I can see a defensible case for saying that English literature in the period 1580-1680 is (as a whole) superior to that of the 19th century. It seems to me much less defensible to say that English literature in the 19th century is inferior to French or Russian literature in the 19th century - and I speak as someone who loves Balzac and Turgenev and Tolstoy! You didn't comment on that, and I would be interested to know what you think.
Tanner Greer is an interesting writer, but my impression--not from any firm basis, just as a casual reader of his--is that his worldview is very much centered on political and cultural "dominance contests". Uncoincidentally, perhaps, he also is a big Iliad enthusiast.
When I think of Austen and Eliot, their novels take a rather deflationary view of dominance contests. They valorize private virtue over public striving. So it does not surprise me that Tanner Greer does not find that era of writing as compelling, and maybe he has a point! There is something unambitious about private virtue.
Err … George Eliot? Didn’t write a less-than-excellent book. Austen is wonderful, of course, but Mary Ann Evans is in a different league, with Balzac, Zola, Tolstoy et al.
I admit that, if he deserves to be on the list, he should rank last. And The Rehearsal, Buckingham et al.'s brutal satire of him, is, to my mind, the funniest play we have from the entire seventeenth century. But I agree with T. S. Eliot's dictum that "We cannot fully enjoy or rightly estimate a hundred years of English poetry unless we fully enjoy Dryden."
Why all these generalized comments/opinions about "greats"? What is your purpose and intent in dropping names, without any in-depth critical thinking (just a few sentences, please) about the ultimate value of each of the authors: historical context, context in theory of literature, themes, progressive ideas, social criticism, voice, style...
How much of this, though, is simply personal preference, or what "speaks" to you in literature? I really don't think we can say that Johnson or Milton is greater than Dickens - while Milton, for instance, tackled a great and eternal subject in "Paradise Lost," it was Dickens who arguably created the modern novel and brought ideas of substance to the masses via inexpensive serialization. But then again, what would Dickens have been without Milton's influence? And what would Milton have been had he come along after Dickens, instead of before?
And while intellectually I can appreciate the contributions of Austen, I can't stand her novels. I read "Pride and Prejudice" and thought, "well, OK." I wasn't blown away by it. And immediately after it I read "Sense and Sensibility," which seemed to me to be the exact same novel, only with different character names. It really seemed as if she took a template and created the second novel from the first. I find her writing to be rather stiff and stilted as well as stuck in time and place, compared to Dickens' ever-flowing imagination that could depict utter poverty as well as lush drawing rooms and the small cottages of the working men and women of the 19th century.
But having said that, obviously others are getting more from Austen than I do, so perhaps it's just a personal preference, and head-to-head comparisons are not the way to think about literature, but to see it more as a continuum, with writers being constantly influenced by their own reading as well as the current events of their day. The quality of literature certainly seems to fluctuate, though, and as a reader, to me, literature began a downturn along about 1970-1980, with the decline continuing to this day. That's not to say that modern literature doesn't have something to say or that great books haven't been written in the past half century, but the sheer volume and the banality of much of it dilutes the experience of the whole.
I think there's a difference between writing a pleasing novel and writing a novel that pushes the form forward. I agree that the 19c British novel, though lovely, does little to push the form forward in general. There's not much experimentation and most of the novels - or the ones we read now - are marriage plots novels or the seeds of later favorite genres: Mary Shelley for horror, for example, and Wilkie Collins for detective tales. I will say, too, that although the average 19th c Brit novel doesn't advance the form - like Tolstoy or Melville do - I do think these novels develop/create certain genres (mentioned above) that grow to be beloved. That's a sort of advancement, surely.
Additionally, these books on the whole are not very masculine in there topics or authors - sorry Dickens, Thackery, and Trollope - and that might be underlying much of his reading, too, although he's probably not aware of it. To be clear, I'm not suggesting he's discounting books based on the gender of their author. I'm talking more about preference. Most men don't care to read about the plight of women finding husbands. I don't hold that against them. I don't care to read Samuel Johnson for fun. He's fine, and I appreciate him, but I would choose Eliot any day of the week. We all like different things for different reasons and should feel free to rate them, either high or low, as we choose.
Surely Walter Scott advanced the form!! He literally created the entire genre of the historical novel with the associated paraphernalia - and I mean by that the genre itself, not merely the seeds from which the genre grew.
