mind that Russia is relatively a new player in the scene, they only got Homer and Aeschylus in the 17th century, but Spain and Italy have been around forever if you include the Romans.

[Anonymous No.18129225]

>>18128358
Baltic sea masterrace

[Anonymous No.18129231]

>>18128493
>ethiopia
>siam
>louisiana
>key for green

[Anonymous No.18129235]

>>18129212
False, there's plenty of Eastern lit, even if you define "eastern" as "east of the Indus river." If you take as Eastern anything after Asia Minor, then you have Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia, Armenia, Georgia, Arabia, Persia, India, Tibet, China and Japan.

[Anonymous No.18129238]

>>18129235
>Armenia, Georgia

western

[Anonymous No.18129247]

>>18129238
Well, yeah, like I said, it depends on what countries you consider to be western.

[Anonymous No.18129360]

>>18129238
Everything west of the Indus is a better determination of western literature but still any arbitrary line is retarded

[Anonymous No.18129409]

>>18129223
>Russia new player on the scene
That was the implication in my post, but yeah, their tradition is lacking mostly for that reason. A lot of the themes and ideas in their novels you can find in most Western European and American novels. There are plenty of political radicals and historical novels in their fiction. Madame Bovary is far superior to Anna Karenina. Scott, perhaps the most popular 19th century novelist at home and abroad, gave us the historical novel long before War and Peace, and you can find political radicals in any number of American, British, and French novels before Dosto. The Russian experience is quite different from the rest of the West. Posters on this board would benefit more from sticking to what was originally the more mainstream canon before the Cold War created a curiosity about all things Russian.

[Anonymous No.18129508]

>>18129409
I don't prize sheer novelty all that much, I think sincerity is more important. But I recently thought more about why Russia was so behind in literary development and my reasons were the following: Firstly, Russia did not have the benefits of either the Abbasids, the Carolingians or the Byzantines in the 9th and 10th centuries. Vladimir did not receive any Plato or Menander as a gift from the Greeks, and there weren't any major translation movements like with the Arabs or any texts left over from the Roman times as was the case with the Carolingians. Next, Russia only started propping up higher institutions like academies and universities in the 17th and 18th centuries, but others had them since the 11th and 12th centuries, e.g. the universities of Paris & Oxford, and the school of Baghdad. Thirdly, the areas where the Renaissance flourished most strongly were regions where there were a lot of affluent states run by princes interested in cultivating the knowledge of arts and sciences, particularly in northern Italy, but also the Netherlands, London and Paris. Russia, on the other hand, still had to pay tribute to the Mongol khans during this time, and it eventually lost the characteristic of having many competing individual city states with the rise of Muscovy. But then we arrive at the 17th century where things begin to appear brighter. It is in this timeframe that we see the works of Homer and Aeschylus being imported, read and discussed. I think this was mostly due to the Hellenophilia of Patriarch Nikon. Then, Peter the Great comes along and we finally see the rise of a proper literary circle with the visits of eminent scholars like Christian Wolff and Leonhard Euler. Real, proper philosophy begins here with figures like Lomonosov and Skovoroda. A while after this, however, the Jacobin movement slowly starts to appear, and the Queen shut down access to the library of Voltaire in order to stop this anti-feudalist movement from spreading. Yeah, they weren't so enlightened those enlightened despots... Anyway, do you think my account of the poverty of early Russian lit is accurate and true? This has been on my for almost a month now lol

[Anonymous No.18129535]

>>18128358
Spain, Italy, Japan.

[Anonymous No.18129551]

>>18128358
>Watch me as I create a thread and spout my ignorant nonsense

You're probably not as well-read as you'd like to believe OP

[Anonymous No.18129732]

>>18129142
Lol, what's fucking except Don Quixote Spain produce that deserves attention?

[Anonymous No.18129754]

>>18129551
>assuming OP reads at all
Actually, don't assume anyone on this board reads.

[Anonymous No.18129763]

>>18129142
For rime that Russia come to lit scene in Europe - its produce pretty much good stuff
Spain lit tradition maybe more old, but they didn't shape the world like russian lit

[Anonymous No.18129770]

>>18128358
I'll be honest anon, I haven't read the big books the chinks and persians and whoever else call their classics, nor have I read their squiggly poetry, and neither have you.

I'm gonna bet they've written something good.

