Computer Assisted Language Learning

Aims & Scope

By Aquila Ismail

Now that the world is once again in the throes of imperial ambitions it would be interesting to see what such ventures do to literature of the colonized nations, during and after the state of subjugation. With so many diverse countries to deal with, from India to South Africa, from Antigua to Canada to Australia via the Caribbean and even Ireland, one usually does not know where to begin. This is a huge landscape with writers like the legendary Chinua Achebe to Seamus Heany, Jamaica Kincaid and Nadine Gordimer and Aime Cesaire and so on. The study of literature in the period after colonized nations attain freedom has been given the very predictable title, ‘post-colonial literature’, to cover all the culture affected by the imperial process from the moment of colonization to the present day. The large time frame is because there is a continuity of preoccupations throughout the historical process initiated by imperial aggression, and the narrative it engenders.

The best, most comprehensive website to get to the bottom of it all is www.literaryhistory.com. The site not only chronicles sources of theory and research, through papers and journals, it also goes deep in with individual authors. I got to the other wonderful, very well designed, simple to use website on the subject known as www.scholars.nus.edu.sg. Together these two sites cover the entire gamut of the genre.

The leading post-colonial novelist Chinua Achebe, now one of the world’s leading writers, was born in Eastern Nigeria, West Africa, in 1930. As Nigeria was under British rule, Achebe received an essentially British education up to the university level. Achebe has described how he became a writer, “At the university I read some appalling novels about Africa (including Joyce Cary’s much praised Mister Johnson) and decided that the story we had to tell could not be told for us by anyone else no matter how gifted or well intentioned.” Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is another novel that irked Achebe.

In response to Joyce Cary’s Nigerian novel, Mister Johnson, Achebe sought to write one novel but ended up writing two, Things Fall Apart and No Longer at Ease. Achebe notes that his Things Fall Apart “was an act of atonement with my past, the ritual return and homage of a prodigal son”. The rest of course is history. These two novels best exemplify what is post-colonial discourse.

Also Indian writing in English or Indo-Anglian, touted by some as the best thing that could have happened in the Indian literary scene (something I strongly dispute, because regional literature in India is among the most compelling), writing is not a contemporary phenomenon. Its origins can be traced to the desire to create “a class of interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect.” However, to give English writing in India its due, this class of interpreters would, put the master’s tools to subversive use. For decades Indian writers have used the colonizer’s language, English, to produce an Indian reality that is very different from anything the masters might have envisioned. The literature produced by Indo-Anglian writers depicts a many-sided India that is completely opposite to the exotic visions of Raj writers like Paul Scott and John Masters.

During the period of imperial control writing in the language of the imperial centre is inevitably produced by a literate elite whose primary identification is with the colonizing power. Thus the first texts produced in the colonies in the new language, that of the occupiers, are frequently produced by ‘representatives’ of the imperial power. Gentrified settlers, travellers and sightseers, or the travel diaries, administrators, soldiers, and frequently, the memsahibs through their memoirs.

However, given the fact that resistance to colonization begins almost the minute it manifests itself, such texts can never form the basis for an indigenous culture nor can they be integrated in any way with the culture, which already exists in the countries invaded. Despite their detailed reportage of landscape, custom, and language, they inevitably privilege the centre, emphasizing the ‘home’ over the ‘native’, the ‘metropolitan’ over the ‘provincial’ or ‘colonial’. At a deeper level their claim to objectivity simply serves to hide the imperial discourse within which they are created.

So the literatures of colonized nations, in Africa, India, the Caribbean, Malaysia, Malta et al are all post-colonial literatures. What each of these literatures has in common beyond their special and distinctive regional characteristics is that they emerged in their present form out of the experience of colonization and asserted themselves by foregrounding the tension with the imperial power, and by emphasizing their differences from the assumptions of the imperial centre. It is this, which makes them distinctively post-colonial.

Coming to the websites mentioned above. Literaryhistory.com declares that it is committed to promoting the use of the Internet for scholarly research in literary studies. Thus it seeks to encourage the publication of high-quality literary criticism on the Internet, and to support the interests of students, scholars, and readers the world over who turn to the Internet for information about literature. The site provides bibliographical details about the articles it indexes, and brief abstracts indicating the topic or thesis of the article and the intended audience. This is really helpful because one can go spot on to the aspect that the user wants to read.

The literaryhistory.com site purports to post all articles and explores all sources of information that could be recommended to a student or reader as substantial and worthy criticism. The web page is thankfully not elaborately designed, and the emphasis is on making life as easy as possible for the user. The site links directly to articles, and spares one the frustration of navigating many different home pages and interfaces. The links do not ever lead to a page of links that leads to more links in an endless loop.

Over the past four years, more and more credible writing about literature has found its way to the Internet, so that it is now possible to do real literary research here. There is now a sufficient body of acceptable writing on the Internet to provide scholars with some background or refresher information, before they go to the library. The second site mentioned is in fact a project of the University of Singapore. It is a delightful site beginning with icons for post-colonial theory, authors, countries, etc. and each icon leads to almost minutely detailed information. This site does the Internet proud and exemplifies what cyberspace should contain.

Post-colonial literatures developed through several stages, which can be seen to correspond to stages both of national and regional consciousness. Early post-colonial texts deal with such powerful material as the brutality of the convict system, the historical potency of the supplanted and denigrated native cultures, or the existence of a rich cultural heritage older and more extensive than that of Europe. This is borne out by the numerous well-published authors on the sites.

Nadine Gordimer was born in 1923 in Springs, a small mining town on the East Rand about thirty miles from Johannesburg, South Africa. Her first novel, The Lying Days, was published in 1953. Her early short stories, those written before 1953, focus on the daily lives of the poor white class and show little political consciousness. In fact, Gordimer acknowledges that her full awareness of black Africans and their paradoxical position in their own country, particularly after the Afrikaner Nationalist government assumed power in 1948 and instituted its repressive apartheid laws, developed with incredible slowness. Perhaps this is not surprising considering the life she led among white people whose very existence depended on the pretence that blacks do not exist except as a permanent underclass of servants and labourers. Yet, the politics of South Africa, particularly its apartheid and censorship laws, became her central concern. Her writing constitutes a merciless scrutiny of that society and of her own developing consciousness and role within that society.

It seemed to her that an “inevitable historical process” was taking place that eventually would demolish racial barriers, an attitude reflected in both of her novels of this period, The Lying Days and A World of Strangers, published in 1958. The hope of ending apartheid by personal relationships across the colour bar became much more difficult to sustain following the Sharpeville massacre of 1960 and the subsequent draconian measures against blacks initiated by the government: prohibition of all right to peaceful protest and banning of the best black writers. Gordimer’s next two novels, Occasion for Loving (1963) and The Late Bourgeois World (1966), reflect the paralysis and frustration that she undoubtedly felt. Her characters seem unable to act, unable to connect with people and situations, and unable to do more than observe and record.

A Guest of Honour (1970) and the novels that follow reveal Gordimer exploring alternatives to the failed belief in liberal humanism. Her novels Burger’s Daughter (1979) and July’s People (1981) impressed even her sterner critics with their warmth, energy, and commitment.

Jamaica Kincaid was born in 1949 on the island of Antigua. In Antigua, she completed her secondary education under the British system due to Antigua’s status as a British colony until 1967. She went on to study photography at the New York School for Social Research. Her first writing experience involved a series of articles for magazines. Antigua became self-governing in 1967, but did not achieve the status of an independent nation within the Commonwealth until 1981. Within the structure of the British educational system imposed upon Antiguans, Kincaid grew to “detest everything about England, except the literature”. She felt first-hand the negative effects of British colonialism as the colonists attempted to turn Antigua “into England” and the natives “into English” without regard for the native culture or homeland. The effects of colonialism serve as the major theme for A Small Place in which Kincaid expresses her anger both at the colonists and at the Antiguans for failing to fully achieve their independence.

Aime Cesaire was born in 1913, in Martinique in the French Caribbean. He left for Paris at the age of 18 with a scholarship for school. In 1936 Cesaire started working on his famed piece “Cahier”, which was not published until 1939. He moved back to Martinique with their son in 1939. Cesaire’s poetry has been described as a style between “artistic ‘modernism’ and black consciousness”. His writing can also be characterized as surreal. Cesaire is closely related to the word “negritude”, which signifies the black youth’s attempt to maintain a positive racial identity.

Ben Okri, Ken Saro-Wiwa, Wole Soyinka, Rohinton Mistry, Earl Lovelace, Jean Rhys, Shyam Selvadurai, Michael Ondaatje… the list is long but almost everyone is covered between these two sites. Do look. It is essential to place ones identity in the context of history and post-colonial fiction provides the tools to do just that.

