MINDANAO LITERATURE  Dayang-dayang –beautiful daughter of the Datu
-Blue blood- Royal Blood
1. A LESSON FOR SULTAN (MARANAO FOLKTALE)
The folktale titled “A Lesson for the Sultan” is
one of the folktales found in the Agamaniyog Folktales.
Derived from Malay and Maranao languages,
Agamaniyog is derived from the words agama and
niyog. Agama means town or village that has land,
people, mosque, wealth, and power. Niyog is the
Filipino word that refers to coconuts. Combining the
two words, Agamaniyog means “land of coconuts.”
Most folktales depicted Agamaniyog as a land
of splendor and glory, and a variety of plots and
characters are woven into its fabric in stories that
either merely entertain or teach lessons about good
and evil. Moreover, many of the Agamaniyog tales and
fables combine pathos, humor, and moral lessons.
 Long ago in Agamaniyog, the best-known, wealthy
couples were Solotan sa Agamaniyog and his wife,
Ba'i sa Agamaniyog. They were so wealthy that
they owned almost half of the land in Agamaniyog.
 Lokes a Mama and Lokes a Babay, the poor couple
who were quarreling and shouting at each other.
 The quarreling couple blamed each other for their
misfortune in life. Lokes a Babay blamed Lokes a
Mama for being lazy and not knowing how to raise
a family and to make a good living. On the other
hand, Lokes a Mama put the blame on his wife
who, he said did not know how to be thrifty.
 In the heat of their argument, the Sultan and the
Ba'i of Agamaniyog agreed to part ways. The
Sultan brought Lokes a Babay to live with him and
Ba'i sa Agamaniyog in turn went to live with Lokes
a Mama
 Solotan sa Agamaniyog was very embarrassed at
the dry welcome that Lokes a Babay showed his
royal visitor. She served neither his visitor nor him.
It was at this time that he became convinced that
Lokes a Babay was lazy and capricious. He also
realized that his wealth had gradually vanished.
 Ba'i sa Agamaniyog and Lokes a Mama became
rich. A beautiful torogan (royal house) was soon
erected, and Ba'i sa Agamaniyog ordered two
kanter (beds). She bought a sultan's tobao
(headdress) for Lokes a Mama and changed his
name to Maradiya Dinda. She was always
surrounded by her seven maids, and Lokes a Mama,
now Maradiya Dinda, was always escorted by his
seven male servants.
2. BLUE BLOOD OF THE BIG ASTANA (IBRAHIM A.
JUBAIRA)
CHARACTERS:
 Jaafar –harelip orphaned child
-poor and had to work as a servant of the
datu at the age of 5.
-in love with the datu’s daughter dayang-
dayang
-married to muramuraan
 Babo –aunt of jaafar
-took care of jaafar when he was young
 Muramuraan –a rich young Datu in Bonbon who is
married to dayang-dayang
 Eting –son of dayang-dayang
 Appah –dather of dayang-dayang
 Amboh –mother of dayang dayang
 The story starts as the flashback of the life of Jafaar
as an orphan and a servant of the Datu’s daughter.
He narrates the bittersweet memories he shared
with Dayang-Dayang.
 As they get older, Jafaar always thinks about
Dayang-Dayang and his feelings towards her grows
stronger but he always reminds himself that he
shouldn’t have feelings towards her because he’s
not a blue blood.
 Months later, a young Datu asked Dayang-Dayangs
hand in marriage, leaving Jafaar brokenhearted.
 Years later, when they lived their seperates lives,
the royal family encountered many problems.
Muramuraan raised hand against the Christian
Government and was sent ot the prison. Appah and
Amboh died and majority their lands and
possessions were confiscated.
 Jafaar went to BonBon on business and saw Dayang
with her children. He saw that she was working and
stressed and saw that she was not used to the hard
labor. Jafaar wants to go back to her, to help and
take care of her because he misses her and still
loves her.
 Even though Jaafar really wanted to go back to
Dayang-Dayang, he stopped himself because he still
has no blue blood and not even the fingers of Allah
could weave our fabric to equality.
3. THE LAND OF PROMISE (JOSELITO ASPERIN)
Often called the land of promise,
Mindanao my native land,
Her soil wet with innocent blood,
The promises many but few are done,
Here stealth cunning warriors,
Are professed men of God,
Their decency turns to refute,
For shedding innocent blood,
Fear pierced deep in our hearts,
Even at calm starry nights,
Anytime in the city or the words,
Barking guns shimmering lights.
Is there a hope for tomorrow?
Will our wailing cease?
Will our children and their offspring,
Have the chance to live in peace?
 METRO MANILA LITERATURE
METRO MANILA AND ITS LITERATURE
 Geography
 The National Capital Region (NCR), official name of
Metro Manila and seat of the government, consists
of 16 cities namely Manila, Quezon City, Las Piñas,
Makati, Mandaluyong, Marikina, Muntinlupa,
Parañaque, Pasay, Pasig, San Juan, Taguig,
Caloocan, Malabon, Navotas, and Valenzuela, as
well as the municipality of Pateros.
 NCR is considered as the Philippines’s political,
economic, social, and cultural center. This is also
reported as the 18th most populous city in the
world in 2016 and one of the modern metropolises
in the Southeast Asia.
 Due to its dense population with its people coming
from the different areas of the country and its
neighboring countries, Merly M. Alunan, an Eastern
Visayan writer and professor, described Metro
Manila as a “huge urban conglomeration.”
 NCR is also a place of economic extremes. High-
income citizens reside in highly developed urban
cities such as Makati and Muntinlupa while poor
and low-income families are scattered in slum areas
such as Tondo and Smokey Mountain
 Famous landmarks and tourist destinations in the
NCR include Rizal Park, National Museum of the
Philippines, Intramuros where Fort Santiago, Manila
Cathedral, San Agustin Church, Bahay Tsinoy
Museum, Anda Circle and others.
 Language(s)
 Filipino – more popularly known as Tagalog, the
national language and an official language of the
country, is the most widely spoken language in
Metro Manila
 English – language of commerce, law, and several
workplaces
THE METRO MANILA LITERATURE
FROM THE PAST TO THE PRESENT
 The Tagalog literature has been born and
developed in the provinces of Southern Luzon,
Central Luzon, and the present Metropolitan
Manila or the National Capital Region.
 Southern Luzon is consisted of the provinces of
Region IV–A and Region IV–B. Region IV-A, also
known as CALABARZON, consists of the
provinces of Cavite, Batangas, Laguna, and
Quezon. Region IV-B, also known as
MIMAROPA, consists of Oriental Mindoro,
Occidental Mindoro, Marinduque, and Palawan.
