Professional Documents
Culture Documents
LESSON 1 5 Module 11 15 Final Grading Lectures
LESSON 1 5 Module 11 15 Final Grading Lectures
LITERATURE
Objectives:
Australian literature literary works are produced in the area or by the people of
the Commonwealth of Australia and its preceding colonies. Australia was a collection of
British colonies; therefore, its literary tradition begins with and is linked to the broader
tradition of English literature. Since 4566, the character of a new continent is introduced
into literature Exploring such themes as Aboriginality, mate ship, egalitarianism,
democracy, migrant and national identity, distance from other Eastern nations and
proximity to Asia, the complexities of urban living, and the "beauty and the terror" of
life in the Australian bush. First landing by Dutch explorers was in the beginning of the
17th century. Australia was first settled as a penal colony of Great Britain at the end of
the 18th century. As a British colony and later a commonwealth state, Australia was
profoundly influenced by Britain in all aspects of society. Australian Literature since the
19th century was the first popular works such as novels about life on the frontier, using
vernacular language or Australian dialect. Later in the 19th century Gothic novels,
poetry, drama, children's literature, and histories became famous.
Themes of Australian Literature
Australian literature- Australian literature, the body of literature, both oral and written, produced
in Australia.
Adam Lindsay Gordon was a much more popular poet. The Sick Stockriderfrom his Bush
Ballads and Galloping Rhymes (1870) was a general favorite, much admired and much recited. It
conveyed a sense of comradeship, mapped a world by a Bushmans kind of detail, and exhibited
stoic sentimentalism that was exactly to colonial taste. Henry Kendall, a poet of forests and
mountain streams, specialized in more mournful effects. As he is the poetry of sound and
description rather than of action (as evinced in his volume Leaves from Australian Forests
[1869]), it is not always clear that he was wrestling with some broad transcendentalist notions.
The first Australian novel, Henry Saverys "Quintus Servinton", was published in 1831. It
is strongly autobiographical, and its convict theme amounts to special pleading. But it does not
emphasize the exotic possibilities of its Australian scenes. James Tuckers Ralph Rashleigh; or,
The Life of an Exile (written in 1844; published in an edited version in 1929 and its original text
in 1952), on the other hand, makes use of all the sensational opportunities at hand. It begins as
a picaresque account of low-life London and proceeds through the whole gamut of convict life,
escapes, bushrangers, and life among Aboriginal peoples. One of its most telling moments is
Ralphs's panic at being lost in the bush, a theme that compelled many colonial writers and
painters.
The first widely known novel of Australia was "Recollections of Geoffry Hamlyn (1859)"
by Henry Kingsley, brother of Charles Kingsley. When the action at last moves from Devon to
Australia, the story transposes into heroic romance, and it too manages to incorporate the
sensational possibilities of the colonial experience: bushrangers and bushfires, floods and
hostile Aboriginal peoples, the tragic outcome of being lost in the bush, cattle branding and
horse galloping, and a fortune earned. Catherine Helen Spences Clara Morison (1854) details
with a nice sense of irony the social preoccupations of Adelaide in the mid-19th century, but it
was not a well-known novel.
Marcus Clarkes "His Natural Life (1874; the antecedent phrase For the Term of was
inserted without authority after his death)" is the first novel regarded as an Australian classic. It
is a powerful account of the convict experience, drawing heavily on documentary sources.
Within the rigors and perversions of the convict system, another social system forms itself and
establishes its code. But beyond the horrors and the brutality, there is a compensating moral
theme, that of goodness recognized. Clarke uses his Australian material to approach universal
values. Both Clarke and Rolf Boldrewood (pseudonym of Thomas Alexander Browne) initially
published their fiction in serial installments in colonial magazines such as the Australian Journal
and The Sydney Mail. Boldrewoods Robbery Under Arms (1888) was immensely popular, and it
too achieved classic status. Of particular interest is the Australian vernacular in which the
narrator, Dick Marston, presents his confession of his part in gang activity. Boldrewood also
articulates the sentimental, stoic resignation that colonial Australians seemed to favor. Other
novelists who had established themselves by the late 1800s were Rosa Praed—her Policy and
Passion (1881) is an interesting account of the personal life of a Queensland politician—and the
prolific Ada Cambridge.
Not to be forgotten in any account of the first hundred years are the published journals
of the explorers. Not only were their discoveries of widespread interest, but many of them—
including Charles Sturt, Edward John Eyre, and Sir Thomas Livingstone Mitchell—were
accomplished writers. Eyres account of his struggle around the Great Australian Bight (a wide
embayment of the Indian Ocean) inspired the Australian novelist Patrick White in writing Voss
(1957), although White modeled that novel in part on the experiences of Ludwig Leichhardt,
explorer, and naturalist who in the 1840s led a dangerous expedition through interior Australia
that resulted in the discovery of many sites suitable for settlement.
The centenary year 1888 provided the occasion for review and reassessment, and
almost inevitably that actively encouraged the growing nationalist sentiment already in
evidence in such publications as the weekly Bulletin (founded 1880). The last 20 years of the
19th century saw a marked growth of nationalism and the movement toward the federation of
the separate states. The Bulletin, with its rallying cry of Australia for the Australians, was
ardently nationalistic. It urged its contributors to write Australian and to celebrate above all the
virtues of the Australian worker, especially the bush worker. It endorsed the egalitarian myth of
mateship rather than the independence of the little man, the battler, who struggles on his own
against the odds. It espoused a cheerful, somewhat larrikin (Australian word meaning, among
other things, rowdy, or irresponsible) brashness, and in this, it revealed its underlying urban
orientation. Other papers and magazines of the period actively published Australian writing, but
the Bulletin attracted the utopian idealists and the sentimental realists who dominated
Australian writing at the end of the century. It advocated a spare, laconic style; it preferred a
humorous attitude to life's hardships; and it favored themes of national pride, the values of
rural life, and sympathy for the struggles of small-scale farmers. Among its many contributors,
A.B. (Banjo) Paterson was acclaimed for composing Waltzing Matilda and for his bush ballads,
and Henry Lawson published his greatest short stories there. (Among the collections of
Lawson's work are While the Billy Boils [1896] and Children of the Bush [1902]).
Curiously, at the very time, the image of young Australia was being so vigorously
advanced, Paterson and Lawson and Steele Rudd (pseudonym of Arthur Hoey Davis) showed a
pronounced tendency to nostalgia, to the distant in time or place. Joseph Furphy, resisting the
call for succinctness, wrote a large complex novel, Such Is Life (1903), describing the rural world
of the 1880s. It overflows with details of station life, the conversations of bullock drivers,
nationalistic sentiments, and philosophical meditations about chance and determinism. The
reading of the Australian experience in terms of bush realism was open to challenge. Barbara
Bayntons stories in Bush Studies (1902) subvert the persistent mateyethos, suggesting instead
the darkly disturbing side of bush experience. Christopher Brennan, in such volumes as Poems
1913 (1913), virtually ignored local preoccupations in his Symbolist poetry; he tapped instead
the deep sources of spiritual restlessness, particularly through the use of myth and archetype.
Some popular writers, such as C.J. Dennis in his verses about the Sentimental Bloke, relocated
many of the bush attitudes to the inner city.
By the early decades of the 20th century, the era of bushranging, convictism, and
exploration was far enough in the past to be regarded as historical color. It also was fully
expected that the Aboriginal peoples would also pass away—Daisy Bates, who lived for many
years among Aboriginal people, used as the title of her book about her experiences the
standard phrase The Passing of the Aborigine (1938). Aboriginal people had become the subject
of anthropological interest in the work of Sir Walter Baldwin Spencer and Francis James Gillen
in Central Australia, and Aboriginal legends had been collected and rewritten by K. Langloh
Parker, although there was still very little interest in Aboriginal people as people. Such interest
as existed was—in the manner of the times—proprietary, as in Mrs. Aeneas Gunns The Little
Black Princess (1905) for young readers and in her autobiographical We of the Never-Never
(1908), about her experiences on a station in the Northern Territory, the last region of Australia
to attract European expansion. It still regards itself as the quintessential Outback.
The first great phase of writing for children also occurred in the Federation era
(Australia's version of the Edwardian period, extending from 1901, when the Australian
provinces formed a federation, to just beyond the end of World War I), a time of widespread
wealth and security and, for the middle class, of social consolidation. The books for children
reflect this atmosphere; they also reflect another reality, the easy acceptance of both
Australian and British Empire loyalties. Classic works were written by Ethel Turner, Ethel Pedley,
Amy, and Louise Mack, May Gibbs, and Mary Grant Bruce (a little later), and Norman Lindsays
wonderful The Magic Pudding (1918) became standard fare for generations of Australian
children.
The character of the times is perhaps best represented in the work of such diverse
writers as Mary Gilmore, Walter Murdoch, and Miles Franklin. Each expressed a kind of
independence from the time: Gilmore by the long reach of her memory, apparent in such
volumes as Old Days, Old Ways: A Book of Recollections (1934); Murdoch by the gentle whimsy
and conversational ease of his essays, as in Speaking Personally (1930); and Franklin by her
absorption in the realm of Australian pastoral in such novels as Up the Country (1928), though
she is mostly remembered by her early pseudo-autobiographical My Brilliant Career (1901).
John Shaw Neilson, in the sheer shimmering beauty of his lyric poetry, achieves another order
of timelessness, that of the moment of true perception, at once unworldly and firmly located in
the natural world.
E.J. Banfield stepped aside from the world for reasons of health and wrote from his
island on the Great Barrier Reef a series of books beginning with Confessions of a Beachcomber
(1908) that reflected, often wryly, on natural history and the advantages of the contemplative
life. Jack McLaren in My Crowded Solitude (1926) was another who encountered timelessness
for a time. And C.E.W. Bean found the same slow rhythms of experience out on the great
Western plains (On the Wool Track [1910]) and down the Darling River (The Dreadnought of the
Darling [1911]). Like Banfield and Murdoch, he identified a genial world and men whose
essential character he admired, and, when he entered the world of torrid events as Australias
official war historian, his thesis was that the courage and resourcefulness of the Australian
soldier, the digger, was derived from the bushman—that these were but two manifestations of
the national type. The same perception is present in Keith Hancocks Australia (1930), a reading
of Australian history in terms of character.
The most impressive novelist of the period was Henry Handel Richardson (pseudonym
of Ethel Florence Lindesay Robertson). Her Maurice Guest (1908), set in Leipzig, Germany, is an
antiromantic novel about ordinariness caught up with a genius, provincialism among the exotic,
the tragedy of an insufficiently great passion. Her three-volume masterpiece, The Fortunes of
Richard Mahony (1917–29), traces the fluctuating fortunes of the immigrants who established
the new urban Australia in the late 19th century. The last volume, Ultima Thule, graphically
describes conditions in the goldfields and brings its character studies of the temperamentally
opposite spouses, Richard and Mary, to a profoundly moving climax. Katharine Susannah
Prichard's realism in Working Bullocks (1926) and Coonardoo (1929), her sympathetic portrait
of an Aboriginal woman, was of a more romantic nature. For others, such as Kylie Tennant and
Eleanor Dark, realism served social and historical ends.
Modernism arrived with the poetry of Kenneth Slessor (as evidenced in such of his
volumes as Earth-Visitors [1926] and Five Bells [1939]) and R.D. FitzGerald (Forty YearsPoems
[1965] and Product: Later Verses by Robert D. FitzGerald [1977]). Slessor was committed to the
importance of the image; FitzGerald was of a more philosophical bent and developed complex
arguments in his poems. During the 1930s both became preoccupied with history and the
concept of time.
The Depression years directed attention back to the comparable experiences of the
early 1890s and confirmed the defining status of that period in Australian cultural mythology,
the apotheosis of the acclaimed national virtues—mateship, humorous stoicism, populist
pragmatism, and irony. It was also a time of international awakening, and it was a time of
discovery, like the many books about travel, especially in the Australian Outback, testify.
Among the discoveries of that period was a romantic notion of the spirit of place and the
importance, for writers, of what could still be discerned of Aboriginal culture: this discovery
gave rise to the Jindyworobak movement, which had as its goal the freeing of Australian art
from alien influences. By apt coincidence, Xavier Herberts Capricornia (1938) was published at
this time. Herbert's sprawling comic anarchy, his maverick vision, and the sense of remoteness
from regulated society all derive from his Northern Territory milieu. But Capricornia also
displays all the themes important to the Jindyworobak movement: concern for the Aboriginal,
discovery of the Outback, social protest, and the true spirit of Australia. Before long, however,
world events overwhelmed the movement completely.
A new and very talented generation of writers and artists began to emerge at the
outset of World War II. Literary magazines—including Southerly and Meanjin, both concerned
with promoting Australian writing (and both still extant)—established themselves, and the
interest of the international reading public in Australian writing grew. Although factual and
descriptive writing remained prominent, Australian writers became increasingly speculative and
searching. The Ern Malley hoax (1944), in which the poets James McAuley and Harold Stewart,
writing as a deceased mechanic-salesman-poet, parodied what they saw as the
meaninglessness of experimental verse, was an indication of the demand for new standards.
Similarly, Patrick White, a Nobel Prize winner (1973) and the most important and influential of
the modern Australian novelists, was drawn to Australian themes and the Australian landscape,
but he was profoundly dismissive of the dun-colored journalism, as he thought it, of Australian
fiction.
Whites' imaginative reach, ambitious themes, and elaborate imagery showed him
surpassing nationalistic limitations. His major novels, The Tree of Man (1955), Voss (1957), and
Riders in the Chariot (1961), had an epic scope. His short stories and plays and his later novels
explored more completely the ambiguity of character and the troubling question of belief.
White not only demonstrated the richness of the Australian experience for imaginative writing
(your country is of great subtlety) but drew the attention of the world to it.
Martin Boyd had won the first Gold Medal from the Australian Literature Society as
early as 1928, but his career belonged mainly to the postwar period. His particular interest was
in tracing the influence of the past upon the present, most often through novels of family
histories. These novels—particularly Lucinda Brayford (1946) and the Langton quartet,
beginning with The Cardboard Crown (1952)—were chronicles too of the decline of the genteel
and aristocratic tradition. Christina Stead, who also had begun writing before the war, did not
win recognition until the 1960s, with the reissue of The Man Who Loved Children (1940). Her
novels explored the relationship between personality and environment and particularly the
theme of exploitation. A younger writer, Randolph Stow, had an early success with To the
Islands (1958), a novel that was poetic in texture and structure and that intertwined aspects of
European and Aboriginal culture and belief.
The practice of descriptive verse continued in the postwar period, but the new
generation of poets also sought a new symbolic reading of Australia. They turned increasingly
to the meditative lyric. In such poems as The Death of the Bird and Moschus Moschiferus, A.D.
Hope developed a reputation for witty, satiric, and allusive verse delivered in the clear middle
style of John Dryden. Rather richer and more emotionally charged were the lyrics of Judith
Wright (Collected Poems 1942–1970 [1971]); sometimes she attempted abstruse concepts,
lodged in images of the natural world. Douglas Stewart (Collected Poems 1936–1967 [1967])
was another who drew his inspiration directly from the natural world, perceiving in it fragments
of the moral design of the universe. James McAuley, always a meditative poet, achieved both
grace and humanity in the moving clarity of his later verse (for example, in Music Late at Night
[1976]). And David Campbell (Collected Poems [1989]) combined an intelligent love for poetry
with a passion for the land, the language of the traditional lyric with the speech rhythms of the
Australian vernacular. His poetry too was mainly a kind of meditative lyric. Rosemary Dobson
(Collected Poems [1991]) was another of this generation of fine poets. Although Vivian Smith
(New Selected Poems [1995]) does not quite fit with this group, he continued the practice of
meditative lyric and so may be mentioned here. Gwen Harwood developed a thoughtful kind of
poetry, varied at times by clever, satiric verses, as in her Collected Poems (1991).
Plays had been written in Australia well back into the colonial period, but the drama
was not distinguished and was of only local interest. Among the first notable plays were two
radio plays by Douglas Stewart, Ned Kelly (published 1943), and The Fire on the Snow
(performed 1941), both of which showed the symbolic possibilities in historic figures. In 1955
Ray Lawler won local and international acclaim for Summer of the Seventeenth Doll, a play
naturalistic in character and idiom and universal in theme yet peculiarly Australian in its
attitudes. Its success began something of a revival in Australian drama; it was followed by Alan
Seymour's The One Day of the Year (1961) and Patrick Whites Four Plays (published 1965).
In nonfictional prose, there were numerous histories and biographies in this period. In
the early 1960s occurred one of those curious convergences that mark literary history. Several
writers began publishing works of an autobiographical kind in which the emphasis lay
elsewhere than on the self. Judith Wrights The Generations of Men (1959) is a family history,
just as Mary Durack's Kings in Grass Castles (1959) is the story of her ancestors as well as social
history. Martin Boyds Day of My Delight (1965) defines his family in its historical and moral
context, while Hal Porters The Watcher on the Cast-Iron Balcony (1963) is a résumé of post-
Edwardian Australia as seen in a country town (an audacious but convincing variant on the bush
orientation of traditional writing) and is patterned as a biography of his mother.
