21st cent

• Literature


  • Language artistically used to achieve identifiable literary qualities to convey meaningful messages
  • Creative and a subjective viewpoint of the writer
  • Characterized by beauty of expression
  • Form by: universality, intellectual and emotional appeal
• Literary Standards by William J. Long


  • Artistry: must have beauty, involves the skillful use of language, imagery, and narrative techniques to create works of beauty and resonance
  • Suggestiveness: the emotional appeal, the ability of a text to evoke deeper meanings and interpretations beyond the surface level
  • Intellectual value: will it tickle your critical thinking skills? encompasses presenting ideas, arguments, and observations that provoke thought, contribute to intellectual growth and enrichment
  • Spiritual value: explores morals, ethics, faith, and human condition, provides readers with opportunities for introspection, moral reflection, and spiritual enlightenment
  • Permanence: possesses a timeless quality that transcends historical and cultural contexts, speaking to readers across generations and retaining its relevance and power long after its creation
  • Universality: resonates with readers from diverse perspectives and contexts, fostering empathy, understanding, and a sense of shared humanity
  • Style: a distinctive way a writer expresses ideas and constructs sentences, paragraphs, and narratives
• World Literature


  • General term used to describe the entirety of global literature or the circulation of literary materials
  • According to David Damrosch: literary works that circulate beyond their culture of origin, either in translation or in their original language
  • Not all literature is world literature; it can only be considered as literature if it has "crossed borders" already or is already circulating
• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe


  Introduced the concept of "weltliteratur" in 1827 to describe the growing availability of texts from other natures, introduced when he was entranced by Chinese Literature
• Issues faced in World Literature

  • Eurocentric - centered on Western, mainly European literature, is not neutral and is a product and function of power
  • Challenges in circulation - it is very hard for literature to "cross borders"
  • Literary pieces being lost in translation - there are words in certain languages that don't have direct meanings
• Reasons a literary text may cross borders

  • Artistic merit of the literary text (ex: it wins an award)
  • Political situation surrounding a text (ex: it comes from an influential country)
  • Popularity of the work (ex: if it's being made into a film)
• Reasons people read


  • For pleasure
  • To relax
  • To acquire knowledge
  • To confront experience
  • For artistic appreciation
• Flash Fiction


  Also known as nanotales or micro-stories
• SMS Text Poetry


  Poems that sport unique ways of spelling caused by character limits and have a maximum of 160 words
• Textula


  Poems sent through SMS messages, also called mobile phone poetry
• Frank G. Rivera created the poetry genre: Textula