"We are now satisfied that he was not connected with the incidents" part II

[Az]

Originally posted by Spiffor

Well, they do seem eager to talk about their war with Canada Give it 450 years, and they'll look like us

Good job pushing for a rift between the US and the English and their minions. Divide and conquer

And in any case, it doesn't challenge the obvious fact that we have the most exciting culture and history in the whole world. Other countries sure are interesting, but let's not hide from the obvious.

Not very clearly, but France and it's contribution to the world cannot be ignored.

[Sandman]

As such, I think 'Poly gives me a (clearly imperfect) glimpse of what cultural bearings the British frequently refer to.

You only notice Oscar Wilde, Edgar Allen Poe and the Scarlet Pimpernel because of your perspective. One is set in France, one set many of his books in France and the other took French citizenship.

Beyond Dumas, Verne and Hugo, I have no idea what C19th French literature involves. I would hardly ever notice a reference to them.

The spread of French as the lingua Franca among the nobility was a very positive externality for French literature, which could be spread over Europe more easily than what was produced in other languages.*

*As an aside, this kind of externality linked to the lingua franca exists today and is beneficial to Britain. The American major labels export a popular English-speaking music pretty much everywhere, and some British pop can also benefit from these distribution channels. The Spice Girls would have probably not met the same international success if they had sang in Romanian.

Japan has a pretty strong cultural influence, and yet their language isn't spoken anywhere else. I think you're overestimating the importance of lingua fracas.

[lightblue]

There's fairly globally known things from those English writers that were mentioned. Things like Sherlock Holmes or Alice in Wonderland are incredibly well known.

[Sandman]

Some of them were Scottish, lightblue.

[lightblue]

Whatever, i am Dutch so I don't really differentiate that much between them, can't really say I knew either, guess i should use british for all this.

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by Sandman
Beyond Dumas, Verne and Hugo, I have no idea what C19th French literature involves. I would hardly ever notice a reference to them.

Balzac? Flaubert? Maupassant? Sand? Zola?

[Sandman]

Who?

[Spiffor]

Who?

[Chemical Ollie]

Hey, stop the threadjack, who cares about Frog vs Rosbif culture anyway?

[BeBMan]

Originally posted by Spiffor
As to the prestige, it is simple really. As I said, in the wake of the napoleonian conquest, continental Europe was full of French worldview. In plenty of countries, the nobility had to learn French to be "in". Quite a few languages imported French words in a fashion as inappropriate as they do English today For example, southern German nobles showed off by calling their watch a "quelle heure est-il" ("what time is it").
The spread of French as the lingua Franca among the nobility was a very positive externality for French literature, which could be spread over Europe more easily than what was produced in other languages*.

Just to nitpick the use of the French language was common amongst the Euro nobility long before Nappy....

[Agathon]

Apart from Dumas, the French of the time didn't seem to have what the English had. Namely a bunch of disaffected conquered people who weren't English but produced most of the finest work in the language. The Irish and the Scots for example. The Irish in proportion to their numbers probably have the finest literary achievement of anyone. Gulliver's Travels is still one of the funniest books ever written.

[Boris Godunov]

Hey, they had Dickens!

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
In fact, Canada didn't even exist at the time.

What happened North of the Great Lakes? Did people fall off the edge of the world?

It was just several different British colonies.

Gold star for Chegitz.

Tell me, does American history cover the French and Indians War? Do they mention the initial settlement of the 13 colonies? Something about Plymouth rock, perhaps?

Why? You didn't exist. By your logic you were simply several different British colonies until one day you sprung forth fully formed as a nation in your own right.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by Spiffor

Some chic that doesn't begin to compete with the influence of French and German cutlture of the time. The Brits gave a default currency to the world (the pound) by dominating trade and the economy, but they didn't give a "default" culture any more than the Dutch did during their domination of the world's economy.

If it wasn't for the US, the international language would still be the language of the elite, and it would be French. As to the international culture, it wouldno't exist, but Britain wouldn't export nearly as much culture as France and Germany.

That's because your nation of clerks didn't have the stroke of genius of the Yanks: you had never thought of selling culture to the masses, and you culdn't hope to compete with the French and Germans wrt the elites.

Face it, the only reason why your culture didn't fall into utter irrelevance after the end of your empire is because of some redneck colonials. Even we have more internal strength at promoting our culture than you do.

This is really funny ****!

Bravo!

[RGBVideo]

Now this is what I call an impressive threadjack