Asian literature

Chinese literature

vernacular fiction novels that arose during the Ming Dynasty

Confucianism, of Daoism, of Mohism, of Legalism, as well as works of military science and
Chinese history

Japanese literature
Nara literature[edit]

Kakinomoto no Hitomaro (c.660c.720): numerous chka and tanka in the Man'ysh

tomo no Yakamochi (c.718785): possible compiler of the Man'ysh
Heian literature[edit]

Sei Shnagon (c.966 c.1017): The Pillow Book

Murasaki Shikibu (c.973 c.1025): The Tale of Genji
Kamakura-Muromachi literature[edit]

Yoshida Kenk (c.12831352): Tsurezuregusa

The Tale of the Heike (c.12121309)
Miyamoto Musashi (c.15841645): The Book of Five Rings
Edo literature[edit]

Ihara Saikaku (16421693)

Matsuo Bash (16441694)
Chikamatsu Monzaemon (16531725)
Ueda Akinari (17341809)
Meiji and Taisho literature[edit]

Mori gai (18621922)

Futabatei Shimei (18641909)
It Sachio (18641913)
Kda Rohan (18671947)
Natsume Sseki (18671916)
Masaoka Shiki (18671902)
Ozaki Ky (18681903)
Doppo Kunikida (18711908)
Modern literature[edit]

Kansuke Naka (18851965)

Yaeko Nogami (18851985)
Jun'ichir Tanizaki (18861965)
 Hyakken Uchida (18891971)
Edogawa Ranpo (18941965)
Eiji Yoshikawa (18921962)
Mitsuharu Kaneko (18951975)
Chiyo Uno (18971996)
Shigeji Tsuboi (18981975)
Masuji Ibuse (18981993)
Jun Ishikawa (18991987)
Yasunari Kawabata (18991972)
Yuriko Miyamoto (18991951)
Sakae Tsuboi (19001967)
Fumiko Hayashi (1903-1951)

Philippine literature
1976 Nick Joaquin, National Artist for Literature
1982 Carlos P. Romulo, National Artist for Literature
1990 Francisco Arcellana, National Artist for Literature
1997 Nestor Vicente Madali Gonzalez, National Artist for Literature
1997 Rolando S. Tinio, National Artist for Theater and Literature
1997 Levi Celerio, National Artist for Music and Literature
1999 Edith L. Tiempo, National Artist for Literature
2001 - F. Sionil Jose, National Artist for Literature
2003 Virgilio S. Almario, National Artist for Literature
2003 Alejandro Roces, National Artist for Literature
2006 Bienvenido Lumbera, National Artist for Literature
2009 Lazaro A. Francisco, National Artist for Literature
2014 Cirilo F. Bautista, National Artist for Literature

American literature

Nathaniel Hawthorne (18041864) is notable for his masterpiece, The Scarlet Letter, a novel about
adultery. Hawthorne influenced Herman Melville (18191891) who is notable for the books Moby-
Dick and Billy Budd. America's two greatest 19th-century poets were Walt Whitman (18191892)
and Emily Dickinson (18301886). American poetry reached a peak in the early-to-mid-20th century,
with such noted writers as Wallace Stevens, T. S. Eliot, Robert Frost, Ezra Pound, Hart Crane,
and E. E. Cummings. Mark Twain (the pen name used by Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 18351910)
was the first major American writer to be born away from the East Coast. Henry James (18431916)
was notable for novels like The Turn of the Screw. At the beginning of the 20th century, American
novelists included Edith Wharton (18621937), Stephen Crane (18711900), Theodore
Dreiser (18711945), and Jack London (18761916). Experimentation in style and form is seen in
the works of Gertrude Stein (18741946).
American writers expressed disillusionment following WW I. The stories and novels of F. Scott
Fitzgerald (18961940) capture the mood of the 1920s, and John Dos Passos wrote about the
war. Ernest Hemingway (18991961) became notable for The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to
Arms; in 1954, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature. William Faulkner(18971962) is notable for
novels like The Sound and the Fury. American drama attained international status only in the 1920s
and 1930s, with the works of Eugene O'Neill, who won four Pulitzer Prizes and the Nobel Prize. In
 the middle of the 20th century, American drama was dominated by the work of
playwrights Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller, as well as by the maturation of the
American musical.
Depression era writers included John Steinbeck (19021968), notable for his novel The Grapes of
Wrath. Henry Miller assumed a unique place in American Literature in the 1930s when his semi-
autobiographical novels were banned from the US. From the end of World War II up until, roughly,
the late 1960s and early 1970s saw the publication of some of the most popular works in American
history such as To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. America's involvement in World War II
influenced the creation of works such as Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead (1948), Joseph
Heller's Catch-22 (1961) and Kurt Vonnegut Jr.'s Slaughterhouse-Five (1969). John Updike was
notable for his novel Rabbit, Run (1960). Philip Roth explores Jewish identity in American society.
From the early 1970s to the present day the most important literary movement has
been postmodernism and the flowering of literature by ethnic minority writers.

