The Gettysburg Address

Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
November 19, 1863 On June 1, 1865, Senator Charles Sumner commented on what is now considered the most famous speech by President Abraham Lincoln. In his eulogy on the slain president, he called it a "monumental act." He said Lincoln was mistaken that "the world will little note, nor long remember what we say here." Rather, the Bostonian remarked, "The world noted at once what he said, and will never cease to remember it. The battle itself was less important than the speech."

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

 Source: Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, edited by Roy P. Basler. The text above is from the so-called "Bliss Copy," one of several versions which Lincoln wrote, and believed to be the final version. For additional versions, you may search The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln through the courtesy of the Abraham Lincoln Association
 

Abraham Lincoln- Gettysburg Address Speech

Abraham Lincoln Speech : The Gettysburg Address

Washington – 19 November 1863

At only 246 words long the Gettysburg address is one of the shortest speeches that we have featured. The most famous part of the speech is the “government of the people – by the people – for the people”. 

 Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met here on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of it as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But in a larger sense we can not dedicate - we can not consecrate - we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled, here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but can never forget what they did here.
It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they have, thus far, so nobly carried on. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us - that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion - that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom; and that this government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

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"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."

Among the beliefs which his audience held, perhaps none were stronger than those put forth in the Bible and Declaration of Independence. Lincoln knew this, of course, and included references to both of these documents.
First, Psalm 90 verse 10 states:

The days of our years are threescore years and ten…

(Note: a “score” equals 20 years. So, the verse is stating that a human life is about 70 years.)
Therefore, Lincoln’s “Four score and seven years ago” was a Biblically evocative way of tracing backwards eighty-seven years to the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. That document contains the following famous line:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Quick Facts

• NAME: Abraham Lincoln
• OCCUPATION: U.S. President
• BIRTH DATE: February 12, 1809
• DEATH DATE: April 15, 1865
• PLACE OF BIRTH: Hodgenville, Kentucky

• PLACE OF DEATH: Washington, D.C.
• Nickname: Honest Abe
• Nickname: The Great Emancipator

Abraham Lincoln-biography

Abraham Lincoln is one of America’s greatest heroes because of his unique appeal. His is a remarkable story of the rise from humble beginnings to achieve the highest office in the land; then, a sudden and tragic death at a time when his country needed him most to complete the great task remaining before the nation. His distinctively human and humane personality and historical role as savior of the Union and emancipator of the slaves creates a legacy that endures. His eloquence of democracy, and his insistence that the Union was worth saving embody the ideals of self-government that all nations strive to achieve.

Childhood

Abraham Lincoln was born in a log cabin in Hardin County, Kentucky to Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks Lincoln. Thomas was a strong and determined pioneer who found a moderate level of prosperity and was well respected in the community. The couple had two other children: Abraham’s older sister Sarah and younger brother Thomas, who died in infancy. Due to a land dispute, the Lincolns were forced to move from Kentucky to Perry County, Indiana in 1817, where the family “squatted” on public land to scrap out a living in a crude shelter, hunting game and farming a small plot. Thomas was eventually able to buy the land.

When young Abraham was nine years old his mother died of tremetol (milk sickness) at age 34 and the event was devastating on him. The nine-year-old Abraham grew more alienated from his father and quietly resented the hard work placed on him at an early age. A few months after Nancy’s death, Thomas married Sarah Bush Johnston, a Kentucky widow with three children of her own. She was a strong and affectionate woman with whom Abraham quickly bonded. Though both his parents were most likely illiterate, Sarah encouraged Abraham to read. It was while growing into manhood that he received his formal education—an estimated total of 18 months—a few days or weeks at a time. Reading material was in short supply in the Indiana wilderness. Neighbors recalled how Abraham would walk for miles to borrow a book. He undoubtedly read the family Bible and probably other popular books at that time such as Robinson Crusoe, Pilgrims Progress and Aesop’s Fables.