 In Region III or Central Luzon, there are
provinces where Tagalog has been
predominantly used as communication tool.
These are the provinces of Aurora, Nueva Ecija,
Bataan, and Bulacan.
 The Tagalog region is well-known nationwide
as the birthplace of a rich tradition of
Philippine culture in the aspects of language,
politics, economy and literature.
 University of Sto. Tomas, the oldest university
in the Philippines, is located in Manila.
 The first printing press that was built in Manila
made the publication of the first book Doctrina
Cristiana possible in 1593, in the form of
xylography. This was written in Spanish and
Tagalog languages.
 Pasyon, which narrated the life of Christ in the
form of song and poetry, was written in Tagalog
by the various writers Gaspar Aquino de Belen
and Fr. Mariano Pilapil.
 Just like in the islands of Visayas, the literary
tradition in the Tagalog regions had been
outstanding in the field of oral literature.
Bugtong (riddle), proverbs, native songs, and
other forms had always been in poetic forms. Its
form and perspective were distincted as Asian,
usually containing seven-syllabic rhymes.
SOME WRITERS OF CLASSIC PHILIPPINE LITERATURE
FROM THE PAST:
Considering this rich and invigorating cultural matrix,
the Tagalog region was also the birthplace of several
historic Filipino men in the field of Philippine politics,
culture, and literature. These writers are also known
today as Filipino heroes:
 Francisco Balagtas Baltazar
 Jose Rizal
 Andres Bonifacio
 Apolinario Mabini
 Emilio Jacinto
 Marcelo H. Del Pilar
 Jose P. Laurel
 Claro M. Recto
 Amado V. Hernandez
 Lope K. Santos
 Lazaro Francisco
 Faustino Aguilar
 Jose Corazon de Jesus
 Alejandro Abadilla
 Modesto de Castro
These men did not only historically play a great role in
Philippine independence movement but they are also
men of letters. Meanwhile, the following writers from
Metro Manila have a timeless and permanent
contribution to the development of Philippine
literature:
 Carmen Guerrero-Nakpil (July 19, 1922 – July
30, 2018) – was a Filipino author, journalist,
historian, and public servant and a recipient of
S.E.A. Write Award; She wrote Woman Enough
and Other Essays
 Nicomedes “Nick” Márquez Joaquín (May 4,
1917 – April 29, 2004) – was a Filipino author,
historian, and journalist who is popular for his
short stories and novels written in the English
language, using the pen name Quijano de
Manila; In 1976, Joaquin was declared as the
1976 National Artist of the Philippines for
Literature.
  Alejandro Reyes Roces (July 13, 1924 – May 23,
2011) – was a dramatist, essayist, and declared
as the 2003 National Artist of the Philippines for
literature. As a public servant, he became the
Secretary of Education from 1961 to 1965,
during the presidency of the former Philippine
President Diosdado Macapagal.
 Bienvenido N. Santos (1911–1996) – was a
Filipino-American fictionist, poet, and
nonfictionist; He was born and raised in Tondo,
Manila. His family roots are originally from
Lubao, Pampanga, Philippines. He resided in the
United States for many years where he is
popular as a pioneering Asian-American writer.
 Carmen Acosta (February 1, 1904 and died on
September 13, 1986) – She was the daughter of
Godofredo B. Herrera, and Paterna Santos. Her
father was a journalist and served for a time as
municipal president (or mayor in modern usage)
of Caloocan during the American colonial rule.
She was a University of the Philippines Bachelor
of Philosophy graduate and taught at the Torres
High School in Manila.
 Genoveva Edroza Matute (January 3, 1915 –
March 21, 2009) – Was born in Sta. Cruz,
Manila; Wrote several books and short stories
such as Kuwento ni Mabuti, and Paglalayag sa
Puso ng Isang Bata
SOME CONTEMPORARY WRITERS FROM PAST TO
PRESENT:
 Lualhati Bautista – was born on December 2,
1945 in Tondo, Manila; she is one of the
historical Filipino female novelists in the
present time. Her famous novels are Dekada
'70, ‘GAPÔ, and Bata, Bata, Pa'no Ka Ginawa?,
 Gémino H. Abad – was born on February 5,
1939 in Sta. Ana, Manila; at present, he is a
University Professor Emeritus at the University
of the Philippines. His current writing and
research include “Upon Our Own Ground”, a
two- volume historical anthology of short
stories in English, 1956- 1972, with critical
introduction; “Our Scene So Fair”, a book of
critical essays on the poetry in English since
1905 to the mid- 50s, and; “Where No Words
break”, a volume of his own poems.
 Linda Ty Casper – was born in 1931 in Malabon
City; She has written and published over fifteen
books, including the historical novel DreamEden
and the political novels The Stranded Whale,
The Peninsulars, Awaiting Trespass, Wings of
Stone, A Small Party in a Garden, and Fortress in
the Plaza.in addition, she has also published
three collections of short stories which focuses
on the cross-section of Filipino society.
 Efren Abueg – born on March 3, 1937 in Tanza,
Cavite but his life as a professor and writer
flourished in Manila since he was college; He
wrote the famous short stories Mabangis na
Lungsod, and Sa Bagong Paraiso.
 Gilda Cordero-Fernando – was born on June 4,
1932 in Manila; a multi-awarded writer,
publisher and cultural icon from the Philippines;
She has written the books We Live in the
Philippines, The last Full Moon: Lessons on My
Life, The Magic Circle, and other books.
SOME FAMOUS WRITERS IN THE PRESENT TIME:
 Bebang Siy – Wrote It’s Raining Mens and It’s a
Mens World, whose works are known to be
funny and comical; despite the humorous
writings, her novels are thought-provoking.
 Bob Ong – Author of Stainless Longanisa,
ABNKKBSNPLAKo, Ang Paboritong Libro ni
Hudas, Kapitan Sino, MACARTHUR, Alamat ng
Gubat, and others which were known to be
written in an informal and comic manner but
reflects the life of many as Filipinos
 Ricky Lee – Known as one of the greatest
scriptwriters in movie and television; Author of
Si Amapola sa 65 na Kabanata, Para kay B (o
kung paano dinevastate ng pag-ibig ang 4 out of
5 sa atin), Trip to Quiapo, and other books.
 Ferdinand Pisigan Jarin – Author of Anim na
Sabado ng Beyblade at Iba Pang Sanaysay, a
memoir about his son named Rebo; He is also a
musician and teacher.
 A QUESTION OF IDENTITY
(Carmen Guerrero-Nakpil) ESSAY - explicated how our
system of Spanish family names originated.
 THE TRANSPARENT SUN
(Linda Ty-Casper)SHORT STORY – is all about a gold
filigree necklace that was pawned to a couple, which is
latter redeemed by its owner after a long time.
