1.
History of literature
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Some recorded materials, such as compilations of data are not considered literature, and this article relates only to the evolution of the works defined above. Literature and writing, though connected, are not synonymous, scholars have often disagreed concerning when written record-keeping became more like literature than anything else, the definition is largely subjective. Moreover, given the significance of distance as a cultural isolator in earlier centuries, the historical development of literature did not occur at an even pace across the world. Much has been written, for example, about the destruction of the Library of Alexandria in the 1st century BC, the deliberate suppression of texts by organisations of either a spiritual or a temporal nature further shrouds the subject. Certain primary texts, however, may be isolated which have a role as literatures first stirrings. Many texts handed down by oral tradition over several centuries before they were fixed in form are difficult or impossible to date. The core of the Rigveda may date to the mid 2nd millennium BC, the Pentateuch is traditionally dated to the 15th century, although modern scholarship estimates its oldest part to date to the 10th century BC at the earliest. Homers Iliad and Odyssey date to the 8th century BC and mark the beginning of Classical Antiquity and they also stand in an oral tradition that stretches back to the late Bronze Age. The great Hindu epics were also transmitted orally, likely predating the Maurya period, the Classic of Poetry is the oldest existing collection of Chinese poetry, comprising 305 works by anonymous authors dating from the 11th to 7th centuries BC. The Chu Ci anthology is a volume of poems attributed to or considered to be inspired by Qu Yuans verse writing. Qu Yuan is the first author of verse in China to have his name associated to his work and is regarded as one of the most prominent figures of Romanticism in Chinese classical literature. The first great author on military tactics and strategy was Sun Tzu, among the earliest Chinese works of narrative history, Zuo Zhuan is a gem of classical Chinese prose. This work and the Shiji or Records of the Grand Historian, were regarded as the models by many generations of prose stylists in ancient China. The books that constitute the Hebrew Bible developed over roughly a millennium, the oldest texts seem to come from the eleventh or tenth centuries BCE, whilst most of the other texts are somewhat later. They are edited works, being collections of various sources intricately and carefully woven together, the Old Testament was compiled and edited by various men over a period of centuries, with many scholars concluding that the Hebrew canon was solidified by about the 3rd century BC. The works have been subject to various literary evaluations, friedrich Nietzsche wrote, “In the Jewish Old Testament, there are men, things and speeches in so grand a style that Greek and Indian literature have nothing to compare to it. One stands with awe and reverence before these tremendous remnants of what man once was, the taste for the Old Testament is a touchstone of greatness and smallness. ”Ancient Greek society placed considerable emphasis upon literature. Notable among later Greek poets was Sappho, who defined, in many ways, a playwright named Aeschylus changed Western literature forever when he introduced the ideas of dialogue and interacting characters to playwriting
2.
Ancient Egyptian literature
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Ancient Egyptian literature was written in the Egyptian language from ancient Egypts pharaonic period until the end of Roman domination. It represents the oldest corpus of Egyptian literature, along with Sumerian literature, it is considered the worlds earliest literature. Writing in ancient Egypt—both hieroglyphic and hieratic—first appeared in the late 4th millennium BC during the phase of predynastic Egypt. It was not until the early Middle Kingdom that a narrative Egyptian literature was created and this was a media revolution which, according to Richard B. However, it is possible that the literacy rate was less than one percent of the entire population. The creation of literature was thus an elite exercise, monopolized by a scribal class attached to government offices, However, there is no full consensus among modern scholars concerning the dependence of ancient Egyptian literature on the sociopolitical order of the royal courts. Middle Egyptian, the language of the Middle Kingdom, became a classical language during the New Kingdom. Scribes of the New Kingdom canonized and copied many literary texts written in Middle Egyptian, some genres of Middle Kingdom literature, such as teachings and fictional tales, remained popular in the New Kingdom, although the genre of prophetic texts was not revived until the Ptolemaic period. Popular tales included the Story of Sinuhe and The Eloquent Peasant, while important teaching texts include the Instructions of Amenemhat and The Loyalist Teaching. By the New Kingdom period, the writing of graffiti on sacred temple and tomb walls flourished as a unique genre of literature. The acknowledgment of rightful authorship remained important only in a few genres, while texts of the genre were pseudonymous. Ancient Egyptian literature has been preserved on a variety of media. This includes papyrus scrolls and packets, limestone or ceramic ostraca, wooden writing boards, monumental stone edifices, Texts preserved and unearthed by modern archaeologists represent a small fraction of ancient Egyptian literary material. The area of the floodplain of the Nile is under-represented because the moist environment is unsuitable for the preservation of papyri, on the other hand, hidden caches of literature, buried for thousands of years, have been discovered in settlements on the dry desert margins of Egyptian civilization. By the Early Dynastic Period in the late 4th millennium BC, Egyptian hieroglyphs, Egyptian hieroglyphs are small artistic pictures of natural objects. The Narmer Palette, dated c.3100 BC during the last phase of Predynastic Egypt, combines the hieroglyphs for catfish and chisel to produce the name of King Narmer. The Egyptians called their hieroglyphs words of god and reserved their use for exalted purposes, such as communicating with divinities, each hieroglyphic word represented both, a specific object and embodied the essence of that object, recognizing it as divinely made and belonging within the greater cosmos. Through acts of priestly ritual, like burning incense, the priest allowed spirits, mutilating the hieroglyph of a venomous snake, or other dangerous animal, removed a potential threat
3.
Akkadian literature
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Akkadian literature is the ancient literature written in the Akkadian language written in Mesopotamia during the period spanning the Middle Bronze Age to the Iron Age. Drawing on the traditions of Sumerian literature, the Babylonians compiled a substantial textual tradition of narrative, legal texts, scientific works, letters. There were libraries in most towns and temples, an old Sumerian proverb averred that he who would excel in the school of the scribes must rise with the dawn. Women as well as men learned to read and write, and in Semitic times, this involved a knowledge of the extinct Sumerian language, the Babylonians very advanced systems of writing, science and mathematics contributed greatly to their literary output. A considerable amount of Babylonian literature was translated from Sumerian originals, vocabularies, grammars, and interlinear translations were compiled for the use of students, as well as commentaries on the older texts and explanations of obscure words and phrases. The characters of the syllabary were all arranged and named, Assyrian culture and literature came from Babylonia, but even here there was a difference between the two countries. There was little in Assyrian literature that was original, and education, in Babylonia, it was of very old standing. Under the Seleucids, Greek was introduced into Babylon, and fragments of tablets have been found with Sumerian and Assyrian words transcribed into Greek letters, the earliest historical royal epic is, however, that of Zimri-Lim of Mari. Similar literature of the middle Babylonian period is poorly preserved with a fragmentary epic of the Kassite period. Exemplars of comical texts span the genres of burlesque to satire and include humorous love poems and riddles. The Dialogue of Pessimism was seen as a saturnalia by Böhl, where master and servant switch roles, and as a burlesque by Speiser, where a fatuous master mouthes clichés, lambert considered it a musing of a mercurial adolescent with suicidal tendencies. The Poor Man of Nippur provides a narrative of the triumph of the underdog over his superior while Ninurta-Pāqidāts Dog Bite is a school text of a slapstick nature. The earliest Akkadian laws are the “Old Assyrian Laws” relating to the conduct of the court of a trading colony in Anatolia. The Laws of Eshnunna were a collection of sixty laws named for the city of its provenance and dating to around 1770 BC. The Code of Ḫammu-rapi, ca.1750 BC, was the longest of the Mesopotamian legal collections, the edict of Ammi-Saduqa, ca.1646 BC, was the last issued by one of Ḫammu-rapi’s successors. The Middle Assyrian Laws date to the fourteenth century BC, over a hundred laws are extant from Assur, the Neo-Babylonian Laws number just fifteen, ca.700 BC, probably from Sippar. A plethora of mid to late second millennium versions give witness to its popularity. ”It is extant in 73 copies and was credited to a certain Sîn-lēqi-unninni, each division contains the story of a single adventure in the career of Gilgamesh, king of Uruk. The whole story is a product, and it is probable that some of the stories are artificially attached to the central figure
4.
Sumerian literature
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Sumerian literature is the literature written in the Sumerian language during the Middle Bronze Age. Most Sumerian literature is preserved indirectly, via Assyrian or Babylonian copies, the Sumerians invented the first writing system, developing Sumerian cuneiform writing out of earlier proto-writing systems by about the 30th century BC. The earliest literary texts appear from about the 27th century BC and it is not rhymed, although “comparable effects were sometimes exploited. ”It did not use syllabo-tonic versification, and the writing system precludes detection of rhythm, metre, rhyme, or alliteration. Quantitative analysis of other possible poetic features seems to be lacking, the Sumerians, Their History, Culture, and Character. In M. E. Vogelzang, H. L. J. Vanstiphout, mesopotamian Poetic Language, Sumerian and Akkadian. Jeremy Black, Graham Cunningham, Eleanor Robson, Gábor Zólyomi, the Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature Catalogue of literary works at the Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature
5.
