Great Novels In English: Are There Any?

[Guest]

I would argue that there aren't.

Dickens, Melville, etc. may be OK, but did anything they did measure up to the best of the best of the Russians/French, etc?

I think not.

Besetting fault of English novelists: a sense of humour.

Besetting fault of American novelists: self-consciousness.

[amateur51]

I would argue that there aren't.

Dickens, Melville, etc. may be OK, but did anything they did measure up to the best of the best of the Russians/French, etc?

I think not.

Besetting fault of English novelists: a sense of humour.

Besetting fault of American novelists: self-consciousness.

I'm waiting for your argument, Mandy.

So far it's the usual "look at me, Ma!" contentious statement

[Demetrius]

Joyce was one of the most inventive novelists of all time, the whole 19th Century teemed with novels that are still well loved and well read around the world (by Dickens, but also by Austen, James, the Brontës, George Elliot, Hardy ...); the foremost examples of literature for children (Alice, Anne of Green Gables, Wizard of Oz, Little Women) are english, as are some major Gothic novels (Frankenstein, Castle of Otranto, Dracula). Same goes for Fantasy Literature. All of these are not only examples of their class, but helped to invent their class. The best of the French and Russians are very well indeed, but I really don't see where they are superior. In fact, the one 'big' language lacking in that department would be german, with a huge gap between say 1805 and 1895 with but one or two novels that aren't long forgotten. As for the Humour, I think I remember some French texts over the years which had a generous portion of that, and english ones that were rather dry ... I don't really see how it could be a fault in general, as long as its not misplayed; humour can be a rather good thing, whether in a novel or elsewhere.

[vinteuil]

... bit of an old canard, this one. What was that quote about Middlemarch - " the only novel for grown ups" ?

I think Robinson Crusoe, Clarissa, Tom Jones, Tristram Shandy, Humphrey Clinker, Emma, Persuasion, Wives and Daughters, Vanity Fair, Our Mutual Friend, The Way We Live Now, The Portrait of a Lady, The Wings of the Dove, The Ambassadors, The Golden Bowl, Nostromo, Ulysses, To the Lighthouse, Mrs Dalloway ... can all stand up to comparison with what the French and Russians produced

[Richard Tarleton]

Cold Comfort Farm



Coat...get

[DracoM]

Middlemarch / George Eliot

[Flosshilde]

Great Novels In English: Are There Any?

Yes.

It has been said (& I can't remember by whom, when, or where) that the novel is England's major contribution to world literature.

the best of the Russians/French, etc?

I don't think they wrote any great novels in English, either.

Besetting fault of English novelists: a sense of humour.

Besetting fault of American novelists: self-consciousness.

It can't be said that you suffer from either of these faults.

[Thropplenoggin]

[QUOTE=Flosshilde;237758]

Besetting fault of English novelists: a sense of humour.

Besetting fault of American novelists: self-consciousness.

It can't be said that you suffer from either of these faults.

That one's an über-ouf!

[MrGongGong]

I would argue that there aren't.
.

you might
but you would be talking nonsense again

[teamsaint]

WEll, its a great late effort for "daftest thread of the year", you have to give him that.

What next?
Brazilian footballers?
German symphonists?
italian artists?
Could be a whole sub forum.

[Nick Armstrong]

Dickens... may be OK, but did anything [he] did measure up to the best of the best of the Russians/French, etc?

I think not.

I disagree completely.

[Thropplenoggin]

I disagree completely.

Dickens is a bit of a windbag, though (naturally, given the way his works were financed). Best read by skipping the chapters containing all that icky schmaltz. Though I expect the latter is why you read him, eh, Don Juan,

[umslopogaas]

Great novels in English?

Samuel Beckett: 'Murphy', 'Watt', 'Molloy', , Mallone Dies', 'The Unameable', 'How It Is'. This stuff is hardly to be borne, but it must be, he got the Nobel Prize for Literature and that must mean something.

Beckett terrifies me. He saw things that I didnt want to see, and then insisted that I did.

'Endgame': a dialogue between Hamm and Clov:

H: 'I've made you suffer too much. (Pause). Havent I?

C. It's not that.

H: (shocked). I havent made you suffer too much?

C. Yes!

etc

OK, I know its a play and not a novel, but you get the same effect.

[Nick Armstrong]

Dickens is a bit of a windbag, though (naturally, given the way his works were financed). Best read by skipping the chapters containing all that icky schmaltz. Though I expect the latter is why you read him, eh, Don Juan,

Not really Actually, the only icky schmaltz that I recall was in 'Curiosity Shoppe' - the only one I found unreadable. Oh and I don't like the American sections of 'Chuzzlewit'.

[doversoul1]

I wonder if English novels share that particular (peculiar?) quality/character with English music. Putting aside the question of greatness, they both somehow seem to lack the universal appeal that Russian, German, and to a certain extent French music and novels seem to have. In pre-war Japan, German, Russian and French novels were translated and studies extensively but English literature was a specialist subject. This is rather like English music (Elgar, RVW etc.) today.