English Literature Old English Literature (600 - 1100)
Old English, the earliest form of the English
Objectives
At the end of this lesson, you should be able to:
 name some well-known English writers
and their works as well as the body of
English literature to which they belong;
and
 analyze a few selected literary works
representative of English literature.
Who are some of the important writers in the
English literature?
Why are they important?
What literary forms are prominent in English
literature?
Let’s Review!
 Epic poem - This is a long narrative
poem usually about a hero and his
deeds. A well-known example is Beowulf.
 Sonnet - This poem has fourteen lines
that follow a rhyme scheme. A well-
known example is Sonnet 18 of William
Shakespeare. It starts with the famous
line, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s
day?”
 Drama - This piece of writing tells a story
through dialogue, and it is performed on
stage. A well-known example is The
Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar
Wilde.
 Novel - This is a long prose narrative
usually about fictional characters and
events, which are told in a particular
sequence.
English literature is one of the richest, most
developed, and most important bodies of
literature in the world. It encompasses both
written and spoken works by writers from the
United Kingdom.
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language, was spoken by the Anglo-Saxons, a
Germanic tribe living in Britain during the fifth
century. One significant work written in Old
English is Beowulf, the longest epic poem in Old
English. It is known for its use of kennings,
which are phrases or compound words used to
name persons, places, and things indirectly.
Middle English Literature (1100 - 1500)
Middle English is a blend Old English and
Norman French, the French dialect spoken by
the Normans (people of Normandy). The
Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, the
father of English literature, is a fine example of
literature written in Middle English.
Elizabethan Literature (1558 - 1603)
The Elizabethan period is the golden age of
English literature. Also, it is the golden age of
drama. Known as the “Bard of Avon,” William
Shakespeare wrote his plays during the period.
His best plays include Hamlet, King Lear,
Macbeth, Othello, and The Merchant of Venice.
Also, he wrote 154 sonnets, many of which are
the best loved and the most widely-read poems
in the English literature.
The Romantic Period (1800 - 1837)
This period is the golden age of lyric poetry.
Poetry became the expression of the poet’s
personal feelings and emotions. A few notable
works of poetry of the period are Songs of
Innocence and of Experience by William
Blake, Lyrical Ballads by William Wordsworth
and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Eve of St.
Agnes, and Other Poems by John Keats, “Don
Juan” by Lord Byron, and “Ode to the West
Wind” by Percy Bysshe Shelley.
The Victorian Period (1837 - 1900)
The period saw the rise of the novel. Charles
Dickens, considered to be the greatest English
novelist of the 19th century, wrote Great
Expectations. This novel was published as a
serial in a weekly periodical from December
1860 to August 1861.
Alfred Lord Tennyson and Robert Browning
each wrote fine poetry during the period.
Tennyson’s In Memoriam A.H.H. is a requiem
for his friend Arthur Henry Hallam. It is widely
considered to be one of the great poems of the
19th century. Browning, who is known for his
dramatic monologues, wrote the famous poem
“My Last Duchess.” In a dramatic monologue,
the poet addresses an audience through an
assumed voice.
Oscar Wilde is the best dramatist of the period.
He wrote the masterpiece The Importance of
Being Earnest.
Twentieth Century (1900 - 2000)
William Butler Yeats and Thomas Stearns Eliot
wrote Modernist poems during the period. Yeats
wrote The Tower, The Winding Stair, and New
Poems, all of which are known to have potent
images. Eliot’s masterpieces are “The Love
Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and “The Waste
Land.”
Virginia Woolf in her story Mrs. Dalloway and
James Joyce in his work Ulysses use stream of
consciousness, a literary technique in which the
flow of thoughts of a character is described in
words.
Summary
English literature is a very large body of
diverse literature that encompasses works by
writers from the United Kingdom.
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American Literature
Objectives
At the end of this lesson, you should be able to:
 name some well-known American writers
of the 19th and 20th centuries and their
works; and
 analyze a few selected literary works
representative of American Literature.
Who are some of the important American writers
during the 19th and 20th centuries?
Why are they important?
What literary forms are prominent in American
literature?
Learn about it!
American literature refers to all works of
literature in English produced in the United
States.
The 19th Century
 William Cullen Bryant (1794 - 1878)
became famous for “Thanatopsis” (1817).
This poem marked a new beginning for
American poetry.
 Washington Irving (1783 - 1859) was
known for “Rip Van Winkle” and “The
Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” the first
American short stories. They were part of
his work The Sketch Book, the first
American work to become successful
internationally.
