British vs French 19thc century lit rumble

[Nostromo]

Originally posted by lord of the mark
ok
Austen vs Balzac
Dickens vs Zola
Carrol vs Verne
Thackery vs Hugo

Byron vs Baudelaire
Coleridge vs Rimbaud


I get the sense the brits are winning.

But I still dont see any single Brit novelist whose quite the equivalent of Flaubert.

Maybe Conrad? Can Heart of Darkness stand up to Madame Bovary?

Weird matchups.

Balzac wipes his ass with Austen. Dickens versus Balzac is more fair, even though Balzac would win.

Carrol versus Verne? Why not Wells versus Verne? That one would be hard to decide.

Thackery versus Hugo? My bet would be on Hugo. Why? To be frank, until today, I never heard of Thackery.

Conrad versus Flaubert. Conrad is great, but not that great.

[chequita guevara]

Alfred Lord Tennyson kicks everyone's ass, then stomps on the 20th century as well.

[Kuciwalker]

JK Rowling pwns everyone in this thread.

*ducks*

[Ben Kenobi]

But I still dont see any single Brit novelist whose quite the equivalent of Flaubert.

Thomas Hardy?

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Lazarus and the Gimp
When it came to doomed young romantic poets, the Brit Pack made the French look like a bunch of eunuchs.

Bwahaha

Gerard de Nerval

From Wikipedia: Gérard de Nerval (May 22, 1808 – January 26, 1855) was the nom-de-plume of the French poet, essayist and translator Gérard Labrunie, the most essentially Romantic among French poets.

You can't get any more spleenful, romantic, melancolic and pretentious than that:
# El Desdichado (Gérard de Nerval).

Je suis le ténébreux - le veuf, - l'inconsolé,
Le prince d'Aquitaine à la tour abolie;
Ma seule étoile est morte, - et mon luth constellé
Porte le soleil noir de la Mélancolie.

Dans la nuit du tombeau, toi qui m'as consolé,
Rends-moi le Pausilippe et la mer d'Italie,
La fleur qui plaisait tant à mon coeur désolé,
Et la treille où le pampre à la rose s'allie.

Suis-je Amour ou Phébus?... Lusignan ou Biron?
Mon front est rouge encor du baiser de la reine;
J'ai rêvé dans la grotte où nage la sirène...

Et j'ai deux fois vainqueur traversé l'Achéron:
Modulant tour à tour sur la lyre d'Orphée
Les soupirs de la sainte et les cris de la fée.


Well, you can be more spleenful: Baudelaire wrote a poem called "spleen", but he's already been cited.

Arthur Rimbaud
Amazing poet

[Spiffor]

While we're among the romantic writers, let's mention Chateaubriand

François-René, vicomte de Chateaubriand (September 4, 1768 – July 4, 1848) was a French writer and diplomat considered the founder of Romanticism in French literature.
[...]
In 1791, he visited North America, which provides the setting for his exotic novels Les Natchez (written in 1800 but published only in 1826), Atala (1801) and René (1802). His vivid, captivating descriptions of nature in the sparsely settled American Deep South seem authentic.
[...]
In 1830, his refusal to swear allegiance to Louis Philippe put an end to his political career. He withdrew from political life to write his Mémoires d'outre-tombe (Memoirs from beyond the grave, published posthumously 1848-1850), which is considered his most accomplished work.

[Dr Strangelove]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov


Gaaack, No.

ALW has nothing to do with the musical. It was written by the team of Claude-Michel Schonberg and Alain Boublil (decidely French).

You beat me to it!

[Dr Strangelove]

Why doesn't Oscar wilde count? The Picture of Dorian Grey was published as a novel in 1891.

[chequita guevara]

Ulysses

It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy'd
Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone, on shore, and when
Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honour'd of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades
For ever and forever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
As tho' to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,---
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me ---
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads --- you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

-- Alfred, Lord Tennyson

[Dr Strangelove]

Do Gilbert and Sullivan count?

[chequita guevara]

I would say yes, since plays count.

[Boris Godunov]

They aren't plays, they're operettas.

I wouldn't recommend comparing 19th century British and French opera. The Brits wouldn't fare very well at all, and that's just because they'd be up against Carmen.

[Boris Godunov]

Oh, and I'd think people would want to match Dickens to Hugo. The similarities are very strong (although Vic does truly run rings around Charlie).

[DerSchwarzfalke]

I choose to play the gender card with Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Do the French have a female poet of the 19th century that is remotely comparable?

[DerSchwarzfalke]

While we are playing her, might as well throw Robert Browning on the table as well. Underappreciated, he is.