Avesta
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The Avesta /əˈvɛstə/ is the primary collection of religious texts of Zoroastrianism, composed in the otherwise unrecorded Avestan language. The Avesta texts fall into different categories, arranged either by dialect. The principal text in the group is the Yasna, which takes its name from the Yasna ceremony, Zoroastrianisms primary act of worship. The most important portion of the Yasna texts are the five Gathas and these hymns, together with five other short Old Avestan texts that are also part of the Yasna, are in the Old Avestan language. The remainder of the Yasnas texts are in Younger Avestan, which is not only from a stage of the language. Extensions to the Yasna ceremony include the texts of the Vendidad, the Visperad extensions consist mainly of additional invocations of the divinities, while the Vendidad is a mixed collection of prose texts mostly dealing with purity laws. Even today, the Vendidad is the liturgical text that is not recited entirely from memory. Some of the materials of the extended Yasna are from the Yashts, unlike the Yasna, Visperad and Vendidad, the Yashts and the other lesser texts of the Avesta are no longer used liturgically in high rituals. Aside from the Yashts, these lesser texts include the Nyayesh texts, the Gah texts, the Siroza. Together, these texts are conventionally called Khordeh Avesta or Little Avesta texts. When the first Khordeh Avesta editions were printed in the 19th century, the term Avesta is from the 9th/10th-century works of Zoroastrian tradition in which the word appears as Zoroastrian Middle Persian abestāg, Book Pahlavi ʾpstʾkʼ. In that context, abestāg texts are portrayed as received knowledge, the literal meaning of the word abestāg is uncertain, it is generally acknowledged to be a learned borrowing from Avestan, but none of the suggested etymologies have been universally accepted. The surviving texts of the Avesta, as they exist today and that master copy, now lost, is known as the Sassanian archetype. The oldest surviving manuscript of an Avestan language text is dated 1323 CE, summaries of the various Avesta texts found in the 9th/10th century texts of Zoroastrian tradition suggest that about three-quarters of the corpus has since been lost. A pre-Sasanian history of the Avesta, if it had one, is in the realm of legend, the oldest surviving versions of these tales are found in the ninth to 11th century texts of Zoroastrian tradition. The legends run as follows, The twenty-one nasks of the Avesta were created by Ahura Mazda, supposedly, Vishtaspa or another Kayanian, Daray, then had two copies made, one of which was stored in the treasury, and the other in the royal archives. Following Alexanders conquest, the Avesta was then supposedly destroyed or dispersed by the Greeks after they translated the scientific passages that they could make use of, the Denkard also transmits another legend related to the transmission of the Avesta. In that story, credit for collation and recension is given to the early Sasanian-era priest Tansar, who had the works collected
6.
Chinese literature
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In more modern times, the author Lu Xun is considered the founder of baihua literature in China. An attempt at tracing the genealogy of Chinese literature to religious spells, there is a wealth of early Chinese literature dating from the Hundred Schools of Thought that occurred during the Eastern Zhou Dynasty. The most important of these include the Classics of Confucianism, of Daoism, of Mohism, of Legalism, as well as works of military science and Chinese history. Note that, except for the books of poems and songs, most of this literature is philosophical and didactic, however, these texts maintained their significance through both their ideas and their prose style. These nine books therefore became the center of the educational system and they have been grouped into two categories, the Five Classics, allegedly commented and edited by Confucius, and the Four Books. Other important philosophical works include the Mohist Mozi, which taught inclusive love as both an ethical and social principle, and Hanfeizi, one of the central Legalist texts, important Daoist classics include the Dao De Jing, the Zhuangzi, and the Classic of the Perfect Emptiness. Later authors combined Daoism with Confucianism and Legalism, such as Liu An, among the classics of military science, The Art of War by Sun Tzu was perhaps the first to outline guidelines for effective international diplomacy. It was also the first in a tradition of Chinese military treatises, such as the Wujing Zongyao, the Chinese kept consistent and accurate court records after the year 841 BC, with the beginning of the Gonghe Regency of the Western Zhou Dynasty. The earliest known history of China was the Zuo Zhuan, which was compiled no later than 389 BC. The Book of Documents included early information on geography in the Yu Gong chapter, the oldest extant dictionary in China is the Erya, dated to the 3rd century BC, anonymously written but with later commentary by the historian Guo Pu. Other early dictionaries include the Fangyan by Yang Xiong and the Shuowen Jiezi by Xu Shen, one of the largest was the Kangxi Dictionary compiled by 1716 under the auspices of the Kangxi Emperor, it provides definitions for over 47,000 characters. This groundbreaking text laid the foundation for Chinese historiography and the many official Chinese historical texts compiled for each dynasty thereafter and this was often difficult for the official dynastic historians, who used historical works to justify the reign of the current dynasty. Large encyclopedias were also produced in China through the ages, the Yiwen Leiju encyclopedia was completed by Ouyang Xun in 624 during the Tang Dynasty, with aid from scholars Linghu Defen and Chen Shuda. This included the Extensive Records of the Taiping Era, the Imperial Readings of the Taiping Era, the Finest Blossoms in the Garden of Literature, the rich tradition of Chinese poetry began with two influential collections. In northern China, the Shijing or Classic of Poetry comprises over 300 poems in a variety of styles ranging from those with a suggestion of folk music to ceremonial hymns. The word shi has the meaning of poem or poetry. Confucius is traditionally credited with editing the Shijing and its stately verses are usually composed of couplets with lines of four characters each, and a formal structure of end rhymes. Many of these early poems establish the tradition of starting with a description of nature that leads into emotionally expressive statements, known as bi, xing
7.
Hebrew literature
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Hebrew literature consists of ancient, medieval, and modern writings in the Hebrew language. It is one of the forms of Jewish literature, though there have been cases of literature written in Hebrew by non-Jews. Hebrew literature was produced in different parts of the world throughout the medieval and modern eras. Beyond comparison, the most important work of ancient Hebrew literature is the Hebrew Bible, the Mishna, compiled around 200 CE, is the primary rabbinic codification of laws as derived from the Torah. It was written in Mishnaic Hebrew, but the commentary on it. Many works of classical midrash were written in Hebrew, during the medieval period, the majority of Jewish and Hebrew literature was composed in Islamic North Africa, Spain, Palestine, and the Middle East. Many works of philosophical literature such as Maimonedes Guide to the Perplexed and The Kuzari. One work of fiction which was written in Hebrew was the Fox Fables by Berechiah ben Natronai ha-Nakdan, much medieval Jewish poetry was written in Hebrew, including liturgical piyyutim in Palestine in the seventh and eighth centuries by Yose ben Yose, Yanai, and Eleazar Kalir. These poems were added to the Hebrew-language liturgy and this liturgy was compiled in book form as the siddur by rabbis including Amram Gaon and Saadia Gaon. Later Spanish, Provençal, and Italian poets wrote both religious and secular poems, particularly prominent poets were Solomon ibn Gabirol, Yehuda Halevi, most were also active in translating Jewish rabbinic and secular literature from Arabic into Hebrew. In addition to writing traditional rabbinic literature in Hebrew, modern Jews developed new forms of fiction, poetry, and essay-writing, by the early eighteenth century, Jewish literature was still dominated by Sephardic authors, often writing in Judeo-Arabic. Moses Hayyim Luzzattos allegorical drama La-Yesharim Tehillah may be regarded as the first product of modern Hebrew literature and it has been referred to as a poem that in its classic perfection of style is second only to the Bible. Luzzattos pupil in Amsterdam, David Franco Mendes, in his imitations of Jean Racine and of Metastasio, continued his masters work, moses Mendelssohns translation of the Hebrew Bible into German inspired interest in the Hebrew language that led to the founding of a quarterly review written in Hebrew. Poetry by Naphtali Hirz Wessely such as Shire Tiferet, or Mosiade, made Wessely, so to speak, nachman Krochmal, a philosopher, theologian, and historian. Meir Halevy Letteris, a poet also known for his adaption of Goethes Faust into Hebrew. In Amsterdam, a circle of Hebrew-language literary artists emerged in the nineteenth century, in Hungary, Hebrew-language authors included Solomon Lewison of Moor, author of Melitzat Yeshurun, Gabriel Südfeld, a poet who was the father of Max Nordau, and the poet Simon Bacher. A notable Jewish author in Romania during the century was the physician. Italian Jews of the nineteenth-century who wrote in Hebrew included I. S. Reggio, Joseph Almanzi, Hayyim Salomon, abraham Mapu, the creator of the Hebrew novel, whose historical romance Ahabat Tziyyon exercised an important influence on the development of Hebrew
8.
Latin literature
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Latin literature includes the essays, histories, poems, plays, and other writings written in the Latin language. Latin literature was in ways a continuation of Greek literature. Formal Latin literature began in 240 BC, when a Roman audience saw a Latin version of a Greek play, the adaptor was Livius Andronicus, a Greek who had been brought to Rome as a prisoner of war in 272 BC. Andronicus also translated Homers Greek epic the Odyssey into an old type of Latin verse called Saturnian, the first Latin poet to write on a Roman theme was Gnaeus Naevius during the 3rd century BC. He composed a poem about the first Punic War, in which he had fought. Naeviuss dramas were mainly reworkings of Greek originals, but he also created based on Roman myths. Quintus Ennius wrote an epic, the Annals, describing Roman history from the founding of Rome to his own time. He adopted Greek dactylic hexameter, which became the verse form for Roman epics. He also became famous for his tragic dramas, in this field, his most distinguished successors were Marcus Pacuvius and Lucius Accius. These three writers rarely used episodes from Roman history, instead, they wrote Latin versions of tragic themes that the Greeks had already handled. But even when they copied the Greeks, they did not translate slavishly, only fragments of their plays have survived. Considerably more is known about early Latin comedy, as 26 Early Latin comedies are extant –20 of which Plautus wrote, and these men modeled their comedies on Greek plays known as New Comedy. But they treated the plots and wording of the originals freely, Plautus scattered songs through his plays and increased the humor with puns and wisecracks, plus comic actions by the actors. Terences plays were more polite in tone, dealing with domestic situations and his works provided the chief inspiration for French and English comedies of the 17th century AD, and even for modern American comedy. The prose of the period is best known through On Agriculture by Cato the Elder, Cato also wrote the first Latin history of Rome and of other Italian cities. He was the first Roman statesman to put his political speeches in writing as a means of influencing public opinion, Early Latin literature ended with Gaius Lucilius, who created a new kind of poetry in his 30 books of Satires. He wrote in an easy, conversational tone about books, food, friends and this period is usually said to have begun with the first known speech of Cicero and ended with the death of Ovid. Cicero has traditionally been considered the master of Latin prose, Ciceros many works can be divided into four groups, letters, rhetorical treatises, philosophical works, and orations
9.
