I sort of leave Socrates out of that debate a bit since none of his writings survive (who knows- maybe he was the ONE GUY to have THE perfect answer... and the writings are gone.)

Most overrated, hmmm... i don't know...

@ obiwan - OK I'll rescind one. I'm taking away Frost, though not because I agree with you over the Poe thing. While Poe did write great poems, he was also know for great short stories. While that does fit into the category you describe I think it makes him less of a strict poet. I agree, Twain is awesome, I said that in my last post. However King is also brilliant and he gets my vote because of some desire to vote for a dark horse.

My nominations for England....

Plays - Shakespeare, I have to confess that I struggle with the language, but the plotlines and the fact that he has given so much to the English language puts the guy head and shoulders above every other writer. Shakespeare would be one of my guests at my imaginary dinner party, although I would insist he speaks modern day English for the most part.

Poems - I'm not a great lover of poetry, but I do like Blake and every Englishman who has been roused by Jeruselam can thank Blake for that experience.

Novels - Strange pick this one, but I will go for Robert Tressell, whilst he only wrote one novel, it was a bloody good 'un.

As usually I suppose the English can claim the top podium and watch as the rest of you duck it out for the minor places.

*duke it out, ducking it out doesn't make much sense :)

I am an Australian but I must say I love American literature: so many great authors to choose from.
Novels: Mark Twain (the greatest American writer)
Plays: Arthur Miller
Philosophy: This is a tough one - C S Pierce I suppose....

If we expand England to cover the whole of the UK (as it does on the map) then

Plays - Shakespear. Blindingly obvious, but worth restating over and over and over.

Poems - Burns. The Scots celebrate him for a reason.

Philosophy - Hobbes - he's a tiger after all :)

Novels - Pratchett. Or Dickens.

I agree with Frost as the American poet.

@Pete U - I picked an author with only 1 Novel and you picked one with 30 plus. I have to say Pratchett is under rated in my opinion, some of his work is brillient. I may be tempted to swing my vote behind Pratchett, I might go and re-read "good omens" first just to be sure. I think if this poll were conducted in another 100 years people would think much higher of Pratchett.

@Maniac - only *some*??? The man is a god-like genius. The Science of the Discworld series should be required reading for anyone who wants to get a basic grounding in biology / cosmology / lots of other-ology.

I'm planning a re-read of the entire Discworld canon at the moment. Once you get to Equal Rites, you don't need the fantasy in jokes. Just indoctrinating (sorry introducing) #1 daughter to TP through the Tiffany Aching books

Novels:
Tom Clancy (USA)

While Lewis WAS a novelist (Chronicles of Narnia) he also wrote works such as Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, the Inner Ring... he dealt extensively with Christianity and human Nature. Even the Narnia books have plenty of philosophical meaning.
As for Dickens, whom you emphasized, I would laugh. While some of Dickens works are quite good, others are simply not. Tolkien created entire worlds and languages for us, creation myths, histories, and in many respects, created an entire genre.
And, while Shakespeare did write Romeo and Juliet, I think we can forgive him in the face of Macbeth, Hamlet, or Midsummer Night's Dream.

R&J is great. The Bard cannot be held responsible for Leonardo di Caprio or thousands of school productions

OK - need to introduce a new country:
Russia:
Novelist: A major battle with Solzhenitzyn, Tolstoy but I would give the win to Dostoevsky
Philosophy: Tricky, because most Russian philosophy is really literature, but I would say Turgenev as the father of Russian Nihilism
Plays: Chekov - probably the easiest of the group.

On the US philosophy side - What about Thoreau???? or Emerson??

"can someone help me with kant? kant was correct in the end i think. the noumenal world cannot be refuted. the phenomenological world is a certainty. we exist. we think. we are defined and define by experience. yet, if we are honest and capable, we are even aware that we can only experience life as human beings/organisms. as organisms, we are aware of other organisms, perceiving them as different. we sense that we experience the same world "outside" or "other" world. we don't know how the other sees it or why. but we know that if we exist in it, in whatever condition, then we must be limited by our senses and existential possibilities. as organisms, what is beyond our understanding, what is truly before us, we can never know. even though our experience is completely valid phenomenologically, it is paradoxically impossible to validate...a complete mystery. kant, then, allows for science, religion AND agnosticism--NOT atheism. that is unscientific. comments?"

