Henry James? Ewwww. As an American, I’d much rather be represented by Mark Twain or Truman Capote or almost anyone other than boring ol’ Henry James.
Nah, Tarantino is the American John Webster.
Great post Sampiro!!!
I agree with pretty much everything you said, and I think that’s why Twain would be considered for the role.
One of the customer reviews at Amazon.co.uk for The West Wing claims that Aaron Sorkin is “the closest thing we have to a modern day Shakespeare.” When I think about it, the claim makes a certain amount of sense. Shakespeare was, after all, a playwright; maybe we should be looking for his “equivalents” among those who write for the stage, movies, or TV.
ETA: And where Shakespeare wrote of kings and courtiers, Sorkin wrote of presidents and their staff.
Other New Zealanders may say Witi Ihimaera. I’ve only read The Whale Rider (& that only after seeing the film).
I’m going to say short story writer Katherine Mansfield, even though she did most of her best work while living abroad. Virginia Woolf once said that Katherine Mansfield had produced “the only writing I have ever been jealous of.”
I don’t know if Shakespeare at his worst ever wrote anything as painfully bad as Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, though.
Thank you for that, Sampiro. I was unaware of that work by Mark Twain, and am profoundly touched now that the gap has been remedied.
No, he didn’t. But I’ve said before that Ford was America’s Shakespeare, only to subsequently see the same thing said by a major American film critic.
Ford didn’t write in letters on a page, but as the creative force behind the works of literature that his movies are–and if a graphic novel is literature, then a movie is literature–no other American artist has ever approached Shakespeare’s plays’ emotional scope and power, and sheer cultural resonance–and relevance–like Ford’s films did.
Actually you could make an argument that movies in general are America’s answer to literature. (Not discounting that the entire world makes movies of course, but Hollywood is still the world capitol and U.S. made movies are the most widely seen across the world.)
There could be a reason there are no surviving copies of Love’s Labour Won…
The Bulgarian answer would almost certainly Hristo Botev. Bulgarians love him not only for his poetry, but because he was a revolutionary. He was banished from the Ottoman Empire at a young age for spreading insurrection, so he ran off to Bucharest. He revolutionaried for awhile in Romania before taking a ship across the Danube to revolutionary in Bulgaria. (For some reason, Bulgarians always make mention of taking the ship across the Danube as if it were a really big deal and incredibly brave. I’m not sure how else he would have gotten across the river, though.) Then the Turks caught up with him and executed him. He was 28.
I’ve read his poetry in English translation, and frankly, I think it’s melodramatic pulp. However, I know a Bulgarian with a PhD in English Literature and I asked her what she thought of his poetry and she told me it’s really beautiful in the original. My own Bulgarian is not at a high enough level to judge.
You be the judge. His most famous poem, AFAICT, is Hadzhi Dimitar.
Patrick White was my thought. Although Miles Davis, mentioned earlier in the thread, might also have been a good call.
Not yet written enough to judge by - Richard Flanagan’s writing has the scope and pure scatological genius, richness of language, and sly humour to play along with Willie S, if he keeps developing.
Amazon sells an Unesco translation of “Martin Fierro”, I can’t vouch for it.
Well this argentinian student never read Shakespeare in High School (regular literature class, not english class), but Huckleberry Finn was a required reading.
Small nitpick it’s Jorge Luis Borges.
As I said, Borges, Cortazar, Sabato, etc… are all great writers. Borges was a giant of 20 century literature but Martin Fierro is our national epic poem.
Speaking of spain, “El Cantar del Mio Cid” by an anonymus writer can qualify instead of Don Quijote
I’ll go with playwright Eugene O’Neill for America’s closest approach to Shakespeare, at least for tragedy. Twain for comedy and Henry Adams for history. But really, Shakespeare is really in a class all by himself in literature. The only thing comparable for Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations is the bible for sheer volume.
Dutchman, have ye not heard of Ben Spinoza?
As for Spain, not only was there Cervantes, but there was Guy Lope de Vega, we have hundreds of his plays.
No country has a precise Shakespeare equivalent; this is the writer that defined modern English which has encompassed the world. He invented more or less out of whole cloth The Play as a serious literary device in English (and thence to other European languages), he invented more or less out of whole cloth thousands of words now incorporated into everyday English, and it is barely possible to write a page of literate English without using some Shakespearean term, phrase, or reference.
If the OP’s actual question was “which writer in your national literature has had a comparable influence to Shakespeare on his” then this thread is going just fine. If it was more like “have there been writers of global influence comparable to Shakespeare but originating from your culture” then, I’m sorry, but there are none. Due to the various accidents of history that have made English the dominant language and source of literature of global culture, trade and commerce, and the unquestioned stature of Shakespeare in the canon of English, I think at this stage it is in practical terms simply impossible he be dethroned.
Not competitors IMO, as they wrote in entirely different genres and at incomparable times. Surely Banjo Patterson with be a better comparison.
Askance, I’m simply going for the “top dog” of every nation, as I clarified in post #25 (which everyone seems to have overlooked 
)
I am a big fan of Naipaul, but he is not very ‘Indian’. He is a cosmpolitan citizen of his own world 
. Even Pico Iyeris more indian than Naipaul in my opinion, so we cannot claim him.
For impact on thought, art , school syllabi and renown similar to Sheakspeare i nominate Kalidas from India. In a slightly ironical sign of the times, at school level we study Sheakspeare and not as much Kalidas. I personally had Julius Caesar and Macbeth in school and have never studied Kalidas in Sanskrit.
For contemporary Top Dog status i guess it will have to be Tagore. Impact on art, education and politics and relevant even today. A Nobel for Literature. An iconical figure in Bengali / Indian literature.
If i was to go for a modern top dog - it would have to be Salman Rushdie. With a host of also rans who write in english. There are a lot of under appreciated writers in Indian languages who are not as well known, but in my opinion much better and more original. O.V. Vijayan was a bitingly wicked proponent of the ‘magical realism’ which Salman Rushdie employed. But i realise thats a subjective opinion.