Law Career

In March, 1830, the family again migrated, this time to Macon County, Illinois. When his father moved the family again to Coles County, 22-year-old Abraham Lincoln struck out on this own, making a living in manual labor.  At six feet four inches tall, Lincoln was rawboned and lanky, but muscular and physically strong. He spoke with a backwoods twang and walked with a long-striding gait. He was known for his skill in wielding an ax and early on made a living splitting wood for fire and rail fencing. Young Lincoln eventually migrated to the small community of New Salem, Illinois where over a period of years he worked as a shopkeeper, postmaster, and eventually general store owner. It was here that Lincoln, working with the public, acquired social skills and honed story-telling talent that made him popular with the locals. When the Black Hawk War broke out in 1832 between the United States and Native Americans, the volunteers in the area elected Lincoln to be their captain. He saw no combat during this time, save for “a good many bloody struggles with the mosquitoes,” but was able to make several important political connections.

After the Black Hawk War, Abraham Lincoln began his political career and was elected to the Illinois state legislature in 1834 as a member of the Whig Party. He supported the Whig politics of government-sponsoreda

Entering Politics

Abraham Lincoln served a single term in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1847-1849. His foray into national politics seems to be as unremarkable as it was brief. He was the lone Whig from the state of Illinois, showing party loyalty, but finding few political allies. He used his term in office to speak out against the Mexican-American War and supported Zachary Taylor for president in 1848. His criticism of the war made him unpopular back home and he decided not to run for second term, but instead returned Springfield to practice law.

By the 1850s, the railroad industry was moving west and Illinois found itself becoming a major hub for various companies. Abraham Lincoln served as a lobbyist for the Illinois Central Railroad as its company attorney. Success in several court cases brought other business clients as well—banks, insurance companies and manufacturing firms. Lincoln also did some criminal trials. In one case, a witness claimed that he could identify Lincoln’s client who was accused of murder, because of the intense light from a full moon. Lincoln referred to an almanac and proved that the night in question had been too dark for the witness to see anything clearly. His client was acquitted.

About a year after the death of Anne Rutledge, Lincoln courted Mary Owens. The two saw each other for a few months and marriage was considered. But in time Lincoln called off the match. In 1840, Lincoln became engaged to Mary Todd, a high spirited, well educated woman from a distinguished Kentucky family. In the beginning, many of the couple’s friends and family couldn’t

Elected President

In 1854, Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which repealed the Missouri Compromise, and allowed individual states and territories to decide for themselves whether to allow slavery. The law provoked violent opposition in Kansas and Illinois. And it gave rise to the Republican Party. This awakened Abraham Lincoln’ political zeal once again and his views on slavery moved more toward moral indignation. Lincoln joined the Republican Party in 1856.

In 1857, the Supreme Court issued its controversial decision Scott v. Sanford, declaring African Americans were not citizens and had no inherent rights. Though Abraham Lincoln felt African Americans were not equal to whites, he believed the America’s founders intended that all men were created with certain inalienable rights. Lincoln decided to challenge sitting U.S. Senator Stephen Douglas for his seat. In his nomination acceptance speech, he criticized Douglas, the Supreme Court, and President Buchanan for promoting slavery and declared “a house divided cannot stand.” The 1858 Senate campaign featured seven debates held in different cities all over Illinois. The two candidates didn’t disappoint the public, giving stirring debates on issues ranging from states’ rights to western expansion, but the central issue in all the debates was slavery. Newspapers intensely covered the debates, often times with partisan editing and interpretation. In the end, the state legislature elected Douglas, but the exposure vaulted Lincoln into national politics.

In 1860, political operatives in Illinois organized a campaign to support Lincoln for the presidency. On May 18th at the Republican National Convention in Chicago, Abraham Lincoln surpassed better known candidates such as William Seward of New York and Salmon P. Chase of Ohio. Lincoln’s nomination was due in part to his moderate views on slavery, his support for improving the national infrastructure, and the protective tariff. In the general election, Lincoln faced is friend and rival, Stephan Douglas, this time besting him in a four-way race that included John C. Breckinridge of the Northern Democrats and John Bell of the Constitution Party.  Lincoln received not quite 40 percent of the popular vote, but carried 180 of 303 Electoral votes.

