I have a belief that there are "big" writers and "small" writers, and then there are some writers that can do both. And within all three categories there is the capacity for greatness.

"Big" writers (and poets) are writers most at home in grand events. The most obvious artist that comes to mind here is Milton: Paradise Lost is a story that can't really get any bigger. Wars, battles, cosmic happenings, the mechantions of the universe, this is the foray of "big" writers. Melville's another writer that comes to mind in this regard. What you'll see in some of these writers, correspondingly, is that the intimate details of human beings are sometimes lacking in their work. Milton, for example, doesn't really do a great job of "characterization" in Paradise Lost. "Big" writers are more comfortable at the largest scale, and sometimes struggle at smaller ones.

On the other hand, "small" writers are writers whose work is very intimate, and they most excel at plumbing the depths of the human heart. Jane Austen immediately comes to mind here. So does James Joyce: what's a "smaller" novel than Ulysses? These are writers whose work may take place in a small neighborhood, within a small span of time, and with a small cast of characters. But they understand how humans work on a fundamental level and excel at depicting it in their work. They don't turn outward to the cosmos, they turn inward to the soul, and explore that, instead.

Then there is the rare writer or poet who can do both: who can handle the very big and the very small with equal skill. Tolstoy comes to mind here, as does Shakespeare. These are not common, and they tend to be considerable geniuses, even by the standards of great writers and great poets.

Alll three types of writers can be great geniuses, but there's a clear differentiation between them and the types of works they write, or so it seems to me.

Thoughts on this thesis, /lit/?

Completely arbitrary categories that show you havent read much.

>>24553832 (OP)
So you're putting genre writers into the "big" category?

>>24553832 (OP)
Pretty good theory for a mongolian basketweaving forum. I can see where it works, Dickens would be another writer at home in "big" or "small". But how precise is your idea of "big" and "small"? Where's the middle-ground? Take Wells' War of the Worlds for instance, it deals with a grand event, perhaps the grandest possible, but focuses on the human and writes off the aliens very quickly with a disease. How would you consider that? Or even some of the more gothic authors like Poe, who don't really focus on the human heart or grand things all that much, but something else entirely?

>>24553848
OP here, I suppose one other way of breaking up the category is the idea of what's more important: plot/events, or characterization? You might say "big" is the former, and "small" is the latter.

>>24553852
So is Stephen King a small writer vs Tolkien who's a big writer?

>>24553857
Tolkien's absolutely a "big" writer, in that events/plot dominate the major work of his writings. I say this as a lover of LOTR: I love it a lot but it's not got the characterization of somebody like Austen or Joyce.

King, I confess I haven't read enough of to judge.

>>24553852
>plot/events, or characterization?
They already call it genre vs literary. Not sure what you are going to achieve by changing the name to "big" and "small" instead

>>24554050
Because there are clearly works of great literature that nonetheless lean more on plot than characterization.