History of literature
Entertainment literature was popular among the nobility during this period, incorporating aspects of narrative myth and folklore, religious hymns, love songs, and praise for the king and the city.
By the time of the Zhou dynasty, Chinese culture emphasized the community over the individual, discouraging mythological stories of great personages and characterization of the divine.
[26] Jian'an poetry developed from the literary tradition of Eastern Han, incorporating idiosyncrasies and strong demonstrations of emotion to express individualism.
Zhang Hua, Lu Ji, and Pan Yue are recognized as the great poets that developed early Western Jin poetry.
[40][41] The New Testament was an additional collection of books that supplemented the Hebrew Bible, consisting of the gospels that described Jesus and the epistles written by notable figures of early Christianity.
Historical works of the early empire included the epic Pharsalia by Lucan, which followed Caesar's civil war, and the Annals of Tacitus, which recorded the events of the first century.
Although much had been lost to the ravages of time (and to catastrophe, as in the burning of the Library of Alexandria), many Greek works remained extant: they were preserved and copied carefully by Muslim scribes.
Poetry flourished, however, in the hands of the troubadours, whose courtly romances and chanson de geste amused and entertained the upper classes who were their patrons.
Thomas Aquinas, more than any other single person, was able to turn theology into a kind of science, in part because he was heavily influenced by Aristotle, whose works were returning to Europe in the 13th century.
Examples of early Persian proto-science fiction include Al-Farabi's Opinions of the residents of a splendid city about a utopian society, and elements such as the flying carpet.
[citation needed] Sanskrit declines in the early 2nd millennium, late works such as the Kathasaritsagara dating to the 11th century, to the benefit of literature composed in Middle Indic vernaculars such as Old Bengali, Old Hindi.
[75] Fiction in the mid-Tang period focused primarily on social commentary and romantic love, and notable authors during this time included Shen Jiji and Yuan Zhen.
Parallel prose remained popular in the early Tang dynasty, though writers such as Li Bai moved away from strict form that was common at the time.
Northern Song lyric poetry was developed by Yan Shu, Liu Yong, and Zhang Xian, and it became a popular pastime among the lower class.
[90] The scientist, statesman, and general Shen Kuo (1031–1095 AD) was the author of the Dream Pool Essays (1088), a large book of scientific literature that included the oldest description of the magnetized compass.
During the Song dynasty, there was also the enormous historical work of the Zizhi Tongjian, compiled into 294 volumes of 3 million written Chinese characters by the year 1084 AD.
[109] Japanese literature expanded beyond the aristocracy in the 13th century and became increasingly accessible to lower classes, often through the narration of religious texts such as The Tale of the Heike by blind priests.
Notable surviving Mayan texts include the Popol Vuh, the Chilam Balam, and the Annals of the Cakchiquels that describe the religious beliefs of Mesoamerican cultures.
Petrarch popularized the sonnet as a poetic form; Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron made romance acceptable in prose as well as poetry; François Rabelais rejuvenates satire with Gargantua and Pantagruel; Michel de Montaigne single-handedly invented the essay and used it to catalog his life and ideas.
Perhaps the most controversial and important work of the time period was a treatise printed in Nuremberg, entitled De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium: in it, the astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus removed the Earth from its privileged position in the universe, which had far-reaching effects, not only in science, but in literature and its approach to humanity, hierarchy, and truth.
[117] The Augustan literature movement developed in the 18th century, led by Samuel Johnson, seeking to imitate the classical tastes of Ancient Greece and Rome.
[127] Early Chinese novels were developed in the Middle Ming period, including works such as Water Margin, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and Journey to the West.
Tang Xianzu was an influential playwright of this period, and the Wujiang School led by Shen Jing was responsible for expanding upon drama as an artform with emphasis on its musical elements.
The late 19th century, known as the Belle Époque, with its Fin de siècle retrospectively appeared as a "golden age" of European culture, cut short by the outbreak of World War I in 1914.
[citation needed] In Britain, the 19th century was dominated by the Victorian era, characterized by Romanticism, with Romantic poets such as William Wordsworth, Lord Byron or Samuel Taylor Coleridge and genres such as the gothic novel.
Charles Dickens, perhaps the most famous novelist in the history of English literature, was active during this time and contributed to the novel's emergence as the leading literary genre of Victorian England.
Washington Irving set precedent for comic literature and short stories, and he established the Knickerbocker School that wrote affectionately of New York.
[153] A movement of backlash against small-town and middle-class values emerged at the beginning of the 20th century, including authors such as Theodore Dreiser, H. L. Mencken, Sinclair Lewis, and Sherwood Anderson.
[168] Wang Shizhen led poetry trends in the Early Qing period through the expression of sentimentality through imagery and prosody rather than vocabulary, particularly with his Autumn Willows: Four Poems.
[170] In the Middle Qing period, Shen Deqian, Weng Fanggang, and Yuan Mei each formed new trends in poetry in opposition to the style of Wang Shizhen.
