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/lit/ - Literature

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6115250 No.6115250 [Reply] [Original]

Okay, so is Shakespeare really THE greatest? I personally can't feel justified saying so, what I've read of his was amazing but I haven't read enough of him or enough literature in general to say with confidence.

I feel like the majority of these 'critics' who claim he's the greatest are english monoglots who feel satisfied knowing the greatest author of all time wrote in their language, thus reinforcing the English world hegemony. Are there many critics/authors of other languages who view Shakespeare as the greatest?

Perhaps once we settle the matter we can move on to the dubious question of Shakespeare authorship...but I digress.
; )

Anyway, discuss

>> No.6115320

he's the greatest and anyone who doesn't see that is a dip

>> No.6115331

>>6115250
He was the greatest because of his astounding influence AND astounding skill, not of mention mimesis of human condition. If he had pumped out just a quarter of the plays he did he would still be considered one of the greatest ever.

>> No.6115338
File: 13 KB, 300x300, 1279082592656.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
6115338

>>6115250

>Dat forehead

>> No.6115399

He mostly wrote sitcoms.

His comedies aren't funny.

His work is formally conventional.

Most of what he wrote is horribly dated, especially his sonnets.

His work seems commonplace and cliched.

Marlowe wrote a better play than he ever did.

Most of his work is derivative.

He never wrote a novel (the true test of a writer).

He's mostly celebrated by people who haven't studied his oeuvre, which is uneven.

>> No.6115416

only silly undergraduates are interesting in determining the absolute "greatest" writer. shakespeare was incredible. dante, rabelais, milton, etc. are also incredible. having a pissing contest between geniuses of that degree is just a waste of time.

>> No.6115425

>>6115399
lol

especially lol at the idea that a novel is the true test of a writer i bet you know nothing about poetry

>> No.6115432

>>6115399
wow
so contrarian

>> No.6115450

>>6115250
yes

>> No.6115457

>>6115425
Poetry is a dead form. Why would I waste time studying it? Give me prose or scripts any day. Especially prose. And Ive read a fair bit of poetry to reach that conclusion. You can accomplish anything in prose that you can in verse.

Ask any writer and they'll tell you that novels are the most challenging form to write well.

>>6115432
I like Shakespeare. Those are just some criticisms.

>> No.6115458

>>6115399
Everything about this post is true but anons in here who don't actually read will pretend that it's bait.

>> No.6115471

>>6115457
lmfao

>> No.6115480

>>6115457
lol at the novel being more challenging to write than the epic poem

>> No.6115539

>>6115457

You're wrong. It's the same in music -- whereas symphonies have been essentially the most popular and most complex forms of pieces, true composition ability was always considered the ability to write good string quartets. It's the challenge to split large ideas between only four players, and much more restrictive form. Every note counts.

Poetry is the challenge to present large ideas within a structured, condensed piece in restricted form. Every word counts.

If you can't convey great meaning in small poetic form, you're a failure as a writer.

>> No.6115550

>>6115399
>cliche
Was it cliche when it was written or are you merely appending the modern conception of what is cliche to hundreds-of-years old works?

>> No.6115556

>>6115250
shakespeare is not even in top 5
the greatest author/writer is HOMER
anyone that disagrees is a fucking pleb
>author of the first known literature(europe)
>so many years later, his works still are the foundation to all readers/writers
>shitloads of other reasons, no need to write them since any /lit/ fag knows them

gg

>> No.6115568

>>6115556
His prose was an 8/10 at best.

>> No.6115572

>>6115568
by that standard, shakespears works were 6/10 at best

>> No.6115578

>>6115480
I'm a novelist so perhaps I'm just biased.

>>6115539
You have to admit that it is at least easier to write in a form that you know that no one will ever actually read because it is fucking dead.

>>6115550
>seems
Obviously I'm referring to the way modern readers will react. It's tough to slog through a work where you recognize every element from derivative works you've read previously, and counts against the work itself because it dates the work.

>> No.6115585

>>6115572
What nigga?
A 9/10 at least.

>> No.6115594
File: 80 KB, 881x506, The Essential Value of a Classic Education.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
6115594

>>6115250
Shakespeare wrote about Freudian psychology, existentialism, and racial equality centuries before any of those things actually existed. No author has ever written so much, so beautifully, about the human condition before he did. No author has changed the English language as much as he has.

