Are you elitist when it comes to what you consider proper literature?

>>24487829 (OP)

Go left if you want to cry yourself to death of boredom

>>24487829 (OP)
hey Calle Borjesson. Where have you been? Still shooting up schools?

>>24487829 (OP)
Blood Meridian is THE Novel per excellence
>picrel

>>24487923
The prose is dogshit

>>24487927
>'filtered'

>>24487829 (OP)
No. "Proper" literature = Good "improper" literature + time

>>24487829 (OP)
>Hamlet not for the masses
>Master and Margarita for the masses

>>24487829 (OP)
Dostoyevsky belongs firmly in the right side, And so does Nabokov.
>>24487923
It's American western cowboy slop.

I agree with Schoppie on this one :
>A novel will be of a loftier and nobler nature, the more of inner and the less of outer life it portrays.

Lit snobs for Joyce is such a bizarre thing when you actually read the fucker.

>>24487829 (OP)
I should be reading Ulysses, and fabricating my case for and against. I have read 200 pages so far—not a third; and have been amused, stimulated, charmed, interested, by the first two or three chapters—to the end of the cemetery scene; and then puzzled, bored, irritated and disillusioned by a queasy undergraduate scratching his pimples. Tom, great Tom [T.S. Eliot], thinks this is on a par with War and Peace! An illiterate, underbred book, it seems to me; the book of a self-taught working man, and we all know how distressing they are, how egotistic, insistent, raw, striking, and ultimately nauseating. When one can have the cooked flesh, why have the raw? But I think if you are anaemic, as Tom is, there is glory in blood. Being fairly normal myself I am soon ready for the classics again. I may revise this later. I do not compromise my critical sagacity. I plant a stick in the ground to mark page 200.

>>24487829 (OP)
>Hamlet
Nigga you do realise that Shakespeare's plays were tailored for the audiences and royal approval? Shakespeare was an entertainer, not an artist

im an elitist anti-elitist and consider the "elite" literature basically garbage (classics are exceptions of course, but "modern elite" stuff 100%) while the actual more popular stuff is far more profound and higher quality.

None gives a fuck if you "play with the medium" your book is shit

>>24487829 (OP)
>Blood Meridian
Surely, this is some concentrated effort by some malicious group of 4 people trying to poison this book's reputation and status, right?

>>24487829 (OP)
Maybe, I am still unsure if the books I like would fall under the strict literature criteria. If they do, then I would happily become an elitist.

>>24488486
It's classic 4chan contrarianism. An e-celeb caused the book to go mainstream among normalfags, so now you have people hating on it in the threads.

all of these books belong on the right side. only the greeks are good litterature

You ever notice how things I enjoy are for high IQ, handsome, cool and epic guys, and things you enjoy are dumbed down shit for plebs? That's a wild coincidence

>>24487829 (OP)
Wrong pic. Sorry

>>24487829 (OP)
But wait OP doesn't Dune... isn't... doesn't there... isn't there something. Uh. Hold on I can't. Think at the moment. Faust... is good book... Dune... Sci-Fi is faustian? Maybe? I think someone said that once... so therefore. Maybe if I count using my fingers... okay. Okay I think I've got it
>Dune is a good book because faust is also a good book
Did. Am I getting through with that?

>>24489500
Fight me in the Benihana parking lot

>>24489500
This but unironically

>>24487829 (OP)
I consider literature a genre.

>>24489500
Do you qualify LOTR as fit for the left field in your post's graphic? I'm not a bona fide enthusiast of Tolkien or anything, but if we're talking about "true works of art that transcend the medium...made out of passion and written by visionaries," then does it not abide by your post's definition of literature? Its influence on fiction in the Western world practically defined modern and postmodern interpretations of fantasy storytelling. Or, do you believe its relevance and influences must endure for a longer time before its inclusion as true literature?

>>24487829 (OP)
And to you, OP, I ask over LOTR's inclusion in the right: Are you insinuating that, due to Tolkien having made a profit off of his work, it must hold "very little artistic value" that forbids its designation as true literature? I understood Tolkien was an avid folklorist, a zealot in his respect for fiction, folklore, linguistics, myths, and religion, going so far as to incorporate those passions into LOTR with meticulous care. I confess there was financial incentive throughout this process, although I disagree it was his prime motivation to make money and entertain people. William Faulkner certainly had financial incentives, and so too did Shakespeare. They did not let this compromise them too much, no? So too was Tolkien this way, notoriously obsessed over how his vision was depicted, this preventing frugal opportunities from actualizing. Does this not display an aversion to selling out? Does this not show a fear for how his work could be dumbed down "for the masses," dumbed down "for monetary purposes"? And does its reception from both low- and highbrow audiences detract from what it literarily offers?


>tl;dr for both my post
What I'm trying to ask is this: Would you deny LOTR the title of genuine literature? Just because its reception led to financial success and mass appeal, the original work itself was not compromised in its artistic integrity. It was transformative; it transcends the medium, made out of passion, and written by a visionary. Why the hate?

>>24490170
It’s a fine book for young adults but nothing more. Fantasy and sci-fi is juvenile by default.

>>24487829 (OP)
Elitist attitudes tend to produce lists of 'greatest works' that really reflect the culture and values of the curator in a way that often feels close minded.
Among the many diverse roles played by literature, I think a significant one is its ability to connect us to others, especially those who differ in considerable ways like in their values, culture, or identity.
Certainly elitists claim that they're just leaving out the 'slop' written purely for entertainment, but they often also seem to leave out everything from cultures that are particularly foreign or from women aside from one or two tokenistic entries.

>>24487829 (OP)
Yo, I don't know if this breaks the rules of this board, but I am dying of boredom. Do any of you guys have good audiobooks to recommend? I have only read some really basic stuff like, Catcher In the Rye, 1984, Slutter House 5, Franeinsien, Of Mice And Men, Ender's Game and Zen In The Art of Writing (the one outlier). The recommendations don't have to be strictly audiobooks; I can read.

