Literary Genres, Traditions, and Forms from Different Cultures

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 Epic poem - This is a long narrative poem usually about a hero and his deeds. A well-known example is
Beowulf.
 Sonnet - This poem has fourteen lines that follow a rhyme scheme. A well-known example is Sonnet 18 of
William Shakespeare. It starts with the famous line, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”
 Drama - This piece of writing tells a story through dialogue, and it is performed on stage. A well-known
example is The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde.
 Novel - This is a long prose narrative usually about fictional characters and events, which are told in a
particular sequence.

English Literature

English literature is one of the richest, most developed, and most important bodies of literature in the world. It encompasses
both written and spoken works by writers from the United Kingdom.

 Old English Literature (600 - 1100)

Old English, the earliest form of the English language, was spoken by the Anglo-Saxons, a Germanic tribe
living in Britain during the fifth century. One significant work written in Old English is Beowulf, the longest epic poem
in Old English. It is known for its use of kennings, which are phrases or compound words used to name persons,
places, and things indirectly.

 Middle English Literature (1100 - 1500)

Middle English is a blend Old English and Norman French, the French dialect spoken by the Normans
(people of Normandy). The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, the father of English literature, is a fine example
of literature written in Middle English.

 Elizabethan Literature (1558 - 1603)

The Elizabethan period is the golden age of English literature. Also, it is the golden age of drama. 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. Also, he wrote 154 sonnets, many of which are the best loved and
the most widely-read poems in the English literature.

 The Romantic Period (1800 - 1837)

This period is the golden age of lyric poetry. Poetry became the expression of the poet’s personal feelings
and emotions. A few notable works of poetry of the period are Songs of Innocence and of Experience by William
Blake, Lyrical Ballads by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems
by John Keats, “Don Juan” by Lord Byron, and “Ode to the West Wind” by Percy Bysshe Shelley.

 The Victorian Period (1837 - 1900)

The period saw the rise of the novel. Charles Dickens, considered to be the greatest English novelist of the
19th century, wrote 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 poetry during the period. Tennyson’s In
Memoriam A.H.H. is a requiem for his friend Arthur Henry Hallam. It is widely considered to be one of the great
poems of the 19th century. Browning, who is known for his dramatic monologues, wrote the famous poem “My Last
Duchess.” In a dramatic monologue, the poet addresses an audience through an assumed voice.

Oscar Wilde is the best dramatist of the period. He wrote the masterpiece The Importance of Being Earnest.

 Twentieth Century (1900 - 2000)

William Butler Yeats and Thomas Stearns Eliot wrote Modernist poems during the period. Yeats wrote The
Tower, The Winding Stair, and New Poems, all of which are known to have potent images. Eliot’s masterpieces are
“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and “The Waste Land.”

Virginia Woolf in her story Mrs. Dalloway and James Joyce in his work Ulysses use stream of consciousness, a
literary technique in which the flow of thoughts of a character is described in words.

PHILIPPINE AND WORLD LITERATURE – Prof. Z.S. Candia 1

 American Literature

American literature refers to all works of literature in English produced in the United States.

The 19th Century

 William Cullen Bryant (1794 - 1878) became famous for “Thanatopsis” (1817). This poem marked a new beginning for
American poetry.
 Washington Irving (1783 - 1859) was known for “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” the first
American short stories. They were part of his work The Sketch Book, the first American work to become successful
internationally.
 Edgar Allan Poe (1809 - 1849) became famous for his macabre stories like “The Fall of the House of Usher” (1839)
and “The Cask of Amontillado” (1846). Also, he wrote “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841), the first detective
story, and the poem “Raven” (1845), with which he achieved instant fame.
 Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804 - 1864) became known for his symbolical tales like “The Hollow of the Three Hills” (1830)
and “Young Goodman Brown” (1835). Also, he wrote the gothic romance The Scarlet Letter (1850).
 Walt Whitman (1819 - 1892) became well-known for Leaves of Grass, first published in 1855. In this poetry collection,
Whitman showed the experiences of the common man.
 Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886) wrote odd poems. She mostly used the imperfect rhyme and avoided regular rhythms.
A collection of her poems, Poems by Emily Dickinson, came out in 1890.

