/lit/ - Literature

>>12930116
Holy shit, you figured it out at last. Shakespeare btfo.

>>12930116
how to spot an ESL

>>12930116
post your work, faggot.

>>12930116
>He was forgotten until Voltaire or some faggot revived him from oblivion
Ah, I see you're one very erudite man
>He only seems esoteric and mysterious to us because of his obscure language.
He doesn't seem esoteric or mysterious, and neither is his language that obscure, if you've read a couple of his plays and gotten used to it.
>There's nothing in Shakespeare that doesn't also happen in other artists from the period.
Existentialism? Deconstruction of the revenge tragedy? Musings on the very nature of art in Tempest? Bakhtinian dialogism?

>>12930116
pick an arbritary figure. 12. name 12 plays which could be called great. of that 12 at least 9, which is another arbitrary figure, are by shakespeare. that leaves 3 on our list, for all the other writers who ever lived. raise it to 5 you can't go higher than that, and shakespeare remains immortally number 1. among all dramatists the first, the greatest poet, in terms of sheer accomplishment, very possibly our greatest man.

>>12930144
>replying to pasta
How spot a newfag

>>12930191
>Shakespeare
>the greatest poet
This is what Anglofags unironically believe. Absolutely risible.

>>12930191
based. as a poetrylet, how does Shakes rate against the best poets of all time? Is he on that list too, or is it moreso his plays that made him great? Are there poets who are vastly better than Shakes, or is he very close to any other poetry genius?

>>12930200
as the poetrylet above, can you please tell me who the greatest English poets are? also please give me your personal top 10 best poets of all time

>>12930204
>how does Shakes rate against the best poets of all time?
He's nowhere near Dante or Blake.
>Are there poets who are vastly better than Shakes, or is he very close to any other poetry genius?
Dante is light-years better.

>>12930212
How do you place Milton?

>>12930212
Imagine thinking some irrelevant boring old christcuck incel was better than Shakespeare.

>>12930218
Up there as well. He might not have the lyrical faggotry of Shakespeare but he's more thematically developed.

>>12930229
Dante had children...

>>12930212
Blake? William, Blake? Is he so great? I thought he was merely one of the best Romantics, but not on the level of a Shakespeare or Dante. I thought Shakespeare was of the same stature as Dante - is that only for his plays, then? Again, I don't know anything about poetry.

Are you evaluating Shakespeare's poetic talent by his sonnets alone, or his entire output?

>>12930229
The Anglofag is butthurt. Sorry mate but The Divine Comedy is a masterwork, superior anything written by Shakes. It's just how things are.

>>12930239
We're talking poetry, lad.

>>12930229
The Anglofag is butthurt. Sorry mate but The Divine Comedy is a masterwork, superior to anything written by Shakes. It's just how things are.

>>12930200
>>12930204
he's fantastic. he marks the end of the rich period of poetry beginning with skelton.

>>12930212
>>12930234
dante and milton were not great poets, in the sense that shakespeare was great. they were minor poets with a remarkable ear for music.
blake i actually like a lot (up until he lost heart in poetry and turned prophet).

>>12930229
Imagine thinking some clichéd, dull, old, homosexual, niggerlovin' SJW was better than Dante.

>>12930247
But his plays are written in poetic meter...

>>12930262
>Dante = minor poet
>Shakespeare = great poet
OHNONONONO HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

>>12930212
Blake's kinda basic poetically compared to Shakes honestly. Not even the best romantic. He could do a lot of grandeur and pomp but couldn't match Shakespeare's seamless verbal highs.

>>12930275
Not all of them. Only certain parts.

>>12930276
He's right though. No one cares about your shitty poem outside of super Mario land. Didn't you know Shakespeare invented the human?

From "Borges" (2006) by Adolfo Bioy Casares:
>BORGES: They say that lately, T.S. Eliot, to show himself as more English than the English has stated that Shakespeare was superior to Dante.
>SILVINA(Bioy's wife): Don't you think that?
>BORGES: I don't think anyone is superior to Dante. Shakespeare seems to me a little irresponsible to put him that high. I don't think of him as capable of building something like The Divine Comedy. He had eloquence, congratulations, that's also present in Dante.
>SILVINA: And the sonnets? Even if you don't like them they're very cute.
>BORGES: Dantes' are also not bad. Shakespeare's have a very weird theme...
>SILVINA: What does it matter? Is it impossible to write a great work with a weird theme?
>BORGES: I don't know. The theme is so weird --asking a beautiful friend to marry and have children to whom he'd transmit his beauty-- that must be true, who would invent that? An argument against Shakespeare is that one does not always want to read him and that there's pieces we don't know.
>BIOY: Do you put The Divine Comedy above all?
>BORGES: As far as literature is concerned, it's only inferior to the Gospels. Homer might be a great writer, but it's incomparable to Dante and the authors of the Gospels. Is there a truly epic moment in The Illiad? I don't think so.
When a huge Anglophile such as Borges thinks Dante is the GOAT you know the matter is settled.

From "Borges" (2006) by Adolfo Bioy Casares:
>BORGES: They say that lately, T.S. Eliot, to show himself as more English than the English has stated that Shakespeare was superior to Dante.
>SILVINA(Bioy's wife): Don't you think that?
>BORGES: I don't think anyone is superior to Dante. Shakespeare seems to me a little irresponsible to put him that high. I don't think of him as capable of building something like The Divine Comedy. He had eloquence, congratulations, that's also present in Dante.
>SILVINA: And the sonnets? Even if you don't like them they're very cute.
>BORGES: Dantes' are also not bad. Shakespeare's have a very weird theme...
>SILVINA: What does it matter? Is it impossible to write a great work with a weird theme?
>BORGES: I don't know. The theme is so weird --asking a beautiful friend to marry and have children to whom he'd transmit his beauty-- that must be true, who would invent that? An argument against Shakespeare is that one does not always want to read him and that there's pieces we don't know.
>BIOY: Do you put The Divine Comedy above all?
>BORGES: As far as literature is concerned, it's only inferior to the Gospels. Homer might be a great writer, but it's incomparable to Dante and the authors of the Gospels. Is there a truly epic moment in The Illiad? I don't think so.
When even a huge Anglophile such as Borges thinks Dante (not Shakespeare) is the GOAT you know the matter is settled

>>12930303
>I don't know. The theme is so weird
>Is there a truly epic moment in The Illiad?
was it senility?

>>12930329
It was brutal honesty.

>>12930212
Blake??? I like him but come on

For me, Milton, Dante, Shakes, Virgil, and Homer are on equal footing as poets. Virgil in Latin is indescribable, I full understand why early Christians thought his poetry was God-inspired. I think he might be the best poet, but imo Shakespeare has such a breadth of themes and emotion to him.

>>12930336
well it's not very brutal at all.

>>12930340
>Milton, Dante, Shakes, Virgil, and Homer
i’m deeply suspicious of the unanimity that people have about the whole range of art. i don’t believe, in literature, that anybody can have taste so catholic that he genuinely likes shakespeare AND milton. yet many people accept ALL of them.

>>12930340
I think epic poetry is on another level. Shakespeare as a poet is inferior to those you mentioned.

>>12930355
why?

>>12930358
anglo dumb

What do you guys class as Shakespeare's best sonnet?

>>12930362
129

>>12930351
It's called the Western Canon.

>>12930355
Name one Shakespeare poem which can rival Paradise Lost or The Divine Comedy.

>>12930373
... i know that. doesn't really relate to my point does it

>>12930343
it low-key is

>>12930385
I don't really know what the fuck is your point, to be honest.

>>12930351
>not being Catholic
kys

>>12930381
How is that a fair comparison at all? Take one of his plays and maybe Lear or Hamlet could compete.

>>12930394
wasn't it pretty on the nose? i think most people aren't being honest. shakespeares' sensibility is mutally exclusive to milton's, n'est-ce pas?

>>12930381
all of othello's lines are written in poetry

>>12930200

I’m not Anglo and yet I think he is the greatest poet, and that by far.

>>12930420
Oh gotcha. But I think those who like both read them for the aesthetics. And you can like two polar-opposite artists.

>>12930429
Good one, mate.

>>12930427
Next you're going to tell me that rap is also poetry.

>>12930351
It’s not fully unanimous though. I studied Latin and Greek and have had people get upset with me because I feel Virgil is better than Homer. Also there are a fair amount of detractors when it comes to Milton, I’ve heard educated people call him “unreadable”

>>12930432
but i think reading shakespeare for the aesthetics is doing him a great disservice, same with homer, because you'd be overlooking the entertainment motive dominant in their work.

the iliad and shakespeare’s later plays are life - tragedy salted with humour; the aeneid, the inferno and paradise lost are literary works of almost superhuman eloquence, written for fame not profit, and seldom read except as a solemn intellectual task.

>>12930462
no you're right there i'm studying classics as well and no one would put virgil above homer (quite right i think). it is unanimous with critics though isn't it? and by extension most people who (perhaps) would like to seem well-read (i know that sounds condescending).

>>12930471
So you think (somehow) that works written for money are superior to works written for supposed fame? And that a work's popularity/size of readership is proportional to the work's quality?

>>12930471
>and seldom read except as a solemn intellectual task.

The Comedy is utra comfy t.b.h
I like to think it's lik Moby Dick in that respect, huge magisterial achievement that can also work as a fascinating read.

