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    History of Literature

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    Claire Arribe
    Literature originated in southern Mesopotamia around 3200 BCE and later developed independently in other ancient cultures like China and Mesoamerica. The earliest known author was the Sumerian priestess Enheduanna from 2285-2250 BCE. Early Mesopotamian literature featured the gods as main characters but later included humans. Literature is categorized as fiction or non-fiction today but these distinctions were not clear in ancient times. English literature encompasses written works in English from Britain, Ireland, the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand from the 7th century to present. While sometimes viewed as insular, English literature has been influenced by Latin, Anglo-Norman, and continental European

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    History of Literature

    Uploaded by

    Claire Arribe
    72 views2 pages
    Literature originated in southern Mesopotamia around 3200 BCE and later developed independently in other ancient cultures like China and Mesoamerica. The earliest known author was the Sumerian priestess Enheduanna from 2285-2250 BCE. Early Mesopotamian literature featured the gods as main characters but later included humans. Literature is categorized as fiction or non-fiction today but these distinctions were not clear in ancient times. English literature encompasses written works in English from Britain, Ireland, the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand from the 7th century to present. While sometimes viewed as insular, English literature has been influenced by Latin, Anglo-Norman, and continental European

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    Literature originated in southern Mesopotamia around 3200 BCE and later developed independently in other ancient cultures like China and Mesoamerica. The earliest known author was the Sumerian priestess Enheduanna from 2285-2250 BCE. Early Mesopotamian literature featured the gods as main characters but later included humans. Literature is categorized as fiction or non-fiction today but these distinctions were not clear in ancient times. English literature encompasses written works in English from Britain, Ireland, the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand from the 7th century to present. While sometimes viewed as insular, English literature has been influenced by Latin, Anglo-Norman, and continental European

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    72 views2 pages

    History of Literature

    Uploaded by

    Claire Arribe
    Literature originated in southern Mesopotamia around 3200 BCE and later developed independently in other ancient cultures like China and Mesoamerica. The earliest known author was the Sumerian priestess Enheduanna from 2285-2250 BCE. Early Mesopotamian literature featured the gods as main characters but later included humans. Literature is categorized as fiction or non-fiction today but these distinctions were not clear in ancient times. English literature encompasses written works in English from Britain, Ireland, the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand from the 7th century to present. While sometimes viewed as insular, English literature has been influenced by Latin, Anglo-Norman, and continental European

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
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    Literature 

    (from the Latin Littera meaning 'letters' and referring to an acquaintance with the


    written word) is the written work of a specific culture, sub-culture, religion, philosophy or the
    study of such written work which may appear in poetry or in prose. Literature, in the west,
    originated in the southern Mesopotamia region of Sumer (c. 3200) in the city of Uruk and
    flourished in Egypt, later in Greece (the written word having been imported there from
    the Phoenicians) and from there, to Rome. Writing seems to have originated independently
    in China from divination practices and also independently in Mesoamerica and elsewhere.

    The first author of literature in the world, known by name, was the high-priestess
    of Ur, Enheduanna (2285-2250 BCE) who wrote hymns in praise of
    the Sumerian goddess Inanna. Much of the early literature from Mesopotamia concerns the
    activities of the gods but, in time, humans came to be featured as the main characters in such
    poems as Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta and Lugalbanda and Mount Hurrum (c.2600-2000
    BCE). For the purposes of study, Literature is divided into the categories of fiction or non-fiction
    today but these are often arbitrary decisions as ancient literature, as understood by those who
    wrote the tales down, as well as those who heard them spoken or sung pre-literacy, was not
    understood in the same way as it is in the modern-day.

    English literature, the body of written works produced in the English language by


    inhabitants of the British Isles (including Ireland) from the 7th century to the present
    day. The major literatures written in English outside the British Isles are treated
    separately under American literature, Australian literature, Canadian literature,
    and New Zealand literature.

    English literature has sometimes been stigmatized as insular. It can be argued that no
    single English novel attains the universality of the Russian writer Leo Tolstoy’s War and
    Peace or the French writer Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary. Yet in the Middle Ages
    the Old English literature of the subjugated Saxons was leavened by
    the Latin and Anglo-Norman writings, eminently foreign in origin, in which the
    churchmen and the Norman conquerors expressed themselves. From this combination
    emerged a flexible and subtle linguistic instrument exploited by Geoffrey Chaucer and
    brought to supreme application by William Shakespeare. During the Renaissance the
    renewed interest in Classical learning and values had an important effect on English
    literature, as on all the arts; and ideas of Augustan literary propriety in the 18th century
    and reverence in the 19th century for a less specific, though still selectively viewed,
    Classical antiquity continued to shape the literature. All three of these impulses derived
    from a foreign source, namely the Mediterranean basin. The Decadents of the late 19th
    century and the Modernists of the early 20th looked to continental European
    individuals and movements for inspiration. Nor was attraction toward European
    intellectualism dead in the late 20th century, for by the mid-1980s the approach known
    as structuralism, a phenomenon predominantly French and German in origin, infused
    the very study of English literature itself in a host of published critical studies and
    university departments. Additional influence was exercised by deconstructionist
    analysis, based largely on the work of French philosopher Jacques Derrida.

    Further, Britain’s past imperial activities around the globe continued to inspire


    literature—in some cases wistful, in other cases hostile. Finally, English literature has
    enjoyed a certain diffusion abroad, not only in predominantly English-speaking
    countries but also in all those others where English is the first choice of study as a
    second language.

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