Poll

Who has produced the greatest body of literary art?

William Shakespeare
Dante Alighieri
Homer
The Deuteronomist
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Leo Tolstoy
James Joyce
Plato
Marcel Proust
William Faulkner
Walt Whitman
Miguel de Cervantes
Charles Dickens
John Milton
F. Scott Fitzgerald
George Orwell
Franz Kafka
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Virginia Woolf
Edgar Allen Poe
King James Bible Translators

Author Topic: The Greatest Literary Artist  (Read 10352 times)

Junior

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Re: The Greatest Literary Artist
« Reply #20 on: June 17, 2011, 11:09:52 AM »
I have a bit of a Joyce-on. I think he's working on having a similar cultural impact to Shakespeare.
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oldkid

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Re: The Greatest Literary Artist
« Reply #21 on: June 17, 2011, 11:28:15 AM »
Why was Dickens posted twice?  Because I was editing this at three in the morning.  I shouldn't be doing that.

I included Woolf, but I wonder about Emily Dickinson or Sylvia Plath? 

For me personally, Shakespeare doesn't go high on the list.  Influential, certainly, but not more than the King James Bible.  (Should the translators be included?)  His stories, except occasionally, aren't exceptional, his language too dense, his monologues often dull.  I find Plato exhilarating and Dante, while also a bit dense, with note to be brilliant.
"It's not art unless it has the potential to be a disaster." Bansky

sdedalus

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Re: The Greatest Literary Artist
« Reply #22 on: June 17, 2011, 12:44:39 PM »
I'd put the authors of the King James Bible on the list.  That's a fantastic, and highly influential, literary work.
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smirnoff

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Re: The Greatest Literary Artist
« Reply #23 on: June 17, 2011, 03:37:18 PM »
Two dickens are better than one.



Now lets see... crossing off the ones I've never read:

William Shakespeare
Dante Alighieri
 Homer
 The Deuteronomist
 Fyodor Dostoyevsky
 Leo Tolstoy
 James Joyce
 Plato
 Marcel Proust
 William Faulkner
 Walt Whitman
 Miguel de Cervantes
 Charles Dickens
 John Milton
 F. Scott Fitzgerald

 George Orwell
Franz Kafka
 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 Virginia Woolf
 Edgar Allen Poe


And the winner is Shakespeare!

Not actually voting.
« Last Edit: June 17, 2011, 03:39:33 PM by smirnoff »

verbALs

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Re: The Greatest Literary Artist
« Reply #24 on: June 17, 2011, 03:53:29 PM »
Get some EA Poe in your life NOW! (I'd suggest reading the stories and watching the Vincent Price films that match).

Seriously MacBeth, Hamlet, King Lear & Othello aren't influential, seriously? Kurosawa seemed influenced, Orson Welles as well, Oliiver.....erm the greatest romance ever? Romeo & Juliet. Over the dinner table last night we were talking about the Shakespeare quotes that are part of everyday life (that sounds weird but my son is an English graduate). I kind of understand the resistance but like I say post a 20th century thread and it might be more of a contest.
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Bondo

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Re: The Greatest Literary Artist
« Reply #25 on: June 17, 2011, 04:04:20 PM »
Get some EA Poe in your life NOW! (I'd suggest reading the stories and watching the Vincent Price films that match).

I've read a fair bit but seeing as Poe's works can be gotten for free as they are in the public domain I might just read/reread the stories along with my already planned October marathon of the Price films.

oldkid

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Re: The Greatest Literary Artist
« Reply #26 on: June 17, 2011, 04:09:56 PM »
No one said Shakespeare wasn't influential.  But he is second in influencing English literature after the King James Bible.

And Romeo and Juliet?  Perhaps the stupidest romance ever.  My daughter had to translate Romeo's final monologue into modern English and that set my whole family into hysterics about how stupid the ending was.  Ever since my first reading of it, I thought that with the number of people who died, an atomic weapon should have just blasted the whole town with as much sense as it made.

Hamlet is great.  Lear is great (Ran is better).  But Plato and the King James Bible.  Just the book of Job outdoes any Shakespearean tragedy.
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verbALs

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Re: The Greatest Literary Artist
« Reply #27 on: June 17, 2011, 04:16:13 PM »
OK you don't like Shakespeare I get it.
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sdedalus

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Re: The Greatest Literary Artist
« Reply #28 on: June 17, 2011, 04:20:11 PM »
Shakespeare is the Babe Ruth of art.  No one comes close, no one ever will come close.
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Bondo

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Re: The Greatest Literary Artist
« Reply #29 on: June 17, 2011, 04:24:03 PM »
Not only did God write the bible, he created all these other authors. God ftw!

Also, Romeo and Juliet has the same silly destiny/determinism as Bollywood, with less social relevance. I happen to love Romeo and Juliet (I have at least two adaptations of it in my top-150). I'm just pointing out that some of the comments vis a vis Bollywood/Slumdog can apply to Mr. Shakespeare's work as well. And a bit with a dog.

 

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