Abraham Lincoln selected a strong cabinet composed of many of his political rivals, including William Seward, Salmon P. Chase, Edward Bates and Edwin Stanton. Formed out the adage “Hold your friends close and your enemies closer”, Lincoln’s Cabinet became one of his strongest assets in his first term in office… and he would need them. Before his inauguration in March, 1861, seven Southern states had

Civil War

Abraham Lincoln responded to the crisis wielding powers as no other present before him. He distributed $2,000,000 from the Treasury for war materiel without an appropriation from Congress; he called for 75,000 volunteers into military service without a declaration of war; and he suspended the writ of habeas corpus, arresting and imprisoning suspected Confederate sympathizers without a warrant. Crushing the rebellion would be difficult under any circumstances, but the Civil War, with its preceding decades of white-hot partisan politics, was especially onerous. From all directions, Lincoln faced disparagement and defiance. He was often at odds with his generals, his Cabinet, his party, and a majority of the American people.

The Union Army’s first year and a half of battlefield defeats made it especially difficult to keep morale up and support strong for a reunification the nation. With the hopeful, but by no means conclusive Union victory at Antietam on September 22, 1862, Abraham felt confident enough to reshape the cause of the war from “union” to abolishing slavery. Gradually, the war effort improved for the North, though more by attrition then by brilliant military victories. But by 1864, the Confederacy had hunkered down to a guerilla war and Lincoln was convinced he’d be a one-term president. His nemesis, George B. McClellan, the former commander of the Army of the Potomac, challenged him for the presidency, but the contest wasn’t even close. Lincoln received 55 percent of the popular vote and 212 of 243 Electoral votes. On March 28, 1865, General Robert E. Lee, commander of the Army of Virginia, surrendered his forces to Union General Ulysses S. Grant and the war for all intents and purposes was over.

Assassination

Reconstruction began during the war as early as 1863 in areas firmly under Union military control. Abraham Lincoln favored a policy of quick reunification with a minimum of retribution. But he was confronted by a radical group of Republicans in the Senate and House that wanted complete allegiance and repentance from former Confederates. Before a political battle had a chance to firmly develop, Lincoln was assassinated on April 14, 1865, by well-known actor and Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C. Lincoln was taken from the theater to a Petersen House across the street and laid in a coma for nine hours before dying the next morning. His body lay in state at the Capitol before a funeral train took him back to his final resting place in Springfield, Illinois.

drama and collaborative-finals

8 Quotes We Owe to William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare. Just seeing that name takes me to a place where coffee flows, procrastination runs rampant, and book reports come back marked down for tardiness. Unless you reside under a rock or still working your way through high-school, you’ve heard of Mr. Shakespeare. Today’s infographic speaks on Shakespeare’s significance in regards to the English language, but not in the typical way.

Down below are eight quotes, phrases, and saying that can be credited to William Shakespeare. I’m sure you’ve heard at least one of them used in your lifetime. My intrigue with this infographic lies in the notion that Shakespeare has so many quotes and writings that are held in high regard by scholars worldwide, yet these get left out. I’m not saying that quotes such as “Et tu, Brute?” and “the world is my oyster” should be studied interchangeably. I’m just taking note of the vast influence Shakespeare had over language.
Share your favorite Shakespeare quotes in the comment box and have an awesome hump day!

