REPRESENTATIVE TEXTS AND AUTHORS FROM ASIA

Asia, the largest continent in the world, has a

vast literary tradition in terms of scope and length of
existence. Literature in the Eastern hemisphere prospered
and mirrored the development in region, war, and
politics. It is wise to study the Asian literature by
geographical region.

EAST ASIA
1. CHINA – one of the world’s cradles of civilization,
started its unbroken literary tradition in the 14 th
century BCE. The preservation of the Chinese
language (both spoken and written), has made the
immeasurable prolonged existence of their literary
traditions possible. It has retained its reputation
by keeping the fundamental of its identity intact.
Poets like Du Fu, Li Po, and Wang Wei of the Tang
Dynasty (618-907), the finest era of Chinese
literature, have produced world-renowned literary
works. Chinese writers in modern times are still
creative and productive and have kept the Chinese
literary traditions prosperous.

a) Du Fu
- he is known as Tu Fu. According to many
literary critics, he was the greatest
Chinese poet of all time, he wrote the
poem “The Ballad of the Army Cats” which
is about conscription and with hidden
satire that speaks of the noticeable
luxury of the court.

b) Li Po
- he is also known as Li Bai, a Chinese
poet who is a competitor of Do Fu as
China’s greatest poet. He was romantic in
his personal life and his poetry. His
works are known for their conversational
tone and vivid imagery. He wrote the poem
“Alone and Drinking under the Moon” which
deals with the ancient social custom of
drinking.

c) Wang Wei
- he was a poet, painter, musician, and
statesman during the Tang dynasty (the
golden age of Chines cultural history).
 He was established founder of the
respected Southern school of painter-
poets. Many of his best poems were
inspired by the local landscape.

d) Mo Yan
- he was a fictionist who won the 2012
Noble Prize for Literature. His first
novel was “Red Sorghum”, and still his
best-known work. It tells the story of
the Chinese battling Japanese intruders
as well as each other during the 1930s.
it relates the story of a family in a
rural area in Shandong Province during
this turbulent time.

e) Yu Hua
- he was a world-acclaimed short story
writer and considered a champion for
Chinese meta-fictionist or postmodernist
writing. His widely acclaimed novel “To
Live” describes the struggles endured by
the son of a wealthy landowner while
historical events caused and extended by
the Chinese Revolution are fundamentally
altering the nature of Chinese society.

More Essential Texts for Reading:

Thunderstorms (drama) Cao Yu
Family (novel) Pa Jin
Please Don’t Call Me Wang Shou
Human (novel)
Strange Tales from a Pu Songling
Chinese Studio (short
story)
On a Gate Tower at Yuzhou Zhang Chenzhi
(Poetry)
Battle (poem) Chu’u Yuan

2. KOREA – literature tradition is greatly influenced

by China’s cultural dominance, as early as the 4 th
century CE, Korean poets wrote literary pieces in
Classical Chinese poetry the transformation
happened in the 7th century. Hangul, Korea’s
distinct writing system and national alphabet, is
developed in the 15th century that gave new
beginnings to Korean literature. In contemporary
times, the Korean War has made a significant mark
on Korean literature. In 1950, the themes present
in the literary works are about alienation,
conscience, disintegration, and self-identity.

a) Ch’oe Nam-Seon
- he was considered a prominent historian,
pioneering, poet, and publisher in Korean
Literature. He was also a leading member
of the modern literary movement and
became notable for pioneering modern
Korean poetry. One of his works, the poem
“The Ocean to the Youth” made him a
widely acclaimed poet. The poem aimed to
produce cultural reform. He sought to
bring modern knowledge about the world to
the youth of Korea.

b) Yi Kwang-su
- he was also the one who launched the
modern literary movement together with
Ch’oe Nam-Seon. He was a novelist and
wrote the first Korean novel “The
Heartless” and became well-known because
of it. It was a description of the
crossroad at which Korea found itself,
stranded between tradition and modernity,
and undergoing conflict between social
realities and traditional ideals.

c) Kim Ok
- He was a Korean poet and was included in
the early modernism movement of Korean
poetry. He wrote the first Korean
collection of translations from Western
poetry “The Dance of Agony”.

d) Yun Hunggil
- He was a South Korean novelist who won
the 1977 Korean Literature Writers Award.
He wrote the classic novel “Changma” (The
Rainy Spell) on a post-war family with
two grandmothers and their shared
grandson.

e) Pak Kyongni
 - She was a South Korean poet and novelist.
She wrote the Korean masterpiece and
internationally acclaimed 21-volume epic
novel T’oji (“The Land”), wherein she
chronicled the violent Korean history
from 1897 to 1945.