Literature Circles involve a small group of students exploring a piece of literature in depth. Although you’ll find lots of books and articles on the Literature Circles, there are many ways to implement the strategies across grade levels and subject areas. Think of literature circles as one element of a balanced literacy program rather than “the solution.” In most cases, the application of literature circles evolves over time as students and teachers become more experienced readers. Check out the off-site resources by Katherine L. Schlick Noe titled Overview of Literature Circles.

The Approach

This learner-centered approach focuses on students’ responses to the literature they read. In Literature Circles, students are actively engaged in reading through making choices, discussing, and constructing meaning. This strategy engages students in higher-level thinking and reflection by encouraging collaboration and constructing meaning with other readers. These literary discussions are guided by student insights, observations, and questions. They may be related to the characters, setting, plot, and author, along with connections to student experiences. Learners often take on a variety of roles in their group and learn to facilitate their own discussions and projects.

The goal of literature circles is enthusiastic, natural, informal conversation that encourages a life-long love of reading. As one element of a balanced literacy program, reading circles can provide an exciting way to promote reading from Kindergarten through Grade 12. Guidelines for structuring activities can be found at Katherine L. Schlick Noe’s website for primary and intermediate/middle grades as well as for secondary grades.

Read Laura Candler’s easy step-by-step instructions for implementing literature circles in the classroom. She has lots of forms you can use too.

The Books

Rather than reading basels, textbooks, or short excerpts, student read novels, short stories, plays, historical fiction, biographies, and other rich popular or classical literature. Generally, literature circle group members will read the same book. Other groups in the same classroom may be reading different books and the groups may jigsaw or participate in a class-wide culiminating activity. Often, books of different reading levels are chosen to accommodate individual reading needs. In some cases, group members may be reading different texts by a particular author, different texts on the same theme (courage, family tradition, survival…), or different texts from the same genre (mysteries, historical fiction, poetry…).

The Choice

It’s easier for students to become passionate about reading when they make choices about their own learning. When possible, allow students to select from a variety of books. If students select a book above their reading level, ask them to do the “five fingers” or “three bears” reading check. You may be able to convince them that an easier book is better. In some cases a tutor or audio-CD/tape might be needed to allow a student to select a book above their reading level. If students select books below their reading level, use a booktalk to motivate them to select a more challenging book. Of course, you could always assign the books, but most students are more motivated by choice.

The Discussions

Group discussions are at the core of a Literature Circle. Start by assessing the discussion skills of your students. Get learners involved in this process by brainstorming lists of the qualities of “good” and “poor” group participants. What does a good listener do or not do? Next, teach some basic discussion etiquette. Try some role playing and modeling using a read-aloud book. Practice these techniques in small groups. Debrief the group using reflection techniques such as asking them to recall something that went poorly or particularly well. Help students create a set of discussion guidelines that can serve as reminders. Periodically provide ideas for ways the group can strengthen their discussion skills. Check out Katherine L. Schlick Noe’sThe Importance of Oral Language in the School Curriculum by Gillian Bertram (English Online, 2002) website for an excellent explanation of group discussions. Also read

The Roles

Most literature circles provide for specific roles and responsibilities within the group. For example, students might take on the roles of discussion director, wacky word finder, travel tracer, super summarizer, passage picker, and interest investigator. Rotating roles keep the discussions fresh and interesting and allows students to each take different leadership responsibilities. The roles encourage students to focus on different cognitive perspectives related to their reading and draw on different intelligences. At first, the roles may be primarily directed at the readings. For example, for a given chapter one student writes discussion questions, another visualizes the setting through art, while still another student identifies new vocabulary or interesting passages. As these roles become a natural part of the circle, you may shift the roles to be more activity specific such as those found in WebQuests. Many find that roles limit the flexibility of the group and prefer to use general group guidelines rather than strict roles. Use the role titles below to get started thinking about the possibilities.

The Assessment

There are many tools that can be used to assess student performance in literature circle situations. Consider a list of focus questions from Noe’s website.

Thematic Literature Circles

Our eduscapes Themed Literature Units go hand-in-hand with Literature Circles. For example, a teacher might focus on a topic such as the Holocaust and ask small groups of students to each read a different book. Students can be grouped based on interests, reading levels, or other criteria. Other popular thematic literature circle topics include, friendship, community, environment, justice, fairy tales, biographies, dealing with disaster, survival, homelessness, women in history, pioneers, underground railroad, journals, fantasy, mythology, medieval Europe, Depression, cross-generations, and Civil War.

Explore at least two of the following literature circles “starters.” Notice how technology can used to access information about books, authors, lessons, and activities. Brainstorm topics and books that would work well for literature-circle type activities.

• 100th Day Celebration
• All About Me & Celebrating Diversity
• Colonial America
• Quilts
• Japanese Internment Camps
• Underground Railroad
• Civil War
• Native American Legend

Technology-Rich Literature Circles

Students working on themed literature circles often ask questions that require resources that go beyond the books. Technology is an excellent resource for addressing these questions. Students may use an Internet resource to visualize a book setting, learn about the book’s author, or explore the science or history behind a book topic. Students may also use the Internet as a communication tool. For example, they may use an “ask-an-expert” website to communicate with a person who represents a careers discussed in the book. They can also use email as a tool for discussing issues with students beyond the classroom. Through online collaborative projects students can work with other classes who are reading the same book or exploring the same theme. This can add an interesting dimension by providing an authentic audience for student sharing. This is also a way for students to ask good questions. For example, a rural class might connect with an urban class and discuss issues related to life in a particular setting.

Read Virtual Circles: Using Technology to Enhance Literature Circles & Socratic Seminars by Johnny Walters in Meridian (Summer 2003). Do you think virtual circles would work in a school or library you’ve worked with? Why or why not?

Will G Hopkins PhD

BACKGROUND

This article is written in the form of a literature review for the journal Sportscience. A few of the requirements for form and content are unique to Sportscience, but most are common to all good scientific journals. You can therefore use this article to help you write a review for any journal. You can also use this article to structure a literature review for a thesis, but check with your supervisor for any special requirements.

This article exists in slightly modified form as a template for a Sportscience review article. If you intend to submit a review to Sportscience, you should download the template from the Information for Authors page at the Sportscience site.

Whether you are writing a review for Sportscience, another journal, or a thesis, you should read my guidelines on scientific writing (Hopkins, 1999a). Here are the main points from that article:

• Avoid technical terms.
• Avoid abbreviations.
• Use simple sentences.
• Avoid common errors of punctuation and grammar.
• Use the first person (I, we) rather than the passive voice.
• Link your ideas into a sensible sequence without repetitions or discontinuities.
• Get feedback on your article from colleagues.

In this Background section, make the topic interesting by explaining it in plain language and by relating it to actual or potential practical applications. Explain any scientific principles underlying the topic. Define and justify the scope of the review: why you are limiting it to certain sports, why you are including studies of non-athletes and non-human species, and so on.

LITERATURE

In this short section you should list how many of each kind of publication you summarized (for example, 31 original investigations, one monograph, five reviews, four popular articles, one manuscript), and how you found them (for example, a search of the sport-science database SportDiscus).

Be specific about any database search you performed. Include the key words you used, and the ways you refined your search if necessary. For example: “A search for overtrain* produced 774 references, which reduced to 559 when we limited the search to intermediate or advanced levels (not le=basic). Further restricting the search to psych* or mood produced 75 references. We read 47 of these as full papers. Of the 41 papers cited in this review, we were able to obtain the following only in abstract form: Jones et al. (1979) and Smith and Brown (1987).” Describe and justify briefly any papers or areas that you decided not to include.

FINDINGS

This section is the most important part of your review. Do not give a summary paper-by-paper; instead, deal with themes and draw together results from several papers for each theme. I have identified four themes for this section: assessing the quality of published work; interpreting effects; points of grammar and style; and a few remarks about tables and figures. These themes are dealt with under subheadings. I encourage you to use such subheadings, which will make it easier for you to write the review and easier for others to read it.

Quality of Published Work

Look critically at any published work. The fact that something has been published does not mean the findings are automatically trustworthy.

Some research designs are better than others (see Hopkins, 1998a). The most trustworthy conclusions are those reached in double-blind randomized controlled trials with a representative sample of sufficient size to detect the smallest worthwhile effects. The weakest findings are those from case studies. In between are cross-sectional studies, which are usually plagued by the problem of interpreting cause and effect in the relationship between variables.

How subjects were sampled is an important issue. You can be confident about generalizing results to a population only if the sample was selected randomly from the population and there was a low proportion of refusals and dropouts (<30%).

Be wary of generalizing results from novice athletes to elites. Something that enhances performance in young or untrained individuals may not work so well in highly trained athletes, who may have less headroom for improvement.

There are big differences in the way data can be collected. At one extreme are qualitative methods, in which the researcher interviews subjects without using formal psychometric instruments (questionnaires). At the other extreme are quantitative methods, in which biological or behavioral variables are measured with instruments or techniques of known validity and reliability. In the middle are techniques with uncertain precision and questionnaires with open-ended responses.

