Types of Literature

Irish Literature

earlier in date than any other preserved Western European literature and featured primative, legendary and literary folklore; pre-1066 manuscripts - Book of the Dun Cow, Book of Leinster; authors - J.M. Synge, Jonathan Swift, Samuel Beckett, W.B. Yeats, George Russell, Sean O'Casey, Lady Gregory, Oscar Wilde, James Joyce, G.B. Shaw

Scottish Literature

1375 - 1st John Barbour's "Bruce" a national epic; authors - Adam Smith, David Hume, John Knox, Walter Scott, J. M. Barrie, Lord Byron, Hugh MacDiarmid, Robert Burns

Jewish-American Literature

began being studied 1935 - topics included what is "Jewishness" and recurrent problems of urban life; authors - Karl Shapiro, Allen Ginsburg, Arthur Miller, J.D. Salinger, Norman Mailer, Saul Bellow, Phillip Roth, Bernard Malamud

Early African-American Literature

began with slave poetry as in Jupiter Hammon and Phillis Wheatley, through Frederick Douglas - slave narrative, escaped slave William W. Brown - novelist in 1853 "Clotel or the President's Daughter"

African-American Poets

Paul Dunbar, Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Gwendolyn Brooks

African-American Novelists

Claude McKay, Zora Hurston, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker

African-American Playwrights

Langston Hughes, Lorraine Hansberry, Ossie Davis

Western Literature

set in the western US and dealt with frontier life with conventional characters and stylized actions; authors - James F. Cooper, Owen Wister, Walter Clark, Zane Grey, Louis L'Amour, Larry McMurtry

Frontier Literature

literature about frontier life, often humorous, crude and marked with a realistic view of life; authors - T B Thorpe, Bret Harte, Mark Twain, Hamlin Garland

Science Fiction Literature

form of fantasy in which scientific facts, hypotheses, ect, form the basis of adventures; authors - H.G. Wells, Ray Bradbury, Kurt Vonnegut, Doris Lessing, Thomas Pyncheon

Anglo-Irish literature, Hibernian literature

literature produced in English by Irish writers, usually with Celtic materials and Irish idioms

bull, Irish bull

work so incongruous and contradictory that it is ridiculous

Welsh literature

includes Arthurian folktales and legends, as well as the Mabinogion, a collection of Welsh tales; works - Pwyll Prince of Dyved, Branwan Daughter of Llyr, Dream of Macsen, Llefelys; Culhwh, Peredur, Owein, dream of Rhonabwy

prolusion

a prefactory piece, a preliminary exercise; Milton's "Oratorical Performances"

panegyric, eulogy

formal composition lauding a person's achievements

palinode, recantation

work that recants or retracts a previous writing

cycle

"circle"; collection of poems or romances centering on some outstanding event or person, as in Arthurian legends or Charlemagne epics

series

group of works centering on a single character or set in a single place, as in Anne of Green Gables

cliffhanger

work that ends at a point of great suspense

wisdom literature

works in which literary elements are subordinate to the expression of moral wisdom, as in the Book of Proverbs or the Bhagavad-Gita

popular literature

commercially viable works, especially prose fiction, appealing to the popular tastes, as in James Mitchner, Stephen King, J K Rawlings

escape literature

writing whose clear intention is to amuse by offering a strong world of exciting adventures and puzzling mysteries

cloak and dagger

work that deals with espionage or intrigue, as in those by John Buchan, Ian Fleming (James Bond), John Le Carre, Helem MacInnes

cloak and sword

comedia de capa y espada; drama with gallant cavaliers, lovely ladies, adventure, pirates, narrow escapes, such as Dumas's Three Musketeers

bestiary

Medieval literature in which the habits of beasts were made the text for allegory, present in many languages

belles-lettres

writing that lives due to its imaginative and artistic elements rather than scientific or intellectual ones, as in Lewis Carroll's Alice books

apocalyptic

literature that predicts the ultimate destiny, usually destruction, of the world, often through obscure symbolism, as in the Book of Revelation; authors - William Blake, E A Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, William Faulkner

utopian

literature describing an imaginary, ideal world; 1516 - Sir Thomas More's Utopia, Plato's Republic, Butler's Erewhon

dystopian

"bad place"; accounts of imaginary worlds, usually in the futurem in which present tendencies are carried out to unpleasant ends, such as Huxley's Brave New World, Orwell's 1984

erotic literature

writing that features sexual love explicitly; not pornographic because it contributes aesthetically to other themes or objectives; Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover, Song of Songs (Solomon), Chaucer's Miller's Tale

local color writing

exploits the speech, dress, mannerisms, habits, ect of a particular region; authors: west - Bret Harte, Mark Twain, Joaquin Miller; south - Joel Harris, Mary Murfree, George Cable, Lafcadio Hearn; New England - Sarah Jewett, Mary Freeman

historical fiction

fiction whose setting is in some time other than that in which it is written

alternative history, allohistory

fiction in which much depends on some major reversal of known geography or history, such as Nabokov's Ada, Gibson and Sterling's The Difference Engine

