Literature is a great way to escape from reality, to travel with your mind to different worlds and cultures. A book is the best escape for the mind.
So let’s dive into some trivia and facts about literature.
- Ibn Tufail and Ibn al-Nafis were pioneers of the philosophical novel
- Ibn Tufail wrote the first fictional Arabic novel Hayy ibn Yaqdhan as a response to al-Ghazali’s The Incoherence of the Philosophers
- Then Ibn al-Nafis also wrote a novel Theologus Autodidactus as a response to Ibn Tufail’s Philosophus Autodidactus
- Both of these narratives had protagonists who were autodidactic feral children living in seclusion on a desert island, both being the earliest examples of a desert island story
- These protagonists were Hayy in Philosophus Autodidactus and Kamil in Theologus Autodidactus
- Hayy lives alone with animals on the desert island for the rest of the story in Philosophus Autodidactus
- The story of Kamil extends beyond the desert island setting in Theologus Autodidactus
- It was the earliest known coming of age plot
- It eventually became the first example of a science fiction novel
- A Latin translation of Ibn Tufail’s work, Philosophus Autodidactus, first appeared in 1671, prepared by Edward Pococke the Younger
- It was followed by an English translation by Simon Ockley in 1708, as well as German and Dutch translations
- These translations later inspired Daniel Defoe to write Robinson Crusoe, a candidate for the title of “first novel in English”
- Philosophus Autodidactus also inspired Robert Boyle to write his own philosophical novel set on an island, The Aspiring Naturalist
- The story also anticipated Rousseau’s Emile: or, On Education in some ways
- It is also similar to Mowgli’s story in Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book as well as Tarzan’s story
- The similarities were in that a baby is abandoned but taken care of and fed by a mother wolf
- Among other innovations in Arabic literature was Ibn Khaldun’s perspective on chronicling past events
- By fully rejecting supernatural explanations, Khaldun essentially invented the scientific or sociological approach to history
- Lyric poetry advanced far more in China than in Europe prior to 1000, as multiple new forms developed in the Han, Tang, and Song dynasties
- The greatest poets of this era in Chinese literature were Li Bai and Du Fu
- Printing began in Tang Dynasty China
- A copy of the Diamond Sutra, a key Buddhist text, found sealed in a cave in China in the early 20th century
- It is the oldest known dated printed book, with a printed date of 868
- The method used was block printing
- The scientist, statesman, and general Shen Kuo was the author of the Dream Pool Essays (1088)
- This is a large book of scientific literature that included the oldest description of the magnetized compass
- During the Song Dynasty, there was also the enormous historical work of the Zizhi Tongjian
- His work was compiled into 294 volumes of 3 million written Chinese characters by the year 1084 AD
- The true vernacular novel was developed in China during the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644 AD)
- Some authors feel that China originated the novel form with the Romance of the Three Kingdoms by Luo Guanzhong (in the 14th century)
- Although others feel that this epic is distinct from the novel in key ways
- Fictional novels published during the Ming period include the Water Margin and the Journey to the West
- These two represent two of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature
- Classical Japanese literature generally refers to literature produced during the Heian Period
- By some it is considered a golden era of art and literature
- The Tale of Genji (early 11th century) by Murasaki Shikibu is considered the pre-eminent masterpiece of Heian fiction
- It is also an early example of a work of fiction in the form of a novel
- It is sometimes called the world’s first novel, the first modern novel, the first romance novel, or the first novel to still be considered a classic
- Other important works of this period include the Kokin Wakashū (905), a waka-poetry anthology, and The Pillow Book (990s) Sei Shōnagon
- He was Murasaki Shikibu’s contemporary and rival
- The Pillow Book is an essay about the life, loves, and pastimes of nobles in the Emperor’s court
- The iroha poem was also written during the early part of this period
- It is now one of two standard orderings for the Japanese syllabary
- The 10th-century Japanese narrative, The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, can be considered an early example of proto-science fiction
- The protagonist of the story, Kaguya-hime, is a princess from the Moon who is sent to Earth for safety during a celestial war, and is found and raised by a bamboo cutter in Japan
- She is later taken back to the Moon by her real extraterrestrial family
- A manuscript illustration depicts a disc-shaped flying object similar to a flying saucer
- In this time the imperial court patronized the poets, most of whom were courtiers or ladies-in-waiting
- Editing anthologies of poetry was a national pastime
- Reflecting the aristocratic atmosphere, the poetry was elegant and sophisticated and expressed emotions in a rhetorical style
- Had nothing occurred to change literature in the 15th century but the Renaissance, the break with medieval approaches would have been clear enough