Qualitative assessment is time consuming, so samples are usually small in size and non-representative, which in turn limit the conclusions that can be made about effects in a population. The conclusions may also be biased by the prejudices of the researcher-interviewer. Quantitative data collection is more objective, but for some projects it could miss important issues that would surface in an interview. A combination of qualitative methods for pilot work and quantitative methods for a larger study should therefore produce valuable conclusions, depending, of course, on the design.

You will probably find that your topic has been dealt with to some extent in earlier reviews. Cite the reviews and indicate the extent to which you have based your review on them. Make sure you look at the key original papers cited in any earlier reviews, to judge for yourself whether the conclusions of the reviewers are justified.

Reviews, like original research, vary in quality. Problems with reviews include poor organization of the material and lack of critical thought. Some of the better reviews attempt to pull together the results of many papers using the statistical technique of meta-analysis. The outcomes in such reviews are usually expressed as relative risk, variance explained, or effect size, terms that you will have to understand and interpret in your review if you meet them. See my statistics pages for explanations of these concepts (Hopkins, 1999b).

Interpreting Effects

You cannot assess quantitative research without a good understanding of the terms effects, confidence limits of effects, and statistical significance of effects. An effect is simply an observed relationship between variables in a sample of subjects. An effect is also known as an outcome. Confidence limits and statistical significance are involved in generalizing from the observedtrue value of the effect. The true value of the effect is the average value of the effect in the whole population, or the value of the effect you would get if you sampled the whole population. The confidence limits of an effect define the likely range of the true value of the effect: in short, how big or positive and how small or negative the effect could be. An effect is statistically significant if the likely range of the true value of the effect is unlikely to include the zero or null effect. Roughly speaking, statistically significant effects are unlikely to be zero, but such a rough interpretation is misleading: in sport and exercise science, the true value of an effect is never exactly zero. value of an effect to the

Statistical significance is notoriously difficult to understand, whereas confidence limits are at once more simple and more informative. Confidence limits are appearing more frequently in publications, but most authors still use statistical significance. As a reviewer you therefore have to come to terms with statistical significance. Here are a few suggestions on how to cope.

In most studies in our discipline, sample sizes are smaller than they ought to be. So if a result is statistically significant, it will probably have widely separated confidence limits. Check to make sure the observed value of the effect is substantial (whatever that means–more about that in a moment). If it is, then you can conclude safely that the true value of the effect is likely to be a substantial. If the observed effect is not substantial–a rare occurrence for a statistically significant effect, because it means the sample size was too large–you can actually conclude that the true value of the effect is likely to be trivial, even though it was statistically significant!

Problems of interpretation arise when researchers get a statistically non-significant effect. If the sample size is too small–as in almost all studies in sport and exercise science–you can get a statistically non-significant effect even when there is a substantial effect in the population. Authors of small-scale studies who do not understand this point will interpret a statistically non-significant effect incorrectly as evidence for no effect. So whenever you see a result that is not statistically significant, ignore what the author concludes and look at the size of the effect in question: if the effect is nearly zero and the sample size is reasonable, chances are there is indeed no worthwhile relationship in the population; if the effect is large, there may well be a substantial relationship in the population. But in either case, a bigger sample is required to be sure about what is going on. Sometimes the research may have been done: for example, moderate but non-significant effects in several studies probably add up to a moderate real effect, if the designs are trustworthy.

How big is a moderate effect anyway? And what about large effects, small effects, and trivial effects? Make sure you look closely at the effects and interpret their magnitudes, regardless of whether they are statistically significant; the authors often don’t. There are two approaches: statistical and practical.

In the statistical approach, effects or outcomes are expressed as statistics that are independent of the units of measurement of the original variables. These statistics are the same ones referred to in the previous subsection: relative risk, variance explained, and effect size. Statisticians have come up with rules of thumb for deciding whether the magnitude of the effect is to be considered trivial, small, moderate, or large. For example, Cohen (1988)Hopkins, 1998b). claims that an effect size of 0.2, a variance explained of 1% (equivalent to a correlation coefficient of 0.1), and a relative risk of 1.2 are the smallest effects worth detecting. I have extended Cohen’s scale to effects of any magnitude, and I have made adjustments to his scale (

In the practical approach, you look at the size of the effect and try to decide whether, for example, it would make any difference to an athlete’s position in a competition. For many events, a difference in performance of 1% or even less would be considered worthwhile. This approach is the better one for most studies of athletes.

Whether you use the statistical or the practical approach, you must apply it to the confidence limits as well as the observed effect. Why? Because you want to describe how big or how small the effect could be in reality, not just how big or small it was in the sample that was studied. If the researchers do not report confidence limits, you can calculate them from the p value. I have devised a spreadsheet for this purpose (Hopkins, 1998c).

Forms of literature

Poetry

A poem is a composition usually written in verse. Poems rely heavily on imagery, precise word choice, and metaphor; they may take the form of measures consisting of patterns of stresses (metric feet) or of patterns of different-length syllables (as in classical prosody); and they may or may not utilise rhyme. Poetry is difficult to characterize precisely. Typically though, poetry as a form of literature makes some significant use of the formalwritten or spoken form of the words, rather than to their meaning. Metre depends on syllables and on rhythms of speech; rhyme and alliteratione. e. cummings, made extensive use of words’ visual form. properties of the words it uses — these properties being attached to the depend on words that have similar pronunciation. Some contemporary poets, such as

Poetry perhaps pre-dates other forms of literature: early known examples include the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh (dated from around 3000 B.C), the Bible and the surviving works of Homer (the Iliad and the Odyssey).

Much poetry uses specific forms: the haiku, the limerick, the sonnet, for example. A haiku must have seventeen syllables, distributed over three lines in groups of five, seven, and five, and should have an image of a season and something to do with nature. A limerick has five lines, with a rhyme scheme of AABBA, and line lengths of 3,3,2,2,3 stressed syllables.

Language and tradition dictate some poetic norms: Greek poetry rarely rhymes, Italian or French poetry often does, English and German can go either way (although modern non-rhyming poetry often, perhaps unfairly, has a more “serious” aura). Perhaps the most paradigmatic style of English poetry, blank verse, as exemplified in Shakespeare and Milton, consists of unrhymed iambic pentameters. Some languages prefer longer lines; some shorter ones. Some of these conventions result from the ease of fitting a specific language’s vocabulary and grammar into certain structures, rather than into others; for example, some languages contain more rhyming words than others, or typically have longer words. Other structural conventions come about as the result of historical accidents, where many speakers of a language associate good poetry with a verse form preferred by a particular good poet.

Works for theatre (see below) traditionally took verse form. This has now become rare outside opera and musicalss, although many would argue that the language of drama remains intrinsically poetic.

Drama

A play or drama is another, classical literary form that has continued to evolve over the years. It is comprised chiefly of dialogue between characters, and is usually intended for dramatic / theatrical performancetheatre) rather than reading. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, opera developed as a combination of poetry, drama, and music. Nearly all drama was in verse form until comparatively recently. (see

Greek drama is the earliest form of drame for which we have substantial knowledge. Tragedy, as a dramatic genre, developed as a performance associated with religious and civic festivals, typically enacting or developing upon well-known historical or mythological themes. Tragedies were generally very serious in theme and treated important conflicts in human nature, but were not necessarily “tragic” as currently understood— meaning sad and without a happy ending. Comedy, as a dramatic genre, was a later development; Greek festivals eventually came to include three tragedies counterbalanced by a comedy or satyr play.

Modern theatre does not in general adhere to any of these restrictions of form or theme. A play is anything written for performance by actors (screenplays, for example); and even some things that are not; many contemporary writers have taken advantage of the dialogue-centred character of plays as a way of presenting literary work that is intended simply to be read, not performed.

Essays

An essay is a discussion of a topic from an author’s personal point of view, exemplified by works by Francis Bacon or Charles Lamb. A memoir is the story of an author’s life from his personal point of view. An epistle is usually a formal, didactic, or elegant letter.

‘Essay’ in English derives from the French ‘essai’, meaning ‘attempt’. Thus an essay may be open-ended, provocative, inconclusive; or all three. The first writings identified as “essays” were the self-reflective musings of Michel de Montaigne, and he is still seen today as the father of this literary form.

Prose fiction

Prose is writing that does not adhere to any particular formal structures (other than simple grammar); “non-poetic writing,” writing, perhaps. The term is sometimes used pejoratively, but prosaic writing is simply writing that says something without necessarily trying to say it in a beautiful way, or using beautiful words. Prose writing can of course be beautiful; the suggestion then is that it is not beautiful by virtue of the formal features of words (rhymes, alliteration, meter), but the distinction does not need to be marked precisely, and perhaps cannot be. There is “prose poetry,” which attempts to convey the aesthetic richness typical of poetry using only prose; and there is “free verse,” which is poetry not adhering to any of the strictures of one or another formal poetic style.

