European literature > American Literature

>>8771675
I'm assuming you're comparing an entire continent to a single country, which just goes to show how great American literature is, that only the entire body of 51 countries' literature is better than ours.

Thanks.

European literature from a long time ago maybe.

It's like european cathedrals. Yeah, they're really impressive, but they don't make new ones.

Greek mathematics > Russian mathematics

:^)

nice bait

No need to point out what's obvious, it's like saying
>European literature>Swahili literature

>>8771675
>american """""literature"""""

>>8771692
wow this is depressing

>>8771675
that is correct if by the > you are showing how the one shit out the other.

>>8771675
That unaesthetic facial profile.

>>8771690
English literature > American Literature.

>>8771692
are you karl pilkington?

>>8771675
I would agree with you if Lolita wasn't a thing

>>8772068
Nabokov is from Russia, a european country

>>8772094
Shut up

>>8772094
>>8772101
I mean, he's not wrong.

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>>8771690
Continental European literature > anglo """""literature""""" as a whole.

>>8771675
What's the need of this thread? I'm European and even I think your small penis complex is sad

>>8771692
Spain has been building one for a while now my dude

>>8772094
Friendly reminder that Europeans have appropriated Russia in order to claim that they should follow the same idealism as the Western World.

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>>8772722
Sure, but I've been writing a manuscript my whole life, and it's never going to be finished either.

>>8772767
Is a Cathedral ever truly finished?

>>8772772
The construction company's contract expires, I suppose.

>>8772094
Kind of raises an interesting point about what constitutes a region's literature. Nabokov was writing about American culture in America, from the perspective of an american (Ayn rand's later work maybe works better as an example), but then you could argue some of hemingways work could be considered european literature (except that maybe you could say his work all had expat perspectives)

>>8772813
Does nationality really matter at this point, in reference to determining where someone's ideas came from?

>is Ken Liu Chinese or American
>is Kazou Ishiguro Japanese or English

You guys are so fucking cringy

>>8772910
I haven't talked to a real person since getting my Medieval Studies degree.

AMA

>be american
>come home from shipping missiles to isreal
>get attacked by protesters
>get shot in a mass shooting
>nurse slaps me for not using xer preffered pronouns
>can't get obamacare because i spent my data cap on asian cartoons
>lose my job because it got moved to mexico
>get arrested for collecting rainwater
>serve three life sentences for resisting arrest
>cellmate trades my asshole for toilet wine

but at least my flag is on the moon

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>>8772917
why the fuck would you ever get a Medieval Studies degree? Or is this just a meme

>>8772923
>or is this just a meme
Bingo.

>>8772928
Dude, is this fucking entire board slowly decaying or is it just me?

>>8772922
>serve three life sentences for resisting arrest
irrelevant to the thread but this one actually hurts because its so true

hitler tried to stage a coup and got out of jail in like 3 months. in the USA you jaywalk and get locked up for 3 years.

>>8772941
Just you.
Your frame of reference expands, and things seem like they've gotten worse when they were in fact never good to begin with.

Why haven't you read Nietzsche yet? None of this matters.

ow sorry, fucking wrong pic

Nigger Jim disagrees.

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Sorry europoors

>>8773106
Poor whallo

>>8772887
Don't forget Kafka. I mean, Jesus, I have seen people on this board trying to claim him for Austria.

In general if we want to sum up literature like that we should sum it up by language, not nation of origin (since those are not permanent anyway; borders change, an original language persists.)

>>8771675
>Implying England is part of Europe.

>>8773795
It literally is.

England doesn't even have the best literature of Britain though, which is funny.

>>8773815
It literally isn't, and you can get fucked if you think Joyce is better than Shakespeare.

>inb4 plays aren't literature

>>8773815
Who does?

>>8773849
...The Isle of Man...
What do you think?

>>8773838
>It literally isn't
Okay, what continent does Britain belong to then? Oceania?

>>8771693
>russian mathematics are russian and not jewish

bad meme

>>8773887
It's part of an island. What continent is Hawaii part of? Polynesia? What Continent is Greenland Part of? North America?
Europe is a continent. Does the term 'continental' include the British Isles? No. Case closed.

>>8773893
Hawaii is far away from North America enough to not count towards any continent. Greenland obviously is a north american island.