Indian literature
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Indian literature refers to the literature produced on the Indian subcontinent until 1947 and in the Republic of India thereafter. The Republic of India has 22 officially recognized languages, the earliest works of Indian literature were orally transmitted. Sanskrit literature begins with the literature of the Rig Veda a collection of sacred hymns dating to the period 1500–1200 BCE. The Sanskrit epics Ramayana and Mahabharata appeared towards the end of the first millennium BCE, Classical Sanskrit literature developed rapidly during the first few centuries of the first millennium BCE, as did the Tamil Sangam literature, and the Pāli Canon. In the medieval period, literature in Kannada and Telugu appeared in the 9th and 11th centuries respectively, later, literature in Marathi, Odia, Bengali, various dialects of Hindi, Persian and Urdu began to appear as well. Early in the 20th century, Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore became Indias first Nobel laureate, in contemporary Indian literature, there are two major literary awards, these are the Sahitya Akademi Fellowship and the Jnanpith Award. Examples of early works written in Vedic Sanskrit include the holy Hindu texts, other examples include the Sulba Sutras, which are some of the earliest texts on geometry. Ved Vyasas Mahabharata and Valmikis Ramayana, written in Epic Sanskrit, are regarded as the greatest Sanskrit epics, the famous poet and playwright Kālidāsa wrote one epic, Raghuvamsha, it was written in Classical Sanskrit rather than Epic Sanskrit. Other examples of written in Classical Sanskrit include the Pāṇinis Ashtadhyayi which standardized the grammar. The Laws of Manu is an important text in Hinduism, some other famous plays were Mricchakatika by Shudraka, Svapna Vasavadattam by Bhasa, and Ratnavali by Sri Harsha. Later poetic works include Geeta Govinda by Jayadeva, some other famous works are Chanakyas Arthashastra and Vatsyayanas Kamasutra. The most notable Prakrit languages were the Jain Prakrit, Pali, Maharashtri, one of the earliest extant Prakrit works is Hālas anthology of poems in Maharashtri, the Gāhā Sattasaī, dating to the 3rd to 5th century CE. Kālidāsa and Harsha also used Maharashtri in some of their plays, in Jainism, many Svetambara works were written in Maharashtri. Many of Aśvaghoṣas plays were written in Shauraseni as were a number of Jain works. Canto 13 of the Bhaṭṭikāvya is written in what is called like the vernacular, the Pali Canon is mostly of Indian origin. Later Pali literature however was produced outside of the mainland Indian subcontinent, particularly in Sri Lanka. Pali literature includes Buddhist philosophical works, poetry and some grammatical works, major works in Pali are Jataka tales, Dhammapada, Atthakatha, and Mahavamsa. Some of the major Pali grammarians were Kaccayana, Moggallana and Vararuci, the Charyapadas are often cited as the earliest example of Assamese literature
10.
Vedic and Sanskrit literature
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There are contemporary efforts towards revival, with events like the All-India Sanskrit Festival holding composition contests. Some Sanskrit literature such as the Yoga-Sutras of Patanjali and the Upanishads were translated into Arabic and Persian, the Panchatantra was also translated into Persian. Composed between approximately 1500 BCE and 600 BCE in pre-classical Sanskrit, Vedic oral literature forms the basis for the development of Hinduism. There are four Vedas - Rig, Yajur, Sāma and Atharva, each with a main Samhita, the main period of Vedic literary activity falls into c. the 9th to 7th centuries when the various shakhas compiled and memorized their respective corpora. The oldest surviving manuscript of a composed in Sanskrit is the Devi Māhātmya on Palm-leaf dating from the 11th century CE. The older Upanishads belong to the Vedic period, but the part of the Muktika canon is post-Vedic. The Aranyakas form part of both the Brahmana and Upanishad corpus, in the Vedanga disciplines of grammar and phonetics, no author had greater influence than Pāṇini with his Aṣṭādhyāyī. Being prescriptive for all later works, such as Patanjalis Mahābhāṣya. The Backus–Naur form or BNF grammars used to describe modern programming languages have significant similarities with Paninis grammar rules and they are known as itihasa, or history. While not as long as the Mahabharata, the Ramayana is still twice as long as the Iliad, traditionally, the authorship is attributed to the Hindu sage Valmiki, who is referred to as Adikavi, or first poet. In the Ramayana, the meter was introduced for the first time. Like the Mahabharata, the Ramayana was also handed down orally and it includes tales that form the basis for modern Hindu festivals and even contains a description of the same marriage practice still observed in contemporary times by people of Hindu persuasion. The story deals with Prince Rama, his exile and the abduction of his wife by the Rakshasa king Ravana, similar to the Mahabharata, the Ramayana also has several full-fledged stories appearing as sub-plots. The Ramayana has also played a similar and equally important role in the development of Indian, the Ramayana is also extant in Southeast Asian versions. The Mahabharata is one of the longest poetic works in the world, while it is clearly a poetic epic, it contains large tracts of Hindu mythology, philosophy and religious tracts. Traditionally, authorship of the Mahabharata is attributed to the sage Vyasa, the broad sweep of the story of the Mahabharata chronicles the story of the conflict between two families for control of Hastinapur, a city in ancient India. The impact of the Mahabharata on India and Hinduism can hardly be overstated, having been molded by Indian culture, it has in turn molded the development of Indian culture. Thousands of later writers would draw freely from the story and sub-stories of the Mahabharata, Sanskrit also became a major language for Indian religions such as Buddhism and Jainism
11.
Sangam literature
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The Sangam litterature is the ancient Tamil literature of the period in the history of ancient southern India spanning from c.300 BCE to 300 CE. This collection contains 2381 poems in Tamil composed by 473 poets, Sangam literature is primarily secular, dealing with everyday themes in a Tamilakam context. The poems belonging to Sangam literature were composed by Tamil poets and these poems were later collected into various anthologies, edited, and with colophons added by anthologists and annotators around 1000 AD. Sangam literature fell out of memory soon thereafter, until they were rediscovered in the 19th century by scholars such as Arumuga Navalar, C. W. Thamotharampillai. Sangam literature deals with emotional and material such as love, war, governance, trade. The Indologist Kamil Zvelebil quotes A. K. Ramanujan, In their antiquity and in their contemporaneity, there is not much else in any Indian literature equal to these quiet and these poems are not just the earliest evidence of the Tamil genius. The available literature from this period was categorized and compiled in the 10th century into two categories based roughly on chronology, the categories are patiṉeṇmēlkaṇakku comprising ettuthogai and the pattuppāṭṭu and patiṉeṇkīḻkaṇakku. Sangam poems falls into two categories, the field, and the outer field as described even in the first available Tamil grammar. The inner field topics refer to personal or human aspects, such as love and intimate relationships, the outer field topics discuss all other aspects of human experience such as heroism, courage, ethics, benevolence, philanthropy, social life, and customs. The division into agam and puram is not rigid, but depends upon the interpretation used in a specific context, Sangam literature illustrates the thematic classification scheme first described in the Tolkāppiyam. The classification ties the emotions involved in poetry to a specific landscape. These are, kuṟiñci, mountainous regions, mullai, forests, marutam, agricultural land, neytal coastal regions, in addition to the landscape based tiṇais, kaikkiLai and perunthinai are used for unsolicited love and unsuited love respectively. According to the compilers of the Sangam works such as Nakkeeran, the Tamil Sangams were academies, the legends claim that the Pandyan dynasty of the mythical cities of South Madurai, Kapatapuram, and Madurai, patronized the three Sangams. The word Sangam is probably of Indo-Aryan origin, coming from sangha, noted historians like Kamil Zvelebil have stressed that the use of Sangam literature to describe this corpus of literature is a misnomer and Classical literature should be used instead. They painstakingly collected and catalogued numerous manuscripts in various stages of deterioration, Navalar and Pillai hailed from Jaffna. Navalar brought the first Sangam text into print, this was the Thirumurukaattuppadai of Pattupattu, Pillai brought out the first of the Eight Anthologies of the Sangam classics, the Kaliththokai, in 1887. Swaminathaiyar published his first print of Paththupattu in 1889 and they published more than 100 works in all, including minor poems. J V Chellaiah of Jaffna College did the translation of the Pattuppāṭṭu in English in 1945
12.