Narrative fiction generally favours prose for the writing of novels, short stories, and the like. Singular examples of these exist throughout history, but they did not develop into systematic and discrete literary forms until relatively recently. Length often serves to categorize works of prose fiction. Although lines remain somewhat arbitrary, publishing conventions dictate the following:

• A short story comprises prose writing of less than 10,000 to 20,000 words, but typically more than 500 words, which may or may not have a narrative arc.
• A story containing between 20,000 and 50,000 words falls into the novella category.
• A work of fiction containing more than 50,000 words falls squarely into the realm of the novel.

A novel consists simply of a long story written in prose; yet it developed comparatively recently. In Europe Cervantes wrote perhaps the first significant novel: Don Quixote, published in 1600. Earlier works, such as the Decameron and the Canterbury Tales, have comparable forms and would probably classify as novels if written today. Earlier works written in Asia resemble even more strongly the novel as we now think of it— for example, works such as the Chinese Romance of the Three Kingdoms and the JapaneseTale of Genji by Lady Murasaki.

Early novels in Europe did not, at the time, count as significant literature, perhaps because “mere” prose writing seemed easy and unimportant. It has become clear, however, that prose writing can provide aesthetic pleasure without adhering to poetic forms. Additionally, the freedom authors gain in not having to concern themselves with verse structure translates often into a more complex plot or into one richer in precise detail than one typically finds even in narrative poetry. This freedom also allows an author to experiment with many different literary styles— including poetry— in the scope of a single novel.

See Ian Watt‘s The Rise of the Novel. [This definition needs expansion]

Other prose literature

Philosophy, history, journalism, and legal and scientific writings have traditionally ranked as literature. They olofedr some of the oldest prose writings in existence; novels and prose stories earned the names “fiction” to distinguish them from factual writing or nonfiction, which writers historically have crafted in prose.

This has become less so in the case of science over the last two centuries, as advances and specialization have made new scientific research inaccessible to most audiences; science is appears mostly in journals. Scientific works of Euclid, Aristotle, Copernicus, and Newton still possess great value; but since the science in them has largely become outdated, they no longer serve for scientific instruction, yet they remain too technical to sit well in most literature programmes. Outside of history of science programmes students rarely read such works. Many books “popularizing” science might still deserve the title “literature”; history will tell.

Philosophy, too, has become an increasingly academic discipline. More of its practitioners lament this situation than occurs with the sciences; nonetheless most new philosophical work appears in academic journals. Major philosophers through history — Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Descartes, Nietzsche — have become as canonical as any writers. Some recent philosophy undoubtedly merits the title “literature” — the work of Wittgenstein, for example, does; but much of it does not, and some areas, such as logic, have become extremely technical to the same degree as the sciences.

A great deal of historical writing can still rank as literature, particularly the genre known as creative nonfiction. So can a great deal of journalism, such as literary journalism. However these areas have become extremely large, and often have a utilitarian purpose: to record data or convey immediate information. As a result the writing in these fields often lacks a literary quality, although it often and in its better moments has that quality. Major historians include Herodotus, Thucydides and Procopius, all of whom count as canonical literary figures.

Law offers a less clear case. Some writings of Plato and Aristotle, or even the early parts of the Bible, might count as legal. The law tables of Hammurabi of Babylon might count. Roman civil law as codified during the reign of Justinian I of Byzantium has a reputation as significant literature. The founding documents of many countries, including the Constitution of the United States, count as literature, however legal writing now rarely exhibits literary merit.

Most of these fields, then, through specialization or proliferation, no longer generally constitute “literature” in the sense under discussion. They may sometimes count as “literary literature”; more often they produce what one might call “technical literature” or “professional literature.”

Lee Galda
Gwynne Ellen Ash
Bernice E. Cullinan

Research on Text

There are two broad strands of research on text: those studies that examine texts or genres to describe what authors do, or literary analyses; and those that examine what texts are about, or content analyses.

Content analyses in children’s literature research reflect the interests of the times. For example, during the 1960s and 1970s, many researchers examined the presence and image of African Americans in children’s books published in the United States (see, e.g., Broderick, 1973; Larrick, 1965). More recent research on children’s literature as text has been informed by more complex theoretical positions and more extensive qualitative research methodologies. Current studies are often based on an understanding of how texts are nested in the social, cultural, and political contexts in which they are both created and read. Studies explore gender, culture, or other social issues, often through the lens of critical theory.

Literary analyses consider children’s literature as an object of literary criticism and analysis. This type of research has increased steadily since 1970 (Beckett, 1997), focuses on illustration, genre, or style, and reflects a variety of perspectives ranging from structuralist criticism, archetypal criticism, and narrative theory to feminist and critical theory, historical criticism, and reader-response criticism. Most of these studies rely on a formalist, close reading of children’s texts in order to examine literary and artistic devices within them, across an author’s work, or within a genre or subgenre. With the exception of reader-response criticism, most literary analyses ignore the reader, assuming that meaning, however defined and analyzed, lies in the text itself. The reader, however, is the second major strand of research in children’s literature.

Research on Children Reading Children’s Literature

Children, the primary readers of children’s literature, are the focus of a rapidly increasing number of studies. Early research consisted of preference and interest studies, with research on children’s responses beginning in the 1980s.

Broad consistencies and individual differences marked a variety of early studies of children’s interests and preferences. For example, children tend to like narrative forms with lively action, humor, and nonsense (Purves & Beach, 1972), and reading interests of boys and girls diverge in upper elementary school (Landy, 1977; Lynch-Brown, 1977). Over the years, more details have been added to these broad patterns identified in the early research. That, plus an understanding that preference and interest are highly individual phenomena that change from reader to reader and book to book but are embedded in sociocultural norms and expectations, have complicated the earlier, simplistic notions of preference and interest (Dressman, 1997a, 1997b [online document]; Summers & Lukasevich, 1983).

How children respond to literature has also become a more complex phenomenon to study as an increasing number of researchers have attempted to describe this process. Stephens (1992) argued that children’s literature is permeated by social and ethical ideologies, and researchers are beginning to explore what happens when the ideologies of the text meet the ideologies of a reader.

The notion of resistance is at the center of some of the most exciting contemporary studies of response (Beach, 1997; Enciso, 1997; Rogers, 1997). Recent studies by McGinley and Kamberelis (1996; McGinley, Kamberelis, Mahoney, Madigan, Rybicki, & Oliver, 1997) have sought to describe how literature influences the attitudes and values of its readers. This research, influenced by narrative and transactional theory and embedded within a social-constructivist notion of reading in classrooms, reaches beyond the realm of reader response, encompasses cultural and social issues, and is thoroughly grounded in the classroom. This reflects the ever-increasing awareness of the complexity of understanding readers, the texts they read, and the contexts in which they read.

Contexts That Support Children’s Engagement with Literature

Investigation of the contexts that support children’s engagement with literature is the third major strand of research on children’s literature. This strand includes inquiries about literary studies in the classroom, effects of teachers reading aloud from children’s books, and teacher beliefs and practices regarding children’s literature.

Early research pointed out that reading children’s literature influences children’s attitudes toward reading and increases their knowledge of the world and of text patterns. Morrow and Gambrell (2000) and Gavelek, Raphael, Biondo, and Wang (2000) discuss current studies of the use of literature in the classroom. Here we review studies of literary instruction, reading aloud, discussing literature, and teacher beliefs and practices.

Most research on literary instruction has, like the instruction itself, focused on children’s ability to recognize literary elements and to use these elements in their discussions and writing. Research by Lehr (1988) has indicated that the use of quality children’s literature in the classroom increases the likelihood of students being able to identify literary elements such as theme. Reading children’s literature also increases the likelihood that students will use literary elements in their writing (Dressel, 1990; Lancia, 1997) and literary registers in their discussion and retellings (Hade, 1988; Pappas & Brown, 1987).

Extensive research and theory support the use of read-alouds of children’s literature to prepare students for literacy and to develop literacy skills, interest in reading, language development, reading achievement, and opportunities for social interaction (see Galda & Cullinan, 1991, for a review of this research). Further research indicates that children enjoy being read to (Mendoza, 1985), but how books are read and what is read influences both children’s literacy and literary development.

Research on reading aloud looks closely at factors that influence the oral presentation of literature, focusing on group size, frequency of read-alouds, genre and style of text, and reading style. For instance, children read to one on one or in small groups are much more likely to engage in active discussion of the texts during and after the reading (Klesius & Griffith, 1996; Morrow, 1988, 1990; Morrow & Smith, 1990). When books are read and reread, students’ reading fluency develops (Dowhower, 1987; Rasinski, 1990) and their talk about text improves in form and focus (Martinez & Roser, 1985; Morrow, 1988). There is some evidence that when series of books are read to children there are positive effects on decoding, reading comprehension, and story retelling (Feitelson, Kita, & Goldstein, 1986; Rosenhouse, Feitelson, Kita, & Goldstein, 1997), and the reading aloud of informational text may increase children’s intertextual connections (Oyler & Barry, 1996). Finally, storybook reading style can vary (Dickinson & Keebler, 1989), with Martinez and Teale (1993) suggesting that it does so along three axes: focus of teacher talk, information shared during reading, and strategies used by the teacher.

