Chaucer, Shakespeare and Milton are the three greatest writers in the English language and if you haven't read them you are effectively illiterate.
>>24985416Ok bong
>>24985416>poetry>poetry and drama>poetryAll great writers but poetry in English is so dead that these guys might as well have written in ancient Egyptian. No one today is conversant in the literary forms that Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Milton used. Their influence is more like that of the Bible, which is not admired for its language but for its themes and spiritual value. 1940s detective novels have more bearing on English letters today, on writing itself, than early modern poets do.
>>24985427>No one today is conversant in the literary forms that Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Milton used. Their influence is more like that of the Bible, which is not admired for its language but for its themes and spiritual value.Maybe in the retard-ville you grew up in, but everyone I know is familiar with the continuing importance of the language in Shakespeare and the KJV.
>>24985445>familiar with the continuing importanceThat's exactly what I'm saying, shitass. I notice you didn't say whether they enjoyed it in the least. The content remains valuable background, but the form is passé, for better or worse. The satire of Canterbury Tales, the plotting of Shakespearean tragedy, and the theology of Paradise Lost are evergreen but poetry and drams themselves aren't, so to boil literacy down to largely dead forms is misguided......unless your aim is to revive the English epic poetry tradition, in which case I wish you the best.
>>24985472You misunderstand. The continuing importance of Shakespeare et al. is in the form just as much as in the content. And ultimately form can never be separated from content, especially with poetry. And for most people who read these works there is a conscious pleasure in the language which is communicating the satire, plotting or theology. I'm guessing you're just not very well educated and that literary pleasure enters your mind unconsciously, which you then misattribute to the subject matter. No is going to be reading Milton if they're just interested in theology but not poetry.
>>24985416ShakespeareHenry JamesJames Joyce
>>24985416Good post. My controversial opinion:Milton > Chaucer > Shakespeare.Shakespeare is better than Chaucer, but I just don't enjoy it. Chaucer obviously isn't very universal, but I don't need him to be; he does what I want quite well. What about good novelists, though?
>>24985743>Chaucer obviously isn't very universalWhat do you mean by this? His portrayal of human nature strikes me as very universal.
>>24985757In that sense, yes. But vs Shakespeare? Putting it autistically, he accesses the universal aspect of man through his particular one. It's like having to peek through a keyhole to see what's behind; the larger and cleaner the keyhole the better we're able to see - yet we're still looking through a hole! Shakespeare is enlightened and intellectual enough that we first see the universal and then the particular. That's why it's so easy for Shakespeare plays to be repurposed to other periods with little loss - could that be done for (if he were acted) Chaucer? Certainly not!
>>24985764>he accesses the universal aspect of man through his particular one.But that's what makes him so great. I wouldn't say it's inferior to Shakespeare, just different. Chaucer had a greater knowledge of human life and culture in empeiria than Shakespeare, and I wouldn't want to be deprived of that particularised perception any more than I would want to be deprived of Shakespeare's generalised or universalised one. There is always a danger in generalisations, although no one would deny that Shakespeare entirely escapes this danger, and conceding also that it is tempting to hold Shakespeare's generalised characters up as a standard for all literature, I do not judge Chaucer on the extant to which his characters resemble direct or unmediated generalisations. It makes sense that a non-dramatic poet's characters would be more attired with culture and details. To me he is already perfect, I don't have to imagine a Platonic beauty hiding behind his descriptions. Btw have you read Johnson? Your description of Shakespeare is reminiscent of his ideas.
>>24985486>you're just not very well educatedWell if we're going for ad hom, you can quit larping about being from some mystical hamlet where villagers giggle over middle english fart jokes and endless cuckoldry.Middle and early modern english literature, poetry especially, requires a concerted effort to appreciate on its own terms, unlike 1800s onward prose, which remains immediately appreciable, even with the antique diction of a writer like Poe. To identify literacy solely with one's capacity to assume the role of the original audience of middle or early modern english poetry is a mistake, since such works, commendable and seminal as they are, do not contain the whole of English literature.>form and contentYou're right; the medium is the message, and form and content can only be separated in the mind of the reader. With forms alien to the modern reader, a grasp of the author's intent may serve to push them to engage with the language, difficult as verse is to the modern prosaic mind. But will they ultimately enjoy it? You seem to operate from the tautology that any learned person will take literary pleasure in reading your favorite authors, but there's no accounting for taste.
>>24985416
>>24985427importance isn’t important. good writing is.
>>24985427>novelists have more bearing on novelists than poets donewsflash
>>24986253If that was true you wouldn't be posting.And poetry doesn't account for all good writing in English. Besides, Chaucer's verse often hinges on slant rhymes appalling to the modern English ear.
>>24986258Novelists have more bearing on the language itself, fag, and they have for centuries.
>>24986268what else is new
>>24986292Nothing in particular except OP's claim that if you don't read middle english cuckshit for fun you're literally heckin' illiterate
>Ok bong
>>24986238Wow, pic related is truly difficult to the modern mind, for whom its metrical nature bears great difficulty and requiring a concerted effort to understand.
>>24985416Read them in high school. What now?
