Ah, yes. Not going to argue that one. There's a great gulf between "last like Virgil" and "last like Trollope" and nothing written since at least 1950 is beginning to be in the first category. And it will pretty well have to be in the first category to last through the upcoming stresses.
I was going to pick at Middle English as a choice - most of the works their contemporaries thought important have survived - but then I considered: I've read the prose Lancelot, I've read (parts of) the Confessio Amantis, I've read some of the Brut, and though we have lots of Middle English and Middle French (as opposed to our loss of Anglo-Saxon works) almost nothing from the period will ever really appeal to more than specialists - even the favourite bits of Chaucer are on the edge, and only in translation. (If I had to bet on any mediaeval secular literature continuing to have immediate impact it would be the best short poems by Villon. La Ballade des Pendus continues to have immediate impact.)
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2019-09-14 09:32 pm (UTC)I was going to pick at Middle English as a choice - most of the works their contemporaries thought important have survived - but then I considered: I've read the prose Lancelot, I've read (parts of) the Confessio Amantis, I've read some of the Brut, and though we have lots of Middle English and Middle French (as opposed to our loss of Anglo-Saxon works) almost nothing from the period will ever really appeal to more than specialists - even the favourite bits of Chaucer are on the edge, and only in translation. (If I had to bet on any mediaeval secular literature continuing to have immediate impact it would be the best short poems by Villon. La Ballade des Pendus continues to have immediate impact.)