Discussion is probably the single most frequent venue for children to respond to what they are reading and hearing. Discussion is an excellent activity for helping students construct meaning (Eeds & Wells, 1989), but recent research has underscored the importance of the structure of those discussions. It is clear that students who are left to wander into discussion unaided, untrained, and unarmed might as well sit alone and ponder the meaning of their text (Wollman-Bonilla, 1994). How discussions of reading are structured depends on who, what, and why: who controls the discussion, what type of book is being discussed, and why is discussion an engaging social interaction for the students.

How discussions are structured reflects the beliefs and practices of the classroom teacher. How a teacher views a children’s book and the activities that surround it is not necessarily how the students view the same. Teachers, however, seem generally enthusiastic about incorporating children’s literature into their curriculum (Lehman, Freeman, & Allen, 1994; Scharer, Freeman, Lehman, & Allen, 1993). Unfortunately, most do so by using literature to teach a skill in reading, writing, science, social studies, or other curricular area; rarely do teachers explore the literature itself as a work of art (Allen, Freeman, Lehman, & Scharer, 1995; Johnston, Guice, Baker, Malone, & Michelson, 1995).

Recent research on contexts that support children’s engagement with literature points to the complexity of examining those contexts. What is read, how it is read, whether and how it is discussed, and the teacher’s beliefs about reading, learning, and literature all influence the experience of a child with a text.

Where Do We Go From Here?

We began this summary with a description of the multidisciplinary nature of children’s literature as a field of study and of research in children’s literature as encompassing a diverse set of methodologies and theoretical perspectives. As interest in children’s literature has grown, the scope of research in children’s literature has enlarged as well; it now is an integral part of many reading programs and, as such, has become enmeshed in the greater body of reading research. The ubiquity of children’s literature is at once its strength and its weakness. Literature is present in many studies of literature-based classrooms or of reading comprehension, but it is often not attended to. Comprehension is of text rather than particular text; literature-based instruction is seen as a set of generic strategies rather than related to particular readers and particular texts. Literature is present, but often treated as invisible.

Yet it is those studies that explore particular readers and particular texts in particular contexts that are most exciting and enlightening. Whether a textual analysis, a study of response, or a study of literary instruction, research that explores the complexities of children reading books is the research that informs us. We need more studies that are grounded in theory, whether it be sociocultural, transactional, narrative, or critical, and that use articulated strategies for a close and careful analysis. We need more studies that cross the boundaries among us, that allow us to speak to one another across schools of library science, colleges of education, and departments of English. Today we have many ways of looking at the complex issues that surround children’s literature. Scholarship can benefit from hearing from multiple, informed voices.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Latin literature, the body of written works in the Latin language, remains an enduring legacy of the culture of ancient Rome. The Romans produced many works of poetry, comedy, tragedy, satire, history, and rhetoric, drawing heavily on the traditions of other cultures and particularly on the more matured literary tradition of Greece. Long after the Western Roman Empire had fallen, the Latin language continued to play a central role in western European civilization.

Latin literature is conventionally divided into distinct periods. Few works remain of Early and Old Latin; among these few surviving works, however, are the plays of Plautus and Terence, which have remained very popular in all eras down to the present, while many other Latin works, including many by the most prominent authors of the Classical period, have disappeared, sometimes being re-discovered after centuries, sometimes not. Such lost works sometimes survive as fragments in other works which have survived, but others are known from references in such works as Pliny the Elder‘s Naturalis Historia or the De Architectura of Vitruvius.

It was probably only after the invention of printing, which made books and pamphlets cheap enough that a mass public could afford them, and which made possible modern phenomena such as the newspaper, that a large number of people in the West could read and write who were not fluent in Latin. Still, many people continued to write in Latin, although they were mostly from the upper classes and/or professional academics. As late as the 17th century, there was still a large audience for Latin poetry and drama; it was not unusual, for example, that Milton wrote many poems in Latin, or that Francis Bacon or Baruch Spinoza wrote mostly in Latin. The use of Latin as a lingua franca continued in smaller European lands until the 20th century.

Although the number of works of non-fiction and drama, history and philosophy written in Latin has continued to dwindle, the Latin language is still not dead. Well into the twentieth century, some knowledge of Latin was required for admission into many universities, and theses and dissertations written for graduate degrees were often required to be written in Latin. Treatises in chemistry and biology and other natural sciences were often written in Latin as late as the early 20th century. Up to the present day, the editors of Latin and Greek texts in such series as the Oxford Classical Texts, the Bibliotheca scriptorum Graecorum et Romanorum Teubneriana and some others still write the introductions to their editions in polished and vital Latin. Among these Latin scholars of the 20th and 21st centuries are R A B Mynors, R J Tarrant, L D Reynolds and John Brisco.

From Citizendium, the Citizens’ Compendium

// The study of literature

In its modern descriptive sense, literature denotes written texts; by extension scholars have also applied the term to spoken or sung texts (“oral literature“), writings in particular subject areas (“medical literature“), other collections of material in a given language or national tradition (“English literature“), visual texts such as video and illustration, and published ephemera (“campaign literature”). It is often divided into historical periods (“Victorian literature“) as well as into formal categories (prose, poetry, or drama) and genres (such as the epic, the novel, or the folktale).

In its more traditional prescriptive sense (that of the 1911 Britannica), literature connotes a particular quality found in the written culture of humane learning, the profession of “letters” (from Latin litteras), and written texts considered as aesthetic and expressive objects. In that sense, the art of “literature” differs from the science of “language,” as studied by theoretical linguists and cognitive psychologists such as Steven Pinker.

Literature as a subject worthy of academic study was first identified in the nineteenth century. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) traces the English word itself back to the 1200s (when it described familiarity with classical learning); not until the early 1800s was it used in the more modern sense. Classical authors of ancient Greece and Rome generally never recognized the study of “literature” as a discipline per se; rather, they looked at forms such as drama, history, poetry, philosophy, and mythology on their own terms, or in terms of various schools of philosophical or religious thought. With the revival of advanced learning in late medieval and Renaissance Europe, though, the focus of study became classical literature itself—the sense first recorded by the OED; a person of “letters” was one who knew the classical traditions, and could read the classics. Only after literature in modern vernaculars became too significant to ignore did the current sense of the word develop.

European universities long resisted according writers working in English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, and other vernacular languages the same status in their curricula as that given to writers of classical Latin and Greek. Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare, and their contemporaries were always conscious of the perceived inferiority of their native language, even as they rivaled and surpassed the literary achievements of their classical precursors. As scientific learning began to supplant classical learning in the early nineteenth century, universities added philology (the predecessor of modern linguistics) as a discipline, but that field focused more on the historical relationships between languages than on their literature.

In the United Kingdom, for example, the first institutions to offer instruction in literature were not the elite universities such as Oxford and Cambridge, but those geared toward students seeking to move up in the world, such as the London Working Men’s College (founded in 1854). There, much to their surprise, sons of London bricklayers and artisans encountered teachers such as F.J. Furnivall, an early editor of the OED, who opened his classes with the dramatic announcement that he was about to return a national literature to its citizens, and then commenced reading aloud in Middle English from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. At the London Society for the Extension of University Teaching, J.C. Collins stressed the influence of classics on English literature, shifting studies of the language away from philology and toward the present-day discipline of comparative literature^[1]. In the United States, the study of literature was introduced at normal schools (schools for the preparation of teachers, mostly women at that time), and subsequently at land grant universities, where English literature was given the place assigned at older universities to reading in Latin and Greek.

The Persian Language

The Old Persian of the Achaemenian Empire, preserved in a number of cuneiform inscriptions, was an Indo-European tongue with close affinities with Sanskrit and Avestan (the language of the Zoroastrian sacred texts).  After the fall of the Achaemenians the ancient tongue developed, in the province of Pars, into Middle Persian or Pahlavi (a name derived from Parthavi – that is, Parthian).  Pahlavi was used throughout the Sassanian period, though little now remains of what must once have been a considerable literature.  About a hundred Pahlavi texts survive, mostly on religion and all in prose.  Pahlavi collections of romances, however, provided much of the material for Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh.

After the Arab conquest a knowledge of Arabic became necessary, for it was not only the language of the new rulers and their state, but of the religion they brought with them and – later – of the new learning.  Though Pahlavi continued to be spoken in private life, Arabic was dominant in official circles for a century and a half.  With the weakening of the central power, a modified form of Pahlavi emerged, with its Indo-European grammatical structure intact but simplified, and with a large infusion of Arabic words.  This was the Modem Persian in use today.