The 20th Century

 Robert Frost (1874 - 1963) wrote poems with traditional stanzas and a blank verse, a verse in iambic pentameter
with no rhyme. His poems portray ordinary people in everyday situations like “Mending Wall,” "The Road Not Taken,"
and “After Apple-Picking,” both of which were published in 1914.
 E. E. cummings (1894 - 1962) was known for his unconventional punctuation and phrasing. His poems were
compiled in Complete Poems (1968).
 Ezra Pound (1885 - 1972) was a leader of the Imagists, who emphasized the use of direct and sparse language and
precise images in writing poetry. Two of his works are Ripostes (1912) and Lustra (1916).
 Sherwood Anderson (1876 - 1941) wrote prose using everyday speech. His best works appeared in Winesburg, Ohio
(1919) and Death in the Woods (1933).
 Ernest Hemingway (1899 - 1961) was known for his succinct writing, which was widely imitated. His writing was very
straightforward and objective - not verbose and sentimental. Two of his finest stories are “The Killers” (1927) and “The
Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber” (1936).
 Allen Ginsberg (1926 - 1997) was known for his work “Howl” (1956), a poem with incantatory rhythms and raw
emotion. He was one of the Beat poets, who aimed to bring poetry back to the streets.
 Anne Sexton (1928 - 1974) became known for her confessional poetry, a kind of poetry that deals with the private
experiences of the speaker. Her work Live or Die (1966) won a Pulitzer Prize.

European Literature

European Literature, also called Western Literature, refers to literature in the Indo-European languages including Latin,
Greek, the Romance languages, and Russian. It is considered as the largest body of literature in the world.

Latin Literature

 Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 BCE–43 BCE) was the greatest Roman orator. The first part of the Golden Age of Latin
Literature (70 BC–AD 18) is named after him, the Ciceronian period (70–43 BC). Using Latin as a literary medium, he
was able to express abstract and complicated thoughts clearly in his speeches. One of his well-known speeches is
Pro Cluentio.
 Virgil (70 BCE–19 BCE), the greatest Roman poet, was known for Aeneid, an epic poem. He wrote it during the
Augustan Age (43 BC–AD 18), the second part of the Golden Age.

Greek Literature

 Homer is known for the The Iliad and the The Odyssey. These epics are about the heroic achievements of Achilles
and Odysseus, respectively.
 Sophocles (496 BC–406 BC) was a tragic playwright. He was known for Oedipus the King, which marks the highest
level of achievement of Greek drama.

Italian Literature

 Francesco Petrarca, or Petrarch (1304–1374) perfected the Italian sonnet, a major influence on European poetry.
Written in the vernacular, his sonnets were published in the Canzoniere.
 Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–1375) is known for Decameron, a classic Italian masterpiece. The stories were written in
the vernacular.

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Spanish Literature

 Two well-known Spanish writers of Siglo De Oro (1500–1681) are Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) and Lope de
Vega (1562–1635).
 Miguel de Cervantes was known for his novel Don Quixote, one of the most widely read works of Western Literature.
Its titular character’s name is the origin of the word “quixotic,” meaning hopeful or romantic in a way that is not
practical.
 Lope de Vega, an outstanding dramatist, wrote as many as 1800 plays during his lifetime, including cloak and sword
drama, which are plays of upper middle class manners and intrigue.

French Literature

 Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880), a novelist, was a major influence on the realist school. His masterpiece, Madame
Bovary (1857), marked the beginning of a new age of realism.
 Guy de Maupassant (1850–1893) is considered as the greatest French short story writer. A Naturalist, he wrote
objective stories which present a real “slice of life.”

Russian Literature

 Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) is known for his novels War and Peace (1865–1869) and Anna Karenina (1875–1877). A
master of realistic fiction, he is considered as one of the world’s greatest novelists.
 Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) is a master of the modern short story and a Russian playwright. His works such as, "The
Bet" and "The Misfortune" reveal his clinical approach to ordinary life.

Latin American Literature

Latin American Literature refers to all works of literature in Latin American countries like Chile, Argentina, Mexico, Cuba,
Guatemala, Colombia, and Peru.

The Vanguardia

 The Vanguardia (avant-garde in English) took place in Latin America between approximately 1916 and 1935. It
collectively referred to different literary movements. Four of those were the following:
o Creacionismo, founded by Vicente Huidobro (1893–1948), a Chilean poet, in 1916
o Ultraismo, introduced to South America by Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986), an Argentine writer, in 1921
o Estridentismo, founded in Mexico City by Manuel Maples Arce (1898–1981), a Mexican writer, in 1921
o Surrealism, which is said to have started in Argentina when the Argentinian poet Aldo Pellegrini (1903–1973)
launched the first Surrealist magazine in 1928
 Surrealism, an art form that combines unrelated images or events in a very strange and dreamlike way, became a
major influence in Latin American Literature throughout the 20th century.
 Pablo Neruda (1904–1973), a Chilean poet, wrote Residence on Earth (1933), a collection of poetry inspired by
surrealism.
 Octavio Paz (1914–1998), a Mexican poet, wrote poems with surrealist imagery. His major works were published in
Freedom Under Parole (1960).
 Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) was known for his fantastic stories, published later as a collection entitled Ficciones
(1944).
 Alejo Carpentier (1904–1980), a Cuban writer, wrote The Kingdom of This World (1949), a novel of the magic realism
genre, in which elements of fantasy or myth are included matter-of-factly in seemingly realistic fiction.
 Miguel Angel Asturias (1899–1974), a Guatemalan writer, wrote the novel The President (1946). This novel along with
Carpentier’s novel introduced magic realism.

