African Literature - African writers are those of the oppression of Du Fu (712-770)

African people by the colonizers, the European influences on the

native African culture, racial discrimination, and pride in African past • China's greatest poet.
and resilience. • He was known for his works of lushi.
• A lushi has eight lines, each of which has five or seven
Chinua Achebe (1930-2013) syllables following a strict tonal pattern.
• It became widely popular during the tang Dynasty (618-907
• Nigerian writer
CE), the golden age of art and literature in Chinese history.
• Was known for his novel "Things Fall Apart" “The african
Trilogy” (1958), considered as best-known African novel of Li Bai (701-762)
the 20th century.
• Achebe’s Igbo community came in contact with white • Also called Li Po
missionaries and its colonizer. • Rivaled Du Fu for the title of China's greatest poet.
• It was followed by "No Longer at Ease", published in 1960, • Unlike Du Fu, he wrote less formal verse forms.
and the "Arrow of God" in 1964. • A famous drinker, he often celebrated drinking in his poetry.

Wole Soyinka Japanese Literature - This body works is mostly in Japanese,

except the early writings which were written in Chinese.
• This Nigerian writer received the Nobel Prize for Literature
in 1986, becoming the first black African to receive such Kakinomoto Hitomaro
award.
• Japan's first literary figure was known for his works of tanka
• As a playwright, he wrote the satire "A Dance of the Forest
and choka.
(1963) his first important play that depicts the tradition of his
• The tanka, the basic form of Japanese poetry, has five lines
people, the Yoruba.
in five-seven-five-seven-seven syllable pattern.
• Yoruba staged in 1960 during the Nigerian independence
• The choka has alternating lines of five and seven syllables
celebrations.
and ends with an extra line of seven syllables. Having no
Nadine Gordimer (1923 - 2014) definite length, it can have from seven lines to 150.
• Hitomaro's works were included in Man'yoshu, the oldest
• This South African writer received the Nobel Prize for anthology of Japanese poetry during the Nara Period (710-
Literature in 1991. 784).
• She was known for her works that dealt with the effects of
apartheid on her country. Apartheid was a system in which Matsuo Basho (1644-1694)
people of color had less political and economic rights than
• Was regarded as the supreme haiku poet.
that of the white people, so the former was forced to live
• Emerged from the early Tokugawa period (1603-1770), the
separately from the latter.
haiku is composed of three lines of a renga, a poem usually
• An ardent opponent of such system, she wrote novels that
with a hundred linked verses.
focused on the oppression of non-white characters like "A
• Basho's verses appear with his travel accounts like The
World of Strangers" (1958), "The Late Bourgeois World"
Narrow Road to the Deep North (1694).
(1966), "Burger's Daughter" (1979), and "July's People"
(1981), all of which were banned in her country. Indian Literature - This body of works is produced in India in a
variety of vernacular languages like Sanskrit, Hindi, Punjabi, Tamil,
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
and Urdu.
• This Nigerian writer is known for her widely acclaimed The Mahabharata
novels
• "Purple Hibiscus" (2003), "Half of a Yellow Sun" (2006), and • Indian epic written in Sanskrit.
"Amerinacah" (2013), all of which won awards. • It is the longest poem in history with about 100,000
couplets.
• It is traditionally ascribed to an Indian sage named Vyasa.
Asian Literature - Asia is known to be the most populous and • The Hindus regard the epic as both a text about dharna
largest continent of the planet. It is a cradle of human race, world (the Hindu moral law) and a history.
religions, and civilizations which is composed of widespread Bhagavadgita, the most celebrated of its episodes, gives
varieties of ethnic group, diverse cultures, environments, economics, spiritual guidance.
historical linkages, and varied governmental system making it riches
The Ramayana
in written literature. Since it is the biggest continent, a wealth of
written and spoken text have been recorded. • Indian epic in Sanskrit.
• The sage Valmiki was traditionally regarded as its author.
Chinese Literature - This body of works is in Chinese. It has more
than 50,000 published works in a wide range of topics. • It is shorter than Mahabharata, with some 24,000 couplets.