>>12930252

The complete works of Shakespeare are superior to the complete Dante, and by far. He portrayed a far larger number of human beings, more varied mindsets and philosophies, a greater variety of scenes of life and social environments, and that in a language that is far more inventive and imaginative than the one Dante used. Dante mostly works with direct language and simile; his capacity to invent original metaphors is not impressive, and I challenge anyone here to find one example of a beautiful poetic image in Dante that don’t have a more accomplished parallel in Shakespeare.

Also, there’s the obvious fact that Shakespeare has a great sensibility to understand women and create all sorts of females, while Dante mostly had a very limited knowledge of them, creating female characters that are mostly a portrait of romantic ideals of how women are and behave.

The Divine Comedy as a whole is impressive, but it’s far longer as a work than any single play by Shakespeare. If you take Shakespeare’s four main tragedies, two great comedies and Henry IV then it would not be that easy to say “Oh yeah, Dante is superior”. Also, Dante counts a lot with the beauty of the terza rima, with its sound and rhyme scheme. In translation Dante loses a lot of his power, but Shakespeare, even in translation, by virtue of his unparalleled imagery-invention is still impressive, even intimidating.

>>12930471
I have a suspicion shakes may have wrote to be read. His plays were (very likely) cut in performance yet he still went through the character effort in script. Like you really think Hamlet went through his whole 4-5 hour inner trip on stage? Compare it to Marlowe who was all fantastical pomp and show with little at the core of the play. There was a lot of unneeded effort on Shakes part on things that seem to be beyond just pleasing the audience.

>>12930508
>Also, there’s the obvious fact that Shakespeare has a great sensibility to understand women and create all sorts of females, while Dante mostly had a very limited knowledge of them, creating female characters that are mostly a portrait of romantic ideals of how women are and behave.
>muh female representation
kys if you think this passes off as an argument

>>12930523
It's a very good point and a virtue on Shakespeare's part, displaying a manner in which he excelled over Dante as well as many others who came after him, and why he's still so immensely praised by modern academia even despite the latest artistic and political trends having shifted so far from its previous ideals. I'm defending that anon, but I'm not him.

>>12930508
>but Shakespeare, even in translation, by virtue of his unparalleled imagery-invention is still impressive, even intimidating.
Wrong. Shakespeare loses his eloquence and peculiar style in translation, as well as other things, and the result is way less effective than in the original, which is also mainly due to the fact that most of his work is dialogue-heavy. Dante only loses his rhyme and some of the worldplay.

>>12930541
>Shakespeare is good because he wrote females
Jesus Christ.

>>12930523

Women are 50% of the human race, a colossal part of real human life and of human society. Any writer who is being placed at the top spot needs to have a great knowledge of so basic an aspect of reality.

By the way: you’re little attack reveals a lot about yourself and many of the Dante fags here. It shows that many of you are either rooting for him because of patriotism or because of “muh religion” and “muh western values”, and even some young fags who are catholic and religious just because this is some sort of countercultural statement now.

Also, it’s appropriate that Borges would defend Dante as superior to Shakespeare, since he himself didn’t knew a thing about women and had a very limited knowledge of real life. It’s almost as if he were defending his own style and aesthetic values.

>>12930492
i mean what i said.

>>12930497
moby dick isn't nearly as moribund or academic

>>12930508
>but Shakespeare, even in translation, by virtue of his unparalleled imagery-invention is still impressive, even intimidating.
Wrong. Shakespeare loses his eloquence and peculiar style in translation, as well as other things, and the result is way less effective than in the original, which is also mainly due to the fact that most of his work is dialogue-heavy. Dante only loses his rhyme and some of the worldplay, while the strong imagery and ideas remain intact.

>>12930523
>one of the arguments is that Shakespeare has a more varied keen depiction of life than Dante (a valid argument for him being a better artist)
>being able to write half the human race well while Dante couldn't is not an argument

>>12930553
have sex incel

>>12930556
>i mean what i said
And what you said was vague and nonsensical.

>>12930559
boldfaced lies. there are countless famous shakespeare performances in foreign languages. verdi's otello. edward gordon craig's hamlet in russian that h g wells said he couldn't tell the difference from watching it in english
>most of his work is dialogue-heavy
you don't say

>>12930553
Being able to authentically capture a broader range of the human experience, especially in an era where few others in the history of your craft showed a sensitivity or an originality enough to observe the female sex for what they are and realize them on paper, is indeed a virtue anon. And that's why Shakespeare is not only still alive and kicking amid such a radically different cultural climate from that which the West has ever seen previous, but actually thriving while so many other great artists have faced nothing besides demotion from their posts. Based Shakespeare, only revealing more of his virtues as time wears on, increasing his relevancy while almost all of his peers continue to fading out from it.

>>12930564
The works themselves should matter, not if he wrote or not all the genders in the world.

>>12930511
well we know he never intended to have them published. still i see your point, it's the same with homer, it took 3 evenings to perform the iliad in it's entirety. still it's a vast difference from milton's sort of game

>>12930252
Based
>>12930508
Wrong and gay, never post again

>>12930570
well for milton, fame was no joke, it was an obsession (as appears throughout the silvae, especially in his letter to manso, and in lycidas). he never loved anyone, after the death of his friend charles diodati, except himself. he was obsessed by thoughts of his own fame, look at his reaction to lycidas' drowning: 'heavens, it might have been myself! cut down before my prime, cheated of immortal fame!'

>>12930587
It is the truth. I've read Shakespeare and Dante in the original language and in my native tongue. Maybe you're a monolingual and can't tell but Dante holds up better in translation. Shakespeare sounds pathetic and melodramatic, instead of beautiful and epic like in the original.

>>12930599
Is his ability Dante lacked to capture a huge aspect of existence (females) not an added merit to his work over Dante?

>>12930429
>I’m not Anglo
No, you’re clearly not white either. That’s an African IQ I detect.

>>12930565
get real, roastie.

>>12930612
sounds like a based man, I want to read his letters now.

>>12930615
no he doesn't, don't make stuff up
je parle francais et latine and i can read greek fairly well

>>12930643
he had the schoolmaster's disease (constipation)

>>12930623
You’re absolutely right that it is, Dante’s two biggest flaws were his Christian simplicity and incelesque romanticization of women. BUT despite that, he’s still the much superior artist to Shakespeare.

>>12930646
>je parle francais
>"francais"
Sure you do, pal, sure you do. But still, Shakespeare loses more in translation than Dante.

>>12930626

Superior to your IQ, you can be certain.

If you ask most poets and writers of the world they will say that Shakespeare is superior to Dante. His linguistic inventions and metaphorical expressions are richer than those of Dante, not to mention the greater variety of human understanding already referenced in this thread. There’s no comparison between the two. Dante only fits perfectly with a certain number of readers as the greatest, while Shakespeare is generally admired by anyone who works with literature. He was so great he even got Tolstoy nervous as his only possible contender as greatest writer of all time.

Dante has clever world-building, good similes and a great sensibility towards rhyme. But Shakespeare is more human, more empathetic, more wild and inventive in language, more adept of the greatest of all the poetic tools - the metaphor: it shows on the impact of both writers in the world. Shakespeare’s influence is orders of magnitude superior to that of Dante.

In the end it’s a matter of taste, but Shakespeare will be the top choice of far more people (experts and writers and artists included, as well as normal readers) than Dante.

>>12930670
what? because i didn't use the cedilla?

>>12930556
> moribund or academic

The Comedy is neither. People are just intimidated by the cred and length.

>>12930737
>He was so great he even got Tolstoy nervous as his only possible contender as greatest writer of all time.
Way to out yourself as intellectually dishonest, retard. You should be ashamed of yourself.

>>12930737
>the pleb choice: shakespeare
>The Patrician's Choice: Dante
You're absolutely right.

>>12930737

Just a sample of the opinion of writers:

https://www.brainpickings.org/2012/01/30/writers-top-ten-favorite-books/

>>12930754
>Norman Mailer, Ann Patchett, Jonathan Franzen, Claire Messud, and Joyce Carol Oates
Lmfao how are you real dude

>>12930587
Remember than being staged gives his words some of the life they might lose in translation. You can't really compare a live stage play in a foreign language with the translation of an epic poem.

>>12930750

Tolstoy is one of the greatest writers of all time

>>12930755

It’s a sample. You could repeat the same questions with other writers, and Dante still would come near Shakespeare.

>>12930759
That has nothing to do with what I said. Depicting Tolstoy as “nervous” because he wrote an essay eviscerating Shakespeare is intellectually dishonest.

>>12930766
Wouldn’t come near.

>>12930754
>Anglofag writers and Anglopseuds prefer Shakespeare
Wow, very deep, bro.

>>12930766
The point is that they don’t qualify as relevant proponents. They’re low IQ, no talent conformists and hacks. Look and see what actual literary Greats think, not contemporary grifters.

>>12930756
all poetry is meant to be read aloud

>>12930766
I'll take Borges' opinion over a bunch of cringy modern burger writers, thank you very much.

>>12930462
>Also there are a fair amount of detractors when it comes to Milton, I’ve heard educated people call him “unreadable”
Pls explain

>>12930781
Being read alourd is not the same thing as being staged as dialogue in a play. There should be not acting (and a single reader) in a proper epic poetry recitation.

>>12930795
Not him but I guess it's because of his strong religious themes and views. Modern academia is liberal and leftist and they prefer atheism and such.

