It's been said that for the title of the best author in the western world, there are only two competitors: Shakespeare and Dante. So, Veeky Forums, who would you say is the better?
I'd say Dante, simply because pic related on its own captured every great thing in Shakespeare's work collectively.
Homer
>there are only two competitors: Shakespeare and Dante. So, Veeky Forums, who would you say is the better?
pynchon, desu.
full disclaimer: i haven't read pynchon.
Dante did everything Homer did, and did it better
Please justify this.
Psssh, when you read Dante, kid, you learn that nothing has to be justified b/c LIFE CAN'T be justified. It just IS. Kinda like Camus. Have you ever read Camus? Probably not, pleb.
Pynchon
Wallace
It really depends on what you value most: influence, originality, or body of work. I'd say their actual literary talents are about the same, as far as complexity, symbolism, and all that other formalist shit is concerned.
So, looking at both, it's impossible to argue that Shakespeare's influence on English can contend with Dante's on Italian, since Dante effectively created the language we know today. That's not to minimize Shakespeare's role in modern English (I'll probably quote him in this post without realizing), since I have nothing but admiration for Shakespeare, but Dante definitely wins as far as "relative influence" is concerned.
It's hard to say which one is more original, though. Shakespeare is kind of notorious for basically rehashing source material to its fullest literary extent, but the way he was able to manipulate every goddamn line of English in his work to achieve maximum beauty and effect in my opinion cancel that out. Dante definitely introduced more, as far as content is concerned; Shakespeare didn't invent the sonnet (he perfected them, but he didn't invent them) but Dante did, at least to any practical degree, invent terza rima. His world-building is also way more influential than Shakespeare's (having none), since his personal conceptions of Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven basically defined how we as a culture picture them to this day. That's not to say world-building counts for literary quality, though. To look at this objectively, it looks like Dante wins.
Shakespeare, however, was much more prolific. His plays and poems could (and do) occupy the most erudite of intellectuals for multiple lifetimes, and each one of his works (excluding those groups of themed sonnets) contains distinct and important themes that we need to examine, generation after generation. Again, that's not to disparage Dante. I'd readily consider The Divine Comedy the greatest work of Western literature, but there's really nowhere else to go from there, unless you want to dig up obscure shit only hardcore Dante scholars care about.
There's also an unannounced fourth category that doesn't exactly fit in with these others, and that's their understanding of humanity. I don't think I could give you an example of an author who understood the human experience better than William Shakespeare. In this fundamental respect he soars above Dante, Cervantes, Milton, and all those other greats, and, like I said before, that's not to their demerit.
As an English speaker, it's hard not to be biased toward Shakespeare, but looking at this they look about tied. Honestly, though, that's just as well since I feel like pitting one against the other just serves to devalue them both. They didn't write to compete with each other, and it's not exactly fair to say either is "better." Sorry if this response was a bit too long and academic for a place like fucking Veeky Forums, but this is just a really interesting question.
(TL;DR: they're tied, I'm long-winded)
>(I'll probably quote him in this post without realizing)
Whoah. This caught me off guard, m8. Good job
Æschylus
Virgil
And Dan Schneider for modern era.
>but there's really nowhere else to go from there, unless you want to dig up obscure shit only hardcore Dante scholars care about.
There's the Vita Nuova and his treatise On Monarchy. I wouldn't say the first is obscure by any means, though the second might be called so. There's probably more that I'm unaware of.
The problem with counting being prolific as a category is that it implies quantity correlates to quality. In the case of Dante, he didn't write as much as Shakespeare (we would need to do line counts, but I think Shakespeare wrote more than Dante) because he dedicated most of his adult life to the Divina Commedia. It became the work of his life, just as Faust became Goethe's, The Faerie Queene's became Spenser's, and The Anatomy of Melancholy became Burton's.
I'm not sure we should count prolificity as the sign of a good writer. There are many examples of writers who didn't write what could be considered "a lot" yet are some of the greatest writers in any language or literature. Joyce wrote 3 novels, 1 short story collection, 2 poem collections, and 1 play. Juan Rulfo wrote 1 short story collection and 1 novella. Yet there's enough in those works to dedicate a lifetime to them, and their value is timeless.
I also think Cervantes is on par with Shakespeare on his understanding of the human condition.
But I agree with you when you say " They didn't write to compete with each other, and it's not exactly fair to say either is "better."". I don't know, it seems like doing so is just a dick-waving contest.
Never apologize for a long, thoughtful post on here. We used to be better than this, and it's nice to see something good on occasion.
I would respond to the content on your post, but I more or less agree. In years past I would have disagreed that people are as obsessed with cuckoldrybthese days as they were in Shakespeare's plays but seeing how much "cuck" is thrown around these days, i was very wrong.
How the fuck did Dante know that the Sun was a star? Where did that knowledge come from?
How could someone decide to read the Comedy without having rred La Vita Nuova first?
