@obi "Beowulf is a regular laugh riot"

WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU ON???

You must be drinking more heavily than krellin on a bad day!

You must be smoking stronger stuff than Vaftrudner on a good day! (whom, by the way, I miss dearly.)

Beowulf is a beautiful epic. Yes, there are some moments that seem funny from our perspective (such as when Grendel's mother has eaten thirty men and Beowulf swims back with his prize after beating her: thirty suits of armor!), but we call that "ethnocentrism."

Please, these are your ancestors, spiritually if not biologically. Have some respect.

That Shakespeare and Chaucer owe a great debt to the Beowulf poet is should be reason enough for you.

That archeological records seem to verify that /some/ of the characters are historical should be reason enough for anybody.

May the gods that neither of us believe in damn you to the hells that neither of us believe in.

I can only respond to dubmdell's post with:

http://media.photobucket.com/image/clapping%20gif/GhostGrendel/OrsenWellesClapping.gif?o=1

Beowulf is part of every English speaker's soul.

For those who talked about not being able to think without language. Well, that is what Einstein did. He didn't speak until he was 3. He didn't become fluent in German until 9. As a child he struggled to use language. He often credited this developmental period with his success in theoretical physics. Obviously anecdotal, but a good example of how language can be limiting.

I like how Putin's .gif has "GhostGrendel" in it. +1'd already but would +1 again for that.

LOL, I LOVE Beowulf...

I'm not AT ALL bashing it, it's a great poem, you're all correct.

I'm more making fun with it than anything else...

But come on, now--I love Shakespeare, but I'll be the first to admit some of his lines that were probably not intended to be funny can come across as such (case in point, hand and tongue-less Lavinia biting down to carry Titus' severed hand in her mouth doggie-style...even Shakespeare critic Harold Bloom considered that rather campy, and the man's made a career out of adoring Shakespeare and writing endless books on him and lecturing on him...

That's the great thing about a great work of literature--you can poke fun at it and still love it, yes?)

:)

I just realized...

THAT was almost the sort of "How dare you!" sort of response I get when I criticize the Bible with believers...

George Bernard Shaw coined "Bardolotry" for a near-religious devotion and praise for Shakespeare...

Do we have a similar Beowulf-fanaticism here? :)

In a sense I'd be somewhat alright with that...better to have that sort of love for the great works of fictional literature in the Western canon than for the Bible alone, in my opinion...

But wow, that was certainly unexpected in terms of a result.

I mean, Beowulf is foundational...without a doubt...

But I'd take the Iliad and Odyssey hands down as epics before Beowulf...

Paradise Lost as well, easily.

@obi, the perceived tragedy was that you love literature and yet hate the oldest extant English poem. If most other users had made the same assertion, I would not have responded. Now I see that you were making jest on the internet where it is, at times, difficult to tell the difference between jest and criticism.

It's still a tragedy. Obi is to aesthetic judgment what Glenn Beck is to political judgment.

Why do Americans say beers and not beer?

Explain to me how this is proper grammar. Please.

Why do Canadians mix and mash which grammatical traditions to follow? Pick one, please.

Countable nouns have different plurals than uncountable ones.

http://imagemacros.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/im_so_british.jpg

@Lando, the word "beer" has come to mean "a bottle, glass, can, or other such container of beer." When you are having a single unit of beer, do you not preface it with a singular article? If you don't, you're too far gone, and there's nothing I can do to save you, so I won't even try.

"It's still a tragedy. Obi is to aesthetic judgment what Glenn Beck is to political judgment."

My favorite authors are Shakespeare, Milton, and T.S. Eliot, Putin...

That's hardly Glenn Beck-poor as far as aesthetic judgment goes.

OF COURSE it's a tragedy...but sometimes it's also fun to poke fun at literary tragedies, hence why there are so many satires of, say, "Romeo and Juliet" (you could even argue that Shakespeare to an extent satirizes the couple himself, given that in his comedies the couples that act the way R&J do are always the bumbling fools who need help from the older, often more cynical and WAY funnier other couple involved.)

If the Bard can take a joke, so can Beowulf's author--and so can you.



Lighten up, Putin, it's Halloween--say!

How about we all read some Poe, now THERE was a guy who knew how to write some real knee-slappers! :p

Putin: "Poe's not funny at all, he's quite serious and Gothic and tragic!" :O

Me: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xECUrlnXCqk

Speaking of Old Edgar...