>> No.6115599

the fact that >>6115568 called homer prose and >>6115572 didn't correct him shows you are both dumb people who use buzzwords incorrectly

>> No.6115606

>>6115599
I bet you're a 2/10 faggot

>> No.6115618

>>6115578
>You have to admit that it is at least easier to write in a form that you know that no one will ever actually read because it is fucking dead.

So are string quartets. But they're still an immense test of skill, as is poetry.

>> No.6115627

>>6115585
seriously, you english cunts really make me rage

>> No.6115629

>>6115606
learn what words mean silly boy

what's next calling paradise lost a novel LOL

>> No.6115642

>Shakespeare
3/10

>Marlowe
2/10

>Schiller
1/10

>Sophocles
2/10

>Euripides
1/10

>Aeschylus
3/10

>Aristophanes
reddit/10


Anyone who says otherwise needs to read more.

>> No.6115648

Holy shiggy, I feel like I need to pay a toll to get into this thread.

>> No.6115653

>>6115627
anyone that think shakespeare is the best of all time, i bet their second-best is stephen king or someone equally bad

>> No.6115657

>>6115642
>this post
meme/10

>> No.6115663

>>6115618
And novels aren't.

>> No.6115670

>>6115653
He is the best of all time.
And I think the second best is Homer followed by Chaucer.

>> No.6115680

>>6115670
chaucer really

i mean i love chaucer but the english bias is real in that pick

>> No.6115681

>>6115642
Do you consider anyone 4/10 or higher?

>> No.6115686

>>6115670
>chaucer
okay, the joke is over, not funny go away

>> No.6115691

>>6115399
>Marlowe
>Writing a better play than any of Shakespeare'a work

And yet you fault Shakespeare for being derivative. Since you can't possibly be talking about Hero and Leander, I'm going to assume you're referring to Dr. Faustus. There are more fart jokes than the average Family Guy episode, there is little to no characterization or growth, and, to be honest, I can't even get into the unoriginality of the Faust story right now. I just can't. I like Marlowe, and don't want to insult him.

>> No.6115693

are you a buttmad frenchman

> Are there many critics/authors of other languages who view Shakespeare as the greatest?
germans <3 shax, they're kind of the original shakespeare cult

>> No.6115701
File: 132 KB, 667x872, melville.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
6115701

Yes, Shakey, I'm sure the groundings laughed at your sex jokes. Excuse me while I recreate the world.

>> No.6115705

>>6115701
i think melville would probably have cringed at this post pretty hard

>> No.6115712

>>6115690
just because someone pushed a english over french and spanish by writing semi-good work doesn't mean he can be considered the GREATEST OF ALL TIME
seriously what the fuck

>> No.6115716

>>6115712
your english isn't even good enough to read shakespeare lol

>> No.6115717

>>6115701
Melville was heavily influenced by Shakespeare

would Moby Dick be half as good as it currently is had he not been copying Shakespeare? Who knows?

>> No.6115721

The man literally single-handedly evolved English and created romantic love as we view it today.

>> No.6115724

Okay, new-friends, this is copypasta.


http://fuuka.warosu.org/lit/thread/S3039755

>> No.6115729

J.K. Rowling is the highest selling author of all time.
And since sales are the only physical way we can measure an author's worth, J.K. Rowling is the greatest writer of all time.

>> No.6115733

>>6115721
English was doing fine without him and romantic love is bullshit, and probably comes from the Cathar bards concealing their theistic love from the Roman Catholics by ironic references to sexual relationships anyway.

>> No.6115736

>>6115705
This is true for anything we ever write about anyone here.

>> No.6115738

>>6115705
>>6115717
Melville outdid Shakespeare by every conceivable metric.

>> No.6115739

>>6115705
I'm absolutely certain 99% of the authors we discuss on here, except for maybe Joyce and DFW, would consider suicide soon after finding this board.
Okay, maybe DFW would, but for unrelated reasons.

>> No.6115741

>>6115716
oh no, you got me pleb

>> No.6115746

>>6115739
DFW would probably want to live to see us all hanged.

>> No.6115748

>>6115741
is this why you are buttmad

are you perplexed by the language

>> No.6115759

>>6115748
yes you got me, i am unable to read the complicated works of an autistic writer

>> No.6115765

>>6115759
>autistic writer
Wat

>> No.6115785

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyZMyYmubv0

i died

>> No.6115806

>>6115250
The question of his authorship isn't really dubious. As to whether he's the greatest, historically at least, authors and critics like J.G. Herder, Goethe, Hugo, Pushkin (I think), Otto Carpeaux, and Gotthold Lessing have praised him to the skies, if not always quite that high.

