WORLD LITERATURE

 Comparative cultural studies is a contextual approach to

the study of culture in a global and intercultural context.
 Focus is placed on the theory, method, and application of the
study process(s) rather than on the "what" of the object(s) of
study. In comparative cultural studies, selected tenets of
comparative literature are merged with selected tenets of the
field of cultural studies (including culture theories, (radical)
constructivism, communication theories, and systems
theories) with the objective to study culture and culture
products (including but not restricted to literature,
communication, media, art, etc.)
 In comparative cultural studies, ideally, the framework
of and methodologies available in the systemic and
empirical study of culture are favored. Scholarship in
comparative cultural studies includes the theoretical, as
well as methodological and applied postulate to move
and to dialogue between cultures, languages, literature,
and disciplines: attention to other cultures against
essentialist notions and practices and beyond the
paradigm of the nation-state is a basic and founding
element of the framework and its application.
 1. A counterculture is a culture whose values and norms of behavior differ
substantially from those of mainstream society, often in opposition to mainstream
cultural mores.
 2. Cross-cultural studies, sometimes called holocultural studies or comparative
studies, is a specialization in anthropology and sister sciences (sociology,
psychology, economics, political science) that uses field data from many societies
to examine the scope of human behavior and test hypotheses about human
behavior and culture.
 3.Cultural anthropology is a branch of anthropology focused on the study of
cultural variation among humans. It is in contrast to social anthropology, which
perceives cultural 11 variation as a subset of a posited anthropological constant.
The umbrella term sociocultural anthropology includes both cultural and social
anthropology traditions.
 4.Cultural assimilation is the process in which a minority group or
culture comes to resemble a dominant group or assume the values,
behaviors, and beliefs of another group. A conceptualization describes
cultural assimilation as similar to acculturation while another merely
considers the former as one of the latter's phases.
 What is an Epic? Epic is: “A long narrative poem on a great and
serious subject, related in an elevated style, and centered on a heroic
or quasi-divine figure on whose actions depends the fate of a tribe, a
nation, or the human race. The traditional epics were shaped by a
literary artist from historical and legendary materials which had
developed in the oral traditions of his nation during a period of
expansion and warfare” (Sandra Effinger)
 --Examples: Homer’s the Odyssey and The Iliad, Virgil’s The
Aeneid, Beowulf, John Milton’s Paradise Lost, El Cid, and many
others.

 An epic is...
 It is a long narrative about a serious or worthy traditional subject.
o This subject may be particular to a specific region, such as a war or a
climate change
o or this subject may be common to different groups of people in
different areas of the world: such as the creation of the world or the
relationship between gods and humans.
o Its diction is elevated in style. It employs a formal, dignified,
objective tone, and many figures of speech.
o The narrative focuses on the exploits of a hero or demigod who
represents the cultural values of a race, nation, or religious group.
 o The hero's success or failure will determine the fate of that people
or nation.
 o The action takes place in a vast setting, and covers a wide
geographic area. The setting is frequently sometime in the remote past.
 o The action contains superhuman feats of strength or military
prowess.
 o Gods or supernatural beings frequently take part in the action to
affect the outcome.
 o Ex. Ishtar in The Epic of Gilgamesh