The Panchatantra

• A collection of Indian animal fables.

 • Originally written in Sanskrit, it is a mixture of prose and • Browning, also known for his dramatic monologues, wrote
verse. the famous "My Last Duchess". In a dramatic monologue,
• The stories are attributed to Vishnusharman, a learned the poet addresses an audience through an assumed
Brahmin. voice.
• Oscar Wilde is the dramatist of the period. He wrote the
English Literature - English literature is one of the richest, most
masterpiece "The Importance of Being Earnest".
developed, and most important bodies of literature in the world. It
encompasses both written and spoken works by writers from the Twentieth Century (1900 - 2000)
United Kingdom.
• William Butler Yeats and Thomas Steams Eliot write
Old English Literature (600-1100) Modernist poems during the period.
• The earliest form of English language. • Yeats wrote "The Tower", "The Winding Stair" and "New
Poems", all of which are known to have potent images.
• It was spoken by the Anglo-Saxons, a Germanic tribe living
Eliot's masterpieces are "The Love Song of J. Alfred
in Britain during the fifth century.
Prufock" and "The Waste Land".
• One significant work written in Old English is Beowulf, the
longest epic poem in Old English. European Literature – It is also called Western Literature. It refers
• It is known for its use of kennings, which are phrases or to the literature in the Indo-European languages including Latin,
compound words used to name persons, places, and things Greek, the Romance languages, and Russian. It is considered as
indirectly the largest body of literature in the world.
Middle English Literature (1100-1500) Latin Literature

• A blend of Old English and Norman French (the French Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 BCE - 43 BCE)
dialect spoken by Normans - people from Normandy).
• Was the greatest Roman orator.
• The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, the father of
• The first part of the Golden age of Latin Literature (70 BC -
English Literature is a fine example of literature written in
AD 18) is named after him, the Ciceronian period (70-43
Middle English.
AD).
Elizabeth Literature (1558- 1603) • Using Latin as a literary medium, he was able to express
abstract and complicated thoughts clearly in his speeches.
• The golden age of English Literature. Also, it is the golden One of his well-known speeches is Pro Cluentio.
age of drama.
Virgil (70 BCE-19 BCE)
• Known as the "Bard of Avon," William Shakespeare wrote
his plays during the period. His best plays include Hamlet,
King Lear, Macbeth, Othello, and the merchant of Venice.
• The greatest Roman poet was known for "Aenid" an epic
poem.
• Also, he wrote 154 sonnets, many of which are best loved
and the most widely read poems in the English Literature. • He wrote it during the Augustan Age (43 BC-AD 18), the
second part of the Golden Age.
The Romantic Period (1800 - 1837)
Greek Literature
• The golden age of lyric poetry. Poetry became the
expression of poet's personal feelings and emotions. Homer
• A few notable works of poetry of this period are "Songs of
• Known for the "The Iliad and The Odyssey".
Innocence and of Experience" by William Blake, "Lyrical
• These epics are about the heroic achievements of Achilles
Ballads" by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor
and Odysseus, respectively.
Coleridge, "The Eve of St. Agnes" and "Other Poems" by
John Keats, "Don Juan" by Lord Byron, and "Ode to the Sophocles (496 BC - 406 BC)
West Wind" by Percy Bysshe Shelley.
• Was a tragic playwright.
The Victorian Period (1837 - 1900) • He was known for "Oedipus the King" which marks the
highest level of achievement of Greek drama.
• The period when the rise of novel was noticed.
• Charles Dickens, considered to be the greatest English
novelist of the 19" century, wrote the "Great Expectations".
This novel was published as a serial in a weekly periodical
from December 1860 to August 1861.