Armenian literature
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Armenian literature begins around AD400 with the invention of the Armenian alphabet by Mesrop Mashtots. Christian Armenian literature begins about 406 with the invention of the Armenian alphabet by Mesrop for the purpose of translating Biblical books into Armenian and this early period of Armenian literature also produced many original compositions. Eznik of Kolb wrote a Refutation of the Sects, and Koryun the History of the Life of St. Mesrop and these men, both of whom were disciples of Mesrop, bring to an end what may be called the Golden Age of Armenian literature. The Golden Age was to large extent a commentary and exegesis of Hebrew and Christian literary tradition, Armenia is known to have been a nation often occupied by nearby powers, such as the Sassanid Empire. The beginning of the Medieval era was marked by the Arab conquest of Armenia, the people then start to talk of a great hero who would be able to liberate them and reestablish Armenian sovereignty. David of Sasun, known as Sasuntsi Davit, is the medieval Armenian equivalent of Hercules, in 1873, the story was first written down by Archbishop Karekin Servantzdiants, who copied word for word the tale as told by a peasant storyteller from Moush named Grbo. One of the most famous treatments of the story was the verse rendition made by Hovhannes Toumanian in 1902 and his poem only covers the story of David, which is actually only one of 4 parts of the story, although the central portion. The four portions of the story are named after their heroes, Sanasar & Balthazar, Lion-Mher, David of Sassoun, Sanasar is the father of Lion-Mher, who is the father of David, who is the father of Mher the Younger. Despite the Christian flavor of the epic, numerous fantastic creatures, good and evil, one of the ancestors of the legendary David is the Lady Dzovinar, who agrees to marry the 90-year-old King of Baghdad in order to save her people. Sanasar and Balthasar were their two sons, Sanasar moves to Sassoun, the fortress-town of Armenia, now located in Turkey. He has three children, the eldest of them being the Great Mher of Sassoun, with superhuman powers, mhers veritable son is David of Sassoun. However, he gets another son from the Arabic queen of Egypt. He is known as Misra Melik, which literally means The sovereign of Egypt and he is probably the figure of all of what the Armenians resented, traitors, and foreign oppressors. Throughout the years the half-brothers fought, and eventually David chops his nemesis in half, the medieval period opens with comparative sterility. It was mostly important in the 8th century, that of John Otznetzi, a Discourse against the Paulicians, a Synodal Discourse, and a collection of the canons of the councils and the Fathers anterior to his day, are the principal works of his now extant. About the same time appeared the translations of the works of several of the Fathers, particularly of St. Gregory of Nyssa and Cyril of Alexandria, from the pen of Stephen, Bishop of Syunik. It was two centuries later that the celebrated History of Armenia by the Catholicos John V the Historian came forth, covering the period from the origin of the nation to the year A. D.925. A contemporary of his, Annine of Mok, an abbot and the most celebrated theologian of the time, composed a treatise against the Tondrakians, the name of Chosrov, Bishop of Andzevatsentz, is honoured because of his interesting commentaries on the Breviary and Mass-Prayers
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Byzantine literature
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Byzantine literature is the Greek literature of the Middle Ages, whether written in the territory of the Byzantine Empire or outside its borders. It forms the second period in the history of Greek literature, though popular Byzantine literature and early Modern Greek literature and this practice was perpetuated by a long-established system of Greek education where rhetoric was a leading subject. A typical product of this Byzantine education was the Greek Church Fathers, consequently, the vast Christian literature of the 3rd to 6th centuries established a synthesis of Hellenic and Christian thought. In addition, this style was also removed from the Koine Greek language of the New Testament, reaching back to Homer. In this manner, the culture of the Byzantine Empire was marked for over 1000 years by a diglossy between two different forms of the language, which were used for different purposes. However, the relations between the high and low forms of Greek changed over the centuries, the political recovery of the 9th century instigated a literary revival, in which a conscious attempt was made to recreate the Hellenic-Christian literary culture of late antiquity. Simple or popular Greek was avoided in literary use and many of the saints lives were rewritten in an archaizing style. By the 12th century the cultural confidence of the Byzantine Greeks led them to new literary genres, such as romantic fiction, in which adventure. Satire made occasional use of elements from spoken Greek, at the same time there was the beginning of a flourishing literature in an approximation to the vernacular Modern Greek. However the vernacular literature was limited to poetic romances and popular devotional writing, all serious literature continued to make use of the archaizing language of learned Greek tradition. Byzantine literature has two sources, Classical Greek and Orthodox Christian tradition, each of those sources provided a series of models and references for the Byzantine writer and his readers. The oldest of three civilizations is the Greek, centered not in Athens but in Alexandria and Hellenistic civilization. Alexandria through this period is the center of both Atticizing scholarship and of Graeco-Judaic social life, looking towards Athens as well as towards Jerusalem and this intellectual dualism between the culture of scholars and that of the people permeates the Byzantine period. Both tendencies persisted in Byzantium, but the first, as the one officially recognized, retained predominance and was not driven from the field until the fall of the empire, the reactionary linguistic movement known as Atticism supported and enforced this scholarly tendency. Alexandria, the center, is balanced by Rome, the center of government. It is as a Roman Empire that the Byzantine state first entered history, its citizens were known as Romans and its laws were Roman, so were its government, its army, and its official class, and at first also its language and its private and public life. The organization of the state was similar to that of the Roman imperial period, including its hierarchy. It was in Alexandria that Graeco-Oriental Christianity had its birth, on Egyptian soil monasticism began and thrived
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Japanese literature
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Early works of Japanese literature were heavily influenced by cultural contact with China and Chinese literature, often written in Classical Chinese. Indian literature also had an influence through the Diffusion of Buddhism in Japan, since Japan reopened its ports to Western trading and diplomacy in the 19th century, Western and Eastern literature have strongly affected each other and continue to do so. Before the introduction of kanji from China, Japanese had no writing system and it is believed that Chinese characters came to Japan at the very beginning of the fifth century, brought by immigrants from the mainland of Korean and Chinese descent. Chinese characters were further adapted, creating what is known as manyōgana. The earliest literary works in Japan were created in the Nara period, one of the stories they describe is the tale of Urashima Tarō. The Heian period has been referred to as the era of art. During this era, literature became centered on an elite of nobility. The imperial court patronized the poets, most of whom were courtiers or ladies-in-waiting. Reflecting the aristocratic atmosphere, the poetry was elegant and sophisticated and expressed emotions in a rhetorical style, editing the resulting anthologies of poetry soon became a national pastime. The iroha poem, now one of two standard orderings for the Japanese syllabary, was developed during the early Heian period. Genji Monogatari written in the early 11th century by a woman named Murasaki Shikibu is considered the pre-eminent masterpiece of Heian fiction, other important writings of this period include the Kokin Wakashū, a waka-poetry anthology, and Makura no Sōshi. The Pillow Book was written by Sei Shōnagon, Murasaki Shikibus contemporary and rival, as an essay about the life, loves, another notable piece of fictional Japanese literature was Konjaku Monogatarishū, a collection of over a thousand stories in 31 volumes. The volumes cover various tales from India, China and Japan, the 10th-century Japanese narrative, Taketori Monogatari, can be considered an early example of proto-science fiction. The protagonist of the story, Kaguya-hime, is a princess from the Moon who is sent to Earth for safety during a celestial war and she is later taken back to her extraterrestrial family in an illustrated depiction of a disc-shaped flying object similar to a flying saucer. During the Kamakura period, Japan experienced many civil wars led to the development of a warrior class, and subsequent war tales, histories. Work from this period is notable for its more sombre tone compared to the works of previous eras, with themes of life and death, simple lifestyles, and redemption through killing. A representative work is Heike monogatari, an account of the struggle between the Minamoto and Taira clans for control of Japan at the end of the twelfth century. Other important tales of the period include Kamo no Chōmeis Hōjōki, despite a decline in the importance of the imperial court, aristocratic literature remained the center of Japanese culture in the beginning of the Kamakura period
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Kannada literature
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Kannada literature is the corpus of written forms of the Kannada language, a member of the Dravidian family spoken mainly in the Indian state of Karnataka and written in the Kannada script. Attestations in literature span something like one and a half millennia, with some literary works surviving in rich manuscript traditions. Although much of the prior to the 18th century was religious. The Veerashaiva movement of the 12th century created new literature which flourished alongside the Jain works, after the decline of the Vijayanagara empire in the 16th century, Kannada literature was supported by the various rulers, including the Wodeyars of the Kingdom of Mysore and the Nayakas of Keladi. In the 19th century, some forms, such as the prose narrative, the novel. In the early period and beginning of the period, between the 9th and 13th centuries, writers were predominantly Jains and Lingayats. Jains were the earliest known cultivators of Kannada literature, which dominated until the 12th century. Jain authors wrote about Tirthankaras and other aspects of religion, the Veerashaiva authors wrote about Shiva, his 25 forms, and the expositions of Shaivism. Lingayat poets belonging to the vachana sahitya tradition advanced the philosophy of Basava from the 12th century, thereafter, Lingayat and Vaishnava writers dominated Kannada literature. Vaishnava writers focused on the Hindu epics - the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, the devotional songs of the Haridasa poets, performed to music, were first noted in the 15th century. Writings on secular subjects remained popular throughout this period, writings eulogising kings, commanders and spiritual heroes waned, with a proportional increase in the use of local genres. The champu Sanskritic metre was the most popular written form from the 9th century onwards, other Sanskritic metres used were the saptapadi, the ashtaka and the shataka. There were numerous translations and adaptations of Sanskrit writings into Kannada and, to a lesser extent, the medieval period saw the development of literary metres indigenous to the Kannada language. These included the tripadi, one of the oldest native metres, the shatpadi, of six types exist, the ragale, the sangatya. There were rare interactions with Tamil literature, as well, though religious literature was prominent, literary genres including romance, fiction, erotica, satire, folk songs, fables and parables, musical treatises and musical compositions were popular. The topics of Kannada literature included grammar, philosophy, prosody, rhetoric, chronicles, biography, history, drama and cuisine, as well as dictionaries and encyclopedias. According to critic Joseph T. Shipley, over fifty works on subjects including medicine, mathematics. Kannada literature of this period was written on palm leaves