At about the same time began another productive phase of writing for children, and by
the end of the 1960s, both Patricia Wrightson and Ivan Southall had won major awards for their
work. Wrightson's novels of the 1960s and 70s were particularly interesting in their use of
Aboriginal figures and motifs, as in Behind the Wind (1981). In 1986 she was awarded the
international Hans Christian Andersen Award for lifetime achievement in children's literature.
Literature From 1970 To 2000
Hal Porter had already begun to establish himself as one of the more interesting short-
story writers. His manner was arch, his perception ironic, his taste somewhat melodramatic.
But his eye for detail was exact and his powers of recollection extraordinary. All these
characteristics can be observed in the volumes The Cats of Venice (1965) and Fredo Fuss Love
Life (1974). His insistence that he wrote only of what was fact, apart from impressing the reader
that the world is a very strange place, put him completely at odds with the following generation
of short-story writers as, for example, Frank Moorhouse, Michael Wilding, and Peter Carey.
These writers, provocative and scandalous in the manner of the 1970s, broke free from all
restraints and explored the many possibilities of fantasy—sexual, science fiction, gothic.
Allowing for the liberalism of their values, their stories display an almost moral preoccupation
with social and political attitudes. They are each highly alert to the ironic possibilities of
personal encounters. In the 1980s Carey extended his range and began writing novels, still
exploiting fantasy and, as much postmodernist fiction does, the interpolation of stories within
stories. He won the Booker Prize in 1988 with Oscar and Lucinda (1988).
Thomas Keneally commenced his prolific output in the late 1960s and attracted
widespread notice with The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (1972). Nearly all his novels explore the
intersection of history and the individual life and contemplate just what kind of effect the
insignificant individual can have on events of some moment. When Schindlers Ark (1982), which
is centrally about just this situation, won the Booker Prize in 1982, it caused something of a
sensation for being as much a work of fact as of fiction. Keneally was a gifted storyteller, and his
fiction appealed to both the serious and the popular audience. Several of his novels were made
into films or plays.
Thea Astley was another highly successful novelist, droll and amusing, yet she wrote
about serious issues. She developed a love-hate relation with many of her characters and
subjects, but underlying her narrative is warm humanity and a delight inaccurate imagery and
surprising turns of phrase. In Beachmasters (1985), one of her most accomplished novels, she
re-creates the cultural tensions in a South Pacific island with aspirations to independence from
joint English and French control. Randolph Stow had similarly written a sensitive and
sympathetic novel of intercultural relations in the Trobriand Islands in Visitants (1979). Astley's
later novels—Drylands: A Book for the Worlds Last Reader (1999), for example—were
increasingly concerned with the dominant, two-pronged problem in late 20th-century Australia:
not only how to effect a reconciliation between Aboriginal peoples and European Australians
but also how to reconcile white Australians to the dark side of their past.
With an Imaginary Life (1978), David Malouf, already a promising poet, emerged as a
major novelist. Nominally a story about Ovid in exile, the novel is really about the transforming
power of the imagination. Malouf's writing is spare, delicate, meticulous. Like many writers of
the time, he thought carefully about language and the signs by which meaning is conveyed. He
also reflected on ow placehowightinfluencese perception; this interest lies behind his use of
Queensland as a setting—as, for example, in Remembering Babylon (1993). C.J. Koch developed
a similar interest in regional writing, using the exotic possibilities of Asia to provide a mythic
reading of political events in The Year of Living Dangerously (1978) and Highways to a War
(1995) and the shadowy otherness of Tasmania in The Doubleman (1985) and Out of Ireland
(1999). Likewise, Shirley Hazzard wrote with great seriousness of purpose in her modern
tragedy The Transit of Venus (1980), an ironic love story devised to contemplate how strangely
things come about. Like so much of Australian fiction, it looks for patterns of meaning that
might indicate some kind of proportion in destiny.
The 1980s also witnessed the emergence of several accomplished women writers
Janette Turner Hospital, Kate Grenville, Helen Garner, Glenda Adams, Barbara Hanrahan, and
Elizabeth Jolley—and the first three of these continued to be prominent voices in the 1990s. In
all her work Grenville treads a precarious line between darkness and superb comedy, from the
extraordinary Lilians Story (1985) and its sequel, Dark Places (1994), to her understated novel
The Idea of Perfection (1999). Garners' work includes The Children's Bach (1984) and True
Stories: Selected Non-Fiction (1996), which draws upon the fact as well as fiction. Hospitals
Collected Stories 1970–1995 appeared in 1995. Jolley's enigmatic fiction includes Miss
Peabody's Inheritance (1983) and The Well (1986). Among male writers, Brian Castro, Robert
Drewe, David Foster, and Tim Winton similarly emerged as significant writers. Of these Winton
and Foster are particularly notable for their volumes Cloudstreet (1991) and The Glade Within
the Grove (1996), respectively.
The two leading poets of the 1980s were Les Murray, allusive and humane, concerned
to find what evidence he could in the secular world of spiritual realities and to demonstrate the
importance of poetry in ordinary life (a representative volume of his work is Dog Fox Field
[1990]), and Bruce Dawe, who evinced the Australian voice in his contemporary, journalistic
poetry appearing in, for example, Sometimes Gladness (1978). Robert Gray continued the
tradition of spare, almost Imagistic lyric verse in such volumes of his as Piano (1988) and Certain
Things (1993). Robert Adamson and John Tranter wrote more experimental verse, as is evinced,
respectively, in The Clean Dark (1989) and The Floor of Heaven (1992).
David Williamson developed a kind of journalistic drama. He had a good ear for
Australian idiom and a good eye for Australian social and cultural attitudes, including prejudice.
His plays were topical, particularly in terms of current political interests, yet they also tapped
much that was enduring and deep-seated in the collective identity. Two of his critically
acclaimed plays are Travelling North (1980) and Dead White Males (1995). Other playwrights
who came into prominence were Jack Hibberd, Alex Buzo, Peter Kenna, Louis Nowra, Steve J.
Spears, and Michael Gow. Nowras Così (1992) was successfully adapted for film.
In nonfictional prose, the autobiographical mode continued. Patrick Whites Flaws in the
Glass (1981) was of particular interest. Malouf and Koch both wrote a volume of essays, and
these too were interesting for the light they shed upon the writers as well as being fine
examples of the essay form. Travel writing continued to be published; one of the most
interesting examples was Robyn Davidsons Tracks (1982), an account of her trek across
Australia with her camels. It is a shaped narrative, tracing her increasing awareness of the
meaning and experience of the desert and leading toward self-discovery. Like the imaginative
writers, she looked for a pattern of significance in her experience. A.B. Facey, recounting his life
experience in A Fortunate Life (1981), accepted what life had offered, not with bitterness but
with gratitude. Robert Dessaix in Night Letters: A Journey Through Switzerland and Italy (1996)
wrote a series of highly cultivated reflections on the poignancy of life, art, and, ultimately,
death. Drusilla Modjeska similarly interwove history and personal story, as in Stravinskys Lunch
(1999).
In each of these modes of writing, Aboriginal people also began to make their presence
known. Oodgeroo Noonuccal (Kath Walker) published her first volume of poetry, We Are Going,
in 1964. Mudrooroo Narrogin (Colin Johnson, whose Aboriginal identity, however, was
questioned) published his first novel, Wild Cat Falling, in 1965. Jack Davis wrote several
acclaimed plays. Sally's autobiography, My Place (1987), is a moving account of her discovery of
her identity and family history. It is also a social and cultural history. And Kim Scott, with his
novel Benang (1999), became the first Aboriginal writer to win the prestigious Miles Franklin
Award (which he shared with Astley). By the example of these and other Aboriginal writers,
Aboriginal people have asserted their claim to the imaginative territory of Australia—a claim
especially significant in the last decade of the 20th century as Australians attempted to affect a
process of mutual understanding and reconciliation.
Writing in Australia evolved through several phases. It began with mapping the
difference and distinctiveness of a new society establishing itself in the antipodes and at a large
imaginative distance from the rest of the world. Then it concentrated on finding and
articulating its cultural voice. This writing was characterized by unusual colloquialisms and
figures of speech, ironic understatement, and laconic rhythms; it concentrated on representing
—even asserting—a nationalist sentiment. Beyond that phase, Australian writing became more
sophisticated, discovering the universal in its local symbolism. Until the mid-20th century,
Australians had written as though their work was that of a more or less homogeneous society.
In the closing decades of the 20th century, however, the country's literature began the
discovery of differences within itself: regional, cultural, and ethnic.
Many of the Australian writers who distinguished themselves in the last decades of the
20th century continued to make their mark in the new century. Named a living treasure by the
National Trust of Australia in 1997, Colleen McCullough, author of The Thorn Birds (1977) and
the Masters of Rome series of historical novels (1990–2007), remained one of the country's
most prolific and best-selling novelists.
Similarly, productive and protean was Peter Carey, whose My Life As a Fake (2003) drew
its inspiration from McAuley and Stewarts 1944 poetry hoax, whereas his Theft: A Love Story
(2006) lampooned the international art market with a story of art fraud. Careys other 21st-
century efforts included Parrot and Olivier in America (2009), focusing on a character modeled
on 19th-century French social observer Alexis de Tocqueville, and Amnesia (2015), which
employs cybercrime as the lens through which to view the Battle of Brisbane (1942), a clash
between U.S. soldiers and Australian military personnel and civilians during World War II.
Among Thomas Keneally's publications in the new millennium were American Scoundrel
(2002), a biography of the infamous American politician and Civil War general Daniel Sickles;
The Daughters of Mars (2012), a novel about volunteer nurses during World War I; and Shame
and the Captives (2013), a fictionalized account of prison breakouts by Japanese prisoners of
war in New South Wales during World War II. Tim Winton added the highly regarded novels Dirt
Music (2001) and Breath (2009) to his oeuvre.
Novelist, historian, and film director Richard Flanagan won the 2002 Commonwealth
writers prize for best book for his novel Goulds Book of Fish: A Novel in Twelve Fish (2001), the
story of a convict living in 19th-century Tasmania. Flanagan's engaging mystery The Unknown
Terrorist (2006) offers a cynical view of the world in the wake the of September 11he , 2001,
attacks, and his The Narrow Road to the Deep North (2013) was much praised for its brutally
stark depiction of the life of a prisoner of war during World War II. Fear of terrorism in the post-
September 11 worlds is central in Janette Turner Hospitals' political thrillers Due Preparations
for the Plague (2003) and Orpheus Lost (2007). The Secret River (2005), another tale of the life
of a British convict in Australia, earned Kate Grenville the 2006 Commonwealth writers prize for
best book. Other Australians who published novels of note in the first decades of the 21st
century were Geraldine Brooks (winner of the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for fiction for March), Sonya
Hartnett, Roger McDonald, Alexis Wright, Steven Carroll, Steve Toltz, Christos Tsiolkas, Anna
Funder, Patricia Mackintosh, and Sofie Laguna.
The art of the short story was also alive and well in Australian literature in the 21st
century and received notable contributions with the publication of acclaimed collections from
Turner Hospital (North of Nowhere, South of Loss [2003]), Winton (The Turning [2004)],
featuring 17 overlapping stories), and David Malouf (Every Move You Make [(2006]). In the
2000s and 2010s the contributions of Australia's most-revered contemporary poet, Les Murray,
included Learning Human, Selected Poems (2001), The Biplane Houses (2005), Taller When
Prone (2010), and Waiting for the Past (2015).
Significant and Contemporary Australian Authors
Patrick White
Elizabeth Jolley
Peter Carey
Thomas Keneally
Coleen McCullough
1. Happy Valley 1. The Burnt Ones 1. Big Toys 1. Flaws in the Nobel Prize in
(1939) (1964) (1978) Glass (1981) Literature
2. The Living and the 2. Four Plays (1965) 2. Signal Driver 2. Patrick Lifetime
Dead (1941) 3. The Cockatoos (1983) White Achievement
3. The Aunt's Story (1974) 3. Netherwood Speaks winner
(1948) 4. Collected Plays: (1983) (1989) (1973)
4. The Tree of Man Vol 1 (1985) 3. Letters of
(1955) 5. Three Uneasy Patrick
5. Voss (1957) Pieces (1987) White (1994
6. Riders in the 6. Collected Plays:
Chariot (1961) Vol 2 (1994)
7. The Solid 7. Selected Writings
Mandala (1966) (1994)
8. The Vivisector
(1970)
9. The Eye of the
Storm (1973)
10. A Fringe of Leaves
(1976)
11. The God in the
Rafters (1978)
12. The Twyborn
Affair (1979)
13. The Memoirs of
Many in One
(1986)
14. The Hanging
Garden (2012)
FAMOUS WORK:
Genre: Historical
Colleen McCullough (1937 - 2015)
Colleen McCullough was born in Australia. A
neurophysicist, she established the department of
neurophysiology at the Royal North Shore Hospital
in Sydney, then worked as a researcher and teacher
at Yale Medical School for ten years. She is the
author of the record-breaking international
bestseller The Thorn Birds as well as eleven other
novels.
Genres: Historical, Mystery
Omnibus
Three Complete Novels (1999)
Series Novels
"Thorn Birds"
Genre: Historical
Direction: From the Introduction of the Australian Literature up to the Literature of the 21st century, kindly
create a timeline of the different developments and significant contributions of the Australian Literature in
History.
Below are the examples of a timeline. Make it as creative as you could. Kindly submit it in our Google
Classroom.
References:
https://www.britannica.com/art/Australian-literature
https://www.fantasticfiction.com/w/patrick-white/
https://www.fantasticfiction.com/m/colleen-mccullough/
https://www.fantasticfiction.com/k/thomas-keneally/
https://www.fantasticfiction.com/c/peter-carey/
https://www.fantasticfiction.com/j/elizabeth-jolley/
Lesson 2 / Module 12
The Pacific Literature / New Zealand Literature
Objectives:
New Zealanders have long been avid readers, but until the mid-20th century most of the
literature they consumed was imported from Britain. Historian and poet Keith Sinclair identified
the 1950s as the decade 'when the New Zealand intellect and imagination came alive'. This
flowering of creative and critical talent was not sudden, but the climax of a process that had
begun at least two decades before.
By the 1930s a new breed of New Zealand writers was emerging, assisted by the growth
of universities and small publishing enterprises. The New Zealand centennial in 1940 provided a
further boost to the local literary scene, and later that decade a state Literary Fund was
established. By the 1950s there was a wider range of outlets for creative writing, including the
influential magazine Landfall. New voices in poetry and drama were generating heated debate
over identity and politics, while writers of novels, short stories, children's and popular fiction
were also finding new audiences.
The 1930s saw the emergence in New Zealand of a new breed of writers, whose work
usually embodied a reaction against established ideas and conventions. Often these writers
were influenced by recent trends in literature overseas, notably modernism, and by social and
political events such as the Depression. A growing, if narrow, sense of nationalism was
expressed, focusing on the dilemma of Pākehā who still looked to England as 'Home', but
increasingly identified with New Zealand through ties of kinship and daily experience. Some
major literary figures of the 1930s, including short-story writer Frank Sargeson, poets Allen
Curnow, A.R.D. Fairburn, Denis Glover and R.A.K. Mason, and Glover's printer associate Bob
Lowry, remained active in the 1940s and 1950s.
Maori Narrative: The Oral Tradition
Like all Polynesian peoples, the Maori, who began to occupy the islands now
called New Zealand about 1,000 years ago, composed, memorized, and performed laments,
love poems, war chants, and prayers. They also developed mythology to explain and record
their past and the legends of their gods and tribal heroes. As settlement developed through the
19th century, Europeans collected many of these poems and stories and copied them in the
Maori language. The most picturesque myths and legends, translated into English and
published in collections with titles like Maori Fairy Tales (1908; by Johannes Carl Andersen),
were read to, or by, Pakeha (European) children, so that some—such as the legend of the lovers
Hinemoa and Tutanekai or the exploits of the man-god Maui, who fished up the North Island
from the sea and tamed the sun—became widely known among the population at large.
Oratory on the marae tribal was, and continues to be, an important part of
Maori culture; it is difficult to make a clear distinction, such as exists in written literatures,
between text and performance. Nor was authorship always attributable. And the Maori sense
of time was such that legend did not take the hearer back into the past but rather brought the
past forward into the present, making the events described contemporary.
Throughout the latter half of the 19th century, the Maori people, disastrously
affected by European minordiseases to which they had only weak resistance, appeared to be in
decline, and European scholars recorded as much Maori legend as they could, believing that the
Maori would die out and that their oral culture, highly figurative and often of rare poetic
beauty, deserved preservation. Some of this material was published; a great deal more was
stored in libraries and is studied today, not least by Maori students and scholars intent on
recovering their own cultural past.