The Boom Novels

These were essentially modernist novels, which appeared in the second half of the 20th century. They had features that
were different or absent from the works of the regionalist writers of the past. (Regionalist writers were those that used local
color, which refers to interesting information about a particular place or its people.)

The boom novels were the following:

 The Death of Artemio Cruz (1962) by Carlos Fuentes (1928–2012), a Mexican writer
 Hopscotch (1963) by Julio Cortazar (1914–1984), an Argentine fictionist
 The Time of the Hero (1963) by Mario Vargas Llosa, a Peruvian writer
 One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1927–2014), a Colombian fictionist

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“Post-Boom” Writers

These writers included a host of women who published works in the last twenty years of the 20th century. Three of them were
Isabel Allende, a Chilean writer who wrote The House of Spirits (1982); Diamela Eltit, a Chilean writer who wrote E. Luminata
(1983); and Luisa Valenzuela, an Argentine writer who wrote Black Novel with Argentines (1990).

Asian Literature

Asian literature refers to the body of literature produced in the countries in Asia.

Chinese Literature

 This body of works is in Chinese. It has more than 50 000 published works in a wide range of topics.
 Du Fu (712–770) is considered as China’s greatest poet. He was known for his works of lüshi. A lüshi has eight lines,
each of which has five or seven syllables following a strict tonal pattern. It became widely popular during the Tang
Dynasty (618–907 CE), the golden age of art and literature in Chinese history.
 Li Bai (701–762), also called Li Po, rivaled Du Fu for the title of China’s greatest poet. Unlike Du Fu, he wrote less
formal verse forms. A famous drinker, he frequently celebrated drinking in his poetry.

Japanese Literature

 This body of works is mostly in Japanese, except the early writings which were written in Chinese.
 Kakinomoto Hitomaro, Japan’s first literary figure, was known for his works of tanka and chōka. The tanka, the basic
form of Japanese poetry, has five lines in five-seven-five-seven-seven syllable pattern. On the other hand, the
chōka has alternating lines of five and seven syllables and ends with an extra line of seven syllables. Having no
definite length, it can have from seven lines to 150. Hitomaro’s works were included in Man’yōshū, the oldest
anthology of Japanese poetry which was produced during the Nara Period (710–784).
 Matsuo Bashō (1644–1694) was regarded as the supreme haiku poet. Emerged from the early Tokugawa period
(1603–1770), the haiku is composed of three lines with five-seven-five syllable pattern. It originated from the hokku,
the first three lines of a renga, a poem usually with a hundred linked verses. Bashō’s verses appear with his travel
accounts like The Narrow Road to the Deep North (1694).

Indian Literature

 This body of works is produced in India in a variety of vernacular languages like Sanskrit, Hindi, Punjabi, Tamil, and
Urdu.
 The Mahabharata is an Indian epic written in Sanskrit. It is the longest poem in history with about 100 000 couplets. It
is traditionally ascribed to an Indian sage named Vyasa. The Hindus regard the epic as both a text about dharma
(the Hindu moral law) and a history. Bhagavadgītā, the most celebrated of its episodes, gives spiritual guidance.
 The Ramayana is another Indian epic in Sanskrit. The sage Valmiki was traditionally regarded as its author. It is
shorter than Mahabharata, with some 24 000 couplets.
 The Panchatantra is a collection of Indian animal fables. Originally written in Sanskrit, it is a mixture of prose and
verse. The stories are attributed to Vishnusharman, a learned Brahmin.

African Literature

The literary works of African writers in English are part of the African literature. This body of works refers to the ones not only
produced in Afro-Asiatic and African languages, but also to those works by Africans in English, French, and other European
languages.

A few of the common themes in the works of African writers are the oppression of African people by the colonizers, the
European influences on the native African culture, racial discrimination, and pride in African past and resilience.