>>24490280
steve parkers audiobooks:
alice in wonderland
through the looking glass

>>24487927
It's good for the first few pages and then it just turns into a disaster.

>>24490245
Fantasy predates realism. It's the original and purest literature.

>>24490292
And cave paintings predate every single art movement, what’s your point? Earlier = better?
Also, fantastical elements alone do not constitute fantasy.

>>24490306
The point is that it's not "juvenile" any more than epics are juvenile. If you think fantasy is just goblins and orcs and whatever generic Angloslop you don't understand fantasy.

>has a category of supposedly fake literature
>says they're monetarily driven without heart put into it
>puts Lord of the Rings in it

Tell me you've never read or studied Tolkien without telling me you've never read or studied Tolkien. I've seen some horrendous takes on this website, but this might be in the top 3 worst ones I've seen.

Tolkien poured his heart and soul into the entire legendarium. As someone who has read all of his published works (including everything put out by Christopher after his father's death), it is utterly insane to say it is a work without emotion and heart put into it. The book mirrors aspects of his personal experience with WW1, with tragedy, hardship, and bonding poured into it to craft arguably the best fantasy novel of all time, rivaled only by The Silmarillion. It disgusts me to see someone put down LOTR in such a way. It isn't some pumped-out corporate slop.

You know what is the "corporate slop" this image promotes? Stuff that's just printed out for cash like Patterson, Hoover, Grisham, etc. Not LOTR. Not Hundred Years of Solitude. The ones on the right in that image are all still works of literature. Great works if you ask me, some better than others.

Tolkien is far, far from being anywhere near a mass-produced money-grubbing. He didn't care about that and you're a moron if you think that. He is a man who came into this world to share his incredible and fantastical visions with the world, to bring us a feeling of relaxation and a break from the hardships of the world. He crafted an incredible narrative, formed multiple languages, wrote dozens of essays, calculated population charts, and carefully designed the progress of the worldbuilding over a near entire lifetime. Go read The Nature of Middle-Earth, and tell me he did that for corporate slop and greed. I fucking dare you. Read The Children of Hùrin, and try to tell me it is a less complex and emotional novel than any other acclaimed piece. Read The Lord of the Rings, not watch the movie adaptions, but actually read the book. Consider the careful worldbuilding that has gone into creating it. Look at how the cast of characters interact with each other, and the minutae of their influences and interactions and how it conveys a deep philosophical message across a vast variety of concepts and ideas. Read The Silmarillion, and come try to tell me that Tolkien wrote for greed.

I dare you.

>>24490313
The epics are in most cases juvenile, yes. They pioneered what literature is but hold little value in the modern day outside of their historical context. No one is sitting reading Aesop’s fables and gasping at their depth, but you can still admire them from a historical standpoint. I wouldn’t bother with something like The Odyssey other than to better understand Ulysses, for example.

>>24489500
If you wanna besmirch Goethe's good name we're gonna have a problem, my guy...I'm waiting for you in the Arby's parking lot

>>24490363
part 2's a snoozefest

>>24487923
>wild west genreslop
>oh-so-edgy tropes
>le gimmicky creepy capeshit villain
Nah. If this is the best american literature has to offer, than you ngmi

>>24490317
correct, anyone who tries to put down lotr by equating it to all of its shallow copycats proves they understand neither and invalidates any other opinion they may hold
it's way more idiotic than the bm trolling in this thread, and that's saying a lot

>>24490371
Uuuuuuuuhhhh I'm getting mad
Oooouuuuuuuh I'm getting angry

I like all of these novels :D

>>24490313
>>24490170
Tolkien is trash, tolkiendrone
It is the opposite of an epic
>Writers like Tolkien take you to the edge of the Abyss and point out the excellent tea-garden at the bottom, showing you the steps carved into the cliff and reminding you to be a bit careful because the hand-rails are a trifle shaky as you go down; they haven’t got the approval yet to put a new one in.
>The great epics dignified death, but they did not ignore it, and it is one of the reasons why they are superior to the artificial romances, of which Lord of the Rings is merely one of the most recent.
>The sort of prose most often identified with “high” fantasy is the prose of the nursery-room. It is a lullaby; it is meant to soothe and console. It is mouth-music. It is frequently enjoyed not for its tensions but for its lack of tensions. It coddles; it makes friends with you; it tells you comforting lies. It is soft
>Moderation was the rule and it is moderation which ruins Tolkien’s fantasy and causes it to fail as a genuine romance. The little hills and woods of that Surrey of the mind, the Shire, are “safe”, but the wild landscapes everywhere beyond the Shire are “dangerous”. Experience of life itself is dangerous. The Lord of the Rings is a pernicious con- firmation of the values of a morally bankrupt middle class. Their cowardly, Home Counties habits are primarily responsible for the problems England now faces. The Lord of the Rings is much more deep-rooted in its infantilism than a good many of the more obviously juvenile books it influenced. It is Winnie-the-Pooh posing as an epic.