 Edgar Allan Poe (1809 - 1849) became
famous for his macabre stories like “The
Fall of the House of Usher” (1839) and
“The Cask of Amontillado” (1846). Also,
he wrote “The Murders in the Rue
Morgue” (1841), the first detective story,
and the poem “Raven” (1845), with which
he achieved instant fame.
  Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804 - 1864)
became known for his symbolical tales
like “The Hollow of the Three Hills” (1830)
and “Young Goodman Brown” (1835).
Also, he wrote the gothic romance The
Scarlet Letter (1850).
 Walt Whitman (1819 - 1892) became
well-known for Leaves of Grass, first
published in 1855. In this poetry
collection, Whitman showed the
experiences of the common man.
 Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886) wrote odd
poems. She mostly used the imperfect
rhyme and avoided regular rhythms. A
collection of her poems, Poems by Emily
Dickinson, came out in 1890.
The 20th Century
 Robert Frost (1874 - 1963) wrote poems
with traditional stanzas and a blank
verse, a verse in iambic pentameter with
no rhyme. His poems portray ordinary
people in everyday situations like
“Mending Wall,” "The Road Not Taken,"
and “After Apple-Picking,” both of which
were published in 1914.
 E. E. cummings (1894 - 1962) was known
for his unconventional punctuation and
phrasing. His poems were compiled
in Complete Poems (1968).
 Ezra Pound (1885 - 1972) was a leader
of the Imagists, who emphasized the use
of direct and sparse language and
precise images in writing poetry. Two of
his works are Ripostes (1912)
and Lustra (1916).
 Sherwood Anderson (1876 - 1941) wrote
prose using everyday speech. His best
works appeared in Winesburg,
Ohio (1919) and Death in the
Woods (1933).
 Ernest Hemingway (1899 - 1961) was
known for his succinct writing, which was
widely imitated. His writing was very
straightforward and objective - not
verbose and sentimental. Two of his
finest stories are “The Killers” (1927) and
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“The Short Happy Life of Francis
Macomber” (1936).
 Allen Ginsberg (1926 - 1997) was known
for his work “Howl” (1956), a poem with
incantatory rhythms and raw emotion. He
was one of the Beat poets, who aimed to
bring poetry back to the streets.
 Anne Sexton (1928 - 1974) became
known for her confessional poetry, a kind
of poetry that deals with the private
experiences of the speaker. Her
work Live or Die(1966) won a Pulitzer
Prize.
Summary
American literature is a rich body of literature.
It refers to all works of literature in English
published in the United States, which has
produced many great writers through the
centuries.
European Literature
Objectives
At the end of this lesson, you should be able to:
 name some writers and their literary
works under European Literature, and
 analyze a few selected literary works
representative of the literature it belongs.
What are some literary pieces included in
European Literature?
Who are some of the major writers in each
literature?
What important works did they produce?
Learn about it!
European Literature, also called Western
Literature, refers to literature in the Indo-
European languages including Latin, Greek, the
Romance languages, and Russian. It is
considered as the largest body of literature in
the world.
Latin Literature
 Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 BCE–43
BCE) was the greatest Roman orator.
The first part of the Golden Age of Latin
Literature (70 BC–AD 18) is named after
him, the Ciceronian period (70–43 BC).
Using Latin as a literary medium, he was
able to express abstract and complicated
thoughts clearly in his speeches. One of
his well-known speeches is Pro
Cluentio.
 Virgil (70 BCE–19 BCE), the greatest
Roman poet, was known for Aeneid, an
epic poem. He wrote it during the
Augustan Age (43 BC–AD 18), the
second part of the Golden Age.
Greek Literature
 Homer is known for the The Iliad and
the The Odyssey. These epics are about
the heroic achievements of Achilles and
Odysseus, respectively.
 Sophocles (496 BC–406 BC) was a
tragic playwright. He was known
for Oedipus the King, which marks the
highest level of achievement of Greek
drama.
Italian Literature
 Francesco Petrarca, or Petrarch (1304–
1374) perfected the Italian sonnet, a
major influence on European poetry.
Written in the vernacular, his sonnets
were published in the Canzoniere.
 Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–1375) is
known for Decameron, a classic Italian
masterpiece. The stories were written in
the vernacular.
Spanish Literature
 Two well-known Spanish writers of Siglo
De Oro (1500–1681) are Miguel de
Cervantes (1547–1616) and Lope de
Vega (1562–1635).
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 Miguel de Cervantes was known for his
novel Don Quixote, one of the most
widely read works of Western Literature.
