Book Trivia | 100 random trivia & facts about literature [Part 2]

They say that a book is the best gift that you can give to anyone. They are right. Because, through a book, you can open up your mind to new ideas and possibilities.

Now, that we find out some things about the difference of literature and writing. Let’s dive deeper into the history of literature.

In many respects, the writers of the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire chose to avoid innovation in favor of imitating the great Greek authors
Virgil’s Aeneid, in many ways, emulated Homer’s Iliad
Plautus, a comic playwright, followed in the footsteps of Aristophanes
Tacitus’ Annals and Germania follow essentially the same historical approaches that Thucydides devised
The Christian historian Eusebius does also, although far more influenced by his religion than either Tacitus or Thucydides had been by Greek and Roman polytheiso
Ovid and his Metamorphoses explore the same Greek myths again in new ways
It can be argued, and has been, that the Roman authors improved on the genres already established by their Greek predecessors
For example, Ovid’s Metamorphoses creates a form which is a clear predecessor of the stream of consciousness genre
What is undeniable is that the Romans, in comparison with the Greeks, innovate relatively few literary styles of their own
Satire is one of the few Roman additions to literature
Horace was the first to use satire extensively as a tool for argument
Juvenal made it into a weapon
Augustine of Hippo and his The City of God do for religious literature essentially what Plato had done for philosophy
Augustine’s approach was far less conversational and more didactive
His Confessions is perhaps the first true autobiography
This gave rise to the genre of confessional literature which is now more popular than ever
Knowledge traditions in India handed down philosophical gleanings and theological concepts through the two traditions of Shruti and Smriti
These two mean that which is learnt and that which is experienced
It also includes the Vedas
It is generally believed that the Puranas are the earliest philosophical writings in Indian history
Linguistic works on Sanskrit existed earlier than 1000 BC
Puranic works such as the Indian epics, Ramayana and Mahabharata, have influenced countless other works
These works include Balinese Kecak and other performances such as shadow puppetry and many European works
Pali literature has an important position in the rise of Buddhism
Classical Sanskrit literature flowers in the Maurya and Gupta periods, roughly spanning the 2nd century BC to the 8th century AD
After the fall of Rome, many of the literary approaches and styles invented by the Greeks and Romans fell out of favor in Europe
In the millennium or so that intervened between Rome’s fall and the Florentine Renaissance, medieval literature focused more and more on faith and faith-related matters
This was in part because the works written by the Greeks had not been preserved in Europe
Therefore there were few models of classical literature to learn from and move beyond
What little there was became changed and distorted, with new forms beginning to develop from the distortions
Some of these distorted beginnings of new styles can be seen in the literature generally described as Matter of Rome, Matter of France and Matter of Britain
In Europe, hagiographies, or “lives of the saints”, are frequent among early medieval texts
The writings of Bede and others continue the faith-based historical tradition begun by Eusebius in the early 4th century
Playwriting essentially ceased
Except for the mystery plays and the passion plays that focused heavily on conveying Christian belief to the common people
Around 400 AD the Prudenti Psychomachia began the tradition of allegorical tales
Poetry flourished, however, in the hands of the troubadours, whose courtly romances and chanson de geste amused and entertained the upper classes who were their patrons
Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote works which he claimed were histories of Britain
These were highly fanciful and included stories of Merlin the magician and King Arthur
Epic poetry continued to develop with the addition of the mythologies of Northern Europe
Beowulf and the Norse sagas have much in common with Homer and Virgil’s approaches to war and honor
While poems such as Dante’s Divine Comedy and Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales take much different stylistic directions
In November 1095, Pope Urban II preached the First Crusade at the Council of Clermont
The crusades would affect everything in Europe and the Middle East for many years to come and literature would, along with everything else, be transformed by the wars between these two cultures
For instance the image of the knight would take on a different significance
Also the Islamic emphasis on scientific investigation and the preservation of the Greek philosophical writings would eventually affect European literature
Between Augustine and The Bible, religious authors had numerous aspects of Christianity that needed further explication and interpretation
Thomas Aquinas, more than any other single person, was able to turn theology into a kind of science
He did that in part because he was heavily influenced by Aristotle
Aristotle’s works were returning to Europe in the 13th century
The most well known fiction from the Islamic world was The Book of One Thousand and One Nights (Arabian Nights)
