World Literature
109 flashcards by MentisLibrary
Four thousand years of storytelling across every continent, from Gilgamesh and the Tale of Genji to Achebe, Borges, and Han Kang. Major works, their authors, and the movements that shaped them.
- The Epic of Gilgamesh
- A Mesopotamian epic about a king of Uruk and his friend Enkidu, and Gilgamesh's search for immortality after Enkidu's death.
- The Iliad
- Homer's epic of a stretch of the Trojan War, centered on the rage of Achilles.
- The Odyssey
- Homer's epic of Odysseus's ten year journey home from Troy and the reclaiming of his household in Ithaca.
- The Aeneid
- Virgil's Latin epic following Aeneas from the fall of Troy to the founding of the Roman line.
- Metamorphoses
- Ovid's Latin poem retelling myths of transformation from creation to the age of Caesar.
- Mahabharata
- A vast Sanskrit epic about the conflict between the Pandavas and Kauravas, containing the Bhagavad Gita.
- Ramayana
- The Sanskrit epic attributed to Valmiki about Rama, his exile, the abduction of Sita by Ravana, and her rescue.
- Who wrote The Tale of Genji?
- Murasaki Shikibu, a lady in waiting at the Heian court.
- The Pillow Book
- Sei Shonagon's collection of observations, lists, and court anecdotes from Heian Japan.
- Journey to the West
- A Chinese novel following the monk Xuanzang and the Monkey King Sun Wukong on a pilgrimage to India for Buddhist scriptures.
- Dream of the Red Chamber
- Cao Xueqin's novel of the decline of an aristocratic Chinese family, centered on Jia Baoyu.
- The four great classical Chinese novels
- Journey to the West, Dream of the Red Chamber, Water Margin, and Romance of the Three Kingdoms.
- One Thousand and One Nights
- A frame tale collection in which Shahrazad tells stories nightly to delay her execution, gathered from Arabic, Persian, Indian, and other sources.
- The Shahnameh
- Ferdowsi's Persian epic of the kings and heroes of Iran from creation to the Arab conquest.
- Who was Rumi?
- A 13th century Persian poet and Sufi mystic whose Masnavi and lyric poems remain widely read in translation.
- Hafez
- A 14th century Persian lyric poet whose ghazals are still recited and used for bibliomancy in Iran.
- The Divine Comedy
- Dante's poem in three parts, Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso, describing a journey through the afterlife.
- Terza rima
- The interlocking three line rhyme scheme, ABA BCB CDC, that Dante used for the Divine Comedy.
- The Decameron
- Boccaccio's collection of a hundred tales told by ten young people sheltering from the plague outside Florence.
- Don Quixote
- Cervantes's novel about a gentleman whose reading of chivalric romances leads him to become a knight errant.
- Who wrote Faust?
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who worked on the two part drama across most of his adult life.
- Sturm und Drang
- A late 18th century German movement of extreme emotion and individual rebellion, preceding Romanticism.
- Romanticism, in literature
- A late 18th and 19th century movement valuing emotion, imagination, nature, the individual, and the sublime over neoclassical order.
- Realism, in literature
- A 19th century movement depicting ordinary life and social conditions plainly, without romantic idealization.
- Naturalism, in literature
- An intensified realism treating character as determined by heredity, environment, and social force, associated with Emile Zola.
- Madame Bovary
- Flaubert's novel about a provincial doctor's wife whose romantic expectations lead her into debt and adultery.
- Who wrote In Search of Lost Time?
- Marcel Proust, in seven volumes published from 1913 to 1927.
- Les Miserables
- Victor Hugo's novel following the ex convict Jean Valjean against the backdrop of postrevolutionary France.
- Who wrote The Stranger?
- Albert Camus, whose novel opens with Meursault's flat report of his mother's death.
- Existentialism, in literature
- A 20th century current holding that existence precedes essence and that individuals must create meaning in an indifferent universe.