>>24490317
>dude he put his heart and soul into it
See picrel
And autists like chris chan put their heart and soul into sonichu doesn't make it literature
> The book mirrors aspects of his personal experience with WW1, with tragedy, hardship, and bonding poured into it to craft arguably the best fantasy novel of all time, rivaled only by The Silmarillion. It disgusts me to see someone put down LOTR in such a way. It isn't some pumped-out corporate slop.
It is the defintion of corporate slop. Soulless, prosaic trite trash whose entire ethos is against the very epics it is trying to imitate.
>He is a man who came into this world to share his incredible and fantastical visions with the world, to bring us a feeling of relaxation and a break from the hardships of the world. He crafted an incredible narrative, formed multiple languages, wrote dozens of essays, calculated population charts, and carefully designed the progress of the worldbuilding over a near entire lifetime. Go read The Nature of Middle-Earth, and tell me he did that for corporate slop and greed. I fucking dare you. Read The Children of Hùrin, and try to tell me it is a less complex and emotional novel than any other acclaimed piece. Read The Lord of the Rings, not watch the movie adaptions, but actually read the book. Consider the careful worldbuilding that has gone into creating it. Look at how the cast of characters interact with each other, and the minutae of their influences and interactions and how it conveys a deep philosophical message across a vast variety of concepts and ideas. Read The Silmarillion, and come try to tell me that Tolkien wrote for greed.
Read some better literature. The Faerie Queene is an actual great epic. The lord of the rings is winnie the pooh LARPing as an epic

>>24487829 (OP)
One hundred years of solitude is one of the greatest works of literature, it wasn't made to make money. The author even hates how popular it got. Fucking retard

>>24490666
TRVKE DIGITS

Btw
>*hated
Márquez is dead, bro

>>24487829 (OP)
Bulgakov wrote a book criticizing the fedoras in a country run by fedoras. He could’ve been shot for that; hardly a book made for “monetary purposes”.

>>24487831
NTA but I went right and cried myself out of boredom

>>24489500
KEK MY SIDES

>>24490586
You are such an insufferable elitist fool. You have entirely missed the point of the entire work, zeroing in on your own personal strawman as you paint a picture of the world as if it is one that cannot have nuance or complexities. Go on, thrive in your cesspool, worm. Lord of the Rings is no "artificial romance." The Shire isn't 'not dangerous,' there were wars and battles in the Shire. An entire point is that not even the Shire is safe. It isn't that elsewhere is unsafe, it's that everywhere has its own trials and tribulations just like our own world.
>Experience of life itself is dangerous.
Of course life itself is dangerous, unless you rot around like an ugly toad and sit in your room without appreciation for the beauty of the world. Everything has danger in it. To say that is a reason that LOTR is not true literature is ridiculous. What's next, Dumas is not true literature because he portrays that life has challenges? Is Kafka now not valued as much because he shows that life does not wait for the individual and ignores us?
Death has dignity. How can one read of the death of Boromir and feel a deep sense of loss for the tragic hero, corrupted by the overpowering influence of the darkest artifact of their entire world? Even after his transgressions, he dies with honor. Are you not inspired as the Ents of Fangorn Forest rise up to tear away at the industrial complex that Orthanc had become? Tolkien imbued every aspect of his great novel with pieces of his life and beliefs. If you read The SIlmarillion, The Great Tales, and The History of Middle-Earth, you would have a much deeper appreciation for the work. But, evidently, your reading comprehension is not at a high enough level to ever hope to grasp the complexity of Tolkien's essays and stories.

Live your sad, sorry life, quivering in the cesspool of your own false intellectualism. You attempt to place yourself higher, but your view is upside-down, showing how far beneath the standards of intellectualism you are as you shake your fist and clutch your pearls, screaming words of hate towards works you could never dream of ever recreating. Shame on you.

>>24490586
>The little hills and woods of that Surrey of the mind, the Shire, are “safe”, but the wild landscapes everywhere beyond the Shire are “dangerous”.
the story ends with war in the shire

>>24491136
Read an actual epic for once, manchild LARPer, instead of reading moralistic false epics written by hacks.
The great epics glorified war. LOTR villainises it. The great epics glorified warriors. LOTR glorifies hobbits.
Dumas is actual literature. LOTR isn't.
It's clear that you're a manchild who has no knowledge of actual literature, especially the epic tradition, because poetry filters you, so you stick to reading tolkien. The fact that you think tolkien is "complex" is testament to your low intellect.

>>24490594
I have, in fact, read The Faerie Queene. I have read all six Books. Three times. Your image is meaningless and you strawman your opponents without any actual arguments. Tolkien dedicated his life to literature and valued it as such. It is not against any ethos of the great epic literature, it is the modern reinvigoration of it that society has lost. Tolkien's legendarium is a profound and expansive set of works that encompass so much, and have an incredible level of nuance and design that an entire group of people would struggle to remotely recreate. I do believe the man who contributed to the dictionary, spent his life teaching literature and translations, spoke countless languages, and devoted his entire life to literature as a whole knows much, much more about the epics than you could ever dream of, certainly more than I do also.

>read some better literature
I have read a huge breadth of literature. It's my field of study. I have a degree in it. I've read countless novels. It would probably be more challenging to name a classic I haven't read. I understand the incredible value of the time, love, hardship, and effort Tolkien has put into his incredible world. You treat his legendarium as if it is equivalent to the bastardizing movies, which are the corporate slop that is printed out. That is what you should be targeting, not his original works. Focus your lens of disdain elsewhere, friend; Tolkien is not your enemy in this scenario. Tolkien holds critiques of the capitalist system throughout his works; Doriath and Rohan aren't exactly bastions of businessmen. Please, I encourage you to take a kinder lens towards Tolkien's works, and truly try to understand the breadth and depth behind works like The Silmarillion, The Lord of the Rings, and his greater works as a whole.

