English: Shakespeare

>tfw German literature fell into irrelevance after the disappearance of great medieval poets like Wolfram von Eschenbach and Walther von der Vogelweide and stayed mediocre until the emergence of the great Baroque writers like Grimmelshausens and Gryphius
>tfw the Meistersänger tradition cannot fill the void
>tfw Germany had to wait for Lessing to write plays that could finally rival those written by authors from culturally advanced European nations

Paradise Lost could be our national epic

How about Utopia?

Also the lengeds of King Arthur are probably the most important, more even than Beowulf.

>How about Utopia?
Forget it. Was first written in Latin.

Proust, maybe Flaubert
Goethe

Finnish: Linna

>not kafka

No, so
obviously

>German literature fell into irrelevance

>Sebastian Brant
>Erasmus von Rotterdam
>Theuerdank
>all those incunabula like the Schedelsche Weltchronik
>invention of the printing press

Neger bitte.

Oh, and, you know ... Martin Luther.

This is GOAT classics, not existential top 40 playlist

>existential top 40
>shakespeare
>dante
>camões
Shakespeare and Dante at least can be considered GOAT classics alot more than kafka.

The lusiads is the greatest epic poem of the Last 500 years, senpai.

point?

who would you rather? pessoa?
my point is we are discussing authors whose works were written in the classical tradition and that are considered timeless.

Heo Gyun for Korea

Yeah guys I kinda fucked that up, I thought he was naming kafka a goat classic, and the titles named in the op top 40's.

Das Narrenschiff and Theuerdank may be valiant efforts but they don't come close (at least not in the capacity of representing literary tradition transcending borders) to the works of the authors OP mentioned. I understood the OP to restrict the choice of authors to those who prominently used their native language to write literary works as opposed to those who still used Latin or wrote historical and philosophical texts. Erasmus von Rotterdam mostly wrote in Latin if I'm not mistaken. One could certainly argue that Hochdeutsch was born with Luther's translation of the bible, but I don't think it has the same merit as an original work when it comes to comparing great artists. I don't know how good his hymns are and I think his theological works should be excluded from the discussion for the purposes of this thread .

I think this is the right answer

There's a lot of competition but Molière definitely should be the French one.

>Camões
>Not de Assis
Reported.

You're right, of course, and I'm aware of the points you brought up. My post was only meant as a refutation of the statement that claimed German literature of the Renaissance "irrelevant". To call the works of that time mediocre is quite audacious.

Luther
Voltaire

>To call the works of that time mediocre is quite audacious.
That is of course true for any period in history during which written works have been published. I just meant to say that there was no monumental figure with whom one could identify German literature of the time. Here (as before) I use "German literature" in the sense that it encompasses literature (as opposed to any kind of science, I don't know if there's a word that properly describes this distinction) written in (some form of) German.

Moliere, Flaubert runner-up
Goethe

Norwegian: Ibsen
Danish: Holberg
Swedish: Strindberg

have you even read genji? its horrible

Yes, I have. What you think doesn't really matter. It's been the major fictional work in Japan for a thousand years.

Is Shakespeare even really that good or do Anglos just prop him up as a meme because they literally have NO one else?

Paradise Lost is the most well written

What are we rating? Gayness?

literature in Japan has been westernized since

they can't even read it without it being translated

he is well known globally

have you not read any?

I'm aware. And the translations are done by major novelists. There's really not an argument against it being the major prose epic of Japan.

I guess the age of prose/poetry epics ended before they had one on the level of the other authors

>nobody has mentioned Montaigne yet

It was written in the 11th century, a few centuries before any of the ones in the OP.

Victor Hugo, Zola, Voltaire, Baudelaire

He didn't write fiction.

Are you just namedropping randomly? What national epic did Voltaire write?

Is Shakespeare even comparable to guys like Cervantes and Dante?

And do plays even strictly count as literature?
I mean you read it with the knowledge that you aren't even getting its full intention (a play).

Candide, almost every student in France read that book.
But if that's what you're looking for then Hugo

Christine de Pisan for France

England: Chaucer
Italy: Galilei
Portugal:Camoes
Spain: Cervantes
French: Moliere
Germany: Luther

Zola, Baudelaire and Voltaire aren't even contenders, wtf

But he is really important to written French. I thought that was the deal...

How about The Song of Roland and The Song of the Nibelungs.

Even with we don't know how write them, they are Imo The most important works of poetry and literature of this period in their countries.