Banquet Scene from the Tale of Nastagio degli Onesti, in Boccaccio's "Decameron

http://www.philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/102441.htm

The Decameron

Dedication: Boccaccio writes this book for women. This is one of the revolutionary element of the book. Why women? Because, says Boccaccio, they are being wrongfully neglected. They have no saying in shaping their destinies, they have no outlet to express their feelings, they are left in their castles by their fathers, brothers, husbands with nothing to do. [Obviously Boccaccio is talking about the women of the nobility]
The background for this book is the black death of 1348, which killed a large number of people in Florence. Within this environment Boccaccio creates the structure of the book.
The premise: The black death is terrorizing the city of Florence, and is causing a complete breakdown of all moral values. Surrounded by this horrible death, people loose respect for each other. Boccaccio is, for all purposes, describing what is happening as hell on earth. (He brought to earth what Dante had placed in the Inferno)
Within this dissolution, one Spring morning seven young ladies meet in a church where they went to pray. Soon they put their prayers aside and turn to a more pragmatic topic: how to survive the rampant death. After considering various possibilities, they decide that it is their duty to preserve their lives by getting out of the city, and isolate themselves in the countryside, away from death. However, in their opinion, they will be successful only if they are joined by some men. (At this time women felt that a man's guidance was necessary).
In the meantime, three young men, friends and relatives to the ladies, enter the church, and are asked to go along. They agree, and the next morning they leave the city with a few of their servants who have survived death. They go to a beautiful country villa, and there they will wait for the pestilence to be over.
But in order for the group to function well, they decide that they need a ruler (king or queen). So, in a democratic fashion, the decide that each one of them will be king or queen for a day, and everyone will obey and follow his/her rules. They also decide to spent the time entertaining themselves, eating well, singing, dancing, and telling stories: one story each for each day.
These stories represent the content of the book. Therefore, we have ten stories for each day. These stories portray all aspects of society, form the most noble behavior to most vulgar and depraved. This is the world of the Decameron. Here we find merchants alongside with kings, clerics, and the common people.
It is a complete representation of human behavior. It is the "human comedy," where the real life becomes the centerpiece (Dante, instead, saw life from a distance). In fact the Decameron completes Dante's vision of life. This is humanity as it is actually behaving in everyday circumstances.
From this point of view, the Decameron does not belong, as it has been suggested, to the new culture centered on Petrarch. Rather it is more properly medieval, as it is encyclopedic in nature (like Dante's Commedia).
However, this work is what we consider today as politically incorrect. It disregards all rules of literature and accepted etiquette. As already mentioned, it is dedicated to women, written with the specific purpose to entertain them, as they are bored during long days with nothing to do. This is a very modern concept: the artist addresses and meets the needs of a specific audience.
In fact, the purpose of the book was so out of place that Boccaccio had practically all the intellectual establishment against him (see his defense in the Introduction to day 4). Even he himself, later in his life, denounced his own masterpiece. In fact, the scholars who immediately followed him admired his scholarly works, not the Decameron. It will take 150 years for the book to be recognized for its artistic, intellectual, and linguistic values.
On the other hand, this book was well received by an audience that was outside the official intelligentsia. It found a crowd of imitators already in its own time in writers who realized that there was an audience for narrative. In fact, the Decameron ended up as being one of the most imitated books in history. No one escaped Boccaccio's influence: he set the rules for story-telling. His presence is felt in the entire Europe, in English literature his influence is felt by many, to name just two, Chaucer and Shakespeare.
With the Decameron, Boccaccio takes the short story and makes it come to life. His characters are, in fact, psychologically alive; he gives the plot and the characters an evolutionary development. In short, he took a minor art form -- telling short anecdotal stories, and created an artistic form.
The Decameron, contrary to other collections of stories of the time, is not a series of unrelated plots. Here, each story becomes a part of the whole. These stories are complete in themselves, and yet they add to the completeness of the book. The stories are in fact grouped by themes and by authorship (the story-tellers). Each day covers a specific theme.
The external structure (the ten young people escaping death to preserve life) is itself a story which contains all other stories; some individual stories have their own stories within, etc. Each story is characterized by the person who tells it. For examples, Dioneo (one of the ten) reserves his position to be the last one to tell his story so that he can be free to close the day with his peculiar tales that do not necessary follow to the themes of the day. Chaucer's Canterbury Tales uses the same concept of a large story as the framework which includes all other stories. The frame-story will be a description of a pilgrimage to Canterbury during which the characters tell their stories.
And at the center of this world we find humanity, in all its variety. People are seen as victim of jokes, victims to human cruelty, or survivor to misfortunes, etc. But what stands out in all this is the triumph of intelligence (mostly in day 6).

