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/lit/ - Literature

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15386564 No.15386564 [Reply] [Original]

The great English novel was written by Dickens but which one was it?

>> No.15386621

>>15386564
Great Expectations. I mean it even has "great" in the name.

>> No.15387037

>tfw I'm from an Anglo country that has never and will never produce a great novel

>> No.15387138

>>15387037
New Zealand?

>> No.15387151

David Copperfield.

>> No.15387161

>>15387037
it's okay Canuck

>> No.15387188

>>15386621
That's good but OP, Elliot is better

>> No.15387191

>>15387037
Produce it then

>> No.15387198

>>15387037
Being Canadian is a fate I would not wish on my worst enemy

>> No.15387217

>>15387037
>cue a bunch of muricans assuming they're safe from this implication...

>> No.15387220

>>15387161
>>15387198
Bingo.

>>15387191
I've written three novels. They'll never be published.

>> No.15387261

>>15386564
I've read A Christmas Carol and Great Expectations.

Sorry, but I can't see him as a truly great writer. He was a great novelist (a master of the form), although full of faults, but not a great writer: his style, his intellectual frameworks, his characters are nearly all extremely conventional. For instance, Joe, Pip's uncle in Great Expectations, is pretty much a caricature, a ''stock character'' representing the ''good, hard-working, poor Christian'', like Silar Marner in George Eliot's mediocre, conventionally Christian book. The same can be applied to other of Dickens's characters. There is, however, some immensely good humor in the Lawyer and his clerk. Still, a lot of the book is forced, exaggerated, such as the sorrows of the old woman, or the existence of a foreign benefactor who will suddenly make your life better: it all feels fake.
There is one stroke of genius in the book, and it comes in the unexpected marriage near the end, which is a surprising exhibition of realist, cynical humor on the part of Dickens, and raises him above the mere conventional, giving the novel a superior, Flaubertian touch, bordering the absurd.

But I don't think it can be grouped alongside truly supreme works, such as Sterne's Tristram Shandy or Conrad's Nostromo, which, depending on how you see things, can also be considered English novels. Are Sterne and Conrad English?

If they are not, well, then I suppose Robinson Crusoe is perhaps the best of English novels. Or maybe even Dickens - perhaps in Bleak House, which I might read eventually.
Another good candidate is Wuthering Heights, but it has the same faults as Dickens in its exaggeration and stylistic tendencies towards kitsch.

Keep in mind that I am only talking about the novels I've read. English is my second language, and I have not read Clarissa, Tom Jones, The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia etc.
Anyway, the greatest writers of the English tongue, in my estimation, have been the Irish. I consider Gulliver's Travels, Tristram Shandy, Moby-Dick, Nostromo and Ulysses as the best five novels of the English language.

>> No.15387267

>>15386564
Jude the Obscure

>> No.15387294

>>15387261

The answer is Middlemarch

>> No.15387320

>>15387294
I've read Silas Marner two days ago and thought it absolutely mediocre.

How is Middlemarch compared to it? How is the morality of it? Is it still the old, conventional Christian babble that has been written and rewritten thousands of times, and better? I can't stand novelists of mediocre intellect.

>> No.15387344

>>15386564
Bleak House

>> No.15387345

>>15387261
Have you read any William Makepeace Thackeray? Much better prose artist than Dickens.

>> No.15387352

>>15387320

>George Eliot
>Of mediocre intellect

Marner is more sentimental and she doesn't totally avoid those qualities in Middlemarch but there's loads more psychological analysis that goes on throughout, not to mention her incredibly witty use of simile that is always just perfect for what she's describing. George Eliot is one of the most underrated novelists of all time and Middlemarch should always be mentioned as something in range with Moby Dick and Ulysses.She is the master of realism in the English language.

>> No.15387355

Being forced to read Hard Times made me lose interest in an English degree.

>> No.15387366

I prefer Trollope to Dickens but most of my favourite English novels are from after the Victorian era

>> No.15387373

>>15387261
>>15387320
Idiot. Your criteria for greatness is retarded. "Conventional Christian babble" and exaggeration in style doesn't mean the novel isn't good

>> No.15387400

>>15386564
Wuthering Heights is better than anything written by Dickens

>> No.15387411

>>15387037
>Canada has never produced a great novel
Ann of Green Gables

>> No.15387550

>>15387411
I literally typed out "except for a young adult novel from the Victorian era" but deleted it because I didn't want to give the game away.

>> No.15387918

>>15387220
Deptford Trilogy's great, anon. I've even read the other two (which I enjoyed) and Murther and Walking Spirits. Davies will re-emerge; he's too good not to
t. way south of the border

>> No.15387940

>>15387345
Told you ;)

>> No.15388123

>>15387345
>>15387400
cringe

>> No.15388125

>>15388123
cringe

>> No.15389221

>>15387373
Which is why George Eliot is good. If she weren't, I wouldn't even had heard of her.

However, I only read good authors, so to me she is mediocre, because my tastes are demanding.

To judge from Silas Marner, George Eliot couldn't think. Imagine writing a book like that in the age of Baudelaire, after Goya and Goethe... There's nothing wrong with holding a conventional moral point of view, but a good author has to acknowledge the conflicts involved, and in no moment the "evil guys" in Silas Marner are given a voice; in fact, it's all based on ridiculous caricatures, so that nobody in the book is actually alive (except perhaps for he villagers); even the main character is merely an instrument used to illustrate a conventional moral point. As for the writing itself, it's syntactically, musically and rhetorically admirable, but, as is typical of the age, it lacks concreteness and concision, dwelling too much on kitsch-inducing abstractions - still, I suppose it's solid enough.

The novel is good insofar as it's a finished piece of work, and has a story that might be interesting for some. But this is not enough for a contemporary of Flaubert: in order to be great, a book needs to be unique and different from everything else you will ever read, but Silas Marner is merely an irrelevant footnote to the Sermon on the Mountain.

A kid, or someone who's just starting to read literature, will probably appreciate the book, but it's too infantile to be read with true enjoyment by an adult who has developed a rigorous critical sense.

>> No.15390537
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15390537

English novels are shit, read our poetry

>> No.15390619

>>15387037
That narrows it down to all Anglo nations other than the US and UK