And staying with Scotland, how about Hogg, Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner for an experimental novel?
Scott definitely advanced the form and was highly influential, but I would argue that Dickens did as well. Prior to Dickens, novels were mostly read by the wealthy; the poor couldn't afford books. Dickens conceived of the serialization of novels in a penny format that almost anyone could afford, with the added twist of a "cliffhanger" that would keep readers coming back for the next bit. It's a formula that even extends to modern-day television. Certainly bringing novels to the masses not only advanced the form of the novel, it also likely contributed to an increase in literacy - for, if everyone around you is talking about "what will happen to Little Nell?", wouldn't it make you want to learn to read, so you could see what the fuss is all about? Surely that happened on some scale, though there's no way to measure. And of course the inexpensive serialization led to Dickens' works being spread all over the world in real time (which also, eventually, heavily influenced international copyright law); there are contemporary stories of people standing on the docks, eagerly waiting for the ship carrying the next part of "The Old Curiosity Shop," and weeping where they stood, part in hand, as they read of the death of Little Nell. For the record, this is perhaps my least favorite Dickens novel - or certainly near the bottom of the list - but its influence cannot be denied, both in terms of reading becoming a cultural event, so to speak, but also in terms of opportunists who saw a market for counterfeit editions, which Dickens fought tooth and nail, and eventually he succeeded in shaping copyright law for all authors who came after him.
Yes, I agree with this. And also - maybe this is just my ignorance, but I think maybe Dickens is formally more experimental than Sarah suggested. Bleak House, with not just its double narrator, but the double narrator alternating between a very grounded first person character voice and an omniscient present tense, highly poetic and imagistic third person voice. Had anyone done anything like that before?
I can see a defensible case for saying that English literature in the period 1580-1680 is (as a whole) superior to that of the 19th century. It seems to me much less defensible to say that English literature in the 19th century is inferior to French or Russian literature in the 19th century - and I speak as someone who loves Balzac and Turgenev and Tolstoy! You didn't comment on that, and I would be interested to know what you think.
Tanner Greer is an interesting writer, but my impression--not from any firm basis, just as a casual reader of his--is that his worldview is very much centered on political and cultural "dominance contests". Uncoincidentally, perhaps, he also is a big Iliad enthusiast.
When I think of Austen and Eliot, their novels take a rather deflationary view of dominance contests. They valorize private virtue over public striving. So it does not surprise me that Tanner Greer does not find that era of writing as compelling, and maybe he has a point! There is something unambitious about private virtue.
Shots fired
I honestly can't get into this game: there's more than enough excellent work to read and enjoy without making these, frankly dumb, comparisons.
Err … George Eliot? Didn’t write a less-than-excellent book. Austen is wonderful, of course, but Mary Ann Evans is in a different league, with Balzac, Zola, Tolstoy et al.
It's nice to see someone making a pitch for Dryden. He seems to have suffered from some neglect over the last generation or so.
For good reason. He doesn't belong on that list of greats.
Yes he does!!
I admit that, if he deserves to be on the list, he should rank last. And The Rehearsal, Buckingham et al.'s brutal satire of him, is, to my mind, the funniest play we have from the entire seventeenth century. But I agree with T. S. Eliot's dictum that "We cannot fully enjoy or rightly estimate a hundred years of English poetry unless we fully enjoy Dryden."
Why all these generalized comments/opinions about "greats"? What is your purpose and intent in dropping names, without any in-depth critical thinking (just a few sentences, please) about the ultimate value of each of the authors: historical context, context in theory of literature, themes, progressive ideas, social criticism, voice, style...
How much of this, though, is simply personal preference, or what "speaks" to you in literature? I really don't think we can say that Johnson or Milton is greater than Dickens - while Milton, for instance, tackled a great and eternal subject in "Paradise Lost," it was Dickens who arguably created the modern novel and brought ideas of substance to the masses via inexpensive serialization. But then again, what would Dickens have been without Milton's influence? And what would Milton have been had he come along after Dickens, instead of before?
And while intellectually I can appreciate the contributions of Austen, I can't stand her novels. I read "Pride and Prejudice" and thought, "well, OK." I wasn't blown away by it. And immediately after it I read "Sense and Sensibility," which seemed to me to be the exact same novel, only with different character names. It really seemed as if she took a template and created the second novel from the first. I find her writing to be rather stiff and stilted as well as stuck in time and place, compared to Dickens' ever-flowing imagination that could depict utter poverty as well as lush drawing rooms and the small cottages of the working men and women of the 19th century.