Introduction to Boccaccio

Boccaccio's Life: Boccaccio made a point of presenting himself by giving details of his life. However, his account may be the most unreliable. In fact, being a master of storytelling, chances are that he made his life conform to the character he made of himself. He says that he was born in Paris, a fruit of a secret love affair his father had with the king's daughter. Then, as his father moved back to Florence, he was brought along and destined to live with a cruel stepmother.
But he was able to get away from all of this when he went to live in Naples, where he was supposed to study accounting, since his father wanted him to be a merchant.
Here in Naples, he met Fiammetta, an illegitimate daughter of the king of Naples: this was a very difficult love because supposedly she was being unfaithful to him. Nevertheless, Boccaccio says that he became a poet and storyteller because of her.
However, the facts are quite different. Very likely, Giovanni Boccaccio was born in Florence, from a widow who had an affair with Boccaccio's father. And Fiammetta was a daughter of a noblewoman from Naples, wife of a rich merchant, and expert in the matters of love.
Boccaccio's family came from the town of Certaldo, his father was Boccaccio da Chellino, who moved to Florence to practice the profession of merchant. In fact, we know that in 1310 he was working for the Bardi Financial House, one of the most important financial institution in Europe. His employment lasted until 1342, when the institution went bankrupt.
As such he was in Paris a few times, including the time of Giovanni's birth (1313). However, it is certain that his son was born in Florence (or perhaps in Certaldo) from this affair in the latter part of the year 1313.
Later, in 1320, Boccaccio's father married a lady called Margherita dei Mondali (the famous stepmother), who was a relative of Beatrice Portinari, loved by Dante a few years earlier. Hence Boccaccio's interest for Dante's works.
Boccaccio did go to Naples around 1325 where he lived at the court of the kings of Naples, supported by the Bardi financial institution, with the specific purpose of getting the training needed to be a merchant.
Naples was at the time one of the most influential political and economical centers in Europe. Here Boccaccio heard stories of incredible travels, which, along with the environment of the city, inspired some of the best stories of his major work, The Decameron.
This leisurely life is present mostly in his youthful works, such as Filocolo, Ameto, Fiammetta, in which one can feel an intense passion for life.
Meanwhile, Boccaccio studies Mathematics and Arithmetic for his future career, although he cares little for these studies. He prefers poetry and other academic subjects. In fact he will say that he wasted time studying mathematics.
His life in Naples was easy. He lived in a fairy-tale world, with no financial worries. He was in the environment of merchants, it is the middle class society that he got to know so well.
His stay in Naples lasted until 1340, enough time to assimilate the intellectual culture of the time. In a way he learned from real life, and not from schooling. Here he studied medieval lyric poetry (Provençal, Italian, and Dante). In this environment he invented his passionate love story centered on a gentlewoman called Fiammetta. In fact she is present in most of his works up to and including The Decameron.
These early works are based on conventional writing forms of the time, mostly epic narrative. Herre they are:
Filocolo: the story of Florio and Biancifiore (1336);
Filostrato, the story of Troilo and Griselda, from the French Roman de Troie, later imitated by Chaucer and Shakespeare in their Troilus and Cressida.
Teseida, in 12 cantos, an epic poem written in 1340-41, which tells the story of Theseus's deeds against Thebe and the Amazons. But the plot is an excuse for Boccaccio to describe a triangle love affair that put against each other Arcita and Palemone, who are both in love with Emilia, a sister of Ippolita who was Theseus's wife. This story became the plot of Chaucer's Knight's Tale, in the Canterbury Tales.
Later he wrote other minor books of prose and poetry, some of them with allegorical meanings. Among those, one stands out: Elegia di Madonna Fiammetta, which portrays the state of mind of a woman in love as she is betrayed by her lover. This is part of Boccaccio's fictional account of his love misadventures.
About this time he was forced to return to Florence because the financial institution of the Bardi went bankrupt, and the source of his income vanished. This was a sour turn of events for Boccaccio. His happy life ended. And so his works changed style, reflecting these changes. His happiness was over, and he would always feel nostalgia for the happy time spent in Naples.
The financially difficult years between 1342 and 1348 were crucial for his literary career. However, his economical difficulties did not destroy his interests for creative writing. In Florence, he comes in contact with the Florentine intellectual circles, and his artistic writings become more "realistic," meaning that he turned his attention to everyday life. In the meantime he travels throughout North Italy.
During these travels Boccaccio observes Nature, which is portrayed in his Ninfale fiesolano, the last verso work before the The Decameron.
In 1348 he is in Florence, where he witnesses the black death, a bubonic plague that hit Europe and killed more than half of the population, especially in cities. The effect of the black death is described in the Introduction to the Decameron. After these events he remains in Florence to administer what's left of the family business.
Between 1348 and 1351 Boccaccio writes the Decameron.
Then Boccaccio undergoes a religious crisis, which will affect his writings from then on. In fact, he turns to the official culture, obviously influenced by Petrarch, whom he met as he was traveling. When he was in Romagna, he also met Dante's daughter, who was in the monastery of Santo Stefano, in Ravenna.
At this time he became a diplomat, traveling all over. Among his assignments, he was the one who represented Florence, when in 1365, the Pope returned to Rome from Avignon.
Throughout these years he feels disappointed by the way he lives, especially because he has little money. He retires in the town of Certaldo to get away from Florence. Here many humanist scholars visit him, as he is already a legend. And during these years, following Petrarch's lead, he writes many scholarly books.
In the meantime, he becomes a deacon, with the purpose to straighten up the souls of the sinners. This is Christian Humanism.
Most of the works written during these years were in Latin, however, he wrote Corbaccio in Italian. This is a book to chastise women (in the early 50's). In this book he criticizes the nature and behavior of women, a definite shift from the free-spirited Decameron.
Later in life he wrote also, in Italian, two books on Dante: a Life of Dante and a series of lessons on the Inferno. He was giving these lectures in a Florentine church.
But, as mentioned, the majority of the writing done between 1350 and his death in 1374 was in Latin: the most important is Genealogia Deorum Gentilium, a dictionary of mythology. He began this book in 1350, and kept working on it until he died. In this book (chpt.15 and 16, Boccaccio defends his theories of poetry -- a similar defense is present in the introduction to the fourth day of the Decameron).
He also wrote:
Bucolicum Carmen (1351-66): allegorical poems based on contemporary events. Here Boccaccio follows the same pattern begun by Dante and employed by Petrarch.
De Claribus Mulieribus (1360-74): a collection of lives of the most famous women from ancient times to Middle Ages (parallel to Petrarch's book on the most illustrious men).
De Montibus, silvis, fontibus (1355-74): on the geographic culture of the time.
De Casibus Virorum Illustrium (1355-74): to show the vanity of earthly wealth.