You're sort of picking and choosing here. You're taking the first Critique to be "Kant" when in fact there's much more to Kant than that. There's the second Critique, which, taken together with the Religion within the Bounds of Mere Reason, argues powerfully for the existence of God. There's the third Critique, which includes a discussion of organic teleology that's at odds with biology as considered today. You seem to be making a skeptic out of Kant, a path which is easy to take from Kant, but which isn't the only path.

Re: American philosophers -

A lot of people here just haven't paid much attention to contemporary developments in philosophy. The United States has some huge names in analytic philosophy - Quine and Kripke might be ones you know, but even newer ones are also doing good things, like Brandom. I'm a bit biased so I didn't even think of some names when I looked into it, but here you go - Putnam, Dennett, Rawls, Rorty. I'm not going to register an opinion on them, I'm just putting them out there as candidates. Philosophy did not end in 1800, people!

@spyman:

Wow, I totally forgot about Arthur Miller... AND Tennessee Williams! That makes it much harder to go with Thornton Wilder... I don't know, what do you guys think- it's basically "Death of A Salesman" vs. "Cat On A Hot Tin Roof" vs. "Our Town."

(I think I'd angle for Williams by just a bit, though... COAHTR is great, and then Streetcar and Glass Menagerie... couple others...

AND I think we ALL totally overlooked one of if not THE best 20th Century novelist, US:

HEMMINGWAY!

Hemmingway vs. Twain... oh, wow... what do you think?

@Krabby:

Chekhov's obvious, so is Tolsoy (he HAS to be there...) and then it's a battle for me between Pushkin and Dostoevsky.

And what do you mean "forgive" Shakespeare for R&J- that's a great play... not his BEST, maybe not even in his top 10, but a great play (which shows how great Shakespeare IS- a plaay that's been ripped off and parodied and beloved by teenage girls and examined by scholars for hundreds of years now... and not even on his Greatest Hits! Just shows- in playwriting, there's the Bard, and then everyone else...)

Yes, R&J itself was borrowed, and it is cliche... that's largely due, however, to the fact that it's many ripoffs have made the ORIGINAL look cliche (and di Caprio killed that role!) Still the language is beautiful, very poetic, one of Shakespeare's better early works (this is before he churned out nearly all his great tragedies and his best comedies and even a couple of his better histories) and let's face it- if R&J was written by anyone BUT Shakespeare it'd be looked upon as a masterwork, we just look at it harsher because we know that the same man who gave us this great-but-not-quite-the-best work gave us some of THE BEST with Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Julius Caesar, Midsummer's, Merchant of Venice, Henry IV Part 1 and Part 2, Richard III... As You Like It... there, that's 10 right there, a VERY rough Top 10, some might come off if I did it properly... still, Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Midsummer's and Merchant of Venice would still likely be there... probably Richard III, too, works as a part of his histories and as a stand-alone tragedy... Julius Caesar might make it, too... even a "bad" Shakespeare play like "Titus Andronicus" (his first tragedy) or a very questionable one like "The Taming of the Shrew" (perhaps his first comedy) are GREAT.

So where was I? lol Oh yeah- R&J's great, just not his best, blame the unauthorized Hollywood copycats if you will...

@Maniac:

Hmmm... didn't think of William Blake for poems- that's not a bad choice...

But why is everyone being so hard on Dickens? He's one of the best of the Victorian Era, definitely Top 10 for his influence and shadow cast even to today... Oliver Twist, Great Expectations, Nicholas Nickelby... throw Christmas Carol in (talk about cliche- but again, that's HOLLYWOOD'S doing... it's not Dicken's fault everyone from Jim Carrey to Mickey Mouse to the Muppets have had a version of this...) and a few others...

As far as US novelists....
King is very popular. Not considered a great writer.
Twain. Strong choice.
Hemmingway. Better short story writer.
Think a bit more recently. You have Toni Morrison and Tim O'Brien both putting out works every bit as good if not better than their predecessors.

