The History of World

Literature
1000 BC - Present
800BC-400BC: Ancient Greek
Literature
 Forms the basis of liberal arts education, and has been taught
since organized education began. Includes philosophical
treatises, epic poetry, myths and plays.
 Aristotle, Poetics
 Plato, The Apology
 Sophocles, Antigone
 Homer, The Illiad & The Odyssey
450-1066: Anglo-Saxon (Old
English) Literature
 Primarily consists of poems already circulating in
oral form at the time they were first written
down. The bulk of the prose literature is historical
or religious in nature.
 Beowulf
1066-1500: Middle English Literature
 Thetransitional period between Anglo-Saxon
and modern English literature. This time period
saw a flowering of secular literature, including
ballads and allegorical poems.

 Petrarch Petrarchan sonnets

 Dante Aligheri The Divine Comedy
 Geoffrey Chaucer The Canterbury Tales
1500-1660: The Renaissance
 Influenced by the artistic and cultural
Renaissance, the transformation of both English
language and literature in this period can be
seen to move away from the medieval Middle
English literature period and into the more
recognizably modern Elizabethan literature.
1500-1660: The Renaissance
 Theperiod is characterized by the influence of
the classics (in literature, language, and
philosophy), as well as an optimistic forward-
thinking approach to the potential of humans.
 The Renaissance
 Miguel Cervantes Don Quixote,
 William Shakespeare plays & sonnets
 Christopher Marlowe Dr. Faustus, pastoral poetry
 Ben Jonson: satirical plays & lyric poetry
 John Milton Paradise Lost
1660-1785: Neoclassicism
A movement whose artists looked to the classical
texts for their creative inspiration in an effort to
imitate classical form. The writers in particular drew
on what were considered to be classical virtues—
simplicity, order, restraint, logic, economy, accuracy,
and decorum—to produce prose, poetry, and drama.
Literature was of value in accordance with its ability
to not only delight, but also instruct.
Neoclassicism
Voltaire Candide
Alexander Pope epic and narrative poetry,
heroic couplet
Daniel Defoe Robinson Crusoe
Jonathan Swift Gulliver’s Travels
1650 - 1730: Puritan Literature/Puritan Plain
Style (United States)
 In
Puritan literature, the writers'
purpose is to show how God
works in their lives. Plain style
writing avoids irony, humor,
hyperbole, and any literary
device that might keep the
reader from understanding the
writer's purpose.
1650 - 1730: Puritan Literature/Puritan Plain
Style (United States)

 Anne Bradstreet To My Dear and Loving Husband

 Edward Taylor Huswifery
 Jonathan Edwards Sinners in the Hands of an
Angry God
1730-1800: The Age of Reason (U.S)
The 18th-century American “Age of
Reason” was a movement marked
by an emphasis on rationality
rather than religious tradition. It’s
foremost thinkers, Benjamin
Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, also
served as political leaders of the
American Revolution.
1730-1800: The Age of Reason (U.S)
 4 major factors for this animosity:
1. Paine denied that the Bible was a sacred, inspired text
2. He argued that Christianity was a human invention
3. His ability to command a large readership frightened
those in power
4. His irreverent and satirical style of writing about
Christianity and the Bible offended many believer
1730-1800: The Age of Reason (U.S)
 scientificinquiry instead of unquestioning religious dogma
 representative government in place of monarchy.
 emphasis on ideals of justice, liberty, and equality as the
natural rights of man
 intellectual pursuit is the highest form of human
consciousness. Faith in human goodness and dignity of
humankind.
1785-1830: Romanticism
 Romanticism was an artistic and intellectual movement that
originated in late 18th century Western Europe and quickly
spread to America. Some of the main underlying ideas of the
movement are:
 Answer the question of man’s relationship with God.
 Thebelief in the natural goodness of man and the idea that
man, in a state of nature, would behave well but is hindered
by civilization.
1785-1830: Romanticism
Romantic artists wished to move away from
the formality of the previous generation.
Strong emotion became a source of aesthetic
experience, placing new emphasis on such
emotions as nervousness, horror, and the awe
experienced in confronting the sublimity of
nature.
Romanticism
British Poetry
 William Blake
 William Wordsworth
 Samuel Taylor Coleridge
 Lord Byron
 Percy Bysshe Shelley
 John Keats
 Alfred Lord Tennyson

British Literature
 Jane Austen Pride and Prejudice
 Mary Shelley Frankenstein

American Literature
 Washington Irving Rip Van Winkle
 James Fenimore Cooper Last of the Mohicans
1830-1900: The Victorian Period
Victorian novels tend to be idealized
portraits of difficult lives in which hard
work, perseverance, love and luck win out in
the end; virtue would be rewarded and
wrongdoers are suitably punished. They
often contain a central moral lesson or theme.
Victorian Period (cont’d)
World Literature
 Henrik Ibsen A Doll’s House
 Victor Hugo Les Miserables
British Victorian Poetry
 Robert Browning
 Elizabeth Barrett Browning
British Victorian Literature
Charlotte Bronte
Jane Eyre
Emily Bronte
Wuthering Heights
Charles Dickens
Great Expectations
1830-1865: American Renaissance
A period during which American literature came of age
as an expression of a national spirit. These authors
utilized native dialect, history, landscape, and characters
in order to explore uniquely American issues.
 Emily Dickinson poetry
 Walt Whitman poetry
 Herman Melville Moby Dick & Billy Budd
 Nathaniel Hawthorne The Scarlet Letter
1855-1900: American Realism & Regionalism
A literary movement that attempted to portray an accurate,
detailed picture of ordinary, contemporary life. Some of its
main ideas were:
Humans control their destinies: characters act on their
environment rather than simply reacting to it.

Renders reality closely and in comprehensive detail:

Selective presentation of reality with an emphasis on
verisimilitude, even at the expense of a well-made plot.
1855-1900: American Realism & Regionalism
 Classis important: primarily, the interests and aspirations of an
insurgent middle class.
 Diction
is the natural vernacular: not heightened or poetic; tone
may be comic, satiric, or matter-of-fact.
 The
use of symbolism is controlled and limited: the realists
depend more on the use of images.

 Mark Twain The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

 Kate Chopin The Awakening
 1900-1940: Modernism
Modernism provided a radical break
with traditional modes of literature.
Its main characteristics were stylistic
innovations - disruption of
traditional syntax and form – and
an obsession with primitive attitudes
(violence, self-centeredness)
1918-1940: The Lost Generation
A term used to describe the generation of writers, many of
them soldiers, who published in the years following WW I.
These authors were said to be disillusioned by the large
number of casualties of the First World War, cynical, disdainful
of the antiquated notions of morality and propriety of their
elders and ambivalent about gender ideals.
 F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby
 Ernest Hemingway The Sun Also Rises
 1960’s-Present: Metafiction
 Metafictionis a type of fiction that self-
consciously addresses the devices of fiction,
constantly reminding the reader that he or she
is reading a fictional work. Some examples of
metafiction are:
A novel about a person writing a novel
A novel about a person reading a novel
A novel in which the author is a character
A work of fiction within a fiction.