>>12930116
What interests me about this discussion is that while Dante and Shakes would unanimously be placed in the category of the greatest literary artists of all time, the debate here seems to see great distance between their levels of talent. That is, almost nobody here is arguing that we're merely pinning two unrivalled masters against eachother in a battle that will ultimately only be won out by personal taste - rather, each side is arguing for the total victory of their chosen poet. Is it possible, then, that this conversation is ultimately predicated upon one's personal artistic biases, and will not lead to any solid, neutral answer?

Correct me if I'm wrong, as it may be possible that both are unequivocally the best writers of all time, while one still completely excels the other within that domain.

>>12930769

He attacked several writers and artists, yet only Shakespeare was an obsession to him (I know because I have read his diaries as well as 3-4 biographies of him). Tolstoy was incredibly egocentric, and a narcissist of the highest order. He could give praise to other writers when he felt they weren’t a threat to him, that they wouldn’t be capable to be placed above him, or that their style was a mere attempt to do what he could do far better. Shakespeare was not only talked about fairly often, he also wrote in a completely different style, a style that Tolstoy himself wold never be capable of reproduce (there are some poems by Tolstoy that are quite mediocre: poetic language wasn’t his strong suit).

There’s a note on Tolstoy’s diary, where he mentions (after completing Anna Karenina) something like: “Very well: now you’re going to be more famous than Gógol, Pushkin, Shakespeare, Hugo and Homer - and what of it”. The note is supposed to show that he knew he was one of the greatest writers of all time, but that this too didn’t matter, yet it’s telling, because it points to his perception that he was starting to be seen as perhaps even greater than the giants of the past.

The most interesting thing is a quote by Chekhov on the irritating effect of Shakespeare on Tolstoy. You can read it here:

https://www.google.com.br/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/books/2011/jul/11/tolstoy-thought-chekhov-worse-than-shakespeare

And Chekhov certainly have the word enough evidence that he knew a great deal about humans beings and how they behaved and felt.

>>12930796
well we know the iliad was performed with multiple speakers, with a person playing the lyre present, in a theatre.
anyway i think more than anything this highlights the sterility of this argument which doesn't really reflect on who's the greater poet at all

>>12930812
> That is, almost nobody here is arguing that we're merely pinning two unrivalled masters against eachother in a battle that will ultimately only be won out by personal taste

I could be making that argument but this thread is mostly contrarian faggotry as usual.

>that this conversation is ultimately predicated upon one's personal artistic biases

No conversation on literary quality (or worse "ranking") can completely escape that, and /lit/ is especially fond of that. At least people have been trying to bring diversity of characterization and metaphorical inventivity (albeit in a very vague and generalizing manner) in this argument.

> will not lead to any solid

We would need more learned readers and commenters for that, or at the very least explicit textual reference. But even then, good luck forming a balanced opinion on the body of work of two poets with more than 100k words to their names from a handful of samples.

> neutral answer

No such thing, and an answer striving for neutrality wouldn't be good either, the best you can get is someone who has read both with passion in the original (and possibly also in translation).

Don't get me wrong, I'm a brainlet like everyone itt and I only use the condescending tone because I like it. But it's clear anons re just fooling around as usual here. Don't get hung on whatever everyne is saying and jus enjoy the ride.

>>12930826
The point was more that you can't really tell Shakespeare less (or more) in translation than Dante by comparing stage performances of the former with private (or even public) reading of the latter.

But I agree that the question ultimaltely has little bearing on the general argument.

>>12930324
>rates literature on his own scale of Ebinness xD

truly based.

>>12930812
The idea that art is subjective is Frankfurt School bullshit. It’s why you have so many ridiculous displays in modern art museums.
Take terrible fan fiction and compare it to Tolstoy. We know Tolstoy is superior. Ok. Move up the scale a bit and take Joyce Carol Oates compared to Tolstoy. We know that Tolstoy is superior, but if you’re retarded you might try to argue it. Ok. Move up the scale and take Dostoevsky compared to Tolstoy. At this level you need a very high literary IQ, like Nabokov’s, for instance, who elucidates the reasons well, to understand why Tolstoy is superior. But he IS superior. It’s just harder to see why, compared to fan fiction.
Same is true here with Dante and Shakespeare. One is objectively better than the other: Dante. But not everyone can see that and it will never be decided either way.

>>12930324
holy BASED

>>12930789

Borges didn’t knew anything about real humanity: his work it’s mostly constructed on the writing of others. For example: he hardly ever talks about Tolstoy or Chekhov or realist writers, because humanity was not that interesting to him, and he knew very well their work wouldn’t help him become a better writer, because he couldn’t write that sort of literature to save his life. Dante was a kindred spirit to him, he perfect ideal of his own vision of what good literature was all about.

But Borges is one great writer voting for Dante. There are many more that think Shakespeare is superior. Nabokov is one example: to him Shakespeare’s verbal poetic texture was the greatest the world has ever seen. Chekhov loved Shakespeare. Freud thought that Shakespeare was he greatest writer of all time. There’s a colossal study by an Austrian author who settled in Brazil, Otto Maria Carpeaux, more than 3000 pages of a history of western literature. When he talks about Shakespeare he says that his only contender is Dante, but that Shakespeare’s more ample vision of humanity and greater understanding of others make him the superior artist

>>12930116
A writer whose authorship of some of his works is disputed can't be considered a real author.

>>12930865
So if an author writes about a novel with a character for every nationality, race, gender, political affiliation, religion, sexual orientation, shoe size, etc. he's automatically the GOAT just based on that fact?

>>12930892
don't talk such absolute piss

>>12930854
>The idea that art is subjective is Frankfurt School bullshit
>Kant is a cultural marxist now

>>12930959
Stylistic studies have shown that he co-wrote Macbeth with Middleton. Fuck knows what else and who else did the others.

>>12930964

Only part of Macbeth that is by Middleton is the Hecate scene (that was considered as an addition by other had many years before the modern research).

>>12930964
Don’t know what point you’re trying to make but it doesn’t matter who propagated it, art isn’t subjective and everyone with an IQ above room temperature can see that. Enjoy your grayons.

>>12931007
That's the best part, though.

>>12930116
This again?

>>12931271
sadly you can only engage in discussion via bait threads these days.

>>12930854
>you need a very high literary IQ

bump

>>12930854
Your point about needing good articulation to compare Tolstoy and Dosto is interesting, but you go against your own point because you haven't actually argued 'why' fan fiction is better than Tolstoy - you just sort of KNOW, don't you? For the record, I agree with your opinions, but you haven't actually argued for them at all. You give people who take after the Frankfurt school ammunition.

>>12930854
>Same is true here with Dante and Shakespeare. One is objectively better than the other: Dante.
stop

>>12930854
based and redpilled

>>12930865
>muh humanity
kys you homo

>italians ITT shilling Dante as usual

I'm not going to learn degenerate bastardized Latin just to "get" your favorite poet. I'm willing to concede that in his native language he may be on par with Milton and Shakespeare, but it's a nationalist epic and non Italians don't fucking care

>>12930116
>>12930131
>>12930144
>>12930200

>>12931826
Dante is recognized outside of Italy, you brainlet. If Italian is "degenerate bastardized Latin" then wtf is English even?

A language that got SO cucked that someone even hypothesized that middle english was a creole

>The argument in favour of calling Middle English a creole comes from the extreme reduction in inflected forms from Old English to Middle English. The system of declension of nouns was radically simplified and analogized. The verb system also lost many old patterns of conjugation. Many strong verbs were reanalysed as weak verbs. The subjunctive mood became much less distinct. Syntax was also simplified somewhat, with word order patterns becoming more rigid. These grammatical simplifications resemble those observed in pidgins, creoles and other contact languages, which arise when speakers of different languages need to communicate. Such contact languages usually lack the inflections of either parent language, or drastically simplify them.

>>12931826
Look at this Frankenstein. It's considered a Germanic language but only 26% of English words are of Germanic origin.

>>12931873
>>12931884

That's what makes English great, it pillages and rapes everything it touches.

>>12931893
Other way around. English is the girl in the center receiving a bukkake.

Be your own Shakespeare.

>>12932014

Realistically what other languages stand a chance against Chinese and Russian? Italian? No. English.

lol ESLs are SEETHING

>>12931884
80% of everyday English words are Germanic. Latin and Latin-via-French serve as synonyms and technical verbiage.

>>12932068
Let's look at your own post:
% -> percent
serve
synonym
technical
verbiage

All of non-Germanic origin.

>>12932114
I'm a big brain poster though, natural that I'd reach for Latin verbiage.

>>12930795
See Pound's ABC of Reading.

In short, he accuses Milton of latinizing the English language too much, by means of uncommon syntax and vocabulary, thus rendering his verse very unclear and often prolix. He also sees Milton's influence as one of the main reasons for the supposed decay of English poetry after the golden age of the Metaphysicists.

Keep in mind that, before Pound, the dominating view was exactly the opposite, with most Metaphyisical poets being seen as quite weird and quaint, while Milton, Dryden, Pope and the rest were considered the epitomes of poetic excellence.

>>12931826
>it's a nationalist epic

Reminder that this is what some Anglos actually think.

>>12930149
/fit/ get out

>>12932014
Hot desu

THE ARGUMENT FOR SHAKESPEARE

More developed characters (within a much larger space), supposedly better metaphors, a bunch of writers (not the best) calling him their favorite.