Arabic continued to be employed in Iran, though on a decreasing scale, as Latin was used in Europe -that is, as a language of the learned.  As such it was employed by Avicenna, al-Biruni, Rhazes, Al Ghazali and others; indeed, many of the most famous names in Arabic literature are those of men of Persian birth.  But in general the use of Arabic declined; Persian developed rapidly to become the vehicle of a great literature, and before, long spread its influence to neighboring lands.  In India, Persian language and poetry became the vogue with the ruling classes, and at the court of the Moghul emperor Akbar Persian was adopted as the official language; spreading thence and fusing later with Hindi, it gave rise to the Urdu tongue.  To the west of Iran, Persian heavily influenced the language and literature of Turkey; Turkish verse was based on Persian models as regards form and style, and borrowed an extensive vocabulary.

A notable feature of Persian is the small extent to which it has changed over the thousand years or more of its existence as a literary language.  Thus the poems of Rudaki, the first Persian poet of note, who died in the year 940 A.D., are perfectly intelligible to the modem reader.  Persian literature too has a number of noteworthy characteristics, the most striking of which is the exceptional prominence of poetry.  Until quite recently there was practically no drama, and no novels were written; prose works were mostly confined to history, geography, philosophy, religion, ethics and politics, and it was poetry that formed the chief outlet for artistic expression.  Classical Persian literature was produced almost entirely under royal patronage whence the frequency of panegyric verse.  An influence of at least equal strength was religion, and in particular Sufism, which inspired the remarkably high proportion of mystical poetry.

Persian Poetry

Classical Persian poetry is always rhymed.  The principal verse forms are the qasida, masnavi, ghazal and ruba’i.  The qasida or ode is a long poem in monorhyme, usually of a panegyric, didactic or religious nature; the masnavi, written in rhyming couplets, is employed for heroic, romantic, or narrative verse; the ghazal (ode or lyric) is a comparatively short poem, usually amorous or mystical and varying from four to sixteen couplets, all on one rhyme.  A convention of the ghazal is the introduction, in the last couplet, of the poet’s pen name (takhallus).  The ruba’i is a quatrain with a particular metre, and a collection of quatrains is called “ruba’iyyat” (the plural of ruba’i).  Finally, a collection of a poet’s ghazals and other verse, arranged alphabetically according to the rhymes, is known as a divan.

A word may not be out of place here on the peculiar difficulties of interpreting Persian poetry to the western reader.  To the pitfalls common to all translations from verse must be added, in the case of Persian poetry, such special difficulties as the very free use of Sufi imagery, the frequent literary, Koranic and other references and allusions, and the general employment of monorhyme, a form highly effective in Persian but unsuited to most other languages.  But most important of all is the fact that the poetry of Persia depends to a greater degree than that of most other nations on beauty of language for its effects.  This is why much of the great volume of “qasidas in praise of princes” can still be read with pleasure in the original, though It is largely unsuited to translation.  In short, the greatest charm of Persian poetry lies, as Sir E. Denison Ross remarked, in its language and its music, and consequently the reader of a translation “has perforce to forego the essence of the matter”.

In the following brief sketch of the vast field of Persian literature we cannot hope to do more than mention a few of the most eminent authors, and to devote a paragraph or two each to the most famous of all.

Early Literature

Though existing fragments of Persian verse are believed to date from as early as the eighth century A.D., the history of Persian literature proper  begins with the lesser dynasties of the ninth and tenth centuries that emerged with the decline of the Caliphate.  The most important of these were the Samanids, who established at Bokhara the first of many brilliant courts that were to patronize learning and letters.  Here Abu Ali Sina, better known in the west as Avicenna, developed the medicine and philosophy of ancient Greece, and wrote numerous works that were to exercise considerable influence not only in the East but in Europe -where, translated into Latin, they were in use as late as the seventeenth century.  Avicenna wrote mostly in Arabic, but composed an encyclopaedia — the Danish Nameh-ye Ala’i – in Persian.

The most famous of the court poets were Rudaki and Daqiqi.  Rudaki, generally regarded as the first of the great Persian poets, wrote a very large quantity of verse, of which but little has survived.  His style direct, simple and unadorned – was to appear unpolished to some of the over-elaborate versifiers of later ages, but appeals more to modem tastes.  Daqiqi, a composer of epics, was commissioned to write a work on the ancient kings of Persia, but only completed a thousand couplets before his death.  Some of these were later incorporated in the celebrated Shahnameh.

The Ghaznavid and early Seljuq Periods

It is said that four hundred poets were attached to the court of Sultan Mahmoud; of these, the most notable were Unsuri, the greatest of Mahmoud’s panegyrists, followed by Farrukhi, Manouchehri and Asadi.  Of the prose writers, the most celebrated was Biruni, author of the “Chronology of Ancient Nations”, who wrote exclusively in Arabic.

The Seljuq era, regarded as the second classical period of Persian literature, is one rich both in prose and poetry.  Famous prose works include Ghazali’s influential Revivification of the Religious Sciences in Arabic and its Persian summary entitled Kimiya-ye Sa’adat (The Alchemy of Happiness); Baihaqi’s History of the Ghaznavids: the Siasat Nameh, a treatise on the art of government by Nizam ul-Mulk, vizier to Alp Arslan and Malik Shah; the entertaining Qabus Nameh of Kai Ka’us, translated by Professor Levy as “A Mirror for Princes”; the collection of animal fables of Indian origin entitled Kalila va Dimna by Nasr Ullah; the charming Chahar Maqala or Four Discourses of Nizami Aruzi; the Fars Nameh of Ibn al-Balkhi, and the noted treatise on poetics of Rashid-i Vatvat.  Four of the above works – the Chahar Maqala, the History of Baihaqi, the Qabus Nameh and the Siasat Nameh – are considered by the poet Bahar as the four great masterpieces of early Persian prose.

A number of authors of this period wrote both prose and poetry.  One of the most brilliant of these was Nasir-i Khosrow, writer of some fifteen works in prose and 30,000 verses, of which less than half have survived.  His best known prose work is the Safar Nameh, an account of his journey to Egypt.  Most of Nasir-i Khosrow’s poems are lengthy odes, mainly on religious and ethical subjects; they are noted for their purity of language and dazzling technical skill.  In the opinion of the scholar Mirza Mohammad Qazvini, the name of Nasir-i Khosrow should be added to those of the six poets – Ferdowsi, Khayyam, Anvari, Rumi, Saadi, and Hafez – whom “practically all” agree to consider the six greatest Persian poets, each in his special field.  Other famous poetry of the period includes the work of the mystics Ansari, Abu Sa’id and Baba Tahir of Hamadan; the odes of Qatran; Gurgani’s romantic epic Vis o Ramin, and the Divans of the two Indian-born poets Mas’ud-i Sa’d-i Salman and Runi.  Seven other poets of the period are of outstanding fame and brilliance; these are Khayyam, Sana’i, Mu’izzi, Anvari, Khaqani, Nizami and Attar.

The versatile Khayyam – “the only man known to me”, says Bertrand Russell, “who was both a poet and a mathematician” – is still perhaps the best known and most appreciated Persian poet in Europe and America.  There was for long considerable skepticism as to whether he was in fact the author of all or any of the quatrains attributed to him, but the discovery recently of manuscripts more ancient than any of those previously known has removed these doubts.

Khayyam’s poetry was largely neglected in Iran until the end of the nineteenth century, mainly no doubt owing to the censure of orthodoxy.  When Fitzgerald’s translation made him suddenly popular in the west the Iranians began to reassess his merits as a poet, and as we have seen, some native critics are now ready to accord him a place in the poetic Pantheon.  Since he uses imagery common to the Sufis, Khayyam has often been hailed as a Sufi himself; but while some of his quatrains can be made to bear a mystical interpretation, the general impression of his work is one of hedonism tinged with a gentle melancholy, born of acceptance of the tragic transience of life, the power of destiny and man’s ultimate ignorance.  The attitude is that of a materialist rather than a deist; indeed, he has with some justice been compared to Lucretius.

Sana’i, who wrote in a style similar to that of Nasir-i Khosrow, was the author of two great Sufi epics, the prototypes of the later masterpieces of Attar and Rumi, as well as of a huge divan.  Mu’izzi, hailed by ‘Abbas Ighbal as “one of the artistic virtuosi of the Persian language”, wrote mainly panegyric verse in a highly elaborate style.  Anvari, author of numerous poetical works, mostly panegyric, wrote in a difficult style, sometimes requiring a commentary; he is regarded by some as one of the greatest Persian poets.  The poetry of Khaqani is even more mannered.  The last three poets mentioned – Mu’izzi, Anvari and Khaqani – are all famous in Iran, mainly for their technical brilliance; but, being particularly difficult to translate, they are less appreciated in the west.  This is not the case with the next two poets to be mentioned.