For Halloween: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXU3RfB7308

ghug - right, I can have several beer. When I say this I can mean those things - bottles, glasses or cans.

"My favorite authors are Shakespeare, Milton, and T.S. Eliot, Putin..."

Which is by itself a bizarre combination, considering Eliot & Milton are polar opposites rarely mentioned in the same breath.

Some beer - refers to the liquid.
A beer - refers to a container with some beer in it.
Several beers - a number of containers each holding some beer.

But the best math/maths analysis is the hippo/rhino. Both animals end in 's' yet we don't use an 's' in their shortened names unless we refer to a group of them.

Draug, I'm firmly in the "math" camp on this one, but "mathematics" is a plural noun, so that's a bad argument.

Languages evolve.

http://i.imgur.com/cHbW9.gif

So why do we say science instead of sciences? Physics is a science. Chemistry is a science. Together they are sciences, but yet we study science. It is mathematical studies which got shortened to mathematics which got shortened again - first to math then to maths.

"Which is by itself a bizarre combination, considering Eliot & Milton are polar opposites rarely mentioned in the same breath."

Spock and Dr. McCoy are polar opposites...

But who here among us would DARE break up the Kirk/Spock/McCoy Power Trio?

Unlike you, I'm not all-or-nothing on something like literature...

Milton and Eliot can be opposed to one another (mostly) and still both find a way to be good in their own way...

Probably the most emphatic English authors I'd be "against" off the top of my head--excluding the obvious and easy cheap shots like Stephenie Meyer...and I'll leave Stephen King out of it as well, as while I maintain he's long past it at this point, he did have some good material way back when, and I've already said my peace on him AT LENGTH anyway--so far:

1. Dr. Samuel Johnson (tedious critic, hated quite a bit of Shakespeare's works--not always a disqualifier, but doesn't help here--and was really something of a prick...which again, usually isn't by itself enough to make me dislike a writer--Milton wasn't exactly the easiest guy to get along with either--but just the fact he was such an ass to Shakespeare...female authors...and that his criticism in general is tedious and not worth it...the best that can be said for him is that he's a building block in Shakespearean criticism and that his dictionary was a good first stab at that...other than that, he was a fat old bastard, in my view, Boswell's unflinching biography of him's far more entertaining and worthwhile than any individual thing Johnson himself ever wrote, excluding the Dictionary, which, well, isn't criticism, isn't creative writing, as it were...and not even solely his baby.)

2. Jane Austen (Very simple reason here--granted I haven't read them all, but I've had enough exposure to Austen where it feels like the same trite, sappy, wish-fulfillment, oh-my-god-we've-used-the-wrong-manners-the-horror! story over and over again...I respect her for being one of the first prominent female authors and probably THE female author that kickstarted women writers in English, but yeah, not a fan, the Brontes improved upon her greatly, and then writers like the incredible Virginia Woolf just blow her away...Mark Twain on Ms. Austen: "I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can't conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.” Not QUITE that angry...maybe approaching that level of loathing with Johnson, but still, not at all in my good literary graces.)

3. Willa Cather (To be fair, if I were including other language's writers, she'd be far down or off the list...or if I could simply say "Most Post-Modernist writers, excluding Plath, Ginsberg, and Vonnegut, + Maybe A Few Others" I'd do that instead...because it's just one book that lands her here, showing America, too, but as it's a major work of hers, I feel justified--"O Pioneers!" had to be *THE* single most boring, tedious, and unrewarding experience I've ever had reading a novel...ever...of course she's also famous for "My Antonia" and maybe that's better, before I read "The Age of Innocence" I'd probably have put Edith Wharton and "Ethan Frome" here for that very reason, despise that book...but TAoI redeemed Wharton, so we'll see if someday I read "My Antonia" and Cather gets off the list, but for now, yeah...at least other authors in English who had books I didn't like--Conrad's "Nostromo"--had something to redeem them, be it another work or something historical about the text itself, and Christopher Marlowe was something of a prick and a huge Anti-Semite, but he doesn't belong on a Most Hated Authors list for me, he's not at all a bad writer, he's very good, if not for Shakespeare Ben Jonson might have called him "The Soul of the Age," but being a jerk doesn't get you here automatically...it just doesn't help when a person as irritating to read as Johnson's a sexist pig as well.)

So.

Two feminist authors--there ARE far, far better ones than Cather and Austen, again, the Brontes and Woolf...and Woolf didn't necessarily like the Brontes, but that's another story--and one incredibly sexist author...