 o The poem begins with the invocation of a muse to inspire the poet, a
prayer to an appropriate supernatural being. The speaker asks that this
being provide him the suitable emotion, creativity, or words to finish
the poem.
 The Fertile Crescent
 The Fertile Crescent is an area in Western Asia or the Middle East, where the
land is fertile in comparison to the land in other parts of that region. It is
nested between the Syrian Desert to the south and the Anatolian highlands to
the north. Additionally, the Mediterranean Sea lies to the west and the
Persian Gulf to the east.
 The region is often considered the "cradle of civilization" because it is where
the earliest civilizations arose and also where writing and the wheel first
developed. As I mentioned in Lesson 2, the invention of writing and the
wheel were extremely important to the development of the globalization
process because they served as tools to bring disparate civilizations together.
 Literature and writing, though connected, are not synonymous. The very first
writings from ancient Sumer by any reasonable definition do not constitute
literature—the same is true of some of the early Egyptian hieroglyphics or
the thousands of logs from ancient Chinese regimes. Scholars have often
disagreed concerning when written record-keeping became more like
"literature" than anything else; the definition is largely subjective .
 Certain primary texts, however, may be isolated which have a qualifying role as
literature's first stirrings. Very early examples include Epic of Gilgamesh, in its
Sumerian version predating 2000 BC, and the Egyptian Book of the Dead written
down in the Papyrus of Ani in approximately 1250 BC but probably dates from
about the 18th century BC. Ancient Egyptian literature was not included in early
studies of the history of literature because the writings of Ancient Egypt were not
translated into European languages until the 19th century when the Rosetta stone
was deciphered.
 The Epic of Gilgamesh
 This is one of the earliest know works of literature. The version
we are reading was also found in a king's library at Nineveh like
the Enuma Elish. Historians believe the story was probably based
on the life of a real king. This explains some of its earlier titles
"He Who Saw the Deep" and "Surpassing All Other Kings." It is
a text written on clay tablets, which again accounts for its
fragmentation and missing parts. And its repetitions, reminiscent
of chants, are due to its origins as an oral story. However, in this
epic, the repetitions also have an important role: they show that
Gilgamesh is less in control of his life, of his fate as he thinks he
is. You can find an example of this in Tablet 1 when Gilgamesh
repeats word for word what the trapper's father predicts he will
say.
 The main characters are:
 Gilgamesh - he is the king of the city of Uruk; he is considered the strongest man
alive; he is very arrogant and selfish, and doesn't treat his people well at all. He
oppresses the people of Uruk so badly that they ask the sky god Anu for help.
Gilgamesh has several dreams that foreshadow what is to come, including one about
his encounter with Enkidu.
 Enkidu - Gilgamesh’s counterpart; Anu makes him of clay and water in response to
the people's pleas for his help. Enkidu is half man, half wild animal; untamed.
 Aruru - is the goddess of creation who constantly interferes with Gilgamesh's doings.
 Humbaba - is a monster created by Enlil, the god of wind and storm.
 Ishtar - is the goddess of love. She desires Gilgamesh but he ignores her advances.
She becomes enraged and sends the Bull of Heaven to Uruk to attack Gilgamesh and
destroy the city.
 Utnapishtim - is the Mesopotamian flood hero; he survived the "Great Flood" and as
such has become the "keeper of immortality"
 This epic is basically divided into 4 parts:16
 --The first introduces you to Gilgamesh, presents the creation of Enkidu, and
shows the development of Gilgamesh and Enkidu's relationship
 --In the second part, Gilgamesh and Enkidu battle Humbaba
 --In the third, Gilgamesh and Enkidu battle the Bull of Heaven. When they kill it,
Ishtar becomes enraged and demands Enkidu lose his life as revenge.
 --In the fourth, Gilgamesh is devastated by Enkidu's death and begins his quest
for immortality. This is the part in which he meets Utnapishtim.
 There are certain themes in this myth that you have already seen in "A
Babylonian Theogony" and Enuma Elish too. These included:
 --The conflict between civilized and wild; order and chao
 Middle Ages
 Europe
 After the fall of Rome (in roughly 476), many of the literary approaches
and styles invented by the Greeks and Romans fell out of favor in
Europe. In the millennium or so that intervened between Rome's fall and
the Florentine Renaissance, medieval literature focused more and more
on faith and faith-related matters, in part because the works written by
the Greeks had not been preserved in Europe, and therefore there were
few models of classical literature to learn from and move beyond.
 What little there was became changed and distorted, with new forms
beginning to develop from the distortions. Some of these distorted
beginnings of new styles can be seen in the literature generally
described as Matter of Rome, Matter of France and Matter of Britain.
 Islamic World
 The most well known fiction from the Islamic world was The Book of One
