Dr. Seuss Is Better Than Shakespeare

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AuthorTopic: Dr. Seuss Is Better Than Shakespeare
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I've been pondering literature lately and am definitely thinking Dr. Seuss is far better than Shakespeare. I think Dr. Seuss will eventually eclipse Shakespeare in his importance if he hasn't already.

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Oh, of course. But Rowling is rather preferable to Seuss, in my opinion.

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I hate the Harry Potter Books. She is more popular now but after she is dead I don't think anyone will remember her like they do Dr. Seuss. They say she inspired a new generation to read well our beloved Doctor has had us reading since early childhood.
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quote:
Originally written by Shiny Things:

Oh, of course. But Rowling is rather preferable to Seuss, in my opinion.
Kicking you in the groin now.

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Master
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you better be using heavy metal boots. :P

Seuss is cool. Rowling is not.

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Suess... now there was a man...

However, Rowling can never quite be the man Suess is :P

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quote:
Originally written by Ultimate Weapon Custer:

Kicking you in the groin now.
quote:
Originally written by Wise Imbaman:

you better be using heavy metal boots. :P

Seuss is cool. Rowling is not.

I'm not alone :eek: .
Well if you really look at it you can't compare the two. Shakespeare wrote epic poems when Seuss wrote beloved childhood books.

[ Saturday, July 03, 2004 17:53: Message edited by: A guy with pretty good grammar ]
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I am betting that in the future Harry Potter will end up becoming one of the 'Classics' and High School students will be forced to read them for the grade.

As for Suess, I still have all his books carefully packed away. My favourite Suess book was "Would you rather?" it brought to light all these important questions I had never even thought of before, like would I rather have purple hair or green.

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Rowling made her career by ripping off Roald Dahl at every turn. The fact that more children are now reading the former author than the latter adds insult to injury.
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I really didn't know she was ripping off Dahl. How badly does she do so? I've never read her work and Dahl was my favorite author as a child, hands-down.

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What, you're telling me Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans didn't remind you of Dahl at all? :P
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Maybe parts of the HP series are slighly Dahl'ish, but I don't think it's a ripoff of Dahl.

Anyway, who the hell is Dr. Seuss?

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This Side Towards Enemy
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She isn't ripping off Dahl very blatantly. Which is a pity, to my mind. Mind you, she is very readable. It's just that if she's 'inspiring a generation to read' serious effort needs to be put in to make sure they read other things as well.

Dolney, Shakespeare didn't write epic poetry. He wrote plays and sonnets. Epic poetry is Paradise Lost, the Iliad, the Odyssey, Beowulf, Gilgamesh and things of that ilk.

Personally, I'm no great fan of Shakespeare, but I like Seuss still less. In Britain, they aren't read as much (I never saw one im my primary school) but when I later compared them to the books I did read at that age, I wasn't impressed in the slightest.

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The thing to note is that Harry Potter is addressed to children about 2-3 years older than those reading Seuss's work. The Hobbit is interesting to children 1-2 years older than those reading Harry Potter. Interest in The Lord of The Rings starts perhaps 1-2 years after the Hobbit. Shakespeare maybe (if at all), 2-3 years after Tolkien.

To summarize, Seuss is for primary school, Rowling wrote a children's book, Tolkien kicks ass, and neither of the two are a match for Shakespeare. In my very humble opinion, of course. :P

[ Sunday, July 04, 2004 05:03: Message edited by: Old Aran ]

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Shakespeare is for very puerile adults. It is a travesty that Shakespeare is regarded as high-culture. Read him and enjoy him, but throw aside the assertion that his work is the greatest pinnacle of the English language.

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I disagree. Hamlet is one of my favorite books of all time, and whenever I see any of his plays performed well -- in Ashland, Oregon, for instance -- I am absolutely blown away. Few other works do that to me -- Paradise Lost is one -- and no author that I've ever read was consistently at Shakespeare's level.

Dr. Seuss is good, but I prefer Shel Silverstein.

EDIT: Although the bit about him not being high culture is pretty true. His work is filled with entirely too many penis jokes and that sort of thing to be proper at a formal occasion.

[ Sunday, July 04, 2004 09:52: Message edited by: Just Call Me Kel ]

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Dr. Seuss is entertaining, and his books have that remarkable quality of not evincing glaring condescension towards their young readers. He was funny. That's about it.

Shakespeare was vastly more prolific and more literary. I'm not sure whether he threw in all the literary devices that cause English teachers to swoon world-wide on purpose or by accident, but they're there. He created words and phrases that have become part of the English lexicon. In other words, regardless of the quality of his works (which I happen to think are quite impressive), he is probably unparalleled in impact on the language itself.

—Alorael, who thinks that's a pretty good reason to declare Shakespeare mister big English man. Rowling, sadly, wrote books that were indeed good, but not so good that all the publicity and cult worship is merited.
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That's a rather sweeping statement to make, BtI, that only "puerile adults" can find any enjoyment out of Shakespeare, a statement which is simply not true. Granted, some of the comedies are outdated (though I enjoyed Twelfth Night) and Romeo and Julliet has been warped beyond expression by modern adaptations (though the Baz Lehrman version was a fine film), but many of his plays are inspired, and I'd be hard pushed to name a better playwright.

I fail to see the value of high culture anyway.

On the matter of Dr. Seuss, I've never been particularly impressed with any of his stories. As for Harry Potter, poorly written as they may be, they are still very readable.

[ Sunday, July 04, 2004 10:44: Message edited by: Morgan ]
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My virtual groin hurts.

I don't particularly like Rowling.
I don't particularly like Suess.
I thought this was a trolling topic.

Damn difficult trying to communicate sarcasm in text. :P

EDIT: So THIS is how I got this rating all of a sudden.

[ Sunday, July 04, 2004 13:51: Message edited by: Shiny Things ]

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Seuss introduced absurdism into children's literature. His imitators are legion, and none of them toe the line he did between staid and vulgar, boring and incomprehensible.

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I have always enjoyed Dr. Suess

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Probably just a typo, but I like how that sentence has a sense of un-finality (:S) to it, without the period.

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Dr. Seuss invented the low vocabulary childrens primer. Most of the books have a vocabulary of no more than 200 words which are mostly comprehensible to very young children. He started by identifying very commonly understood english then mixed and matched the wording in absurd combinations-- thus coming up with One Fish Two Fish and The Cat In The Hat. For a long time he was an editor at Random House founding the Beginner books series. :D I think this had a tremendous impact on literacy. I also love his artwork-- it is absolutely ridiculous.

I find Shakespeare to be extremely overrated. I would much rather read epics than Shakespeare.

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This is not intended as an insult, just a question: do you have difficulty understanding Shakespeare? At least ninety percent of the dislike of Shakespeare I've ever run into has been from people who can't get past the slightly archaic language. A small but noticeable few have a different gripe with it, so I'm just wondering which category you fall into.

[ Sunday, July 04, 2004 18:10: Message edited by: Just Call Me Kel ]

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I understand it perfectly well, but I still don't really like it. Once you take out the obscurities of the language and try to look at it like a normal book or play, it falls short when compared to pretty much anything else in terms of plot and character development.

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