LITERARY GENRE FROM DIFFERENT CULTURES

European Literature, also called Western Literature, refers to literature in the Indo-European
languages including Latin, Greek, the Romance languages, and Russian. It is considered as the largest body of
literature in the world.

Latin Literature
 Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 BCE–43 BCE) was the greatest Roman orator. The first part of the Golden
Age of Latin Literature (70 BC–AD 18) is named after him, the Ciceronian period (70–43 BC). Using Latin
as a literary medium, he was able to express abstract and complicated thoughts clearly in his speeches.
One of his well-known speeches is Pro Cluentio.
 Virgil (70 BCE–19 BCE), the greatest Roman poet, was known for Aeneid, an epic poem. He wrote it
during the Augustan Age (43 BC–AD 18), the second part of the Golden Age.

Greek Literature
 Homer is known for the The Iliad and the The Odyssey. These epics are about the heroic achievements
of Achilles and Odysseus, respectively.
 Sophocles (496 BC–406 BC) was a tragic playwright. He was known for Oedipus the King, which marks
the highest level of achievement of Greek drama.

Italian Literature
 Francesco Petrarca, or Petrarch (1304–1374) perfected the Italian sonnet, a major influence on
European poetry. Written in the vernacular, his sonnets were published in the Canzoniere.
 Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–1375) is known for Decameron, a classic Italian masterpiece. The stories
were written in the vernacular.

Spanish Literature
 Two well-known Spanish writers of Siglo De Oro (1500–1681) are Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616)
and Lope de Vega (1562–1635).
 Miguel de Cervantes was known for his novel Don Quixote, one of the most widely read works of
Western Literature. Its titular character’s name is the origin of the word “quixotic,” meaning hopeful or
romantic in a way that is not practical.

 Lope de Vega, an outstanding dramatist, wrote as many as 1800 plays during his lifetime, including
cloak and sword drama, which are plays of upper middle class manners and intrigue.

French Literature
 Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880), a novelist, was a major influence on the realist school. His
masterpiece, Madame Bovary(1857), marked the beginning of a new age of realism.
 Guy de Maupassant (1850–1893) is considered as the greatest French short story writer. A Naturalist,
he wrote objective stories which present a real “slice of life.”

Russian Literature
 Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) is known for his novels War and Peace (1865–1869) and Anna
Karenina (1875–1877). A master of realistic fiction, he is considered as one of the world’s greatest
novelists.
  Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) is a master of the modern short story and a Russian playwright. His works
such as, "The Bet" and "The Misfortune" reveal his clinical approach to ordinary life.

Latin American Literature

Latin American Literature refers to all works of literature in Latin American countries like Chile, Argentina,
Mexico, Cuba, Guatemala, Colombia, and Peru.

The Vanguardia

 The Vanguardia (avant-garde in English) took place in Latin America between approximately 1916 and
1935. It collectively referred to different literary movements. Four of those were the following:
o Creacionismo, founded by Vicente Huidobro (1893–1948), a Chilean poet, in 1916

o Ultraismo, introduced to South America by Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986), an Argentine writer,
in 1921

o Estridentismo, founded in Mexico City by Manuel Maples Arce (1898–1981), a Mexican writer,
in 1921

o Surrealism, which is said to have started in Argentina when the Argentinian poet Aldo
Pellegrini (1903–1973) launched the first Surrealist magazine in 1928

 Surrealism, an art form that combines unrelated images or events in a very strange and dreamlike way,
became a major influence in Latin American Literature throughout the 20th century.

 Pablo Neruda (1904–1973), a Chilean poet, wrote Residence on Earth (1933), a collection of poetry
inspired by surrealism.

 Octavio Paz (1914–1998), a Mexican poet, wrote poems with surrealist imagery. His major works were
published in Freedom Under Parole (1960).

 Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) was known for his fantastic stories, published later as a collection
entitled Ficciones (1944).

 Alejo Carpentier (1904–1980), a Cuban writer, wrote The Kingdom of This World (1949), a novel of the
magic realism genre, in which elements of fantasy or myth are included matter-of-factly in seemingly
realistic fiction.

 Miguel Angel Asturias (1899–1974), a Guatemalan writer, wrote the novel The President (1946). This
novel along with Carpentier’s novel introduced magic realism.

The Boom Novels

These were essentially modernist novels, which appeared in the second half of the 20th century. They had
features that were different or absent from the works of the regionalist writers of the past. (Regionalist writers
were those that used local color, which refers to interesting information about a particular place or its people.)

The boom novels were the following:

  The Death of Artemio Cruz (1962) by Carlos Fuentes (1928–2012), a Mexican writer
 Hopscotch (1963) by Julio Cortazar (1914–1984), an Argentine fictionist

 The Time of the Hero (1963) by Mario Vargas Llosa, a Peruvian writer

 One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1927–2014), a Colombian fictionist

“Post-Boom” Writers
These writers included a host of women who published works in the last twenty years of the 20th century.
Three of them were Isabel Allende, a Chilean writer who wrote The House of Spirits (1982); Diamela Eltit, a
Chilean writer who wrote E. Luminata(1983); and Luisa Valenzuela, an Argentine writer who wrote Black
Novel with Argentines (1990).

African Literature
The literary works of African writers in English are part of the African literature. This body of works refers to
the ones not only produced in Afro-Asiatic and African languages, but also to those works by Africans in
English, French, and other European languages.