Until the 1970s there was almost no connection between the classical Maori
tradition, preserved largely as a historical record, and the development of a postcolonial
English-language literature of New Zealand. When Maori writers began to appear after World
War II, they wrote in English, and the most notable of them knew little or nothing of the Maori
language. In 1966 Jacqueline Sturm, wife of the poet James K. Baxter, became the first Maori
writer to appear in a major anthology of New Zealand short stories. By that time, Hone
Tuwhare, the first Maori poet to make a strong impression in English, had published his first
book, No Ordinary Sun (1964). Witi Ihimaeras short stories, collected in Pounamu, Pounamu
(1972; Greenstone, Greenstone), and his novel Tangi (1973) seemed finally to establish Maori
writers as part of modern New Zealand writing. The Whale Rider (1987; film 2002) gained
Ihimaera an international readership. Patricia Graces narratives of Maori life—Mutuwhenua:
The Moon Sleeps (1978), The Dream Sleepers, and Other Stories (1980), Potiki (1986)—were
very widely read, especially in schools as part of a broad effort in New Zealand to encourage the
study of Maori writing. And Keri Hulmes The Bone People (1983), winner of Britains Booker
Prize in 1985, probably outsold, both at home and abroad, any other book written during the
postwar period. In the work of these writers, the language is English, the forms (particularly in
fiction) are European, and Maorinessis partly a matter of subject, partly of sensibility, and partly
(as in the case of Hulme, who has only one Maori great-grandparent and who changed her
given name from Kerry to Keri) sympathetic identification.
But, increasingly through the 1980s, there was a tendency to politicize Maori
issues in literature, something seen clearly in Ihimaeras The Matriarch (1986) and in some of
the later fictions of Grace, where the misfortunes of the Maori are laid, sometimes angrily, at
the Pakeha door. A reaction against this came from Maori novelist Alan Duff—author of Once
Were Warriors (1990; film 1994)—who argued that the Maori must take responsibility for their
own failures and find the means somewhat scornfully of his fellow Maori writers, saying that
they sentimentalize Maori life. This polarization within the Maori literary community continued
with the publication of Graces Cousins (1992) and Ihimaeras Bulibasha (1994) on the one hand,
both of which present positive images of a people who were damaged by colonialism and
racism but who are fighting back, and with Duffs What Becomes of the Broken Hearted? (1996)
on the other hand, in which salvation for the Maori is again seen as lying within integration,
education, and acceptance of individual responsibility. Duffs controversial view was taken
further in his autobiographical Out of the Mist and Steam (1999), in which his abusive Maori
mother seems intended to be seen as typical while his bookish, intellectual Pakeha father
represents a path of escape from the cycle of violence, failure, and despair. In the 1990s, after
more than two decades of marriage and as the father of two daughters, Ihimaera publicly
acknowledged his homosexuality; this added a further dimension not so much to his work itself
but to the way it is read and the kind of interest taken in it.
A different form of politicization has come from Maori poets, some of whom
rediscovered, partly through academic study, the classic forms of Maori poetry and returned to
them in the Maori language. Since there are only a few thousand fluent speakers of the
language (government statistics from 2001 said something over 10,000 adult Maori claimed to
speak the language wellor very well), this has been seen by some as an exercise in self-
limitation, while to others it appears to be a brave assertion of identity; anthologies of New
Zealand poetry now include examples of these new poetswork in Maori with translations into
English. Of the Maori poets writing in English, Robert Sullivan is the one whose work attracted
the most attention at the turn of the 21st century.
Maori character and tradition have also found expression in the theatre, in plays
written predominantly in English but with injections of Maori. Among the best of these works
are Hone Koukas Nga tangata toa (published 1994; The Warrior People) and Waiora (published
1997; Health).
Modern discussions of New Zealand literature have not given much attention to
the 19th century. Immigrant writers were Britishers abroad. Only those born in the newland
could see it as New Zealanders; and even they, for most of the first 100 years of settlement
(1820–1920), had to make conscious efforts to relocate the imagination and adapt the literary
tradition to its new home. It is not surprising, then, that the most notable 19th-century writing
is found not in poetry and fiction but rather in letters, journals, and factual accounts, such as
Lady Mary Anne Barkers Station Life in New Zealand (1870), Samuel Butlers A First Year in
Canterbury Settlement (1863), and, perhaps most notably, Frederick Manings Old New Zealand
(1863).
The best of the 19th-century poets include Alfred Domett, whose Ranolf and
Amohia (1872) was a brave if premature attempt to discover epic material in the new land;
John Barr, a Scottish dialect poet in the tradition of Robert Burns; David McKee Wright, who
echoed the Australian bush ballad tradition; and William Pember Reeves, born in New Zealand,
who rose to be a government minister and then retired to Britain, where he wrote nostalgic
poems in the voice of a colonist. They were competent versifiers and rhymers, interesting for
what they record. But none of the poets stands out until the 20th century, the first being
Blanche Edith Baughan (Reuben, and Other Poems [1903]), followed by R.A.K. Mason (In the
Manner of Men [1923] and Collected Poems [1962]) and Mary Ursula Bethell (From a Garden in
the Antipodes [1929] and Collected Poems [1950]).
New Zealand literature, it might be said, was making a slow and seemly
appearance, but already the whole historical process had been preempted by one brief life—
that of Katherine Mansfield (born Kathleen Beauchamp), who died in 1923 at age 34, having
laid the foundations for a reputation that has gone on to grow and influence the development
of New Zealand literature ever since. Impatient at the limitations of colonial life, she relocated
to London in 1908, published her first book of short stories (In a German Pension [1911]) at age
22, and, for the 12 years remaining to her, lived a life whose complicated threads have, since
her death, seen her reappearing in the biographies, letters, and journals of writers as famous as
T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Bertrand Russell, and D.H. Lawrence. More important, she altered for
good and all(in the words of the British writer Elizabeth Bowen) our idea of what goes to make
a story.Two additional books published in her lifetime (Bliss and Other Stories [1920] and The
Garden Party, and Other Stories [1922]) were followed by posthumously published stories,
collections of poems, literary criticism, letters, and journals. She became for a time a major
figure, faded for two decades, and was rediscovered in the 1970s by feminists and by scholars
examining the Bloomsbury group. It seemed, from any perspective, that Mansfield remained a
New Zealand writer whose best work was that in which she had re-created the country and
family she had grown up in.
Mansfield once wrote, I want to make my own country leap in the eyes of the
Old World—and she did it. She also made the short story respectable, established it as a form
sufficient in itself for a writer’s reputation to rest on, and made it a staple of New Zealand
writing. But she never completed a novel.
The first important New Zealand novels came from two writers whose scene was
northern New Zealand: William Satchell (The Land of the Lost [1902], The Toll of the Bush
[1905], and The Greenstone Door [1914]) and Jane Mander (The Story of a New Zealand River
[1920]). They were followed by John A. Lee, whose Children of the Poor (1934), mixing fiction
and oratory, was drawn from his own experience of childhood poverty in the South Island;
Robin Hyde, who in The Godwits Fly (1938) still wrestled with the sense of colonial isolation;
and John Mulgan, whose Man Alone (1939) held in balance both the colonial romanticism of
the solitary figure in the empty landscape and the leftist romanticism of men moving
togetherto change the world. In the 1930s Ngaio Marsh began publishing the detective novels
for which she became internationally known.
During the decade some significant changes occurred in the literary scene. More and
more, those engaged in literary pursuits began to be associated with academia, rather than
journalism as had previously been the case. Several magazines publishing new writing were
founded by university staff and students; the most prominent of these was Phoenix, an
Auckland University College publication. The influential Christchurch periodical, Tomorrow,
received strong university support.
Post-War Developments
With peace came a sense of renewal and some crucial innovations that helped literature
to flourish. New Zealand universities began to expand rapidly after the war, and once again,
they proved havens for writers. The University of New Zealand began publishing books in 1949.
A controversial but significant move, championed by the influential public servant Joe Heenan,
was the establishment in 1946 of a government Literary Fund to provide writers with financial
assistance.
Pre-war publishing enterprises, notably the Caxton Press, were revived, and new ones
began, for instance the Paul's Book Arcade imprint of Blackwood Paul. Once Monte Holcroft
took over the editorship of the Listener in 1949 even more creative writing was featured, and
Māori writers were encouraged by the establishment of Te Ao Hou in the early 1950s. Possibly
the most momentous event was the founding by poet and editor Charles Brasch of Landfall.
This quarterly journal, which first appeared in 1947, came to dominate literary life, though a
number of other small magazines were soon set up in competition with it.
Poetry
A Book of New Zealand Verse (1945; rev. ed. 1951), edited by Allen Curnow, is usually held
to mark the advent of New Zealand literatures postcolonialphase. It was Modernist, nationalist,
and critically sophisticated, and Curnows long, elegant introduction set a new standard for the
discussion of local writing. Curnows own poetry, though not immediately as well received as
that of his contemporaries Denis Glover and A.R.D. Fairburn,
had intensity, precision,
and formal control that
theirs, for all its lyric
ease and vividness of
local reference, could
not match. Curnow
eventually became,
with James K. Baxter (a
younger poet whose
merit Curnow was
quick to recognize), one of
the countrys dominating poetic presences.
By the end of the 1950s—when his second and more comprehensive anthology, The
Penguin Book of New Zealand Verse (1960), was about to appear—Curnow was already a major
figure on the literary landscape against whom younger poets felt the
need to rebel. The decade of the 1960s, however, was dominated by
Baxters poetry and charismatic presence. Baxter was a very public and
prolific writer whose Collected Poems (1979), which appeared after his
death (in 1972 at age 46), contained more than 600 pages; it was said
that possibly three times as many additional poems remained in
unpublished manuscript. He was effortless and natural in verse—a
modern Byron—while Curnow was all conscious skill and contrivance. It
was in the year of Baxters death that Curnow began publishing again,
extending his reputation at home and, through the 1980s, establishing
a reputation abroad. Curnow received many awards, culminating in the
Queens Gold Medal for Poetry, a rare honour he shared with such
poets as W.H. Auden, Robert Graves, and Ted Hughes.
Other poets whose work came to the fore during the 1950s and 60s
include Kendrick Smithyman, a poet almost as prolific as Baxter but
whose poems are much more densely textured and oblique; Fleur
Adcock, who emigrated to London and established herself among respected British poets; C.K.
Stead, who, in addition to his role as poet, earned an international reputation as a literary critic
with his book The New Poetic (1964); and Vincent OSullivan, who, like Stead, was an academic
as well as a poet and a writer of plays and short stories.
Among the poets who became known in the 1970s and 80s were several whose
work showed, at least as a general tendency, a shift away from British and toward American
models of Modernism and postmodernism. Two of the most talented
were Ian Wedde, whose energy, formal inventiveness, and stylistic
charm in the use of spoken language extended the range of New Zealand
poetry, and Bill Manhire, a witty understater and unsettler of reality.
Others also appearing then included Murray Edmond, a dour but
resourceful pupil of the American school; Elizabeth Smither, whose
poetic world was sharpened by her sense of ironies and contradictions;
Anne French, who made gossip into high art; and Leigh Davis, a poet and
literary theorist who gave up poetry for higher finance. Lauris Edmond,
who began publishing in middle age, was an anomaly among these
poets, riding high on the feminist tide of those two decades but writing
in a more conventional poetic style that set her apart from her publishing contemporaries.
Gregory OBrien was among the more notable poets who marked out a space for
themselves in the 1990s. OBrien, who was also a painter, sometimes illustrated his semi-surreal
poems with matching iconography. Other poets were Jenny Bornholdt, a warmhearted, clever
observer of the everyday; Andrew Johnston, also a witty poet, who gave language a degree of
freedom to create its own alternative reality; and Michele Leggott, the most scholarly of this
group and the one who took the most, and most directly, from American postmodernists such
as Louis Zukofsky.
Drama
In the 1960s Curnow, Baxter, and Sargeson had all written plays of literary
interest but no great public success; the 1970s and 80s, however, saw significant development
in the writing and production of New Zealand plays. Bruce Mason, whose one-man show The
End of the Golden Weather (published 1962) had been performed hundreds of times all over
the country, continued to write and saw the best of his earlier plays with Maori themes—The
Pohutukawa Tree (published 1960) and Awatea (published 1969)—given professional
productions. Mervyn Thompson wrote expressionist plays mixing elements of autobiography
with social and political comment (O! Temperance! and First Return [both published 1974]).
Greg McGee probed the surface of New Zealands national game,rugby, in the hugely successful
Foreskins Lament (published 1981). Roger Hall wrote clever comedies and satires of New
Zealand middle-class life—Middle Age Spread (published 1978), which was produced in
Londons West End, and Glide Time (published 1977). OSullivans Shuriken (published 1985) used
a riot by Japanese soldiers in a New Zealand prison camp to illustrate how understanding and
sympathy fail to cross cultural boundaries. Drama, the last of the major literary genres to get
started in New Zealand, developed rapidly in the 1980s, and new playwrights (Stuart Hoar,
Michael Lord, Hilary Beaton, Renée [original name Renée Taylor], and Stephen Sinclair, for
example) were finding producers, casts, and audiences as never before.
Although prominent figures such as Charles Brasch, James
K. Baxter and Frank Sargeson wrote plays, the best-known
playwright of the 1950s was Bruce Mason. He addressed the
question of cultural identity by exploring Māori themes and the
disintegration of traditional values. With professional theatre in its
infancy in New Zealand, Mason pioneered solo performances and
also contributed to the development of radio drama.
Fiction
In postwar fiction the central figure was Frank Sargeson. He had begun publishing
stories in the 1930s, attempting to do for New Zealand what Mark Twain had done for America
and Henry Lawson for Australia—find a language in fiction that represented the New Zealand
voice and character. That Summer, and Other Stories (1946) gathered together the best of his
early stories, and it was followed by the experimental novel I Saw in My Dream (1949).
Although both these books were published in London, Sargeson was seen by New Zealand
writers as something of an inspiration—a man committed to full-time writing and to the life of
literaturein New Zealand.
His most notable younger protégés were Maurice Duggan, whose stories brought a new
level of sophistication into New Zealand fiction, and the novelist Janet Frame, whose fame was
to outstrip that of her mentor. From her first novel, Owls Do Cry (1957), Frames work was
internationally respected though never widely popular. However, with the publication of her
three-volume autobiography (To the Is-Land [1982], An Angel at My Table [1984], and The
Envoy from Mirror City [1985]) and its adaptation (written by
Laura Jones; directed by Jane Campion) into the movie An Angel at
My Table (1990), Frames work received much wider attention,
attracting interest both because of that part of it that draws upon
her younger years, when she was wrongly diagnosed as
schizophrenic and locked away in mental hospitals, and because of
its technical experimentation and linguistic inventiveness.
The 1960s saw the rise to prominence of two young novelists, Maurice Gee and
Maurice Shadbolt, neither of them much interested in technical innovation, both writing
traditional, solid, realistic novels giving New Zealanders a more comprehensive view of
themselves and their society than fiction had previously offered. For a long time Gees best work
was considered to be his Plumb trilogy—Plumb (1978), Meg (1981), and Sole Survivor (1983)—
which tells the story of the Christian leftist George Plumb (based on Gees grandfather) and the
subsequent fortunes of his children and grandchildren. His later novels, however—including
Going West (1992), Crime Story (1994), and Live Bodies (1998)—show a further extension of his
range and ease as a novelist, social historian, and moralist. Shadbolts background and interests
were also of the political left. The typical central character in Shadbolts early work is a product
of a working-class background who finds himself among writers and artists, is involved in love
affairs and marriages, but is always concerned about politics, especially the politics of what it
means to be a New Zealander. Strangers and Journeys (1972) gathers together and restates all
the themes of his early work, after which Shadbolt found a new subject in 19th-century Maori-
Pakeha relations (also explored by Stead in his novel The Singing Whakapapa [1994]). Shadbolts
attention focused especially on the 1860s, the period of the New Zealand Wars, fought
between European colonists and the Maori over control of land. His three novels on that
subject—Season of the Jew (1986), Mondays Warriors (1990), and The House of Strife (1993)—
are possibly his best.
Other notable novelists of the postwar period include Bill Pearson, whose one novel,
Coal Flat (1963), gives a sober, faithful, strongly written account of life in a small mining town
on the West Coast of the South Island; David Ballantyne (Sydney Bridge Upside Down [1968]
and The Talkback Man [1978]), the lost manof those decades whose work deserves more
readers than it has had; and Ronald Hugh Morrieson, whose bizarre, semi-surreal, and rollicking
stories of small-town life, The Scarecrow (1963) and Came a Hot Friday (1964), were largely
ignored when they were published but have since been hailed as unique and valuable. Sylvia
Ashton-Warner, by contrast, wrote an international best seller, Spinster (1958), a success
unmatched by her later novels, but her fine autobiography, I Passed This Way (1979), is the
personal record of a brilliant naturalboth as a writer and as a teacher.
Much fiction of the 1940s and 1950s concentrated on the plight of an isolated
individual in a hostile, puritanical society. This theme mirrored the actual struggle of many New
Zealand fiction writers to make a living and achieve acceptance. Among those who produced
significant novels were expatriates Dan Davin and
James Courage, and younger writers including David
Ballantyne, Ruth France and Janet Frame. Although
Frank Sargeson's 'realist' narrative style with its blunt
New Zealand idioms dominated, some fiction writers
experimented with impressionism to convey the
intensity of individual experience. Maurice Duggan
transcended realist conventions in his short stories,
drawing on a wide range of textual models, while
Helen Shaw was one of several women short-story
writers who broke free of the prevailing focus on
masculine concerns and pursuits.