 PEARL OF THE ORIENT
(Yen) A POEM –is about the present-time Manila
 Narciso Claveria –The Spanish Governor who
ordered what family names the Filipinos must bear
ASIAN LITERATURE
 Asian Literature encompasses various facets of
literature. Primarily, these are the poetry and prose
writings produced in a variety of languages in Asia.
As religion, was, and politics influence Asian
communities, literary flourished to emulate these
developments.
 The literary mores of Asia which is considered the
largest continent of the world are immense in
terms of scope and length of existence. With these,
it is prudent to take a literary exploration of Asian
Literature by geographical region. By its technical
term, it is basically the literary products made in
continent Asia throughout history.
 Asian literature reflects the similarities in customs
and traditions of African and Asian countries, their
philosophies of life, and the struggles and
successes of their developing nations and its
people.
 The study of the massive amount of Asian
literature as a whole requires the combination of
 literature under specific headings. Asian literature
can be divided into a host of different labels,
categorized according to religion, zone, region,
ethnic group, literary genre, historical perspective
or language of origin.
CHINA
Chinese literature is one of the major literary heritages
of the world, with an uninterrupted history of more
than 3,000 years, dating back at least to the 14 th century
BCE.
 Its medium, the Chinese language, has retained its
unmistakable identity in its spoken and written
aspects in spite of generally gradual changes in
pronunciation, the existence of regional and local
dialects, and several stages in the structural
representation of the written graphs, or
“characters.”
 Culturally speaking, China has endured its attribute
of keeping the fundamental of its identity very
firm. The Tang Dynasty is the finest era of the
Chinese literature because the poets like Tu Fu, Li
Po and Wang Wei created landmark works.
 Through cultural contacts, Chinese literature has
profoundly influenced the literary traditions of
other Asian countries, particularly Korea, Japan,
and Vietnam. Not only was the Chinese script
adopted for the written language in these countries,
but some writers adopted the Chinese language as
their chief literary medium, at least before the 20th
century.
 The pronunciation of the Chinese graphs has also
influenced the development of Chinese literature.
The fact that each graph had a monophonic
pronunciation in each context created many
homonyms, which led to misunderstanding and
confusion when spoken or read aloud without the
aid of the graphs.
FAMOUS CHINESE POETS
Two of the greates Chinese poets, and the best
known, are Li Po and Tu Fu. Li Po and Tu Fu, being
respected poets from the T’ang Dynasty period,
competed heavily with one another, but they have been
called friends by many scholars. In fact, many of the
poems written by the two are directed towards the
other. Each of these poets use his emotions and
experiences in the T’ang Dynasty of China to create
poems that illustrate and comment on many different
aspects of ancient Chinese life. Also, both employ
similar key images. However, by examining the
“friendship” poems for insight into their relationship,
one discovers the contrast between their attitudes
toward life.
JAPAN
Japanese literature places as one of the major
literatures in the world both in quantity and in quality,
like in age, vibrancy, and capacity to English literature,
although its pattern of improvement has been
somewhat different. The surviving works comprise a
literary tradition extending from the 7th century CE to
the present.
 The earliest writing of literature in Japanese was
motivated by impact from China. But in the
following years Japanese tradition created its
distinct literary landmark. One of the renowned
poetic forms is haiku (a short descriptive poem
with 17 syllables) and the various theatrical
genres, namely: the Noh and the Kabuki.
 Still, the texts entirely in Japanese depict an
exceptional range of styles, which cannot be
clarified merely in terms of the natural progression
of the language.
 The complexities of interpreting Japanese literature
can barely be exaggerated; even a specialist in one
period is likely to have trouble deciphering a work
from another period or genre.
 Japanese style has always favored vagueness, and
the elements of speech required for easy
understanding of a statement are often excluded
as unnecessary or as thoroughly precise.
 Despite the great problems occurring from such
qualities of style, Japanese literature of all periods
is extremely interesting to modern-day readers,
whether read in the original or in translation.
 Because it is prevailingly personal and colored by an
emotional rather than intellectual or moralistic
mood, its themes have a universal quality almost
unchanged by time.
JAPANESE POET SPOTLIGHT
Matsuo Basho (1644-1694) was one of the greatest
Japanese poets. He elevated haiku to the level of
serious poetry in numerous anthologies and travel
diaries. The name of Matsuo Basho is associated
especially with the celebrated Genroku era (ca. 1680-
1730), which saw the flourishing of many of Japan’s
greatest and most typical literary and artistic
personalities. His poetry and in his attitude toward life
he seemed to harken back to a period some 300 years
earlier. An innovator in poetry, spiritually and culturally
he maintained a great tradition of the past. One of the
most famous haiku of Matsuo Basho:
The old pond
A frog jumps in
Sound of water.
KOREA
Korean literature consists the body of works written by
Koreans, at first in Classical Chinese, later in various
transcription systems using Chinese characters, and
finally in Hangul
 Although Korea has had its own language for
several thousand years, it has had a writing system
only since the mid-15th century, when Hangul was
invented. As a result, early literary activity was in
Chinese characters. Korean scholars were writing
poetry in the traditional manner of Classical Chinese
at least by the 4th century CE.
 By the 7th century a system, called idu, had been literature, being considered the ‘founding father
devised that allowed Koreans to make rough of modern Korean poetry’.
transliterations of Chinese texts. Eventually, certain  Under the pen name Midang, he published at
Chinese characters were used for their phonetic least 15 collections of poetry. His works have been
value to represent Korean particles of speech and translated into several languages, including
inflectional endings. English, French, Spanish, and German. His 100th
 In general, then, literature written in Korea falls anniversary in December 2016 was
into three categories: works written in the early commemorated by the republication of his
transcription systems, those written in Hangul, and collected works which included recently
those written in Chinese. discovered and previously unpublished poems.
 There are four major traditional poetic forms in
Korean Literature: INDIA
 Hyangga (“native songs”) poems were written
 The original Indian literature took the form of the
in four, eight, or 10 lines; the 10-line form—
canonic Hindu sacred writings, recognized as the
comprising two four-line stanzas and a
Veda, which were written in Sanskrit. To the Veda
concluding two-line stanza—was the most
were added prose notes such as the Brahmanas
popular and oldest form in Korean literature.
and the Upanishads.