Thousand and One Nights (Arabian Nights), which was a compilation of many
earlier folk tales told by the Persian Queen Scheherazade. The epic took form
in the 10th century and reached its final form by the 14th century; the number
and type of tales have varied from one manuscript to another. All Arabian
fantasy tales were often called "Arabian Nights" when translated into English,
regardless of whether they appeared in The Book of One Thousand and One
Nights, in any version, and a number of tales are known in Europe as "Arabian
Nights" despite existing in no Arabic manuscript.
 This epic has been influential in the West since it was translated in the 18th century,
first by Antoine Galland. Many imitations were written, especially in France. Various
characters from this epic have themselves become cultural icons in Western culture,
such as Aladdin, Sinbad and Ali Baba.
 However, no medieval Arabic source has been traced for Aladdin, which was
incorporated into The Book of One Thousand and One Nights by its French
translator, Antoine Galland, who heard it from an Arab Syrian Christian
storyteller 20 from Aleppo. The popularity of the work may in part be due to
greater popular knowledge of history and geography since it was written. This
meant that the plausibility of great marvels had to be set at a greater distance
of time ("long ago") and place ("far away").
 This is a process that continues, and finally culminates in fantasy fiction
having little connection, if any, to actual times and places. A number of
elements from Arabian mythology and Persian mythology are now common
in modern fantasy, such as genies, bahamuts, magic carpets, magic lamps, etc.
[7] When L. Frank Baum proposed writing a modern fairy tale that banished
stereotypical elements he felt the genie, dwarf and fairy were stereotypes to
avoid
 Arabic literature
 Ibn Tufail (Abubacer) and Ibn al-Nafis (1213–1288) were pioneers of the
philosophical novel. Ibn Tufail wrote the first fictional Arabic novel Hayy ibn
Yaqdhan (Philosophus Autodidactus) as a response to al-Ghazali's The
Incoherence of the Philosophers, and then Ibn al-Nafis also wrote a novel
Theologus Autodidactus as a response to Ibn Tufail's Philosophus
Autodidactus. Both of these narratives had protagonists (Hayy in Philosophus
Autodidactus and Kamil in Theologus Autodidactus) who were autodidactic
feral children living in seclusion on a desert island, both being the earliest
examples of a desert island story. However, while Hayy lives alone with
animals on the desert island for the rest of the story in Philosophus
Autodidactus, the story of Kamil extends beyond the desert island setting in
Theologus Autodidactus, developing into the earliest known coming of age
plot and eventually becoming the first example of a science fiction novel.
 Persian literature
 Ferdowsi's Shahnameh, the national epic of Iran, is a mythical and heroic retelling
of Persian history. It is the longest epic poem ever written. From Persian culture
the book which would, eventually, become the most famous in the west is the
Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. The Rubáiyát is a collection of poems by the Persian
mathematician and astronomer Omar Khayyám (1048–1122). "Rubaiyat" means
"quatrains": verses of four lines.21 Amir Arsalan was also a popular mythical
Persian story, which has influenced some modern works of fantasy fiction, such as
The Heroic Legend of Arslan. Examples of early Persian proto-science fiction
include Al-Farabi's Opinions of the residents of a splendid city about a utopian
society, and elements such as the flying carpet.
 India literature
 Early Medieval (Gupta period) literature in India sees the flowering of Sanskrit
drama, classical Sanskrit poetry and the compilation of the Puranas. Sanskrit
declines in the early 2nd millennium, late works such as the Kathasaritsagara
dating to the 11th century, to the benefit of literature composed in Middle Indic
vernaculars such as Old Bengali, Old Hindi.
 Lyric poetry advanced far more in China than in Europe prior to 1000, as multiple
new forms developed in the Han, Tang, and Song dynasties: perhaps the greatest
poets of this era in Chinese literature were Li Bai and Du Fu.
 Printing began in Tang Dynasty China. A copy of the Diamond Sutra, a key
Buddhist text, found sealed in a cave in China in the early 20th century, is the
oldest known dated printed book, with a printed date of 868. The method used was
block printing
 Japan
 Japanese literature and List of Japanese classic texts Classical Japanese literature
generally refers to literature produced during the Heian Period, what some would
consider a golden era of art and literature. The Tale of Genji (early 11th century)
by Murasaki Shikibu is considered the pre-eminent masterpiece of Heian fiction
and an early example of a work of fiction in the form of a novel. It is sometimes
called the world's first novel, the first modern novel, the first romance novel, or
the first novel to still be considered a classic.
 Other important works of this period include the Kokin Wakashū (905), a waka-
poetry anthology, and The Pillow Book (990s), the latter written by Murasaki
Shikibu's contemporary and rival, Sei Shōnagon, as an essay about the life, loves,
and pastimes of nobles in the Emperor's court. The iroha poem, now one of two
standard orderings for the Japanese syllabary, was also written during the early
part of this period.
 TALE OF GENJI

