21st Century

• AFRICAN LITERATURE

  • oral in nature and has to be recited and even performed
  • not accessed through books but through storytellers who pass on epics, poems, and narratives
  • interrelated with dance, music, and other performances
• Joseph Ephraim Casely Hayford • the author who first published African novels written in English and wrote a novel entitled "Ethiopia Unbound"
• Herbert Isaac Ernest Dhlomo

  • Who first published an English language African play entitled "The Girl Who Killed to Save"

  • Founder of the Bantu Dramatic

  Society
• Chinua Achebe

  • a Nigerian who wrote the novel "Things Fall Apart"
  • Things Fall Apart - regarded as one of the most influential African novels and has received worldwide critical acclaim.
• Leopold Sedar Senghor

  • President of Senegal who published the first anthology of French language poetry
  • French was popularly used by local intellectuals because of the strong influence of French colonizers.
• Wole Soyinka

  • Nigerian poet who was well-known for his use of English in writing poetry
  • became a Nobel Prize laureate for literature in 1986 and was the first African for this award
  • Most of his poems depict racial discrimination.
• Nadine Gordimer

  • second African writer who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991
  • playwright and poet
  • Her writing discusses apartheid or the racial discrimination system in South Africa.
• JOHN PEPPER CLARK

  • Nigerian literary critic
  • His famous collection of poems was called "A Decade of Tongues", which reflected postcolonial life in Africa
• MODERN AFRICAN LITERATURE

  • The modern experience of Africa comes from the traumatic colonial evidence violence of the West and the struggles toward national identity. • __ writing serves as a movement toward the restoration and rediscovery of African culture and thinking.
• southeast asian literature

  major crossroads of commerce, ideas, and ideals

  characterizing these texts as a melting pot of culture for both countries that had been colonized and used to colonize.
• Modern Indonesian Literature

  • W. S. Rendra and Pramoedya Ananta Toer - works were banned and they were imprisoned because their literary works expressed their dissent against the government
  • This Earth of Mankind by Pramoedya Ananta Toer - Ramon Magsaysay Award, Asian equivalent of the Nobel Prize for Literature 
• The Literature of Japan

  • beginnings to oral traditions
  • first recorded in written form in the early eighth century after a writing system was introduced from China.
  • Chinese elements are regarded as an integral part of Japanese literature
• • Kojiki (Record of Ancient Matters)
  • Nihon shoki (Chronicle of Japan)
  • The Fudoki (Records of Wind andEarth)
• Chinese Literature

  • Home to 1.3 billion people
  • a country filled with a long and colorful history
  • its rich literary heritage that dates back to ancient times
• • Ming Dynasty - entertain common literate Chinese.

  • Tang Dynasty - Woodblock printing was invented.

  • Song Dynasty - Movable type of printing was introduced.
• Chinese philosopher - CONFUCIUS

  teacher, advisor, editor, philosopher, reformer, and prophet.
• TWO DISTINGUISHED POETS

  Li Po (Li Bai) - romanticism of his poems

  Tu Fu - Confucian moralist
• The early Tang period was known for its lushi, consisting of eight lines with five to seven characters in each line.
• European literature also known as Western literature, and can also be defined as the literature written in the context of Western culture in the languages of Europe, as several geographically or historically related languages.
• Transcendentalism is a philosophical movement developed in the 1830s and 1840s in the New England region of the United States as a protest to the general state of culture and society, and in particular, the state of intellectualism at Harvard University
• • Transcendentalists believed that society and its institutions - particularly organized religion and political parties - ultimately corrupted the purity of the individual.
• Gabriel Jose de la Concordia García Marquez was a Colombian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter and journalist, known affectionately as Gabo throughout Latin America.
• Puritans - Protestants who followed the Bible in the strictest manner-dominated England.
• The most significant event of this era was the invention of the printing press.
• • Oral literature cherished by the Native Americans was soon replaced by printed literature.
• Transcendentalists

  believed that knowledge could be obtained through intuition and contemplation of inner spirits and not merely through sense.
• Literary techniques or devices 

  • refer to specific methods writers employ in their works to convey messages.
• • Writers make use of literary techniques or devices to convey messages or to simply add an artistic value to a text. 
• • Antihero is a fictional character who DOES NOT possess the traits, such as pride and valor, expected of a hero. 
• • Cliffhanger is a literary technique used by the author to arouse curiosity among readers by ending a chapter or story abruptly.
• • Juxtaposition is a technique authors use in their works to compare two different things, or two contrasting ideas to be able to emphasize their differences
• • Foreshadowing refers to lines or dialogues in a story which give the reader an idea of what is about to happen without spoiling or explicitly stating the plot's entirety.
• Catharsis

  • It refers to the emotional release or cleansing of the characters, or audience or readers, from strong emotions usually brought by learning of the truth or when confronted with difficult situations.
• • Catharsis is derived from the Greek word katharsis, which means "purification" or “purgation."
• • Hamartia or tragic flaw, is a technique commonly found in Greek tragedies. It refers to the tragic hero's error in judgment, which leads to his or her downfall.
• • Hamartia is used to have the audience identify themselves with the protagonist (that he or she has weaknesses too) and to provoke pity because of the miserable turn of events he or she went through.
• • Creative Non-fiction refers to narrative events told in a literary style.
• MEMOIR

  • This account is narrowly focused on a single event in a person's life.
• DIARY

  • This is a collection of discrete accounts of a person's experiences and thoughts each day.
• BIOGRAPHY

  • This is a detailed account of a person's life written by another person.