>>24491171
>It is not against any ethos of the great epic literature, it is the modern reinvigoration of it that society has lost
It literally is
As stated already, The epics glorified warriors. Tolkien glorifies hobbits.
>I do believe the man who contributed to the dictionary, spent his life teaching literature and translations, spoke countless languages, and devoted his entire life to literature as a whole knows much, much more about the epics than you could ever dream of, certainly more than I do also.
Eddison was a far better author and far more knowledgeable than tolkien. One page of the worm ouroborus is better than anything tolkien wrote.
>I have read a huge breadth of literature. It's my field of study. I have a degree in it. I've read countless novels. It would probably be more challenging to name a classic I haven't read
Sure you have buddy.
>I understand the incredible value of the time, love, hardship, and effort Tolkien has put into his incredible world. You treat his legendarium as if it is equivalent to the bastardizing movies, which are the corporate slop that is printed out. That is what you should be targeting, not his original works. Focus your lens of disdain elsewhere, friend; Tolkien is not your enemy in this scenario. Tolkien holds critiques of the capitalist system throughout his works; Doriath and Rohan aren't exactly bastions of businessmen. Please, I encourage you to take a kinder lens towards Tolkien's works, and truly try to understand the breadth and depth behind works like The Silmarillion, The Lord of the Rings, and his greater works as a whole.
Stop fanboying over tolkien. He was not the second coming of christ. He was not in any way better than shakespeare. He was not the greatest author of the 20th century; he wasn't even the greatest fantasy author of the 20th century. he was an alright author who wrote some ok fantasy books that are overrated by people like you.

>Authors who inspire a movement are usually misunderstood, especially by those they have inspired, and Tolkien is no exception, but one of the biggest misconceptions about Tolkien is the idea that he is somehow an 'innovator of fantasy'. He did add a number of techniques to the repertoire of epic fantasy writers, and these have been dutifully followed by his many imitators, but for the most part, these techniques are little more than bad habits.
>Many have called Tolkien by such epithets as 'The Father of Fantasy', but anyone who makes this claim simply does not know of the depth and history of the fantasy genre. For those who are familiar with the great and influential fantastical authors, from Ovid and Ariosto to Eddison and Dunsany to R.E. Howard and Fritz Leiber, it is clear that, long before Tolkien, fantasy was already a complex, well-established, and even a respected literary genre.
>Eddison's work contains an invented world, a carefully-constructed (and well-researched) archaic language, a powerful and unearthly queen, and a central character who is conflicted and lost between the forces of nobility and darkness. Poul Anderson's The Broken Sword , which came out the same year as The Fellowship of the Ring, has distant, haughty elves, deep-delving dwarves, a broken sword which must be reforged, an epic war between the armies of light and darkness, another central character trapped between those extremes, and an interweaving of Christian and Pagan worldviews.
>So, if these aspects are not unique to Tolkien, then what does set him apart? Though Dunsany, Eddison, and Anderson all present worlds where light and dark come into conflict, they present these conflicts with a subtle and often ironic touch, recognizing that morality is a dangerous thing to present in absolutes. Tolkien (or C.S. Lewis), on the other hand, has no problem in depicting evil as evil, good as good, and the only place they meet is in the temptation of an honest heart, as in Gollum's case--and even then, he is not like Eddison's Lord Gro or Anderson's Scafloc, characters who live under an alternative view of the world, but instead fluctuates between the highs and lows of Tolkien's dualistic morality.

>>24491177
>The epics glorified warriors, Tolkien glorifies hobbits
This statement is true in the literal stated sense. Yes, hobbits are glorified for their bravery and heroism. The hobbits quite literally also have moments as warriors. However, you imply that Tolkien does not glorify warriors and their battles. In no particular order: Húrin, Fingolfin, Túrin, Glorfindel, Ecthelion, Tuor, Eärendil, Maedhros, Beren, Gil-galad, Beleg, Fingon, Boromir, Aragorn, Éowyn, Galadriel, Bard, Azaghal, and Thorin. This is a list of heroic warriors who fought in various battles and/or wars. Tolkien absolutely glorifies them and shows them in a powerful, positive light where they thrive in fighting the forces of evil and pushing back against whomever their villain is, whether it be Morgoth, Sauron, Smaug, or others. Genuinely, these characters all follow in the steps of the warriors of the great epics, and fight their own battles, literal and mental. I promise you, the names I have stated, which are throughout Tolkien's works, reflect the ancient ideals. Tolkien did not hate those works, nor did he try to tear them down. He spent his life translating ancient epics like Beowulf, and revered them. He didn't desire profit, or write purely for people's entertainment.
>Eddison was a better author
I won't argue for or against "better" or "worse," because for the most part that is subjective and pure opinion. I'm attempting to deal with the facts of the works here, and the themes that Tolkien presents throughout his works. I would like to ask if you have read The Silmarillion or Great Tales, or even Lord of the Rings, in recent times. If you haven't, I would greatly implore you to read them once more with a more open lens to seeing how I have interpreted and studied them.
>Sure you have
I have. It's not that unbelievable. Many people have degrees, literature was just what I chose because I enjoy it the most of any subject.
>Stop fanboying
To a degree, I do. However, I don't think I'm overexaggerating on any points. Tolkien is widely considered an excellent author, and by many to be the greatest fantasy author. Is he my personal choice? Yes. That doesn't mean he is objectively the best, and I have never tried to say that he is. I think your opinion is unfairly biased, though. My keyword is unfairly; all opinions have some bias. I think you haven't taken proper time to examine his works through a more critical eye to see the intricacies I discuss. I'm not trying to put you down for it, truly. I want to have a civilized discussion and I have been more aggressive in some earlier posts than I would have liked, which I apologize for. There is a degree of agitation I had for seeing slander against an author whom I feel was incredibly gifted with a creative spirit and thoughtful mind.

Please, I implore you to read The Silmarillion/LOTR (perhaps again, if you have) with a more open eye. You might see that Tolkien does indeed still embrace the powerful warrior.

>>24491180
Of course, Tolkien is not the father of fantasy as a whole. Modern fantasy? It's not unreasonable to say he's been the largest influence on culture and laid the model for a lot of fantasy works to be developed.