Its titular character’s name is the origin of
the word “quixotic,” meaning hopeful or
romantic in a way that is not practical.
 Lope de Vega, an outstanding dramatist,
wrote as many as 1800 plays during his
lifetime, including cloak and sword
drama, which are plays of upper middle
class manners and intrigue.
French Literature
 Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880), a
novelist, was a major influence on the
realist school. His masterpiece, Madame
Bovary (1857), marked the beginning of
a new age of realism.
 Guy de Maupassant (1850–1893) is
considered as the greatest French short
story writer. A Naturalist, he wrote
objective stories which present a real
“slice of life.”
Russian Literature
 Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) is known for
his novels War and Peace (1865–1869)
and Anna Karenina (1875–1877). A
master of realistic fiction, he is
considered as one of the world’s greatest
novelists.
 Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) is a master
of the modern short story and a Russian
playwright. His works such as, "The Bet"
and "The Misfortune" reveal his clinical
approach to ordinary life.
Summary
European Literature refers to literatures in the
Indo-European languages. It is considered as
the largest body of literature in the world.
 Latin American Literature
Objectives
At the end of this lesson, you should be able to:
 name some well-known Latin American
writers of the 20th century and their
works, and
 analyze two selected literary works
representative of the period.
What is Latin American literature?  in Freedom Under Parole (1960).
Who are some well-known Latin American
writers of the 20th Century and what did they
write?
Latin American Literature
Latin American Literature refers to all works of
literature in Latin American countries like Chile,
Argentina, Mexico, Cuba, Guatemala, Colombia,
and Peru.
The Vanguardia
 The Vanguardia (avant-garde in English)
took place in Latin America between
approximately 1916 and 1935. It
collectively referred to different literary
movements. Four of those were the
following:
o Creacionismo, founded by Vicente
Huidobro (1893–1948), a Chilean
poet, in 1916
o Ultraismo, introduced to South
America by Jorge Luis
Borges (1899–1986), an
Argentine writer, in 1921
o Estridentismo, founded in Mexico
City by Manuel Maples
Arce (1898–1981), a Mexican
writer, in 1921
o Surrealism, which is said to have
started in Argentina when the
Argentinian poet Aldo
Pellegrini (1903–1973) launched
the first Surrealist magazine in
1928
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 Surrealism, an art form that combines
unrelated images or events in a very
strange and dreamlike way, became a
major influence in Latin American
Literature throughout the 20th century.
 Pablo Neruda (1904–1973), a Chilean
poet, wrote Residence on Earth (1933),
a collection of poetry inspired by
surrealism.
 Octavio Paz (1914–1998), a Mexican
poet, wrote poems with surrealist
imagery. His major works were published
 Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) was
known for his fantastic stories, published
later as a collection
entitled Ficciones (1944).
 Alejo Carpentier (1904–1980), a Cuban
writer, wrote The Kingdom of This
World(1949), a novel of the magic
realism genre, in which elements of
fantasy or myth are included matter-of-
factly in seemingly realistic fiction.
 Miguel Angel Asturias (1899–1974), a
Guatemalan writer, wrote the novel The
President (1946). This novel along with
Carpentier’s novel introduced magic
realism.
The Boom Novels
These were essentially modernist novels, which
appeared in the second half of the 20th century.
They had features that were different or absent
from the works of the regionalist writers of the
past. (Regionalist writers were those that used
local color, which refers to interesting
information about a particular place or its
people.)
The boom novels were the following:
 The Death of Artemio Cruz (1962)
by Carlos Fuentes (1928–2012), a
Mexican writer
 Hopscotch (1963) by Julio
Cortazar (1914–1984), an Argentine
fictionist
 The Time of the Hero (1963) by Mario
Vargas Llosa, a Peruvian writer
  One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967)
by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1927–
2014), a Colombian fictionist
“Post-Boom” Writers
These writers included a host of women who
published works in the last twenty years of the
20th century. Three of them were Isabel
Allende, a Chilean writer who wrote The House
of Spirits (1982); Diamela Eltit, a Chilean
writer who wrote E. Luminata(1983); and Luisa
Valenzuela, an Argentine writer who
wrote Black Novel with Argentines (1990).
Summary
Latin American Literature refers to all works of
literature in Latin American countries. The 20th
century saw some of its best writers.
Japanese Literature
Asian Literature
Objectives
At the end of this lesson, you should be able to:
 name some major works and their writers
in three major national literatures of Asian
literature, namely, Chinese, Japanese,
and Indian, and
 analyze a few selected literary works
representative of the literature it belongs.
What is Asian literature?