But having said that, obviously others are getting more from Austen than I do, so perhaps it's just a personal preference, and head-to-head comparisons are not the way to think about literature, but to see it more as a continuum, with writers being constantly influenced by their own reading as well as the current events of their day. The quality of literature certainly seems to fluctuate, though, and as a reader, to me, literature began a downturn along about 1970-1980, with the decline continuing to this day. That's not to say that modern literature doesn't have something to say or that great books haven't been written in the past half century, but the sheer volume and the banality of much of it dilutes the experience of the whole.
none come close to Dream of the Red Chamber. Not within a hairsbreadth.
I wouldn't want to see the animal from which this hair was taken
I think there's a difference between writing a pleasing novel and writing a novel that pushes the form forward. I agree that the 19c British novel, though lovely, does little to push the form forward in general. There's not much experimentation and most of the novels - or the ones we read now - are marriage plots novels or the seeds of later favorite genres: Mary Shelley for horror, for example, and Wilkie Collins for detective tales. I will say, too, that although the average 19th c Brit novel doesn't advance the form - like Tolstoy or Melville do - I do think these novels develop/create certain genres (mentioned above) that grow to be beloved. That's a sort of advancement, surely.
Additionally, these books on the whole are not very masculine in there topics or authors - sorry Dickens, Thackery, and Trollope - and that might be underlying much of his reading, too, although he's probably not aware of it. To be clear, I'm not suggesting he's discounting books based on the gender of their author. I'm talking more about preference. Most men don't care to read about the plight of women finding husbands. I don't hold that against them. I don't care to read Samuel Johnson for fun. He's fine, and I appreciate him, but I would choose Eliot any day of the week. We all like different things for different reasons and should feel free to rate them, either high or low, as we choose.
Surely Walter Scott advanced the form!! He literally created the entire genre of the historical novel with the associated paraphernalia - and I mean by that the genre itself, not merely the seeds from which the genre grew.
And staying with Scotland, how about Hogg, Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner for an experimental novel?
Scott definitely advanced the form and was highly influential, but I would argue that Dickens did as well. Prior to Dickens, novels were mostly read by the wealthy; the poor couldn't afford books. Dickens conceived of the serialization of novels in a penny format that almost anyone could afford, with the added twist of a "cliffhanger" that would keep readers coming back for the next bit. It's a formula that even extends to modern-day television. Certainly bringing novels to the masses not only advanced the form of the novel, it also likely contributed to an increase in literacy - for, if everyone around you is talking about "what will happen to Little Nell?", wouldn't it make you want to learn to read, so you could see what the fuss is all about? Surely that happened on some scale, though there's no way to measure. And of course the inexpensive serialization led to Dickens' works being spread all over the world in real time (which also, eventually, heavily influenced international copyright law); there are contemporary stories of people standing on the docks, eagerly waiting for the ship carrying the next part of "The Old Curiosity Shop," and weeping where they stood, part in hand, as they read of the death of Little Nell. For the record, this is perhaps my least favorite Dickens novel - or certainly near the bottom of the list - but its influence cannot be denied, both in terms of reading becoming a cultural event, so to speak, but also in terms of opportunists who saw a market for counterfeit editions, which Dickens fought tooth and nail, and eventually he succeeded in shaping copyright law for all authors who came after him.
Yes, I agree with this. And also - maybe this is just my ignorance, but I think maybe Dickens is formally more experimental than Sarah suggested. Bleak House, with not just its double narrator, but the double narrator alternating between a very grounded first person character voice and an omniscient present tense, highly poetic and imagistic third person voice. Had anyone done anything like that before?
That's an excellent question, and one I'd not thought of before. If it was done prior to Dickens, I'm not aware of it.
Taking the nineteenth century back to the 1770s still wont get you to Swift who died in 1745.
It’s bizarre to rate Turgenev over Dickens. T is mostly a word painter.
Ooh punchy. I had to google Dream of the Red Chamber….
It's a wonderful novel! You could read this great Substack post as an introduction: https://jeffstreeter.substack.com/p/vanished-splendour-the-dream-of-the