- The 15th century, however, also brought Johann Gutenberg and his invention of the printing press
- It was an innovation that would change literature forever
- Texts were no longer precious and expensive to producethey could be cheaply and rapidly put into the marketplace
- Literacy went from the prized possession of the select few to a much broader section of the population
- As a result, much about literature in Europe was radically altered in the two centuries following Gutenberg’s unveiling of the printing press in 1455
- William Caxton was the first English printer and published English language texts including Le Morte d’Arthur and Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales
- It is a collection of oral tales of the Arthurian Knights which is a forerunner of the novel
- These are an indication of future directions in literature
- With the arrival of the printing press a process begins in which folk yarns and legends are collected within a frame story and then mass published
- In the Renaissance, the focus on learning for learning’s sake causes an outpouring of literature
- Petrarch popularized the sonnet as a poetic form
- Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron made romance acceptable in prose as well as poetry
- François Rabelais rejuvenates satire with Gargantua and Pantagruel
- Michel de Montaigne single-handedly invented the essay and used it to catalog his life and ideas
- Perhaps the most controversial and important work of the time period was a treatise printed in Nuremberg
- It was entitled De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium
- In it, the astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus removed the Earth from its privileged position in the universe
- It had far-reaching effects, not only in science, but in literature and its approach to humanity, hierarchy, and truth
- A new spirit of science and investigation in Europe was part of a general upheaval in human understanding which began with the European discovery of the New World in 1492
- It continues through the subsequent centuries, even up to the present day
- The form of writing now commonplace across the world, the novel, originated from the early modern period and grew in popularity in the next century
- Before the modern novel became established as a form there first had to be a transitional stage when “novelty” began to appear in the style of the epic poem
- Plays for entertainment (as opposed to religious enlightenment) returned to Europe’s stages in the early modern period
- William Shakespeare is the most notable of the early modern playwrights
- But numerous others made important contributions, including Molière, Pierre Corneille, Jean Racine, Pedro Calderón de la Barca, Lope de Vega, Christopher Marlowe, and Ben Jonson
- From the 16th to the 18th century Commedia dell’arte performers improvised in the streets of Italy and France
- Some Commedia dell’arte plays were written down
- Both the written plays and the improvisation were influential upon literature of the time
- Particularly upon the work of Molière
- Shakespeare drew upon the arts of jesters and strolling players in creating new style comedies
- All the parts, even the female ones, were played by men but that would change by the end of the 17th century
- It first changed in France and then in England
- The epic Elizabethan poem The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser was published, in its first part, in 1590 and then in completed form in 1597
- The Fairie Queen marks the transitional period in which “novelty” begins to enter into the narrative in the sense of overturning and playing with the flow of events
- Theatrical forms known in Spenser’s time such as the Masque and the Mummers’ Play are incorporated into the poem in ways which twist tradition
- It turn to political propaganda in the service of Queen Elizabeth I
- The earliest work considered an opera in the sense the work is usually understood dates from around 1597
- It is Dafne, written by Jacopo Peri for an elite circle of literate Florentine humanists who gathered as the “Camerata”
- 17th century is considered as the greatest era of Spanish and French literature where it is called Siglo de Oro and Grand Siècle respectively
- The most famous authors beside playwrights include Jean de La Fontaine and Charles Perrault known primarily for their fables
- Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote has been called “the first novel” by many literary scholars
- It is the first of the modern European novels
- It was published in two parts
- The first part was published in 1605 and the second in 1615
- It might be viewed as a parody of Le Morte d’Arthur
- In this case the novel form would be the direct result of poking fun at a collection of heroic folk legends
- This is fully in keeping with the spirit of the age of enlightenment which began from about this time and delighted in giving a satirical twist to the stories and ideas of the past
- It’s worth noting that this trend toward satirising previous writings was only made possible by the printing press
- Without the invention of mass-produced copies of a book it would not be possible to assume the reader will have seen the earlier work and will thus understand the references within the text
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