Chinua Achebe (1930–2013) – This Nigerian writer was known for his novel Things Fall Apart (1958), considered as the best
known African novel of the 20th century. It deals with emergent Africa, where native communities, like Achebe’s Igbo
community, came in contact with white missionaries and its colonizers. The novel is the first in sometimes called The African
Trilogy. It was followed by No Longer at Ease, published in 1960, and then Arrow of God in 1964.

Wole Soyinka – This Nigerian writer received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986, becoming the first black African to receive
such award. As a playwright, he wrote the satire A Dance of the Forests (1963), his first important play that depicts the
traditions of his people, the Yoruba. It was staged in 1960 during the Nigerian independence celebrations. Also, he wrote
fiction and poetry.

Example

“The Telephone Conversation” by Wole Soyinka

Wole Soyinka’s poem “The Telephone Conversation” first appeared in his collection Modern Poetry from Africa (1963). As
the title suggests, the poem is about a telephone conversation between an African man and a white woman. Considering
to rent the apartment owned by the white woman, the African man confesses, saying “I hate a wasted journey—I am

PHILIPPINE AND WORLD LITERATURE – Prof. Z.S. Candia 4

African.” Then as the conversation goes, the woman shows her true colors. She asks, “HOW DARK?” then follows it up with
another question, “ARE YOU LIGHT/ OR VERY DARK.” Then asks again, “ARE YOU DARK? OR VERY LIGHT?” Then the African
man clarifies the question, saying “You mean—like plain or milk chocolate?” Then he settles on this response “West African
sepia... Down in my passport.” Perhaps, out of ignorance, the woman says that she does not know the color. To simplify, the
African man says, “Like brunette.” Confirming what she already thinks about the African man, the woman says “THAT’ S
DARK, ISN’T IT?” Towards the end of the poetry, the African man tries to describe the colors of the different parts of his body
to the woman. The poem ends with an invitation from the African man for the white woman, saying “Madam . . . wouldn’t
you rather/ see for yourself?”

Nadine Gordimer (1923–2014) – This South African writer received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991. She was known for
her works that dealt with the effects of apartheid on her country. Apartheid was a system in which people of color had less
political and economic rights than that of the white people, so the former was forced to live separately from the latter. An
ardent opponent of such system, she wrote novels that focused on the oppression of nonwhite characters like A World of
Strangers (1958), The Late Bourgeois World (1966), Burger’s Daughter (1979), and July’s People (1981), all of which were
banned in her country.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – This Nigerian writer is known for her widely-acclaimed novels Purple Hibiscus (2003), Half of a
Yellow Sun (2006), and Americanah (2013), all of which won awards. The story of Purple Hibiscus is told through a fifteen-
year-old girl named Kambili as she together with her family endured domestic violence in the hands of her father. The story
of Half of a Yellow Sun took place during the Nigerian Civil War or Biafran War (1967–1970). Lastly, Americanah tells the story
of a young Nigerian woman that came to the US to study and to stay for work.

Example:

“A Private Experience” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

“A Private Experience” is one of the short stories in the author’s collection The Thing Around Your Neck published in 2009. It
tells the story of two women, one named Chika and the other unnamed. Chika is an Igbo, one of the largest ethnic groups
of Africa, and an outward Christian (she wears a rosary that her mother gave her, but she does not pray or believe in God).
On the other hand, the unnamed woman is a Hausa, another large African ethnic group, and a devout Muslim. They cross
paths during a riot at a market in the city of Kano, northern Nigeria. Both confused and scared, they ran away from the
market and hid in a small, abandoned store. Stuck together, the two women start to talk and eventually learn more things
about each other. Chika tells the woman that her sister Nnedi was with her at the market and that they are both university
students. She learns that the woman sells onions for a living. The two women become closer when the woman shows Chika
her breasts with cracked nipples. Chika, who is studying medicine, examines the breasts and learns that the woman has just
had her fifth child. She then advises the woman to rub some lotion on her nipples after feeding her baby and to put the
nipple and the areola into the baby’s mouth while it feeds. The woman’s eldest daughter, Halima, was at the bus stop
selling groundnuts when the confusion began. At the mention of her daughter’s name, the woman cries. As she wipes her
tears away, she says, “Allah keep your sister and Halima in safe place.” After more than three hours, Chika ventures out into
the street to go home, anxious to see her sister and her auntie. She leaves the woman and promises to come back for her
and her daughter. However, when she sees and smells a recently burned body in the street, she gets terrified and runs back
to the small store, accidentally cutting her leg. The woman at the store cleans the wound and wraps it with her scarf. Chika
stays there with the woman until morning when it is safe to leave the store.

PHILIPPINE AND WORLD LITERATURE – Prof. Z.S. Candia 5