3. Japan - has a rich and unique literary history even

though it has been influenced by the Chinese
language and Chinese literature. It has a world-
renowned poetic genre called haiku (a short
descriptive poem with 17 syllables) and the diverse
forms of theatre Noh (traditional Japanese
theatrical form and one of the oldest extant
theatrical forms in the world) and Kabuki
(traditional Japanese popular drama with singing
and dancing performed in a highly stylized manner).
Japanese literature reflects simple yet complex,
imperfect yet abounding with beauty – the
traditional Japanese cultural identity. In
contemporary times, Western influences take part in
Japanese literature, specifically in the pioneering
of modern Japanese novels, translations of poetry,
and reinventions of traditional Japanese poetic
forms like haiku and tanka. Playwrights like Abe
Kobo and Mishima Yukio are Japan’s notable
literalists.

a) Abe Kobo
- He was a Japanese novelist and playwright
also known by the pseudonym of Abe
Kimifusa. He wrote the best-known play
"Tomodachi" (Friends) which is a story,
with dark humor, that reveals the
relationship with the others and exposes
the peculiarity of human relations in the
present age. He also won the 1967
Akutagawa Award. He also won the 1951
Akutagawa Award for his short novel Kabe
(“The Wall”).

b) Kimitake Hiraoka
- He is also known by the pen name Mishima
Yukio, the most important Japanese
novelist of the 20th century. He was one
of the finalists of the 1963 Nobel Prize
for Literature and won numerous awards
 for his works. He wrote the novel “The
Temple of the Golden Pavilion” and won
Yomiuri Prize from Yomiuri Newspaper
Corporation for the best novel. “The
Temple of the Golden Pavilion”,
translated into the English language by
Ivan Morris, is based on the burning of
the Reliquary (or Golden Pavilion) of
Kinkaku-Ji in Kyoto by a young Buddhist
acolyte in 1950.

c) Ryūnosuke Akutagawa
- He was a Japanese writer and is regarded
as the Father of the Japanese short
story. He wrote the short story
“Rashomon” that recounts the encounter
between a servant and an old woman in the
dilapidated Rashōmon, the southern gate
of the then-ruined city of Kyoto, where
unclaimed corpses were sometimes dumped.
The Akutagawa Prize, Japan’s premier
literary award was named after him to
honor his memory after he died by
committing suicide.

d) Haruki Murakami
- He was a Japanese novelist who won the
international award Jerusalem Prize. He
also won the Gunzou Literature Prize for
his first novel “Hear the Wind Sing”. It
featured episodes in the life of an
unnamed protagonist and his friend, the
Rat, who hang out at a bar. The unnamed
protagonist reminisces and muses about
life and intimacy. Murakami’s work has
been translated into more than fifty
languages.

MIDDLE EAST
Arabic literary tradition has been flourishing in
the Middle East. Islam is the foundation of culture in
this region - an essential component. Its literary
tradition has grown and influenced others like Persian,
Byzantine, and Andalusian traditions. In return, Arabic
literature has also been influenced by other literary
traditions of different countries. Even European
literature followed and imitated Arabic literature. In
contemporary times, Arabic writers experience
difficulties in producing their literary texts due to the
issue of freedom of expression and the tension between
religious and secular movements.

a) Abbas Mahmoud al-Aqqad

- He was an Egyptian poet, journalist, and
literary critic, an innovator of 20th-
century Arabic poetry and criticism. He
became famous for his Abqariyat series, a
seven-book compilation that covers the
life of seven of the most important
Sahabah (the disciples and followers of
Muhammad).

b) Taha Hussein
- He was an Egyptian novelist, essayist,
critic, and an outstanding figure in
Egyptian literature. His nickname was
“The Dean of Arabic Literature”. He wrote
the novelized autobiography “The Days”,
one of the most popular works of modern
Arabic literature that deals with his
childhood in a small village, then his
studies in Egypt and France.

c) Ali Ahmad Said Esber

- He is known also as Adonis his pseudonym.
He is an award-winning Syrian-born
Lebanese poet, and literary critic, and
is a leader of the modernist movement in
contemporary Arabic poetry. He was the
recipient of numerous honors, including
the 2011 Goethe Prize and the 2017
PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in
International. Some of his famous poems
are “First Poems” and “Leaves in the
Wind”.

d) Etgar Keret
- He is an Israeli writer known for his
short stories, graphic novels, and
scriptwriting for film and television.
His 2019 Fly Already (“Glitch at the Edge
of the Galaxy”) published in English won
Israel’s prestigious Sapir Prize in
Literature.
 More Essential Texts for Reading:
Last Simile (poem) Abid B Al-Abras
Lāmiyyāt ‘al-Arab (poem) Al-Shanfarā
Cities of Salt (novel) Abdul Rahman Munif
That Smell and Notes from Sonallah Ibrahim
Prison (novel)
The People of the Cave Tawfiq al-Hakim
(novel)
A Love Poem (poem) Umm Khalid
Annumairiyya
Bin Barka Ally (novel) Mahmoud Saeed
I Am The One Who Saw
(Saddam City) (novel)
A Thousand Splendid Sun Khaled Hosseini
(novel)

SOUTH AND SOUTHEAST ASIA

India is the cultural giant of South Asia. Hallmark
writings such as Veda, the Brahmanas, and the Upanishads
are the roots of Indian literature. As early as 1500 BCE,
the Veda written in the Sanskrit language introduced the
birth of Indian literary works. Around the 16th century,
written literature in India appeared. In the succeeding
centuries of British colonization, English literature
emerged that happen to be a significant influence of
Indian literary traditions until the 21st century period.
Kalidasa is a notable and famous Indian writer considered
to be the Hindu Shakespeare.
The literary traditions of Southeast Asia possess
the influences of Buddhist, Thai, and English cultures,
especially in Burma literature. Malaysian and Indonesian
literature reflects a large part of the Sanskrit language
and Islam culture.
In contemporary times, India still manifests the
impact of colonial rule through the presence of the
English language in literary traditions. Numerous Indian
writers like Rabindranath Tagore, Prem Chand, Raja Rao,
and R.K. Narayan are highly accomplished and
internationally known. Southeast Asia literature presents
themes on colonial and postcolonial experiences in
Burmese literature and Western literature influences in
Thailand literature.