Popular Fiction
By the end of the 1950s, the environment for New Zealand literature was much more
favourable. The time was ripe for emerging writers to challenge, subvert and transcend the
concepts of nationhood which had been formulated in recent decades.
The turn of the 21st century
The short story continued to be an important form for New Zealand writers
through the last decades of the 20th century. One of its best modern exponents was Owen
Marshall (The Lynx Hunter, and Other Stories [1987], The Divided World [1989]); OSullivan
(Survivals and Other Stories [1985]) was another. OSullivan published both poetry and fiction
(though Hyde and, to some extent, Frame, had done the same before), and this practice of
writing across genres became a feature of the 1980s and 90s. Two well-known novelists, Fiona
Kidman (A Breed of Women [1979], Paddys Puzzle [1983], True Stars [1990], Ricochet Baby
[1996]) and Marilyn Duckworth (Married Alive [1985], Rest for the Wicked [1986], Pulling Faces
[1987], A Message from Harpo [1989], Unlawful Entry [1992], Leather Wings [1995]), also
published collections of poems. Smither, best known as a poet, published several novels,
including Brother-Love, Sister-Love (1986). Wedde extended his range from poetry to the novel
with Symmes Hole (1986). Fiona Farrell, whose novels include The Skinny Louis Book (1992) and
Six Clever Girls Who Became Famous Women (1996), moved back and forth between fiction
and poetry. And Stead, whose political fantasy Smiths Dream (1971) went through many
reprints, continued to write both poetry and fiction in the 1980s and into the next century.
Many of his novels were published simultaneously in New Zealand and Britain, including The
Death of the Body (1986), The End of the Century at the End of the World (1992), Talking About
ODwyer (1999), Mansfield (2004), and My Name Was Judas (2006).
Notable in the final decades of the 20th century was the number of literary
biographies and autobiographies published, as if New Zealanders had become eager to record
and to read about the creators of their national literature. There were full biographies
published of Fairburn, Sargeson, Baxter, Duggan, Glover, and Frame, as well as of the novelist
and short-story writer Dan Davin. In addition to the autobiographies of Duff, Frame, Sargeson,
and Ashton-Warner, Shadbolt (2 vol.), Duckworth, Lauris Edmond (3 vol.), the poet Charles
Brasch, and the poet and novelist Kevin Ireland also published accounts of their lives.
Also frequently remarked upon was the number of younger women novelists
writing in, and largely about, New Zealand while finding a major publisher abroad. These
include Elizabeth Knox, whose novel The Vintners
Luck (1998) won international acclaim, as well as
Catherine Chidgey, Charlotte Grimshaw, Emily
Perkins, and Sarah Quigley.
https://www.britannica.com/art/New-Zealand-literature
https://nzhistory.govt.nz/culture/literature-in-new-zealand-1930-1960
https://www.google.com/search?
q=A+picture+from+Hutu+and+Kawa+find+an+island&client=ms-android-oppo-
rev1&prmd=ivsn&sxsrf=ALeKk017sS5Hh3_-
mpvmnpZ8mwxWCpoEHA:1605246070591&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved
=2ahUKEwiD4MHO5_7sAhUNrZQKHYnZCOkQ_AUoAXoECAMQAQ&biw=360&bih
=668&dpr=2#imgrc=YhIF7HBReBBuvM
LESSON 3 / MODULE 13
THE HINDU AND THE EUROPEAN EPIC
Objectives:
4.Analyze the poem “The song of Roland”, the France’s national epic.
Definition of Epic
The word epic is derived from the Ancient Greek adjective, “epikos”, which
means a poetic story. In literature, an epic is a long narrative poem, which is usually
related to heroic deeds of a person of an unusual courage and unparalleled bravery. In
order to depict this bravery and courage, the epic uses grandiose style.
The hero is usually the representative of the values of a certain culture, race,
nation or a religious group on whose victor of failure the destiny of the whole nation or
group depends. Therefore, certain supernatural forces, deus ex machina, help the hero,
who comes out victor at the end. An epic usually starts with an invocation to muse, but
then picks up the threads of the story from the middle and moves on to the end.
Function of Epic
As the epic poem is the earliest form of poetry, it is the earliest form of entertainment as
well. Epics were written to commemorate the struggles and adventures of kings and
warriors. The main function of epic poetry was to elevate the status of the hero among
the audiences to inspire them to be ready to perform heroic actions. Epic obtained most
of its themes from the exploits performed by legendary characters and their illustrious
ancestors. That is why these exploits became examples for others to follow, and still
lived in books. It is through epics; models of ideal heroic behavior were supplied to the
common people. Moreover, epics also were collections of historical events not recorded
in common history books — the reason that they are read today to be enjoyed and be
informed regarding the past.
The Hindu Epic
Epic of India
Every culture has its great, foundational texts. Epics, or a Mahakavya, are
known as the specialty of Sanskrit and are also the earliest forms of literature.
Indian literature is thought to be the earliest literature of the world. Literature during
this time largely incorporated art. In this art, the gods portrayed in the story were
depicted and it was grandiose. The art was very detailed and included humans,
animals, scenery, color and much more. The two most famous epics are the
Mahabharata and the Ramayana.
Classical epics were made by using parts of the two original epics. An epic is
supposed to be divided into chapters, or Sarga. Every chapter is composed in an
individual and specific manner depending on the subject or theme of the Sarga.
Epics are thought of as art as much description is provided besides the main plot.
Imagery is widely used to describe festivals, forests, mountains, seasons, and so on.
Stanzas are composed so they flow with the story line but are also an individual idea
or image.
The two classical epics have to do with ideals and values of human civilization.
The epics highlight the value of truth and the importance of self-sacrifice. Epics have
many moral teachings and are sacred writing to Hindus because of the important
discourses and teaching included in them. Although they are originally written in
Sanskrit, they were performed orally before transferring epics into writing. Tellers of
the stories add and take out parts and pieces of the story and the epics area
changed a bit when translated as well. The main ideas and morals remain intact
even if small details of the epics do change.
The earliest works of literature of India were epics, long poems, travelogues,
plays, and collection of stories for children which were written in verse. A large
number of great Indian epics were created during the first millennium BC. The two
most famous epics are the Mahabharata and the Ramayana.
1.MAHABHARATA
The Mahabharata is a famous Indian epic written by Ved Vyasa and is the
longest Sanskrit epic ever written. The epic has more
than 74,000 verses and 18 books. The story is set in
India is about the conflict of a family, the Pandavas
and the Kauravas. The two sides of the family have a
dispute over who is to rule the kingdom but the
Kauravas are exiled after losing a game of gamble.
Later on, they come back and have a war. Krishna is
a great part of the story as he helps Arjuna drive his
chariot. Another very important part of the story is the
conversation that Arjuna and Krishna have about the
Bhagawad Gita. Krishna gives Arjuna a glimpse of his
divine self and reminds Arjuna that he must fulfill his
destiny in life. The Pandavas won the battle and ruled
over Hastinapura for many years. The epic talks
about the importance of fulfilling one’s dharma in life. Other important teachings
of the epic are about lies, deceit, and other vices. The prevailing theme of the
story is that good always triumphs over evil. It also portrays ancient politics and
how a person can let go of his or her principles for selfish desires.
2. RAMAYANA
The Ramayana is the most famous
and read epics of all times. Maharshi
Valmiki is the author of the epic. The
Hindus have such high respect for this
epic, that it is considered a holy book.
All children in India know the story of
the Ramayana and it holds important
values as well as idealistic principles.
There are many local versions written
and printed across India. The
Ramayana takes place in the kingdom
of Ayodhya where there was a noble
king, Dashratha. He has three wives
and was granted four sons. The eldest
son was Rama and because of his
values and outlook, he was considered
the seventh incarnation of Lord Vishnu. The king was going to crown Rama but his
second wife became jealous and wanted her son named king after a promise the king
had made her.
Her son was named king and Rama was exiled for fourteen years. He set out with Sita
and Lakshmana but one day, a Demoness saw Rama and was charmed by his
personality. She tried seducing him but Rama ignored her and so she tried seducing
Lakshmana. Lakshmana was disgusted and mad so he cut off her nose. The Demoness
went to her brother Ravana, the Demon king to complain about what happened. Ravana
abducted Sita so they must find her. In the end, Rama wins and they go back to the
kingdom where he is now crowned. The moral of the epic is that good triumphs over
evil, and the values highlighted are the ones demonstrated by Rama.
3. PANCHAT ANTRA
The Panchatantra is a legendary
collection of short stories from India.
Originally composed in the 3rt century
B.C, Panchatantra is believed to be
written by Vishnu Sharma. The ancient
Sanskrit text boasts of various animal
stories in verse and prose, arranged
within a frame story. It is based on
older oral traditions, including “animal
fables that are as old as we are able to
imagine”.
The Panchatantra is the best guide to
enroot moral values in children since its each tale has a moral lesson in its end. The
Panchatantra is a great book where plants and animals can speak and converse with
human beings too.
There are recorded over two hundred different versions known to exist in more than fifty
languages, and three-quarters of these languages are extra-Indian. As early as the
eleventh century this work reached Europe. It has been worked over and over again,
expanded, abstracted, turned into verse, retold in prose, translated into medieval and
modern vernaculars, and re-translated into Sanskrit.
4. Sangam literature
The corpus of poems known as Sangam
literature was produced over six
centuries, from around 300 BC to 300
A.D, by Tamils from very diverse social
backgrounds. The period during which
these poems were composed is called
the Sangam period. These works provide insight into early Tamil culture and into trade
relations between South India and the Mediterranean, West Asia and Southeast Asia.
This collection contains 2381 poems in Tamil composed by 473 poets, some 102 of
whom remain anonymous. These poems were later collected into various anthologies,
edited, and with colophons added by anthologists and annotators around 1000 AD.
Sangam literature fell out of popular memory soon thereafter, until they were
rediscovered in the 19th century by scholars.
5. Abhijnanasakuntalam
Abhijnanasakuntalam is a beautiful
tale of love and romance,
dramatizing the story of
Shakuntala (mother of emperor
Bharata) told in the epic
Mahabharata. Its date is uncertain,
but Kalidasa is often placed in the
period between the 1st century
BCE and 4th century CE. The
Sanskrit title means ‘Of Sakuntala
who is recognized by a token’.
Abhijnanasakuntalam is the first Indian play ever to be translated into western
languages.
6. Kamasutra
The Kama Sutra is the world’s
oldest book on the pleasures of
sensual living. It was originally
compiled in the 3rd century by the
Indian sage Vatsyayana, who lived
in northern India. The title of the
text, Kama Sutra, literally means “a
treatise on pleasure.”
Contrary to western popular
perception, the Kama Sutra is not
exclusively a sex manual, only
20% of Kama Sutra is about sexual
positions. The majority of the book is about the philosophy and theory of love, making
oneself more attractive and how spouses should treat each other.
7. Shishupala Vadha
Shishupala Vadha is a Sanskrit epic
dealing with the life of Shishupala, a king
of an ancient Indian province, and his death by Krishna. The story is taken from
Mahabharata. It is an epic poem in 20 cantos of about 1800 highly ornate stanzas, and
is considered one of the six Sanskrit mahakavyas, or “great epics”. It is believed to
composed by Māgha in the 7th or 8th century. the epic has been widely acclaimed for
its use of ornate style and poetic techniques.
8. The Kiratarjuniya
The Kiratarjuniya is a Sanskrit epic written in the 6th
century or earlier. It is an epic poem in eighteen
cantos in which the God Shiva tests the strength of
Arjuna, one of the Pandavas in the Mahabharata.
Though Arjuna fails in the competition, he gets an
opportunity to meet the Lord Siva and receive His
blessings. The story has a moral that every human
being should keep in mind that we have to respect
others whatever their status. It expounds the basic of
Indian religious thought that every human being is a
part of the omnipotent.
9. The Arthashastra
The Arthasastra by Chanakya is a 2300-year-old
masterpiece on governance, economics and
politics. This book is a huge work and has fifteen
parts, each dealing with some aspects of the art of
government. Composed, expanded and redacted
between the 2nd century BCE and 3rd century CE,
the Arthashastra was influential until the 12th
century, when it disappeared. It was rediscovered
in 1905 by R. Shamasastry, who published it in
1909.
The title “Arthashastra” is often translated to “the science of politics”, but the book
Arthashastra has a broader scope. It includes books on the nature of government, law,
civil and criminal court systems, ethics, economics, markets and trade, the methods for
screening ministers, diplomacy, theories on war, nature of peace, and the duties and
obligations of a king.
10. Buddhacarita
Buddhacharita is a great epic which narrates the
life of Buddha – from his birth to Nirvana.
Buddhacharita, one of the best Sanskrit epics, was written by Asvogosha, a Buddhist
poet in 2nd century AD. This epic is renowned for the details about Buddha’s life which
can be corroborated by available historical records and the facts available in other
chronologies of that period. This epic consists of 28 cantos.
THE EUROPEAN EPIC
In the history of world literature, many ancient countries in ancient Greece, India,
and Europe have excellent long epics. The heroic epic is the leader in the medieval
literary world in Europe. It inherits the tradition of ancient epic depiction and transcends
tradition.
Epic poetry begins with The Epic of Gilgamesh. It is unlikely that any Medieval or
Renaissance European writer had read Gilgamesh. The European epic tradition begins
with Homer in Greece around 800 BC. It is essential that students of English literature
read The Iliad and The Odyssey. The form of the epic poem, its typical characters, its
plot, its tropes, and so forth are all set out in Homer. All epic poets of note read him.
Other epic poets include Hesiod, Apollonius, Ovid, Lucan, and Statius.
Epic of Germany
German literature comprises the written works of the German-speaking peoples
of central Europe.
In Germany, the epic genre had combined the heathen martial spirit with
chivalrous civility without the Christian element so prominent in the French epic,
although the specifically chivalric brand of piety that the historian Adolf Waas labelled
Ritterfrömmigkeit was conspicuously present in the religious epics of biblical inspiration.
Nibelungenlied
Nibelungenlied, (German: “Song of the Nibelungs”)
Middle High German epic poem written about 1200 by an
unknown Austrian from the Danube region. It is preserved in
three main 13th-century manuscripts, A (now in Munich), B
(St. Gall), and C (Donaueschingen); modern scholarship
regards B as the most trustworthy. An early Middle High
German title of the work is Der Nibelunge Not (“The
Nibelung Distress”), from the last line of the poem. The
superscription on one of the manuscripts from the early 14th
century is “The Book of Kriemhild.”
This fragmented collection of several thousand stanzas was
only rediscovered several centuries after it was written, but
this poem’s scale is so grand that it helped revive Teutonic
mythology in Germany. About the slow but inevitable decline of the Burgundian people
of the North Atlantic, the majority of the poem follows Siegfried, an Achilles-like figure
who fights dragons, conquers Nibelungenland and uses his invisibility cloak to defeat
enemies. 19th century composer Richard Wagner would later use material from this
poem to produce his masterpiece The Ring-Cycle, though later German National
Socialists would use it to propagate erroneous assertions about a “Teutonic race.”
Epic of France
Literature matters deeply to the people of France and plays an important role in
their sense of identity. As of 2006, French literary people have been awarded more
Nobel Prizes in Literature than novelists, poets and essayists of any other country.
French literature, the body of written works in the French language produced
within the geographic and political boundaries of France. The French language was one
of the five major Romance languages to develop from Vulgar Latin as a result of the
Roman occupation of western Europe.
La Chanson de Roland or The Song of Roland,
is an old French epic poem that is probably the earliest
(c. 1100) chanson de geste and is considered the
masterpiece of the genre. The poem’s probable author
was a Norman poet, Turold, whose name is introduced
in its last line.
France's national epic is namely The Song of Roland,
not just by virtue of its considerable length, but by the
values it promotes. The title character is consistently
presented throughout the poem as a role model for
French manhood, a brave soldier whose loyalty, valor,
and sacrifice make him the first authentically national
hero.
b. The medias res technique is used in developing the action, the action begins in
the middle.
d. The poet uses metrical pattern that shows the interlocking of ideas. Also, the poet
uses the dream device (Charlemagne’s dream foreshadowing the death of Roland) to
show the workings of the supernatural element too.
Characterization:
Roland’s sins or flaws of character are: his heroic pride and his fear of public opinion,
the vice of human respect, his fear of betraying Charlemagne’s trust in him, and his
strong sense of honor prevented him from blowing the horn, an act that led him and his
men to death.
Lastly, his over confidence in his prowess as a warrior in the battlefield also brought
about his own downfall.
2. OLIVER – like Roland, he was brave but unlike Roland, he was prudent yet blunt
in his manner of speaking and action.