And sorry for saying this England, but I think Dickens is WAY overrated.

Oh, I forgot about Faulkner too. Literary masterpieces, every one of them.

England
Byron's works for Poems/Novels
Shakespeare's Macbeth for Theatre
Locke for Philosophy
France
Can't say on novels or Theatre, Voltaire for Philosophy
Germany
again can't say on novels and theatre, Kant for Philo
Italy
Petrarch for poems, Aristophanes (Ancient Greek, but close enough) for Theatre, Aquinas for Philosophy
Can't say on others

kreilly89... sorry, but I think you mangled France (nohing personal!) ;)

France
-Victor Hugo for Novels... Hunchback of Notre Dame AND Les Miserables
-Theatre is Moliere, the Father of Modern Written Comedy
-Sorry, NO WAY on Voltaire... he dabbled here and there, but he's not too strong a presence, at least not as strong as DESCARTES, Father of Modern Philosophy, or SARTRE, a Founding Father of Existentialism... Caums... Rousseau was in the same time period as Voltaire and HE beats him out for philosophy

And we DID forget Faulkner... I'm not a great fan of his (I find him a tad too... well, too much like Toni Morison, who's also great but I hate here style, too)

So, throw out Morrison (she's too recent, adn not beating these guys, anyway) and:

Twain vs. Hemmingway vs. Faulkner for the Novelist Title

I stand by the fact that Hemmingway, while a great writer, was a much better short story writer than novelist. I take Faulkner.

And fyi, I have read everything by both Hemmingway and Faulkner, as well as Morrison. I have good taste in novelists. And, since our friends in Columbia haven't spoken up, I'll toss a name out for them. Gabriel José García Márquez. And, yes, I've read everything from him, too.

@KReilly - Let's try to improve on Italy:
Novelist/Poet: Agree on Petrarch although Ovid, Virgil etc. are good and Umberto Eco is a decent novelist
Philosopher: Machiavelli (c'mon - hell, we all play diplomacy)
Playwright: Gonna cheat - don't know one so I am picking Fellini as a filmmaker
Drama:

Italy's looking better...

And I think I recall reading something of Marquez's... it was alright, decent author, but his subject/style just wasn't for me... not a guy I'll read twice (at least not before about 50 other guys.)

And if you're taking Faulkner, tell me why over Twain:

He's got a few works, Twain, obviously some great stuff...

But "Huck Finn" is nearly impossible to beat on the American front of novels... I think only really "Moby Dick" has an argument there...

And in defense of Hemmingway- "The Sun Also Rises" is a masterwork...

And I STILL remember so well "A Farewll To Arms."

You want a great American story, post-WWI era story, romance, war story, tragedy...

ALL IN ONE?

"A Farewell To Arms." I dare you to try and name a better American war book... thus beats even "The Red Badge of Courage." (And I read both... AFTA wins easily, no matter how good "Courage" is, it's a book that, while you care about the characters, they're not going to crush you... the American soldier and nurse in AFTA are so HUMAN, they WILL move you in a way maybe Henry Fleming and the "Courage" cast don't... you may cry, may not, but you WILL feel like you've had a kick to the gut and a head buzzing with questions after AFTA. BEAUTIFUL AND POWERFUL AND ROMANTIC AND A WAR STORY ALL IN ONE!)

Faulkner ftw

I'm a little partial to Killer Angels, but that may be since it isn't as weighty

Ayn Rand might have been good. On the other hand, she might have been laughable. And the idea that you can take the best of Ayn Rand and Kant and somehow combine them suggests that you don't get either of them at all...just saying.

I'd like to see people work on some of the smaller countries. Since we mentioned Kierkegaard, how about Denmark:

Kierkegaard, Isak Dinesen, Lars von Trier

they may not medal, but people will be glad they came.

PS--Twain has to be the American novelist because of his accessibility. You can't represent American literature if you don't appeal to the unwashed masses. I'd pick William James in philosophy, although I'd be happy to get him into the final heat.