This book was a compilation of many earlier folk tales told by the Persian Queen Scheherazade
The epic took form in the 10th century
It reached its final form by the 14th century
The number and type of tales have varied from one manuscript to another
All Arabian fantasy tales were often called “Arabian Nights” when translated into English
They were named this way regardless of whether they appeared in The Book of One Thousand and One Nights or not
This epic has been influential in the West since it was translated in the 18th century
It was translated first by Antoine Galland
Many imitations were written, especially in France
Various characters from this epic have themselves become cultural icons in Western culture
Some of them are Aladdin, Sinbad and Ali Baba
However, no medieval Arabic source has been traced for Aladdin
The character was incorporated into The Book of One Thousand and One Nights by its French translator, Antoine Galland
The translator claimed he heard it from an Arab Syrian Christian storyteller from Aleppo
The popularity of the work may in part be due to greater popular knowledge of history and geography since it was written
This meant that the plausibility of great marvels had to be set at a greater distance of time (“long ago”) and place (“far away”)
This is a process that continues, and finally culminates in fantasy fiction having little connection, if any, to actual times and places
A number of elements from Arabian mythology and Persian mythology are now common in modern fantasy
Some examples are genies, bahamuts, magic carpets, magic lamps and many more
When L. Frank Baum proposed writing a modern fairy tale that banished stereotypical elements he felt the genie, dwarf and fairy were stereotypes to avoid
A number of stories within the One Thousand and One Nights (Arabian Nights) also feature science fiction elements
One example is “The Adventures of Bulukiya”
In this story the protagonist Bulukiya’s quest for the herb of immortality leads him to explore the seas, journey to the Garden of Eden and to Jahannam, and travel across the cosmos to different worlds much larger than his own world, anticipating elements of galactic science fiction
In another Arabian Nights tale, the protagonist Abdullah the Fisherman gains the ability to breathe underwater and discovers an underwater submarine society that is portrayed as an inverted reflection of society on land, in that the underwater society follows a form of primitive communism where concepts like money and clothing do not exist
Other Arabian Nights tales deal with lost ancient technologies, advanced ancient civilizations that went astray, and catastrophes which overwhelmed them
“The City of Brass” features a group of travellers on an archaeological expedition across the Sahara to find an ancient lost city and attempt to recover a brass vessel that Solomon once used to trap a jinn and, along the way, encounter a mummified queen, petrified inhabitants, lifelike humanoid robots and automata, seductive marionettes dancing without strings, and a brass horseman robot who directs the party towards the ancient city
“The Ebony Horse” features a robot in the form of a flying mechanical horse controlled using keys that could fly into outer space and towards the Sun
The “Third Qalandar’s Tale” also features a robot in the form of an uncanny boatman
“The City of Brass” and “The Ebony Horse” can be considered early examples of proto-science fiction
Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy is considered the greatest epic of Italian literature
It derived many features of and episodes about the hereafter directly or indirectly from Arabic works on Islamic eschatology
These works where the Hadith and the Kitab al-Miraj
The latter was translated into Latin in 1264
The Moors also had a noticeable influence on the works of George Peele and William Shakespeare
Some of their works featured Moorish characters
Some of these characters are Peele’s The Battle of Alcazar and Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, Titus Andronicus and Othello
These works are said to have been inspired by several Moorish delegations from Morocco to Elizabethan England at the beginning of the 17th century
Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh, the national epic of Iran, is a mythical and heroic retelling of Persian history
It is the longest epic poem ever written
From Persian culture the book which would, eventually, become the most famous in the west is the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
The Rubáiyát is a collection of poems by the Persian mathematician and astronomer Omar Khayyám
“Rubaiyat” means “quatrains”
These are verses of four lines
Amir Arsalan was also a popular mythical Persian story
It has influenced some modern works of fantasy fiction, such as The Heroic Legend of Arslan
Examples of early Persian proto-science fiction include Al-Farabi’s Opinions of the residents of a splendid city about a utopian society, and elements such as the flying carpet
The two primary streams of Ottoman written literature are poetry and prose
Until the 19th century, Ottoman prose did not contain any examples of fiction
A large part of the reason for this was that much prose was expected to adhere to the rules of sec’, or rhymed prose, a type of writing descended from the Arabic saj’ and which prescribed that between each adjective and noun in a sentence, there must be a rhyme