potboiler

written solely for money

formula

hackneyed sequence of events characteristic of some popular form of writing

myth

anonymous story that presents supernatural episodes as a means of interpreting natural events

classic

noun - literature that has achieved recognized superior status, literary works of Ancient Greece and Rome; adjective - of recognized excellence or established tradition

saga

Icelandic and Norse stories of the medieval period giving accounts of heroic adventure, lying between authentic history and intentional fiction

set piece

work of any conventional type, designed to impress

monograph

indefinite term for scholarly writing, usually on a limited topic

cyberpunk

science fiction (after 1975) with cybernetics, robotics, and punk rock culture, such as Blade Runner, Total Recall, novels of Gibson - Neuromancer, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive

dubia

uncertain or disputed authorship

fanzine

magazine addressed to fans

hommage

tribute or act of homage by one artist to another

maggot

fanciful piece of whimsy, sometimes perverse or morbid

nekuia

work having to do with the land of the dead, especially a visit by a living person, as in Book XI of Homer's Odyssey, Book VI of Virgil's Aeneid, Dante's Divine Comedy, Pound's Canto I

noir

work that is notably dark, brooding, cynical, complex, and pessimistic, such as Dashiel Hammett's crime novels

nostos

work describing a homecoming or return, as in Homer's Odyssey, Milton's Paradise Regained

pornography

writing designed to arouse sexual lust

propaganda

material advocating a political or ideological position

prose, prosa

during the Middle Ages, all writing that was not poetry in the classical style (quantitative verse) was labeled as prose, including accentual-syllabic verse

prosaics

systematic study of the principles of prose

pseudomorph

literary work with a title that belongs to a form different from that work itself, such as Dickens's Christmas Carol (not a song), Pound's Villanelle: the Psychological Hour" (not a villanelle), or the "sonnets" by WC Williams and John Ashberry

riddle

vernacular literature of ancient people containing sometimes obvious, sometimes obscure description and imagery, as the Exeter Book with nearly 100 AS riddles

robinsonade, robinsonnade

work similar to Robinson Crusoe with a shipwreck on a deserted island and adventures of survival

Asian-American literature

large, growing body by writers with Asian heritage (China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, India, Phillippines, ect); authors - Sadakicki Hartmann, Jessica Hagedorn, Maxine Hong Kingston, Amy Tan, Lin Yutang, Garrett Makherjee, David Hwang

Chicano/Chicana Literature

"Mexican"; literature of the experiences of Mexican-Americans; authors - Sandra Cisneros, Lorna Cervantes, Jose Villarreal, Gloria Anzaldua, Fary Soto, Luis Salinas

Children's literature

loosely defined body of work of books written for children up to age 12; after age 12, it is considered young adult literature

diasporic literature

writing having to do with any scattering of a population (dispersion(displacement) of the Jews, Africans as slaves to America), as in Longfellow's Evangeline (Acadians from Canada to Louisiana

fairy tales

stories relating to mysterious pranks and adventures of spirits who manifest themselves in the form of diminutive human beings; Perrault, Brothers Grimm, Keightley, Croker, Hans C. Anderson, Ruskin, Kingsley, Wilde, Kipling

fables

brief tales told to point a moral, frequently with animal characters; Gay, Lessing, Krylov, Kipling - Just So Stories, Joel C. Harris - Uncle Remus, Orwell - Animal Farm, Eliot - Practical Cats, Henson's Muppets

fiction

narrative writing drawn from imagination rather than history or fact

Oriental tale/novel (Eastern tale/novel)

after 18th century translation of The Arabian Nights, many works were set in Eastern exotic places

Native American Literature

literature by Native Americans, Scott Momaday, Russell Means, Roberta Hill Whiteman, Leslie Silko

saga

Icelandic and Norse stories of the medieval period giving accounts of heroic adventures

postcolonial literature

writing showing elements resulting from colonialism and its aftemath

set piece

work on any conventional kind, designed to impress, usually with little originality

techno-thriller

fiction involving military, far-fetched adventures centering on technical equipment, computers, ect; Tom Clancy, Clive Cussler, Ian Fleming

medical thrillers

popular melodramatic fiction drawn from illness, medicine or epidemics; Michael Crichton, Robin Cook

manga

a comic book or graphic novel, originally from Japan, with fantasy, sci fi and romance; featuring stylized characters with large eyes and exaggerated anatomies; related to anime

disability studies

academic field dealing with people with disabilities

version

particular form of a work

treatise

formerly used of any writing or story, now a formal treatment of a serious thought

sequelula

a little sequel

opuscule

a small work

prose idyll

an idyll in prose rather than verse

nature literature

works concerning external nature and its beauty and inspiration; Anglo-Saxon, medieval romances, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Burns, Darwinism

hommage

tribute by one artist to another

monograph

indefinite term for a piece of scholarly writing, usually on a limited topic

diary

a personal record of day by day events, usually not intended for publication

young adult literature

classification of literature designed for readers between ages of 18 and 25

prototype

a first form or original instance of a thing