world lit

• Literature

  An artistic representation of life, that is, of varied human experiences, in different forms of expressions
• Literature


  The preserved writings of a country or a people. It is the embodiment of a nation's traditions, customs, and cultural patterns
• Literature


  A faithful reproduction of man's manifold experiences blended into one harmonious expression
• World Literature


  Works of literature that have been created, distributed, and circulated beyond their country of origin
• World Literature


  Encompasses literary works from diverse cultures and languages, transcending national boundaries
• World Literature


  Writing that circulates widely beyond the borders of its country of origin
• World Literature


  Describes the entirety of global literature/ the circulation of literary materials into all parts of the world, regardless of their origins
• Literary genres


  • Prose fiction
  • Poetry
  • Prose nonfiction
  • Drama
  • Creative nonfiction
• Literary Periods/Movements


  The evolution of literature through time
• Literary Periods/Movements


  The span of time in which literature shared intellectual, linguistic, religious, and artistic influences
• The Classical Period (1200 BC - 455 AD)


  • The Heroic Age was known as a stage in the development of human societies
  • The first literary period
  • It gave rise to legends about heroic deeds and mythology
  • Greek legends were passed along orally, including Homer's The Iliad and The Odyssey
  • Started the practice of writing literature down
  • The chaotic period of warrior-princes, wandering sea-traders, and fierce pirates
• Homeric or Heroic Period (1200-800 BC)


  • The Golden Age of Greece
  • Some of the world's finest art, poetry, drama, architecture, and philosophy originated in Athens
  • Greek writers, playwrights, and philosophers include Aesop, Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Euripides, and Sophocles
• Notable Works from the Classical Greek Period (800-200 BC)


  • Aesop's fables
  • The Republic
  • Socratic Method
  • The Poetics
  • Medea
  • Antigone
• Classical Roman Period (200 BC - 455 AD)


  • Greece's culture gave way to Roman power when Rome conquered Greece in 146 AD
  • Roman writers include Ovid, Horace, and Virgil
  • Roman rhetoricians include Cicero and Quintilian
• Notable Works from the Classical Roman Period


  • Amores and Metamorphoses
  • The Art of Poetry
  • Aeneid
• Patristic Period (70 AD - 455 AD)


  • Christianity spread across Europe and the fall of Roman Empire to the barbarians
  • Early Christian writers include Saint Augustine, Saint Cyprian, Saint Ambrose, and Saint Jerome
  • First compilation of the Bible

  
• The Old English (Anglo-Saxon) Period (428 - 1066)


  • The "Dark Ages" (until 799 AD) occurred after Rome fell and barbarian tribes moved into Europe. Angles, Saxons, and Jutes migrated to Britain displacing native Celts into Scotland, Ireland, and Wales
• Notable Works from the Old English (Anglo-Saxon) Period


  • Beowulf
  • The Wanderer
  • The Seafarer
• The Middle English Period (1066 - 1450)


  • Norman French armies invaded and conquered England and marked the end of Anglo-Saxon hierarchy
  • The rise of French Chivalric romances spread in popularity
  • Scholastic and theological works were produced
• Notable Works from the Middle English Period


  • Marie de France - French fables
  • Geoffrey Chaucer - Canterbury Tales
  • Anonymous - Gawain Poet (Sir Gawain and the Green Knight)
  • Petrarch - Italian poetry
  • Dante - The Divine Comedy
• The Renaissance and Reformation Period (1485 - 1649)


  • Marks the works of William Shakespeare

  
• William Shakespeare


  • An English playwright and poet who is widely considered to be the greatest dramatist of all time
  • Wrote at least 37 plays and collaborated on several more
  • His 17 comedies include The Merchant of Venice and A Midsummer Night's Dream
  • Among his 10 historical plays are Henry V and Richard III
  • The most famous among his tragedies are Hamlet, Othello, King Lear and Macbeth
  • Also wrote 4 poems, and a famous collection of Sonnets which was first published in 1609
  • Was also an actor who performed many of his own plays as well as those of other playwrights
  • Has been credited by the Oxford English Dictionary with introducing almost 3,000 words to the English language
  • Estimations of his vocabulary range from 17,000 to a dizzying 29,000 words – at least double the number of words used by the average conversationalist

  
• Words introduced by Shakespeare


  • accommodation
  • aerial
  • amazement
  • apostrophe
  • assassination
  • auspicious
  • baseless
  • bloody
  • bump
  • castigate
  • changeful
  • clangor
  • control (noun)
  • countless
  • courtship
  • critic
  • critical
  • dexterously
  • dishearten
  • dislocate
  • dwindle
  • eventful
  • exposure
  • fitful
  • frugal
  • generous
  • gloomy
  • gnarled
  • hurry
  • impartial
  • inauspicious
  • indistinguishable
  • invulnerable
  • lapse
  • laughable
  • lonely
  • majestic
  • misplaced
  • monumental
  • multitudinous
  • obscene
  • palmy
  • perusal
  • pious
  • premeditated
  • radiance
  • reliance
  • road
  • sanctimonious
  • seamy
  • sportive
  • submerge
  • suspicious
• The Enlightenment (Neoclassical) Period (1660 - 1790)