Nizami, born at Ganja in the Caucasus in 1140, was a prolific writer famous especially for his Khamseh or Quintet, a series of five great romances and epics.  These consist of the Makhzan al-Asrar or Treasure House of Secrets, a mystical epic inspired by Sana’i; the popular romances Khosrow o Shirin and Laila o Majnun; the Iskandar Nameh or Story of Alexander, and the Haft Paikar, the life story of Bahrain Gur.  Nizami’s style is original and, colorful; his works enjoyed great popularity, and episodes from his romantic poems were favorite subjects for miniature painters.

Farid ud-Din Attar, who was born possibly around 1136, was a great and an original poet who produced numerous religious and didactic works.  He was essentially a mystic, and as such exercised a great influence on Rumi.  The best known of his works, the Mantiq ut-Tair (translated by Fitzgerald as the Bird Parliament) , is a mystical allegory in which the birds all set off in search of the mythical Simorgh, whom they wish to make their king.  The story, which symbolizes the quest of the soul for union with God, ends with their discovery that they have no existence separate from the object of their search.

The Simorgh then addresses them thus:

Pilgrim, Pilgrimage and Road
Was but Myself toward Mvself, and Your
Arrival but Myself at my own Door…..
Come, you lost Atoms, to your Center draw
And be the Eternal Mirror that you saw:
Rays that have wandered into Darkness wide
Return, and back into your Sun subside.

The Thirteenth Century

The Thirteenth century produced two poetic geniuses of the first rank, Sa’adi and Rumi.  It is also particularly notable for histories, of which many were inspired by these singularly troubled times.  Hamdullah Mostofi produced notable works both of history and geography, as well as an epic, the Zafar Nameh or Book of Victory, in 75,000 couplets, and Nasir ud-Din Tusi wrote on philosophy and logic.  Three notable poets of the period are Iraqi, author of the mystical Lama’at or Flashes; Amir Khosrow, known as “The Parrot of India” and author of no less than five divans, and Zakani the satirist.

Foremost in the ranks of historical works are Juvaini’s Tarikh-i Jahan Gusha, an account of the Mongol conquests; the history of Juzjani, an important source book for the history of Moslem India; Rashid ud-Din’s great Jami’ ut-Tawarikh or Universal History, and the History of Vassaf.  The style of the period tended to over-ornateness; Juvaini, according to Arberry, was “the most accomplished exponent of the prized art of verbal arabesque”, while Vassaf  “modeled his style on Juvaini at his most intricate and verbose.” Of the writings of this school Levy remarks that it was “so filled with metaphor, allusion, and assonance, that the meaning was often lost in a tangle of verbiage”.  By contrast, the work of the conscientious Rashid ud-Din, considered by Browne to be the best of all the Persian historians, is a model of clarity.

The Fifteenth Century onwards

The fifteenth century produced a number of notable historians – Nizam ud-Din Shami, author of the Zafar Nameh (a history of Timur); Yazdi, who wrote a work of the same name; Hafiz-i Abru, Khafi, Dowlatshah and Mir Khand, author of the immense Rozat as-Safa or Garden of Purity.  Other prose writers of note , include Davvani, author of the Akhlaq-i Jalali, and Kashefi, who produced an elaborate prose paraphrase of Kalila va Dimna known as Anvar-i Suhaili (The Lights of Canopus).  Fifteenth century poets include the Sufis Maghribi and Qasim-i Anvar, Katibi,  the saintly Ni’mat Allah Vali, and Jami.

Jami, “universally regarded as the last eminent figure in the history of classical Persian literature” (Arberry) was born in 1414.  A man of considerable erudition as well as of poetic genius, Jami produced some forty-five works, of which the best known are the Baharistan, the Divan, and the Haft Aurang or Seven Thrones, a series of four didactic works and three romances (Salaman o Absal, Yusuf o Zulaikha and Laila o Majnun) which he intended to rival the work of Nizami.

After Jami, who died shortly before the rise of the Safavis, Persian poetry is generally considered to have fallen into decline.  There were indeed no poets of the very first rank after the fifteenth century, yet in this long period there was no lack of writers and poets of talent, some of them of great eminence.

Of the poets immediately following Jami, his nephew Hatif was a noted writer of romantic and historical epics; also famous were his pupils Asafi, Fighani (who earned himself the title of “The Little Hafiz”), Ahli and the Sufi poet Hilali.  Later in the sixteenth century came the poets Hayrati, Kasimi, Kashi the panegyrist, Shani, Fasihi and Shafai.

Sa’ib (born 1677), the greatest literary figure of the seventeenth century, is considered by some to be the best Persian poet after Jami.  In early life he spent some time in India as court poet to the Moghul emperor Shah Jahan, and returned to Iran to become poet laureate to Shah Abbas II.  Sa’ib was a vivid and original poet who infused fresh life into the old forms and founded a new school.  Also of note was his contemporary Fayyaz.  A famous prose writer of the eighteenth century was Azar, author of the Atesh Kadeh (a biographical dictionary containing the lives of over 800 poets) as well as of a divan and a romantic epic.  The prolific writer Hazin produced histories and an autobiography, as well as four divans.  Also worthy of note is the poet Nejat.

In the nineteenth century Saba, poet laureate to Fath Ali Shah, composed a divan and an epic called the Shahanshahnameh; as a poet he was excelled by Neshat, also author of a divan.  Qa’ani (died 1853), the best writer of the nineteenth century and perhaps the most outstanding since Jami, was one of Iran’s most brilliant and melodious poets.  Well known prose works of the period include Nasir ud-Din Shah’s diaries of his three journeys to Europe and the literary biographies of the poet Reza Quli Khan. This period was marked by the increasing influence of European literature, noticeable in the works of the poet Shaybani and others.

The real revival of Persian letters came in the early twentieth century, when the growing desire for reform inspired numerous satires.  One of the most outstanding figures of this period was Iraj Mirza (died 1926), a poet of great talent and champion of the emancipation of women.  Other noted poets were Adib, Bahar, Lahuti, Shahryar, Aref and the poetess Parvin E’tesami.  Poets of more recent decades include Nima, Ra’di, Khanlari, Islami, Gulchin, Shamlu, Akhavan Salis, Mas’ud Farzad and the poetess Foroogh Farrukhzad., Some of these poets have introduced verse forms new to Persian literature.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Literature is the art of written works. Literally translated, the word means “acquaintance with letters” (from Latin littera letter), and therefore the academic study of literature is known as Letters (as in the phrase “Arts and Letters”). In Western culture the most basic written literary types include fiction and nonfiction.

// Definitions

People may perceive a difference between “literature” and some popular forms of written work. The terms “literary fiction” and “literary merit” often serve to distinguish between individual works. Critics may exclude works from the classification “literature,” for example, on the grounds of a poor standard of grammar and syntax, of an unbelievable or disjointed story-line, or of inconsistent or unconvincing characters. Genre fiction (for example: romance, crime, or science fiction) may also become excluded from consideration as “literature.”

History

One of the earliest known literary works is the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh, an epic poem dated around 2100 B.C., which deals with themes of heroism, friendship, loss, and the quest for eternal life. Different historical periods have emphasized various characteristics of literature. Early works often had an overt or covert religious or didactic purpose. Moralizing or prescriptive literature stems from such sources. The exotic nature of romance flourished from the Middle Ages onwards, whereas the Age of Reason manufactured nationalistic epics and philosophical tracts. Romanticism emphasized the popular folk literature and emotive involvement, but gave way in the 19th-century West to a phase of realism and naturalism, investigations into what is real. The 20th century brought demands for symbolism or psychological insight in the delineation and development of character.

Poetry

A poem is a composition written in verse (although verse has been equally used for epic and dramatic fiction). Poems rely heavily on imagery, precise word choice, and metaphor; they may take the form of measures consisting of patterns of stresses (metric feet) or of patterns of different-length syllables (as in classical prosody); and they may or may not utilize rhyme. One cannot readily characterize poetry precisely. Typically though, poetry as a form of literature makes some significant use of the formal properties of the words it uses – the properties of the written or spoken form of the words, independent of their meaning. Meter depends on syllables and on rhythms of speech; rhyme and alliteration depend on the sounds of words.

Poetry perhaps pre-dates other forms of literature: early known examples include the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh (dated from around 2700 B.C.), parts of the Bible, the surviving works of Homer (the Iliad and the Odyssey), and the Indian epics Ramayana and Mahabharata. In cultures based primarily on oral traditions the formal characteristics of poetry often have a mnemonic function, and important texts: legal, genealogical or moral, for example, may appear first in verse form.

Some poetry uses specific forms: the haiku, the limerick, or the sonnet, for example. A traditional haiku written in Japanese must have something to do with nature, contain seventeen onji (syllables), distributed over three lines in groups of five, seven, and five, and should also have a kigo, a specific word indicating a season. A limerick has five lines, with a rhyme scheme of AABBA, and line lengths of 3,3,2,2,3 stressed syllables. It traditionally has a less reverent attitude towards nature. Poetry not adhering to a formal poetic structure is called “free verse“

Language and tradition dictate some poetic norms: Persian poetry always rhymes, Greek poetry rarely rhymes, Italian or French poetry often does, English and German poetry can go either way. Perhaps the most paradigmatic style of English poetry, blank verse, as exemplified in works by Shakespeare and Milton, consists of unrhymed iambic pentameters. Some languages prefer longer lines; some shorter ones. Some of these conventions result from the ease of fitting a specific language’s vocabulary and grammar into certain structures, rather than into others; for example, some languages contain more rhyming words than others, or typically have longer words. Other structural conventions come about as the result of historical accidents, where many speakers of a language associate good poetry with a verse form preferred by a particular skilled or popular poet.