 Pyŏlgok (“special songs”) or changga
 In addition to holy and moral writings, such genres
flourished during the middle and late Koryŏ
as suggestive and religious lyrics, court poetry,
period. It is characterized by a refrain either in
plays, and narrative folktales surfaced.
the middle or at the end of each stanza. The
 Other related languages appeared in the modern
theme of most of these anonymous poems is
languages of northern India from these. The
love, the joys and torments of which are
literature of those languages varied largely on the
expressed in frank and powerful language.
ancient Indian experience, which consist of two
 Sijo (“current melodies”) is the longest-
Sanskrit epic poems, the Mahabharata and
enduring and most popular form of Korean
Ramayana, as well as the Bhagavata-purana and
poetry. Sijo are three- line poems in which
the other Puranas.
each line has 14 to 16 syllables and the total
 The South Indian language of Tamil is an
number of syllables seldom exceeds45. Each
exemption to this form of Sanskrit influence since
line consists of groups of four syllables. Sijo
it had a classical practice of its own. Urdu and
may deal with Confucian ethical values, but
Sindhi are other exemptions.
there are also many poems about nature and
 Beginning in the 19th century, especially during
love.
the height of British control over the subcontinent,
 Kasa (“verses”) tends to be much longer than
Western literary models had an impact on Indian
other forms of Korean poetry and is usually
literature, the most remarkable result being the
written in balanced couplets. During the
launch of the use of language prose on a major
earlier period, the poem was generally about
scale.
100 lines long and dealt with such subjects as
 Such forms as the texts began to be embraced by
female beauty, war, and seclusion.
Indian writers, as did realism and an attraction in
 In another system, kugyŏl, abridged versions of
social questions and psychological explanation. A
Chinese characters were used to denote
practice of literature in English was also
grammatical elements and were inserted into texts
recognized in the subcontinent.
during transcription.
 Existing literary works indicate, however, that INDIAN POET SPOTLIGHT
before the 20th century much of Korean literature
was written in Chinese rather than in Korean, even Rabindranath Tagore (May 7, 1861-August 7, 1941)
after the invention of Hangul. Bengali poet, short-story writer, song composer,
playwright, essayist, and painter who introduced new
KOREAN POET SPOTLIGHT prose and verse forms and the use of colloquial
language into Bengali literature, thereby freeing it from
Seo Jeong-ju (May 18, 1915 – December 24, 2000) was
traditional models based on classical Sanskrit.
a Korean poet and university professor. He taught
Korean literature in universities, who wrote under the  He was extremely influential in introducing Indian
pen name “Midang”. culture to the West and the other way around, and
he is commonly considered as the outstanding
 He is widely considered as one of the best poets
creative artist of early 20th-century India. In 1913
in twentieth-century Korean literature and was
he became the first non-European to receive the
nominated five times for the Nobel Prize in
Nobel Prize for Literature.
literature. His grandmother’s stories and his
 Tagore’s works are practically untranslatable, as his
interest in Buddhism had a strong influence upon
over 2,000 songs, which attained considerable
his writing.
recognition among all groups of Bengali society.
 He wrote over 1,000 poems over more than 60
years and had considerable influence on Korean
 AFRICAN LITERATURE
 There are 54 nations which make up Africa. Each of
these separate countries has their own history,
culture, tribes, and traditions. With that being said,
there are some commonalities shared by literature
which comes from the continent as a whole.
 Describing African literature can be difficult. There
are some writers who think African literature can
only be written in African languages. While others
consider African literature can be written in any
language if it is created by writers from Africa.
 African literature comprises of a body of texts in
various languages and several genres, varying from
oral literature to literature written in foreign
languages (French, Portuguese, and English).
 Oral literature, including stories, dramas, riddles,
histories, myths, songs, proverbs, and other
expressions, is frequently employed to educate
and entertain children. Oral histories, myths, and
proverbs additionally serve to remind whole
communities of their ancestors' heroic deeds, their
past, and the precedents for their customs and
traditions. Essential to oral literature is a concern
for presentation and oratory. Folktale tellers use
call-response techniques. A griot (praise singer)
will accompany a narrative with music.
 Some of the first African writings to gain attention
in the West were the poignant slave narratives.
Since the early 19th century writers from western
Africa have used newspapers to air their views.
Several founded newspapers that served as
vehicles for expressing nascent nationalist feelings.
 Africa suffered several difficulties in its lengthy
history which gave an influence on the themes and
topics of its literature. One difficulty which headed
to several others is that of colonization. The
problem with colonization is when the incoming
people take advantage of the indigenous people
and the properties of the occupied land.
 Colonization led to slavery. Millions of African
people were enslaved and brought to Western
countries around the world from the sixteenth to
nineteenth centuries. This spreading of African
people, largely against their will, is called the
African Diaspora.
 After World War II, as Africans began demanding
their independence, more African writers were
published. The writers written in European
languages, and often they shared the same themes:
the clash between indigenous and colonial
cultures, condemnation of European suppression,
pride in the African past, and hope for the
continent's independent future.
 Masala Kulangwa and the Monster
Shing'weng'we
 Rawera (the Comforter) and the Monsters
EUROPEAN LITERATURE
Greece and Rome are considered the birth place of
European Literature. Literary pieces were conserved,
remolded, and spread through Christianity and thus
communicated to the diverse vernacular languages of
the European Continent, both in the Western
Hemisphere, and other regions the Europeans settled
in. Today, this body of writing displays a unity in its
main features making it different from the literatures of
the rest of the world.
ANCIENT PERIOD (750BC -450)
 The birth of the European literature can be traced
back to circa 750 BC. It was the time when two
significant literary works were developed. The first
was the Old Testaments of the Bible which was
composed of 39 books in Hebrew language. It is
made of various genres which include lyric poem,
tales, and histories. On the other hand was the
realization of the timeless epics: The Iliad and the
Odyssey which were associated with Homer. The
Greek literary masterpieces were conceived by
scholars to have been collected across years by
poets using the oral tradition. Evidently, the Old
Testament was highly religious and moralistic while
the Iliad and Odyssey narrated the heroic deeds of
Greek characters like Achilles and Odysseus who
reflected the culture of warfare.
CLASSICAL PERIOD (450 -1066)
 As the beginning of the Current Era (CE) comes,
Greece endured its reputation to be a cultural
overpowering force. The Greek drama flourished
during the 5th and 4th centuries BCE. The
playwright of comedy (like Aristophanes) and
tragedy (namely: Aeschylus, Sophocles, and
Euripedes) became popular in this time. Notable
lyrical poets like Pindar and Sappho were also
famous. The varied works of the great philosophers:
Plato and Aristotle were also eminent
 The Greek tradition was later endured by the
Romans, who resembled their civilization after
Greeks. When Romans gained their imperial
authority in 27 BC, the emperor Augustus Caesar
urged to have a literary identity that would reflect
Rome’s potency. Approximately a decade after, the
poet Virgil became renowned because of his
Aeneid, an epic modeled on Iliad and Odyssey.