THE ARGUMENT FOR DANTE

More concision, more precision, less Petrarchist babble, more philosophical depth, richer visual imagination, superior musicality within a form much more restrained, deeper historical perspective, constant dialogue with the literary tradition that precedes him (people call Shakespeare an innovator for the 'play within the play' in Hamlet, but have you ever considered how many meta-poetic thoughts are expressed in the Commedia, how Dante incorporates literary criticism, history, science, philosophy and theology within the form of the epic?), fully-realized moral and theological vision, independence and completeness of mind rather than mere schizophrenia, talented blending of the Christian with the Greco-Roman mythological traditions, actually smart social critique by a man who occupied relevant positions of great power during his lifetime, more masculine nose, better love life, higher IQ.


Sorry, but Dante's gotta win that one. Shakespeare remains my third favorite writer, though, below Dante and Homer, and above Cervantes.

For me, it's Rimbaud

>>12932248
>Shakespeare may be better at writing, but does he spout boil-in-the-bag Catholic platitudes? Checkmate

>>12930420
And you imply that people can't like different things? Are you autistic or trolling?

>>12932363
>boil-in-the-bag Catholic platitudes
This is the main problem with Dante (and Cervantes). Unlike truly universal writers like Homer, Shakespeare, Valmiki etc, Dante fails to transcend his time and place, and is essentially a parochial mind, making sense only in the context of white Catholic medieval Italy.

>>12932248
Shakespeare completely btfo

>>12932469
>Dante fails to transcend his time and place

What are you talking about? He was the greatest influence over the major 20th century American poet (Eliot, as the majority opinion seems to agree) and you say he can't transcend his time and place?

What is that even supposed to mean?

>>12932469
>Valmiki
Never heard of this guy until today, thanks.

>>12932383
they're mutually exclusive. unless you like poetry dispassionately.

>>12932586
>white Christian European influences another white Christian European
>wow this guy really crosses all boundaries
Dante is a major figure in white European literature, of course. He just isn't a big fish outside that small pond; Shakespeare on the other hand very much is.

Anglos are brainwashed with their bardolatry

>>12932586
Shakespeare is studied and beloved all over the world. Part of that might be the universality of the English language, but much of it is the universality of his work. Think of the Japanese director Akira Kurosawa's film adaptations of Shakespeare, for example. His stories have no culture they resonate best with and represent most - they are truly cultureless and timeless encapsulations of the human condition that will be read and praised so long as humans are around and able to read them. Dante hasn't a fraction of this universality, partly due to the obseleteness of his language (not his fault) but primarily due to him being a quintessentially "Christian/Catholic" writer, rather than the universal imagination that Shakespeare is, which is definitely his fault.

>>12932248
THE ARGUMENT FOR BOCCACCIO
Most realistic depictions of women to ever grace spoken or written word. Tits, arse, sex. Complete synthesis of Greek and Roman mythology. Black death rape gangs. Sluts, sluts, and more sluts.

Yep, for me it's Giovanni.

>His stories
>the universal imagination that Shakespeare is
You seem unaware of the fact that Shakespeare literally didn't come up with his own stories. This is historical fact. Sorry to break it to you.
Imagine thinking Shakespeare is more imaginative than Dante lmao. Dante actually came up with his story, one of the most iconic in literature, and then WROTE IT IN A RHYMING STANZA THAT HE FUCKING INVENTED.

>>12933072
somehow didn't (you) you >>12932807

>>12933072
>standard Christian mythology combined with that cliched trope from the Odyssey and Aeneid where the hero visits the underworld
>original
Nobody is disputing Dante is great in his narrow field of Medieval Christian poetry, he's a master of that. He's just not a major figure in world literature like Shakespeare

>>12933098
I mean you're objectively wrong, he's an established Great Poet in the same company as Homer, Shakespeare, Chaucer. But if you want to pretend otherwise for maximum edginess you do you.

>>12933098
Medieval Christian poetry (Cid, Chanson de Roland, troubadours, dolce stil nuovo, Petrarch, Dante, Chaucer, Seafarer) is a field A LOT richer than Elizabethan theater, though.

>>12933158
Of course, but an irrelevant point given Shakespeare, unlike Dante, transcends his genre
>>12933098
Established in Europe yes, I've not denied that. Like Chaucer, he doesn't have much traction outside the European canon, unlike Shakespeare and Homer

>>12932807
Everything you said about Shakespeare applies to Harry Potter as well and you know it. Also to the Evangelists. Also to Martin Luther.

Popularity is not the same as quality.

As for Kurosawa directing Shakespeare... Well, Japan was pretty much a Western country by then, and Kurosawa himself used to be criticized for been too Westernized. Also, he mostly just used the stories, which are not even Shakespeare's, really.

>>12933098
Why do you insist in being wrong?

>>12933175
How does Dante not "transcend his genre"?

Have you ever actually read a book in your life?

First of all, his "genre" is not Medieval Christian literature. You have not read Dante. Not at all. Never. His "genres" are: courtly love, philosophical and political prose, mythological narrative, imagism, fantastic realism (big influence on Borges, of course), expository/didatic poetry, meta-poetry, and so on.

Second, his influenced has extended over all the major modern writers, from Baudelaire to Eliot and beyond, in Russia, Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, and other places.

By the way, isn't it curious that Anglos always appeal to Shakespeare's popularity, while we who defend Dante's superiority usually just have to mention his literary merit? It's almost as if Shakespeare didn't have anything all that solid to back up that big popularity which he gets for being the most famous author of the world's most popular language...

Just deal with the fact that Harry Potter speaks to many more people than Shakespeare does!

>>12933072
I'm aware of his borrowing extant stories, but by imbuing them with his singular and inimitable genius, he universalized them beyond anything they were previously. It's in many ways pointless to even acknowledge the predecessors of his work, given that the Shakespearean dimension would not be present.

I'm not even downplaying Dante there, I'm only saying that it's an indisputable fact that Shakespeare's work is far more universally beloved, and I'm arguing that it's due to his personal genius as a writer in singularly capturing the human experience in a manner that speaks equally to all cultures and time periods, while Dante, for whatever mastery he had, could not match this quality in his own work. Dante is a Medieval Christian Italian Male writer, and is appreciated as such, while Shakespeare is without period, ethnicity, language or even gender - he is an uncolored archetype of the human literary consciousness itself, influencing nearly all literature subsequent to himself, with no aspects of outdatedness to his work nearly half a millenium after its publishing. Whatever Dante does have, he doesn't have that. And perhaps he can boast attributes which Shakespeare cannot - I'm not denying that, but here simply highlighting a major dimension of Shakespeare's greatness, which almost no other authors in history have claim to.

Also Dante borrowed heavily from mythological sources, so please don't discredit Shakespeare for his influences - plus many of Shakespeare's greatest works have no earlier skeletons for themselves - the Tempest, for example, is both entirely original and entirely unrivalled by anything else in literature, a wholly Shakespearean world unto itself.

>>12933072

You should read the book by Kenneth Muir on Shakespeare’s sources: he changed all of them in very considerable ways, and mostly mixed several of them into new organic structures. Check out how Othello was in the source before Shakespeare made several alterations.

>>12933236
Harry Potter is - and the way things are going will forever remain - much more universally beloved than anything Shakespeare ever wrote.

>>12933072
While Dante's work remains wholly frozen in the cultural era it was produced from, and only inches towards increasing irrelevancy and sentimental incongruency over time, Shakespeare's nearly 500 year run has only seen his stature, praise and relevancy increased, in how the ideological prescience embedded in his writings could only be appreciated once the surrounding culture had caught up with his commentaries, be it of race, gender, psychology (Freud, to name one example), and even economics (inspiring Marx, who included a quote by Shylock in "Capital"), along with all the standard domains intrinsic to literary fiction itself - character archetypes, thematic content, and whatever else - which has left his indelible and inescapable influence upon. Just look at the number of famous works who've borrowed their titles from single lines of Shakespeare, for a start.

Dante is a time-capsule; Shakespeare is a time-traveller.

>>12933232
>First of all, his "genre" is not Medieval Christian literature.
It is. He is so rooted in that, it rarely speaks to those outside Catholic Christian circles, as you mention. When you consider Homer, Shakespeare, Valmiki, you have famous characters, famous scenes which everyone knows, even if they haven't even read it. Everyone knows Hamlet, Achilles, Sita.
Dante has none of that. Who are his famous characters? What are his famous scenes? He doesn't have anything which transcends his parochial origins

>>12933184
Nobody, in the US or elsewhere, is studying Harry Potter as a serious literary franchise. Shakespeare, however, is studied in literary curriculums all over the globe - and is possibly the single-most pervasive author formally studied throughout the world. Harry Potter has no relation to Shakespeare, and is a non-argument for this discussion.

https://teachingshakespeareblog.folger.edu/2012/02/27/shakespeare-in-other-worlds/

>>12933346
very neat

True. There is nothing extraordinary about Shakespeare.

shakespear is CRINGE

I CANT FIND YOUTUBE VIDEOS EXPLAINING SHAKESPEAR YIKES

CRINGE

After 169 replies it is safe to assume that the only arguments Anglos have is not in Shakespeare's texts themselves, but rather in how people react to them.

Goes to prove that Dante is indeed superior.

>>12930462
Yes but there are also some who consider him one of the best poets of all time

>>12930324
Borges is a literal subhuman

>>12933586
Stay mad.

>>12930438
>mate
cringe

Anglos brainwashed themselves. It's amazing

>>12930200

Mate even Hitler used to quote Shakespeare.