 Written about 1,000 yeas ago and has 54 chapters and over 1,000 pages
of text in its English translation. It is generally considered to be the
world's first true novel.
 The Tale Of Genji Background The tale of Genji deals with the life of a
prince and his seemingly endless affairs with various court ladies The
novel depicts a refined Japanese court life during the Heian period.
 The Tale Of Genji Background The tale is parallel to the Heian society,
one group of elites obsessed in rank, leisure and breeding, they were
acutely sensitive to beauty of nature and pleasures of music, poetry and
calligraphy, as it was portrayed in this tale.
 Prince Hikaru Genji

 Emperor

 Princess Fujitsubo

 Princess Aoi No Ue

 Lady Murasaki
 Lady Rokujo

 Lady Kiritsubo

 Lady Oburuzukiyo

 Princess Ona Sanno Miya

 The 10th-century Japanese narrative, The Tale of the
Bamboo Cutter, 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 is found and raised by a
bamboo cutter in Japan. She is later taken back to the Moon
by her real extraterrestrial family. A manuscript illustration
depicts a disc-shaped flying object similar to a flying
saucer.
 Renaissance
 In the Renaissance, the focus on learning for learning's sake causes an
outpouring of literature. Petrarch popularized the sonnet as a poetic form;
Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron made romance acceptable in prose as
well as poetry;
 François Rabelais rejuvenates satire with Gargantua and Pantagruel;
Michel de Montaigne singlehandedly invented the essay and used it to
catalog his life and ideas. Perhaps the most controversial and important
work of the time period was a treatise printed in Nuremberg, entitled De
Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium: in it, the astronomer Nicolaus
Copernicus removed the Earth from its privileged position in the
universe, which had far reaching effects, not only in science, but in
literature and its approach to humanity, hierarchy, and truth.
 Enlightenment
 With the rise of literacy, books and other texts became more entrenched in
the culture of the West. Along with literacy and more printed words also
came censorship, especially from governments. In France, Voltaire and
Rousseau were both imprisoned for their works. Other authors, like
Montesquieu and Diderot, had to publish outside France. Censored books
became a valuable commodity within this environment, and an
underground network of book smugglers started operating within France.
 Diderot and Jean d'Alembert created the Encyclopedia, which was
published in 1751 in seventeen folio volumes with eleven volumes of
engravings. This work embodied the essence of the Age of Enlightenment.
Modern period:18th century
 This is the Age of Enlightenment and its most important authors are
Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Immanuel Kant and Adam Smith.
The second half of the century sees the beginnings of Romanticism
with Goethe.
 19th century literature
 In Britain, the 19th century is dominated by the Victorian era,
characterized by Romanticism, with Romantic poets such as William
Wordsworth, Lord Byron or Samuel Taylor Coleridge and genres
such as the gothic novel. Charles Dickens, perhaps the most famous
novelist in the history of English literature, was active during this
time and contributed to the novel's emergence as the leading literary
genre of Victorian England.
 In Germany, the Sturm und Drang period of the late 18th century merges
into a Classicist and Romantic period, epitomized by the long era of
Goethe's activity, covering the first third of the century. The conservative
Biedermeier style conflicts with the radical Vormärz in the turbulent
period separating the end of the Napoleonic wars from the Revolutions
of 1848.
 20th century literature
 The main periods of 20th century literature are captured in the bipartite
division, Modernist literature and Postmodern literature, flowering from