I would like to discuss that you remark that Tolkien's morality is purely binary. This isn't true. There are a variety of characters who are morally gray and complex, especially in the expanded legendarium but even in LOTR itself. Denethor is a notorious example, who is not an "evil" character. I would like to make sure we are distinguishing the book Denethor from its more directly sinister movie variant, which I have seen overlap and combination of traits from over the years. He is quite complex and misguided, influenced by evil but still attempting to do the best for his city until his mental strains overwhelm him.

Covering the works more expansively and outside of LOTR, I would like to bring up a variety of morally gray characters. Fëanor, Thingol, Túrin, Mîm, Isildur, Celebrimbor, Thranduil, and Sons of Fëanor like Maedhros and Maglor present tough, morally gray perspectives that are not wholly good or wholly evil. They are portrayed as complex, and treated as such throughout his works. There is a sense of "Good" and "Evil" throughout Tolkien, yes. That is entirely undeniable and is a part of his world. That doesn't necessarily mean that every single character is wholly committed to one or the other, though. I feel his works are unique, through his specific stories, the way they are told, the uniqueness of power and godly beings, and more. If you attempt to remove all his nuance and try to focus it solely down to a dualistic perspective that has no room for nuance, of course he would seem to be a poorer author in comparison. However, he simply doesn't have that aspect you attempt to proclaim.

>>24491248
The existence of powerful warriors in tolkien's world doesn't preclude the fact that tolkien's view is that war is a bad thing. when he wrote "I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend." it was pretty intentional. This is antithetical to the ancient epics which promoted war as a glorious and good thing.
I have read LOTR, the hobbit, most of the silmallirion and even his lesser known works like farmer giles of tom. My actual, non hyperbolic view is that tolkien was a good writer but his work does not match the epics of old and certainly doesn't match the fantasy writers even of his day.
And there really isn't that much of an "english epic" about the lord of the rings. It's set in the ancient past but could be set on another planet for all we know. Ignoring the fact that england has it's "epics" (havelok the dane, guy of warwick, even robin hood at a stretch), the principal feature of epics is that they involve the nation or the people of that nation. LOTR doesn't. Inspired by england parts of it may be but there's nothing about it that could be considered an epic for england.

>>24491295

True. I do not mean to take away from the fact that he saw war as a negative. I would assume most people would think so. We don't exactly desire war. I think you can still capture the glory and power of the epic's warrior with undertones of distaste towards war. The War of Wrath is a brutal, painful conflict, wrought with sorrow and realism. Tolkien was a soldier who saw the horrors of World War 1 with his own eyes and lost friends during it.
The vast majority of the old epics do show war as a "glorious and good thing." Even The Iliad is ambivalent towards war. The rage of Achilles and the widespread death and sorrow show the sorrow and darkness associated with war. The Aeneid has a very haunted protagonist and it can seem to question what the price of raising an empire through war is. The Pharsalia harrowingly shows the tragedy of the Roman Civil War. The Bhagavad Gita, a part of the Mahabharata, shows the devastating aftermath of the Kurukshetra war and the survivors question if their cause was righteous and worth the struggle and blood. Tolkien's beloved Beowulf ends with a funeral and a sense of foreboding, dark and brooding as Beowulf dies and leaves his kingdom vulnerable. I don't think you would argue any of these are not great epics, I hope. I'm not trying to say these works (or their authors) are explicitly anti-war, especially not to the degree Tolkien was, but that these sentiments are still underlying themes in these works. It isn't an unheard of concept.
As for the quality of the works, I feel that comes down to personal opinion (to a degree). I do think quite highly of Tolkien's works, and place them above essentially every modern fantasy writer in quality. For content, he's my favorite. I have some bias because of that, which I acknowledge.
I wouldn't say it is explicitly an "English epic" in the work itself. Tolkien did intend for the legendarium to be a mythopoeic history of England and the world. I do not get that much, not really beyond the obvious symbolism of the Shire with England and a few vague scattered connections throughout his other works. I generally take it as simply a grand fantasy epic in its own time. In-universe, as you mentioned, we just live in the far future. I don't necessarily think it needs to be set as an epic of a specific country to be seen as an equal work to other greats, though. Despite having anti-war sentiments embedded, I don't think that means it needs to be wholly separated and seen as lesser than other epics. It simply is different, which isn't necessarily a bad or good thing.

>>24488011
>American western cowboy slop
That's right. Westerns are only for us Americans. It is part of our national heritage and myth. Non-Americans cannot relate and should fuck off having any part or concern for western tales and epics. Gatekeep westerns, Americans all.

>>24490245
Thank you for your answer.

>>24490586
I just wanted to say, I am not >>24490313 or >>24490317. I was just curious because LOTR was a first. I'm not a fan of Tolkien, nor have I ever read his books; I know what I know through a book I read about folklorists.

>>24487829 (OP)
Proust is not literature, but Blood meridian is

>>24490317
Tolkien is a good writer and his works are definitely much better than other fantasy, but putting him on the same level of Shakespeare, Faulkner, or Goethe is idiotic.

>>24490390
Why are you so retarded?

Blood meridian is a more artistically pleasing work than Absalom, Absalom!

And it sold less than every single book on the left until the 2nd decade of its release. OP is a retard

>>24488011
So does Tolstoy, shitter. Fuck that soap opera writer.

>>24491638
>artistically pleasing
Anon, I’m afraid you’re retarded.

>>24492146
No it's you who is retarded

>>24492210
Art isn’t about being artistically pleasing you fucking dumbass.

>>24492211
so true. art is when banana strapped on wall

>>24492211
One of them is about psychos murdering people for 200 pages, so if it also happens to be more artistically pleasing it is better art too.

>>24492212
>>24492216
Capeshitter mentality, neck yourself.

>>24487829 (OP)
I've read all the ones on the right and not a single one on the left

>>24492241
Faulkner unironically writes sutpen like some faggy capeshit mob boss

>>24487829 (OP)
>ezra pound
A second rate poet and the fact that you have put him among literary greats voids your opinion.