Most of the writers you mentioned as being less prolific yet great still have larger bodies of work worth consideration than Dante does. I agree quantity doesn't equal quality, however ability to consistently produce quality is something that is related to greatness.
The ancients knew this already.
Because it's in the sky you moron.
>however ability to consistently produce quality is something that is related to greatness.
Yet Dante, Rulfo, and to a lesser extent Joyce (his poems and play are very inferior to his narrative) consistently produced quality in their literary output. The fact that the Divina Commedia alone is a longer work yet retains his quality throughout shows that.
Rulfo is a much better example of this, since aside from his short story collection and his novella, he only produced some essays and the script for a film (also an unfinished novel, but that doesn't really count). However, almost everybody only reads El llano en llamas and Pedro Páramo, both masterpieces of their respective genres. He didn't feel like writing more, and he didn't need to. In just 300 pages, combined, Rulfo single-handedly transformed the narrative landscape of world-literature in a way only some other authors have achieved. Being prolific is irrelevant when your work has that kind of impact.
t. an actual retard
Wrong.
Nice post!
On worldbuilding, I'd say that Shakespeare does it to some extent, especially in his fantasies. Midsummer Night's Dream has the forest, which was a pivotal aesthetic leap in my opinion, and i'd argue that the Tempest island is pretty well built too. Still, I agree that Dante's cosmology greatly outranks this, but I just wanted to give Shakes' his due
Joyce
This thread is the death of
Pfft Homersexual
Dante
>a poem of 14.233 lines (more than the Odyssey and the Aeneid)
>a poem of 480 lines
>350 sonnets
>2 prosimetrum(s)
>2 essays in Latin about political and linguistic questions
>2 Eclogues in Latin
>1 scientific speech in Latin
Shakespeare
>36 plays
>2 poems for a total of 3049 lines
>154 sonnets
Do the math.
Both of them were excellent poets that show what it is to be human using their works, but there's one thing that sets them apart for me: Shakespeare used different stories, each with a different theme, mostly in very realistic settings. Dante brought all of his themes together into one work using his own allegorical depictions of Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven. For that, I'd give it to Dante.
>thinking this said anything.
I'm sure I've taken over 10,000 shits in my lifetime.
>using math to decide best author
you've been misled.
It's not in the sky its in space moron
Where did this Dante was great meme come from?
He's a fine part of the canon but he couldn't hold a candle to the real titans
One wrote theater and the other poetry, not lit strictly speaking. If you want to go that route, maybe the best authors were the evangelists.
One wrote theater and the other poetry, not lit strictly speaking
You are a fucking idiot if you think poetry and theater are not "lit, strictly speaking". Consider killing yourself so as not to waste space, or actually think before you type.
You can't even quote. Murda urself lil nigga
C-C-Chaucer
...
How would you compare Homer to Shakespeare & Dante?
In my country highschoolers read the Comedy for lit class.
>One wrote theater and the other poetry, not lit strictly speaking
You know jack shit about literature if you think this.
That nigga literally started the renaissance/humanism and usage of vernacular language in literature. His influence is gargantuan, he is certainly more important to the history of lit than Shakespeare. For that alone he is a titan.
Here's something I've been considering recently. I believe that Tolstoy is the greatest. He is, as far as I know, the only writer whose works and message truly reached out to people. His books cut more deeply and powerfully into human beings than anyone else, he is read and beloved by everyone (both demanding critics and common people looking for entertainment), a whole sect was formed around his teaching and message, and he directly influenced Mahatma Gandhi's philosophy. What did Shakespeare, Joyce, Goethe, Dante and Homer do compared to him? They seem like mere masturbation next to this genius. Maybe they represented well, but Tolstoy changed that which was represented.
You didn't need to point it out, we already knew from your retarded Homer suggestion.
A nigger, not surprised by the stupidity if your post.
eek
Keep Coming Back
All those writers you mentioned did what Tolstoy did, and sometimes better, except being a cult leader.
>a whole sect was formed around his teaching and message,
what was his teaching and his message?
t. fedora tipper
I haven't read Dante in the original so I'm not competent to make a judgement. I love them both dearly and would only rank Homer alongside them (if he were a real person).
That said, if I could only bring one with me to a desert island, I would have to choose Shakespeare on account of his variety.
>(if he were a real person)
What about this motherfucker right here?
I read the entire Divine Comedy and had a difficult time understanding it most of the time. I feel like if you are not well versed in that style of writing, which I certainly wasn't at the time, then the power of the book is mostly lost on you. I still enjoyed it, though. I might have to give Tolstoy the crown. Maybe Dumas just for Monte Cristo alone...
Which means he was not original, which matters. Though personally I do not see much connection between the two authors. I found the Illiad to be boring, but the Odyssey to be awesome.
The hell are you talkin bout? Humanism from Dante? It is nothing but torture all the way through Inferno, and for petty crimes as well. And then Purgatory is even worse because, though the punishment is not as bad, it is for trivial bullshit. How do you get to humanism from that, pray tell?
Because he's talking about Renaissance humanism.
>Illiad