a) Rabindranath Tagore
- He was a Bengali poet, short-story
writer, song composer, playwright,
essayist, and painter. He was referred to
 as “The Bard of Bengal”. He is a towering
figure of world literature and the most
famous modern Indian poet. He won the
1913 Nobel Prize for Literature award for
his book The English Gitanjali or Song
Offerings. It is a volume of poetry that
is a collection of devotional songs to
the supreme.

b) Dhanpat Rai Srivastava

- Also known by his pseudonym Prem Chand,
he is a famous Indian author of novels
and short stories of his modern
Hindustani literature. He pioneered
adapting Indian themes to Western
literary styles. He wrote the most
popular Hindi novel “Godaan” (Cow
Donation) and is considered one of the
greatest Hindi novels of modern Indian
literature. Its theme was around socio-
economic deprivation as well as the
exploitation of the village poor.

c) Raja Rao
- He is an Indian writer of novels and
short stories in the English language.
His famous novel “The Serpent and the
Rope”, a semi-autobiographical account of
the narrator, a young intellectual
Brahman, and his wife seeking spiritual
truth in India, France, and England,
recognized him as one of the fines Indian
prose Stylists. It won him the Sahitya
Akademi Award. He was also rewarded the
Neustadt International Prize for
Literature. His literary works in various
genres had a significant contribution to
Indian and world literature.

d) Rasipuram Krishnaswami Narayan

- One of the finest Indian authors in the
English language, he wrote the Sahitya
Award-winning novel “The Guide” which was
adapted for film and Broadway. It was
based on a fictional town in South India
and describes the transformation of the
protagonist from a tour guide to a
 spiritual guide and one of the greatest
holy men of India.

e) Chart Korbjitti
- He is the most successful Thai writer. He
was recognized for the publication of his
novel Khamphiphaksa (The Judgment). His
novel was named Book of the Year by
Thailand's Literature Council and won him
the S.E.A. Write Award. He was awarded
the National Artist in Literature (2004)
and was among the honorees of the
inaugural Silpathorn Award, given to Thai
contemporary artists

f) Nguyen Du
- The best-loved poet and the father of
Vietnamese literature, he was most known
for his epic poem “The Tale of Kieu”
which recounts the life, trials, and
tribulations of Thuy Kieu, a beautiful
and talented young woman, who has to
sacrifice herself to save her family. She
sells herself into marriage with a
middle-aged man, not knowing that he is a
pimp, and is forced into prostitution.

g) Tengku Amir Hamzah

- He was an Indonesian poet and National
Hero of Indonesia. His poem collection
“Nyangi Sunyi” is considered the most
developed and shows the theme of God and
His relationship to humanity, fate,
dissatisfaction, and escape. Some
literary critics think that the
collection is an attempt to address the
worldly problems of Amir. He was the only
Indonesian poet recognized
internationally.

More Essential Text for Reading:

In Custody (novel) Anita Desai
The Gods of Small Things Arundhati Roy
(novel)
The Folded Earth (novel) Anuradha Roy
The Feather of the Dawn Sarojini Naidu
(Poetry) Subrahmanyam
 (The
Nightingale of
India)
The Caged Ones (novel) Ludu U Ha
A Crazy Man’s Shoulder Hmawbi Saya
Bag (anecdote) Thein
Working Elephants (essay) Kyi Aye
The General Retires and Nguyen Huy
Other Stories (short Thiep
story)

CENTRAL ASIA
Central Asia literature has different literary
characteristics and political culture. In contemporary
times, Russian influence continues to be present in
Central Asia literature. Some of the Central Asian
writers and their literary works pave their way to be
known worldwide.

a) Abdullah Qodiriy
- He was known by the pseudonym Julqunboy.
He was one of the most influential Uzbek
writers of the 20th century and a Soviet
playwright, poet, writer, and literary
translator. His most famous work is the
historical novel “O’tgan Kunlar (Days
Gone By), the first Uzbek full-length
novel.

b) Mukhtar Auez-uli
- He was an early Soviet Kazakh writer and
won recognition for the long novel “Abay”
which is based on the life and poetry of
Kunanbay-uli.