'two citizens of England, one from America...

Two very close together, one far away from them, in the 20th century...

And not all the selections in this "Worst of List" get along, either, as Austen and Johnson didn't exactly get along well, as you might imagine (part of the reason she's not #1, at least she was able to somewhat put that sexist pig Johnson in his place)...

So somewhat like the "Best of" list.

But I like opposites, Putin, as long as both bring good points to the table...

I like Shaw and Shakespeare alike (have 10 plays of theirs each on DVD) and yet, while Shaw found some things he liked in Shakespeare...

He also found a lot to criticize--not a fan of all of his works, but he did say "King Lear" was a tragedy that would never be topped.

By the same token, I wish more of Shaw's plays had the sense of scope that Shakespeare had--"Man and Superman" being the best exception I can think of, especially with the "Don Juan in Hell" Act 3, that's a play that should be done more, easily--and other quibbles are to be had...

But I love "Pygmalion," "Man and Superman," "Arms and the Man" (underrated anti-war play) and "Mrs. Warren's Profession," to name a few.

Variety--it's a good thing! :)

@Draug, forgive me if Obi already brought this up, very much tl;dr. Science and sciences are different kinds of words than mathematics. As a native English speaker, I'm sure you know that English is in no way regular, so that should make sense. The word "mathematics" comes from a Greek neuter plural form, meaning that the word was originally plural. It has evolved in English into a collective singular noun like "team," which we all know the British are bad at keeping singular.

Samuel Johnson possessed the ability to write clearly & think critically. Naturally you hate him.

Your aesthetic tastes don't make a shred of sense. You hate art. Adore Nietzsche & Plato simultaneously. Think Ulysses was the greatest novel of the 20th century. You have a more inflated view of Orwell's writing than Orwell ever did. You despise Joseph Conrad. You think the repetitive and disjointed Odyssey was better than Beowulf. And you enjoy the Romanticist epic par excellence along with the scourge of Romantics everywhere.

^True, tl;dr, so, the Cliffnotes version:

A. You can like authors even if they're a somewhat opposed to one another
B. Spock/McCoy are totally different, but still go well with Kirk for a Power Trio
C. Thus, Shakespeare/Milton/Eliot is a good Power Trio for English literature
D. My 3 LEAST favorite English-language authors excluding easy ones like Stephenie Meyer:
1. Dr. Samuel Johnson (Tedious hypocritical sexist pig AND a Shakespeare hater!)
2. Jane Austen (Same trite pandering plot and characters over and over..again, Twain said it best, "I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can't conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.”)
3. Willa Cather (Boring boring boring boring boring HOW COULD YOU POSSIBLY MAKE FLAT FRONTIER NEBRASKA ANY MORE FLAT OR TEDIOUS OR MISERABLE OR BORING?!?!?!)

To call Johnson a Shakespeare hater is truly remarkable, more proof that Obi doesn't actually read anything.

"Samuel Johnson possessed the ability to write clearly & think critically. Naturally you hate him."

The man said the only reason to write is for money...and then gets on Shakespeare's case for putting comedy, sex, violence, and lurid characters in his plays when, well, what sells more than anything else in Shakespeare's day OR our day?

Comedies...sex...violence...and "lurid" characters.

HYPOCRITE. Not to mention a sexist, a glutton, a piss-poor critic, and so on.

"You hate art."

No I don't...I've referenced Michelangelo in a positive light before? And da Vinci? I can't draw worth shit and I'm colorblind, so between literature, music, and art, it's an easy guess which of the three is my least favorite and which I simply am least interested in, but I don't hate art...

I hate certain KINDS of art--see: folks who throw buckets of paint onto a canvas with intentional aimlessness and call that "art" while others are carefully learning brush stroke techniques and really trying and not being so damn pretentious--but, again, you take an all-or-nothing approach.

Just as I may dislike some authors by love literature, I can dislike some forms of art but like art still overall.

"Adore Nietzsche & Plato simultaneously."

Yes...again, I don't mind conflicting ideas...there are cases where I say, "Sorry Neech, old boy, but Plato's got you there" and other cases where it's more like "Oh, damn, Plato, you just got buuuuuurned!" ...Well, something like that.having different viewpoints, again, like Spock and Dr. McCoy, and then *I* choose who I prefer in that situation or on that particular topic while still acknowledging both as valuable at different times in different ways.