>>24487829 (OP)
anyone who uses "for the masses" unironically is a pleb in spirit.

>>24492212
art can be when a banana is strapped to a wall however, I am against such art receiving any taxpayer funding.

>>24490330
>The epics are in most cases juvenile >hold little value in the modern day
>I wouldn’t bother with something like The Odyssey other than to better understand Ulysses
You are a lowly, soulless creature

>>24492431
so can a triangle have four sides

>>24491393
Keep up the good work anon, it is refreshing to see an articulated wall of text that's not AI slop.

>>24492523
Art is a language. one may be permitted to swear but not in a restaurant or around children.

>>24491393
>True. I do not mean to take away from the fact that he saw war as a negative. I would assume most people would think so. We don't exactly desire war. I think you can still capture the glory and power of the epic's warrior with undertones of distaste towards war. The War of Wrath is a brutal, painful conflict, wrought with sorrow and realism. Tolkien was a soldier who saw the horrors of World War 1 with his own eyes and lost friends during it.
The view that war is a bad thing is a modern idea. I really don't think frankish knights of the 12th century or buccaneer captains of the 17th thought war and conquest were bad and horrible.
>I'm not trying to say these works (or their authors) are explicitly anti-war, especially not to the degree Tolkien was, but that these sentiments are still underlying themes in these works. It isn't an unheard of concept.
They can show the negative affects of war while still portraying it as a great adventure. And we have diaries from people in the middle ages and modern era who fought in wars- most of them either describe fighting in war neturally or show it as a good thing.

>>24491156
>long winded critique of [insert classic here]
>look inside
>its not even talking about what its critiqueing
Every time lol

>>24492645
>The view that war is a bad thing is a modern idea
Thus are mens lives spun out in war and death, the worst of sarrows to the human soul. Homer...
And I almost forgot about Euripides lmao
>what else is war but evil mutiplied
You're not just wrong, you're fucking stupid.

>>24487829 (OP)
A great work of art tells me about the artist. A popular work of art tells me about everyone.
*smirks*

>>24492697
ao3 fiction qualifies as great work by that standard.

>>24492718
I'm fine with that.

>>24490245
Literally half the books on the left are Fantasy, what are you talking about? Try not to be the most pretentious person on earth, and answer in good faith.

"At that very moment, the fingers of a human hand appeared and began writing on the lamp-illumined, whitewashed wall of the palace. When the king saw the disembodied hand writing away, he went white as a ghost, scared out of his wits."

>>24491441
Anon im peruvian and I loved western and cowboy slop ever since I was a little chipper...

>>24492645
the ancients thought cowardice and weakness were bad, and that prowess in battle was extremely valuable and admirable. those who practiced war enjoyed certain aspects of it. the idea that war is "not a bad thing" does not follow from any of that.

>>24492718
What is Paradise Lost or The Divine Comedy but a massive fanfiction?

>>24487829 (OP)

>>24487829 (OP)
Bros, I still feel for Amaranta burning her hand after Pietro Crespi's death. I don't know why, but this scene just hit me so hard. Every time I see something related to One Hundred Years of Solitude I remember this and I cry a little.

>>24487829 (OP)
Blood Meridian was a failure and only became successful years later when Cormac actually sold out with stuff like the border trilogy.

Why don't you like Blood Meridian guys? I thought it was a great novel, absolutely incomparable to mainstream novels like The Lord of the Rings or Dune.

>>24491624
>putting him on the same level of Shakespeare, Faulkner, or Goethe is idiotic.
Correct. He's in fact much better than them.

>>24495287
It’s simple. They’re hipsters that hate stuff that’s popular. Don’t complicate their psychology and make them feel special. They’re contemptible dorks.

>>24487829 (OP)
I don't know. I just look for literature that resonates with me.
I definitely look down on people who seem to enjoy things I would consider bad. It's the same feeling I get when I see a shock video of someone shitting in another person's mouth and I wonder to myself "who the fuck enjoys watching this?"
I lose a little bit of respect for someone if they tell me they really enjoy the disney star wars movies, for example.

>>24487923
His reading of the novel as anti-gun-violence is legitimately baffling. How could you come away thinking that, especially if you read it the dozens of times Bloom probably did? Clearly it's about the difference between normative moral humanity and amoral vitalism, and it doesn't settle on an answer as to which is better, except to show that each, by the standards of the other, is a failure to participate fully in life. How do you reduce that to a Tarantino-tier commentary on how we like cowboy violence but it's also bad? From one of the leading critics of the past century, a guy who had Paradife Loft memorifed? Infane. Abfolutely infane

>>24495454
he liked it cuz it's white man bad the book

>>24488072
I liked Orlando but she probably shouldn't have been allowed to say these things

>>24488254
lol, people say this about Virgil too

protip, Virgil is still one of the greatest of all time

>>24488254
Hamlet is a formally insane play (for example, the fact that there is a single scene that lasts like forty minutes and one single character speaks like 1/3 of the lines). It runs the gamut of verbal registers and while it was popular it was definitely not basic genreslop like Titus Andronicus or Taming of the Shrew. Shakespeare did have a lot of fun with his audience (when Polonius says he played Julius Caesar and Brutus killed him, the joke is probably that Hamlet is Brutus' actor from like last week, and Polonius is Caesar's, and Hamlet's going to stab Polonius in like a single act), but we really can't reduce him to mere popularity, especially given the linguistic and conceptual density he aspires to, which others of the era do not reach for. Did early audiences eat up the "rank" and "weeds" motifs in Hamlet? Or the diachronicity of A Midsummer Night's Dream? He clearly makes a ton of choices for artistry's sake that one wouldn't necessarily even notice on a stage, much less care about, if the goal were entertainment (which, again, he does make choices for the sake of -- it's just by no means the sole driver, and in Hamlet I don't even think it's principal; I think he's wrestling with heavy things in that, as evidenced by naming the protagonist after his deceased son and casting himself as that protagonist's deceased father).