c) Chingiz Aytmatov
- He was a Soviet and Kyrgyz author and the
best-known figure in Kyrgyz and Russian
literature. “Jamila”, his first major
novel was told from the viewpoint of a
fictional character that tells the story
by looking back on his childhood. The
story recounts the love between his new
sister-in-law Jamilya and a local
crippled young man, Daniyar, while
Jamilya’s husband, Sadyk, is “away at the
front” (as a Soviet soldier during WW2).
 REPRESENTATIVE TEXTS AND AUTHORS FROM
AFRICA
Africa, the “Cradle of humankind” according to
scientists, has a literature that is filled with the
human spirit, desiring freedom and contentment. African
literature consists of oral tradition and written
literature ranging from local languages brought by the
colonizers (English, Portuguese, and French). The
experiences of colonization and post-colonization shaped
African literature.
The oral literature of Africa such as myths,
stories, riddles, proverbs, and dramas document the
exploits of the heroes of the communities, remind the
people about their culture and traditions, and entertain
and educate the youth. It flourishes across the continent
in the 15th century CE until the interaction of Africa
with Europe and Asia, their trade and cultural partners,
serves as the main contributor to the African literature
growth.
In the 19th century, European countries compete for
the colonization of African territory to gain a political
and economic edge. The colonization and slave trade have
awakened the African psyche (the soul and mind)
incredibly. The literary works are the vehicle,
specifically the newspaper, in exposing the psychological
and social impact of colonization. African writers
express their cry for freedom from oppression through
their poetry and narrative works. Though they use the
European language to produce their literary works, the
cry for independence has reached a climax, so strong and
effective, with the embodiment of the spirit of
nationalism, gained worldwide acclaim. Numerous notable
African writers are Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, Kofi
Awoonor, Ngungi wa Thiong’o (East Africa’s leading
novelist), Okot p’Bitek, Nadine Gordimer, Dennis Crutus,
Es’kia Mphahlele, and Jacques Rabemananjara.
In contemporary times, African writers experience
new challenges with their new and sovereign government.
They still use their literary works as a vehicle for
expressing their voices against their government with a
constant theme of corruption.

a) Chinua Achebe
- He was a Nigerian novelist, poet, critic,
and professor and was honored as Grand
Prix de la Memoir of the 2019 edition of
 the Grand Prix of Literary Associations.
His first novel and masterpiece, “Things
Fall Apart”, is the most widely-read book
in modern African literature. It concerns
the traditional Igbo life at the time of
the advent of missionaries and the
colonial government in his homeland.

b) Wole Soyinka
- He was the first black African to be
awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize for
Literature. One of his famous works is
his first important play “A Dance of the
Forests” which was written for the
Nigerian Independence celebrations. It
parodies the emerging nation by stripping
it of romantic legend and by showing that
the present is no more a golden age than
it was before.

c) Kifi Awoonor
- He was a Ghanaian novelist and poet who
wrote “This Earth, My Brother”, a cross
between a novel and a poem. It was told
on two levels each representing a
distinct reality. The first level is a
standard narrative that details a day in
the life of an attorney named Amamu. The
second level is a symbol-laden mystical
journey filled with biblical and literary
allusions. These portions of the text
deal with the new nation of Ghana, which
is represented by a baby on a dunghill.
The dunghill is a source of both rot and
renewal and in this way represents the
foundations upon which Ghana was built.

d) Ngungi wa Thiong’o
- East Africa’s leading novelist, a Kenyan
writer who wrote the famous novel “Weep
Not, Child”. It was the first major novel
in English by an East African. It deals
with the Mau-Mau Uprising, a war in the
British Kenya Colony (1920–1963) between
the Kenya Land and Freedom Army.

e) Okot p’ Bitek
 - He was a Ugandan poet, novelist, and
social anthropologist who wrote the three
verse collections – Song of Lawino
(1066), Song of Ocol (1970), and Two
Songs (1971). He achieved international
recognition for Song of Lawino, a long
poem dealing with the tribulations of a
rural African wife whose husband has
taken up urban life and wishes everything
to be Westernized. It was followed by the
husband’s reply, the Song of Ocol.

f) Nadine Gordimer
- A South African writer and the recipient
of the 1991 Nobel Prize in Literature.
She wrote the joint winner of the Booker
- McConnell Prize novel “The
Conservationist”. The story is a
character study of a successful South
African industrial executive and, by
extension, a critique of South Africa.

g) Jacques Rabemananjara
- He was a Malagasy playwright and poet and
one of Madagascar’s most prominent
writers. He wrote and published his play
“Les dieux malgaches”, the first modern
Malagasy play in French. This play dealt
with the pre-colonial past and with the
coup that unseated King Radama II in
1863.

h) Es’kia Mphahlele
- He wrote the South African classic
autobiography “Down Second Avenue” about
the story of a young man’s growth into
adulthood with penetrating social
criticism of the conditions forced upon
black South Africans by a system of
institutionalized racial segregation.

i) Thomas Mofolo
- He was the greatest writer from the Sotho
people in Africa. He created the first
Western-style novels in the Basotho
language. His novel “Chaka” became a
classic. It was a historical novel about
 the story of the rise and fall of the
Zulu king Shaka. Dennis P. Kunene
translated the novel from Sotho to
English.

More Essential Texts for Reading:

The Invention of Africa: Valentin-Yves
Gnosis, Philosophy and Mudimbe
the Order of Knowledge
(essay)
The Cardinals (novel) Bessie Head
Striving for the Wind Meja Mwangi
(novel)
The Famished Road (novel) Ben Okri
Season of Migration to Tayeb Salih
the North (novel)
To Every Birth its Blood Mongane Serote
(novel)
The Palm-Wide Drinkable Amos Tutuola
(novel)
Nervous Conditions Tsitsi
(novel) Dangarembe
Mission to Kala (novel) Mango Beti
Up in Arms (poetry) Chenjerai Hove
Tales of Amadou Koumba Birago Diop
(fiction tales)
Muriel at Metropolitan Miriam Tlali
(novel)

POETRY AND ITS ELEMENTS

What is poetry?
 Is an imaginative awareness of experience expresses
through meaning, sound, and rhythmic language choices so
ad to evoke an emotional response.
 Is the chiseled marble of language; it’s a paint-
spattered canvas – but the poet uses words instead of
paint, and the canvas is you.

