/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.21790165]

Why were early modern english and middle english writers so obsessed with “wit”? What the hell even is wit? How am I supposed to appreciate poetry if half its value is riding on being considered snappy and funny by dead britons? “Wit” has no perennial value, but it’s either that or generic religious shit. I feel like English poetry didn’t even start until romanticism.

[Anonymous No.21790174]

>why is this old thing stupid if I think like a modern person instead of the people from the time it was created
Why do you feel the need to be inflammatory

[Anonymous No.21790176]

>>21790174
Well why were the so obsessed with wit? If it’s just cultural difference then explain their mindset. Sounds like you’re making excuses for their mediocrity.

[Anonymous No.21790200]

>>21790165
What about Donne, Dryden, etc

[Anonymous No.21790205]

>>21790165
Wit is the reddit quip of their days.

[Anonymous No.21790206]

>>21790176
>Sounds like you’re making excuses for their mediocrity.
I have no opinions on them whatsoever so it seems like you're projecting some sort of frustration that you're not "getting the joke" so to speak

[Anonymous No.21790246]

>>21790200
Idk I haven’t read them yet, I made this thread because I started reading the Norton anthology and it seems mostly not very good so far, except a few like Pearl and Western Wind.

[Frater Asemlen !XS8vrClKs2 No.21790308]

Cleverness isn’t just in them, every people appreciates cleverness, the danger with wit is that over-wit without sweetness is plainly annoying, to demonstrate wit, clever intellect is pleasing like seeing a painting that shows you a fascinating trick of perspective, like a song taking non standard elements and somehow still sounding incredibly beautiful.

The beauty of wit is it shows things about language, shows a vision of the intellectual world, the key to poetry in opposition to the other arts is that its primary interest is in the play of the intellect, whether that’s the imagination, the reason faculties or what have you, to see how the strange many words and concepts harmonize is “wondrous” it produces a delight, what differentiates it from the gimmick is the amount of success, for this Witt even extends to concise and accurate definition and beautiful phrasing.

Wit includes in itself the humor wit we speak of, but all manner of clever craftsmanship also.

[Anonymous No.21790345]

>>21790165
You have to be stupid as shit to find the wit found in Shakespeare inaccessible. Take for example Henry IV, the entire book is saturated with imagery of doubles and "accounting" which serves as indirect commentary on the characters and history. There are higher and lower expressions of this extended metaphor, but it's always clever and effortless.

[Anonymous No.21790350]

>he thinks wit = funny
roflmao

[Anonymous No.21790351]

>>21790205
>he says with the most reddit criticism possible

[Anonymous No.21790355]

>>21790350
Yeah, retards who can't into double entendre and wordplay have no business reading Shakespeare.

[Anonymous No.21790385]

>>21790308
Jerking off could also give me delight but it doesn’t instill any lasting meaning. You said in another thread that poetry should be judged by how well the author presents his values, you really think wit is properly “poetic” in the highest sense?

[Anonymous No.21790396]

>>21790351
Metacriticism

[Anonymous No.21790413]

>>21790246
>hasnt read donne and dryden
>making sweeping generalizations about english verse

[Anonymous No.21790426]

>>21790413
They are both post shakespeare writers anon, I was referring to middle and early modern english

[Anonymous No.21790449]

>>21790426
They're early modern but fair enough. What have you read other than Shakespeare?

[Frater Asemlen !XS8vrClKs2 No.21791006]

>>21790385
Not presents his values, how well he adheres to his values of aesthetic, and in the colder, more mechanical modes, the more egotistical modes, wit absolutely can be very poetic, for example, in Hamlet Shakespeare himself his ego is not present, but he makes of hamlet a powerful ego, and this is bolstered immediately by his sense of wit, since his mother tells him He’d feel better if he was more out in the sun, to which he replies he feels unwell precisely because he is in the son( role, with a dead father.)

Immediately this snarky wit establishes much about the character of hamlet, and this is a key question, authors have two options when writing, to utterly annihilate their own ego and replace it with a host of imaginary egos and environments, OR to magnify their ego to the highest possible extent they can muster, and of course targeted combinations of these. Neither mode is superior, in Dante you have the self inserted clever poet as absolutely a major driving force in the aesthetic and it works exceptionally well.


Again the problem isn’t cleverness or ego, it’s over-cleverness that doesn’t have an appropriate amount of “sweetness” of easy beauty to balance it, to the point it becomes snarky and even incoherent, and Ego when married with virtuous qualities produces some of the most excellent works, how much of Goethe comes out of his self-inserting overly clever ego? It’s just not a problem because his mind and character and style is so damn beautiful and lively and like spring, that the ego feels vital, powerful, positive.

[Anonymous No.21791128]

>>21790165
John Lyly started it with his plays "Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit" (1578) and "Euphues and his England" (1580), which originated the form and were wild successes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euphues
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lyly

Wit also had an important theoretical standing, much greater than the snappy literary device it is today. Sorry I've forgotten what it was to be able to relay it, but if you read lit crit on the era they'll explain it.

[Anonymous No.21791165]

>>21791128
Wit was understood more generally then as what we would call "humour" (whereas humour then was the comprehensive medical theory encompassing all health and emotional states), and also taste, and whether wit and taste were objective or subjective and by what criteria to judge, if it were possible at all, good wit and good taste from bad wit and bad taste.

[Anonymous No.21791193]

>>21790176
Because Lyle was wonderful (i.e. new and the feeling of awe at a new discovery) at the time. It went out of fashion quickly and retreated to being a background device like all others. You're projecting a modern tiredness that doesn't exist in the springtime of a new literary devices/movement invention as it is born. It's not tired when its fresh and young.

[Anonymous No.21791233]

>>21790165
>What the hell even is wit?
If you read the intro of the modern Lyle edition here>>21791128 they explain the form of the device named 'euphuism', at its most basic a sentence of two clauses of equal length and assonance with a word substituted for contrasting effect, ideally its antithesis.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euphuism