>> No.6115807

>>6115785
Are you seriously trying to say that Shakespeare is autistic? Just, wow. fucking Frenchmen.
I bet you think Joyce was schizophrenic.

>> No.6115812

>>6115691
Marlowe's best plays are better than Shakespeare's worst (mainly really early ones)

>> No.6115813

>>6115701
>Comparing an American (lol) novelist with a playwright who died 200 years before Melville was born

>> No.6115815

>>6115416
I wonder if someone has realized that we have a /thread.

>> No.6115855

>>6115807
no, I am not

>> No.6115924

>>6115594
Except theories of races appeared in the nineteenth century, before that inequality wasn't grounded on race. As for Freudian psychology, I'll wait until you provide quotes pointing in this direction. And no, anything dealing with desire, internalized guilt or conflicted motivations have to be Freudian psychology, by that account Augustine invented Freudian psychology.

I'd agree on existentialism, which is pretty much the only modern -ism whose preoccupations can be read almost word for word in Shakespeare. The rest relies on a sketchy knowledge of literary history and on loose application of modern labels to older writers.

>> No.6115929

>>6115681
Lao Tin.

>> No.6115979

>>6115250
Shaky was all the rage in the eighteenth and mostly nineteenth century. Of course "greatest of all times" is an emphatetic statement that doesn't mean much in a field so vast and so diverse as literature, but there was a time when Shakespeare was considered that by emphatetic young (and not so young) writers like Goethe or Balzac. I think his highest point was around 1820-1840 but I might be wrong on that.

>>6115693

The French were at it as early as the Germans. Voltaire is the godfathers of continental Shakespeare fans.

>>6115721

>romantic love

is at least as old as Petrarquism. Shakespeare is not even the first English writer to exalt romantic love, nor is he the one who insisted more on it.

I like Shakespeare but you guys display an astonishingly scarce knowledge of the topic. Next time you're going to pretend that he invented the blank verse and the imabic pentameter.

>>6115729
Actually it's whoever wrote the Bible.

>> No.6116025

>>6115924
>before that inequality wasn't grounded on race
Laws of Manu disagree.

>> No.6116081

>>6115979
>The French were at it as early as the Germans. Voltaire is the godfathers of continental Shakespeare fans.
well voltaire certainly was possibly the most important person for getting shakespeare read on the continent he wasn't really the originator of the shakespeare cult the way german scholars were. he was intrigued by shakespeare, but also criticized him a lot later in his life, and i dont know if he ever called shakespeare the greatest ever or anything similar. that reputation came later and to my knowledge still isn't as established in france as it is farther north

>> No.6116086

>>6115399
>Most of what he wrote is horribly dated, especially his sonnets.

You think Shakespeare's sonnets are dated? Seriously? Seriously?

1/10 for making me respond

>> No.6116092

>>6115979
But the bible was written by multiple people.

>> No.6116110

>>6116081
Yes, he's the godfather because he was the first big Shakespeare popularizer on the continent, but in all honesty they were earlier and bigger fans (as you said the Germans scholar, as well as Goethe and the romantics among others). My word choice was not the best. Saying Voltaire was the herald of Shakespeare readership on the continent would probably be better.

>>6116025
Discrimination grounded on hereditary social roles doesn't have to be racial, unless you want to believe that aristocratic societies were racist for privileging highborns, which would be rather anachronostic. Note also that those laws were applied in a region that had Englishmen were scarcely aware of until the time of Shakespeare included.

>> No.6116115

>>6116092
I suppose they'll have to split the title among themselves. What is the most widely read part of the Bible ?

>> No.6116174
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6116174

>>6115594
>Shakespeare wrote about Freudian psychology, existentialism, and racial equality centuries before any of those things actually existed.
I think you'll find that is impossible.

>> No.6116555

>>6115399
>his comedies aren't funny

They're not supposed to be. Comedies are just plays with happy endings.

>> No.6116619

>>6116555
no they are funny

>> No.6116645

Everyone who has posted in this stupid thread is also stupid except for me.

>> No.6116646

>>6116645
no anon you are the stupids

>> No.6116649

>>6116646

*Unsheathes Katana*

*Shitposts*

*Sheathes Katana*

>> No.6116652

>>6116555
Technically, they're plays which end with marriage rather than tragedy.