LESSON 5

• European Literature


  Also known as Western Literature. Includes literary works written in the context of Western culture in the languages of Europe.
• Periods of European Literature

  • Ancient Period/The Antiquity
  • Classical Period
  • Medieval Period
  • Renaissance Period
  • Age of Reason
  • Romantic Period
  • Modernism
  • Postmodernism
• Ancient Period/The Antiquity


  750 BC – 450 AD
• The Old Testaments of the Bible

  • Composed of 42 books in Hebrew language
  • Consists of lyric poems, tales, and stories
• The Iliad and The Odyssey


  • Associated with Homer
  • Greek literary masterpieces
  • Conceived by scholars to have been collected across the years by poets using the oral tradition
• Classical Period


  450 AD – 1066
• Greek drama


  • Flourished
  • Several Greek playwrights of comedy (like Aristophanes) and tragedy (namely: Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripedes) became popular
• Other notable writers/individuals of the Classical Period

  • Sappho
  • Pindar
  • Aristotle
  • Plato
• Greek tradition was later endured by the Romans, who resembled their civilization after Greeks
• In 27 BC, the emperor Augustus Caesar urged to have a literary identity
• Virgil


  • Became renowned because of his Aeneid, an epic modeled on Iliad and Odyssey
• Roman drama


  • Seneca
  • Terence
  • Plaurus
• Roman poetry and prose

  • Horace
  • Cicero
  • Apuleius
• Dante Alighieri


  • An Italian poet who depicted the three realms of Christian afterlife (Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso) in Divine Comedy
• St. Augustine


  • Whose "The Confessions" and "City of God" laid as spiritual foundation of the Catholic faith up to this day
• Chivalric adventure


  • Evident in the works associated to King Arthur, including Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur
• Geoffrey Chaucer


  • Gained his title as the Father of English Literature with his work, The Canterbury Tales
• Renaissance


  • Refers to the historical period in Europe that occurred after the Middle Ages
  • Highlights the creation of printing press and commissions
  • Left behind the medieval ways of the past and launched a society towards a modern world marked by reason and passion
• Writers


  • Produced literary pieces that catered to wealthy patrons who commissioned their work
• Johannes Gutenberg


  • Created the printing press which allowed for mass production of pamphlets and novels
• Age of Enlightenment


  Also known as the "Age of Enlightenment"
• Literature of the Age of Reason


  • Centered on: human nature, people-government, relationships, property, natural laws and rights, organized religion
• Notable writers of wit, satire, and argument

  • Alexander Pope
  • Jonathan Swift
  • Samuel Johnson
• The novel


  • Recognized as a major art form in English literature through rational realism and psychological exploratory novels
• Romantic Period


  • Began in English poetry with William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the publication of "Lyrical Ballads" in 1798
  • Six primary characteristics: celebration of nature, focus on the individual and spirituality, celebration of isolation and melancholy, interest in the common man, idealization of women, personification and pathetic fallacy
• Modernism


  • Provided critique of morality of the people belonging to the middle-class society
  • Writers explored new forms and styles of writing, which paved way to a technique called "stream of consciousness"
• Stream of consciousness


  Developed by Marcel Proust, allowed the author to explore all of the facets of their thought processes in the absence of any suggested formatting rules
• Postmodernism


  • Characterized by an unusual mix of high and low culture, served as the literary and societal response to the horrifying events of World War II and elitism of high modernism
  • Fragmentation, paradox, and narrators that are difficult to define are common
• Notable present-day authors and their works

  • Carlos Ruiz Zafon (Spain, born 1964) - "Kiss" short story
  • Teolinda Gersao (Portugal; born 1940) - "The Red Fox Fur Coat" short story
  • Eavan Boland (Ireland, born 1944) - Irish poet