Types of Poetry
1. Haiku – poem with 5-7-5 syllables
Example:
In the blink of time
You will grow away fast
Amazingly wise.

2. Limerick
 Short five-line humorous poem.
  They often contain onomatopoeia, hyperboles, and
idioms.
 They typically contain one couplet and one
triplet.

Example:
A flea and a fly in a flue
Were caught, so what could they do?
Said the fly, “Let us Flee.” “let us fly,” said the
flea.
So they flew through a flaw in the flue.

3. Narrative poem
 Poetry that tells a story with plot and
characters.

4. Lyric poem
 Poem of a single speaker

Examples:
Sonnets
Songs
Odes

5. Concrete poetry
 Poetry that takes the shape of the poems theme or
tone.

6. Free Verse Poetry

 Poetry that doesn’t rhyme.

Elements of Poetry
Can be defined as a set of instruments used to create a
poem.
Many of these were created thousands of years ago and
have been linked to ancient story telling.
They help bring imagery and emotion to poetry, stories,
and dramas.

1. Stanza
 A unit of lines grouped together
 Similar to a paragraph in prose
 Consists of two or more lines of poetry that
together form one of the divisions of poem
 The stanzas of a poem are usually of the same
length and follow the same pattern of meter and
rhyme and are used like paragraphs in a story.

a. Couplets
 Are stanzas of only two lines which usually rhyme
b. Tercets
 Stanzas of three lines. The three lines may or
may not have the same end rhyme. If all three
lines rhyme this type of tercet is called a
triplet.

c. Quatrains
 Of four line which can be written in any rhyme
scheme.

2. Tone and mood

 Tone indicates the writer’s attitude. Often an
author’s tone is described by adjectives, such
as: cynical, depressed, sympathetic, cheerful,
outraged, positive, angry, sarcastic, prayerful,
ironic, solemn, vindictive, intense, excited.

3. Imagery
 Representation of the five senses.
 Creates mental images about a poem’s subject.

4. Refrain
 The repetition of one or more phrases or lines at
certain intervals, usually at the end of each
stanza.
 Similar to the chorus in a song.

5. Repetition
 A word or phrase repeated within a line or stanza
 Reinforces or even substitutes for meter (the
beat), the other chief controlling factor of
poetry.
 Sometimes the effect of a repeated phrase in a
poem will be to emphasize a development or change
by means of the contrast in the words following
the identical phrases.

6. Theme
 Talks about the central idea, the thought behind
what the poet wants to convey.
 A theme can be anything from a description about
a person or thing, a thought or even a story.
 In short a theme stands for whatever the poem is
about.

7. Symbolism
 A symbol in poetry can stand for anything and
makes the reader take a systematic approach which
helps him/her look at things in a different
light.
  A symbol is a poetry style that is usually
thought of in the beginning.

8. Figurative language
 Is language that uses words or expression with a
meaning that is different from the literal
interpretation.
 Departs from the actual, or literal meaning of
words to create an effect.
 Paints a picture in reader’s mind.
 Uses exaggeration and comparisons.

9. Rhythm
 Is a regular, patterned repetition of sounds in a
poem (the beat)
 Gives poetry a musical feel

10. Meter
 Is a unit of rhythm in poetry, the pattern of the
beats
 Is also called “foot”
 This is the number of feet that is in line of
poetry. A line of poetry can have any number of
feet, and can have more than one type of foot.
There are some meters that are used more often
than others.

EUROPEAN LITERATURE
Languages:
 In Europe, there are about 50 different languages and
more than 100 dialects most of which belong to the Indo-
European language family.
 The Slavic languages of eastern Europe, the Germanic
language of northern Europe, and the Romance languages
of southern Europe are Indo-European languages.

Major Literary Themes:

 Politics
 Religion
 Reason and logic
 Tolerance, freedom, and equality
 Nature
 Man and childhood
 Myths
 Imagination
 Hypocrisy, brutality and dullness
 War, empires, prosperity and reform
 Beauty
 Emotions and feelings
GREECE AND ROME ARE CONSIDERED THE BIRTH PLACE OF EUROPEAN
LITERATURE.

