Grd 11

• Epic Poem – a long narrative poem about a hero and his deeds. (Ex. Beowulf)
• Haiku - A Japanese form of poetry consisting of three lines with the first and third line having five syllables, while the second has seven
• Sonnet – a poem that has 14 lines that follow a rhyme scheme (Ex. Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare.
• Drama – a piece of writing that tells a story through dialogue and is performed on stage. (Ex. 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.
• Beowulf – The longest epic poem in English and is known for its kennings.

         Kennings – Phrases and compound words used to name persons, places and things indirectly.

         Example: battle gear – body armor      sky candle – sun
• Middle English Literature (1100-1500)

  -          A blend of Old English and Norman French.

  -          The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer is a fine example of literature in this era.
• Norman French – French dialect spoken by Normans.
• Elizabethan Literature (1558-1603)

  -          The golden age of English literature and golden age of drama.

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• Romantic Period (1800-1837)


  The golden age of lyric poetry. Poetry becomes the expression of poet's personal feelings and emotions.
• Romantic period


  • Writers focus more on expressing their feelings and emotions
  • Writers focus on connecting or building relationships with their readers to capture their hearts with their writing Golden Age of lyric poetry
• The Victorian Period (1837-1900)

  -          The period saw the rise of the novel.

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• Twentieth Century - William Butler Yeats, Thomas Stearns Eliot, Virginia Wolf and James Joyce are the prominent writers in this period
• American Literature

  -          All works of literature in English produced in the U.S.
• European Literature

  -          Also called Western Literature, refers to literature in the Indo-European languages including Latin, Greek, the Romance languages, and Russian.

  -          Largest body of literature in the world.
•      Marcus Tullius Cicero was the greatest Roman orator. The 1st part of the Golden Age of Latin Literature is named after him. (Ciceronian period). Used Latin as a literary medium, and expressed abstract and complicated thoughts clearly in his speeches.
•   Virgil the greatest Roman poet. Known for Aeneid, an epic poem. He wrote it during the Augustan Age, 2nd part of the Golden Age.
• • Homer is known for The Iliad and The Odyssey, about heroic achievements of Achilles and Odysseus
• -          Francesco Petrarca or Petrarch perfected the Italian sonnet, a major influence on European poetry. Written in the vernacular, his sonnets were published in the Canzoniere.

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• -          Two well-known Spanish writers of Siglo De Oro are Miguel de Cervantes and Lope De Vega.

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• -          Gustave Flaubert is a novelist, a major influence on the realist school. His masterpiece, Madame Bovary, marked the beginning of a new age of realism.

  -          Guy de Maupassant is considered as the greatest French short story writer. A Naturalist, he wrote objective stories which present a real “slice of life”.
• -          Leo Tolstoy is known for his novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina. Master of realistic fiction, considered as one of the world’s greatest novelists.

  -          Anton Chekhov is a master of modern short story and a Russian playwright. His works are “The Bet” and “The Misfortune”.
• Latin American Literature

  -          Refers to all works of literature in Latin American countries like Chile, Argentina, Mexico, Cuba, Guatemala, Colombia and Peru.
• -          William Cullen Bryant became famous for Thanatopsis, the poem that marked a new beginning for American poetry.

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• -          Nathaniel Hawthorne became known for his symbolical tales. He wrote the gothic romance The Scarlet Letter.

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• -          Robert Frost wrote poems with traditional stanzas and a blank verse (verse in iambic pentameter with no rhyme). His poems portray ordinary people in everyday situations.

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• -          Ernest Hemingway was known for his succinct writing, which was widely imitated. His writing was very straightforward and objective

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• The Vanguardia

  -          (avant-garde in English) took place in Latin America approximately 1916-1935. Referred to different literary movements. 4 of those were the following:
• ·       Creacionismo founded by Vicente Huidobro in 1916, a Chilean poet.

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• Pellegrini launched the 1st Surrealist magazine in 1928.

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• Surrealism is an art form that combines unrelated images or events in a very strange and dreamlike way and became a major influence in Latin American Literature throughout the 20th century.-        
•   Pablo Neruda is a Chilean poet, who wrote Residence on Earth, a collection of poetry inspired by surrealism.
• Ultraismo was introduced to South America by Jorge Luis Borges in 1921, an Argentine writer.·      
• ·       Estridentismo, founded in Mexico City by Manuel Maples Arce in 1921, was a Mexican writer.
• ·       Surrealism which is said to have started in Argentina when the Argentinian poet, Aldo.
• ·      Creacionismo founded by Vicente Huidobro in 1916, a Chilean poet
• Allen Ginsberg was known for his work Howl, a poem with incantatory rhythms and raw emotion. He was one of the Beat poets, who aimed to bring poetry back to the streets.
• Anne Sexton became known for her confessional poetry (which deals with the private experiences of the speaker). Her work Live or Die won a Pulitzer Prize
• E.E. Cummings was known for his unconventional punctuation and phrasing.-