[Anonymous No.18129794]

>>18129409
>>18129508
What a amerimutt seething on russian lit, lol
Maybe russian lit tradition new compare to western european countries, but fucking american?
You say that ru lit is "newfag" and made an example with country about 250 years old or something
Lmao
They fucking have writers before your country is formed

[Anonymous No.18129801]

>>18129732
Lope de Vaga and Calduron, plus Suárez and Juan de Santo Tomas

[Anonymous No.18129806]

>>18129794
I'm not an American lmao, I'm a yurofag

[Anonymous No.18129848]

> Ignores Chinese contributions (4 great novels, Buddhist, Daoist, and confucian writings, classical poetry)
> Ignores Spanish and Latin American contributions (Borges, Don Quixote, Garcia Marquez)

I would argue aside from a few key contributions, Germany is not as major of a player in world literature as the other countries listed in OP. Greece and Italy should be included over Germany.

2 Main reasons why some countries dominate:
- High Level of economic development means widespread literacy and access to education as well as the resources to support a class of intellectuals
- Linguistic imperialism (widespread geographic distribution of a language encompassing may cultural groups) means a greater exchange of ideas and more people working in the language, so better ideas can be incubated

[Anonymous No.18129873]

>>18128358
Why do the books I know the most about come from the part of the world I'm most familiar with?

Also, much of the world has largely lacked literary culture until European empire brought it to them. The first Caribbean and African novels are all in response to imperialism.

[Anonymous No.18129881]

>>18128647
BASED

[Anonymous No.18129883]

>>18128358
>Most classics seem to come from United States
lol what?

[Anonymous No.18129887]

>>18129848
>Argentina
>latin america

kek fucking burger

[Anonymous No.18129889]

>>18129134
>Palinuro de México
Mexico is not in South America but in North America. If you want to include it, Hispanic America is the term.

[Anonymous No.18129896]

>>18129887
What?

[Anonymous No.18129974]

>>18128358
Believe me anon, it's too risky to make those statements. We give for granted that everything worth attention spreads by itself just because we live in a globalized world. We assume we have everything at hand, everything knowable and uploaded to the internet. This is an illusion, not to say a lie. Until very few years ago it was common opinion that Italy never had a philosophical tradition past Machiavelli (the idea was: leave poetry to Italy and philosophy to Germany). Then, all of a sudden the book market hosted the English translations of Ficino's Theologia Platonica, Vico's Scienza Nuova, Leopardi's Zibaldone, Agamben's Homo Sacer and Michelstaedter's Persuasion and Rethoric, all of which are masterpieces in their respective kinds. Even academic scholars were surprised. They simply didn't know that Italy had all of this. How many works are still to be rescued and translated? What can we expect? When you don't know a language it's hard to tell what treasures hide in its country's tradition.

[Anonymous No.18129977]

>>18129508
Your analysis is spot on. I was actually unaware that the classics were introduced so late to Russia but that makes sense given their isolation from the West for so long. It also shows how quickly a country can modernize once it is able to communicate with the rest of the world. See Meiji Japan. The same process happened after World War 2 in many Asian and African countries as well due to the Cold War.

>>18129732
Compared to Russia, which is a major latecomer, Spain has a rich corpus. Much of this is owing to the nuances indicated by this poster >>18129508 if anything Russia has peaked pretty early considering there was very little of merit produced during the Soviet regime and nothing of any merit now.

>>18129763
In what way has Russian literature actually shaped the world? It is pretty difficult to say literature has shaped the world until a significant time has passed. We can say that about Homer, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, etc. but heading towards the 18th century most writers have been influential primarily within their own countries except for perhaps Anglo, French, and German philosophy.

>>18129794
American literature is just an offspring of British literature. Considering the deep relationship between their literature, treating them as fully separate is off the mark. Americans are very much how Englishmen would have ended up had Cromwell been more Washington and less Cromwell.

[Anonymous No.18129992]

>>18129212
Latin America is not in the West.
t. Latin American

[Anonymous No.18130004]

>>18129992
you´re mestizo and latin america is part of the west

[Anonymous No.18130014]

>>18129992
It is. Our literature is written in Western languages and our countries were founded by Western empires. The region has better literature than Australia and Australia is considered le West as well even though it's south of Asia lol

[Anonymous No.18130025]

>>18129974
This is unfortunately true, despite all the >translation memes. If most of the corpus of a philosopher remains untranslated into English, very few will know the actual doctrines espoused by the author. The clearest example of this is Wolff, everyone namedrops him but nobody reads him. At best, they skim Baumgarten, who was only one Wolffian out of a million.

