Lorraine Anne P.

Zarraga
STEM 111

Reviewer in 21st Century in the Philippines

and the World

Asian Literature – known to be the most populous and largest continent of the
planet
Chinese Literature - is one of the major literary heritages of the world, with
an uninterrupted history of more than 3,000 years.
The earliest Chinese poetry begins with the SHIH CHING, a collection of 305
poems of varying length, drawn from all ranks of Chinese society.
Confucius – was one of the most influential figures in the history of China.
GREATEST CHINESE POETS
Wang Wei – a musician and the traditional father of monochrome landscape
painting, was also a great poet. One of Wang Wei’s poems is “One-Hearted”
(Xiang Si 相思)
Li Bai – a lover of detachment and freedom, deliberately avoided the lüshi
and chose the less formal verse forms to sing of friendship or wine.An
example is the poem “To Danqui,” translated by Arthur Waley”
Du Fu - an observer of the political and social scene who criticized injustice
wherever he found it and who clearly understood the nature of the great
upheaval following the rebellion of dissatisfied generals
Japanese Literature – is one of the major literatures of the world comparable
to English literature in age and variety.

TYPES OF JAPANESE POETRY

Haiku - a Japanese poem of seventeen syllables, in three lines of five, seven,
and five, traditionally evoking images of the natural world.
Tanka - a Japanese poem consisting of five lines, the first and third of which
have five syllables and the other seven, making 31 syllables in all and giving a
complete picture of an event or mood.

FAMOUS AUTHORS
Matsuo Bashō - is recognized as the greatest master of haiku
Fukuda Chiyo-ni – is widely regarded as one of the greatest haiku poets.

Korean Literature
For much of Korea's 1,500 years of literary history, it was written in Hanja.
TRADITIONAL POETIC FORMS
Hyangga – was the first uniquely Korean form of poetry. 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
Goryeo songs – it is characterized by a refrain either in the nmiddle or at the
end of each stanza.
Gasa – is a simple form of verse, with twinned feet of three or four syllables
each.

Indian Literature – one of the world’s oldest and richest.

POPULAR EPICS OF ANCIENT INDIA
Mahabharata - is one of the two most important ancient epics of India, the
other being the Ramayana.
Ramayana - is an ancient Sanskrit epic about Rama. The epic was originally
written by sage Valmiki.
Singaporean Literature - The various literatures flourished in the late 19th
and early 20th centuries with the rise of print culture in the British colony,
but after independence in 1965, English became emphasized in both the
education system and society at large as part of the new government’s
attempts to modernize the country.
F.M.S.R (1937) – a poem that describes a train journey from Singapore to
Kuala Lumpur on the Federated Malay States Railways.
FAMOUS AUTHORS FROM SINGAPORE – (Goh Poh Seng, Robert Yeo,
Kuo Pao Kun)
Singaporean Fiction
Han May - is pseudonym of Joan Hon who is better known for her non-fiction
books. (Star Sapphire (1985))
Children Literature
Children’s Lit. in Singapore has gained momentum in recent years due to
increased interest in the genre generated by the First Time Writers and
Illustrators Initiative which discovered acclaimed writers such as “Adeline
Foo The Diary of Amos Lee”, Jin Pyn, The Elephant and the Tree, and
“Emily Lim Prince Bear and Pauper Bear.”
Jessie Wee, one of the pioneers of children’s literature. And her popular
Mooty series with Marshall Cavendishin 2009.

American Literary Characteristics Famous Authors

Periods
1. The Colonial Period  The majority of Captain John Smith
(1607 – 1775) writings were: ( A True Relation of Virginia
1. historical and The Generall Historie)
2. practical
3. religious in
nature

2. The Revolutionary -the richest period of Thomas Jefferson, Thomas

Age political writing Paine, James Madison, and
(1765 -1790) Alexander Hamilton
(Declaration of Independence)
3. The Early National -first American comedy The Contrast by Royall Tyler,
Period -first American Novel 1787
(1775 -1828) The Power of Sympathy by
William Hill, 1789

AMERICAN FICTION
- Washington Irving
- James Fenimore Cooper
- Charles Brockden Brown

AMERICAN POETRY
- Edgar Allan Poe
- William Cullen Bryant
4. The American -Transcendentalists Johann Wolfgang von
Renaissance espoused four main Goethe and Immanuel Kant,
(1828 – 1865) philosophical points, William Wordsworth and
1. Self Reliance Samuel Taylor Coleridge.  
2. Individual
Conscience
3. Intuition Over
Reason
4. Unity of All Things in
Nature
5. The Realistic Period -Reconstruction and the William Dean Howells, Henry
(1865 – 1900) age of Industrialism James, and Mark Twain,
-American Renaissance Walt Whitman, and Emily
are replaced by realistic Dickinson
descriptions of
American life
6. The Naturalist Period -recreating life as life Frank Norris, Theodore
(1900 – 1914) really is Dreiser, and Jack London,
and Edith Wharton
7. The Modern Period -second most influential William Faulkner and John
(1914 – 1939) and artistically rich age Steinbeck, Eugene O’Neill
of American writing
8. The Beat Generation -a rise in confessional Jack Kerouac and Allen
(1944 – 1962) poetry and sexuality in Ginsberg, William S.
literature Burroughs and Henry Miller
9. The Contemporary -literature has become
Period broad and varied in
(1939 – Present) terms of theme, mode,
and purpose