21st century

• Epic poem


  A long narrative poem usually about a hero and his deeds. A well-known example is Beowulf.
• Sonnet


  A poem with fourteen lines that follow a rhyme scheme. A well-known example is Sonnet 18 of William Shakespeare, which starts with the famous line "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?"
• Drama


  A piece of writing that tells a story through dialogue, and is performed on stage. A well-known example is The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde.
• Novel


  A long prose narrative usually about fictional characters and events, which are told in a particular sequence.
• English literature is one of the richest, most developed, and most important bodies of literature in the world. It encompasses both written and spoken works by writers from the United Kingdom.
• Old English Literature (600 - 1100)


  The earliest form of the English language, spoken by the Anglo-Saxons, a Germanic tribe living in Britain during the fifth century. One significant work written in Old English is Beowulf, the longest epic poem in Old English, known for its use of kennings, which are phrases or compound words used to name persons, places, and things indirectly.
• Middle English Literature (1100 - 1500)


  A blend of Old English and Norman French, the French dialect spoken by the Normans (people of Normandy). The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, the father of English literature, is a fine example of literature written in Middle English.
• Elizabethan Literature (1558 -1603)


  The golden age of English literature and drama. William Shakespeare wrote his plays during this period, including Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, Othello, and The Merchant of Venice. He also wrote 154 sonnets, many of which are the best loved and most widely-read poems in English literature.
• The Romantic Period (1800-1837)


  The golden age of lyric poetry, where poetry became the expression of the poet's personal feelings and emotions. Notable works include Songs of Innocence and of Experience by William Blake, Lyrical Ballads by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Eve of St. Agnes and Other Poems by John Keats, Don Juan by Lord Byron, and "Ode to the West Wind" by Percy Bysshe Shelley.
• The Victorian Period (1837-1900)


  The period saw the rise of the novel, with Charles Dickens, considered the greatest English novelist of the 19th century, writing Great Expectations. Alfred Lord Tennyson and Robert Browning each wrote fine poetry during the period, with Tennyson's In Memoriam A.H.H. being widely considered one of the great poems of the 19th century. Oscar Wilde was the best dramatist of the period, writing the masterpiece The Importance of Being Earnest.
• Twentieth Century (1900-2000)


  William Butler Yeats and Thomas Stearns Eliot wrote Modernist poems during this period, with Yeats' The Tower, The Winding Stair, and New Poems known for their potent images, and Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and The Waste Land being his masterpieces. Virginia Woolf in Mrs. Dalloway and James Joyce in Ulysses used the literary technique of stream of consciousness, describing the flow of thoughts of a character in words.
• American literature


  All works of literature in English produced in the United States
• 19th Century American literature


  • William Cullen Bryant's Thanatopsis (1817) marked a new beginning for American poetry
  • Washington Irving's Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow were the first American short stories, part of his work The Sketch Book which was the first American work to become successful internationally
  • Edgar Allan Poe became famous for his macabre stories like The Fall of the House of Ushers (1839) and The Cask of Amontillado (1846), as well as writing the first detective story The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841) and the poem The Raven (1845)
  • Nathaniel Hawthorne became known for his symbolical tales like The Hollow of the Three Hills (1830) and Young Goodman Brown (1835), as well as writing the gothic romance The Scarlet Letter (1850)
  • Walt Whitman became well-known for Leaves of Grass first published in 1855, showing the experiences of the common man
  • Emily Dickinson wrote odd poems using imperfect rhyme and avoiding regular rhythms, with a collection of her poems Poems by Emily Dickinson coming out in 1890
• 20th Century American literature


  • Robert Frost wrote poems with traditional stanzas and blank verse, portraying ordinary people in everyday situations like Mending Wall, The Road Not Taken, and After Apple-Picking
  • E.E. Cummings was known for his unconventional punctuation and phrasing, with his poems compiled in Complete Poems (1968)
  • Ezra Pound was a leader of the Imagists, emphasizing direct and sparse language and precise images in poetry, with works like Ripostes (1912) and Lustro (1916)
  • Sherwood Anderson wrote prose using everyday speech, with his best works appearing in Winesburg, Ohio (1919) and Death in the Woods (1933)
  • Ernest Hemingway was known for his succinct, straightforward and objective writing style, with two of his finest stories being The Killers (1927) and The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber (1936)
  • Allen Ginsberg was known for his work Howl (1956), a poem with incantatory rhythms and raw emotion, as one of the Beat poets
  • Anne Sexton became known for her confessional poetry, a kind of poetry that deals with the private experiences of the speaker, with her work Live or Die (1966) winning a Pulitzer Prize
• Latin American literature