Rome continued to produce literary giants in drama
(Seneca, Terence, and Plaurus), poetry (Horace),
and prose (Cicero and Apuleius)
MEDIEVAL PERIOD (1066 -1500)
 Medieval, “belonging to the Middle Ages,”
denotes the literature of both Europe and the
Eastern Mediterranean from the founding of the
Eastern Roman/Byzantine, Empire about 300 AD
for medieval Greek, to the period following the fall
of Rome in 476 for medieval Latin, and from about
the time of Charlemagne and the “Carolingian
Renaissance” he fostered in France (c. 800) to the
end of the 15th century for most written
vernacular literatures.
 The central literary ideals of the period are found
in works created from the dialect. The pre-
Christian literature of Europe belonged to an oral
tradition that was mirrored in the “Poetic Edda”
 and the “sagas”, or heroic epics, of Iceland, the
Anglo-Saxon “Beowulf”, and the German “Song of
Hildebrand”. These were from a common
Germanic alliterative tradition, but all were initially
recorded by Christian scribes at times later than
the historical events they relate, and the pagan
elements they hold were merged with Christian
thought and feeling.
 Two well-known literary writers from the religious
aspect: Dante Alighieri (whose Divine Comedy
depicts the three realms of afterlife and St.
Augustine (whose The Confessions and City of
God last as spiritual foundation up to this day).
 Heroic deeds and dignified actuations were
underscored in the epics like Beowulf (Anglo-
Saxon), The Song of Roland (French), The Song of
Nibelungs (German), and El Cid (Spanish). The
culture of chivalric adventure was evident in the
works associated to King Arthur, including Sir
Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur. Moreover,
Geoffer Chaucer gained his title as The Father of
English Literature with his paramount literary
work, The Canterbury Tales.
RENNAISANCE PERIOD (1485 -1680)
 Renaissance (“Rebirth”) refers to the historical
period in Europe that occurred after the middle
Ages. This left behind the medieval ways of the
past and launched a society towards a modern
world. The age was marked by three major
characteristics namely: (1) the new interest in
education, emulated by the classical scholars
known as humanists and instrumental in
providing appropriate classical models for the
new writers; (2) the new form of Christianity,
introduced by the Protestant Reformation
headed by Martin Luther, which drew men’s
interest to the individual and his inner
experiences and encouraged a response in
Catholic countries summarized by the term
“Counter-Reformation” and; (3) the journeys
of the great explorers that culminated in
Christopher Columbus’s discovery of America
in 1492 and that had extensive consequences
on the countries that developed overseas
empires, as well as on the minds and
consciences of the most exceptional writers of
the era.
 During this period, people were concerned with
individualism, as well as self and societal
improvement. The emergence of a fresh essence of
intellectual and artistic inquiry, which was the
leading feature of this political, religious, and
philosophical phenomenon, was basically a
resurgence of the spirit of ancient Greece and
Rome. In literature, this intended a new attention
and investigation given to the works of the great
classical writers. Scholars examined and translated
“lost” ancient texts, whose distribution was much
helped by developments in printing in Europe from
about 1450. Art and literature in the Renaissance
reached a height unattained in any previous period.
 On the other hand, many writers produced literary
pieces that catered to wealthy patrons who
commissioned their work. In 1440, Johannes
Gutenberg created the printing press, which
allowed for mass production of pamphlets and
novels. This event gave people more opportunities
to read publication of authors like Petrarch and
Boccaccio. Following are notable literary works
written during the Renaissance:
 Christopher Marlowe: Doctor Faustus
 Dante Alighieri: Divina Commedia
 Giovanni Boccaccio: The Decameron
 John Milton: Paradise Lost
 Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote
 Niccolo Machiavelli: The Prince
 Petrarch: Canzoniere, Trionfi
 Sir Thomas More, Utopia
 William Shakespeare: King Lear, Hamlet,
Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet
AGE OF REASON (1650 -1800)
 Also known as the “Age of Enlightenment,” the Age
of Reason aims not to grab a hold on a useful half-
truth but to cause misperception in the over- all
picture, because the predominance of reason had
also been a mark of certain periods of the previous
era. In literature, the rational desire nurtured satire,
argument, wit, plain prose; the other stimulated the
psychological novel and the poetry of the
magnificent. Since the print culture emerged from
the previous period, the volume of printed reading
materials increased. Literary works during this
period centered on human nature, people-
government relationship, property, natural laws and
rights, and organized religion. Thus, this period
caused a dramatic change in the political, economic,
social policies and beliefs of people.
 The cult of wit, satire, and argument manifested in
England in the writings of Alexander Pope,
Jonathan Swift, and Samuel Johnson, continuing
the tradition of Dryden from the 17th century. The
novel was recognized as a major art form in English
literature relatively by a rational realism shown in
the works of Henry Fielding, Daniel Defoe, and
Tobias Smollett and partly by the psychological
exploratory of the novels of Samuel Richardson and
of Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy.
 In France, the major characteristic of the period
rests in the philosophical and political writings of
the Enlightenment, which had a deep influence all
through the rest of Europe and prefigured the
French Revolution. Voltaire, Jean-Jacques
Rousseau, Charles de Montesquieu, and the
Encyclopédistes Denis Diderot and Jean d’Alembert
all dedicated much of their work to controversies
about social and religious matters, often involving
criticisms and direct conflict with the authorities.
 It is more precise to say that the 18th century was
marked by two key impulses: reason and passion.
The respect given to reason was displayed in search
of order, regularity, propriety, and scientific
 knowledge; the refinement of the feelings roused
compassion, exaltation of personal relationships,
religious fervor, and sensibility. This period
contributed to the betterment of humankind.
Famous authors and their literary works during this
period are:
 Adam Smith: The Wealth of Nations
 Daniel Defoe: Robinson Crusoe
 Denis Diderot: Encyclopedie
 Jean-Jacques Rousseau: The Social Contract,
Emile, and Confessions.
 John Locke: An Essay Concerning Human
Understanding
 Jonathan Swift: Gulliver’s Travels
 Mary Wollstonecraft: A Vindication of the Rights
of Women
 Montesquieu: Spirit of the Laws
 Thomas Hobbes: Leviathan
 Voltaire: Candide
ROMANTIC PERIOD (1798 -1870)
 Romanticism was the principal literary movement of
the initial part of the 19th century, in which
literature had its origins in the “Sturm und Drang”
period in Germany. A consciousness of this first
phase of Romanticism is an important modification
to the usual impression of Romantic literature as
something that began in English poetry with
William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge
and the publication of “Lyrical Ballads” in 1798.