African literature

Oral literature (or orature) may be in prose or verse. The prose is often mythological or historical
and can include tales of the trickster character.
"Epic of Sundiata" composed in medieval Mali, and the older "Epic of Dinga" from the old Ghana
Empire.
Kebra Negast, or "Book of Kings."
The African Colonial works best known in the West from the period of colonization and the slave
trade are primarily slave narratives, such as Olaudah Equiano's The Interesting Narrative of the
Life of Olaudah Equiano (1789).
Among the first pieces of African literature to receive significant worldwide critical acclaim was
Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe. Published in 1958, late in the colonial era, Things Fall Apart
analyzed the effect of colonialism on traditional African society.

European

About 300 medieval and Renaissance manuscripts

Political treatises of all periods to the time of the French Revolution
Humanism
French political pamphlets of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
French Revolutionary-period pamphlets
Early works on military science and military architecture
Calligraphy, handwriting, and shorthand books
Emblem books
Courtesy books
Dictionaries and encyclopedias
Editions of Terence
The institutional history of the Christian churches
Religious non-conformity, especially Recusancy, Jansenism, Sociniansim
The Roman and Spanish Inquisitions
Religious publishing and censorship
Childrens books

Prose fiction
 imaginary story, usually written down, that someone tells in everyday, natural language.
generally uses a variety of techniques such as narrative and has a wide range in terms of
length.
derives from the Italian novella (little new thing), which was a short piece of prose.
Although individuals label these stories by form and genre, a common thread is the use of
universal themes that trigger emotional responses from readers.
The definition of good and bad for these works is fairly subjective, because they are based
on the way people talk and behave in regular conversation and situations, which changes over
time.

Poetry (the term derives from a variant of the Greek term, poiesis, "making") is a form
of literature that uses aesthetic and rhythmic
Poetry uses forms and conventions to suggest differential interpretation to words, or to evoke
emotive responses.
Devices such as assonance, alliteration, onomatopoeia and rhythm are sometimes used to
achieve musical or incantatory effects.
The use of ambiguity, symbolism, irony and other stylistic elements of poetic diction often
leaves a poem open to multiple interpretations.
Some poetry types are specific to particular cultures and genres and respond to characteristics
of the language in which the poet writes.

Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance

The term "drama" comes from a Greek word meaning "action" (Classical
Greek: , drama), which is derived from "I do" (Classical Greek: , drao).
The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience,
presupposes collaborative modes of production and a collective form of reception.
Drama is often combined with music and dance: the drama in opera is generally sung
throughout; musicals generally include both spoken dialogue and songs; and some forms of
drama have incidental music or musical accompaniment underscoring the dialogue
(melodrama and Japanese N, for example).
In English (as was the analogous case in many other European languages), the word "play"
or "game" (translating the Anglo-Saxon plga or Latin ludus) was the standard term used to
describe drama until William Shakespeare's timejust as its creator was a "play-maker"
rather than a "dramatist" and the building was a "play-house" rather than a "theatre".
Nonfictional prose, any literary work that is based mainly on fact, even though it may contain
fictional elements.
Examples are the essay and biography.
Nonfictional prose genres cover an almost infinite variety of themes, and they assume many
shapes.
. Nonfictional prose genres have flourished in nearly all countries with advanced literatures.
 The genres include political and polemical writings, biographical and autobiographical literature,
religious writings, and philosophical, and moral or religious writings.

A drama, or a play, is a piece of writing that is presented almost exclusively through dialogue.
Like a short story or novel, it has a setting, characters, plot, and even symbolism.

However, the way in which they are presented to the audience is different, because unlike a
short story or novel, the play is meant to be performed in front of an audience, not read.

Plays are not written in paragraphs like a novel or short story. Instead, they are written as lines
of dialogue in the form of a script.

Plot refers to the sequence of events inside a story which affect other events through the
principle of cause and effect.

The causal events of a plot can be thought of as a series of sentences linked by "and so".

Plots can vary from simple structures such as in a traditional ballad to complex interwoven
structures sometimes referred to as an imbroglio.

The term plot can serve as a verb and refer to a character planning future actions in the story.

In contemporary literary studies, a theme is the central topic a text treats.

Themes can be divided into two categories: a work's thematic concept is what readers "think
the work is about" and its thematic statement being "what the work says about the subject".

The most common contemporary understanding of theme is an idea or point that is central to a
story, which can often be summed in a single word (e.g. love, death, betrayal).
Typical examples of themes of this type are conflict between the individual and society; coming
of age; humans in conflict with technology; nostalgia; and the dangers of unchecked ambition.
A theme may be exemplified by the actions, utterances, or thoughts of a character in a novel.

