US illiteracy is an issue, but I wasn't confining my list of modern Great Artists to Americans! Or to writers. And my point is not that that there isn't any any more, just that it's still rare.
On the only authority we have (Jonson's), Shakespeare had "small Latin and less Greek." His French (see the scene with Prince Catherine and her made in Henry V) is a joke. He was astoundingly erudite, but not in languages.
--- Robert Wrubel <bobwrubel at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
> andie nachgeborenen <andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com>
> wrote:
>
> "Great art is historical and local but rare.
>
> "Dante and Shakespeare divide the world between them
> -
> there is no third." -- TS Eliot
>
> You might add a few names to the list (we'd both put
> Homer on, and the Greek tragedians) and we might
> dispute some (I don't get your thing for Pound, and
> Ovid's a first class second rater) but I can't see
> that great works are multiplying at such a madcap
> rate
> such that reading them is a bore. Nor has the vast
> increase in writing, to my mind, increased the
> quality
> of what is written.
>
> Wouldst that Milton were living at this hour! Is
> he? In whom? I like Thomas Pynchon, but really!"
>
> Andie: what do Shakespeare, Dante, Milton, Ben
> Jonson, George Eliot, JS Mill, TS Eliot and James
> Joyce all have in common? They all read at least
> two classical languages and two or three
> continental ones (not sure about Shakespeare).
> What's common to most American writers today? They
> dont read any other language. Could be something in
> that!
> BobW
>
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