  • Known also as The Age of Reason - It was an intellectual and philosophical movement which dominated the world of ideas in Europe during the 18th century that saw the rise of concepts such as reason, liberty and the scientific method
  • Neoclassical refers to the increased influence of Classical Literature upon these centuries
  • The Neoclassical Period is also called the Enlightenment due to the increased reverence for logic and disdain for superstition
  • The period is marked by the rise of Deism
  • Intellectual backlash against earlier Puritanism, and America's revolution against England
• Restoration Period (1660-1700)


  • This period marks the British king's restoration to the throne after a long period of Puritan domination in England
  • The dominance of French and Classical influences on poetry and drama
  • Writers include John Dryden, John Locke, Sir William Temple, Jean Racine and Molière
• The Augustan Age (1700 - 1750)


  • This period is marked by the imitation of Virgil and Horace's literature in English letters
  • Writers include Addison, Steele, Swift, and Alexander Pope
  • Voltaire was the dominant French writer
• The Johnson Age (1750 - 1790)


  • This period marks the transition toward the upcoming Romanticism though the period is still largely Neoclassical
  • Writers include Samuel Johnson, Boswell, and Edward Gibbon who represent the Neoclassical tendencies, while writers like Robert Burns, Thomas Gray, Cowper, and Crabbe show movement away from the Neoclassical ideal
  • In America, this period is called the Colonial Period. It includes colonial and revolutionary writers like Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and Thomas Paine
• The Romantic Period (1790 - 1830)


  • It was an artistic, literary, and intellectual movement towards the end of the 18th century; A reaction to the Enlightenment period
  • Romanticism focuses on the emotional side of human nature, individualism, the beauty of the natural world, and the simplicity of common people
  • Romantic authors value sentimental, heartfelt feelings, and emotional experiences over historical and scientific facts
  • Romantic poets wrote about nature, imagination, and individuality in England
  • Romantic writers were Coleridge, Blake, Keats, and Shelley in Britain and Johann von Goethe in Germany
  • Jane Austen also wrote at this time, though she is typically not categorized with the male Romantic poets
  • In America, this period is mirrored in the Transcendental Period from about 1830-1850
  • Transcendentalists Emerson and Thoreau
  • Gothic writings (1790-1890) overlap with the Romantic and Victorian periods
  • Writers of Gothic novels (the precursor to horror novels) include Radcliffe, "Monk" Lewis, and Victorians like Bram Stoker in Britain
  • In America, Gothic writers include Poe and Hawthorne
• Characteristics of Romanticism in English Literature


  • Imagination and Creativity
  • The Beauty of Nature
  • Individualism and Solitude
  • Romantic Love
• The Victorian Period (1832 - 1901)


  • Writings from the period of Queen Victoria's reign include sentimental novels
  • British writers include Elizabeth Browning, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Robert Browning, Charles Dickens, and the Brontë sisters
  • The end of the Victorian Period is marked by the intellectual movements of Aestheticism and the Decadence in the writings of Walter Pater and Oscar Wilde
  • In America, Naturalist writers like Guy de Maupassant, Thomas Hardy, Stephen Crane and the likes flourished, as did early free verse poets like Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson
• Naturalism


  • A literary movement that emphasizes observation and the scientific method in the fictional portrayal of reality
  • A literary movement was especially popular in America from 1880 -1920
  • The main characters in Naturalism are usually of the lower socioeconomic classes and often don't have a strong moral compass
  • The tone is often detached, emotionless, and scientific
  • When it comes to diction, ugly and unpleasant words may be chosen rather than lyrical or elegant ones
  • In descriptive passages, an excessive amount of detail may appear, but the arrangement will be informal, even chaotic, in order to show that society and nature are governed by random forces
• Realism


  • An approach that attempts to describe life as it is without idealization or romantic subjectivity
  • It focuses on the actualities of life, and truthfully treats the commonplace characters of everyday life
  • The purpose of using realism is to emphasize the reality and morality that is usually relative and intrinsic for the people as well as the society
  • Makes the readers face reality as it happens in the world, rather than in the make-believe world of fantasy
• The Modern Period (1914 - 1945)


  • During this period, society at every level underwent profound changes. The carnage of two World Wars profoundly affected writers of this period
  • War and industrialization seemed to devalue the individual
  • Writers responded to this new world in a variety of ways
• Characteristics of Modernist Literature


  • Individualism
  • Experimentation
  • Absurdity
  • Symbolism
  • Formalism
• Individualism


  In Modernist literature, the individual is more interesting than society
• Experimentation

  Modernist writers broke free of old forms and techniques. Poets abandoned traditional rhyme schemes and wrote in free verse
• Absurdity


  • The senseless violence of WWII was yet more evidence that humanity had lost its way
  • The use of absurdity in literature is a vehicle for writers to explore those elements in the world that do not make sense. It examines questions of meaning and life, and writers often use absurd themes, characters, or situations to question whether meaning or structure exists at all
• Birth of the Theater of the Absurd


  • Luigi Pirandello - Six Characters in Search of an Author (1921)
  • Jean-Paul Sartre - No Exit (1944)
  • Samuel Beckett - Waiting for Godot (1953)
  • Harold Pinter - The Dumbwaiter (1960)
• Symbolism


  The Modernist writers infused objects, people, places and events with significant meanings. They imagined a reality with multiple layers, many of them hidden or in a sort of code
• Absurdism


  A literary device for writers to explore those elements in the world that do not make sense. It examines questions of meaning and life, and writers often use absurd themes, characters, or situations to question whether meaning or structure exists at all.