 Although it is true that the French Revolution of
1789 and the Industrial Revolution were two major
political and social influences affecting the Romantic
poets of early 19th-century England, many features
of Romanticism in literature were from literary or
philosophical sources. A philosophical background
was given in the 18th century largely by Jean-
Jacques Rousseau, whose emphasis on the
individual and the power of inspiration inspired
Wordsworth and also such first-phase Romantic
writers as Friedrich Hölderlin and Ludwig Tieck in
Germany and the French writer Bernardin de Saint-
Pierre, whose “Paul et Virginie (1787)” predicted
some of the sentimental excesses of 19th-century
Romantic literature.
 Here are the famous writers of Romantic period and
their literary works:
 Fredrick Schlegel: Lucinde
 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: Phenomenology
of Mind
 Horace Walpole: The Castle of Otranto
 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: The Sorrows of
Young Werther, Faust
 Lord Byron: Don Juan, Childe Harold’s
Pilgrimage
 Mary Shelley: Frankenstein
 Samuel Taylor Coleridge: The Rime of the
Ancient Mariner, Lyrical Ballads
 Victor Hugo: Les Miserables
 William Wordsworth: The Prelude
MODERNISM (1870 -1965)
 Modernism, like realism, provided critique of
morality of the people belonging to the middle-class
society. Writers during this period explored new
forms and styles of writing, which paved way to a
technique called “stream of consciousness.”
Developed by Marcel Proust, “stream of
consciousness” is a style that allowed the author to
explore all of the facets of their thought processes
in the absence of any suggested formatting rules.
POST-MODERNISM PERIOD (1965 -PRESENT)
 Characterized by an unusual mix of high and low
culture, this period 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. The style of writing
evokes the absence of tradition in a modern
consumer-driven, technologically based society.
 Authors began to use a jumble of various
ingredients, known as pastiche,that had not been
seen as appropriate for literature before, in order to
create a more complex story, filled with allusions to
events and style of other literary works that took a
certain level of education to recognize or even
begin to appreciate.
 Here are the post-modernist famous authors and
their literary works:
 Alan Moore: Watchmen
 Alasdair Gray, Lanark: A Life in Four Books
 Dmitry Galkovsky: The Infinite Deadlock
 George Perec: Life: A User’s Manual
 Gertrude Stein: The Autobiography of Alice B.
Toklas
 Italo Calvino: If on a winter’s night a traveler
 John Fowles: The French Lieutenant’s Woman
 Umberto Eco: Foucault’s Pendulum
 Venedikt Erofeev: Moscow-Petushki
 Vladimir Nabokov: Mother Night
 Walter Abish: How German Is It
AMERICAN LITERATURE
The Colonial and Early National Period
(17th century to 1830)
 As early as 1600, the first European settlers of
North America wrote about their experiences
starting. This was considered the earliest
American literature and was characterized as
practical, straightforward, often derivative of the
Great Britain literature, and future-centered.
Moreover, the American literature consisted
mostly of practical non-fiction written by British
settlers who occupied the continent that was
discovered by Christopher Columbus, which
would later on become the United States of
America. The period was marked by the
following writers and their literary contributions.
 John Smith wrote the Histories of Virginia.
Published in 1608 and 1624, this account was
 written based on his life experiences as an
English explorer and president of the Jamestown
Colony.
 The writers Nathaniel Ward and John Winthrop
wrote books on religion, which focused about
the colonial America.
 In 1650, Anne Bradstreet wrote The Tenth Muse
Lately Sprung Up in America, which was said to
be the earliest collection of poetry written in and
about America, although it was published in
England
 A new era began when the United States
declared its independence in 1776, and much
new writing addressed the country’s future.
American poetry and fiction were largely
modeled on what was being published overseas
in Great Britain, and much of what American
readers consumed also came from Great Britain.
 Between 1787 and 1788, Alexander Hamilton,
James Madison, and John Jay wrote The Federalist
Papers which greatly influenced the political
direction of the United States.
 Between 1770s and 1780s, Benjamin Franklin
wrote Autobiography, which told his American life
story.
 Phillis Wheatley, an African woman enslaved in
Boston, wrote the first African American book,
Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral
(1773). Philip Freneau was another notable poet of
the era.
 The first American novel, The Power of Sympathy by
William Hill Brown, was published in 1789.
 Olaudah Equiano’s autobiography, The Interesting
Narrative (1789), was among the earliest slave
narratives and a forceful argument for abolition.
 By the first decades of the 19th century, a truly
American literature began to emerge. Though still
derived from British literary tradition, the short
stories and novels published from 1800 through the
1820s began to depict American society and explore
the American landscape in an unprecedented
manner.
 Washington Irving published the collection of short
stories and essays The Sketch Book of Geoffrey
Crayon, Gent. in 1819–20. It included “The Legend
of Sleepy Hollow” and “Rip Van Winkle,” two of the
earliest American short stories.
 James Fenimore Cooper wrote novels of adventure
about the frontiersman Natty Bumppo. These
novels, called the Leatherstocking Tales (1823–41),
depict his experiences in the American wilderness in
both realistic and highly romanticized ways.
The ROMANTIC PERIOD (1830 to 1870)
 Romanticism is a way of thinking that
emphasizes and embraces individualism and a
person’s emotional experience over reason. This
also is a movement that shows appreciation of
the wildness of nature over human- made order.
A worldwide view which emerged in the Western
Europe in the late 18th century, the Americans
embraced the movement in the early 19th
century.
 Edgar Allan Poe is one of the well-known writers of
the Romantic period. He was a genius, who was
often tormented and struggled against writing
conventions—during the 1830s and up to his
mysterious death in 1849.
 In 1841, Poe wrote “The Murders in the Rue
Morgue.”
 His poem “The Raven” (1845) is a gloomy depiction
of lost love. Its eeriness is intensified by its meter
and rhyme scheme.
 The short stories titled “The Fall of the House of
Usher” (1839) and “The Cask of Amontillado”
(1846) is gripping tales of horror.
 In New England, several different groups of
writers and thinkers emerged after 1830, each
exploring the experiences of individuals in
different segments of American society.
 James Russell Lowell was among those who
used humor and dialect in verse and prose to
depict everyday life in the Northeast.
 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Oliver
Wendell Holmes were the most prominent of
the upper- class Brahmins, who filtered their
depiction of America through European models
and sensibilities.
 The Transcendentalists developed an elaborate
philosophy that saw in all of creation a unified
whole. Transcendentalists’ concepts include: (1.)
Nature is the Truth; (2.) Nature is God and God is
Nature; and (3) Be self-reliant and stand up for
what you believe.
 Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote influential essays,
while Henry David Thoreau wrote Walden (1854),
an account of his life alone by Walden Pond.