  All works of literature in Latin American countries like Chile, Argentina, Mexico, Cuba, Guatemala, Colombia, and Peru
• The Vanguardia

  • Creacionismo, founded by Vicente Huidobro (1893-1948), a Chilean poet, in 1916
  • Ultraismo, introduced to South America by Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986), an Argentine writer, in 1921
  • Estridentismo, founded in Mexico City by Manuel Maples Arce (1898-1981), a Mexican writer, in 1921
  • Surrealism, which is said to have started in Argentina when the Argentinian poet Aldo Pellegrini (1903-1973) launched the first Surrealist magazine in 1928
• Surrealist influence in Latin American literature


  • Pablo Neruda's Residence on Earth (1933), a collection of poetry inspired by surrealism
  • Octavio Paz's poems with surrealist imagery, published in Freedom Under Parole (1960)
  • Jorge Luis Borges' fantastic stories, published later as a collection entitled Ficciones (1944)
• Spanish literature of the Siglo De Oro (1500-1681)


  • Miguel de Cervantes was known for his novel Don Quixote, one of the most widely read works of Western Literature, with the titular character's name being the origin of the word "quixotic"
  • Lope de Vega, an outstanding dramatist, wrote as many as 1800 plays during his lifetime, including cloak and sword drama
• French literature


  • Gustave Flaubert, a novelist, was a major influence on the realist school, with his masterpiece Madame Bovary (1857) marking the beginning of a new age of realism
  • Guy de Maupassant, considered the greatest French short story writer, wrote objective stories presenting a real slice of life as a Naturalist
• Russian literature


  • Leo Tolstoy is known for his novels War and Peace (1865-1869) and Anna Karenina (1875-1877), considered one of the world's greatest novelists as a master of realistic fiction
  • Anton Chekhov, a master of the modern short story and a Russian playwright, revealed his clinical approach to ordinary life in works such as "The Bet" and "The Misfortune"
• European literature refers to literatures in the Indo-European languages and is considered the largest body of literature in the world
• Alejo Carpentier


  Cuban writer who wrote The Kingdom of This World (1949), a novel of the magic realism genre
• Magic realism


  Elements of fantasy or myth are included matter-of-factly in seemingly realistic fiction
• Miguel Angel Asturias


  Guatemalan writer who wrote the novel The President (1946), which introduced magic realism
• Boom Novels


  Modernist novels that appeared in the second half of the 20th century, with features different or absent from the works of the regionalist writers of the past
• Boom Novels


  • The Death of Artemio Cruz (1962) by Carlos Fuentes
  • Hopscotch (1963) by Julio Cortazar
  • The Time of the Hero (1963) by Mario Vargas Llosa
  • One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
• Regionalist writers


  Writers that used local color, which refers to interesting information about a particular place or its people
• "Post-Boom" Writers


  Women writers who published works in the last twenty years of the 20th century
• Latin American Literature refers to all works of literature in Latin American countries, and the 20th century saw some of its best writers
• Asian literature refers to the body of literature produced in the countries in Asia
• Chinese literature has more than 50,000 published works in a wide range of topics
• Du Fu


  Considered China's greatest poet, known for his works of lüshi (a poetic form with eight lines, each with five or seven syllables following a strict tonal pattern)
• Li Bai


  Also called Li Po, rivaled Du Fu for the title of China's greatest poet, wrote less formal verse forms, and frequently celebrated drinking in his poetry
• Kakinomoto Hitomaro


  Japan's first literary figure, known for his works of tanka and choka (poetic forms with specific syllable patterns)
• Matsuo Bashō


  Regarded as the supreme haiku poet, his verses appear with his travel accounts like The Narrow Road to the Deep North (1694)
• Haiku


  A poetic form composed of three lines with a five-seven-five syllable pattern, originating from the hokku (the first three lines of a renga, a poem usually with a hundred linked verses)
• Mahabharata


  An Indian epic written in Sanskrit, the longest poem in history with about 100,000 couplets, traditionally ascribed to the Indian sage Vyasa, regarded by Hindus as both a text about dharma (the Hindu moral law) and a history
• Bhagavadgīta


  The most celebrated episode of the Mahabharata, which gives spiritual guidance
• Ramayana


  Another Indian epic in Sanskrit, traditionally regarded as authored by the sage Valmiki, shorter than the Mahabharata with some 24,000 couplets
• Panchatantra


  A collection of Indian animal fables, originally written in Sanskrit, a mixture of prose and verse, attributed to Vishnusharman, a learned Brahmin