Any Dutch?

this thread has digenerated into yet another "look how unlike everyone else I am" convention

>English: Milton
>Spanish: Quevedo
>Italian: Ariosto
>Portuguese: Camões
>French: Flaubert
>German: Mann
>Russian: Bely

>o god som1 might post som1 idk lmao hipsters

>Sweden: Strindberg

>he fell for the Machado de Assis meme

>Middle High German
it's not close enough to modern German to count

>>Erasmus von Rotterdam
moffen opgekankerd aub

>Assis:
>Dom Casmurro
>Brás Cubas
>Alienista

>Camões:
>Os Lusíadas

Looks like it was you who fell for the Camões meme.

Machado de Assis is a better writer, but Guimarães Rosa is the best brazilian contender.

Agreed, João Guimarães Rosa is GOAT

You all are a bunch of faggots.

It is clear that Raul Pompéia is the best one.
Who didn't die of boredom whilst reading O ateneu?
How can he be so bad and yet manages to be a classic?

The truly greatest writer is the one that tricks the cultural elite in believing in him.
It alligns well with Brazil cultural scenery of the last years.
I bet Pompéia knew javanese.

I haven't read O Ateneu :V

Dit. Moffen krijgt de tyfus.

Keep your sausage fingers off muh humanist freethinkers.

Paul van Loon

>Germany
>no one has said Büchner yet
>Goethe & Mann literally the only serious mentions

This kills the Hans.

Dafuk? This is a good thread. No one mentioned hipstershit, and coming from Veeky Forums, a board full of pseudo smart commie faggots, that rare.

the ? means there are too many. fags.

well done op. exposed lit's illiteracy.

>implying it was necessary

??????

>Dom Casmurro

it's probably the most AIDS-tier thing that happened in Brazilian literature. "did Olhos de Ressaca really cu.cked him!? Betinho was such a madman xD"

Sick novel though.

but he is relatively obscure which is all that matters on Veeky Forums
and he takes a nice picture
that also helps

>Shakespeare
This guy is literally trash. His plays are shit and writes so pretentiously it hurts.

>Is Shakespeare even comparable to guys like Cervantes and Dante?
The reverse is a better question, just because he crushes both in quantity. Shakespeare's complete works is said to have 118,406 lines and 884,647 words (for comparison, Commedia has 14,233 lines and Quixote 307,520 words). Now, not all of Shakespeare's work is the work of a genius, but unlike the other two, he had more than one absolute masterpiece (are Hamlet and King Lear not on the level of Commedia and Don Quixote?)
Dante has 3 characters: himself, Virgil and Beatrice. They're not why people care about the Divine Comedy. Cervantes has two: Don Quixote and Sancho Panza.
Hamlet, King Lear, Edmund, Iago, Macbeth, Lady Macbeth, Falstaff and Prospero are certainly not alone Shakespeare's immortal characters, but make it there. That's more than both combined.

It's not fair. It just isn't. And no, reading a play doesn't take away from the experience. You don't need actors to feel his characters' life or to feel the texture of his poetry and prose.

>Buchner and Mann
Goethe is the only option
t. wehraboo

Shakespere has more masterpieces than Cervantes, but none of them is as good as Don Quixote.

Why do you think Don Quixote is so great?

Dante hasn't written only the Commedia tho

French : Sade.

>muh satire
>muh irony

>people saying Camões is not the biggest name in the Portuguese language
Come one, Machado de Assis might have better short stories. Guimarães Rosa might have a better prose, but Portuguese is know as the language of Camões for a reason.

Just like Shakespeare and Dante helped to create what we call English and Italian today, Portuguese just exists because of Camões.

Literally fart jokes.

>so in so

>French: ?
Dumas
>German: ?
Goethe

Russian: Pushkin

Lessing was always more of a keen theorist than a playwright, I do believe he said something along those lines himself, although applying what is today called method and theory to something like Lessing's Laocoon would obviously be anachronistic, so if his dramas could compete with his contemporary French rivals, for example, it was because the French drama had at the time grown stagnant, to which was also alluded in the contemporary literature of the times, or near-contemporary literature like Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship where French drama is mentioned as an example of overly coy and pretentious stagnancy.

or something to that effect*

Is this some kind of sick joke ?

?

not sure how christine de pisan would be a joke. her work on joan of arc was pretty important. lierally a national epic.

Agreed.

Also I love Lacoön...it's a shame more of his work isn't translated into English

I sometimes feel bad when an anime/game fan is more educated than me.

Is it autistic?