>>12933586
SEETHING

>>12932051
Stand a chance how?

>>12932248
This.

>>12930174
not op but
>deconstruction
>existentialism
i'm pretty sure this isn't why shakes is good

Shakespeare wrote for the Oprah audience. Dante is the patrician's choice.

>>12933346
>Shakespeare won the popularity contest, and he's more SJW-friendly, therefore he is of superior literary quality.
This is what Anglos/burgers actually believe. I guess you can't expect much from a culture that idolizes instawhores, the Kardashians, and YouTubefags.

>>12933535

Either you are acting in bad faith or you have not read the thread.

It was argued (altough in a more simple and brief way) that Shakespeare:

Created more characters, all more individualized and with their own lives (they are not the service of a world view or a personal philosophy, like in Dante)

Expressed more different philosophies and all sorts of points of view, so subtly and with such good arguments in favor of each side that no one can say what the author's own opinion about such concepts was (eample: war as something horrible X war as something glorious, or the existence of God and a greater sense for life X the total lack of meaning for human life and existence,like in Macbeth and Lear)

Used a language much more poetic and inventive than Dante. Dante is usually quite literal, almost using metrified prose. Shakespeare almost thought in images, and so luxuriantly that not only his metaphors (Dante was not very apt with metaphors: his sonnets are far more cliché than those of Shakespeare), but even his similes are more fertile, more inventive and more dazzling than we find in Dante. Again: take any simile in Dante and look for the same subject matter in Shakespeare: you will find better similes in the Englishman.

Showed more scenes of human life in a greater number of environments, from the shepherd's hut, through brothels and taverns to the solemn castles of stone and palaces of marble. At the same time he also created fantastic worlds where elves, demons and angels coexisted with humans. Dante basically talks about the world that exists beyond life, and does not give us a realistic view of how humans live in the real world. Moreover his conception of hell, purgatory and paradise is influenced by existing works and doctrines, so it is not as if he had created a whole new world by himself.

Once again: Shakespeare is the greatest of all masters of metaphor, and metaphor is the queen of poetic techniques. Aristotle himself - whom Dante calls the "Master ofthose who know" already said it: “The greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor; it is the one thing that cannot be learnt from others; and it is also a sign of genius, since a good metaphor implies an intuitive perception of the similarity in the dissimilar".

cont

>>12934074
Have you even read Dante in Italian? That's a lot bollocks you wrote about him.

>>12934074

Dante has a mind plastered by a single doctrine and world view, by a private concept of right and wrong, and all his characters and debates must fit that vision. This limitation makes his work boring and unpleasant for many readers who do not agree with what he thinks. Shakespeare, however, seems to fit all cultures, all readers, all sorts of artistic temperaments. This is why Shakespeare has been a much greater influence in the development of several other artists, thinkers and philosophers over the last few centuries.

Dante is often regarded as an equal of Homer, sometimes even as smaller than him. Shakespeare, on the other hand, is the undisputed master of universal drama: no other playwright is considered superior.

Despite the title "The Divine Comedy" (comedy because the end of the poem is a "happy ending"), laughter is something alien to Dante's temperament and work (with the exception of a few gross jokes about demons and their flatulence): Dante is just a poet of the tragic. Shakespeare, however, managed to create both masterpieces of lamentation and laughter. Intoehr words: a great share of human experience and people's states of mind were not worked on by Dante, and indeed were even annoying to him.

Similarly, Dante could not create female characters who did not follow a romantic and artificial form of medieval-virtue ideals. Shakespeare, however (and unlike virtually all authors of the time) paid great attention to women, and created a whole range of realistic female characters, very different from each other. In other words: 50% of the human race was not portrayed with empathy and truthfulness by Dante.

cont

>>12934074
>Dante basically talks about the world that exists beyond life, and does not give us a realistic view of how humans live in the real world.
No shit.

>>12931826
Not Italians, but Christians. I bet that if Shakespeare was an official Christian, and his works explicitly so in their content, with every other artistic property unchanged, then the people here presently arguing for Dante would be doing so for Shakespeare.

>>12934093

Shakespeare's vocabulary was greater.

Shakespeare sells more, is more read, quoted, reinterpreted, remodeled, loved and inspiring than Dante.

Dante was praised for working philosophical concepts in his work. Shakespeare does the same, in a more varied way, with very different points of view. Examples: A treatise on Stoicism spoken by the Duke in Measure for Measure, or the speech of Ulysses dealing with the organization of the state and anarchy (almost a pre-Hobbes) in Troilus and Cressida.

Shakespeare's sonnets have far more complex and rich imagery than the ones crated by Dante.

Dante has a mind plastered by a single doctrine and world view, by a private concept of right and wrong, and all his characters and debates must fit that vision. This limitation makes his work boring and unpleasant for many readers who do not agree with what he thinks. Shakespeare, however, seems to fit all cultures, all readers, all sorts of artistic temperaments. This is why Shakespeare has been a much greater influence in the development of several other artists, thinkers and philosophers over the last few centuries.

Dante is often regarded as an equal of Homer, sometimes even as smaller than him. Shakespeare, on the other hand, is the undisputed master of universal drama: no other playwright is considered superior.


>>12934092
>Have you even read Dante in Italian?

Yes. I have read him in 3 Portuguese translations, and one of them with the italian original at the side: his rhyming capacities are indeed awe-inspiring. He manages to make it seem that the rhyme he choosed was inevitable. I studied Italian to read him, Calvino, Leopardi and Galileu in the original.

lots of ESL cope ITT

>>12934099

Despite the title "The Divine Comedy" (comedy because the end of the poem is a "happy ending"), laughter is something alien to Dante's temperament and work (with the exception of a few gross jokes about demons and their flatulence): Dante is just a poet of the tragic. Shakespeare, however, managed to create both masterpieces of lamentation and laughter. Intoehr words: a great share of human experience and people's states of mind were not worked on by Dante, and indeed were even annoying to him.

Similarly, Dante could not create female characters who did not follow a romantic and artificial form of medieval-virtue ideals. Shakespeare, however (and unlike virtually all authors of the time) paid great attention to women, and created a whole range of realistic female characters, very different from each other. In other words: 50% of the human race was not portrayed with empathy and truthfulness by Dante.

Shakespeare's vocabulary was greater.

Shakespeare sells more, is more read, quoted, reinterpreted, remodeled, loved and inspiring than Dante.

Dante was praised for working philosophical concepts in his work. Shakespeare does the same, in a more varied way, with very different points of view. Examples: A treatise on Stoicism spoken by the Duke in Measure for Measure, or the speech of Ulysses dealing with the organization of the state and anarchy (almost a pre-Hobbes) in Troilus and Cressida.

Shakespeare's sonnets have far more complex and rich imagery than the ones crated by Dante.

cont.

>>12934099
>Shakespeare sells more, is more read, quoted, reinterpreted, remodeled, loved and inspiring than Dante
>>12933886

>>12934107

Shakespeare was the only writer who managed to make the greatest novelist and short story writer of all time (Tolstoy) angry, the only other writer that left him obsessed:

>>12930825

Here's Chekhov on the matter:

>"I admire him greatly. What I admire the most in him is that he despises us all; all writers. Perhaps a more accurate description is that he treats us, other writers, as completely empty space. You could argue that from time to time, he praises Maupassant, or Kuprin, or Semenov, or myself. But why does he praise us? It is simple: it's because he looks at us as if we were children. Our short stories, or even our novels, all are child's play in comparison with his works. However, Shakespeare … For him, the reason is different. Shakespeare irritates him because he is a grown-up writer, and does not write in the way that Tolstoy does."

And here you can see how Tolstoy had a clear perception of how much he had achieved and how sensible he was to the fact that he would soon become one of the most respected and famous authors of all time.

After finishing Anna Karenina, Tolstoy himself said (to himself, in his journal), "Very well, you will be more famous than Gogol or Pushkin or Shakespeare or Molière, or than all the writers of the world--and what of it?"

Strange that after a while he would get annoyed especially with Shakespeare's fame and admiration, and that he chose exactly Shakespeare to be the object of his attacks.

>>12934107
>Shakespeare's vocabulary was greater
Only because he filled more pages. Very dishonest argument on your part.

>>12933886
Shakespeare has had tremendous influenced outside the domain of literature - on the founding father of psychoanalysis through Freud, and one of the founding fathers of socialism, Marx. You've already encountered Shakespeare, whether you've heard of his name yet or not, or read a single line of his. This, in addition to his inescapable influence on all subsequent literature and cultural storytelling. All the greatest of writers of the post-Shakespeare Western canon have been deeply influenced by him: Goethe, Proust, Melville, Joyce, the list does not end. Meanwhile, Dante is only known within the literary sphere, having no influence to the larger world beyond it save for what he influenced of Christian theology (which, being the dominant religio-political institution would naturally spread to larger culture beyond it, not by any virtue on Dante's part), and even within it has had a far less wide and deep impact on it than Shakespeare has. Again, he's the most studied author in the entire world, and this is not by chance nor political propaganda (post-colonialist nations for example, despite removing many earlier authors from their curriculum, were adamant that Shakespeare remained).

>>12933886
>Freud
>Marx
>Anglos
>Burgers
anon, I...

>>12934098
>Not Italians, but Christians.

These faggots are annoying, especially because they have "discovered Christ" only 2-3 years ago, if that much.

>>12934107
>Shakespeare sells more.
Rowling sells more than Faulkner, García Márquez, Kafka, and Tolstoy.