Unless England has its own continental plate, it would be really tough to describe it as its own entity. So don't be facetous here just out of national pride. Geographically and culturally, Britain belongs to Europe.

>>8773898
>Geographically and culturally, Britain belongs to Europe.
>culturally

Seriously get fucked you know-nothing twat. The term 'continental' is literally used to distinguish European culture and thought from British culture and thought.

>>8773858
dat Scottish lit doe

>>8773849
>>8773858
>>8773910
Guys, I'm pretty sure >>8773815 is referring to Wales.

>>8773905
>The term 'continental' is literally used to distinguish European culture and thought from British culture and thought.
By the English, yes. Just like the term "deutsch" was used by early Germans to distinguish themselves from the French. Just because there is a distinction between Britain and "the European continent" does not mean that Britain is not a part of Europe at large.

>>8773905
Yeah, by Daily Mail Brexit wankers like yourself. You'll never be part of the British Empire. Grow up.

>>8773916
>con·ti·nent
>ˈkänt(ə)nənt/
>noun
>any of the world's main continuous expanses of land (Africa, Antarctica, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America, South America).
>the mainland of Europe as distinct from the British Isles.
>a mainland contrasted with islands.

>main continuous expanses of land
>contiuous

>the mainland of Europe as distinct from the British Isles.
>as distinct from the British isles

>a mainland contrasted with islands.
>contrasted with islands.
>contrasted

>Yeah, by Daily Mail Brexit wankers like yourself.

Actually, by nearly all philosophers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_philosophy

>>8773929
just because britain does not belong to the european continent doesnt mean it doesnt belong to europe

>continental philosophy
thats such an artificial concept, it was just coined to have something that analytics could distinguish themselves from

>>8773941
Turkey is more culturally European than England, and even Morocco is more European than Ireland.

>>8771675
why stop there?

European civilisation > everywhere else

>>8773957
Maybe 500 years ago.

>>8773967
Well, obviously, the European continent had the best conditions to create a great civilisation.

>mild climate, few geographical barriers
>mediterranean room and several rivers create versatile trading routes
>a lot of animals that are easily domesticated
>relatively close to humanity's crib, so a headstart to other places

Why wouldn't it be better than anywhere else?

>>8774020
so let me get this straight

>Europe is the only place with a suitable climate for an advanced civilisation, and having a half-year window to grow your year's supply of food is a benefit
>Europe is the only place with good water trading routes, and even people such as the Germans and Scandinavians benefited from this
>Europe's bounty of domesticated animals and nutritious plants fell into the lap of the earliest Europeans, instead of being selectively bred over thousands of years from wild animals and plants, undisturbed from any predators who inhibit every other civilisation's agricultural growth but was never a problem in Europe.
>Europe obviously 'benefits' from being 'relatively' close to humanity's crib, while it's a meaningless point criticise every other civilisation as close to, if not closer, than Europe who has failed to come close to Europe's splendour.

>>8771693
Japanese swan paddle boats > Thai swan paddle boats.
>>8771690
51 States vs 51 States

I fucking hate Europeans

>>8774109
>>Europe is the only place with a suitable climate for an advanced civilisation, and having a half-year window to grow your year's supply of food is a benefit
Not the only one. Europe's benefitial geography is a sum of many different factors, I did not say all of them only exist there.

>trading routes
Germany definately benefited from the Rhine and the Oder. Scandinavia was a pretty backwards civilisation before technology allowed it to become rich. And the mediterranean room was predestined to house a bunch of greater kingdoms and empires over the millenia.

>domesticated animals
What african animals could have been domesticated? The zebra, that does not have any family structures (which allowed the wild horse to be domesticated so easily)? Elephants or giraphes? That take forever to bear children and need a ton of food? Any of the fucking predator cats there? Or do you suggest gazelles, that would leap out of any kind of enclosure with ease while also being not very benefitial? Or what american ones? Do you suggest natives with some sticks could have caught and kept a bunch of fucking buffalo to breed them without getting half their tribe killed by angry giant cows? Nepal's lamas are the closes that the Americas got to domesticating any animal, because there really are just no real candidates to do that with.

I am not saying all that stuff would have been impossible, but it was very, very unlikely.

And yeah, the last point is a rather weak one, but Europe was discovered and settled way before places like Australia or South America, so I felt like putting that in there.

