1.
Western fiction
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Western fiction is a genre of literature set in the American Old West frontier and typically set from the late eighteenth to the late nineteenth century. Well-known writers of Western fiction include Zane Grey from the early 20th century, the genre peaked around the early 1960s, largely due to the popularity of televised Westerns such as Bonanza. Readership began to drop off in the mid- to late 1970s and has reached a new low in the 2000s, most bookstores, outside of a few west American states, only carry a small number of Western fiction books. The predecessor of the western in American literature emerged early with tales of the frontier, the most famous of the early 19th century frontier novels were James Fenimore Coopers five novels comprising the Leatherstocking Tales. Coopers novels were set in what was at the time the American frontier. As did his novel The Prairie, most later westerns would typically take place west of the Mississippi River, the Western as a specialized genre got its start in the penny dreadfuls and later the dime novels. Published in June 1860, Malaeska, the Indian Wife of the White Hunter is considered the first dime novel. These cheaply made books were successful and capitalized on the many stories that were being told about the mountain men, outlaws, settlers. Many of these novels were fictionalized stories based on people, such as Billy the Kid, Buffalo Bill, Wyatt Earp, Wild Bill Hickok. By 1900, the new medium of pulp magazines helped to relate these adventures to easterners, popularity grew with the publication of Owen Wisters novel The Virginian and especially Zane Greys Riders of the Purple Sage. The first Hopalong Cassidy stories by Clarence Mulford appeared in 1904, when pulp magazines exploded in popularity in the 1920s, Western fiction greatly benefited. Pulp magazines that specialised in Westerns include Cowboy Stories, Ranch Romances, Star Western, West, the simultaneous popularity of Western movies in the 1920s also helped the genre. In the 1940s several seminal Westerns were published, including The Ox-Bow Incident by Walter van Tilburg Clark, The Big Sky and The Way West by A. B. Guthrie, Jr. and Shane by Jack Schaefer. Many other Western authors gained readership in the 1950s, such as Ray Hogan, Louis LAmour, the genre peaked around the early 1960s, largely due to the tremendous number of Westerns on television. The burnout of the American public on television Westerns in the late 1960s seemed to have an effect on the literature as well, and interest in Western literature began to wane. Western novels, films and pulps gave birth to Western comics, which were popular, particularly from the late 1940s until circa 1967. Other notable long-running Marvel Western comics included Rawhide Kid Two-Gun Kid, DC Comics published the long-running series All-Star Western and Western Comics, and Charlton Comics published Billy the Kid and Cheyenne Kid. Magazine Enterprises Straight Arrow ran from 1950–1956, and Prize Comics Prize Comics Western ran from 1948–1956, fawcett Comics published a number of Western titles, including Hopalong Cassidy from 1948–1953
2.
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
3.
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
4.
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
5.
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
6.
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
7.
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
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