• Alfred Lord Tennyson and Robert Browning each wrote fine Italian Literature
poetry during the period. Tennyson's "In Memoriam A.H.H."
Francesco Petrarca, or Petrach (1304 - 1374)
is a requiem for his friend Arthur Henry Hallam. It is widely
considered to be one of the great poems of the 19th • Perfected the Italian sonnet, a major influence on European
century. poetry, written in vernacular, his sonnets were published in
the Canzoniere.
Giovanni Boccaccio (1313 - 1375) Octavio Paz (1914 - 1998)

• Known for "Decameron", a classic Italian masterpiece. The • A Mexican poet wrote poems with surrealist imagery. His
stories were written in vernacular. major works were published in "Freedom Under Parole".

Spanish Literature Jorge Luis Borges (1899 - 1986)

Miguel de Cervantes (1547 - 1616) • Was known for his fantastic stories, published later as a
collection entitled "Ficciones".
• Was known for his novel "Don Quixote", one of the most
widely read works of Western Literature. Alejo Carpenter (1904 - 1980)
• Its titular character's name is the origin of the word
"quixotic" which means hopeful or romantic in a way that is • Cuban writer wrote "The Kingdom of This World", a novel of
not practical. the magic realism genre, in which elements of fantasy or
myth are included matter-of-factly in seemingly realistic
Lope de Vega (1562 - 1635) fiction.

• An outstanding dramatist, wrote as many as 1800 plays Miguel Angel Asturias (1899 - 1974)
during his lifetime, including cloak and sword drama, which
are plays of upper middle-class manners and intrigue. • A Guatemalan writer wrote the novel "The President". This
novel along with Carpenter's novel introduced magic
French Literature realism.

Gustave Flaubert (1821 - 1880) The Boom Novels - These were essentially modernist novels,
which appeared in the second half of the 20" century. They had
• A novelist was a major influence on the realist school.
features that were different or absent from the works of the
• His masterpiece, "Madame Bovary", marked the beginning
regionalist writers of the past. The Boom novels were the following:
of a new age of realism.

Guy de Maupassant (1850 - 1893)

➢ The Death of Artemio Cruz (1962) by Carlos Fuentes
(1928 2012), a Mexican writer
• considered as the greatest French Story writer. ➢ Hopscotch (1963) by Julio Cortazar (1914 - 1984), an
• A naturalist, he wrote objective stories which present a real Argentine fictionist
"slice of life". ➢ The Time of the Hero (1963) by Mario Vargas Llosa, a
Peruvian writer
➢ One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) by Gabriel Garcia
Latin American Literature —It refers to all works of literature in Marquez (1927 - 2014), a Colombian fictionist
Latin American countries like Chile, Argentina, Mexico, Cuba,
Guatemala, Colombia, and Peru. Post Boom Writers - These writers included a host of women who
published works in the last twenty years of the 20th century.
The Vanguardia - (avant-garde in English) took place in Latin
America between approximately 1916 and 1935. It collectively ➢ Isabel Allende, a Chilean writer who wrote "The House of
referred to different literary movements. Four of those writers were Spirits (1982)
the following: ➢ Diamela Eltit, a Chilean writer who wrote E. Luminata
(1983)
Creacionismo — founded by Vicente Huidobro (1893 - 1948) a
Chilean poet, in 1916 ➢ Luisa Valenzuela, an Argentine writer who wrote Black
Novel with Argentines (1990).
Ultraismo — introduced to South America by Jorge Luis Borges
(1899 - 1986), an Argentine writer in 1921

Estridentismo — founded in Mexico City by Manuel Maples Arce

(1898 - 1981), a Mexican writer in 1921

Surrealism — which is said to have started in Argentina when the

Argentinian poet Aldo Pellegrini (1903 - 1973) launched the first
Surrealist magazine 1928

Pablo Neruda (1904 - 1973)

• A Chilean poet wrote "Residence on Earth", a collection of

poetry inspired by surrealism (an art form that combines
unrelated images or events in a very strange and dreamlike
way).