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Middle Persian literature
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Middle Persian was the prestige dialect during the era of Sassanid dynasty. These compositions, in the Aramaic-derived Book Pahlavi script, are known as Pahlavi literature. The earliest texts in Zoroastrian Middle Persian were probably written down in late Sassanid times, the surviving manuscripts are usually 14th-century copies. Pahlavi literature traditionally defines the writings of the Zoroastrians in the Middle Persian language and Book Pahlavi script which were compiled in the 9th, the literary corpus in Middle Persian in Book Pahlavi consists of, translations and commentaries of the Avesta. Other exegetical compositions on religious subjects and these divisions are not mutually exclusive. Several different literary genres are represented in Pahlavi literature, zand texts The zand corpus include exegetical glosses, paraphrases, commentaries and translations of the Avestas texts. Although such exegetical commentaries also exist in other languages, the Middle Persian zand is the only to survive fully, with the notable exception of the Yashts, almost all surviving Avestan texts have their Middle Persian zand, which in some manuscripts appear alongside the text being glossed. These glosses and commentaries were not intended for use as theological texts by themselves, in contrast, the Avestan language texts remained sacrosanct and continued to be recited in the Avestan language, which was considered a sacred language. The Bundahishn, Original Creation, is an important source of information on Zoroastrian cosmogony, Manushchihrs Dadestan i Denig and Epistles the Vichitakiha i Zatsparam, the Treatises of Zatsparam, by Manushchihrs brother Zatsparam. The Arda-Viraf Namag relates the dream-journey of a devout Zoroastrian through the next world, the Shikand-gumanic Vichar, a partly apologetic and partly polemic review of other religions. The Shayast ne-shayast, Proper and Improper, a compilation of laws and customs regarding sin and impurity, with other memoranda about ceremonies. The Shahrestaniha i Eranshahr, is a catalogue of the four regions of the Sassanid empire with mythical and/or historical stories related to their founding, several andarz texts, the Iranian type of wisdom literature containing advice and injunctions for proper behavior. The Drakht i Asurig, the Assyrian tree, is an originally Parthian poem recast into Book Pahlavi but retaining many Parthian phrases, the Abdih ud Sahigih i Sagistan is a description of the Wonders and Remarkable Features of Sistan. The Khusraw va Redag, Khusraw and the Page, is an account of a conversation between the king and a boy who would like to be a page. This work is a source of information on the delights of the Sassanian court. Only a single manuscript of this text survives. Scribes also created several glossaries for translating foreign languages, of these, two have survived, Frahang-i Pahlavig, a glossary of common Aramaic heterograms used in written Middle Persian. Frahang-i Oim-evak, a dictionary of Avestan words and phrases, several other works, now lost, are known of from references to them in other languages. e
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Medieval literature
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Medieval literature is a broad subject, encompassing essentially all written works available in Europe and beyond during the Middle Ages. The literature of time was composed of religious writings as well as secular works. Just as in literature, it is a complex and rich field of study, from the utterly sacred to the exuberantly profane. Works of literature are often grouped by place of origin, language, however, in Eastern Europe, the influence of the Eastern Roman Empire and the Eastern Orthodox Church made Greek and Old Church Slavonic the dominant written languages. The common people continued to use their respective vernaculars, although the extant versions of these epics are generally considered the works of individual poets, there is no doubt that they are based on their peoples older oral traditions. Celtic traditions have survived in the lais of Marie de France, the Mabinogion, another host of vernacular literature has survived in the Old Norse literature and more specifically in the Saga literature of Iceland. A notable amount of literature is anonymous. This is not only due to the lack of documents from a period, medieval authors often deeply respected the classical writers and the Church Fathers and tended to re-tell and embellish stories they had heard or read rather than invent new stories. And even when they did, they claimed to be handing down something from an auctor instead. From this point of view, the names of the individual authors seemed much less important, the invention of biography can be attributed to this time period. It had such ancient forebears as Plutarchs Parallel Lives and Suetoniuss Lives of the Twelve Caesars, theological works were the dominant form of literature typically found in libraries during the Middle Ages. Catholic clerics were the center of society in the Middle Ages. Countless hymns survive from time period. The liturgy itself was not in fixed form, and numerous competing missals set out individual conceptions of the order of the mass, hagiographies, or lives of the saints, were also frequently written, as an encouragement to the devout and a warning to others. The Golden Legend of Jacobus de Voragine reached such popularity that, in its time, francis of Assisi was a prolific poet, and his Franciscan followers frequently wrote poetry themselves as an expression of their piety. Dies Irae and Stabat Mater are two of the most powerful Latin poems on religious subjects, goliardic poetry was an art form used by some clerics to express dissent. The text of these plays was often controlled by local guilds, during the Middle Ages, the Jewish population of Europe also produced a number of outstanding writers. Maimonides, born in Cordoba, Spain, and Rashi, born in Troyes, secular literature in this period was not produced in equal quantity as religious literature, but much has survived and we possess today a rich corpus
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Medieval Bulgarian literature
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Medieval Bulgarian literature is Bulgarian literature in the Middle Ages. In the late 9th, the 10th and early 11th century literature in Bulgaria prospered, with many books being translated from Byzantine Greek, many scholars worked in the Preslav and Ohrid Literary Schools, creating the Cyrillic script for their needs. Bulgarian scholars and works influenced most of the Slavic world, spreading Old Church Slavonic, the Cyrillic, as the Bulgarian Empire was subjugated by the Byzantines in 1018, Bulgarian literary activity declined. However, after the establishment of the Second Bulgarian Empire followed another period of upsurge during the time of Patriarch Evtimiy in the 14th century. Evtimiy founded the Tarnovo Literary School that had a significant impact on the literature of Serbia and Muscovite Russia, Bulgarian literature continued in the Ottoman empire. Medieval Bulgarian literature was dominated by themes, most works being hymns, treatises, religious miscellanies, apocrypha and hagiographies, most often heroic. Епитетът в славянобългарската агиография от 14-15 век, anonymous Bulgarian Chronicle Старобългарска литература, Донка Петканова Илиев, И. Епитетът в славянобългарската агиография от 14-15 век,2005 Епитетът в славянобългарската агиография от 14-15 век
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Old English literature
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Old English literature or Anglo-Saxon literature, encompasses literature written in Old English, in Anglo-Saxon England from the 7th century to the decades after the Norman Conquest of 1066. The Peterborough Chronicle can also be considered a text, continuing into the 12th century. The poem Beowulf, which begins the traditional canon of English literature, is the most famous work of Old English literature. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle has also significant for historical study, preserving a chronology of early English history. In all there are over 400 surviving manuscripts from the period, besides Old English literature, Anglo-Saxons wrote a number of Anglo-Latin works. Later, on account of the work of Bernard F. Huppé, a large number of manuscripts remain from the Anglo-Saxon period, with most written during its last 300 years, in both Latin and the vernacular. There were considerable losses of manuscripts as a result of the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 16th century, Scholarly study of the language began in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I when Matthew Parker and others obtained whatever manuscripts they could. There are four major poetic manuscripts, The Junius manuscript, also known as the Cædmon manuscript, is a collection of poems on biblical narratives. The Exeter Book is an anthology, located in the Exeter Cathedral since it was donated there in the 11th century, the Vercelli Book contains both poetry and prose, it is not known how it came to be in Vercelli. The Beowulf Manuscript, sometimes called the Nowell Codex, contains prose and poetry, typically dealing with monstrous themes, including Beowulf. Seven major scriptoria produced a good deal of Old English manuscripts, Winchester, Exeter, Worcester, Abingdon, Durham, regional dialects include, Northumbrian, Mercian, Kentish, and the main dialect, West Saxon. Some Old English text survives on parchment, stone structures, Old English poetry falls broadly into two styles or fields of reference, the heroic Germanic and the Christian. Almost all Old English poets are anonymous, although there are Anglo-Saxon discourses on Latin prosody, the rules of Old English verse are understood only through modern analysis of the extant texts. The first widely accepted theory was constructed by Eduard Sievers, who distinguished five distinct alliterative patterns and his system of alliterative verse is based on accent, alliteration, the quantity of vowels, and patterns of syllabic accentuation. It consists of five permutations on a base verse scheme, any one of the five types can be used in any verse, the system was inherited from and exists in one form or another in all of the older Germanic languages. Alternative theories have proposed, such as the theory of John C. Pope, which musical notation to track the verse patterns. J. R. R. Tolkien describes and illustrates many of the features of Old English poetry in his 1940 essay On Translating Beowulf
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Arabic literature