Margaret Fuller was editor of The Dial, an
important Transcendentalist magazine.
 The three men writers namely Nathaniel
Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Walt
Whitman wrote and published literary works
that became some of the most-enduring and
well-known works of American literature up to
the present day.
 As a young man, Nathaniel Hawthorne
published short stories, most notable among
them the allegorical “Young Goodman Brown”
(1835). In the 1840s he crossed paths with the
Transcendentalists before he started writing his
two most significant novels—The Scarlet Letter
(1850) and The House of the Seven Gables
(1851).
 Herman Melville was one of Hawthorne’s
friends and neighbors. Hawthorne was also a
strong influence on Melville’s Moby Dick (1851),
which was the culmination of Melville’s early life
of traveling and writing.
 Walt Whitman wrote poetry that described his
home, New York City. He refused the traditional
constraints of rhyme and meter in favor of free
verse in Leaves of Grass (1855), and his
frankness in subject matter and tone repelled
some critics. But the book, which went through
many subsequent editions, became a landmark
 in American poetry, and it epitomized the ethos
of the Romantic period.
 During the 1850s, as the United States headed
toward civil war, more and more stories by and
about enslaved and free African Americans were
written.
 William Wells Brown published what is
considered the first black American novel, Clotel,
in 1853. He also wrote the first African American
play to be published, The Escape (1858).
 In 1859 Frances Ellen Watkins Harper and
Harriet E. Wilson became the first black women
to publish fiction in the United States.
 Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, first
published serially 1851–52, is credited with
raising opposition in the North to slavery.
 Emily Dickinson lived a life quite unlike other
writers of the Romantic period: she lived largely in
seclusion; only a handful of her poems were
published before her death in 1886; and she was a
woman working at a time when men dominated the
literary scene. Yet her poems express a Romantic
vision as clearly as Walt Whitman’s or Edgar Allan
Poe’s. They are sharp-edged and emotionally
intense. Five of her notable poems are:
 I’m Nobody! Who are you?”
 “Because I could not stop for Death –”
 “My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun”
 “A Bird, came down the Walk –”
 “Safe in their Alabaster Chambers”
REALISM AND NATURALISM (1870 to 1910)
 The Civil War in the United States caused an
immense human cost. They said was had recorded
that more than 2.3 million Soldiers fought in the
war. As a result of it, an estimated number of
851,000 people died in the years 1861 to 1865.
 Walt Whitman claimed that “a great literature
will…arise out of the era of those four years.”
Realism became the literary movement of most
writers. The literature that had emerged in the
following decades was characterized by its
detailed, realistic, and unembellished vision of
the world as it truly was.
 After the Civil War, writing has become the
means of self-expression of the Americans.
Following are the well- known American writers
who were known from this period up to the
present time:
 Samuel Clemens, with the pseudonym Mark
Twain, was a typesetter, a journalist, a riverboat
captain, and an itinerant laborer before he
became a 27-year-old writer in 1863.
 Published in 1865, his celebrated short story
“The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras
County,” made him famous. Twain’s story was a
humorous tall tale, at the same time; its
characters were realistic depictions of American
people.
 Twain deployed this writing style marked with
humor and realism throughout his writing. Some
of his notable works include novels “The
Adventures of Tom Sawyer” (1876) and “The
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” (1885).
 He also wrote the Travel narratives
“The Innocents Abroad” (1869), “Roughing It”
(1872), and “Life on the Mississippi” (1883).
Lastly, he wrote the short stories “Jim Baker’s
Blue-Jay Yarn” (1880), “The Man that Corrupted
Hadleyburg” (1899)
 Meanwhile, Naturalism is also a literary
movement that emerged during the period but
this was distinctly marked with an intensified
form of realism. This movement had drawn
inspiration from 19th century French who sought
to document, through fiction, the reality that
they saw around them, and particularly centered
on the middle-class and working class who were
living in cities.
 The foremost among American writers who
embraced naturalism was Theodore Dreiser .
His Sister Carrie (1900) is the most important
American naturalist novel.
 Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (1893) and The
Red Badge of Courage (1895), by Stephen
Crane, and McTeague (1899), The Octopus
(1901), and The Pit (1903), by Frank Norris, are
novels that vividly depict the reality of urban life,
war, and capitalism.
 Paul Laurence Dunbar was an African American
writer who wrote poetry in black dialect
—“Possum,” “When de Co’n Pone’s Hot”—that
were popular with his white audience and gave
them what they believed was reality for black
Americans. Dunbar also wrote poems not in
dialect—“We Wear the Mask,” “Sympathy”—
that exposed the reality of racism in America
during Reconstruction and afterward.
 Henry James had the same views with the
realists and naturalists but his writing style and
use of literary form created an aesthetic
experience aside from merely documenting the
truth. He was preoccupied with the clash in
values between the United States and Europe.
His writing shows features of both 19th-century
realism and naturalism and 20th-century
modernism. Some of his notable novels are:
 The American (1877)
 The Portrait of a Lady (1881)
 What Maisie Knew (1897)
 The Wings of the Dove (1902)
 The Golden Bowl (1904)
THE MODERNIST PERIOD (1910 to 1945)
 Advances in science and technology in Western
countries rapidly intensified at the start of the
20th century and brought about a sense of
unprecedented progress. The devastation of
World War I and the Great Depre ssion also
caused widespread suffering in Europe and the
United States. These contradictory impulses can
be found swirling within modernism, a
 movement in the arts defined first and foremost
as a radical break from the past. But this break
was often an act of destruction, and it caused a
loss of faith in traditional structures and beliefs.
Despite, or perhaps because of, these
contradictory impulses, the modernist period
proved to be one of the richest and most
productive in American literature.
 A sense of disillusionment and loss pervades
much American modernist fiction. That sense
may be centered on specific individuals, or it
may be directed toward American society or
toward civilization generally. It may generate a
nihilistic, destructive impulse, or it may express
hope at the prospect of change.
 F. Scott Fitzgerald skewered the American Dream in
The Great Gatsby (1925).
 Richard Wright exposed and attacked American
racism in Native Son (1940).
 Ernest Hemingway’s early novels The Sun Also
Rises (1926) and A Farewell to Arms (1929)
articulated the disillusionment of the Lost
Generation.
 Willa Cather told hopeful stories of the American
frontier, set mostly on the Great Plains, in O
Pioneers! (1913) and My Ántonia (1918).
 William Faulkner used his stream-of-
consciousness technique in writing monologues
and other formal techniques to break from past
literary practice in The Sound and the Fury
(1929).
 In his literary works Of Mice and Men (1937) and
The Grapes of Wrath (1939), John Steinbeck
depicted the realistically difficult lives of migrant
workers who belong to the working class.