[Anonymous No.18130094]

>>18129977
Thanks, I came up with that analysis during my walks. I basically surveyed the history of each country's literature and compared the timelines and considered any major events that had a significant impact on the production of literary works. The leading German historians of philosophy thought that Russia had plenty of potential for developing a rich environment for philosophy and judged that they were slowly starting to develop their own tradition, but the Bolsheviks fucked it up by banning literally anything that had the word 'soul' in it, i.e. the complete works of Plato, Aristotle, Kant and many others. It was completely ridiculous. There was also a brief period in the first half of the 19th century where philosophy was banned at the universities, so that also contributed to the styming of philosophy in the Russian Empire. I'm starting to think that Russian rulers have beef with professors of philosophy lmao

[Anonymous No.18130131]

>>18128358
>Doesn't know about latin american literature, chinese and japanese incredibly vast literary traditions, muslim and indian philosophy
Read more books

[Anonymous No.18130143]

>>18129977
I often wonder if Britain would have been better off if Cromwell hadnt been deposed although I wouldnt exist because i'm irish

[Anonymous No.18130150]

>>18129974
Based post.

[Anonymous No.18130175]

>>18130094
I had no idea about the Soviet banning those writers for those reasons. Sad! I agree that Russia had a lot of wasted potential. A lot of anons presume I am just taking the piss when I say Russian literature isn't as rich as other countries but my reasoning is largely based on what you have said. It is just due to a historical process. Who knows what sort of literature a Romance Africa would have produced. Probably good stuff considering St. Augustine and that guy who wrote the Golden Ass.

I want to reply to something you said in an earlier post. For me, I see novelty in literature as vitally important because invention is essential to trace. The Russians mastered the arts quickly, but whatever they might have innovated in, say, philosophy was tragically cut off. Anons take "poor literary corpus" to mean bad writing. No, much of that is due to history, nothing to do with talent or skill. One of the reasons why I always promote English (including American) and French literature on this board is because they have had an uninterrupted, extensive corpus. Virtually no other nation or people can say this.

[Anonymous No.18130202]

>>18130143
It's hard to say. The Puritanical regime was pretty brutal and the Enlightenment played a good enough role to temper America to make it thrive. With term limits, could the Commonwealth of England maintained itself? Could England have progressed to a point where they may have been a Catholic Lord Protector in the 20th century. So many curious alternate histories out there.

[Anonymous No.18130254]

>>18130175
Yeah, here's the original quote in German:
>Seitdem gibt es russische Philosophie nur noch in der russischen Emigration atißerhalb Rußlands. Aber es liegt auf der Hand, daß eine Philosophie der Emigration auf die Dauer nicht möglich ist, da sie der Resonanz im eigenen Volkskörper entbehrt, und so ist auch das Schicksal der russischen Philosophie abhängig von dem Gelingen der Beseitigung der bolschewistischen Regierung.
English translation:
>Russian philosophy now exists only in Russian emigration outside Russia. But it is obvious that a philosophy of emigration is not possible in the long run, since it lacks resonance in one's own national body, and so the fate of Russian philosophy also depends on the success of the elimination of the Bolshevik government.
>In pursuit of these "ideas", every other direction was finally violently expelled from the "universities". "The great campaign against all directions in philosophy that are not acceptable to the materialists began practically not only with the help of numerous pamphlets, but above all through a" radical cleansing "of the universities. To preserve the spiritual poison of the old worldview, it was now a matter of completely transforming the universities. For the Bolsheviks, all idealistic doctrines were as false and dangerous as religion itself; their representatives therefore had to be rendered harmless. Many teachers at Russian universities, also known in Europe, who had been regarded as representatives of idealistic philosophy, were confronted with the alternative of either leaving Russia as quickly as possible at the expense of the state or of converting to the new views of materialistic philosophy; then began the emigration of the most famous philosophers abroad, which was soon joined by historians and lawyers. Soon the Russian "Main Committee for Popular Education," headed by Nadeshda Krupskaya, Lenin's widow, issued a circular demanding the removal of a number of books from public libraries. This index included the works of Kant, Plato, Schopenhauer, Herbert Spencer, Ernst Mach, Nietzsche and numerous others. A total of 134 books were declared as forbidden in this circular and 94 authors were listed, all of whom were to be removed from the libraries; optional to ban other books from their collections as dangerous.

[Anonymous No.18130335]

>>18130254
Yeesh, even the Vatican's Index wasn't so prohibitive. Emigré literature inevitably becomes something more cosmopolitan, though that is not necessarily a bad thing if you have a broader culture that transcends borders, such as medieval Europe had. You might enjoy Ezra Pound's comments on the subject in ABC of Reading. He gives high praise to Chaucer for this reason over Shakespeare because Chaucer was able to riff on Dante whereas Shakespeare just had his peers and the classics.