What are some of the major works in Chinese,
Japanese, and Indian literatures and who wrote
them?
Learn about it!
Asian literature refers to the body of literature
produced in the countries in Asia.
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Chinese Literature
 This body of works is in Chinese. It has
more than 50 000 published works in a
wide range of topics.
 Du Fu (712–770) is considered as
China’s greatest poet. He was known for
his works of lüshi. A lüshi has eight lines,
each of which has five or seven syllables
following a strict tonal pattern. It became
widely popular during the Tang Dynasty
(618–907 CE), the golden age of art and
literature in Chinese history.
 Li Bai (701–762), also called Li Po,
rivaled Du Fu for the title of China’s
greatest poet. Unlike Du Fu, he wrote
less formal verse forms. A famous
drinker, he frequently celebrated drinking
in his poetry.
 This body of works is mostly in Japanese,
except the early writings which were
written in Chinese.
 Kakinomoto Hitomaro, Japan’s first
literary figure, was known for his works of
tanka and chōka. The tanka, the basic
form of Japanese poetry, has five lines in
five-seven-five-seven-seven syllable
pattern. On the other hand, the chōka has
alternating lines of five and seven
syllables and ends with an extra line of
seven syllables. Having no definite
length, it can have from seven lines to
150. Hitomaro’s works were included
in Man’yōshū, the oldest anthology of
Japanese poetry which was produced
during the Nara Period (710–784).
 Matsuo Bashō (1644–1694) was
regarded as the supreme haiku poet.
Emerged from the early Tokugawa period
(1603–1770), the haiku is composed of
three lines with five-seven-five syllable
pattern. It originated from the hokku, the
first three lines of a renga, a poem
usually with a hundred linked verses.
Bashō’s verses appear with his travel
 accounts like The Narrow Road to the
Deep North (1694).
Indian Literature
 This body of works is produced in India in
a variety of vernacular languages like
Sanskrit, Hindi, Punjabi, Tamil, and Urdu.
 The Mahabharata is an Indian epic
written in Sanskrit. It is the longest poem
in history with about 100 000 couplets. It
is traditionally ascribed to an Indian sage
named Vyasa. The Hindus regard the
epic as both a text about dharma (the
Hindu moral law) and a history.
Bhagavadgītā, the most celebrated of its
episodes, gives spiritual guidance.
 The Ramayana is another Indian epic in
Sanskrit. The sage Valmiki was
traditionally regarded as its author. It is
shorter than Mahabharata, with some 24
000 couplets.
 The Panchatantra is a collection of
Indian animal fables. Originally written in
Sanskrit, it is a mixture of prose and
verse. The stories are attributed to
Vishnusharman, a learned Brahmin.
Summary
Asian literature refers to the body of literature
produced in the countries in Asia, which
includes the Chinese, Japanese, and Indian
literatures.
African Literature
Objective
At the end of this lesson, you should be able to
name some well-known African writers in
English and their works.
What is African literature?
Who are some of the African writers in English?
What did they write about?
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Learn about it!
In this lesson, you will learn about some well-
known African writers in English and their works.
African Literature
The literary works of African writers in English
are part of the African literature. This body of
works refers to the ones not only produced in
Afro-Asiatic and African languages, but also to
those works by Africans in English, French, and
other European languages.
A few of the common themes in the works of
African writers are the oppression of African
people by the colonizers, the European
influences on the native African culture, racial
discrimination, and pride in African past and
resilience.
Chinua Achebe (1930–2013) – This Nigerian
writer was known for his novel Things Fall
Apart (1958), considered as the best known
African novel of the 20th century. It deals with
emergent Africa, where native communities, like
Achebe’s Igbo community, came in contact with
white missionaries and its colonizers. The novel
is the first in sometimes called The African
Trilogy. It was followed by No Longer at Ease,
published in 1960, and then Arrow of God in
1964.
Wole Soyinka – This Nigerian writer received
the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986, becoming
the first black African to receive such award. As
a playwright, he wrote the satire A Dance of the
Forests (1963), his first important play that
depicts the traditions of his people, the Yoruba.
It was staged in 1960 during the Nigerian
independence celebrations. Also, he wrote
fiction and poetry.
