WORLD LITERATURE

EUROPEAN LITERATURE
EUROPEAN LITERATURE
OBJECTIVES
• Discuss the different periods of
European Literature
• Prepare literary analysis of selected
European Literary Pieces
• Differentiate characteristics of
European and American Literature
European Literature
I.Ancient Literature
 Five ancient civilizations—Babylon and Assyria, Egypt, Greece, Rome,
and the culture of the Israelites in Palestine—each came into contact
with one or more of the others.
 Though influenced by the religious myths of Mesopotamia, Asia Minor,
and Egypt, Greek literature has no direct literary ancestry and appears
self-originated
 All of the chief kinds of literature—epic, tragedy, comedy, lyric, satire,
history, biography, and prose narrative—were established by the Greeks
and Romans, and later developments have for the most part been
secondary extensions
 In sum, the work of these writers and others and perhaps especially that
of Greek authors expresses the imaginative and moral temper of
Western man. It has helped to create his values and to hand on a
tradition to distant generations.
European Literature
II. Medieval Literature
 “belonging to the Middle Ages”
 to refer to the literature of Europe and the eastern
Mediterranean from as early as the establishment of
the Eastern Roman, or Byzantine, Empire
about AD 300 for medieval Greek, from the period
following upon the fall of Rome in 476 for medieval
Latin, and from about the time of Charlemagne and
the Carolingian Renaissance he fostered in France
(c. 800) to the end of the 15th century for most
written vernacular literatures.
 Period Of Christianity and the Church
 Period of Vernacular Works and Drama
European Literature
III. The Renaissance

 The name Renaissance (“Rebirth”) is given to the historical period in Europe

that succeeded the Middle Ages.

 The awakening of a new spirit of intellectual and artistic inquiry

 The age was marked by three principal characteristics: first, the new interest in
learning, mirrored by the classical scholars known as humanists and
instrumental in providing suitable classical models for the new writers; second,
the new form of Christianity, initiated by the Protestant Reformation led
by Martin Luther, which drew men’s attention to the individual and his inner
experiences and stimulated a response in Catholic countries summarized by
the term Counter-Reformation; third, the voyages of the great explorers that
culminated in Christopher Columbus’ discovery of America in 1492 and that
had far-reaching consequences on the countries that developed overseas
empires, as well as on the imaginations and consciences of the most gifted
writers of the day.
European Literature
IV. The 17th Century

 a period of unceasing disturbance and violent storms, no less in literature than in politics and society.

 The questioning attitude that characterized the period is seen in the works of its great scientists and
philosophers: Descartes’s Discourse on Method (1637) and Pascal’s Pensées (written 1657–58) in
France; Bacon’s Advancement of Learning (1605) and Hobbes’s Leviathan (1651) in England.

 A true picture of the period must also take into account the enormous effect of social and political
upheavals during the early and middle parts of the century.

 The civil, political, and religious conflicts that dominated the first half of the century were in many ways
also the characteristic response of the Counter-Reformation. The pattern of religious conflict was
reflected in literary forms and preoccupations.

 The most characteristic of all the disputes of the 17th century was that in which the tendency to continue
to develop the Renaissance imitation of the classics came into conflict with the aspirations and
discoveries of new thinkers in science and philosophy and new experimenters with literary forms
European Literature
V. The 18th Century

 was marked by two main impulses: reason and passion.

The respect paid to reason was shown in pursuit of order,
symmetry, decorum, and scientific knowledge; the
cultivation of the feelings stimulated philanthropy,
exaltation of personal relationships, religious fervour, and
the cult of sentiment, or sensibility. In literature the
rational impulse fostered satire, argument, wit, plain prose;
the other inspired the psychological novel and the poetry
of the sublime.
European Literature
V. The 19th Century

 Romanticism

 Post-Romanticism
European Literature
V. The 20th Century
 When the 20th century began, social and cultural conditions that prevailed in Europe and America were not too
different from those of the middle and late 19th century. Continuity could be seen, for example, in the work of
four novelists writing in English at the turn of the century and after.

 An interest in the unconscious and the irrational was reflected in their work and that of others of about this
time. Two important sources of this influence were Friedrich Nietzsche, a German philosopher to whom both
Gide and Mann, for example, were much indebted, and Sigmund Freud, whose psychoanalytical works, by the
1920s, had had a telling influence on Western intellectuals.

 The international and experimental period of Western literature in the 1910s and 1920s was important not only
for the great works it produced but also because it set a pattern for the future. What was clearly revealed in the
major works of the period was an increasing sense of crisis and urgency, doubts as to the 19th century’s faith in
the psychological stability of the individual personality, and a deep questioning of all philosophical or religious
solutions to human problems.

 In the 1930s these qualities of 20th-century thought were not abandoned but, rather, were expanded into a
political context, as writers divided into those supporting political commitment in their writing and those
reacting conservatively against such a domination of art by politics.
Reading of Literary Piece: Divine Comedy
by Dante Alighieri (Epic Poem)
Dante Alighieri was a native of Florence, Italy and the last of the great poets of the Middle ages. His work, Divine

comedy, is a great narrative poem written in the Tuscan dialect (Latin) and originally titled Commedia. Not content

with a single word title, later generations have called it Divine Comedy. This is an allegory which dramatizes and

glorifies the ways of God and at the same time protests the medieval man’s thwarting of the divine plan. The Divine

Comedy is a complete literary summation of the Philosophy of the Middle Ages and in it, Dante builds the most

complicated and absolute structure of the universe. The poem traces Dante’s imagined journey through the three levels

of the Christian afterlife: the Inferno, where those guilty of the seven deadly sins are forever punished; the Purgatorio,

where Christians still having to perform penance dwell; and Paradiso, where the blessed live.

Dante gives two reasons for calling his work comedy. First, its sad beginning (Inferno), and its happy ending

(Paradiso) and the vision of God in His essence. Second, it is written in a lax and humble style.
 Reading of Literary Piece: A Piece of
String by Guy de Maupassant
 Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893) was a champion of the realistic approach to writing and one of the finest short story writers of all time. He was born in

Normandy, France to wealthy parents. His parents separated when he was eleven and was raised by his domineering mother who became the basis for his

characterizations of overbearing slighted women in most of his stories. The greatest influence in his life and career was Gustave Flaubert who served as mentor in

his adulthood. To Flaubert and his circle, Maupassant was truly at the center of European Literature and his work bears it.

 In the “Piece of String,” de Maupassant pictures the many unlovely aspects of a small French town and French peasant life. He does this because he feels it

is a writer’s business to tell the truth about the environment that he sees about him and to tell it as vividly and forcefully as possible.

 In teaching de Maupassant, Flaubert would set him the task of describing someone he has met in the street in such vivid and realistic terms, that he, Flaubert

would recognize the person. This technique was well mastered by De Maupassant and is clearly evident in the story we have here. The realistic effectiveness of “A

Piece of String” can be further accounted for by the shrewdness of de Maupassant’s observation that often is a person’s minor habits and traits which reveal his true

personality.

 Through illness cut short his promising career which lasted only ten years from 1880 to 1890, Maupassant managed to write about 300 short stories and

six novels. He achieved fame for the Umbrella, A Piece of String, and The Necklace.