>>12934098
I'm an atheist.
You're basically like
>everyone is biased but me!1!!111!

>>12930324
This.

People defending Dante: people of various nationalities that recognize true greatness
People defending Shakespeare: biased anglos that NEED to think of themselves as supreme

>>12934137
Oh yeah he should add ‘did more’ to that list

>>12934099
Oh god, you're that Brazilian angloboo

>>12934199
Quality > Quantity.
No individual Shakeapeare work can seriously compete against a monumental work such as The Divine Comedy.

>>12934207

No, I am not the guy who made that thread.

>>12934211
An artist is not ranked by an individual work, but by their entire canon. If Shakespeare wanted to write an epic like Dante did, he would have, but he didn't. What he did do is write far more than Dante did, and the whole of Shakespeare's work is superior to the whole of Dante's.

>>12934251
Shakespeare couldn't have written something like The Divine Comedy. Stop being delusional. Shakespeare is good and varied but he's not that good.

>>12934290

>>12934074
>>12934093
>>12934099
>>12934107
>>12934128

Try again. Aso, be honest: you have read only Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet, maybe Othello and Macbeth, but not a single one of his comedies, or Henry IV, and certainly not his complete works.

>>12934128
> who managed to make the greatest novelist and short story writer of all time (Tolstoy) angry
Imagine being the person who typed this. Can't take this dude seriously.

>>12934333

Why don't you attack all those arguments and prove them wrong instead of whining.

>>12934290
Maybe he couldn't have, but that still doesn't make it valid to place Dante higher than him on the basis of a single work, rather than compare their canons as a whole. If a single work is the arbiter, then Dante wins. If the entire ouevre is the arbiter, Shakespeare does.

>>12934290

And Dante coulnd't do what Shakespere did. Seriously, try to think more clearly before posting.

Plays were the movie scripts of their time. They aren't literature. Prove me wrong.

>>12934346
You say that after you ignored Tolstoy's arguments and went "like dood it's cuz he was jealous xD"

>>12934290
The Divine Comedy is a dusty old museum piece without cultural or intellectual relevance in the modern world and Italian, like all romance languages, is just wimpy watered down peasant Latin. Shakespeare is QUITE OBVIOUSLY superior to Dante; Better metaphor, more humour (all but non-existent in Dante who, bless him, was not a funny chap), richer characterization, and I could go on. The only respect in which Dante has him beat is in his mastery of large-scale narrative structure, which obviously wasn't of much concern to Shakespeare anyway. If Shakespeare had taken himself seriously enough to write an epic poem, he'd probably have produced something far richer than the comedy because his intellectual purview wasn't hopelessly clouded over by hard-headed Catholic dogmatism as was Dante's. If you could bring back Virgil he'd probably laugh at Dante and his silly little poem.

>>12934426
>like all romance languages, is just wimpy watered down peasant Latin.
lmao and English is what? It's not even that. It was a already watered down language that got even more watered down. It's a language that got raped by a "wimpy watered down peasant" latin and everything that came from it was considered more prestige.
You guys should read the history of your own language sometimes.

>With the Norman conquest of England in 1066, -->the now norsified Old English language<--- was subject to contact with the Old Norman language, a Romance language closely related to Modern French. The Norman language in England eventually developed into Anglo-Norman. Because Norman was spoken primarily by the elites and nobles, while the lower classes continued speaking Anglo-Saxon, ---->the main influence of Norman was the introduction of a wide range of loanwords related to politics, legislation and prestigious social domains.[40]<------

>Middle English also greatly simplified the inflectional system, probably in order to reconcile Old Norse and Old English, which were inflectionally different but morphologically similar. The distinction between nominative and accusative cases was lost except in personal pronouns, the instrumental case was dropped, and the use of the genitive case was limited to indicating possession. The inflectional system regularised many irregular inflectional forms,[41] and gradually simplified the system of agreement, making word order less flexible.[42]

>>12934426
Based, and Anglopilled. Not even Anglo, I'm ethnically Indian and Canadian nationally, but I can say that I'm proud to be the double-product of British colonization. Simply being able to read Shakespeare is worth it by itself... :')

>>12934455
England has lots of good Anglo Saxon words with none of the nasty Latin implications. English poets are very careful about how they use English

>>12934333
Why didn't a Russian like Tolstoy not feel jealous of Dante, then? Why Shakespeare alone? The nationalities involved disqualify any mention of "cultural propaganda", with no Anglo/American influence in sight.

>>12934426
>If Shakespeare had taken himself seriously enough to write an epic poem, he'd probably have produced something far richer than the comedy
I seriously doubt it, most if not all of Shakespeare's stories are stolen, which means all his structures are also stolen. And his poetry consists mainly of sonnets. He's good, but Dante played on another level.

>>12934479
Read King Lear & it’ll be very clear

>>12934479
You're the one claiming that he was jealous, you dishonest fuck

>>12934376

Once again, refute all the arguments on those posts if you can, not just the easy ones.

As for Tolstoy, I have read his diaries and many biographies on him, and the fact that he was jealous is quite obvious. Also: he was trying to trial Shakespeare with the rules of realistic fiction. He complains that Shakespeare's language is artificial and that nobody talks like that, and also that the events in his plays don't follow the rules of real life. Well, what he is not taking into account is that Shakespeare was not aiming at realism, but trying to create great poetry and verbal wonder while at the same time telling stores with a dramatic structure of rising action, climax and resolution. And Tolstoy was aware of it, but choosed to ignore this obvious fact. He also don't mention the fact that when Shakespeare wanted to write with realism (Faltaff, the brothel and tavern scenes in many plays) he could easely do it.

Also, Tolstoy tried his hand at poetry but realized that he couldn't do it, that he was at best mediocre at it. He says it in his journal. When he talks about Shakespeare he never discusses his poetic gifts, perhaps because he himself wasn't sensible enough to really perceive just how extraordinary that metaphoric language is (but most likely because, if he did it, he would have to give some very valuable points to Shakepeare).

Finally, Tolstoy talks about the "immorality" of Shakespeare's works, of Shakespeare's disdain for any particular view of life and personal philosophy, for his chameleaon-spirit. That is old Tolstoy talking: the time when he decided that art must had the common good as it's object, that it must have society and it's improvement as a goal. To my mind his criticism of the lack of values in Shakespeare and his chameleon-mind is actually a great compliment. Tolstoy himself was like that when he wrote War and Peace:

>The aim of an artist is not to solve a problem irrefutably but to make people love life in all its countless inexhaustible manifestations. If I were to be told that I could write a novel whereby I might irrefutably establish what seemed to me the correct point of view on all social problems, I would not even devote two hours work to such a novel; but if I were to be told that what I should write would be read in about twenty years time by those who are now children, and that they would laugh and cry over it and love life, I would devote all my own life and all my energies to it.

cont

>>12934494
Mate, it's already been stated that works like The Tempest are entirely original, having no prior influences or skeletons, and is to this day still ranked among the greatest literary works ever written, being unlike any other work of which you'll find, even within Shakespeare's own corpus, where it's considered an insulated world unto itself. Please end this, "Shakespeare wasn't original" meme, his own work has already disproven that claim. Read The Tempest and ask yourself whether you consider it to have both originality and depth, and then come back here and see if you'll still remark of Shakespeare's "inability to write his own stories". Meanwhile Dante literally sources most of his creative elements from the mythologies which preceded him (and which he was raised believing in), only augmenting what already existed before he ever wrote a word. His poetic form might have been completely original; his content is not close to such.

>>12934536

Also, dont take my word for it, but the word of Chekhov. He loved Shakespeare and loved Tolstoy (and knew Tolstoy very well), ws very sensitive toards other people and their thoughts and was one of the greatest writers of all time. He said exaclty the same about Tolstoy and his vews of Shakespere:

>>12934128
>>"I admire him greatly. What I admire the most in him is that he despises us all; all writers. Perhaps a more accurate description is that he treats us, other writers, as completely empty space. You could argue that from time to time, he praises Maupassant, or Kuprin, or Semenov, or myself. But why does he praise us? It is simple: it's because he looks at us as if we were children. Our short stories, or even our novels, all are child's play in comparison with his works. However, Shakespeare … For him, the reason is different. Shakespeare irritates him because he is a grown-up writer, and does not write in the way that Tolstoy does."


And for the record, Tolstoy complained that Dante was "extremelly boring" in his diary, and that he was having trouble in reading him because he was so boring that he couldn't move foaward. So you see: he didn't liked Dante too (but he also didn't acre about Dante - it was nothing to him).

>>12934478
>implication
>From Middle French implication, from Latin implicationem (accusative of implicatio).

>poet
>From Old French poete, from Latin poēta (“poet, author”), from Ancient Greek ποιητής (poiētḗs, “creator, maker, author, poet”), from ποιέω (poiéō, “I make, compose”).

>use
>Noun from Middle English use, from Old French us, from Latin ūsus (“use, custom, skill, habit”), from past participle stem of ūtor (“use”

lmao even very
>From Middle English verray, verrai (“true”), from Old French verai (“true”) (Modern French vrai), from assumed Vulgar Latin vērācus

Apparently even Anglo Saxon came through latin
>Old English Angli Saxones (plural), from Latin Anglo-Saxone
https://www.etymonline.com/word/anglo-saxon

I love this

>>12934517
Tolstoy was based and redpilled about Shakespeare by not swallowing the Anglofag pill. He has my respect.