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Arabic literature is the writing, both prose and poetry, produced by writers in the Arabic language. The Arabic word used for literature is Adab, which is derived from a meaning of etiquette, Arabic literature emerged in the 5th century with only fragments of the written language appearing before then. The Quran, widely regarded by people as the finest piece of literature in the Arabic language, would have the greatest lasting effect on Arabic culture and its literature. Arabic literature flourished during the Islamic Golden Age, but has remained vibrant to the present day, with poets, the Quran had a significant influence on the Arab language. The language used in it is called classical Arabic, and while modern Arabic is very similar and it contains injunctions, narratives, homilies, parables, direct addresses from God, instructions and even comments on itself on how it will be received and understood. It is also, paradoxically, admired for its layers of metaphor as well as its clarity, the word Quran means recitation, and in early times the text was transmitted orally. The first attempt at a written version was during the reign of the third Rightly Guided Caliph. Although it contains elements of both prose and poetry, and therefore is closest to Saj or rhymed prose, the Quran is regarded as entirely apart from these classifications, the text is believed to be divine revelation and is seen by Muslims as being eternal or uncreated. This leads to the doctrine of ijaz or inimitability of the Quran which implies that nobody can copy the works style, say, Bring you then ten chapters like unto it, and call whomsoever you can, other than God, if you speak the truth. This doctrine of ijaz possibly had a limiting effect on Arabic literature. And as to the poets, those who go astray follow them Do you not see that they wander about bewildered in every valley and this may have exerted dominance over the pre-Islamic poets of the 6th century whose popularity may have vied with the Quran amongst the people. There were a lack of significant poets until the 8th century. One notable exception was Hassan ibn Thabit who wrote poems in praise of Muhammad and was known as the prophets poet, just as the Bible has held an important place in the literature of other languages, The Quran is important to Arabic. It is the source of ideas, allusions and quotes. Aside from the Quran the hadith or tradition of what Muhammed is supposed to have said, the entire body of these acts and words are called sunnah or way and the ones regarded as sahih or genuine of them are collected into hadith. Some of the most significant collections of hadith include those by Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj, the research into the life and times of Muhammad, and determining the genuine parts of the sunnah, was an important early reason for scholarship in or about the Arabic language. Muhammad also inspired the first Arabic biographies, known as al-sirah al-nabawiyyah, the earliest was by Wahb ibn Munabbih, whilst covering the life of the prophet they also told of the battles and events of early Islam and have numerous digressions on older biblical traditions. Some of the earliest work studying the Arabic language was started in the name of Islam, tradition has it that the caliph Ali, after reading a copy of Quran with errors in it, asked Abu al-Aswad al-Duali to write a work codifying Arabic grammar
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Persian literature
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Persian literature is one of the worlds oldest literatures. It spans two-and-a-half millennia, though much of the material has been lost. For instance, Mowlana Rumi, one of best-loved Persian poets, born in Balkh or Vakhsh, wrote in Persian, the Ghaznavids conquered large territories in Central and South Asia and adopted Persian as their court language. There is thus Persian literature from Iran, Mesopotamia, Azerbaijan, not all Persian literature is written in Persian, as some consider works written by ethnic Persians in other languages, such as Greek and Arabic, to be included. The bulk of surviving Persian literature, however, comes from the following the Islamic conquest of Iran c.650 CE. After the Abbasids came to power, the Iranians became the scribes and bureaucrats of the Islamic empire and, increasingly, also its writers and poets. The New Persian literature arose and flourished in Khorasan and Transoxiana because of political reasons——the early Iranian dynasties such as Tahirids and Samanids were based in Khorasan, Iranians wrote in both Persian and Arabic, Persian predominated in later literary circles. Persian poets such as Ferdowsi, Sadi, Hafiz, Attar, Nezami, Rumi, very few literary works of Achaemenid Iran have survived, due partly to the destruction of the library at Persepolis. Most of what remains consists of the inscriptions of Achaemenid kings, particularly Darius I. Many Zoroastrian writings were destroyed in the Islamic conquest of Iran in the 7th century, the Parsis who fled to India, however, took with them some of the books of the Zoroastrian canon, including some of the Avesta and ancient commentaries thereof. Some works of Sassanid geography and travel also survived, albeit in Arabic translations, no single text devoted to literary criticism has survived from Pre-Islamic Iran. However, some essays in Pahlavi, such as Ayin-e name nebeshtan, some researchers have quoted the Shoubiyye as asserting that the Pre-Islamic Iranians had books on eloquence, such as Karvand. No trace remains of such books, there are some indications that some among the Persian elite were familiar with Greek rhetoric and literary criticism. While initially overshadowed by Arabic during the Umayyad and early Abbasid caliphates, New Persian soon became a literary language again of the Central Asian, in short, the ability to write in verse form was a pre-requisite for any scholar. For example, almost half of Avicennas medical writings are in verse, works of the early era of Persian poetry are characterized by strong court patronage, an extravagance of panegyrics, and what is known as سبک فاخر exalted in style. The tradition of patronage began perhaps under the Sassanid era. The Qasida was perhaps the most famous form of panegyric used, khorasani style, whose followers mostly were associated with Greater Khorasan, is characterized by its supercilious diction, dignified tone, and relatively literate language. The chief representatives of this lyricism are Asjadi, Farrukhi Sistani, Unsuri, panegyric masters such as Rudaki were known for their love of nature, their verse abounding with evocative descriptions
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Medieval Spanish literature
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The Medieval Spanish literature is composed by the corpus of literary works written in medieval Spanish between the beginning of the 13th and the end of the 15th century. Traditionally, the first and last work of this epoch are the Cantar de Mio Cid, a poem the manuscript of which dates from 1207, and La Celestina. By the end of the 10th century, the languages spoken in North Spain were very far from their Latin origins, Latin texts were no longer understood, as can be seen from the glosses used in Castile to explain Latin terms. Spanish oral literature was doubtless in existence before Spanish texts were written, the Jarchas, dating from the 9th to the 12th centuries C. E. were short poems spoken in local colloquial Hispano-Romance dialects, known as Mozarabic, but written in Arabic script. The Jarchas appeared at the end of poetry written in Arabic or Hebrew known as muwashshah. Typically spoken in the voice of a woman, the jarchas express the anxieties of love, particularly of its loss, as in the example, Vayse meu corachón de mib. ya Rab. Mi corazón se me va de mí, oh Dios, ¿acaso se me tornará. ¡Tan fuerte mi dolor por el amado, what the discovery of the jarchas makes clear instead is that from its origins, the literature of Spain has arisen out of and born witness to a rich, heterogeneous mix of cultures and languages. The epic poem Cantar de Mio Cid was written about a real man—his battles, conquests, the poet, name unknown, wrote the epic in about 1140 and Cid supposedly died forty years before in 1099. This epic represents realism, because nothing was exaggerated and the details are very real, unlike other European epics, the poem is not idealized and there is no presence of supernatural beings. It has assonance instead of rhyme and its lines vary in length and this type of verse is known as mester de juglaria. The epic is divided into three parts, also known as cantos, Medieval Spanish poets recognized the Mester de Juglaría as a literary form written by the minstrels and composed of varying line length and use of assonance instead of rhyme. These poems were sung to uneducated audiences, nobles and peasants alike and this Castilian narrative poetry known as the Mester de Clerecía became popular in the thirteenth century. It is the form of the learned poets, usually clerics. These poets carefully counted the number of syllables in each line, the line form is the Alexandrine line with consonantal rhyme in stanzas of four lines each. This form is known as the cuaderna vía or the fourfold way. Popular themes of these poets were Christian legends, lives of saints, the poems were cited to villagers in public plazas. Two traits separate this form from the mester de juglaría, didacticism, Castilian priest and poet Gonzalo de Berceo was one of the greatest followers of the mester de clerecía
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Catalan literature
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Catalan literature is the name conventionally used to refer to literature written in the Catalan language. The Catalan literary tradition is extensive, starting in the early Middle Ages, a Romantic revivalist movement of the 19th century, Renaixença, classified Catalan literature in periods. The centuries long chapter known as Decadència that followed the golden age of Valencian literature, was perceived as extremely poor, further attempts to explain why this happened have motivated new critical studies of the period, and nowadays a revalorisation of this early modern age is taking place. Catalan literature reemerged in the 19th and early 20th centuries, to experience troubled times from the start of the Spanish Civil War on, many intellectuals were forced into exile and Catalan culture was repressed. However, this began to temper after the end of World War II. Many measures were introduced soon to protect and promote the Catalan language, Catalan, a Romance language, evolved from Vulgar Latin in the Middle Ages, when it became a separate language from Latin. Another early Catalan poem is the mid-13th century Augats, seyós qui credets Déu lo Payre, see Llibre de Meravelles and Blanquerna for more details on his works. These four major works are chronicles written between the 13th and 14th centuries narrating the deeds of the monarchs and leading figures of the Crown of Aragon. They are the following, Crònica de Jaume I, also known as The book of deeds Crònica de Bernat Desclot, also known as Book of the king, Peter of Aragon. Crònica de Ramon Muntaner Crònica de Pere el Cerimoniós The first widespread vernacular writing in any Romance language was the poetry of the troubadours. Since Occitan and Catalan are often indistinguishable before the 14th century, the first Catalan troubadour may be Berenguier de Palazol, active around 1150, who wrote only cançons. Guerau III de Cabrera and Guillem de Berguedà, active in the generation after, were noted exponents of the ensenhamen, during this early period Occitan literature was patronised by the rulers of Catalonia—not surprisingly considering their wide involvement in Occitanian politics and as Counts of Provence. Alfonso II patronised many composers, not just from Catalonia, the tradition of royal troubadours continued with his descendants Peter III James II of Aragon, the anonymous known only as Lo bord del rei dArago, and Frederick II of Sicily. The most prolific Catalan troubadour during the ascendancy of Occitan as language of literature, was Cerverí de Girona and he was the most prolific troubadour of any nationality. In the early 13th century, Raimon Vidal, from Besalú, composed his poetic grammar and this was the earliest and perhaps most influential Occitan lyric treatise. The troubadour lyric followed the Catalans to Sicily later in the century, a third Catalan treatise on the language of the troubadours and composing lyric poetry, the Mirall de trobar, was written by a Majorcan, Berenguer dAnoia. The first golden age of Catalan literature is from half 14th century to 15th century, the language is consolidated and clearly differenciated, even in lyrical poetry, from Occitan language. The prose is widely cultivated, with influences from Italian humanism, authors as the humanist Bernat Metge the preacher Vincent Ferrer, Francesc Eiximenis or Anselm Turmeda write works now considered as classical models of Catalan prose
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Medieval Dutch literature