Works for theatre (see below) traditionally took verse form. This has now become rare outside opera and musicals, although many would argue that the language of drama remains intrinsically poetic.

In recent years, digital poetry has arisen that takes advantage of the artistic, publishing, and synthetic qualities of digital media.

Prose

Prose consists of writing that does not adhere to any particular formal structures (other than simple grammar); “non-poetic” writing, perhaps. The term sometimes appears pejoratively, but prosaic writing simply says something without necessarily trying to say it in a beautiful way, or using beautiful words. Prose writing can of course take beautiful form; but less by virtue of the formal features of words (rhymes, alliteration, metre) but rather by style, placement, or inclusion of graphics. But one need not mark the distinction precisely, and perhaps cannot do so. One area of overlap is “prose poetry“, which attempts to convey using only prose, the aesthetic richness typical of poetry.

Essays

An essay consists of a discussion of a topic from an author’s personal point of view, exemplified by works by Michel de Montaigne or by Charles Lamb.

‘Essay’ in English derives from the French ‘essai’, meaning ‘attempt’. Thus one can find open-ended, provocative and/or inconclusive essays. The term “essays” first applied to the self-reflective musings of Michel de Montaigne, and even today he has a reputation as the father of this literary form.

Genres related to the essay may include:

• the memoir, telling the story of an author’s life from the author’s personal point of view
• the epistle: usually a formal, didactic, or elegant letter.

Fiction

Narrative fiction (narrative prose) generally favours prose for the writing of novels, short stories, graphic novels, and the like. Singular examples of these exist throughout history, but they did not develop into systematic and discrete literary forms until relatively recent centuries. Length often serves to categorize works of prose fiction. Although limits remain somewhat arbitrary, modern publishing conventions dictate the following:

• A mini saga is a short story of about 50 words or less.
• Flash fiction is generally defined as a piece of prose under a thousand words.
• A short story is prose of between 1000 and 20,000 words (but typically more than 5000 words), which may or may not have a narrative arc.
• A story containing between 20,000 and 50,000 words falls into the novella category. Although this definition is very fluid, with works up to 70,000 words or more being included as novelle.
• A work of fiction containing more than 50,000 words generally falls into the realm of the novel.

A novel consists simply of a long story written in prose, yet the form developed comparatively recently. Icelandic prose sagas dating from about the 11th century bridge the gap between traditional national verse epics and the modern psychological novel. In mainland Europe, the SpaniardCervantes wrote perhaps the first influential novel: Don Quixote, the first part of which was published in 1605 and the second in 1615. Earlier collections of tales, such as the One Thousand and One Nights, Giovanni Bocaccio‘s Decameron and Chaucer‘s The Canterbury Tales, have comparable forms and would classify as novels if written today. Other works written in classical Asian and Arabic literature resemble even more strongly the novel as we now think of it—for example, works such as the Japanese Tale of Genji by Lady Murasaki, the Arabic Hayy ibn Yaqdhan by Ibn Tufail, the Arabic Theologus Autodidactus by Ibn al-Nafis, and the Chinese Romance of the Three Kingdoms by Luo Guanzhong.

Early novels in Europe did not, at the time, count as significant literature, perhaps because “mere” prose writing seemed easy and unimportant. It has become clear, however, that prose writing can provide aesthetic pleasure without adhering to poetic forms. Additionally, the freedom authors gain in not having to concern themselves with verse structure translates often into a more complex plot or into one richer in precise detail than one typically finds even in narrative poetry. This freedom also allows an author to experiment with many different literary and presentation styles—including poetry—in the scope of a single novel.

Other prose literature

Philosophy, history, journalism, and legal and scientific writings traditionally ranked as literature. They offer some of the oldest prose writings in existence; novels and prose stories earned the names “fiction” to distinguish them from factual writing or nonfiction, which writers historically have crafted in prose.

The “literary” nature of science writing has become less pronounced over the last two centuries, as advances and specialization have made new scientific research inaccessible to most audiences; science now appears mostly in journals. Scientific works of Euclid, Aristotle, Copernicus, and Newton still possess great value; but since the science in them has largely become outdated, they no longer serve for scientific instruction, yet they remain too technical to sit well in most programmes of literary study. Outside of “history of science” programmes students rarely read such works. Many books “popularizing” science might still deserve the title “literature”; history will tell.

Philosophy, too, has become an increasingly academic discipline. More of its practitioners lament this situation than occurs with the sciences; nonetheless most new philosophical work appears in academic journals. Major philosophers through history—Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Descartes, Nietzsche—have become as canonical as any writers. Some recent philosophy works are argued to merit the title “literature”, such as some of the works by Simon Blackburn; but much of it does not, and some areas, such as logic, have become extremely technical to a degree similar to that of mathematics.

A great deal of historical writing can still rank as literature, particularly the genre known as creative nonfiction. So can a great deal of journalism, such as literary journalism. However these areas have become extremely large, and often have a primarily utilitarian purpose: to record data or convey immediate information. As a result the writing in these fields often lacks a literary quality, although it often and in its better moments has that quality. Major “literary” historians include Herodotus, Thucydides and Procopius, all of whom count as canonical literary figures.

Law offers a less clear case. Some writings of Plato and Aristotle, or even the early parts of the Bible, might count as legal literature. The law tables of Hammurabi of Babylon might count. Roman civil law as codified in the Corpus Juris Civilis during the reign of Justinian I of the Byzantine EmpireUnited States Constitution, can count as literature; however legal writing now rarely exhibits literary merit. has a reputation as significant literature. The founding documents of many countries, including the

Game design scripts are never seen by the player of a game and only by the developers and/or publishers to help them understand, visualize and maintain consistency while collaborating in creating a game, the audience for these pieces is usually very small. Still, many game scripts contain immersive stories and detailed worlds making them a hidden literary genre.

Most of these fields, then, through specialization or proliferation, no longer generally constitute “literature” in the sense under discussion. They may sometimes count as “literary literature”; more often they produce what one might call “technical literature” or “professional literature”.

Drama

A play or drama offers another classical literary form that has continued to evolve over the years. It generally comprises chiefly dialogue between characters, and usually aims at dramatic / theatrical performance (see theatre) rather than at reading. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, opera developed as a combination of poetry, drama, and music. Nearly all drama took verse form until comparatively recently. Shakespeare could be considered drama. Romeo and Juliet, for example, is a classic romantic drama generally accepted as literature.

Greek drama exemplifies the earliest form of drama of which we have substantial knowledge. Tragedy, as a dramatic genre, developed as a performance associated with religious and civic festivals, typically enacting or developing upon well-known historical or mythological themes. Tragedies generally presented very serious themes. With the advent of newer technologies, scripts written for non-stage media have been added to this form. War of the Worlds (radio) in 1938 saw the advent of literature written for radio broadcast, and many works of Drama have been adapted for film or television. Conversely, television, film, and radio literature have been adapted to printed or electronic media.

Oral literature

The term oral literature refers not to written, but to oral traditions, which includes different types of epic, poetry and drama, folktales, ballads, legends, jokes, and other genres of folklore. It exists in every society, whether literate or not. It is generally studied by folklorists, or by scholars committed to cultural studies and ethnopoetics, including linguists, anthropologists, and even sociologists.

Other narrative forms

• Electronic literature is a literary genre consisting of works which originate in digital environments.
• Films, videos and broadcast soap operas have carved out a niche which often parallels the functionality of prose fiction.
• Graphic novels and comic books present stories told in a combination of sequential artwork, dialogue and text.

Literary techniques

Main article: Literary technique

A literary technique or literary device can be used by works of literature in order to produce a specific effect on the reader. Literary technique is distinguished from literary genre as military tactics are from military strategy. Thus, though David Copperfield employs satire at certain moments, it belongs to the genre of comic novel, not that of satire. By contrast, Bleak House employs satire so consistently as to belong to the genre of satirical novel. In this way, use of a technique can lead to the development of a new genre, as was the case with one of the first modern novels, Pamela by Samuel Richardson, which by using the epistolary technique strengthened the tradition of the epistolary novel, a genre which had been practiced for some time already but without the same acclaim.

Literary criticism

Also see: Literary criticism, Literary history, Literary theory

Literary criticism implies a critique and evaluation of a piece of literature and in some cases is used to improve a work in progress or classical piece. There are many types of literary criticism and each can be used to critique a piece in a different way or critique a different aspect of a piece.