>>24490330
Pretty wild take! Especially because of how much Joyce adored the Odyssey (he deep-read it enough that he could, and I forget the source on this but either he or his friend said this, see the details' glory in Homer like the rainbow refracted through a dewdrop) and the Divine Comedy ("my spiritual food") and of course Shakespeare, who in turn adored Ovid's Metamorphoses, which was probably his favorite fiction, and possibly his favorite book. There's a pretty unbroken (and generally very direct) line from any more contemporary literary great to the beauty of one or more specific epics. Moby-Dick to Paradise Lost, Paradise Lost to The Faerie Queene, The Divine Comedy to the Aeneid, much of Shakespeare to the Metamorphoses, Ulysses to the Odyssey. Obviously Job is more than an epic, but it's an ancient long poem that Faust and Moby-Dick respond to and are to some degree informed by. I do agree that epic's successors are often more approachable, but I don't think that's due to the successors being better so much as less culturally and formally alien. I recommend rereading them if they're not hitting, especially with secondary lit or the comments of great authors to help prime you for the experience. One perk of their ubiquity is that the great epics have had centuries of love showered on them, which can aid our own readings.

>>24495465
It's weird to me how he was basically universally acknowledged to be the best poet anyone could read (since nobody could read Homer) for like 1800 years, and now he doesn't seem to get any love. I guess it's the predomination of the primitive vitalist reading of the Greeks, the fact we read him in translation, and the alliance of premodern and postmodern over against the Stoic/republican ideals. One can't help but feel that we're missing out, given that the Aeneid was probably the single most influential work of Western literature for over a millennium and a half.

>>24487829 (OP)
Realism is the real fad, an anomaly that has only been around for some 300 years. Not to say that realism and its 20th century successors are bad, far from it: modern fantasy rarely compares favorably.
However, the notion that if it adheres to some arbitrary marketing label it's somehow "not literature" is absurd. Is William Blake not literature because he constructed his own setting with its own cosmology? Is Beowulf not literature because it's about a dude with a sword who fights a dragon? Is the Divine Comedy not literature because Dante's revelation of hell, purgatory and heaven isn't veiled through him going through the motions and mundanities of his everyday life?

>>24495520
have you read it? it's a pretty poem, but like you said his prevalence had a lot to do with nobody reading homer. he took homeric tropes, put them into a simplified story structure, polished up the surface aesthetics, and added a romance subplot (yes i'm aware of the larger significance of it).
it comes from a more settled, comfortable period, lending itself less to true seriousness; it has a straightforward, specific extra-literary political agenda; and it is the work of a single author, rather than a tradition. it's great to think critically about canonical rankings, but the reasons for this one are pretty clear.

>>24488003
Yeah that threw me off, too. Can't tell if OP's pic is memeing or serious

>>24490245
>Fantasy and sci-fi is juvenile by default.
Is Beowulf or The Illiad juvenile by default?

>>24495871
That's fair, but I think it discounts him a bit; there's solid mythological work by Catullus, and the Metamorphoses are incredible, but Ovid comes in at a second place to Virgil in valuation by most of literary history, despite being very formally and philosophically complex, Ovid having a more nuanced political stance, and the work having much more varied material (CS Lewis notes the lamentable lack of love as a theme in the Aeneid, despite the Dido episode, compared to national destiny). Clearly they saw something in Virgil that Ovid lacked; and surely it wasn't just simplicity. I think there's a manner of looking at life -- civilization clinging to its own civilizedness so that it can escape barbarism, maybe, or maybe something else -- that we've kind of lost there. As to your question, I read some, listened to the rest, and read like a page of the Latin text; I've been thinking about reading through the first six books in Latin on my reread (would be a good way to pick some up), and finishing it off in the fairly literal, elevated blank verse version Dover Thrift put out. I got a bit hyped to reread by Lewis' essays on it in A Preface to Paradise Lost, and by a Divine Comedy reread a couple months later.

>>24496001
being better than ovid has no bearing on whether virgil deserves to be discussed alongside homer. ovid did not have epic ambitions. the concerns of epic were taken for granted as being the most important ones.
i'm not sure barbarism vs. civilization is the right lens to describe virgil's concerns. it had more to do with sovereignty vs. slavery.

>>24496057
Would that not separate Virgil from Homer more and make him less replaceable? Achilles himself, in Odyssey XI, says that slavery is a permissible state of affairs. That hardly seems to be the same ethos as "the Alban lords and lofty walls of Rome" thing in Aeneid I; maybe Virgil is even directly contradicting it when in his own hell sequence in Aeneid VI he depicts the glory, as prophesied in the underworld, of a man who will die in battle (name escapes me; Marcellus?). Further, where Homer finds a balance between Achaean piratical valor and the urbanized patriotism of Troy, Virgil seems pretty intent on the latter (even though Homer tilts toward the former; see the highly uncritical depiction of Odysseus' crew raiding Ismaros, which takes up a page or so of the Odyssey).

>>24496099
homer lived before the philosophers, he/the greek epic tradition did not have a defined "position" on every "issue". i don't think you can say that homer's ethos was fine with slavery lmao.
anyway i'm not saying virgil reproduces the exact concerns and values of homer, i'm saying his form is aping a form endemic to a different time.