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Medieval Dutch literature is the Dutch literature produced in the Low Countries from the 12th century up to the sixteenth century. It is preceded by only a view fragmentary texts existing in Old Dutch, in the first stages of Dutch literature, poetry was the predominant form of literary expression. In the Low Countries as in the rest of Europe, courtly romance, the chivalric epic was a popular genre as well, often featuring King Arthur or Charlemagne as protagonist. The first Dutch language writer known by name is the 12th-century County of Loon poet Henric van Veldeke, Van Veldeke wrote courtly love poetry, a hagiography of Saint Servatius and an epic retelling of the Aeneid in a Limburgish dialect that straddles the Dutch-German language boundary. Apart from ancient tales embedded in Dutch folk songs, virtually no genuine folk-tales of Dutch antiquity have come down to us, on the other hand, the sagas of Charlemagne and Arthur appear immediately in Middle Dutch forms. These were evidently introduced by wandering minstrels and translated to gratify the curiosity of the noble women and it is rarely that the name of such a translator has reached us. The Arthurian legends appear to have brought to Flanders by some Flemish colonists in Wales. Around 1250 a Brabantine minstrel translated the Prose Lancelot at the command of his liege and this adaptation, known as the Lancelot-Compilatie, contains many differences from the French original, and includes a number of episodes that were probably originally separate romances. Some of these are translations of French originals, but others, such as the Morien. In his existing work the author follows Pierre de Saint-Cloud, but not slavishly, the second part was added by another poet, Aernout, of whom we know little else either. The first lyrical writer of the Low Countries was John I, Duke of Brabant, who practised the minnelied with success. In 1544 the earliest collection of Dutch folk-songs saw the light, almost the earliest fragment of Dutch popular poetry, but of later time, is an historical ballad describing the murder of Floris V, Count of Holland in 1296. A very curious collection of lyrics and songs by Hadewijch. With the close of the century a change came over the face of Dutch literature. The Dutch towns began to prosper and to assert their supremacy over the North Sea. The founder and creator of this original Dutch literature was Jacob van Maerlant and his Der Naturen Bloeme, written about 1263, takes an important place in early Dutch literature. It is a collection of moral and satirical addresses to all classes of society, with his Rijmbijbel he foreshadowed the courage and free-thought of the Reformation. It was not until 1284 that he began his masterpiece, De Spieghel Historiael at the command of Count Floris V, with the middle of the fourteenth century the chivalric spirit came once more into fashion
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Medieval French literature
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Medieval French literature is, for the purpose of this article, literature written in Oïl languages during the period from the eleventh century to the end of the fifteenth century. For historical background, see History of France, France in the Middle Ages or Middle Ages, for other national literary traditions, see Medieval literature. The language in southern France is known as langue doc or the Occitan language family, also known under the name of one of iys dialects, the Western peninsula of Brittany spoke Breton, a Celtic language. Catalan was spoken in the South, and Germanic languages and Franco-Provençal were spoken in the East, the various dialects of Old French developed into what are recognised as regional languages today. Languages which developed from dialects of Old French include Bourguignon, Champenois, Franc-Comtois, Francien, Gallo, Lorrain, Norman, Anglo-Norman, Picard, Poitevin, Saintongeais and Walloon. From 1340 to the beginning of the century, a generalized French language became clearly distinguished from the other competing Oïl languages. This is referred to as Middle French, the vast majority of literary production in Old French is in verse, the development of prose as a literary form was a late phenomenon. The French language does not have a significant stress accent or long and this means that the French metric line is not determined by the number of beats, but by the number of syllables. The most common lengths are the ten-syllable line, the eight-syllable line. Verses could be combined in a variety of ways, blocks of assonanced lines are called laisses, the choice of verse form was generally dictated by the genre. The Old French epics are written in ten-syllable assonanced laisses. The earliest extant French literary texts date from the ninth century, the first literary works written in Old French were saints lives. The Canticle of Saint Eulalie, written in the half of the ninth century, is generally accepted as the first such text. It is a poem that recounts the martyrdom of a young girl. The best known of the early Old French saints lives is the Vie de Saint Alexis, the life of Saint Alexis, a translation/rewriting of a Latin legend. Saint Alexis fled from his familys home in Rome on his wedding night and dwelled as a hermit in Syria until a mystical voice began telling people of his holiness. In order to avoid the earthly honor that came with such fame, he left Syria and was back to Rome. He was only identified later when the pope read his name in a letter held in the saints hand
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Bengali literature
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Bengali literature denotes the body of writings in the Bengali language. The earliest extant work in Bengali literature is the Charyapada, a collection of Buddhist mystic songs dating back to the 10th and 11th centuries, thereafter, the timeline of Bengali literature is divided into two periods − medieval and modern. Novels were introduced to Bengali literature in the mid-19th century, Rabindranath Tagore, poet, playwright, novelist, painter, essayist, musician, and social reformer, is the best known figure of Bengali literature to the world. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913, after the post-partition era, Bengali literature comprises literature of erstwhile East Pakistan and modern-day Bangladesh and of West Bengal. The first works in Bengali, written in new Bengali, appeared between 10th and 12th centuries C. E and it is generally known as the Charyapada. These are mystic songs composed by various Buddhist seer-poets, Luipada, Kanhapada, Kukkuripada, Chatilpada, Bhusukupada, Kamlipada, Dhendhanpada, Shantipada, Shabarapada etc, the famous Bengali linguist Haraprasad Shastri discovered the palm leaf Charyapada manuscript in the Nepal Royal Court Library in 1907. Pre-Chaitanya or Early Vaishnava literature denotes the literature of the preceding the time of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. Sri Krishna Kirtana was written by Boru Chandidas in the half of 14th century CE. It is considered as the second oldest work of Bengali literature after Charyapada, the 15th century is marked by the emergence of Vaishnava lyrical poetry or the padavali in Bengal. The poetry of Vidyapati, the great Maithili poet, though not written in Bengali and he flourished in the modern-day Darbhanga district of Bihar, India in the 14th century. His Vaishnava lyrics became very popular among the masses of Bengal, the first major Bengali poet to write Vaishnava lyrics was Chandidas, who belong to the modern-day Birbhum district, Paschimbanga in the 15th century. Chandidas is also known for his humanist proclamation—Sabar upare manush satya, tahar upare nai —The supreme truth is man, the Bengali translations of two great Sanskrit texts the Bhagavata Purana and the Ramayana played a crucial role in the development of Middle Bengali literature. Maladhar Basu’s Sri Krishna Vijaya, which is chiefly a translation of the 10th and 11th cantos of the Bhagavata Purana, is the earliest Bengali narrative poem that can be assigned to a definite date, Maladhar Basu flourished in the modern-day Bardhaman district of Paschimbanga in the 15th century. Composed between 1473 and 1480 C. E, Sri Krishna Vijaya is also the oldest Bengali narrative poem of the Krishna legend. The Ramayana, under the title of Sri Rama Panchali, more known as the Krittibasi Ramayana, was translated by Krittibas Ojha who belonged to the modern-day Nadia district. He also, like Maladhar Basu, flourished in the 15th century, post-Chaitanya or Late Vaishnava literature denotes the literature of the time succeeding the time of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. These include, biographies of Chaitanya by Gaudiya Vaishnava scholar-poets and later Vaishnava Padavali with a subgenre based on the life of Chaitanya. Major figures of the Late Vaishnava literature are Krishnadasa Kaviraja, Vrindavana Dasa Thakura, Jayananda, Govindadasa, Jnandada, there are also minor Mangalkāvyas known as Shivāyana, Kālikā Mangal, Rāya Mangal, Shashtī Mangal, Sītalā Mangal and Kamalā Mangal etc
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Italian literature
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Italian literature is written in the Italian language, particularly within Italy. It may also refer to literature written by Italians or in Italy in other languages spoken in Italy, an early example of Italian literature is the tradition of vernacular lyric poetry performed in Occitan, which reached Italy by the end of the 12th century. In 1230, the Sicilian School is notable for being the first style in standard Italian, Dante Alighieri, one of the greatest of Italian poets, is notable for his Divine Comedy. Petrarch did classical research and wrote lyric poetry, Renaissance humanism developed during the 14th and the beginning of the 15th centuries. Humanists sought to create a citizenry able to speak and write with eloquence, early humanists, such as Petrarch, were great collectors of antique manuscripts. Lorenzo de Medici shows the influence of Florence on the Renaissance, Leonardo da Vinci wrote a treatise on painting. The development of the drama in the 15th century was very great, the fundamental characteristic of the era following Renaissance is that it perfected the Italian character of its language. Niccolò Machiavelli and Francesco Guicciardini were the originators of the science of history. Pietro Bembo was a figure in the development of the Italian language. In 1690 the Academy of Arcadia was instituted with the goal of restoring literature by imitating the simplicity of the ancient shepherds with sonnets, madrigals, canzonette and blank verse. In the 18th century, the condition of Italy began to improve. Apostolo Zeno and Metastasio are two of the figures of the age. Carlo Goldoni, a Venetian, created the comedy of character, the leading figure of the literary revival of the 18th century was Giuseppe Parini. The ideas behind the French Revolution of 1789 gave a direction to Italian literature in the second half of the 18th century. Love of liberty and desire for equality created a literature aimed at national object, patriotism and classicism were the two principles that inspired the literature that began with Vittorio Alfieri. Other patriots included Vincenzo Monti and Ugo Foscolo, the romantic school had as its organ the Conciliatore established in 1818 at Milan. The main instigator of the reform was Manzoni, the great poet of the age was Giacomo Leopardi. History returned to its spirit of learned research, after the Risorgimento, political literature becomes less important
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Korean literature
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Korean literature is the body of literature produced by Koreans, mostly in the Korean language and sometimes in Classical Chinese. For much of Koreas 1,500 years of literary history and it is commonly divided into classical and modern periods, although this distinction is sometimes unclear. Korea is home to the worlds first metal and copper type, worlds earliest known printed document, Classical Korean literature has its roots in traditional folk beliefs and folk tales of the Korean peninsula. There are four major traditional poetic forms, hyangga, pyolgok, or changga, sijo, other poetic forms that flourished briefly include the kyonggi-style, in the 14th and 15th centuries, and the akchang in the 15th century. The most representative akchang is Yongbi ochon ka, a cycle compiled in praise of the founding of the Yi dynasty, Korean poetry originally was meant to be sung, and its forms and styles reflect its melodic origins. The basis of its prosody is a line of alternating groups of three or four syllables, which is probably the most natural rhythm to the language, one famous earliest poetry or lyric song was the Gonghuin by Yeo-ok during Gojoseon. Hyangga was written in Korean using modified hanja in a system that is called idu, specifically, the variety of idu used to write hyangga was sometimes called hyangchal. Idu was a system using characters to express Korean. The key to the system was to use some hanja characters for their purpose, their meaning. On the surface, it appears to be a complicated, even incomprehensible system, hyangga was the first uniquely Korean form of poetry. The Samguk Yusa contains 14 poems and the Gyunyeojeon, a set of biographies of prominent monks, hyangga are characterized by a number of formal rules. The poems may consist of four, eight or ten lines, the ten-line poems are the most developed, structured into three sections with four, four, and two lines respectively. Many of the poems were written by Buddhist monks. And Buddhist themes predominate the poems, many of the poems are eulogies to monks, to warriors, and to family members. The Goryeo period was marked by a use of hanja characters. Hyangga largely disappeared as a form of Korean literature, and Goryeo gayo became more popular, most of the Goryeo songs were transmitted orally and many survived into the Joseon period, when some of them were written down using hangul. The poetic form of the Goryeo songs is known as pyolgok or changga and it flourished during the middle and late Koryo dynasty. It is characterized by a refrain either in the middle or at the end of each stanza, the refrain establishes a mood or tone that carries the melody and spirit of the poem or links a poem composed of discrete parts with differing contents
