WORLD LITERATURE

Types of Literature

·         Prose

·         Poetry- written in verse

5 (Five) Genres of Literature

·         Short Story                 

·         Poem

·         Play/Drama

·         Essay

·         Novel

·         Epic

EPICS OF THE WORLD

COUNTRY	NAME OF EPIC	WRITER
Greece	Iliad and Odyssey	Homer
Rome	The Aeneid	Virgil
England	Beowulf	Unknown writer
Persia	The Shah Namah	Firdausi
Germany	The Nibelungenlied	Unknown writer
France	The Song of Roland
Spain	The Cid
Italy	The Divine Comedy	Dante
India	Mahabharata and Ramayana

LYRIC POETRY

·         Ode- talks about praises/adoration

·         Elegy- talks about pain ( centers on death)

·         Sonnet-composed of 14 lines-iambic pentameter

·         Simple lyric

THE ESSAY

2 Types

·         Familiar Essay (Informal Essay)

·         Formal Essay ( Serious Essay)

THE NOVEL

Types of Novels

·         Picaresque novel-adventures of a rogue or lowborn adventurer

Example: Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes

·         Epistolary novel-told through the medium of letters

·         Gothic novel- European Romantic, pseudo medieval fiction having a prevailing atmosphere of mystery and terror.

Examples: Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

            Dracula by Bram Stoker

            Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

Well-known Gothic writer: Edgar Allan Poe

·         Roman a Clef- French, literally means novel with a key

Example: Noli Me Tangere

·         Historical novel

·         Novel of manners

Examples: Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

                  The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

LITERARY TERMS

Comedy- lightness/humor (Verbal)

Farse- a light dramatic which includes violent horseplay ( physical)

Allegory-symbolic fictional narrative that conveys a secondary meaning

Bildungsroman-formative years of the main character

Magic Realism- Latin-American literature

            Example: One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Stream of Consciousness Technique- flow of myriad impressions

OTHER INFORMATION

Metrical Romance-long rumbling love story in verse

The Ballad- narrative poem which could be sung

Metrical Tale- short story in verse

            Examples:  The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer

                                The Decameron( Black Death as its background) by Giovanni Boccaccio

Note: The Cnaterbury Tales, The Decameron and The Arabian Nights are examples of Framed Story which means, a story within a story.

Allusion- indirect reference

            Examples: between the devil and the deep blue sea

                              Literature is my Achilles’ heel

                              Beware of Greeks, bearing gifts

Foreshadowing- what future may bring

Flash back- remembering the past