S/O What English language literature is read in other cultures?

[Cosmos]

Another thread asked what American literature people read in other English speaking countries, and it reminded me of another question I've wondered in the past.

 

In the U.S., a typical high school curriculum consists mostly of English language literature, primarily American and English writers. There are, however, some writers and works from other parts of the world that have become part of our basic canon. Perhaps --

 

Homer

Dante

Cervantes

Ibsen

Dostoevsky

Tolstoy

Victor Hugo

Kafka

 

I'm probably leaving out some obvious ones. I think it's fair to say that a typical strong high school student at a good high school would read something by at least one of these authors. (Of course a Great Books curriculum would probably include many more.)

 

What about the reverse situation? What English language literature is being read in other countries? To narrow the discussion a bit, I'm talking about what a well-educated high school student might be expected to read, not a voracious reader or a student (or adult) specializing in English. I want the short list, like the one above.

 

My guess is that Shakespeare will be on the list, but what else? It's interesting to think about what authors transcend national and linguistic boundaries. Virginia Woolf or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle or Samuel Johnson? Those names aren't my guesses, by the way. It's just interesting to ponder both what's on the list and why something gets on the list. There are probably a lot of factors -- influence the work has had, its literary merit, its accessibility to students particularly of a different culture. I'm guessing Faulkner, for example, isn't much read outside the U.S.

[Beth S]

I know Jane Austen's works have been translated into many foreign languages.

It puzzles me, because much of the satire is based on the English setting and her use of language . . . much like Shakespeare.

It seems like it would be a very difficult book to translate, much less fully understand, in Africa (for example).

 

:lurk5:

[Cosmos]

Well the world of Austen seems pretty foreign to a modern American too, at least in my experience! But I know what you mean.

 

And you made a point I should have made clearer. When I say English-language literature, I definitely mean to include those works translated into the local language, not necessarily read in the original English.

 

I remember reading this NYT article about children in a refugee camp putting on a production of King Lear. Truly great literature really does span across time and language and geography.

[madteaparty]

Edited because the list of works int he first post led me astray and I misunderstood the question :)

 

[Laura Corin]

I know Jane Austen's works have been translated into many foreign languages.

It puzzles me, because much of the satire is based on the English setting and her use of language . . . much like Shakespeare.

It seems like it would be a very difficult book to translate, much less fully understand, in Africa (for example).

 

:lurk5:

 

Jane Austen is about families, money, marriage and class.  When the Taiwanese director of Sense and Sensibility, Ang Li,  read the script, he said that he understood it completely.

 

L

[Ad astra]

Below is the list of American and British authors whose translated works are included in high school "Literature" textbooks in South Korea:

 

T.E.Hulme

Robert Lee Frost

William Blake

Kilmer

Emily Dickinson 

William Wordsworth 

William Butler Yeats

William shakespears

Milton

E.A. Poe

T.S. Eliot

Geoffrey chaucer

Ernest M. Hemingway

J. Steinbeck                 

O. Henry

A. Miller   

Tennessee Williams 

[Cosmos]

Thank you, Moon! Just what I was hoping for.

[EmilyGF]

I studied Hamlet in Germany and Shakespeare plays are put on regularly there.

[Cosmos]

Aw, I love the idea of people around the world reading Winnie the Pooh to their kids. Uncle Remus is a little surprising to me, considering it's hardly read at all in the U.S. anymore.

[Farrar]

Aw, I love the idea of people around the world reading Winnie the Pooh to their kids. Uncle Remus is a little surprising to me, considering it's hardly read at all in the U.S. anymore.

 

We read the versions that are in the Virginia Hamilton book The People Could Fly.  I felt uncomfortable reading the Harris versions to say the least though I knew them from my own childhood.

 

I'd love to see more of these lists.  It's sort of interesting.

[Ad astra]

Oh, I thought we were only talking about school curriculum. In Korea, most picture books by famous authors such as Eric Carle, Anthony Browne, Maurice Sendak and simply too many to list (Yes, Winnie the Pooh, too.) that you see at a local library here are all translated and published. Many families with little kids have a number of world-renowned picture books in their home library.

 

And for middle and high schoolers, most award-winning international classic literature are also available and being sold as a set of 60 books or so.

[SarahW]

I asked my Dutch Dh. He said in his high school English class (which is the foreign language class of the majority of school kids) they read some Poe, Hawthorne (not sure what), and Twain (Huckleberry Finn, he thinks). In class they also read some short stories, he thinks by Woolfe and Dickens. And remembers an introduction to the Brontes and Austen. He had a reading list for the class, and besides class reading they had to read a book of British literature, and it had to be a real classic, not a dime-store novel. He's fuzzy on the details. He admits he may have been more than a bit stoned for a lot of it. He just remembers that Poe was a creep. But he was good enough to take English "A-levels" as it was at the time.

 

On his own he read some Shakespeare. And Bunyan. Winnie-the-Pooh is a popular "classic" book in translation for kids.

 

My MIL owns nearly all the Grisham books in translation. Not that that's literature or anything...