Epic of Italy
The Divine Comedy (Epic of Italy)
Medieval epic poems are plentiful, though
rarely read. Each nation or state produced its great
epic poets. Italy has not only Virgil, but also Dante,
among others. Dante's great epic is The Divine
Comedy. It has inspired poets and artists for
centuries. T. S. Eliot is said to have carried a
volume of Dante in his coat pocket. Gustave Doré
illustrated The Divine Comedy in the nineteenth
century.
The Divine Comedy is one of the greatest
monuments of human genius. It is the Christian
epic. The story is related as a vision; it is the story
of humanity itself.
The poem begins with Dante being lost in a
forest (representing worldliness or sin) near a hill,
the Mount of Joy or Salvation. He wishes to ascend the hill but is prevented from doing
so by a leopard (representing violence and ambition) and a she-wolf (representing lack
of self-restraint). Trembling with fear at the threatening and ferocious appearance of the
beasts, Dante is saved by Virgil (who becomes his guide), sent by Beatrice to help him.
With Virgil, Dante descends into hell. Beatrice herself is his guide as he makes the
ascent to heaven.
Virgil and Dante enter the gates of hell (Inferno) and enter that dismal region of
eternal suffering and punishment. Hell is shaped like an inverted cone with nine circles,
each circle lower and narrower than the preceding one. In each circle the wicked are
punished, and the punishment grows more severe at each lower circle. The punishment
is always in proportion to the sinner’s guilt. At the pit of hell are two arch-sinners: Satan,
the rebel against God, and Judas of Kerioth, the betrayer of Christ.
As the poets pass through the gates of hell, cries of anguish deafen their ears.
Dante sees the first of the souls in torment. The first group of sinners is the ordinary
type – those souls who, when they lived were neither good nor evil but lived only for
themselves. They race round and round, pursuing a wavering banner that runs forever
through polluted air. As they run, they are stung by wasps and hornets.
As Dante and Virgil descend farther down, they see that each of the different
ledges in Hell is reserved for sinners having committed the same sins. There seems to
be no movement from one ledge to another. The gluttons are punished by a rain of foul-
smelling, dirty, decaying food full of worms, food not even fit for pigs. The spendthrifts
and the misers (who abused the gifts of God) are punished by rolling large boulders
upon a hill with their shoulders. They are on opposite sides of the hill; the boulders clash
and fall and the pair of sinners begin again from the bottom, rolling the boulders
painfully up the hill. The murderers are immersed in a river of boiling blood, and when
they come up to breathe, monsters hit them on the head and they go down into the river
of blood again.
After leaving hell, Dante and Virgil ascend to Purgatory where they find the
immense zone divided into seven sections of a circular ascending stairway. This is the
Mountain of Purgatory; each ledge or circle of the stairway is devoted to the expiation of
each of the seven deadly sins. The proud sinners bend and groan, carrying heavy
weights; the envious are covered with garments of coarse horsehair; the hot-tempered
are suffocated with smoke; the lazy are compelled to run around continuously; the
gluttons suffer from hunger and thirst. The sins punished in hell are the same sins
punished in purgatory; but while the sufferings in hell are endless, the sufferers in
purgatory are given a chance to repent of and expiate their sins and are allowed to rise
to the top of the mountain of Purgatory until they reach the Terrestrial Paradise or the
Garden of Eden. From there they can ascend to Paradise. The inhabitants of hell and
purgatory are all sinful souls. The difference lies in the fact that those in hell did not feel
sorry or repent for their sins while those in purgatory were sorry for, and tried to avoid,
sin when they were on earth.
When Dante reaches paradise, Beatrice, who was the object of his early and
constant love, meets him and becomes his guide to heaven. She leads him upward
through the nine heavens and acquaints him with great men, among them the saints
who by their virtuous lives have deserved to enjoy the vision of God in paradise.
Absorbed in the beatific vision of God, Dante falls into a faint and awakens on earth.
Dante’s Divine Comedy is both an epic and an allegory. In grandeur and scope,
it is an epic since Dante’s pilgrimage takes him from earth, to hell, to paradise, to
heaven, and back to earth again. However, the poem has an allegorical meaning. It is,
in fact, an extended metaphor. The allegorical meaning is hidden under the literal one.
Dante, traveling through the invisible world, is mankind who tries to find temporal and
eternal happiness. The forest typifies the will and religious confusion of society deprived
of two heads – the temporal leader (the emperor) and the spiritual leader (the pope).
The three beasts typify the strongest obstacles to man’s achieving happiness. Virgil
acting as guide on the journey typifies reasons, which should come to help man in this
journey through life. Beatrice typifies the supernatural help which man also needs in his
journey through this life. Without these two aiding him, man cannot attain his true end,
which is happiness.
References
Definition and functions of epic
https://literarydevices.net/epic/
Epic of India
https://ancientcivilizationsapwh.weebly.com/classical-indian-
epics.html#:~:text=The%20two%20most%20famous%20epics%20are%20the
%20Mahabharata%20and%20the%20Ramayana.&text=The%20epics
%20highlight%20the%20value,and%20teaching%20included%20in%20them.
https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2010/12/27/india-epics
https://www.themysteriousindia.net/famous-epics-of-ancient-india/
Epic of Germany
https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?
docId=ft4j49p00c&chunk.id=d0e5369&toc.depth=1&toc.id=d0e5245&brand=uc
press
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Nibelungenlied
https://qwiklit.com/2013/09/10/the-20-greatest-epic-poems-of-all-time/
Epic of France
https://www.britannica.com/art/French-literature/The-Middle-Ages
https://www.britannica.com/topic/La-Chanson-de-Roland
https://www.enotes.com/homework-help/why-this-song-well-known-national-
epic-france-280547
https://sites.google.com/site/sirrheynanong/classroom-pictures
Epic of Spain
https://www.webofproceedings.org/proceedings_series/ART2L/AISALLC
%202019/AISALLC19019.pdf
https://people.umass.edu/eng2/genre/epic.html
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Cantar-de-Mio-Cid
Epic of Italy
https://sites.google.com/site/sirrheynanong/classroom-pictures
LEARNING TASK
2. In your own words, define the Hindu epic and what makes it unique from the
other epics?
1. Ramayana
2. The Mahabharata
3. Nibelungenlied
4. Divine Comedy
5. The Divine Comedy
LESSON 4 / MODULE 14
THE EUROPEAN LITERATURE
Objectives:
At the end of the lesson, the students should able to:
1. Discuss the background of literature from different European country;
2. Explain the key features to understand European Literature;
3. Appreciate the characteristics of different European Literature; and
4. Analyze the poem “Demain, dès l’aube” by Victor Hugo
LITERATURE OF ENGLAND
Literature of England is also known as the English literature. English literature is
the body of written works produced in the English language by inhabitants of the
British Isles (including Ireland) from the 7th century to the present day. Being the
origin of the English language, England has yielded many noteworthy literary
works and authors. While each of these is unique, they represent England’s
literature as a cohesive body. Over the ages, different styles and approaches to
literature have become evident.
HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE
OLD ENGLISH LITERATURE
The Old English language or Anglo-Saxon is the earliest form of English. The
period is a long one and it is generally considered that Old English was spoken from
about A.D. 600 to about 1100. Many of the poems of the period are pagan, in particular
Widsith and Beowulf.
The greatest English poem, Beowulf is the first English epic. The author of
Beowulf is anonymous. It is a story of a brave young man Beowulf in 3182 lines. In this
epic poem, Beowulf sails to Denmark with a band of warriors to save the King of
Denmark, Hrothgar. Beowulf saves Danish King Hrothgar from a terrible monster
called Grendel. The mother of Grendel who sought vengeance for the death of her son
was also killed by Beowulf. Beowulf was rewarded and became King. After a
prosperous reign of some forty years, Beowulf slays a dragon but in the fight he himself
receives a mortal wound and dies. The poem concludes with the funeral ceremonies in
honor of the dead hero. Though the poem Beowulf is little interesting to contemporary
readers, it is a very important poem in the Old English period because it gives an
interesting picture of the life and practices of old days.
The difficulty encountered in reading Old English Literature lies in the fact that
the language is very different from that of today. There was no rhyme in Old English
poems. Instead they used alliteration. Besides Beowulf, there are many other Old
English poems. Widsith, Genesis A, Genesis B, Exodus, The Wanderer, The Seafarer,
Wife’s Lament, Husband’s Message, Christ and Satan, Daniel, Andreas, Gathas, The
Dream of the Rood, The Battle of Maldon etc. are some of the examples. Two important
figures in Old English poetry are Cynewulf and Caedmon. Cynewulf wrote religious
poems and the four poems, Juliana, The Fates of the Apostles, Christ and Elene are
always credited with him. Caedmon is famous for his Hymn. Alfred enriched Old English
prose with his translations especially Bede’s Ecclesiastical History. Aelfric is another
important prose writer during Old English period. He is famous for his Grammar,
Homilies and Lives of the Saints. Aelfric’s prose is natural and easy and is very often
alliterative.
In Europe, as in Greece, the drama had a distinctly religious origin. The first
characters were drawn from the New Testament, and the object of the first plays was to
make the church service more impressive, or to emphasize moral lessons by showing
the reward of the good and the punishment of the evil doer. In the latter days of the
Roman Empire the Church found the stage possessed by frightful plays, which debased
the morals of a people already fallen too low. Reform seemed impossible; the corrupt
drama was driven from the stage, and plays of every kind were forbidden. But mankind
loves a spectacle, and soon the Church itself provided a substitute for the forbidden
plays in the famous Mysteries and Miracles.
THE INTERLUDES
It is impossible to draw any accurate line of distinction between the Moralities
and Interludes. In general, we may think of the latter as dramatic scenes, sometimes
given by themselves (usually with music and singing) at banquets and entertainments
where a little fun was wanted; and again, slipped into a Miracle play to enliven the
audience after a solemn scene. Thus, on the margin of a page of one of the old Chester
plays we read, “The boye and pigge when the kinges are gone.” Certainly, this was
no part of the original scene between Herod and the three kings. So also, the quarrel
between Noah and his wife is probably a late addition to an old play. The Interludes
originated, undoubtedly, in a sense of humor; and to John Heywood (1497 -1580), a
favorite retainer and jester at the court of Mary, is due the credit for raising the Interlude
to the distinct dramatic form known as comedy.
Heywood’s Interludes were written between 1520 and 1540. His most famous is “The
Four P’s,” a contest of wit between a “Pardoner, a Palmer, a Pedlar and a Poticary.”
The characters here strongly suggest those of Chaucer. Another interesting Interlude is
called “The Play of the Weather.” In this Jupiter and the gods assemble to listen to
complaints about the weather and to reform abuses. Naturally everybody wants his own
kind of weather. The climax is reached by a boy who announces that a boy’s pleasure
consists in two things, catching birds and throwing snowballs, and begs for the weather
to be such that he can always do both. Jupiter decides that he will do just as he pleases
about the weather, and everybody goes home satisfied.
All these early plays were written, for the most part, in a mingling of prose and
wretched doggerel, and add nothing to our literature. Their great work was to train
actors, to keep alive the dramatic spirit, and to prepare the way for the true drama.
The immense power and variety of Shakespeare’s work have led to the idea that
one man cannot have written it all; yet it must be true that one man did. Thus,
Shakespeare remains as the greatest English dramatist even after four centuries of his
death.
Another dramatist who flourished during the Elizabethan period is Ben Jonson.
He introduced the “comedy of humours’’, which portrays the individual as dominated
by one marked characteristic. He is best known for his Every Man in his Humour. Other
important plays of Jonson are Every Man out of his Humour, Volpone or the Fox,
and The Alchemist,
John Webster’s The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi are important
Elizabethan dramas. Thomas Dekker, Thomas Middleton, Thomas Heywood, Beaumont
and Fletcher etc. are other noted Elizabethan playwrights.
John Dryden popularized heroic couplets in his dramas. Aurengaxebe, The Rival
Ladies, The Conquest of Granada, Don Sebastian etc. are some of his famous plays.
His dramatic masterpiece is All for Love. Dryden polished the plot of Shakespeare’s
Antony and Cleopatra in his All for Love. As a prose writer, Dryden’s work, An Essay on
Dramatic Poesie is worth mentioning.
John Bunyan’s greatest allegory, The Pilgrim’s Progress, The Holy War.
Comedy of Manners
Restoration period produced a brilliant group of dramatists who made this age
immortal in the history of English literature. These plays are hard and witty, comic and
immoral. It was George Etheredge who introduced Comedy of Manners. His famous
plays are She Would if She Could, The Man of Mode and Love in a Tub.
William Congreve is the greatest of Restoration comedy writers. His Love for
Love, The Old Bachelor, The Way of the World and The Double Dealer are very
popular.
William Wycherley is another important Restoration comedy playwright. His
Country Wife, and Love in a Wood are notable plays.
Sir John Vanbrugh’s best three comedies are The Provoked Wife, The Relapse
and The Confederacy.
ENGLISH POETS, 1660-1798
ALEXANDER POPE (1688-1744)
Alexander Pope was the undisputed master of both prose and verse. Pope wrote
many poems and mock-epics attacking his rival poets and social condition of England.
His Dunciad is an attack on dullness. He wrote An Essay on Criticism (1711) in heroic
couplets. In 1712, Pope published The Rape of the Lock, one of the most brilliant
poems in English language. It is a mock-heroic poem dealing with the fight of two noble
families.
An Essay on Man, Of the Characters of Women, and the translation of Illiad and
Odyssey are his other major works.
Oliver Goldsmith wrote two popular poems in heroic couplets. They are The
Traveller and The Deserted Village.
James Thompson is remembered for his long series of descriptive passages
dealing with natural scenes in his poem The Seasons. He wrote another important
poem The Castle of Indolence.
Edward Young produced a large amount of literary work of variable quality. The
Last Day, The Love of Fame, and The Force of Religion are some of them.
Robert Blair’s fame is chiefly dependent on his poem The Grave. It is a long
blank verse poem of meditation on man’s morality.
Thomas Gray (1716-1771) is one of the greatest poets of English literature. His
first poem was the Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College. Then after years of
revision, he published his famous Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard. Its popularity
had been maintained to the present day. Other important poems of Thomas Gray are
Ode on a Favourite Cat, The Bard and The Progress of Poesy.
William Blake (1757-1827) is both a great poet and artist. His two collections of
short lyrics are Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. His finest lyric is The
Tiger.
Robert Burns is known as the national poet of Scotland. A Winter Night, O My
Love is like a Red Red Rose, The Holy Fair etc. are some of his major poems.
William Cowper, William Collins, and William Shenstone are other notable poets
before the Romanticism.
Edmund Burke is one of the masters of English prose. He was a great orator
also. His speech On American Taxation is very famous. Revolution in France and A
Letter to a Noble Lord are his notable pamphlets.
The letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Earl of Chesterfield, Thomas Gray
and Cowper are good prose works in Eighteenth century literature.
William Wordsworth ((1770-1850) was the poet of nature. In the preface to the
second edition of the Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth set out his theory of poetry. He
defined poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings and emotions”. His
views on poetical style are the most revolutionary. In his early career as a poet,
Wordsworth wrote poems like An Evening Walk and Descriptive Sketches. The Prelude
is the record of his development as a poet. It is a philosophical poem. He wrote some of
the best lyric poems in the English language like The Solitary Reaper, I Wandered
Lonely as a Cloud, Ode on the Itimations of Immorality, Resolution and Independence
etc. Tintern Abbey is one of the greatest poems of Wordsworth.
Samuel Tylor Coleridge (1772-1814) wrote four poems for The Lyrical Ballads.
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is the most noteworthy. Kubla Khan, Christabel,
Dejection an Ode, Frost at Midnight etc. are other important poems. Biographia Literaria
is his most valuable prose work. Coleridge’s lectures on Shakespeare are equally
important.
Lord Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage was based on his travels. Don Juan
ranks as one of the greatest of satirical poems. The Vision of Judgment is a fine political
satire in English.
PB Shelley (1792-1822) was a revolutionary figure of Romantic period. When
Shelley was studying at Oxford, he wrote the pamphlet The Necessity of Atheism which
caused his expulsion from the university. Queen Mab, The Revolt of Islam and Alastor
are his early poems. Prometheus Unbound is a combination of the lyric and the drama.
Shelley wrote some of the sweetest English lyrics like To a Skylark, The Cloud, To Night
etc. Of his many odes, the most remarkable is Ode to the West Wind. Adonais is an
elegy on the death of John Keats.
John Keats (1795-1821) is another great Romantic poet who wrote some
excellent poems in his short period of life. His Isabella deals with the murder of a lady’s
lover by her two wicked brothers. The unfinished epic poem Hyperion is modelled on
Milton’s Paradise Lost. The Eve of St Agnes is regarded as his finest narrative poem.
The story of Lamia is taken from Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy. Endymion, Ode to a
Nightingale, Ode on a Grecian Urn, Ode to Psyche, Ode on Melancholy and Ode to
Autumn are very famous. His Letters give a clear insight into his mind and artistic
development.
Robert Southey is a minor Romantic poet. His poems, which are of great bulk,
include Joan of Arc, Thalaba, and The Holly-tree.