>>24496133
I mean certainly Homer thinks slavery is a painful and unfortunate status to fall into -- there's that one famous simile about the horrible weeping of a woman being taken as a slave in a raid -- but my point was more that if, as you said, Virgil's dialectic is sovereignty and slavery, and Homer explicitly has his single least slavebrained character place life above sovereignty once he gets the wisdom everyone gets when they die, then we can't simultaneously say that Virgil's popularity is that he scratches the same itch Homer does, since his ethos is markedly different. As you noted, his construction differs in that it's more trim; but being trim and vaguely similar to Homer seems short shrift for our world's increasing condemnation of Virgil's work to literary insignificance. I doubt that civilizedness is sufficient either, or that primitivity is necessary to epic; the Henriad, Paradise Lost, and the Divine Comedy are all highly successful epics that arose out of developed cultures reaching back through consciousness of millennia of literary history. Nor can Elizabethan or Restoration England justly be said to be heroic or primitive ages; I guess there's a case for Florence, but really Florence was no more heroic than, e.g., 5th c. B.C. Athens. I suppose my thesis is that something more than concerns of form or content are involved in our displeasure with him, and I think maybe it's our difference in outlook; nobody really seriously advocates nation, destiny, and stoic virtue as the highest values except perhaps some on the alt right (which itself also has substantial cohorts of Catholics and Nietzscheans, neither of whom can be said to have quite the classical Roman worldview).

>>24496245
the problem is that virgil sticks quite close to homer in constructing his narrative. the others you mention are much more obviously independent narratively (though in terms of pure structure, milton is very imitative where dante isn't; and the henriad succeeds as an english epic precisely because it eschews the literal definition).

>>24487829 (OP)
I agree with the principle of drawing a line and I'm a bit tired of the increasing amont of bad fiction pretending to be literature.That being said, most of the finest titles, including some in that chart, have been written to be sold, Goethe's was a best seller, so to say, and countless plays and poems were plain commissions. I would also caution against intellectualism. James Joyce is the sort of authors I would discard without a second thought. I have often wondered what could he possibly have been thinking as he subjected English to such torture, an endless stream of nuances unintelligible even to the sharpest of native speakers. I fear that unintelligibility is often being mistaken for density, or even mystery. I wouldn't go as far as to call Joyce a fraud, but had Finnegans Wake come from the pen of some obscure scribbler, we may wager it would long since have been forgotten. When dealing with literature, we should keep in mind its primary function is to entertain, whatever some snobs say.

>>24495520
Virgil is an outstanding poet but others who fell out of favour such as Lucan, Statius or Ovid had a massive circulation as well. I think there is a strong case for Ovid to be the most influential poet in the Middle Ages.

>>24496267
Yeah, you're probably right that the narrative closeness has done him no favors. It's also possible that comparing the Latian adventures with the Odyssey's nostos makes Virgil show unfavorably in the latter half of the epic. I definitely far preferred the burning of Troy sequence to the Italian warfare and statecraft.
>>24496308
Ovid was definitely preferred over Virgil among schoolboys when Latin learning became less limited to the élite and diffused among English grammar schools; his sex, violence, black comedy, and prevalence of one-to-five-page scenes probably helped. He also doesn't seem to have quite the same stoic ethic. I'm pretty sure Golding's Metamorphoses significantly predated the first English Aeneid), possibly for that reason. But to be fair to Ovid, he gets his fair share of references in Dante etc. too; the Glaucus simile in Paradiso I, off the top of my head. I'm not really sure why Lucan and Statius have fallen so out of favor, but I think maybe a bias toward antiquities and a greater tolerance for Latin comedy (in Lucan's case) may have kept them afloat beyond their natural expiries. Lewis says Statius is dreadfully dull, even though Dante likes him, and Lucan's probably gone the way of Terence and Plautus. I don't think anyone really reads Martial, or Ovid's dirty comic poems, anymore, and Catullus' may survive in popularity largely because his œuvre is small enough that you can package them in with the romantic and mythological pieces in a volume of 80 pages. As late as like the 1620s Robert Burton calls Rabelais the French Lucan, but I can't really recall anyone talking about Statius after the Middle Ages. Greek comedy might have a longer shelf-life in Aristophanes (and the Symposium? But I don't think people read that for the comedy), but the Batrachomyomachia and Menander are pretty well buried, so who knows. I don't think we generally like ancient and medieval comedy so much as things post-1500. The exceptions would be a bit or two in Inferno and Chaucer, and Aristophanes. After that we wait until like, Rabelais if you like scatological humor, and Shakespeare or Marlowe if you don't. Seems easier to kill off comedy.

>>24487829 (OP)
I actually knew someone who unironically held an opinion like this, it was criminally embarrassing. Literatures' merit has nothing to do with its audience. If you are concerned with literature's audience that does not make you literati it makes you hipster and likely a midwit.

>>24487829 (OP)
Am I wrong for liking every single book on this list?

I already know the answer of course. I just want to see what /lit/ has to say!

>>24487829 (OP)
>Master and Margarita
>written for money
uhhhhhhh bro?? your knowledge of Soviet history??

>>24496353
are you confusing lucan with lucian? lucan didn't write comedies, he wrote an epic about the civil war, which is not super highly acclaimed but seems interesting for reasons outside of its purely artistic merits.

>>24487829 (OP)
>All that anglo shit on the left
Don quijote > Any Joyce slop

>>24496535
You're right, I was thinking Lucian, not the Pharsalia, and earlier when I said Lewis trashed Statius I may be thinking of him ripping on the Pharsalia and not the Thebaid (in The Discarded Image), though he might do both.

>>24495281
The Crossing is the same level as Blood meridian

>>24496596
i checked and he doesn't have terribly harsh words for either of them but he seems to prize statius as being closer to the medieval christian sensibility and also consider him the better poet in general (but the latter judgment may be influenced by the former).
like i said though, my interest isn't really about the quality of the poetry or the narrative.

>>24487829 (OP)
No. My comments on /lit/ are literature.

>>24487829 (OP)
Faust and Hamlet belong on the other side because they have fake shit like ghosts and demons in them.