LIT

• Countries that make up Africa

  • 54 nations
• African literature


  • Employed to educate and entertain children
  • Includes: stories/folktales, riddles, histories, myths, song, proverbs
  • Concern for presentation and the oratory
  • Folktale tellers use call-response techniques
  • A griot (praise singer) will accompany a narrative with music
• Slave Narratives


  First African writings to gain attention to the West, horrors of slavery and the slave trade
• African Diaspora


  Spreading of African people, largely against their will
• Apartheid


  System of racial segregation by the National Party government in South Africa from 1948 to 1994
• Wole Soyinka was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986, becoming the first African laureate
• Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart


  First novel by Chinua Achebe, written in English and published in 1958, helped create the Nigerian literary renaissance of the 1960s, describes the simultaneous disintegration of its protagonist Okonkwo and of his village
• Ngugi Wa Thiong'o's Weep Not, Child

  First major novel in English by an East African, story of a Kikuyu family drawn into the struggle for Kenyan independence during the state of emergency and the Mau Mau rebellion
• Ngugi Wa Thiong'o's The River Between


  Tells of lovers kept apart by the conflict between Christianity and traditional ways and beliefs
• Ngugi Wa Thiong'o's Petals of Blood

  Deals with social and economic problems in East Africa after independence, particularly the continued exploitation of peasants and workers by foreign business interests
• J.M Coetzee is a South African novelist, essayist, linguist, translator
• Kofi Awoonor was a Ghanaian poet and author whose work combined the poetic traditions of his native Ewe people
• Ladan Osman is a Somali American poet and teacher
• Asia is the world's largest and most diverse continent, occupying the eastern four-fifths of the giant Eurasian landmass
• Asia is the birthplace of all the world's major religions—Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism—and of many minor ones. Of those, only Christianity developed primarily outside of Asia
• Asian literature


  • Influenced by religion, war, and politics
• Li Po and Tu Fu

  Respected poets from the T'ang Dynasty period in China, competed heavily with one another but have been called friends by many scholars, used their emotions and experiences in T'ang Dynasty of China
• Matsuo Basho


  One of the greatest Japanese poets, elevated haiku to the level of serious poetry, associated with the celebrated Genroku era (ca. 1680-1730), famous haiku: "The old pond, A frog jumps in, Sound of water"

  
• Seo Jeong-ju


  Pen name "Midang", five novel prizes, 'founding father of modern Korean poetry', published at least 15 collections of poetry, debut book "Haw-Sa Jip (flower snake)", "Jahwasang (portrait)", more than 2000 poems

  
• Rabindranath Tagore


  Bengali poet, short-story writer, song composer, introduced new prose and verse forms and the use of colloquial language into Bengali literature, first non-European to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913, works are practically untranslatable, including his over 2,000 songs, "Gitanjali"
• Harui Murakami


  Contemporary Japanese writer, translated into 50 languages, including the World Fantasy Award (2006) and the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award (2006), while his oeuvre received among others the Franz Kafka Prize (2006) and the Jerusalem Prize (2009), praised by Steven Poole of The Guardian as "among the world's greatest living novelists", "Scheherazade" (short story)
• Kim Young-Ha


  "Christmas Carol" (sudden fiction)
• Mong-Lan


  Praised for "the subtle shifting of images, and the quiet intensity of their information. Clearly she is a master of the art.", "Elegy" (poem)
• Ouyang Jianghe


  Part of the "third generation" of twentieth-century Chinese literature and the so-called "five masters from Sichuan"-poets, advocates an intellectual model that is based on reflection, president of the literary, magazine Jintian, "The burning Kite" (poem)
• Vinda Karandikar


  Well-known Marathi poet, translated his own poems in English, published as "Vinda Poems" (1975), "The Wheel"
• Periods of European/Western Literature

  • Ancient Period/The Antiquity
  • Classical Period
  • Medieval Period
  • Renaissance Period
  • Age of Reason
  • Romantic Period
  • Modernism
  • Postmodernism
• The Old Testaments of the Bible


  Composed of (24?) books in Hebrew language, consists of lyric poems, tales, and stories
• The Iliad and The Odyssey


  Greek literary masterpieces associated with Homer, conceived by scholars to have been collected across the years by poets using the oral tradition
• Greek drama


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

  • Sappho - Greek lyric poet associated with love
  • Pindar - Greek lyric poet known for his victory odes
  • Aristotle - Philosopher and a student of Plato (Poetics)
  • Plato - Philosopher known for his dialogues (use dramatic and humorous)
• Virgil and Aenid


  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 also flourished (Seneca, Terence, and Plaurus), together with poetry (Horace) and prose (Cicero and Apuleuis)
• Medieval Period


  "Belonging to the Middle Ages", "the dark ages"
• Dante Alighieri


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


  His The Confessions and City of God last as spiritual foundation of the Catholic faith up to this day
• Geoffrey Chaucer


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


  Refers to the historical period in Europe that occurred after the Middle Ages, Johannes Gutenberg created the printing press which allowed for mass production of pamphlets and novels
• Age of Reason


  "Age of Enlightenment", in literature, the rational desire nurtured satire, argument, wit, and plain prose, literature centered on: human nature, people-government relationships, property, natural laws and rights, organized religion
• Notable writers of wit, satire, and argument from the Age of Reason

  • Alexander Pope
  • Jonathan Swift
  • Samuel Johnson
• The novel was recognized as a major art form in English literature through rational realism and psychological exploratory novels during the Age of Reason
• 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