>>12934536
>Also: he was trying to trial Shakespeare with the rules of realistic fiction.
Another dishonest argument. Tolstoy said he was looking for poetry in whatever form but wasn't pleased with S.

>>12934543
Anon your native tongue is Portuguese, right? I just want to tell you that your English is excellent, and you should feel very proud of yourself for achieving fluency in two languages. :)

>>12934552

He thought Dante was crap too (But liked Homer. He said that Homer "Screams and sings and it's all true")

>>12934567
based tolstoy

>>12934560
Remember that Tolstoy was a textbook narcissist, and ask yourself whether you should be reading between the lines of such a character's words rather than treating their meanings literally. Do people always mean exactly what they say? The anon earlier has provided good arguments highlighting what could be read as insecurity on Tolstoy's part, seen here: >>12934536 His mention of Chekov is also valid.

>>12934563
>"choosed"
>"Your English is excellent."
lmao okay

>>12934578
Mate, I observed all the tiny grammatical errors scattered there but to be able to write out such lengthy passages as he did, in a language foreign for oneself, and still express his positions with the specificity and general eloquence he did is a great achievement on his part, grammar be damned. Grammar is the least-meaningful part of language, and once he polishes his understanding of it, he'll be indistinguishable from an English speaker in whatever he writes.

>>12934543
He obviously felt the need to attack Shakespeare more because of nuthuggers like you. How is this not obvious to you?

>Altho I know that the majority of people so firmly believe in the greatness of Shakespeare that in reading this judgment of mine they will not admit even the possibility of its justice, and will not give it the slightest attention, nevertheless I will endeavor, as well as I can, to show why I believe that Shakespeare can not be recognized either as a great genius, or even as an average author.

>>12934551
‘Poet’ is Ancient Greek
Note that John of Gaunt says This England not This Britain and Will called women women and not females

>>12934599
Monolingual Anglofags are quite impressionable, no wonder they think Shakespeare is the GOAT lmao

>>12934613
>ancient greek
But English acquired it through old French that acquired it through Latin.

>>12930324
How can a man be so based?

>>12934613
Your language is cucked by Latin. There's no escape. Some guys dreaming of uncucking it created this:
https://anglish.fandom.com/wiki/English_tung

So autistic.

>>12934619
Okay anon, I respect your personal stance on Dante's superiority, and will just say that at this point in my life I happen to consider Shakespeare the greater of the two. I don't think our discussion here is going to move anywhere further, given what all has already been covered, so let's just respect eachother while agreeing to disagree. :)

>>12934657
Okay, good luck, mate. Cheers.

>>12934517
"I don't get it" -- Tolstoy

>>12934657
based, let's just end this discussion here guys because it's clear we're just insulting eachother at this point (well, for most of the thread...)

>>12934686
<3 you too mate

>>12934625
But it’s not a Latin word, that’s the whole point of this discussion, it comes from the quite different Greek culture

>>12934647
But it’s not a Romance language, real English poetry is very different from European poetry

>>12930596
>observe the female sex for what they are and realize them on paper
not sure if progressive or traditionalist, but either way I want some clarification on what Shakespeare saw that his peers did not.

>>12934702
The point of this discussion is your notion that every romance language is just "wimpy watered down peasant Latin". I'm showing that English is even worse. It's a Frankenstein

English received the word though "wimpy watered down peasant Latin". You didn't receive it unaltered. So you watered down the watered down version of the watered down version

poiētḗs -> poēta -> poete -> poet

>>12930212
>Dante is light-years better.
In melody, yes, but that is because of the language. In illustrative language, about equal. In terms of character depth

NO

>>12934777
>reading Dante for the characters

>>12934813
>reading Dante at all

>>12934813
>>12934756
Well I didn’t read that post. I like a few romans though mostly it was a rotten and criminal society. And that’s not really the point, every word has it’s own history. And English has (or had, rather) a lot of its medieval and Celtic which was is better for poetry by their history of usage.


Not sure what you’re going on about at the end there, it’s a Greek word, picking it up after a Roman invasion doesn’t change that.

>>12934756 #
Well I didn’t read that post. I like a few romans though mostly it was a rotten and criminal society. And that’s not really the point, every word has it’s own history. And English has (or had, rather) a lot of its medieval and Celtic which was is better for poetry by their history of usage.

Not sure what you’re going on about at the end there, it’s a Greek word, picking it up after a Roman invasion doesn’t change that.

I think I am in good company, and that not being the argument, that Hamlet is the greatest work ever written in the English language. Obviously I have not read every single piece of English writing but to me it demonstrates what a work of writing should be. If I find a piece of writing that encapsulates the human condition in such beautiful writing as Hamlet I will disregard my opinion.

>bait this good

bon appetit

>>12934978
Everyone knows it’s rubbish bait we’re just here to talk about Shakespeare

>>12935002

I'm having a fantastic time

>>12935002
>have made several shitposts itt on both sides of this argument
>have received many seething replies

>>12934459
>a poo is proud of being cucked
lmao

>>12935053
When will you learn
People enjoy being mad

Let's say that all books in the world will disappear and you could only save one book
1) hamlet
2) the divine comedy
Which one would you pick?

>>12932114
Let's look at yours:
Let's
loot
k
at
your
own

>>12931866
This doesn't prove anything?

>>12935120
If the divine comedy was the only book in the world there wouldn’t be a ‘to be or not to be’ I’d kill myself

>>12932248
But none of this matters because it's pure poetic genius, and Shakespeare wins in that category hands down. There isn't a single phrase in all of Dante as memorable as "To take arms against a sea of troubles." or "To thine own self be true." Simple stuff on the face of it, but the Italian never even remotely approaches this ability. Usually, idioms and set phrases take generations to refine and accumulate and are the invention of an entire culture. Shakespeare could pull them out of thin air and place them in the mouth of a minor character's valet.

This is why Nabokov said of him: His poetic texture is the greatest the world has ever known.

>Bible
>Shakespeare
>Tolstoy
>Pushkin
>Melville
>Milton
>Dante

>>12935173
Nigga, Dante was so influential that his divine comedy helped turn his dialect into the main dialect in Italy.

http://italyexplained.com/blame-dante-how-a-dialect-became-a-language/

The imagery that people have of hell also is because of him
>In his book, Inventing Hell, Catholic writer and historian Jon M. Sweeney is critical of the ways that Christians have appropriated Dante's vision and images of hell.

>>12935234
>Nigga, Dante was so influential t
Who's talking about influence? I'm talking about genius. Luther was "influential" in the development of modern German. He wasn't a genius of literature.
>The imagery that people have of hell also is because of him
It predates him, this is a meme.

>>12935120
The Divine Comedy, without a doubt.

>>12935173
>There isn't a single phrase in all of Dante as memorable as "To take arms against a sea of troubles." or "To thine own self be true."
Those aren't even Shakespeare's most memorable lines. And I doubt you've read Dante at all. "Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita/Mi ritrovai per una selva oscura"? "Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch'entrate"? Jesus Christ. I could go on and on.

>>12935255
Tell me where in The Bible does it say that Hell is divided into circles.

>>12935255
>genius
How the fuck isn't Dante a genius?

>>12935320
Didn't you know? Only Anglofags can be genius. The rest of the world is just alright.

>>12935306
>Those aren't even Shakespeare's most memorable lines.
Did someone say they were?
>Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita/Mi ritrovai per una selva oscura
I don't speak Italian, but I recognize those lines. They're not that great. Name some by Dante used in daily conversation? Name some that are so valuable and memorable, they've become idiom.
>>12935313
The common view of hell is not that it's divided into circles. People who say so tend to be using it for fiction rather than theology.

>>12935173
>pull them out of thin air
Not sure if you were being witty there or not, but you just used one of Shakespeare's famous idioms with the "out of thin air" remark. Either way it only strengthens your argument - Shakespeare has contributed more commonplace sayings to the English language than any other document in literature besides the Bible, and that's an entire corpus spanning numerous authors and centuries of time - Shakespeare was a single individual, who died at 52. Simply unbelievable. I don't think our species will ever unravel what caused such genius to come out of a single ordinary, uneducated, single man. Of course, he was Divinity in flesh: but what does this mean? Was he simply a freak of nature, blessed more heavily by providence than any before or since himself? I don't subscribe to a theistic conception of the Divine, and therefore am not sure how our model of genius works in a pantheistic system with reincarnation and so forth - whether it's by accident or reward or whatever else. But I hope our species uncovers it one day, and thereby understands how Shakespeare came to be himself.

>>12930116
Shakespeare's greatness/the near unilateral praise Shakespeare receives has absolutely nothing to do with either his erudition, his mystery, or any "obscure language." You obviously have no familiarity with either his writing, or any of the writing that has been done on him.

>>12935306
>>12935255
>>12935234
>>12935173
Wonder why the Dante side can never articulate their argument as nicely as the Shakespeare camp

>>12935339
You're contradicting yourself. According to you Dante making his dialect become the standard language of Italy and popularizing the imagery of hell don't count since you just said that influence isn't the same as genius but now you're saying that because people adopted Shakespeare's idioms he is a genius.

>>12935332
>The common view of hell is not that it's divided into circles. People who say so tend to be using it for fiction rather than theology.
So you're saying that's a Dante invention? Oh I thought it was a meme. Retard.