"Think Ulysses was the greatest novel of the 20th century."

...Um, how's that contradictory or "wrong?" Not only is that opinion-based, it's not an uncommon opinion, Modern Library's Top 10 of it's Top 100 Novels of the Last Century, as chosen by the EDITORS (not voters, who picked something like 7/10 slots for Ayn Rand...ugh) and for English-language novels, so:

1. Ulysses (James Joyce)
2. The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
3. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (James Joyce)
4. Lolita (Vladimir Nabokov)
5. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
6. The Sound and the Fury (William Faulkner)
7. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
8. Darkness at Noon (Arthur Koestler, the only one I've no real knowledge of or on)
9. Sons and Lovers (D.H. Lawrence)
10. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)

That's a pretty good list...

#1 is Ulysses, so there's that...
#2 is a bit high for TGG, but it's still a Top 10 book in my view...
#3 is the first portion I disagree with, mixed on that, don't think it's Top 10, 1984 instead
#4 is, well, fine, no complaints there...
#5 is there, and to be fair, BNW and 1984 are similar, so Huxley instead of Orwell, OK...
#6 is a masterpiece, especially Benjy and Quentin's segments...
#7 is, well, Catch-22, makes sense it'd place high, I suppose...
#8 is the only one I have no idea on so can't comment except, HEMINGWAY OR WOOLF!
#9 is eagerly anticipated by me, read Women in Love and Lady Chatterly's Lover, loved them...
#10 is one that again makes sense, taking one of Steinbeck's most famous works.

Aside from a couple choices I disagree with and the list being a total sausage fest, not a bad one...not the best, but then, Top 10s can be rather hard for a category that rich, someone's bound to be left off unfairly.

In any case, it's not at all odd to rank Ulysses #1 for the century...so what's your hangup here?

"You have a more inflated view of Orwell's writing than Orwell ever did."

Maybe he was just modest, I happen to think Orwell was a brilliant novelist and essayist.

"You despise Joseph Conrad."

I don't despise him, he's just not one of my favorites, and not really my style..."Nostromo" is a bore, and while "Heart of Darkness" is a vital text to read, I maintain he makes that book feel far, far longer than it actually is...

"You think the repetitive and disjointed Odyssey was better than Beowulf."

Yes.
Yes I do.
It's called an opinion.
Grow up already.

I mean, really, you act like The Odyssey was the 5th Twilight book and Beowulf the best thing ever written...neither is true:

The Odyssey is great, Beowulf is great, if pressed, I prefer Beowulf, largely due to the fact I find Odysseus a far more compelling character and, for as great a monster slayer as Beowulf is, well, I think The Odyssey has far more memorable monsters--

Polyphemus the Cyclops...
Scylla and Charybdis (caught between a rock and a hard place indeed)...
Circe's a formidable foe...

And then there's the fact that Beowulf's largely a sausage fest again, whereas Homer at least thought to say something about Penelope and give her a role, and she's not at all a bad female character for when she was written, it really does say something about Homer that he gives one female character--Circe--such tremendous power over men and make her one of the more powerful characters in the work, and giving the other main female character the ability to ward off suitors for 20 years, no small feat.

What IS IT about Beowulf that makes you so incensed her, Putin...you act like I dared cut off Marx's beard or something, it's a GREAT work...I'm not saying it's not...

I'm saying the choice is like picking between Joe Montana and Tom Brady in their primes--both are great QBs, just like both are great epics above, you win no matter who you pick...so where's the foul?

"And you enjoy the Romanticist epic par excellence along with the scourge of Romantics everywhere."

...Before I answer that one...

I can think of a few epics the Romantics would've leaped at, and a few not so much...

To whom are you referring there, specifically, before I begin to justify my daring to like two different things at the same time?

"To call Johnson a Shakespeare hater is truly remarkable, more proof that Obi doesn't actually read anything."

He said of Hamlet's "To be or not to be" speech that it was ghastly and hoped it would never be uttered again.
He loathed characters like Iago and Falstaff, who rank among Shakespeare's best creations.
In his preface he finds thing after thing he dislikes about the Comedies.

He seems to be hating at least mildly, Putin...

"Several beers - a number of containers each holding some beer."

this is wrong, several beer. why can't you understand that?

It's like trying to say that while in Cape Breton Highland I saw several "mooses" it would be just wrong (plus I saw zero meese).

No dictionary I have seen says the plural of.beer is still beer.