Periods in European Literature

Ancient Period 750BC – 450
 The first was the Old Testament of the
Bible which was composed of 39 books in
Hebrew language.
 On the other hand was the realization
of the timeless epics: the Iliad and
the Odyssey which were associated with
Homer
Classical Period 450-1066
 The playwright of comedy (like
Aristophanes) and tragedy (namely:
Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripedes)
became popular in this time.
 Notable lyrical poets like Pindar and
Sappho were also famous. The varied
works of the great philosophers: Plato
and Aristotle were also eminent.
 The Greek tradition was later endured
by the Romans, who resembled their
civilization after Greeks.
 The poet Vigil became renowned because
of his Aeneid, an epic modelled on
Iliad and Odyssey.
Medieval Period 1066-1500
 Medieval, “belong to the Middle Ages”,
denotes the literature of both Europe
and the Eastern Mediterranean from the
founding of the Eastern
Roman/Byzantine, Empire about 300 AD
for medieval Greek, to the period
following the fall of Rome in 476 for
medieval Latin, and from about the time
of Charlemagne and the "Carolingian
Renaissance" he fostered in France (c.
800) to the end of the 15th century for
most written vernacular literatures.
 The pre-Christian literature of Europe
belonged to an oral tradition that was
mirrored in the "Poetic Edda" and the
"sagas", or heroic epics of Iceland,
the Anglo- Saxon "Beowulf", and the
German "Song of Hildebrand".
 Two well-known literary writers from
the religious aspect: Dante Alighieri
(whose Divine Comedy depicts the three
realms of the afterlife) and St.
Augustine (whose The Confessions and
 the City of God last as spiritual
foundation up to this day).
 Heroic deeds and dignified actuations
were underscored in the epics like
Beowulf (Anglo-Saxon), The Song of
Roland (French), The Song of Nibelungs
(German), and El Cid (Spanish).
 The culture of chivalric adventure was
evident in the works associated to King
Arthur, including Sir Thomas Malory's
Le Morte d'Arthur. Moreover, Geoffery
Chaucer gained his title as "The Father
of English Literature" with his
paramount literary work, The Canterbury
Tales.
Renaissance Period 1485-1680
 The age was marked by 3 major
characteristics namely:
 (1) the new interest in education,
emulated by the classical scholars
known as humanists and instrumental in
providing appropriate classical models
for the new writers;
 (2) the new form of Christianity,
introduced by the Protestant
Reformation headed by Martin Luther,
which drew men's interest to the
individual and his inner experiences
and encouraged a response in Catholic
countries summarized by the term
"Counter- Reformation" and;
 (3) the journeys of the great explorers
that culminated in Christopher
Columbus's discovery of America in 1492
and that had extensive consequences on
the countries that developed overseas
empires, as well as on the minds and
consciences of the most exceptional
writers of the era.
 During this period, people were
concerned with individualism, as well
as self and societal improvement many
writers produced literary pieces that
catered to wealthy patrons who
commissioned their work. In 1440,
Johannes Gutenberg created the printing
press, which allowed for mass
production of pamphlets and novels.
This event gave people more
opportunities to read publication of
authors like Petrarch and Boccaccio
  Christopher Marlowe: Doctor Faustus
 Dante Alighieri: Divina Commedia
Giovanni Boccaccio: The Decameron
 John Milton: Paradise Lost Miguel de
Cervantes: Don Quixote
 Niccolo Machiavelli: The Prince
 Petrarch: Canzoniere, Trionfi Sir
Thomas More: Utopia
 William Shakespeare: King Lear, Hamlet,
Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet
Age of Reasons 1650-1800
 Also known as the "Age of
Enlightenment," the Age of Reason aims
not to grab a hold on a useful half-
truth but to cause misperception in the
overall picture, because the
predominance of reason had also been a
mark of certain periods of the previous
era
 The cult of wit, satire, and argument
manifested in England in the writings
of Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, and
Samuel Johnson, continuing the
tradition of Dryden from the 17th
century.
 The novel was recognized as a major art
form in English literature relatively
by a rational realism shown in the
works of Henry Fielding, Daniel Defoe,
and Tobias Smollett and partly by the
psychological exploratory of the novels
of Samuel Richardson and of Laurence
Sterne's Tristram Shandy.
 In France, the major characteristic of
the period rests in the philosophical
and political writings of the
Enlightenment, which had a deep
influence all through the rest of
Europe and prefigured the French
Revolution.
 Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau,
Charles de Montesquieu, and the
Encyclopédistes Denis Diderot and Jean
d'Alembert all dedicated much of their
work to controversies about social and
religious matters, often involving
criticisms and direct conflict with the
authorities.

Famous authors and their literary works

during this period nature are:
  Adam Smith: The Wealth of Nations
Daniel Defoe: Robinson Crusoe
 Denis Diderot: Encyclopedie Jean-
Jacques Rousseau: The Social Contract,
Emile, and Confessions.
 John Locke: An Essay Concerning Human
Understanding Jonathan Swift:
Gulliver's Travels
 Mary Wollstonecraft: A Vindication of
the Rights of Women
 Montesquieu: Spirit of the Laws Thomas
Hobbes: Leviathan
 Voltaire: Candide
Romantic Period 1798-1870
 Romanticism was the principal literary
movement of the initial part of the
19th century, in which literature had
its origins in the "Sturm and Drang"
period in Germany.
 A consciousness of this first phase of
Romanticism is an important
modification to the usual impression of
Romantic literature as something that
began in English poetry with William
Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge
and the publication of "Lyrical
Ballads" in 1798.
 A philosophical background was given in
the 18th century largely by Jean-
Jacques Rousseau, whose emphasis on the
individual and the power of inspiration
inspired Wordsworth and also such
first- phase Romantic writers as
Friedrich Hölderlin and Ludwig Tieck in
Germany and the French writer Bernardin
de Saint-Pierre, whose "Paul et
Virginie (1787)" predicted some of the
sentimental excesses of 19th-century
Romantic literature.
 Here are the famous writers of Romantic
period and their literary works:
 Fredrick Schlegel: Lucinde
 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel:
Phenomenology of Mind