 T.S. Eliot was an American by birth and, as of
1927, a British subject by choice. His
fragmentary, multivoiced The Waste Land (1922)
is the quintessential modernist poem, but his
was not the dominant voice among American
modernist poets.
 Robert Frost and Carl Sandburg evocatively
described the regions—New England and the
Midwest, respectively—in which they lived.
 The Harlem Renaissance produced a rich coterie of
poets, among them Countee Cullen, Langston
Hughes, Claude McKay, and Alice Dunbar Nelson.
 Harriet Monroe founded Poetry magazine in
Chicago in 1912 and made it the most important
organ for poetry not just in the United States but
for the English-speaking world.
 During the 1920s, Edna St. Vincent Millay,
Marianne Moore, and E.E. Cummings expressed a
spirit of revolution and experimentation in their
poetry.
 In 1937, Zora Neale Hurston wrote Their Eyes Were
Watching God, which told the story of a black
woman’s three marriages.
 Drama came to prominence for the first time in the
United States in the early 20th century. Playwrights
drew inspiration from European theater but created
plays that were uniquely and enduringly American.
 Eugene O’Neill was the foremost American
playwright of the period. His Long Day’s Journey
into Night (written 1939–41, performed 1956) was
the high point of more than 20 years of creativity
that began in 1920 with Beyond the Horizon and
concluded with The Iceman Cometh (written 1939,
performed 1946).
 During the 1930s Lillian Hellman, Clifford Odets,
and Langston Hughes wrote plays that exposed
injustice in America.
 In his writings, Thornton Wilder presented an
influential and realistic vision of small-town
America in Our Town, first produced in 1938.
POST-MODERNISM/ CONTEMPORARY PERIOD
(1945 TO PRESENT)
 The United States, which emerged from World War
II confident and economically strong, entered the
Cold War in the late 1940s. This conflict with the
Soviet Union shaped global politics for more than
four decades, and the proxy wars and threat of
nuclear annihilation that came to define it were just
some of the influences shaping American literature
during the second half of the 20th century. The
1950s and ’60s brought significant cultural shifts
within the United States driven by the civil rights
movement and the women’s movement. Prior to
the last decades of the 20th century, American
literature was largely the story of dead white men
who had created Art and of living white men doing
the same. By the turn of the 21st century, American
literature had become a much more complex and
inclusive story grounded on a wide-ranging body of
past writings produced in the United States by
people of different backgrounds and open to more
Americans in the present day.
 Literature written by African Americans during
the contemporary period was shaped in many
ways by Richard Wright, whose autobiography
Black Boy was published in 1945. He left the
United States for France after World War II,
repulsed by the injustice and discrimination he
faced as a black man in America; other black
writers working from the 1950s through the
1970s also wrestled with the desires to escape
an unjust society and to change it.
 Ralph Ellison’s novel Invisible Man (1952) tells
the story of an unnamed black man adrift in, and
ignored by, America.
 James Baldwin wrote essays, novels, and plays
on race and sexuality throughout his life, but his
first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953),
was his most accomplished and influential.
 Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, a play
about the effects of racism in Chicago, was first
performed in 1959.
 Gwendolyn Brooks became, in 1950, the first
African American poet to win a Pulitzer Prize.
 The Black Arts movement was grounded in the
tenets of Black Nationalism and sought to
 generate a uniquely black consciousness. The evolution and development American
Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965), by Malcolm literature. Allen Ginsberg wrote Howl (1956), a
X and Alex Haley, is among its most-lasting poem that pushed aside the formal, largely
literary expressions. traditional poetic conventions that had come to
dominate American poetry. Raucous, profane,
 Toni Morrison’s first novel, The Bluest Eye and deeply moving, Howl reset Americans’
(1970), launched a writing career that would put expectations for poetry during the second half of
the lives of black women at its center. She the 20th century and beyond. Among the
received a Nobel Prize in 1993. important poets of this period are:
 In the 1960s Alice Walker began writing novels,  Adrienne Rich
poetry, and short stories that reflected her  Anne Sexton
involvement in the civil rights movement.  Donald Hall
 During the Post-War period, the American novels  Elizabeth Bishop
had taken several numbers of forms. Writers and  James Merrill
writings varied and were classified as realist,  John Berryman
meta-fictional, post-modern, absurdist, and  Nikki Giovanni
autobiographical, short, long, fragmentary,  Rita Dove
feminist, stream of consciousness.  Robert Pinsky
 More labels can be applied to the numerous  Sylvia Plath
writings and literary works of American  Tracy K. Smith
novelists. Among representative novels are:  W.S. Merwin Yusef
 Norman Mailer: The Naked and the Dead  Komunyakaa
(1948), The Executioner’s Song (1979)  In the early decades of the contemporary period,
 Vladimir Nabokov: Lolita (1955) American drama was dominated by three men
 Jack Kerouac: On the Road (1957) namely Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, and
 Thomas Pynchon: The Crying of Lot 49 (1966) Edward Albee.
 Miller’s Death of a Salesman (1949) questioned
 Kurt Vonnegut: Slaughterhouse-Five (1969)
the American Dream through the destruction of
 Philip Roth: Portnoy’s Complaint (1969),
its main character.
American Pastoral (1997)
 Meanwhile, Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire
 Ursula K. Le Guin: The Left Hand of Darkness
(1947) and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955)
(1969)
excavated his characters’ dreams and
 Eudora Welty: The Optimist’s Daughter (1972)
frustrations.
 Saul Bellow: Humboldt’s Gift (1975)
 Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962)
 Toni Morrison: Song of Solomon (1977),
rendered what might have been a benign
Beloved (1987)
domestic situation into something vicious and
 Alice Walker: The Color Purple (1982)
cruel. By the 1970s the face of American drama
 Sandra Cisneros: The House on Mango Street had begun to change, and it continued to
(1983) diversify into the 21st century.
 Jamaica Kincaid: Annie John (1984)
 Maxine Hong Kingston: Tripmaster Monkey: His Other notable American dramatists include:
Fake Book (1989)
 David Foster Wallace: Infinite Jest (1996)  Amiri Baraka
 Don DeLillo: Underworld (1997)  August Wilson
 Ha Jin: Waiting (1999)  David Henry Hwang
 Jonathan Franzen: The Corrections (2001)  David Mamet
 Junot Díaz: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar  Ntozake Shange
Wao (2007)  Richard Greenberg
 Colson Whitehead: The Underground Railroad
 Sam Shepard
(2016)
 Having a lasting influence on American poetry  Suzan-Lori Parks
during this period, the Beat movement had been  Tony Kushner
a short-lived movement in the history of the  Wendy Wasserstein