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Newari literature
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Nepal Bhasa literature refers to literature in the Newar language. The language has the fourth oldest literature among the Sino-Tibetan languages, the earliest known document in Newar is called The Palmleaf from Uku Bahal which dates from 1114 during the Thakuri period. The earliest dated inscription in Newari is dated Nepal Sambat 293. From the 14th century onwards, a number of stone inscriptions in the Kathmandu Valley. The first books appeared in the 14th century, Nepal Bhasa literature can be broadly divided into four periods. The literary genres prevalent during this era consist of chronicles, epics, stories, scientific manuals mainly dealing with astrology and medicine, didactic poems, the kings and queens of the Malla dynasty were keen lyricists and playwrights. Dance dramas written at the time continue to be performed during annual festivals, king Mahindra Malla is regarded as the first Newari poet. Other notable poets among the Malla kings include Siddhi Narsingh Malla, Pratap Malla, Ranjit Malla, Siddhi Narsingh Malla was the first Newari playwright. He wrote a play entitled Ekadashibrata in 1633 based on a Hindu story. His most famous work is Katti Pyakhan which is shown annually at Patan Durbar Square, the queens Riddhi Laxmi, considered to be Nepals first woman poet, Jaya Laxmi and Bhuvan Laxmi were also prominent songwriters. Among the public, Jagat Keshari of Banepa in the east of the Kathmandu Valley is celebrated for a dedicated to Goddess Chandeswari. In the later part of the Classical Period, Rajendra Bikram among the Shah kings is famed for writing Mahasatwa Pakhyan, pundit Sundarananda is known for his epics while Amritananda, besides composing poetry, wrote a grammar of Newari. After the Gorkha conquest of Nepal in 1768 and the advent of the Shah dynasty, overt suppression was started by the Rana dynasty. In 1906, official documents written in Newari were declared illegal, the use of the language for business and literary purposes was forbidden. Books were confiscated and writers were jailed, as a result, not only literary creations but also writing for general purposes almost ceased, and the distance between the spoken and the written language began to widen. A small number of hymns and religious stories were produced during this period, notable writers of the era were Swami Abhayananda, Hari Bhakta Mathema, Man Bahadur Joshi and Bir Bahadur Malla. During this period, a new generation of writers emerged who asserted themselves by producing literary works defying government restrictions, the renaissance aimed to restore the Newar languagess lost glory and stimulate creative literature. The activities of this period laid the foundation for the course of the language
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Bylina
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Bylina or Starina is a traditional East Slavic oral epic narrative poem. Byliny songs are based on historical fact, greatly embellished with fantasy or hyperbole to create their songs. The word Bylina is derived from the past tense of the verb “to be”, later scholars believe that Sakharov misunderstood the word bylina in the opening of Igor’ Tale as “an ancient poem. ”The folk singers of byliny called these songs stariny or starinki meaning “stories of old”. Byliny incorporate elements of history from several epochs into their stories, for example, byliny singers refer to many of the enemies of the Kievan people as Tartars though the stories originally referred to other steppe peoples in conflict with Kievan Rus’. The character of Prince Vladimir refers to a generalized “epic Vladimir” rather than an allusion to a specific historical Vladimir, byliny have been collected in Russia since the seventeenth century, initially they were published for entertainment in prose paraphrases. The Cossack Kirsha Danilov compiled the most notable of the collections in the Ural region for the mill owner Prokofi Demidov in the middle of the eighteenth century. A storm stranded Rybnikov on an island in Lake Onega where he heard the sound of a bylina being sung, he persuaded the singer to repeat the song and wrote down his words. He proceeded to collect several hundred bylina, all of which he recorded from spoken paraphrase, another influential collector, Alexander Gilferding, published one collection entitled Onega Bylinas Recorded by A. F. Gilferding in the Summer of 1871. He improved upon Rybnikov’s work by transcribing the byliny directly from the performance rather than the spoken retellings. There are several ways to categorize bylina, and scholars disagree on which classification to use, scholars from the mythological school differentiate between byliny about ‘older’ and ‘younger’ heroes. The ‘older’ heroes resembled mythological figures, while the ‘younger’ heroes resembled ordinary human beings, the historical school classifies byliny based on the principality in which the story took place, as in Kivan, Novgorodian, and Galician-Volhynian cycles. The mythological byliny of giants and the like probably originated long before the Kievan state was founded, scholars of the historical school often consider mythological byliny separately. Other scholars group byliny based on content, including heroic, fairy tale type, novella type, most scholars prefer classification based on principalities. Because of their nature as performed pieces, byliny singers employ basically linear, byliny structure typically includes three basic parts, introduction, narrative portion and epilogue. The introduction sometimes includes a verse to entice the audience to listen, introductions often describe heroes at a feast being given a task or setting out on a mission. The narrative portion relates the adventure with exaggerated details and hyperbole to make the more exciting. The epilogue refers to the reward for the mission, a moral or a reference to the sea, to help listeners grasp the story, singers used ‘tag lines’ to preface speeches or dialogues, setting up for the audience who is talking to whom. Singers may use their telling of these scenes in many of their songs, christian beliefs mixed with pre-Christian ideas of magic and paganism in byliny, for instance, saints would appear to defend mortals against darkness
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Turkish literature
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The Ottoman and Azeri forms of Turkish, which forms the basis of much of the written corpus, are highly influenced by Persian and Arabic literature, and used the Ottoman Turkish alphabet. The history of the broader Turkic literature spans a period of nearly 1,300 years, the oldest extant records of written Turkic are the Orhon inscriptions, found in the Orhon River valley in central Mongolia and dating to the 7th century. For the next 900 years, until shortly before the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1922, with the founding of the Republic of Turkey in 1923, the two traditions came together for the first time. Throughout most of its history, Turkish literature has been sharply divided into two different traditions, neither of which exercised much influence upon the other until the 19th century. The first of two traditions is Turkish folk literature, and the second is Turkish written literature. For most of the history of Turkish literature, the salient difference between the folk and the written traditions has been the variety of language employed. The folk tradition, by and large, was oral and remained free of the influence of Persian and Arabic literature, when the Ottoman Empire arose early in the 14th century, in northwestern Anatolia, it continued this tradition. Out of this confluence of choices, the Ottoman Turkish language—which was always distinct from standard Turkish—was effectively born. This style of writing under Persian and Arabic influence came to be known as Divan literature, Turkish folk literature is an oral tradition deeply rooted, in its form, in Central Asian nomadic traditions. However, in its themes, Turkish folk literature reflects the problems peculiar to a people who have abandoned the nomadic lifestyle. Another example is the mysterious figure of Nasreddin, a trickster who often plays jokes, of a sort. The religion henceforth came to exercise an influence on Turkish society and literature, particularly the heavily mystically oriented Sufi. The word aşık is in fact the term used for members of the Bektashi order. There are three basic genres in the tradition, epic, folk poetry, and folklore, the Book of Dede Korkut endured in the oral tradition of the Oghuz Turks after settling in Anatolia. Alpamysh is an epic, still preserved in the literature of various Turkic peoples of Central Asia in addition to its important place in the Anatolian tradition. The Book of Dede Korkut was the element of the Azerbaijani–Turkish epic tradition in the Caucasus. Concurrent to the Book of Dede Korkut was the so-called Epic of Köroğlu, complicating matters somewhat is the fact that Köroğlu is also the name of a poet of the aşık/ozan tradition. The epic tradition in modern Turkish literature may be seen in the Epic of Shaykh Bedreddin, many of the works of the 20th-century novelist Yaşar Kemal, such as the 1955 novel Memed, My Hawk, can be considered modern prose epics continuing this long tradition
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Renaissance literature
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Renaissance literature refers to European literature which was influenced by the intellectual and cultural tendencies associated with the Renaissance. It is characterized by the adoption of a humanist philosophy, the recovery of the literature of Antiquity. For the writers of the Renaissance Greco-Roman inspiration was shown both in the themes of their writing and in the forms they used. The world was considered from an anthropocentric perspective, platonic ideas were revived and put to the service of Christianity. The search for pleasures of the senses and a critical and rational spirit completed the ideological panorama of the period, new literary genres such as the essay and new metrical forms such as the sonnet and Spenserian stanza made their appearance. The impact of the Renaissance varied across the continent, countries that were predominantly Catholic or Protestant experienced the Renaissance differently, areas where the Orthodox Church was culturally dominant, as well as those areas of Europe under Islamic rule were more or less outside its influence. The period focused on self-actualization and ones ability to accept what is going on in ones life, the earliest Renaissance literature appeared in Italy in the 14th century, Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Machiavelli and Ariosto are notable examples of Italian Renaissance writers. From Italy the influence of the Renaissance spread at different times to other countries, the English Renaissance and the Renaissance in Scotland date from the late 15th century to the early 17th century. In northern Europe the scholarly writings of Erasmus, the plays of Shakespeare, the poems of Edmund Spenser and the writings of Sir Philip Sidney may be considered Renaissance in character
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