[Anonymous No.18130337]

>>18130175
I agree with you on the Russian corpus not being really that large. I would say that other European nations could contest England and France in terms of both quantity and quality, e.g. Spain, Italy and Germany. Other countries, like Ireland, Scotland, Switzerland, Poland, Denmark/Sweden, did not have as large a population, so they can't compete on the quantity front, but I think they might challenge them on the quality front. That's for European nations though.

[Anonymous No.18130375]

>>18130335
It was insane, honestly. I want to expand on my other point about the reception of classical literature in Russia, important books for liturgy, the Scriptures, prayer books and apocryphal material (some of which is probably only preserved in Old Church Slavonic, e.g. 2 Enoch, Ladder of Jacob, Ascension of Isaiah, and the Legend of Aphroditianus) They didn't import books on astronomy, rhetoric, arithmetic, philosophy, grammar, music, or any cool works of philosophy or poetry, i.e. anything which was extremely important for the development of later western and byzantine lit

[Anonymous No.18130381]

>>18130375
Wanted to say all those ecclesiastical books got translated into Slavonic

[Anonymous No.18130415]

>>18130175
>uninterrupted, extensive corpus
What's the point in noting this? France, England and the United States excelled over a period of three centuries (roughly 1650-1950) because they were the foremost countries riding the effects of the Enlightenment. Before the 17th century Italy had been continuously the cultural centre of Europe for over four centuries (roughly 1250-1650) with a tradition spanning from Dante to Giambattista Marino. What of it, then? After the Second world war it doesn't seem like any country prevailed over the others. It's a homogenized world, things are very different. I really don't get the relevance of the parameter you adopt to judge national literatures. Especially when you talk about America which is still a young country with a relatively short timeline.

[Anonymous No.18130822]

>>18128384
>>18128404
Fried rice and chicken balls

[Anonymous No.18130858]

Ban leftist burgerfaggots from online communication, no one cares about your retarded internalised self hatred or the many threads you post regarding it

[Anonymous No.18130894]

>>18130202
>>18130143
puritanism gave birth to modern retarded American 'sjw' ideology. There is a direct correlation between royalist and puritan civil war sides and modern voting here in the uk

[Anonymous No.18131109]

>Latin America: Gabriel García Marquez, Borges, Bolaño, Cortázar, Pessoa
>Middle East: Sadegh Hedayat, Thousand and One Nights, a shitton of persian poets
>East Asia: Lao Tzu, Mishima, Luo Guanzhong, Sun Tzu
Camus was also Algerian prior to moving to France.

While some of these nations are probably irrelevant in terms of literature nowadays, historically literature has always been the medium with the most diversity of origin, next to music. In contrast, i think i've never played a single videogame from a country other than Japan, China or the United States.

[Anonymous No.18131605]

>>18131109
lots of games you've played have probably been developed in Europe. It is true that its basically the west and japan.

[Anonymous No.18131838]

>>18128604
>>18128647
based

[Anonymous No.18131906]

>>18129508
Russian lit is old and rich, but very church oriented pre Peter. The learned there were all into mysticism and hagiography, but couldn't care less about worldly shit.
I recall some ancient elder's reaction on one monk's vail that Aristotle nor Plato was translated into Church Slavonic, which basically amounted to "it is all pagan dogshit, why bother, go read the Bible". The monasteries did procure mystical tomes from Greece and Germany, Boehme was extremely popular with Bolsheviks looting and burning like hundreds of tomes of him from the monasteries.
Still there were some major translation from Greek and Latin in XVI century. The monks were quite literate and read in occult and mystic lit, they just didn't care about fiction.

Also Belarus and Ukraine had notable Latin literacy due to Baltic Sea trade and Polish influence, with comparable Renaissance and Baroque period lit, but nobody outside Poland cares. They are indistinguishable from Hungary or Portugal or other less imperial countries.

Overall, don't Orientalize Russia, it is just big Sweden with bad PR.

[Anonymous No.18131988]

>>18131906
Yeah, Belarus and Ukraine managed to establish contact with the Catholic world through Poland. I don't know if Jews should be included in this, but one of the best philosophers at the close of the 18th century, Salomon Maimon, was born in Belarus. I didn't know about Böhme though, that's actually quite cool. I hope I didn't give the impression that I disdain Russian culture or anything lol

[Anonymous No.18132182]

>>18130894
Dumb

[Anonymous No.18132210]

>>18128358
Well most good literature was written before the 18th century when all other countries were basically pseudo-barbarians. Nowadays we have many countries but we have very little quality anything culturally.

[Anonymous No.18132242]

Read the story of the stone