Do you rank him above Shakespeare?

Do you rank him above Shakespeare?

Yeah undoubtedly, and I say that as someone who regards Shakespeare highly

nah man he's shit with reviews to prove it.

no. shakey did more for language than joyce.

>so all my hip friends read this and it was recommended by my local college bookstore by chad worthington the cashier but i just didn't understand it, religion? what's the big deal?

He was undoubtedly more well versed in the English language. However, Joyce can be criticized for the methods he chose to display his knowledge.

Honestly, has there been a book as influential as Ulysses since? Just consider the copious abundance of stylistic sentence-fragments in 20th century prose, that's all from Joyce; the mixture of getting into the character's head (with these sentence-fragments, often) with objective third-person narration in the same paragraph, that's Joyce; no one since Joyce has really revolutionized English prose so much, it's not even the learned literary allusions, the obsession to minute details, the insanely wellplanned structure of it and the fact that it's all in one day that's so revolutionary as the very goddamn prose itself. I guess there's also the fact that he was the first author who really brought into the open the small details of ordinary life no one ever wrote about, Proust was great too but he never explicitly included masturbation, descriptions of shitting, pissing, etc., he dresses it up with "going to my room for my private pleasures", or the sound of him on the chamber-pot being like fairy music, they're not actual events that happen in the plot per se, just heavily implied.

For American authors where the influence of Joyce is incredibly obvious in their style and/or content, there's Pynchon, Updike, Gass, McElroy, P.K. Dick, and more.

McCarthy, Faulkner, also, Beckett (obv. not American), Hemingway (even if their aesthetic philosophies seemed to be opposed, Hemingway definitely used a very minimalist form of stream-of-consciousness in a lot of his stories), the list goes on and on; all great authors in their own right, but none of them as influential as Joyce, rather all derivative from Joyce.

>Yeah undoubtedly,

Joyce couldn't write poetry or drama sooo

I think it is perfectly fair to say that just like all English Literature since Shakespeare has come from Shakespeare, all English literature since Joyce has come from Joyce. They are certainly equals but I lean toward Joyce as the superior of the two.

this

shakes had a supernatural ability to sense and fill holes in the linguistic weave of the era with brand new words and word-constructions which were immediately understandable to those who heard them even though they'd never been used before.

think about that for a second.

there were all of these words waiting to happen: words that made sense to exist, yet hadn't come to birth.

shakespeare had this crazy talent for identifying those gaps and perfectly filling them, to the tune of over 1000 words.

that is fucking crazy

joyce can't touch him

I come up with new words all the time when I've had a few too many.

but nobody repeats them, they don't reach fixity in the linguistic ecosystem because you suck out loud

Around him, sure, but, at that level, placing one ahead cof another is senseless, since they are too much themselves.

No, and FW is my favorite piece of lit.

They're the two outstanding writers in English IMO. That said, Shakespeare without a doubt.

1) Shakespeare has more range: he's equally at home with a bunch of thieving drunkards in the tavern as he is covering high dynastic politics -- and he can do this in the same play (Henry IV Part 1). Joyce covered the entire human condition in the head of Bloom, but only wrote about ordinary Dubliners.
2) Shakespeare is a poet. Comparatively, Joyce was playing on easy mode when bending the English language. And no matter how beautiful his prose is (Joyce writes the most sonorous English prose ever put to paper), it simply can't match blank verse in the hands of a supreme prosodist like Shakespeare.

Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes and groves,
And ye that on the sands with printless foot
Do chase the ebbing Neptune and do fly him
When he comes back; you demi-puppets that
By moonshine do the green sour ringlets make,
Whereof the ewe not bites, and you whose pastime
Is to make midnight mushrooms, that rejoice
To hear the solemn curfew; by whose aid,
Weak masters though ye be, I have bedimm'd
The noontide sun, call'd forth the mutinous winds,
And 'twixt the green sea and the azured vault
Set roaring war: to the dread rattling thunder
Have I given fire and rifted Jove's stout oak
With his own bolt; the strong-based promontory
Have I made shake and by the spurs pluck'd up
The pine and cedar: graves at my command
Have waked their sleepers, oped, and let 'em forth
By my so potent art. But this rough magic
I here abjure, and, when I have required
Some heavenly music, which even now I do,
To work mine end upon their senses that
This airy charm is for, I'll break my staff,
Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,
And deeper than did ever plummet sound
I'll drown my book.


Top that.

Why do you guys always do this. Shakespeare wrote better plays and poems but Joyce definitely wrote better novels.
I enjoy Joyce more, but that's just my personal preference.