The Brontës
Charlotte, Emily, and Anne were the daughters of an Irish clergy man Patrick
Brontë, who held a living in Yorkshire. Charlotte Brontë’s first novel, The Professor
failed to find a publisher and only appeared after her death. Jane Eyre is her greatest
novel. the plot is weak and melodramatic. This was followed by Shirley and Villette. Her
plots are overcharged and she is largely restricted to her own experiments. Emily
Brontë wrote less than Charlottë. Her one and only novel Wuthering Heights (1847) is
unique in English literature. It is the passionate love story of Heathcliff and Catherine.
Anne Bronte’s two novels, Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall are much
inferior to those of her sisters, for she lacks nearly all their power and intensity.
George Eliot (1819-1880) is the pen-name of Mary Ann Evans. Adam Bede was her
first novel. Her next novel, The Mill on the Floss is partly autobiographical. Silas Manner
is a shorter novel which gives excellent pictures of village life. Romola, Middle March
and Daniel Deronda are other works of George Eliot.
Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) published his first work Desperate Remedies
anonymously. Under the Greenwood Tree, one of the lightest and most appealing of his
novels established him as a writer. It was set in the rural area he was soon to make
famous as Wessex. Far from the Madding Crowd is a tragi-comedy set in Wessex. The
rural background of the story is an integral part of the novel, which reveals the
emotional depths which underlie rustic life. The novel, The Return of the Native is a
study of man’s helplessness before the mighty Fate. The Mayor of Casterbridge also
deals with the theme of Man versus Destiny. Tess of the D’Urbervilles and Jude the
Obscure aroused the hostility of conventional readers due to their frank handling of sex
and religion. At the beginning Tess of the D’Urbervilles was rejected by the publishers.
The outcry with the publication of Jude the Obscure led Hardy in disgust to abandon
novel writing. Thomas Hardy’s characters are mostly men and women living close to the
soil.
Mary Shelley, the wife of Romantic poet PB Shelley is now remembered as a
writer of her famous novel of terror, Frankestein. Frankestein can be regarded as the
first attempt at science fiction. The Last Man is Mary Shelley’s another work.
Edgar Allan Poe was a master of Mystery stories. Poe’s powerful description of
astonishing and unusual events has the attraction of terrible things. Some of his major
works are The Mystery of Marie Roget, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Fall of the
House of Usher and The Mystery of Red Death. Besides poetry collections like The
Lady of the Last Ministrel, Marmion, The Lady of the Lake, and The Lord of the Isles, Sir
Walter Scott produced enormous number of novels. Waverly, Old Mortality, The Black
Dwarf, The Pirate, and Kenilworth are some of them. He was too haste in writing novels
and this led to the careless, imperfect stories. He has a great place in the field of
historical novels.
Frederick Marryat’s sea novels were popular in the nineteenth century. His
earliest novel was The Naval Officer. All his best books deal with the sea. Marryat has a
considerable gift for plain narrative and his humour is entertaining. Peter Simple, Jacob
Faithful and Japhet in Search of His Father are some of his famous works.
R.L. Stevenson’s The Treasure Island, George Meredith’s The Egoist, Edward
Lytton’s The Last Days of Pompeii, Charles Reade’s Mask and Faces, Anthony
Trollope’s The Warden, Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone, Joseph Conard’s Lord Jim,
Nathaniel Hawthrone’s The Scarlet Letter etc. are some of other famous works of
nineteenth century English literature.
Rudyard Kipling was born in Bombay but soon moved to Lahore. He worked as
a news reporter in Lahore. Kipling was a prolific and versatile writer. His insistent
proclamation of the superiority of the white races, his support for colonization, his belief
in the progress and the value of the machine etc. found an echo on the hearts of many
of his readers. His best-known prose works include Kim, Life’s Handicap, Debits and
Credits, and Rewards and Fairies. He is now chiefly remembered for his greatest work,
The Jungle Book.
E.M Forster wrote five novels in his life time. Where Angels Fear to Tread has
well-drawn characters. Other novels are The Longest Journey, A Room with a View,
Howards End, and A Passage to India. A Passage to India is unequal in English in its
presentation of the complex problems which were to be found in the relationship
between English and native people in India. E.M Forster portrayed the Indian scene in
all its magic and all its wretchedness.
H.G Wells began his career as a journalist. He started his scientific romances
with the publication of The Time Machine. The Invisible Man, The War of the Worlds,
The First Men in the Moon and The Food of the Gods are some of his important science
romances. Ann Veronica, Kipps and The History of Mr. Polly are numbered among his
sociological novels.
D.H Lawrence was a striking figure in the twentieth century literary world. He
produced over forty volumes of fiction during his period. The White Peacock is his
earliest novel. The largely autobiographical and extremely powerful novel was Sons and
Lovers. It studies with great insight the relationship between a son and mother. By
many, it is considered the best of all his works. Then came The Rainbow, suppressed
as obscene, which treats again the conflict between man and woman. Women in Love
is another important work. Lady Chatterley’s Lover is a novel in which sexual
experience is handled with a wealth of physical detail and uninhibited language.
Lawrence also excelled both as a poet and short story writer.
James Joyce is a serious novelist, whose concern is chiefly with human
relationships- man in relation to himself, to society, and to the whole race. He was born
in Dublin, Ireland. His first work, Dubliners, is followed by a largely autobiographical
novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. It is an intense account of a developing
writer. The protagonist of the story, Stephen Dedalus is James Joyce himself. The
character Stephen Dedalus appears again in his highly complex novel, Ulysses
published in 1922. Joyce’s mastery of language, his integrity, brilliance, and power are
noticeable in his novel titled Finnefan’s Wake.
Virginia Woolf famed both as a literary critic and novelist. Her first novel, The
Voyage Out is told in the conventional narrative manner. A deeper study of characters
can be found in her later works such as Night and Day, Jacob’s Room, To the
Lighthouse, Mrs. Dalloway and Orlando. In addition to her novels, Virginia Woolf wrote a
number of essays on cultural subjects. Woolf rejected the conventional concepts of
novel. She replaced emphasis on incident, external description, and straight forward
narration by using the technique “Stream of Consciousness”. James Joyce and Virginia
Woolf popularized this writing technique.
George Orwell became a figure of outstanding importance because of Animal
Farm. It is a political allegory on the degeneration of communist ideals into dictatorship.
Utterly different was Nineteen Eighty-Four on the surveillance of state over its citizen.
Burmese Days and The Road to Wigan Pier are other works.
William Golding deals with man’s instinct to destroy what is good, whether it is
material or spiritual. His best-known novel is Lord of the Flies. The Scorpion God, The
Inheritors and Free Fall are other notable works.
Somerset Maugham was a realist who sketched the cosmopolitan life through his
characters. The Moon and Sixpence, Mrs. Craddock and The Painted Veil are some of
his novels. His best novel is Of Human Bondage. It is a study in frustration, which had a
strong autobiographical element.
Kingsly Amis’s Lucky Jim, Take a Girl like You, One Fat Englishman, and Girl are
notable works in the twentieth century.
J M Synge was the greatest dramatist in the rebirth of the Irish theatre. His plays
are few in number but they are of a stature to place him among the greatest playwrights
in the English language. Synge was inspired by the beauty of his surroundings, the
humour, tragedy, and poetry of the life of the simple fisher-folk in the Isles of Aran. The
Shadow of the Glen is a comedy based on an old folktale, which gives a good romantic
picture of Irish peasant life. It was followed by Riders to the Sea, a powerful, deeply
moving tragedy which deals with the toll taken by the sea in the lives of the fisher-folk of
the Ireland. The Winker’s Wedding and The Well of the Saints are other notable works.
Samuel Beckett, the greatest proponent of Absurd Theatre is most famous for
his play, Waiting for Godot. It is a static representation without structure or
development, using only meandering, seemingly incoherent dialogue to suggest despair
of a society in the post-World War period. Another famous play by Beckett is Endgame.
Harold Pinter was influenced by Samuel Beckett. His plays are quite short and
set in an enclosed space. His characters are always in doubt about their function, and in
fear of something or someone ‘outside’. The Birthday Party, The Dumb Waiter, A Night
Out, The Homecoming and Silence are his most notable plays.
James Osborne’s Look Back in Anger gave the strongest tonic to the concept of
Angry Young Man. Watch it Come Down, A Portrait of Me, Inadmissible Evidence etc.
are his other major works.
T.S Eliot wrote seven dramas. They are Sweeney Agonistes, The Rock, Murder
in the Cathedral, The Family Reunion, The Cocktail Party, The Confidential Clerk and
The Elder Statesman. Juno and the Paycock, The Plough and the Stars, and The Silver
Tassie marked Sean O’Casey out as the greatest new figure in the inter-War years. His
own experience enabled him to study the life of the Dublin slums with the warm
understanding.
Another leading playwright of 20th century was Arnold Wesker. Wesker
narrated the lives of working-class people in his plays. Roots, Chicken Soup with Barley
and I’m Talking about Jerusalem are his famous works.
Bertolt Brecht, J.B Priestley, Somerset Maugham, Christopher Fry, Peter
Usinov, Tom Stoppard, Bernard Kops, Henry Livings, Alan Bennett et al are other
important playwrights of twentieth century English literature.
R.S Thomas, Philip Larkin, Kingsley Amis, Peter Porter, Seamus Heaney et al are
also added the beauty of 20th century English poetry.
War Poets
The First World War brought to public notice many poets, particularly among the
young men of armed forces, while it provided a new source of inspiration for writers of
established reputation. Rupert Brooke, Slegfried Sassoon, and Wilfred Owen are the
major War poets. Rupert Brooke’s famous sonnet “If I should die, think only this of me”
has appeared in so many anthologies of twentieth century verse. Brooke turned to
nature and simple pleasures for inspiration. Sassoon wrote violent and embittered
poems. Sassoon painted the horrors of life and death in the trenches and hospitals.
Wilfred Owen was the greatest of the war poets. In the beginning of his literary career,
Owen wrote in the romantic tradition of John Keats and Lord Tennyson. Owen was a
gifted artist with a fine feeling for words. He greatly experimented in verse techniques.
LITERATURE OF FRANCE
French literature, one of the world's most brilliant, has been for centuries an
impressive facet of French civilization, an object of national pride, and a principal focus
for feelings of national identity. Because the French are a literate people, passionately
interested in questions of language and in the exploration of ideas, the influence of
French intellectuals on the course of French history during the last three centuries has
been great, and remains so today. A high proportion of European literary trends have
originated in France. The continuing prestige of literature in France is evidenced today
by the innumerable private societies devoted to individual authors and by the large
number of literary prizes awarded each year. A knowledge of French literature, in short,
is the key to an understanding of the French people.
Seventeenth Century
The seventeenth century saw French literary work carried out all through
France’s Grand Siecle. The period was also significant for France as it led Europe in
cultural and political development. The writers of this period featured good taste,
proportion, clarity and order of classical ideals in their work. Popular France writers in
this period include Madame de La Fayette and Jean Racine.
Eighteenth Century
The eighteenth century in French literary work was between 1715 and 1798. This
was the period when the modern period of French history began, with a conclusion of
the French revolution and the assumption of power by the consulate. Great French
playwrights during the period include Corneille, Racine and Moliere, who were also
prominent in the seventeenth century.
Nineteenth Century
The nineteenth century French history centered between 1799 and 1940. The
period saw the end of Empire and monarchy as well as the development of democracy
in France. French literature enjoyed huge international success and prestige in this
period. Some popular styles during the period include symbolism, Parnassian poetry
and naturalism.
Twentieth Century
The twentieth century French history spanned from 1900 to 1999. There were
several developments in French literary works during the period. Some notable events
that influenced literature during the period were Algerian independence war, Far East
and the Pacific, Imperialism in Africa and French colonialism as well as Dreyfus affairs.
Known for writing novels, poems and plays with a cause, Victor Hugo engaged in
several political battles, like the one against the death penalty or the Second Empire led
by Napoleon III. This last combat got him exiled to Jersey in 1848, then to Guernsey for
about 20 years, where he produced the richest part of his literary work. Upon his return
to France in 1870, Victor Hugo was welcomed as the symbol of Republican resistance
to the Second Empire.
On his 80th birthday, 600,000 admirers cheered him in front of his house, located
on Eylau avenue in Paris. The same year, the avenue was renamed after him, “avenue
Victor Hugo”, while he was still living there. “I saw for the first time my boulevard”, wrote
Hugo in his collection of biographical notes and essays, Things Seen. Therefore, Victor
Hugo lived in a street called “Victor Hugo” and letters were addressed to him as follows:
“To Mr. Victor Hugo, In his avenue, in Paris".
2. Emile Zola changed the course of the Dreyfus Affair ("J’accuse!")
"One day, France will thank me for
having helped to save her honor."
Already in his lifetime, Emile Zola
(1840-1902) was considered one of
the most popular French authors and
journalists who ever lived. A leader
and theorist of the movement of
Naturalism in literature, his novels,
such as L'Assommoir, Germinal, The
Ladies’ Paradise, Nana or The
Monomaniac, display a methodic,
almost scientific description of his
era. He uncompromisingly analyzed
the men of his time and never
ceased to engage in social causes - the most famous of which being the Dreyfus Affair.
It started in 1894, in a France marked by a stiff revival of anti-Semitism. Dreyfus, a
French officer of Jewish origin, was falsely convicted of passing military secrets to
France’s archenemy, Germany, and subsequently expelled from the army and
sentenced to life imprisonment in Devil’s Island.
Committed to fighting injustice, Zola decided to defend the disgraced officer. On
January 13, 1898, in the newspaper L’Aurore, he published an open letter addressed to
the President of France, Félix Faure, entitled “J’accuse!” (“I Accuse!”), in which he
destroyed the false accusations against Dreyfus. This pamphlet came as a bombshell. It
divided France and the French people into two irreconcilable parts: the “Dreyfusards”
(Dreyfus’ supporters) and the “anti-Dreyfusards”. The French author was condemned
for defamation, and had to flee to England to avoid imprisonment.
It’s only in 1906, after countless twists and turns, that Alfred Dreyfus was finally
rehabilitated and reintegrated into the army -
an outcome that Zola, who died four years
earlier, never got to know. Nonetheless, his
commitment and relentlessness resulted in
the denunciation of anti-Semitic practices
and the release of an innocent man.
3. Albert Camus: The absurd death
“The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the
unreasonable silence of the world.”
Born in French Algeria, Albert Camus (1913-1960) was a philosopher, author and
journalist. From his involvement in the Resistance during World War II to his
denunciation of the Soviet Union, Camus demonstrated a constant political activity
throughout his life. Philosophically, he stayed on the margins of the main movements of
his time, opposing both Marxism and Existentialism, and fighting any overarching
ideology aimed at dissociating men from their human condition. He was also involved in
the defense of North African Muslims and antifascist Spanish refugees.
His books are steeped in his existential anxieties and his endless questioning
about human condition. His views contributed to the rise of Absurdism, a philosophy
inviting to embrace the inability to find any purpose in a fundamentally absurd human
existence. This theme inspired Camus’ “absurd cycle”, a series of novels, plays and
essays including The Outsider, The Myth of Sisyphus, Caligula and The
Misunderstanding.
In 1957, Albert Camus was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, becoming the
second-youngest recipient in history. Three years later, while returning to Paris after
celebrating New Year’s Eve with his family in his home in Lourmarin, he died in a car
accident after the driver, his friend Michel Gallimard, crashed into a tree. The French
author was 47 years old.
4. Guy de Maupassant hated the Eiffel Tower
“I left Paris and even France,
because the Eiffel Tower ended up
boring me too much.”
Henry-René-Albert-Guy de
Maupassant, commonly known as
Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893),
was a journalist and writer of novels
and short stories (such as Bel Ami,
The Horla, Une Vie) that brilliantly
mixed realism with fantasy. Most of
his works have a pessimistic
consonance, as Maupassant insisted
on portraying the cruelty, stupidity
and selfishness of the human race.
Although he lived for several
years in Paris, Maupassant has repeatedly admitted to hating the Eiffel Tower. Like
many fellow authors and artists, he thought of the iron monument to be a desecration of
the beauty of the French capital. Ironically enough, he often had lunch in one of the
restaurants located on its first floor. After a journalist asked him why he would eat in the
Eiffel Tower if he disliked it so much, the French writer replied: "It is the only place in the
city where I do not see it".
He ended up leaving Paris, and eventually France, because of the iconic tower:
“It could not only be seen from all over, but it could be found everywhere, made of all
sorts of known matters, exhibited in all the shops and show windows, an inevitable and
racking nightmare. It was not the only thing, though, that created in me an irresistible
desire to be alone for a while, but everything that has been made in and over it, and
even around it”, he wrote in The Wandering Life.
5. Romain Gary is the only person to win the Goncourt Prize twice
“With maternal love, life makes a
promise at dawn that it can never
hold.”
Born Roman Kacew in Vilnius,
Lithuania, Romain Gary (1914-1980)
emigrated to France at the age of 14.