Narration is the use of a written or spoken commentary to convey a story to an audience.[1] Narration
encompasses a set of techniques through which the creator of the storypresents their story,
including:

Narrative point of view: the perspective (or type of personal or non-personal "lens") through
which a story is communicated
Narrative voice: the format (or type presentational form) through which a story is communicated
Narrative time: the grammatical placement of the story's time-frame in the past, the present, or
the future.
 a distinctive manner of expression (as in writing or speech) writes with more attention to style
than to content the flowery style of 18th century prose
b :a distinctive manner or custom of behaving or conducting oneself the formal style of the
court his style is abrasive; also :a particular mode of living in high style
c :a particular manner or technique by which something is done, created, or performed a unique
style of horseback riding the classical style of dance

Point of view (philosophy), an attitude how one sees or thinks of something

Point of view (literature) or narrative mode, the perspective of the narrative voice; the pronoun
used in narration
Point of view (painting), the angle of painter vision
Point of view shot, a technique in motion photography
Point of view pornography, as used in adult film

In literature, the tone of a literary work expresses the writer's attitude toward or feelings
about the subject matter and audience
Depending upon the personality of the writer and the effect the writer wants to create, the
work can be formal or informal, sober or whimsical, assertive or pleading, straightforward or
sly.
Tone and mood are not the same, although they are frequently confused. The mood of a
piece of literature is the feeling or atmosphere created by the work, or, said slightly
differently, how the work makes the reader feel. Mood is produced most effectively through
the use of setting, theme, voice and tone, while tone is how the author feels about
something.

Symbolism is the use of symbols to signify ideas and qualities, by giving them
symbolic meanings that are different from their literal sense.

Symbolism can take different forms. Generally, it is an object representing

another, to give an entirely different meaning that is much deeper and more
significant. Sometimes, however, an action, an event or a word spoken by
someone may have a symbolic value. For instance, smile is a symbol of
friendship. Similarly, the action of someone smiling at you may stand as a
symbol of the feeling of affection which that person has for you.

A figure of speech or rhetorical figure[1] is figurative language in the form of a

single word or phrase. It can be a special repetition, arrangement or omission of words with
literal meaning, or a phrase with a specialized meaning not based on the literal meaning of
the words.[dubious discuss] Figures of speech often provide emphasis, freshness of expression, or
clarity. However, clarity may also suffer from their use, as any figure of speech introduces an
ambiguity between literal and figurative interpretation.[dubious discuss]
 Illustrated fiction is a hybrid narrative medium in which images and text work together to tell
a story. It can take various forms, including fiction written for adults or children, magazine
fiction, comic strips, and picture books
Digi Fiction is a book that includes passcodes so that there is more information for the book
online. It might be short videos to watch, or more text. Sometimes Digi Fiction can also mean
that the entire book can be found in an online version only.
Graphic novels can and should be used in the classroom much like any other form of reading
material. They also tell a story, with all of the literary elements of traditional stories present:
plot, character, setting, theme, climax, etc. Figurative language, symbolism, and other literary
devices are also present in many graphic novels. Due to the scaffolding of illustration in addition
to the text, concepts such as flashback, foreshadowing, and symbolism might be more readily
identified and understood. Since graphic novels might be a new format for a lot of readers,
teachers must make sure to take time to demonstrate the structure so that students will know
how to read a graphic novel.
Manga ( Manga) are comics created in Japan or by creators in the Japanese language,
conforming to a style developed in Japan in the late 19th century.[1] They have a long and
complex pre-history in earlier Japanese art.
The term manga (kanji: ; hiragana: ; katakana: ;
listen (helpinfo); English: /m/ or /m/) in Japan is a word used to refer to both
comics and cartooning. "Manga" as a term used outside Japan refers to comics originally
published in Japan.[3]
In Japan, people of all ages read manga. The medium includes works in a broad range of
genres: action-adventure, business and commerce, comedy, detective, historical drama,
horror, mystery, romance, science fiction and fantasy, sexuality, sports and games, and
suspense, among others.[4] [5] Many manga are translated into other languages.[6] Since the
1950s, manga has steadily become a major part of the Japanese publishing
industry,[7] representing a 406 billion market in Japan in 2007 (approximately $3.6 billion)
and 420 billion (approximately $5.5 billion) in 2009.[8] Manga have also gained a significant
worldwide audience.

A doodle is a drawing made while a person's attention is otherwise occupied. Doodles are simple
drawings that can have concrete representational meaning or may just be composed of random
and abstract lines, generally without ever lifting the drawing device from the paper, in which case it is
usually called a "scribble".
Doodling and scribbling are most often associated with young children and toddlers, because their
lack of handeye coordination and lower mental development often make it very difficult for any
young child to keep their coloring attempts within the line art of the subject. Despite this, it is not
uncommon to see such behaviour with adults, in which case it is generally done jovially, out of
boredom.