Do you really deny that Europe had ideal conditions for great civilisations? Sure, there is also some element of randomness to it, but except maybe south-east asia I can't really think of any place that comes close to this level of cumulative benefitial factors for a young human civilisation.

>>8771991
I wouldn't disagree with this but modern day English literature is crap, the entire body of English literature is good but Americans have been dominating anglophone literature for quite awhile now.

>>8772045
You're an idiot. Play a record.

>>8774271
Germany benefited from the Rhine and the Oder the same way that any group of peoples globally benefits from their own rivers. The fact is, there is no discernible advantage from rivers given to the prosperous peoples of central, eastern and even northern Europe, because these are not unique trading routes to Europe. Meanwhile, in the med. it is only Europeans who became prosperous. Western North Africa enjoys the same resources and climate as Spain, has the same potential for trading, and the same access to the Atlantic, while being better protected from invasion from other peoples by having the uninhabited Sahara beneath them. Yet this is a completely backward region of the world, only partly alleviated by European colonialism. The Turks, of course, failed to carry the torch of East Roman civilisation and slumped to merely being a poor imitation of European culture.

Of course you cannot simply walk into Africa now and domesticate the many species that inhabit it, even though Elephants have been semi-domesticated and Buffalo have been fully domesticated elsewhere in the world. Nowhere in the world at any period has there been a supply of animals simply willing and waiting to be domesticated from the wild, the accomplishment of the Europeans is that they have done a better job than anywhere else in the world of selectively breeding agricultural animals and pets from the wild over thousands of years, transforming unwieldy, aggressive beasts that would appear totally incapable of domestication now, into the subservient animals that Europe was apparently always blessed with.

Europe only looks like such a fortunate, perfectly conditioned part of the world because its people physically changed the composition of it's animals and plants, and efficiently used the geography around them.

>>8774697
>Germany benefited from the Rhine [...] these are not unique trading routes to Europe.
Point taken. The thing however is: for very young civilisations, rivers or waterways, and Europe is cut into pieces by rivers - not just the big ones like the Rhine, but you will notice that every bigger city that wasn't at the coast was founded at a river, however small that river might be. This, of course, is true for most major cities in the world that are older than a few hundred years.

Also, remember that I only said that the initial conditions in Europe are great, I did not take into account what historic influences shaped the people living there afterwards. For example, there are many prosperous northern african cities, like Marakesh, Tripolis, Alexandria, that also at one point had their empires, though those empires perished due to foreign influence - for example, the change the islamic world went through in the last thousand years. (Spain, by the way, is also protected from land evasions by the Pyrenees, but that is besides the point.
Also, Morokko, while not being paradise itself, is far better off than most other african nations.

The turks also had a giant empire for more than a millenium, in case you forgot that. Remember: good initial geographic conditions do not guarantee a great empire that will last forever and be just as prosperous as another empire that had the same initial geographic conditions.
However, the mediterannean region was pre-destined to have something like Rome - if it wasn't Rome, it would have been Carthage, or maybe another empire that would have lasted extremely long and be extremely rich and stable; and such an empire obviously spreads its culture around. It is just a shame that the southern half of the roman empire was mostly culturally obliterated by the islamic holy wars.

And about animals: no, it simply isn't true that you could, as a pre-agricultural civilisation, domesticate elephants or buffalo. Elephants have been tamed at best, but those tamed elephants are not breed at all. It would take way too long to bread elephants, since they do not exactly pump out babies. And buffalo have been somewhat domesticated, but only in the recent few generations with modern technology. There are only very, very few animals that have actually been domesticated: pigs, goats, sheep, cows, dogs, camels, chickens, horses, llamas, to some degree cats - and it kinda stops there. And every one of those had had very good conditions to be domesticated: breeds a lot, is easy to feed, is easy to control (for example, by family structures) or is easy to keep from running away. If it is so easy to domesticate animals, why didn't the great south and middle-american empires do so? Surely they were rich and powerful enough. If there is no fitting material to domesticate, you can't do it. And the absolute majority of domesticatable animals lived in Eurasia, Northern Africa and Arabia.

>>8775283
Also, I did not proof-read this post, so please apologize bad structure or typos. I reached the character limit and got to go, but I will read your answer, should you give one, once I come back.

Latin American literature > European literature