>Joyce definitely wrote better novels

Can’t hear with the waters of. The chittering waters of. Flittering bats, fieldmice bawk talk. Ho! Are you not gone ahome? What Thom Malone? Can’t hear with bawk of bats, all thim liffeying waters of. Ho, talk save us! My foos won’t moos. I feel as old as yonder elm. A tale told of Shaun or Shem? All Livia’s daughtersons. Dark hawks hear us. Night! Night! My ho head halls. I feel as heavy as yonder stone. Tell me of John or Shaun? Who were Shem and Shaun the living sons or daughters of? Night now! Tell me, tell me, tell me, elm! Night night! Telmetale of stem or stone. Beside the rivering waters of, hitherandthithering waters of. Night!

>Exiles
>not great

Fuck you

The first page is probably the most flawless I can think of

>Riverrun, past Eve and Adam's

That alone gives me shivers

The siss of the whisp of the sigh of the softzing at the stir of the ver
grose O arundo of a long one in midias reeds: and shades began to
glidder along the banks, greepsing, greepsing, duusk unto duusk, and it
was as glooming as gloaming could be in the waste of all peacable
worlds. Metamnisia was allsoonome coloroform brune; citherior spiane
an eaulande, innemorous and unnumerose. The Mookse had a sound
eyes right but he could not all hear. The Gripes had light ears left yet he
could but ill see. He ceased. And he ceased, tung and trit, and it was
neversoever so dusk of both of them. But still Moo thought on the deeps
of the undths he would profoundth come the morrokse and still Gri
feeled of the scripes he would escipe if by grice he had luck enoupes.
Oh, how it was duusk! From Vallee Maraia to Grasyaplaina,
dormimust echo! Ah dew! Ah dew! It was so duusk that the tears of
night began to fall, first by ones and twos, then by threes and fours, at
last by fives and sixes of sevens, for the tired ones were wecking, as we
weep now with them. O! O! O! Par la pluie!
Then there came down to the thither bank a woman of no
appearance (I believe she was a Black with chills at her feet) and she
gathered up his hoariness the Mookse motamourfully where he was
spread and carried him away to her invisible dwelling, thats hights,
Aquila Rapax, for he was the holy sacred solem and poshup spit of her
boshop's apron. So you see the Mookse he had reason as I knew and you
knew and he knew all along. And there came down to the hither bank a
woman to all important (though they say that she was comely, spite the
cold in her heed) and, for he was as like it as blow it to a hawker's hank,
she plucked down the Gripes, torn panicky autotone, in angeu from his
limb and cariad away its beotitubes with her to her unseenshieling, it is,
De Rore Coeli. And so the poor Gripes got wrong; for that is always
how a Gripes is, always was and always will be. And it was never so
thoughtful of either of them. And there were left now an only elmtree
and but a stone. Polled with pietrous, Sierre but saule. O! Yes! And
Nuvoletta, a lass.
Then Nuvoletta reflected for the last time in her little long life and
she made up all her myriads of drifting minds in one. She cancelled all
her engauzements. She climbed over the bannistars; she gave a childy
cloudy cry: Nuée! Nuée! A lightdress fluttered. She was gone. And into
the river that had been a stream (for a thousand of tears had gone eon
her and come on her and she was stout and struck on dancing and her
muddied name was Missisliffi) there fell a tear, a singult tear, the
loveliest of all tears (I mean for those crylove fables fans who are 'keen'
on the prettypretty commonface sort of thing you meet by hopeharrods)
for it was a leaptear. But the river tripped on her by and by, lapping as
though her heart was brook: Why, why, why! Weh, O weh I'se so silly to
be flowing but I no canna stay!

Definitely. Willy S. didn't have the balls to spend 20 years writing the perfect dick joke.

william shakespeare's name is a wank joke you fool

>
shakes had a supernatural ability to sense and fill holes in the linguistic weave of the era with brand new words and word-constructions which were immediately understandable to those who heard them even though they'd never been used before.

That's a bit of a stretch, he was an effective meme-lord and his influence on linguistics via pop culture makes his language more "immediately understandable" today than it was at the time

>Do you rank him above Shakespeare?
according to what criteria? how do you rank validity of those criteria? they didn't even write in the same genre.
but honestly who cares? do you have anything interesting to say about either of them?

His dad gets the credit for that though.

Ehh, Gass was more influenced by Flaubert, Rilke, and Henry James.

I actually went checking it myself because I couldn't believe it's real. I'm guessing american students are forced to read it in high school.

>i rank shakespeare

Shakespeare coining all of those words is a myth. He's just the earliest source we have for them. That's impressive in itself as it shows his wide linguistic capabilities, so we don't have to pretend he invented all of them.

>He was undoubtedly more well versed in the English language.

9/10 bait

>came into the thread to see if this exact post was here

Well done la