He studied law and was later enlisted in
the Free French Air Force during the
Second World War. After the war, he
joined the diplomatic career, during
which he wrote many of his most
famous books. Haunted by the war and the angst of aging, the French writer described
the complexity and turmoil inherent to human relationships in emblematic books such as
Promise at Dawn and The Dance of Gengis Cohn.
In 1956, he received the Prix Goncourt, the most prestigious literary award in
France, for The Roots of Heaven, the story of a crusading environmentalist who fights to
save elephants from extinction.
In 1974, in search of renewal, he decided to write a new series of novels using a
pseudonym. In 1975, without knowing the real identity of the writer, the jury of the
académie Goncourt awarded its prestigious prize to Emile Ajar for The Life Before Us,
the story of a Muslim orphan boy living under the care of an old Jewish woman, in post-
war Paris. This is how Gary became the first and only writer in history to win the
Goncourt twice.
6. Honoré de Balzac who was addicted to
coffee
“Many people claim coffee inspires them,
but, as everybody knows, coffee only
makes boring people even more boring. “
Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850) was one of the initiators of Realism in literature.
In 1834, he had the idea of grouping all of his novels in an organized whole, which
would eventually turn into one of the most fantastic efforts in the history of literature: the
Comédie humaine (The Human Comedy), a masterpiece gathering more than 2,000
characters in 91 different works, in which he aimed to paint the “social species” of his
time.
As you could already guess, Honoré de Balzac was a hard worker, and like many
hard workers, a huge fan of coffee. He wouldn’t let anyone prepare his beverage
because he followed a very precise recipe, mixing three varieties of coffee beans -
Bourbon Island, Martinique and Yemen mocha - before boiling the decoction for hours
in order to obtain a caffeine concentrate capable of keeping him awake all night. He
even wrote about the effects of coffee in his Treatise on Modern Stimulants.
During the last years of his life, the French author actually slept very little. He
would spend entire nights writing and drinking coffee. Legend has it that Honoré de
Balzac could sometimes drink up to 25 coffees a day! We can say that Balzac was, in a
way, the Georges Clooney of the 20th century.
7. Marcel Proust wrote an 856 word-long sentence
On the night of July 8, 1873, Rimbaud joined Verlaine in Brussels. The few days
spent together were stormy, Verlaine thinking of returning to London and Rimbaud
refusing to go with him. On July 10, Verlaine drank excessively and went out to buy a
six-shot revolver with a box of cartridges. After yet another argument during which
Rimbaud told him that he wanted to leave him, Verlaine shot his lover twice after
shouting at him, "That's it for you, since you're leaving!" One bullet struck Rimbaud
above the left wrist joint, the other touched the wall. On August 8, 1873, Verlaine was
sentenced for serious injury to two years in prison and a 200-francs fine.
In 2016, more than 140 years later, the revolver used by Verlaine against his
companion was sold at auction for a whopping €434,500. Fortunately, this gun has
caused more ink than blood to flow.
09. Georges Perec wrote a 300-page
novel without the letter “e”
“To write: to try meticulously to
retain something, to cause
something to survive; to wrest a few
precise scraps from the void as it
grows, to leave somewhere a
furrow, a trace, a mark or a few
signs.”
Georges Perec (1936-1982) was one of the most remarkable French writers of
the twentieth century. He reached literary fame in 1965, after the publication of Things:
A Story of the Sixties, in which he described in a very meticulous way the mundane
events of his daily life. Perec was particularly fond of literary devices and experiments,
from constrained writing to plays of words, from endless lists to absurd classifications.
They enabled him to tackle with grace some very heavy, recurring topics, such as
disappearance and the quest for identity, tracing back to Perec’s trauma who lost all of
his family in the Holocaust when he was a child.
In 1969, he took up an unprecedented literary challenge: a 300-page
lipogramatic novel entitled A Void, made of regularly built sentences, but using only
words that do not include the letter “e” - the most frequent vowel in the French
language. In an interview (in French) about this incredible literary endeavor, Perec said:
“When we write, we usually pay attention to the sentences, we try to modulate our
sentences. We pay attention to the words; we pick our words. But we hardly pay
attention to the letters, that is to say the graphic supports of writing. If we decide to
deprive ourselves, to make an element disappear in this alphabet, and instead of 26
letters, we decide to only have 25, a real catastrophe is meant to occur, as soon as the
letter we choose is important”.
10. Guillaume Apollinaire coined the word “surrealism”
“It is high time to relight the stars.”
Guillaume Albert Vladimir Alexandre
Apollinaire de Kostrowitzky, commonly
known as Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-
1918), was one of the most influential
poets of the early 20th century (Alcools,
Caligrammes), as well as a calligraphist
and author of erotic short stories. Theorist
of the “New Spirit”, he was a good friend of
Pablo Picasso, with whom he shared a
passion for the emerging Cubist
movement.
In 1916, while fighting with the French army, he was injured by shrapnel that hit
his right temple. After a long and painful recovery, he published the collection Les
Mamelles de Tiresias, which he qualified as a “surrealist drama”. He used the term
“surrealism” for the first time in a letter to Paul Dermée, a Belgian writer and friend of
his, in which he tried to name the new literary movement he was initiating: “All things
considered, I believe indeed that it is better to adopt surrealism than supernaturalism
that I had first employed. The word “surrealism” does not yet exist in dictionaries, and it
will be more convenient to handle than supernaturalism already used by MM. the
philosophers”.
This marked the beginning of Surrealism. If Apollinaire coined the term, it is only
a few years later that André Breton, with his Manifesto of Surrealism (1924), would lay
the conceptual groundwork of the movement. Deeply influenced by the works of Freud,
surrealist authors would develop unconventional literary techniques and explore all of
the facets of the unconscious mind in search for creativity. The word “surreal” appeared
in the English language in the 1930s as a backformation of “surrealist”. It is still widely
used today, almost a century later, as a slang for “weird” or “irrational”.
Tomorrow, at dawn, when the countryside I will not watch the evening gold fall,
brightens, Nor the distant sails going down to Harfleur,
I will depart. You see, I know that you wait And, when I arrive, I will put on your grave
for me. A bouquet of green holly and heather in
I will go through the wood, I will go past the bloom.
mountains.
I cannot remain far from you any longer.
LITERATURE OF GERMANY
GERMANY
• A federal parliamentary republic in western-central Europe
• The most populous member state in the European Union
• The major economic and political power of the European continent and a historic
leader in many theoretical and technical fields
• Known for its rich cultural and political history, Germany has been the home of many
influential philosophers, music composers, scientists, and inventors
• German is the official and predominant spoken language in Germany. It is one of 23
official languages in the European Union, and one of the three working languages of the
European Commission
The term literature in German respectively German literature indicates the
literature works in German language of the German-speaking area of the past and
present. Please read in Wikipedia how the single epochs in German literature distance
from each other. We present in the following some sources and authors specially
interested if you are interested in learning German.
LITERATURE OF ITALY
Italian literature, the body of written works produced in the Italian language that
had its beginnings in the 13th century. Until that time nearly all literary work composed
in Europe during the Middle Ages was written in Latin. Moreover, it was predominantly
practical in nature and produced by writers trained in ecclesiastical schools. Literature in
Italian developed later than literature in French and Provençal, the languages of the
north and south of France, respectively. Only small fragments of Italian vernacular verse
before the end of the 12th century have been found (although a number of Latin legal
records contain witness testimonies in an Italian dialect vernacular), and surviving 12th-
and 13th-century verse reflects French and Provençal influence.
Levi was also a chemist, and this formed the backdrop for his equally revered
Periodic Table. Published in 1975, Il Sistema Periodico collates a series of short stories
depicting Levi's experiences as both an Italian-Jewish man and a chemist during the
eras of war, fascism and later in the aftermath. Each of the 21 stories are named after
and linked with a chemical element.
Italo Calvino
Italo Calvino shares a number of connections with other writers in this list. Like
Alberto Moravia, Calvino was a journalist as well as an author. Like Primo Levi, he drew
upon his wartime experiences for inspiration – the anthology of stories, Ultimo viene il
corvo (The Crow Comes Last), came out four years after the end of the Second World
War to the applause of the critics.
But Calvino also possessed a unique style, melding real-world concerns with
elements of fantasy and fable. The best example of this is 1952's Cloven Viscount (Il
visconte dimezzato), which dealt with Calvino's political disillusionment and the
concerns over the Cold War.
Even in his later years, Calvino was still going strong, with 1979's If On A
Winter's Night A Traveler proving immensely popular. Calvino's worldwide success was
seen in the fact that by the time he passed away, he was the most translated Italian
author around the globe.
Umberto Eco
As well as a novelist, Eco was a university professor, semiotician and
philosopher. His academia and interest in semiotics held him in good stead for one of
his most famous works, The Name Of The Rose. This 1980-published murder mystery
draws in both semiotics (the study of communication) and various literary tips of the hat
such as Arthur Conan Doyle (the Franciscan friar's called William of Baskerville) and
also Arabian Nights (the inspiration for the mystery).
While not the most prolific of authors (seven novels in 35 years), Eco's novels
were still rapturously received by critics and the public. These include Il pendolo di
Foucault (Foucault's Pendulum), which deals with three editors concocting a sham
conspiracy theory involving a domination plan by a clandestine order descended from
the Knights Templar. L'isola del giorno prima (The Island of the Day Before) takes a
more introspective approach, following the thoughts of a marooned man on a ship in the
17thcentury.
Even in the 2010's Eco's novels were still proving massively popular. 2010's
Prague Cemetery was a big hit in the book charts, tackling the growing rise of
antisemitism in the modern world. Meanwhile, in 2015 (the year before his passing),
Numero Uno saw Eco's attention switched towards the issues of Fascism and a satirical
take on kickbacks and bribery.
LITERATURE OF SPAIN
Spanish literature, the body of literary works produced in Spain. Such works fall
into three major language divisions: Castilian, Catalan, and Galician.
The history of Spain has been marked by all types of events, wars, conquests,
marriages, deaths... and literature has played an important part in it. From the epic tale
of the "Cantar del Mio Cid" to the surrealism present in some of Cela's works; from the
amazing adventures of Don Quixote to the many books recounting the horrors of the
Spanish Civil War, Spanish literature has had its own way of influencing history.
Literature is a very important subject in all Spanish schools, and this site is a guide to
the evolution of Spanish literature across the centuries.
Spanish Literature - The beginnings
The history of Spanish literature starts with "El Cantar del
Mio Cid" (12th century), an epic narrative that was transmitted
orally through the story tellers. However, the first written
testimonies of Spanish literature begin in the 13th century with
the Middle-Ages literature, which cultivated all the genres in prose, poetry and theatre.
The end of the Middle Ages (sometimes known as pre-Renaissance period) is a very
prolific time for Spanish literature, with the development of works like "Coplas a la
muerte de mi padre" (Jorge Manrique) and "La Celestina" (Fernando de Rojas).
During the Renaissance the influence of Italy in Spain was very strong, and thus
the religious influence. During this period there's a big production of religious works with
authors such as Fray Luis de Leon or San JUan de la Cruz. Pastoral or didactic novels
were also quite popular, and the picaresque genre became popular with "Lazarillo de
Tormes"
Spanish Literature - Baroque period
The Spanish Baroque coincides with the Golden
Age of Spanish literature, called that way because of the great
number of excellent literary productions that appeared in the
period. Miguel de Cervantes is, without doubt, the ultimate
Baroque author. His masterpiece, the adventures of the mad
knight "Don Quixote", is considered the most important book of
the Spanish literature and one of the most important in the
Universal literature. Other important authors in this period are the
poet Quevedo and the play writer Lope de Vega.
REFERENCES
EUROPEAN LITERATURE DEFINITION AND BACKGROUND
https://www.slideshare.net/king_1041968/european-literature-presentation
LITERATURE OF ENGLAND
https://www.britannica.com/art/English-literature
https://www.englandforever.org/literature-and-authors.php
https://literariness.org/2018/07/18/a-brief-history-of-english-literature/
LITERATURE OF FRANCE
https://www.discoverfrance.net/France/Literature/DF_literature.shtml
https://www.wix.com/wordsmatter/blog/2020/06/french-authors
https://www.medievalchronicles.com/medieval-music/medieval-
songs/song-of-roland/
https://thefrenchdesk.com/2020/02/21/famous-french-poems/
https://whatshotblog.com/classic-french-novels/
LITERARTURE OF GERMANY
https://www.slideshare.net/babylovezeiah/german-literature
https://www.learn-german-online.net/en/learning-german-
resources/german_literature_en.htm
https://www.thoughtco.com/popular-german-writers-1444578
https://www.citystarlings.com/2020/05/29/10-most-popular-german-authors-
18-to-20-century/
LITERATURE OF ITALY
https://www.britannica.com/art/Italian-literature
https://www.italymagazine.com/featured-story/10-famous-italian-writers-
and-their-notable-works
LITERATURE OF SPAIN
https://www.britannica.com/art/Spanish-literature
https://www.classicspanishbooks.com/
LEARNING ACTIVITY
EUROPEAN LITERATURE
A. Make a 300-word essay for the topic: What is the impact of the different
European Literature in today’s literature?
Write your answer here:
______________________________________________________________________
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______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
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Analyze the poem of Victor Hugo “Demain, dès l’aube”. Write at least two-
page analysis of the given poem.
LESSON 5 / MODULE 15
THE NORTH AND SOUTH AMERICA LITERATURE
Objectives:
At the end of the lesson, the students should able to:
Literature has existed in the Americas for as long as the people who lived there
have been telling stories. Native American cultures have a rich history of oral literature.
Like other national literatures, American literature was shaped by the history of the
country that produced it.
Regional literature has always been important in the United States. Until the end
of the 19th century, American literature was dominated by the works of New
Englanders, such as Cotton Mather. Sermons and religious tracts provided the greatest
part of the writing. The Puritan definition of good writing was that which brought home a
full awareness of the importance of worshipping God and of the spiritual dangers that
the soul faced. Puritan style varied enormously -- from complex metaphysical poetry to
homely journals and religious history.
The Romantic movement reached America around the year 1820. In America as
in Europe, fresh new vision electrified artistic and intellectual circles. Yet there was an
important difference: Romanticism in America coincided with the period of national
expansion and the discovery of a distinctive American voice. The solidification of a
national identity and the surging idealism and passion of Romanticism nurtured
masterpieces by authors such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau.
In the second half of the 19th century, the United States was transformed into a
modern, industrial nation. As industrialization grew, so did alienation. Characteristic
American novels of the period, for example by Stephen Crane and Jack London, depict
the damage of economic forces and alienation on the weak or vulnerable individual.
Survivors, like Mark Twain's Huck Finn, endure through inner strength involving
kindness, flexibility, and, above all, individuality.
Although American prose between the two World Wars experimented with
viewpoint and form, Americans such as Ernest Hemingway, wrote more realistically, on
the whole, than did Europeans. William Faulkner set his powerful southern novels firmly
in Mississippi heat and dust. The importance of facing reality became a dominant theme
in the 1920s and 1930s: Writers such as F. Scott Fitzgerald repeatedly portrayed the
tragedy awaiting those who live in flimsy dreams.
Narrative since World War II resists generalization: It is extremely various and
multifaceted. It has been vitalized by international currents such as European
existentialism and Latin American magical realism. The biggest transformation has been
the ascendancy of a new generation of highly ambitious writers who are attuned to our
collective arrival in a hypercomplex and polyglot info-culture. The best known of these is
probably novelist Jonathan Franzen, whose The Corrections, rode the 2001 best-seller
lists for many months.
The poetry scene is configured by a similar plurality of modes, but what feels like
abundance and variety in the world of fiction feels to many poets like a frustrating
balkanization. A few years ago, the major division of camps was between the
"formalists" and exponents of various kinds of "free" verse. The situation feels
somewhat different now, with the split coming more between poets who use language in
referential ways -- pointing out at our common world -- and those for whom language is
its own self-created realm.
The Nobel Prize for Literature has been awarded to nine Americans: Sinclair
Lewis, Eugene O'Neill, Pearl Buck, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, John
Steinbeck, Saul Bellow, Isaac Bashevis Singer and Toni Morrison.
Writing about their society, many writers of short fiction, the novel, autobiography
or memoir, biography, poetry and drama have recurrently portrayed particular historical
figures, both to reveal their intrinsic interest and implicitly to suggest how they epitomize
certain cultural attributes or qualities of character. Such figures include Samuel Hearne,
Louis Riel, Susanna Moodie, Sir John A. Macdonald, Emily Carr and William Lyon
Mackenzie. In the retelling, sometimes transposed from their own time into the present,
each possesses a vision but remains an ordinary human being, one with frailties, not a
conventional hero. Characteristically, Canadian writing resists the binaries associated
with perfectionism (right-wrong, good-evil, hero-villain), embracing notions of multiple
alternatives, working pluralities, multi-voicedness and negotiated or evolving resolution
instead. In narrative, violence generally functions as an instigation of action and as a
penultimate event rather than as a solution or act of closure. Repeatedly, individual
rights balance against community responsibilities. In more recent drama, poetry, and
prose—even in much popular genre writing (see Popular Literature in English)—open
endings predominate over conventional strategies of closure, inviting readers/listeners
to participate in the play of alternatives and possibilities.