A few of the common themes in the works of African writers are the oppression of African people by the
colonizers, the European influences on the native African culture, racial discrimination, and pride in African
past and resilience.

Chinua Achebe (1930–2013) – This Nigerian writer was known for his novel Things Fall Apart (1958),
considered as the best known African novel of the 20th century. It deals with emergent Africa, where native
communities, like Achebe’s Igbo community, came in contact with white missionaries and its colonizers. The
novel is the first in sometimes called The African Trilogy. It was followed by No Longer at Ease, published in
1960, and then Arrow of God in 1964.

Wole Soyinka – This Nigerian writer received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986, becoming the first black
African to receive such award. As a playwright, he wrote the satire A Dance of the Forests (1963), his first
important play that depicts the traditions of his people, the Yoruba. It was staged in 1960 during the Nigerian
independence celebrations. Also, he wrote fiction and poetry.

Example
“The Telephone Conversation” by Wole Soyinka

Wole Soyinka’s poem “The Telephone Conversation” first appeared in his collection Modern Poetry from Africa
(1963). As the title suggests, the poem is about a telephone conversation between an African man and a white
woman. Considering to rent the apartment owned by the white woman, the African man confesses, saying “I
hate a wasted journey—I am African.” Then as the conversation goes, the woman shows her true colors. She
asks, “HOW DARK?” then follows it up with another question, “ARE YOU LIGHT/ OR VERY DARK.” Then asks
again, “ARE YOU DARK? OR VERY LIGHT?” Then the African man clarifies the question, saying “You mean—like
plain or milk chocolate?” Then he settles on this response “West African sepia... Down in my passport.”
Perhaps, out of ignorance, the woman says that she does not know the color. To simplify, the African man says,
“Like brunette.” Confirming what she already thinks about the African man, the woman says “THAT’S DARK,
ISN’T IT?” Towards the end of the poetry, the African man tries to describe the colors of the different parts of
his body to the woman. The poem ends with an invitation from the African man for the white woman, saying
“Madam . . . wouldn’t you rather/ see for yourself?”

Nadine Gordimer (1923–2014) – This South African writer received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991. She
was known for her works that dealt with the effects of apartheid on her country. Apartheid was a system in
which people of color had less political and economic rights than that of the white people, so the former was
forced to live separately from the latter. An ardent opponent of such system, she wrote novels that focused on
the oppression of nonwhite characters like A World of Strangers(1958), The Late Bourgeois
World (1966), Burger’s Daughter (1979), and July’s People (1981), all of which were banned in her country.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – This Nigerian writer is known for her widely-acclaimed novels Purple
Hibiscus (2003), Half of a Yellow Sun (2006), and Americanah (2013), all of which won awards. The story
of Purple Hibiscus is told through a fifteen-year-old girl named Kambili as she together with her family endured
domestic violence in the hands of her father. The story of Half of a Yellow Sun took place during the Nigerian
Civil War or Biafran War (1967–1970). Lastly, Americanah tells the story of a young Nigerian woman that came
to the US to study and to stay for work.

Example:
“A Private Experience” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

“A Private Experience” is one of the short stories in the author’s collection The Thing Around Your Neck
published in 2009. It tells the story of two women, one named Chika and the other unnamed. Chika is an Igbo,
one of the largest ethnic groups of Africa, and an outward Christian (she wears a rosary that her mother gave
her, but she does not pray or believe in God). On the other hand, the unnamed woman is a Hausa, another
large African ethnic group, and a devout Muslim. They cross paths during a riot at a market in the city of Kano,
northern Nigeria. Both confused and scared, they ran away from the market and hid in a small, abandoned
store. Stuck together, the two women start to talk and eventually learn more things about each other. Chika
tells the woman that her sister Nnedi was with her at the market and that they are both university students.
She learns that the woman sells onions for a living. The two women become closer when the woman shows
Chika her breasts with cracked nipples. Chika, who is studying medicine, examines the breasts and learns that
the woman has just had her fifth child. She then advises the woman to rub some lotion on her nipples after
feeding her baby and to put the nipple and the areola into the baby’s mouth while it feeds. The woman’s eldest
daughter, Halima, was at the bus stop selling groundnuts when the confusion began. At the mention of her
daughter’s name, the woman cries. As she wipes her tears away, she says, “Allah keep your sister and Halima
in safe place.” After more than three hours, Chika ventures out into the street to go home, anxious to see her
sister and her auntie. She leaves the woman and promises to come back for her and her daughter. However,
when she sees and smells a recently burned body in the street, she gets terrified and runs back to the small
store, accidentally cutting her leg. The woman at the store cleans the wound and wraps it with her scarf. Chika
stays there with the woman until morning when it is safe to leave the store.

Explanation:
In different parts of the narrative, the narrator gives a brief glimpse of what happens in the future. For
instance, after Chika shuts the windows of the small store where she and the unnamed woman are hiding, the
narrator tells the reader what Chika will find out eventually—that Chika will see the burned cars and will learn
that the riot started when some Muslims chopped off an Igbo man’s head for driving over a Koran with his car.
Another instance is that after Chika mentions her sister’s name to the woman, the narrator tells the reader
what Chika will later do—that Chika will go to hospital mortuaries to look for her sister, but she will never find
her.