Example
“The Telephone Conversation” by Wole
Soyinka
Wole Soyinka’s poem “The Telephone
Conversation” first appeared in his collection
Modern Poetry from Africa (1963). As the title
suggests, the poem is about a telephone
conversation between an African man and a
white woman. Considering to rent the apartment
owned by the white woman, the African man
confesses, saying “I hate a wasted journey—I
am African.” Then as the conversation goes, the
woman shows her true colors. She asks, “HOW
DARK?” then follows it up with another question,
“ARE YOU LIGHT/ OR VERY DARK.” Then
asks again, “ARE YOU DARK? OR VERY
LIGHT?” Then the African man clarifies the
question, saying “You mean—like plain or milk
chocolate?” Then he settles on this response
“West African sepia... Down in my passport.”
Perhaps, out of ignorance, the woman says that
she does not know the color. To simplify, the
African man says, “Like brunette.” Confirming
what she already thinks about the African man,
the woman says “THAT’S DARK, ISN’T IT?”
Towards the end of the poetry, the African man
tries to describe the colors of the different parts
of his body to the woman. The poem ends with
an invitation from the African man for the white
woman, saying “Madam . . . wouldn’t you rather/
see for yourself?”
Nadine Gordimer (1923–2014) – This South
African writer received the Nobel Prize for
Literature in 1991. She was known for her works
that dealt with the effects of apartheid on her
country. Apartheid was a system in which
people of color had less political and economic
rights than that of the white people, so the
former was forced to live separately from the
latter. An ardent opponent of such system, she
wrote novels that focused on the oppression of
nonwhite characters like A World of
Strangers (1958), The Late Bourgeois
World (1966), Burger’s Daughter (1979),
and July’s People (1981), all of which were
banned in her country.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – This Nigerian
writer is known for her widely-acclaimed
novels Purple Hibiscus (2003), Half of a Yellow
21st Century Literature from the World Page 8
Sun (2006), and Americanah (2013), all of which
won awards. The story of Purple Hibiscus is told
through a fifteen-year-old girl named Kambili as
she together with her family endured domestic
violence in the hands of her father. The story
of Half of a Yellow Sun took place during the
Nigerian Civil War or Biafran War (1967–1970).
Lastly, Americanah tells the story of a young
Nigerian woman that came to the US to study
and to stay for work.
Example:
“A Private Experience” by Chimamanda
Ngozi Adichie
“A Private Experience” is one of the short stories
in the author’s collection The Thing Around Your
Neck published in 2009. It tells the story of two
women, one named Chika and the other
unnamed. Chika is an Igbo, one of the largest
ethnic groups of Africa, and an outward
Christian (she wears a rosary that her mother
gave her, but she does not pray or believe in
God). On the other hand, the unnamed woman
is a Hausa, another large African ethnic group,
and a devout Muslim. They cross paths during a
riot at a market in the city of Kano, northern
Nigeria. Both confused and scared, they ran
away from the market and hid in a small,
abandoned store. Stuck together, the two
women start to talk and eventually learn more
things about each other. Chika tells the woman
that her sister Nnedi was with her at the market
and that they are both university students. She
learns that the woman sells onions for a living.
The two women become closer when the
woman shows Chika her breasts with cracked
nipples. Chika, who is studying medicine,
examines the breasts and learns that the
woman has just had her fifth child. She then
advises the woman to rub some lotion on her
nipples after feeding her baby and to put the
nipple and the areola into the baby’s mouth
while it feeds. The woman’s eldest daughter,
Halima, was at the bus stop selling groundnuts
when the confusion began. At the mention of
her daughter’s name, the woman cries. As she
wipes her tears away, she says, “Allah keep
your sister and Halima in safe place.” After more
than three hours, Chika ventures out into the
street to go home, anxious to see her sister and
her auntie. She leaves the woman and promises
to come back for her and her daughter.
However, when she sees and smells a recently
burned body in the street, she gets terrified and
runs back to the small store, accidentally cutting
her leg. The woman at the store cleans the
wound and wraps it with her scarf. Chika stays
there with the woman until morning when it is
safe to leave the store.

Explanation:
In different parts of the narrative, the narrator
gives a brief glimpse of what happens in the
future. For instance, after Chika shuts the
windows of the small store where she and the
unnamed woman are hiding, the narrator tells
the reader what Chika will find out eventually—
that Chika will see the burned cars and will learn
that the riot started when some Muslims
chopped off an Igbo man’s head for driving over
a Koran with his car. Another instance is that
after Chika mentions her sister’s name to the
woman, the narrator tells the reader what Chika
will later do—that Chika will go to hospital
mortuaries to look for her sister, but she will
never find her.

Summary

Literary works by African writers in English like

Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, Chimamanda
Adichie, and Nadine Gordimer are part
of African literature, a body of works produced
in Afro-Asiatic and African languages as well as
those made by Africans in English, French, and
other European languages.

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