Settings
Settings often possess a symbolic dimension. Catholic Québec recurrently
figures in anglophone writing as a land of mystery, attractive but enthralling and morally
dangerous; Ontario as an enigmatic blend of moral uprightness and moral evasiveness;
Atlantic Canada as a repository of old values; the North as a land of vision; the Prairies
as a land of isolation and acquisition; and the West Coast as a dream of the future in
which people often mistakenly believe. Europe often appears as the home of
refinement, deceit, and discrimination; the United States as a land of crass achievement
and tangible success; and Africa as the embodiment of all that seems “other” to
Protestant rationalism. In recent writing, Latin America and Asia (both East and South)
are frequently configured as sites of political entanglement, which is expressed through
inheritance and family ties or embodied in the complexities of larger communities.
Within Canada, the land itself is recurrently associated with power, whether as property,
region, a hostile force, a godly gift, the basis for resource extraction, the site of
communication, the contested territory of competing cultural claims, the border or the
ecological medium in which human life integrates with all other living beings in Nature.
Although most Canadians live in cities, until recently writers used rural and small-
town settings more frequently than urban ones, and to the degree that they adapted
conventional adventure and pastoral formulas to Canadian settings, they seldom
questioned unstated assumptions about status and race. From early on in Canadian
literature, however, essayists (see Essay in English) and travel writers (see Travel
Literature) analyzed and challenged as well as celebrated Canadian political life. Often,
women writers used fiction and autobiography to reveal social divisions within Canada
that male adventure writers ignored or underplayed, and to suggest reforms. Recent
writing by both women and men focuses more directly and fully on urban life as well as
on social issues (ethnicity, gender, poverty, health, education) that transcend setting.
“Regional” writing also conveys political stances. The term is used in two ways:
to refer to places ruled by a real or imagined center, and to configure the variant parts
that make up a collective unit or community. By rejecting a single definition of “Canada,”
writing about regional distinctiveness sometimes declares separatist claims on identity
and power and in other instances asserts the viability of a nation with a plural character
(see Regionalism in Literature). Increasingly, Indigenous writers and writers who draw
on backgrounds other than western European ones have examined the political
opportunities of Canadian pluralism, but also the social limitations of local convention.
History
A rough chronological guide to changes and developments in Canadian writing
should not be equated with a simple chart of “progress”; each age (Colonial, Early
National, Interwar and Postwar, Contemporary) reveals differing conventions,
preoccupations and accomplishments. Hence, as fashions and critical tastes change
over time, so do determinations of value and significance.
Canadian literature in English can be said to begin in the early 17th century with
Jacobean poetry in Newfoundland; in the decades that followed with numerous
explorers writing narratives of contact (see Exploration Literature); or in the mid-18th
century with the epistolary fiction of the English garrison community in Québec. After
1776, in the Loyalist settlements of Upper Canada and the Maritimes, many writers
turned to political verse satire (see Humorous Writing in English; Literature and Politics).
Newly founded newspapers and magazines (see also Literary Magazines in English)
became venues for political commentary, both conservative and reform-minded, as well
as for literary expression, which in the 19th century generally followed Romantic,
Sentimental and Orientalist fashions in Britain. Some scathing satire emerged in Nova
Scotia. Novels and dramas followed historical romance and Gothic paradigms, as did
most long poems. Mid-19th century autobiographies set in present day Ontario provide
insight into daily life: Susanna Moodie’s Roughing It in the Bush (1852), Catharine Parr
Traill’s The Backwoods of Canada (1836) and Anna Brownell Jameson’s Winter Studies
and Summer Rambles in Canada (1838) highlight British women’s various attitudes
toward settlement, while the Nishnaabe missionary George Copway’s memoir The Life,
History and Travels of Kah-ge-ga-gah-Bowh (1847) both celebrates Christianity and
emphasizes the value of Indigenous law, land use and religion. Short personal sketches
of persons and places formed the basis for much travel writing and for the short fiction
that emerged as a new genre during the 19th century. Folksong and folktale survive, but
Native oral literature received scant literary attention until the later 19th century.
Early National
In the years leading up to Confederation and during the five decades following,
much attention turned to literacy and political organization. Schools and universities
opened, as did several Carnegie Libraries, part of a network of public libraries across
North America financed by the fortune of Pittsburgh steel magnate Andrew Carnegie.
Writers celebrated their newfound nationalism and were drawn variously to such
enterprises as the Mechanics’ Institutes, the Institute Canadian, the Royal Society of
Canada, the Canada First Movement and Imperial Federation (see Imperialism).
Philosophical and scientific writing flourished, encouraging thoughtful discourse across
language lines. Travel (within Canada and abroad) encouraged other kinds of contact,
and with it both impressionistic and reportorial writing. By the end of the 19th century,
writers like Edith Maude Eaton (Sui Sin Far) addressed racism against Chinese North
Americans, while proponents of Women’s Suffrage and Prohibition wrote stories and
essays that focused on issues of social change.
By the early 20th century, many Canadian books won widespread international
popularity, notably L.M. Montgomery’s Anne Of Green Gables (1908), a humorous tale
of an orphan’s life in Prince Edward Island. C.G.D. Roberts’s and E.T. Seton’s
seemingly realistic animal tales provide other examples, as do the comic sketches of
Stephen Leacock, which parodied literary stereotypes and dealt ironically with social
platitudes. In poetry, the Confederation group (William Wilfred Campbell, Bliss Carman,
Archibald Lampman, Charles G.D. Roberts, Duncan Campbell Scott and Fredrick
George Scott) produced the most important writings of the late 19th century; committed
to closely observed details, they variously reshaped how the lyric represented nature,
winter and the Canadian landscape.
Interwar and Postwar
Cultural and social attitudes changed during and after the First World War. One
creative generation was lost but another emerged, objecting both to imperial
assumptions of militarism and the language associated with it (see The First World War
in Canadian Literature). New magazines affirmed the independence of Canadian
thought. New prizes were established to recognize Canadian literary accomplishment.
In the fiction of the 1920s, while some popular family chronicles continued to affirm
conventional class distinctions, antiwar novels and class critiques began to appear, a
trend magnified during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Many writers focused on
uprooted or marginalized individuals and the troubled lives of non-English-speaking
immigrants. Novelists championed industrial workers’ rights and sought fresh, more
direct forms of speech, spurning the sentimental romance in favor of a more “realistic”
(some called it a more “violent”) vocabulary. American literary practice—and the
international avant-garde of postwar Paris—drew writers such as John Glassco and
Morley Callagham; the short story genre thrived, espousing forms that resisted narrative
closure.
Young writers also rejected received social values by mounting left-wing agitprop
drama, writing dramas that satirized nationalist pageantry, publishing erotica, finding
inspiration in the Group of Seven painters, and embracing the modernist dicta of the
poet T.S. Eliot and others. Chief among emerging Canadian poets at this time were
those associated with the “McGill” (or “Montreal”) Group, especially F.R. Scott for his
commitment to social justice and Abraham Klein for his passionate embrace of his
Jewish heritage. Over succeeding decades Dorothy Livesay became the voice of
socialist feminism and Scott, with the poet-critic A.J.M. Smith, became an influential
anthologist, shaping the early teaching of Canadian literature.
In the wake of the Second World War came a mix of propaganda, pacifist
rhetoric, parodies of military ineptitude, and a new wave of progressivist writers, by
turns humanist, anticlerical, community-minded and intellectually anarchist. Notable
names include Irving Layton, Earle Birney, Gabrielle Roy (who remains one of the best-
known francophone writers in translation), P.K. Page and George Woodcock. In the
1940s and 1950s, social policies were being drafted that would shape a Canadian
sense of community for decades to come. New Literary Periodicals demanded a
sharper, more locally grounded language. Radio technology also served this end. Public
radio, established in 1932, led to a wave of cross-country spoken-word broadcasts,
talks, dramas, readings of short stories and children’s programs, all reconfirming the
sounds of Canadian speech as a literary medium, especially from 1943 on. Novelists
such as Hugh MacLennan and Sinclair Ross turned again to local settings, rendering
the prairies, the Maritimes and Montreal as sites of personal and political trauma. Critics
now praise more highly the innovative stylistic practice of Ethel Wilson for her insights
into women’s lives; Malcolm Lowry for his symphonies of despair and transient joy;
Sheila Watson for her rendering of life as an elliptical mythology; and in a career that
would last for half a century, Mordecai Richler for his frank and animated cultural
politics.
Contemporary: Three Generations
Several social developments markedly changed Canadian society in the years
following 1960. The large “baby-boom” generation matured, with the vocal “X” and “Y”
generations following; immigration policies were altered to allow greater numbers of
new citizens from Asia, Africa and Latin America; startling technological developments
(from radio to the Internet) collapsed notions of space and sped up communication. All
these changes had an impact on literary topics and techniques. Cross-border and
cross-cultural contacts validated notions of cultural “hybridity” as a social norm,
challenging conventional definitions of “ethnic purity” and “fixed identity.” Family
biographies shifted focus from single lives onto lives-in-context. Multimedia
presentations challenged conventions regarding the unity of literary form. Bilingual texts,
triptychs (in fiction and drama), and discontinuous narratives in fiction and poetry all
deliberately disrupted conventional linearity as a literary technique. Numerous
integrated (but discontinuous) collections of short fiction appeared called sequences,
cycles or “composite narratives.” Some of the major writers of these decades had just
been emerging in the 1950s: Richler and two of the world’s foremost authors of short
fiction, Alice Munro and Mavis Gallant, whose stories embed more than announce,
reveal more than parade. They would be joined by Alistair MacLeod, Clark Blaise and
numerous others.
The number of Canadian universities, small presses, accessible academic and
literary periodicals (from Canadian Literature to Geist), courses in Canadian literature
and creative writing schools also increased, in part because of the recommendations of
the Massey Commission and the emergence of the Canada Council in the 1950s.
Further government policies led to such social developments as the Charter Of Rights
and Freedoms in 1982, but a sudden shift to policies that favored fiscal restraint and
cultural cutbacks occurred in the early 21st century and have persisted; the publishing
industry, libraries, public media and scholarship were all affected. New technologies
opened up opportunities for local (and frequently more innovative) publishing (including
experiments in syllabic and concrete poetry, mixed-media presentations, performance
poetry and other formats), yet they did not guarantee access to publicity and sales.
Coteries came and went; so did scores of journals and papers. Newspapers faced
hardships, and some stopped publishing print editions; this was due in part to a
readership that had shifted to online news sources. Publishers of formula fiction
remained monetarily successful. Some writers of mystery and science fiction achieved
international stardom and praise for their literary achievements, as in the case of
William Gibson’s Neuromancer (1986), Nalo Hopkinson’s Brown Girl in the Ring (1998)
and Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy (2003, 2009 and 2013). But publishing
houses that had thrived in the 1960s when American control over the information
industry was resisted faced closure in the 2010s with the increasing influence of
electronic publishing and multinational corporations. The CBC’s annual Canada Reads
contest, which began in 2002, pits a selection of books against one another, each with
its own celebrity endorsement. The event promotes Canadian writing and emphasizes
the importance of a reading public yet simplifies literature and contributes to a
competitive literary culture. Likewise, a plethora of prizes, often with corporate
sponsorship, began to construct literature as spectacle. Many bookstores nevertheless
closed.
Throughout the decades from 1960 onward, while there has been some evidence
of a literary return to older forms of expression and fundamentalist redefinitions of
ethics, writers more characteristically in each generation embraced social justice and
reformist causes: for women’s rights (see Women’s Movement), for gay and lesbian
equality (See Homosexuality), against colonialism and against increasing poverty.
Children’s literature, an enterprise that flourished at this time, ranging from nonsense
verse to problem-centered novels for young adults, addressed some of these same
issues of race, gender, alcohol, drug abuse and social identity. Science writing, social
history, life writing, environmental inquiry and other forms of “creative nonfiction” also
frequently combined discovery with protest. Critiques of social arrogance in one decade
(foreign wars, napalm, racism) morphed into critiques of other disparities in the next
(discrimination by sex, gender, ethnicity, economics). Margaret Atwood embraced the
new nationalism of the 1960s and 1970s (with the Centennial celebrations in 1967) but
later tempered her observations in dystopias such as The Handmaid’s Tale (1985),
which challenges government control over women’s bodies. Robertson Davies’s
Jungian novels expressed one pervasive understanding of myth and psychology;
Robert Kroetsch’s poems and tales deconstructed such conventions and rerouted the
epic in everyday vernacular experience. Language and literary form again became
subjects for analysis and theoretical discussion, as in the work of Marshall McLuhan
and Northrop Frye, as well as territories for dispute, as when Nicole Brossard’s critiques
of French grammar influenced feminist writers in English, or when, in much of 21st-
century fiction, conventional vulgarities became normative (and therefore potentially
radical, culturally upsetting) speech.
The Writers Union of Canada formed in 1973, reflecting writers’ numbers and
endeavoring to help deal with the challenges they face.
Other writers addressed cultural, social, and political alternatives in Canadian
society, some of which were longstanding, others deriving from more recent changes in
population, technology, language and communication. Many of these writers sought a
balance between criticism of social practice (racism, passive dismissal, restrictive
legislation) and celebration of social potential. A great number of Métis and First Nations
writers have provided important commentary, variously critiquing colonialism and
celebrating Indigenous life. More specifically (although authors address multiple topics
in each work), Maria Campbell’s Half-Breed (1973), Lee Maracle’s Bobbi Lee (1973)
and Jeannette Armstrong’s Slash (1985) depict journeys toward political consciousness;
Ruby Slipperjack’s Honor the Sun (1987), Richard Van Camp’s The Lesser Blessed
(1996), and Eden Robinson’s Monkey Beach (2000) represent childhood and
adolescence; Thomas King’s The Truth about Stories (2003) highlights the value of
Indigenous creation stories; Marie Clements’s Burning Vision (2003) and Drew Hayden
Taylor’s Motorcycles and Sweetgrass (2010) consider environment and land use;
Tomson Highway’s Kiss of the Fur Queen (1998), Joseph Boyden’s Three Day Road
(2005) and Richard Wagamese’s Indian Horse (2012) address the residential school
system, which has been further investigated in the Truth and Reconciliation
Commission of Canada (2008–15). The poet Robert Bringhurst translated some of the
great classic Haida oral tales, Al Purdy created poetry out of the rhythms of ordinary
speech, Jack Hodgins turned Vancouver Island idiosyncrasy into a comedy of human
aspiration, George Elliott Clarke and Wayde Compton called attention to Black writing in
Canada, and increasing numbers of writers (including Rohinton Mistry, Michael
Ondaatje and Wayson Choy) drew on their Asian heritage both to reflect on adaptations
to difference and to dramatize the challenges and rewards of a fractured or shared
history.
Developments in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, including the North
American Free Trade Agreement, the “war on terror,” and climate change awareness
underscored global interconnectedness. While regions and places continued to provide
inspiration for contemporary fiction, as in David Adams Richards’ Mercy Among the
Children (2001) and André Alexis’s Pastoral (2014), stress was often laid on
globalization’s impact on specific locales, as in Alistair MacLeod’s No Great Mischief
(1999) and Lisa Moore’s February (2009). Environmental concerns were made central
in Hiromi Goto’s The Kappa Child (2001), Ruth Ozeki’s A Tale for the Time Being
(2013), Thomas King’s The Back of the Turtle (2014), and Rita Wong’s Forage (2008)
and undercurrent (2015), which share concerns about the global ramifications of
overconsumption, waste disposal and polluted water. With a similar planetary focus,
Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy (2003, 2009 and 2013) explores the frailty of
national borders in the wake of climate change.
Los
ingrávidos by Valeria Luiselli
One of Mexico’s brightest contemporary
talents, Valeria Luiselli has so far published
three texts – Papeles falsos (2013) is a
collection of essays, whereas Los
ingrávidos (2012) and La historia de mis
dientes (2015) are novels. Having been mentored by Mario Bellatín, the works of Luiselli
are essential reading for anyone interested in the world of Mexican literature,
contemporary or otherwise and her debut is arguably the best place to start. She’s
widely translated into other languages too.
LITERATURE OF U.S.A
https://usa.usembassy.de/arts-literature.htm?
fbclid=IwAR2iS9TaO9PfZO5tokBgbEIeWyfvzp9o_2PJVA1H0lZisJjY-
62Q4jZQAD4
LITERATURE OF CANADA
https://thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/literature-in-english?
fbclid=IwAR1kIjGzHxXsYiEXegkTQHplr7NOZ5Ug0R-
KScwSL3cvRQzheIXRGJM2lE8
LITERATURE OF MEXICO
http://thelatinoauthor.com/countries/literature/mexican-literature/
https://theculturetrip.com/north-america/mexico/articles/an-introduction-to-
mexican-literature-in-10-works/
LITERATURE OF CHILE
http://www.chileculture.org/arts-and-literature/
https://theculturetrip.com/south-america/chile/articles/an-introduction-to-chilean-
literature-in-10-books/
LEARNING ACTIVITY
1. What is the difference between the North and South American Literature?
Write your answer here:
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