 Horace Walpole: The Castle of Otranto ⚫

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: The Sorrows
of Young Werther
 Faust • Lord Byron: Don Juan, Childe
Harold's Pilgrimage
 Mary Shelley: Frankenstein
  Samuel Taylor Coleridge: The Rime of
the Ancient Mariner, Lyrical Ballads
Victor Hugo: Les Miserables
 William Wordsworth: The Prelude
Modernism 1870-1965
 Modernism, like realism, provided
critique of morality of the people
belonging to the middle-class society.
Writers during this period explored new
forms and styles of writing, which
paved way to a technique cafted "stream
of consciousness." Developed by Marcel
Proust, "stream of consciousness" is a
style that allowed the author to
explore all of the facets of their
thought processes in the absence of any
suggested formatting rules.
Post-Modernism Period 1965-present
 Characterized by an unusual mix of high
and low culture, this period served as
the literary and societal response to
the horrifying events of World War II
and elitism of high modernism.
Fragmentation, paradox, and narrators
that are difficult to define are
common. The style of writing evokes the
absence of tradition in a modern
consumer-driven, technologically based
society.
 Here are the post-modernist famous
authors and their literary works:
 Alan Moore: Watchmen
 Alasdair Gray: Lanark: A Life in Four
Books
 Dmitry Galkovsky: The Infinite Deadlock
George Perec: Life: A User's Manual
 Gertrude Stein: The Autobiography of
Alice B. Toklas Italo Calvino: If on a
winter's night a traveler
 John Fowles: The French Lieutenant's
Woman • Umberto Eco: Foucault's
Pendulum
 Venedikt Erofeev: Moscow-Petushki
 Vladimir Nabokov: Mother Night
 Walter Abish: How German Is It

21st Century Authors and their Works (European)

J.K Rowling
 Harry Potter
 Fantastic Beasts
Zadie Smith
 White Teeth
 NW
 Swing Time
 Feel Free

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

 Purple Hibiscus (2003)
 Half of a Yellow Sun (2006)
 Americanah (2013)
 The short story collection The Thing Around Your Neck
(2009)

Ian McEwan
 The Cement Garden (1978)
 The Comfort of Strangers (1981)
 The Child in Time (1987)
 The Innocent (1990)

Cormac McCarthy
 Genre: Southern gothic, western, post-apocalyptic
 Suttree (1979)
 Blood Meridian (1985)
 The Boarder Trilogy (1992-1998)

AMERICAN LITERATURE
North America is a mainland or continent totally inside the
Northern Hemisphere and practically all inside the Western
Hemisphere. It is the third-biggest landmass by region,
following Asia and Africa, and the fourth by populace after
Asia, Africa, and Europe. It incorporates the nations of Central
America, Mexico, the United States, Canada, Greenland, and the
islands of the Caribbean district.
Various writers from this continent are prominent for their
works and contribution to the body of literature. Some are
presented in the table below.

 The story of American Literature begins long before the

US began its existence
 Native Americans
 Oral literature
 Myths and legends
 Focus on nature and creation stories
 The first permanent settles were Puritans
 Interested in education and culture
 Harvard was founded in 1636
  Printing press was started in 1638
 New World saw the emergence of literature which was
mainly made up of sermons, histories, autobiographies
and poems all of them written with a religious purpose.

PROMINENT THEMES OF AMERICAN LITERATURE:

 Independence
 Individualism
 Freedom
 Nationalism
 Slavery
 Coming of age
 Redemption
 Good vs evil
 Courage
 Feminism
 Oppression

Eras of American literature

1. Native Americans Pre-1600’s
Oral tradition of song and
stories Authors from:
 Original authors 1600’s – 1700’s
unknown  Anne Bradstreet
 Written accounts come  Benjamin Franklin
after colonization  Thomas Paine
 Include creation
stories, myths, totems
1800’s
 Archetypes of
 Washington Irving
trickster and conjurer
 Edgar Allan Poe
 Harriet Beecher Stowe
Focuses on
 The natural world as
1900’s
scared
 Emily Dickson
 Importance of land and
place.  Samuel Langhome
Clemens
 T.S. Eliot
 Walt Whitman

1930’s
 John Steinbeck
 Harper Lee
Enlightenment Era
 Age of Faith
 Age of Reason
Romanticism Era
Realism Era
Modernism Era
 Contemporary Era

AUTHORS FROM AMERICAN LIERATURE:

1. David L. Weatherford is a child psychologist with
published poems in "Chicken Soup for the Soul". He was
born on July 20, 1952 in Mount Vernon, Jefferson County,
Illinois, USA. He died on January 7, 2010 at age 57. One
of his poems is entitled “Slow Dance”.
2. Alfred Edward Housman, known as A. E. Housman, was an
English traditional researcher and writer, most popular
to the overall population for his pattern of sonnets “A
Shropshire Lad”. Melodious and practically epigrammatic
in structure, the sonnets contemplatively bring out the
fates and frustrations of youth in the English
countryside. He was one of the premier classicists of
his age and has been positioned as probably the best
researcher who ever lived. One of his works is entitled
“When I Was One-and-Twenty.”
3. Kate Chopin was an American creator of short stories and
books situated in Louisiana. She is currently considered
by some scholars to have been a harbinger of American
twentieth century women's activist writers of Southern
or Catholic foundation. One of her works is entitled
“The Story of An Hour.” James Grover Thurber was an
American sketch artist, creator, comedian, writer,
dramatist, and commended mind. He was most popular for
his kid's shows and short stories, distributed primarily
in The New Yorker and gathered in his various books.
Thurber was one of the most mainstream comedians of his
time and commended the comic disappointments and
unconventionalities of common individuals. His works
have every now and again been adjusted into films,
including The Male Animal (1942), The Battle of the
Sexes (1959, in view of Thurber's "The Catbird Seat"),
and The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (adjusted twice, in
1947 and in 2013).
4. Robert Charles Benchley was an American comedian most
popular for his work as a paper editorialist and film
entertainer. Benchley is best associated with his
commitments to The New Yorker, where his expositions,
regardless of whether effective or absurdist, impacted
numerous advanced comedians. He also wrote essays. One
of his works is entitled “My Face.”

LATIN AMERICAN LITERATURE

 Consist of oral literature in several languages
(Spanish, Portuguese and the indigenous languages of the
America as well as literature of the United States
written in Spanish language)

HISTORY:
Pre-Columbian Literature
 Primarily oral through the Aztecs and the Mayans
Colonial Literature
 When the Europeans encountered the new world, early
explorers and conquistadores produced written accounts
and cronicas of their experience
Ex. Columbus’ letters or Bernal Diaz del Castillo’s description
of the conquest of Mexico
19th Century Literature
 Novels in the Romantic or Naturalist traditions that
attempted to establish a sense of national identity and
which often focused on the indigenous question or the
dichotomy of “civilization or barbarism.”
 A gradual increase in women’s education and writing
during the 19th-century brought more women writers to the
forefront.
Modernismo
 Emerged in the late 19th century
 A poetic movement whose founding text was the Nicaraguan
Ruben Dario’s Azul (1888)
 In early 20th century, it saw the rise of indigenismo, a
movement dedicated to representing indigenous culture
and the injustices that such communities were undergoing
Avant Garde
 Artistic movement after modernismo which instituted a
radical search for new, daring, confrontational themes
and shockingly novel forms
 Works have become experimental
 To push boundaries of what is accepted as the norm
The Boom
 Also called literary boom
 Literary flourishing in the 1960s and 70s
 Include boom authors such as Julio Cortazar, Carlos
Fuentes, Octavio Paz, Mario Vargas Llosa and Gabriel
Garcia Marquez
 They ventured outside traditional narrative structures
and embraced non-linearity and experimental narration
Post Boom and Contemporary
 Characterized by a tendency towards irony and the use of
popular genres
 Contemporary literature in the region is vibrant and
varied ranging from the best-selling Paulo Coelho and
Isabel Allende

MAJOR THEMES IN LATIN AMERICAN LITERATURE

The Fantastic
 Odd, remarkable or bizarre: grotesque and highly
unbelievable or unrealistic events occur in fiction
Borges and Cortazar

Other Principle under the Fantastic

 Labyrinth
 When characters’ actions cause them to be trapped in a
place or time, repeating the same bad decisions
endlessly
Eternal Recurrences of All Things
 Everything that has happened in the past will happen
again
 Only characters who are capable of self-knowledge can
learn not to repeat the mistakes of the past

Magical Realism
 When magical or supernatural elements are introduced
into an otherwise realistic fictional setting
 Depicts believable settings, characters and
circumstances but the supernatural or magical is
incorporated Garcia Marquez, Carpentier, Esquivel

Social Realism
 Dark and often depressing depictions of life in Latin
America
 Reflects the violent history of the region Novas Calvo,
Rulfo and Arias

Female Discourse
 Fiction that makes its main theme gender role as it
critiques marianismo and machismo Allende, Castellanos,
Ferre

Surrealism
 it seeks to express the subconscious, unconscious, the
repressed and inexpressible

PROMINENT WRITERS OF LATIN AMERICAN

Jorge Luis Borges (Argentine 1899-1986)
 The most eminent Latin American author of any century
 His work is aesthetic
 He writes with the intention of contributing to the
world of literature
 Crediting for advancing the fantastic style

Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Columbia)

 The most prominent author to emerge from Latin America
in the 20th century
 Won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1982
 His magical realist world blends beautifully the
magically quotidian (ice, magnets) with everyday magic
(raining flowers)

Pablo Neruda (Chile)

 Is the greatest poet of the 20th century in any language
 His poetry is famously romantic and erotic sometimes
importing sensuality to the most quotidian of objects
Octavio Paz
 Mexican writer and poet
 His poetry often explores solitude and sensuality as
well as language and silence

Alejo Carpentier
 Mexican writer and poet
 His poetry often explores solitude and sensuality as
well as language and silence

Gabriela Mistral
 Her poetry captures not only the wide political themes
of Latin American identity and progress but also the
intimate spheres of loss, grief and motherhood

Carlos Fuentes (1928-2012)

 His books reflect a constant political striving,
interrogating the ideals of revolution, power, equality,
justice and violence

Isabel Allende (1947-present)

 Her novels frequently blend myth and reality
 She draws from the fount of magical realism
 She is regarded as a Latin American treasure and figure
of world culture