roughly 1900 to 1940 and 1945 to 1980 respectively, divided, as a rule of
thumb, by World War II.
 Popular literature develops its own genres such as fantasy and
science fiction. Ignored by mainstream literary criticism, these
genres develop their own establishments and critical awards, such as
the Nebula Award (since 1965), the British Fantasy Award (since
1971) or the Mythopoeic Awards (since 1971).
 World folk-epics are those epics which are not just literary
masterpieces but also an integral part of the worldview of a people.
They were originally oral literatures, which were later written down
by either single author or several writers. African languages
Bayajidda, a West African epic Eri, a West African epic Lianja, a
Central African epic Oduduwa, a West African epic Silamaka, a
West African epic Epic of Sundiata, a West African epic
 National Epic
 A national epic is an epic poem or a literary work of epic scope which seeks or is
believed to capture and express the essence or spirit of a particular nation—not
necessarily a nation state, but at least an ethnic or linguistic group with aspirations to
independence or autonomy. National epics frequently recount the origin of a nation, a
part of its history, or a crucial event in the development of national identity such as
other national symbols. In a broader sense, a national epic may simply be an epic in the
national language which the people or government of that nation are particularly proud
of. It is distinct from a pan-national epic which is taken as representative of a larger
cultural or linguistic group than a nation or a nation-state.
 National myth. It is an inspiring narrative or anecdote about a nation's past. Such myths
often serve as an important national symbol and affirm a set of national values. A
national myth may sometimes take the form of a national epic or be incorporated into a
civil religion. A group of related myths about a nation may be referred to as the national
mythos, from μῦθος, the original Greek word for "myth".
 A national myth is a legend or fictionalized narrative which has been
elevated to a serious mythological, symbolic, and esteemed level so as
to be true to the nation. It might simply over-dramatize true incidents,
omit important historical details, or add details for which there is no
evidence; or it might simply be a fictional story that no one takes to be
true literally, but contains a symbolic meaning for the nation.
 The national folklore of many nations includes a founding myth, which
may involve a struggle against colonialism or a war of independence.
In many cases, the meaning of the national myth is disputed among
different parts of the population.
 National myths serve many social and political purposes. National
myths often exist only for the purpose of state-sponsored
propaganda. In totalitarian dictatorships, the leader might be given,
for example, a mythical supernatural life history in order to make
him or her seem godlike and supra-powerful (see also cult of
personality). However, national myths exist in every society. In
liberal regimes they can serve the purpose of inspiring civic virtue
and self-sacrifice, or of consolidating the power of dominant groups
and legitimizing their rule
 Asian languages
 Mahabharata, a Sanskrit epic from India; known as Bharatayuddha in Indonesia
and one of the longest epics in the world.
 Ramayana, a Sanskrit epic from India.
 La Galigo, also known as Sureq Galigo or La Galigo, is an epic creation myth of
the Bugis people from South Sulawesi, Indonesia Written in an Austronesian
(Malayo-Polynesian) language, it is the longest epic in the world.
 Alpamysh, a Turkic epic of Middle Asia
 Bahman Nama, a Persian epic about the story of Bahman son of IsfandyarBanu
Goshasp Nama, a Persian epic about the daughter of RustamTaghribat
 Bani Hilal, an Arabic epic recounting the journeys and conquests of the Bani
Hilal tribe
 Bidasari, a Malay epic