>>12935356
>According to you Dante making his dialect become the standard language of Italy and popularizing the imagery of hell don't count since you just said that influence isn't the same as genius b
It isn't. Writing a dictionary isn't the same as making idioms because idioms usually have some poetic and artistic value. Every lexicographer isn't an artist.

>>12935339
>Shakespeare was a single individual.
Perhaps he was, but some of his pieces are disputed. For all we know, it might as well could be a group of people where "William Shakespeare" was the boss.

>>12935375

>>12935339
He stole most of stories. Basically did aesthetic remakes and reworkigs. And most of his supposed word inventions are Anglicized versions of foreign words, take for instance, 'assassination'. There's nothing divine about him. The sole idea of that makes me laugh. Why are Anglos so delusional?

>>12935369
Be honest, you haven't read one single line of the divine comedy.

>>12935347
Try doing this argument in an Italian-language board and see how things go. Of course this place is Anglo-centric.

>>12935391
Be honest. You've lost and are now deflecting with petty personal attacks.

>>12935356
It's only genius if Shakes did it.

>>12935356
I'm not the one who said anything about influence or genius, and I should clarify I wasn't in my comment speaking about Dante, or of Shakespeare relative to him - I was, like an Anglofag/Bardolator, simply gushing over the greatness of my favorite poet. If Dante influenced the dialect of his culture a lot too then that's certainly a virtue to him, but in this case I'm not promoting a kind of "quote wars" between them, merely praising ol' Shakes. I know I said "strengthens your argument", but I moreso meant "you utilizing a classic Shakespearian idiom in your comment, accidentally or not, only helps you for whatever point you're making on him".

>>12935173
Those are pretty shit lines. I don't think you've read Dante. You just read Shakes in high school and probably have a generic English name like Smith or Williams so you feel the need to defend Shakes despite your ignorance of other cultures.

>>12935339
reading this back i made some yucky errors of formatting here, apologies frens

>>12935339
>>12935384
>>12935409

I actually read that Shakespeare wasn't even out of the ordinary with his knowledge of words compared to other authors in his era.

>Dr Jonathan Hope, a Reader in English in the Faculty of Humanities & Social Sciences, has found that, while Shakespeare may appear to have used and coined more words than his contemporaries, this could be attributed to the fact that more of his writing survives and his rate of word coinage is actually similar to other writers.

>"He was writing at a time when the English language's vocabulary was expanding rapidly but, while he had a rich vocabulary himself, it was on a par with other writers from the same time. Originality in language was not necessarily seen as a good thing in Shakespeare's time and he did not always use elaborate words with Latin roots- when he did, he often tended to follow them with an explanation in more straightforward English.

>>12935398
Mate, both Dante and Shakes are geniuses without question. We're merely ascertaining the greater one, if such a title exists. Ignore the biased people, on either side, who pretend that we aren't presently discussing the greatest literary artists in history. Not my fault if some people get so petty in these discussions.

>>12935432
Good points, despite being a Bardolator I can accept all of this. I too have read that his linguistic accolades are overstated and inflated.

>>12935432
It's the literary devices Shakespeare uses, not the vocab. See the book by Sister Miriam here>>12932034
They were accessible to others who had read contemporary guides and Quintillian, but knowing and executing are different things.

>>12935384
>There's nothing divine about him.
And that's why Shakespeare is both based and redpilled. Dante using God as a literary device is cheating.

>>12935875
If someone can't execute, in what sense can they be said to know? How could anyone else even know that they know?

>>12935921
Because knowledge is an awareness of a thing, while execution is an act of creating a thing. I know Shakespeare and Dante, I have knowledge of them and that Boccaccio is superior to them both, but I can not execute my erotic fiction to a level of Boccaccio's and all my dirty tales are rated sub-three stars where ever I upload them. My possession of knowledge is different to my execution of acts.

>>12936053
What is that awareness? How do you know that the "awareness of a thing" that you have "in pure knowledge" or whatever you want to call knowledge somehow extracted from the act of knowing is knowledge and not a figment? For instance: doesn't the statement "I know Shakespeare" mean something like "I can perform the act of internally reciting some lines of Shakespeare," or "I can identify (the act of identification), if asked, the literary techniques that Shakespeare uses," or something along these lines?

I'll just throw in that Shakes is definitely a bigger and more universal figure than Dante. Only Homer I think has ever matched Shakes in permeability, outside of religious writing of course. Universality and timelessness are probably the most important factors for measuring eminence when talking the greatest in the canon.

>>12936090
It could mean either, you could ask the person making the statement for a precise clarification. Neither meaning changes that knowing a thing is different to performing an act. Knowing a techne is different to performing an act of a techne. This is an obvious distinction. Everyone can read Quintilian and Longinus and others, not everyone who reads and knows them writes great literature. Knowledge is a formal cause, an act is performed by an efficient cause.

>>12936162
You're repeating yourself and saying that the distinction "is obvious," but this is exactly what is not obvious to me. Using synonyms does nothing to clear this up. What did you mean when you said, "I know Shakespeare"? And the title of that work looks to me like "Institutes of Oratory," not "How to Write Great Literature." "Writing great literature" does not seem to me to be a reasonable criterion of knowledge in this case. Do you think that only Boccaccio knew how to write dirty tales properly, that only Shakespeare knew how to write plays in iambic pentameter properly, i.e. according to the accepted rules?

>>12936201
I'll repeat
>Knowledge is a formal cause, an act is performed by an efficient cause.

Literary devices are a techne. Quintilian wrote a defininitive list of them. Shakespeare employed them to so great effect an Elizabethan playright ascended to the apex of world literature. You can read Quintilian too and gain knowledge of the techne of literary devices, almost every writer has, certainly all of them in Shakespeare's time. Will you be able to execute like him though? No one else could.

Literary devices are not a great secret, there is no great skeptic debate to be had about whether you can have knowledge of them as a techne. Discussion and lists of them exist from earliest times of classical literature onwards. The execution is the difficult part.

>>12930523
yikes, you're not gonna make it

>>12936271
I do write women, though. But I don't think I'm automatically better for doing so. And neither is Shakes.

>>12936142
Shakes is just a meme that went too far, let's be honest.

>>12936322
He's not automatically better for writing women - he's qualified himself as better by writing them better than Dante.

>>12936254
>I'll repeat
Are you fucking with me? But I'll come at it from another angle: how do they know they know? When did the teachers of these writers say, "You know this technique well enough, we can move on?" Clearly the teachers can't peer into their students' subjectivites and gauge their level of knowledge that way. It comes to this: how could someone claim to have knowledge and yet be unable to execute that knowledge? It's as if I said, "I have the awareness that I can bench press 200 pounds, but I can't execute a 200 pound bench press." And if you're saying you don't know the technique as well as Shakespeare or Boccaccio, that's exactly why you can't - execute it as well. And if you mean that there's some ineffable, unique quality about Shakespeare's writing that can't be objectified in technique, what's the point of comparing yourself to him in that regard?

>>12936333
So Jane Austen is automatically better than Shakes for writing even more compelling female characters?

>>12935384
this

>>12936357
Only better in that specific regard. I'm not saying Shakes is "better than Dante" for writing better females than he did, only that "he is better than Dante at writing females".

>>12936375
>He's not automatically better for writing women - he's qualified himself as better by writing them better than Dante.
Mhmm it seems like backpedaling, bro. That's not what you said. Even less if you're the Portuguese faggot ITT.

>>12936356
Are you ESL or just dull? Do you understand causes? Do you understand the difference between a formal and an efficient cause? Your posts are either a confusion of causation or a failure to understand or precisely use the words you post with.

I'll repeat again
>Knowledge is a formal cause, an act is performed by an efficient cause.

Read the Stanford article on causes
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-causality/#FouCau

Contact your ESL teacher if there are words you don't understand.

>>12936463
I understand now why Wittgenstein beat his pupils. Enjoy your evening.

>>12930324
>BIOY: Do you put The Divine Comedy above all?
>BORGES: As far as literature is concerned, it's only inferior to the Gospels. Homer might be a great writer, but it's incomparable to Dante and the authors of the Gospels.

>>12936414
Mate, why would I backpedal a single comment later? My implicit assumption in reading your original comment was that it was plainly obvious nobody here is saying Shakespeare is unanimously better than Dante simply by his being better for a single aspect - hence why I left that statement without such unnecessary clauses. If you want to assume I'm backpedaling do so, but I'm genuinely disappointed in you for even asking the question of "Is Shakespeare all-around better than another writer for beating them in a single category?" as if it were a valid question in the first place, and then accepting my own completely rational answer as some kind of recant on my part. Are we children, or adults? Can you please debate with sense, and not reduce our conversations to their present drivel? Other individuals above already stated he's better than Dante in the SPECIFIC category of female characters, since both feature them in their work - nobody of intelligence here has argued for him being universally better than Dante for superiority in merely a particular aspect.

>>12936582
>Other individuals above already stated he's better than Dante in the SPECIFIC category of female characters
Not really, the Portuguese fag utilized this as one of the reasons why Shakes is better than Dante. He didn't say "he's better than Dante at writing female characters" he said "he's better than Dante because he wrote female characters, 50% of humanity yada yada yada metaphors." And yes, you're kinda backpedaling but it doesn't really matter, just don't be dishonest.

>>12936357
>even more compelling female characters?
I'd put Austen and Shakes about equal here. Obviously Austen is better than Dante. A writer who does not understand women is like an athlete with only one leg. They will never develop the full potential of their art, being emotionally and social cripples