02-21-2023, 02:57 PM
I think there's something to be said for a writer who's still read for reading pleasure 400 years after his death (come to think of it...in April of this year, it will be 400 years!)
There are very few who belong in that category, the authors of religious and foundational literature aside.
No one reads Milton anymore, except for the first two books of Paradise Lost and a couple of his sonnets, because he wasn't that good in the grand scheme of things. Milton was within living memory of Shakespeare, so it's not a bad comparison.
Of course, Shakespeare has the advantage in that his works have been preserved. There may have been several talented scribes in Sumeria and Egypt who wrote moving stories about the wages of sinning against Nut and Isis, but we don't have their stone tablets with us to this day.
The reason that Shakespeare appeals to us is that he's the last of the greats that we allow to be ridiculous. Orwell couldn't have gotten away with plots involving cross dressing boys who're really girls who were really played by boys, but we allow Shakespeare that leeway because his age is permitted a certain barbarity and ignorance.
It's the same reason that a modern professor of physics would be held to a higher standard than Michael Faraday.
Now, very little of what I've written above forms a cogent argument for or against anything, but I'm rather liking this declamatory, pulpit-ish style of writing. Bombastic, even. But I'll reply at greater length to your well exposited essay, Rivernotch.
For now, I'll just say that comparing the stalwarts across just three or four traditions, all in Western Europe, doesn't quite make sense anymore. Why, for instance, can't you compare Milton to Mohammed, given that the latter basically composed the Quran? Unless you actually believe it came from up above, in which case there's no reason for you not to say the Shahada, which I assume you haven't.
Or Spenser to David, assuming he wrote his songs, and didn't instead get them written by slaves and scribes on pain of torture? The psalms are amongst the greatest literary creations of the human mind. Nothing Shakespeare wrote comes close.
Actually, apart from the KJV bible, there are not that many examples of where English literature bears spiritual fruit
The poetry of Hopkins would be an exception to the rule.
Donne leaves me cold.
Crashaw and Herbert are pedestrian
Vaughan only slightly less so.
Maybe the rude rhymesters pre-Chaucer, and Hopkins.
And then a lot of greats in the 20th century, most of them being non-English voices
Why the anomaly? Probably because the English were a practical, mercantilist race, and the Scotch and the Irish back in the day, far too unlettered for anything other than folk songs, of which they wrote the best.
There are very few who belong in that category, the authors of religious and foundational literature aside.
No one reads Milton anymore, except for the first two books of Paradise Lost and a couple of his sonnets, because he wasn't that good in the grand scheme of things. Milton was within living memory of Shakespeare, so it's not a bad comparison.
Of course, Shakespeare has the advantage in that his works have been preserved. There may have been several talented scribes in Sumeria and Egypt who wrote moving stories about the wages of sinning against Nut and Isis, but we don't have their stone tablets with us to this day.
The reason that Shakespeare appeals to us is that he's the last of the greats that we allow to be ridiculous. Orwell couldn't have gotten away with plots involving cross dressing boys who're really girls who were really played by boys, but we allow Shakespeare that leeway because his age is permitted a certain barbarity and ignorance.
It's the same reason that a modern professor of physics would be held to a higher standard than Michael Faraday.
Now, very little of what I've written above forms a cogent argument for or against anything, but I'm rather liking this declamatory, pulpit-ish style of writing. Bombastic, even. But I'll reply at greater length to your well exposited essay, Rivernotch.
For now, I'll just say that comparing the stalwarts across just three or four traditions, all in Western Europe, doesn't quite make sense anymore. Why, for instance, can't you compare Milton to Mohammed, given that the latter basically composed the Quran? Unless you actually believe it came from up above, in which case there's no reason for you not to say the Shahada, which I assume you haven't.
Or Spenser to David, assuming he wrote his songs, and didn't instead get them written by slaves and scribes on pain of torture? The psalms are amongst the greatest literary creations of the human mind. Nothing Shakespeare wrote comes close.
Actually, apart from the KJV bible, there are not that many examples of where English literature bears spiritual fruit
The poetry of Hopkins would be an exception to the rule.
Donne leaves me cold.
Crashaw and Herbert are pedestrian
Vaughan only slightly less so.
Maybe the rude rhymesters pre-Chaucer, and Hopkins.
And then a lot of greats in the 20th century, most of them being non-English voices
Why the anomaly? Probably because the English were a practical, mercantilist race, and the Scotch and the Irish back in the day, far too unlettered for anything other than folk songs, of which they wrote the best.