A World Literature Timeline

Invention of Writing and Earliest Literature [Beginnings to 100 A.D.]

1. Writing was not invented for the purpose of preserving literature; the earliest written documents contain commercial, administrative, political, and legal information, and were created by the first "advanced" civilizations in an area that Westerners commonly call the Middle East.
2. The oldest writing was pictographic, meaning that the sign for an object was written to resemble the object itself; later, hieroglyphic and cuneiform scripts were invented to record more complicated information.
3. Begun in 2700 B.C. and written down about 2000 B.C., the first great heroic narrative of world literature, Gilgamesh, nearly vanished from memory when it was not translated from cuneiform languages into the new alphabets that replaced them.
4. Though the absence of written signs for vowels can confuse some readers, the consonantal script developed by the Hebrews ushered in a new form of writing that could be composed without special artistic skills and read without advanced training.
5. With their return to Palestine in 539 B.C., the Hebrews rebuilt the Temple and created the canonical version of the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible.
6. As the stories in the Bible expound, unlike polytheistic religions in which gods often battle among themselves for control over humankind, the sole resistance to the Hebrew God is humankind itself.

Ancient Greece [Beginnings to 100 A.D.]

1. Though the origin of the Hellenes, or ancient Greeks, is unknown, their language clearly belongs to the Indo-European family.
2. By serving as a basis for education, the Iliad and Odyssey played a role in the development of Greek civilization that is equivalent to the role that the Torah had played in Palestine.
3. The Greeks who established colonies in Asia adapted their language to the Phoenician writing system, adding signs for vowels to change it from a consonantal to an alphabetic system.
4. Before its defeat to Sparta, Athens developed democratic institutions to maintain the delicate balance between the freedom of the individual and the demands of the state.
5. Unlike the Sophists, Socrates proposed a method of teaching that was dialectic rather than didactic; his means of approaching "truth" through questions and answers revolutionized Greek philosophy.
6. The basis for Homer's Iliad and Odyssey was an immense poetic reserve created by generations of singers who lived before him.
7. Neither the Iliad nor the Odyssey offers easy answers; questions about the nature of aggression and violence are left unanswered, and questions about human suffering and the waste generated by war are left unresolved.
8. Greek comedy and tragedy developed out of choral performances in celebration of Dionysus, the god of wine and mystic ecstasy.

Poetry and Thought in China [Beginnings to 100 A.D.]

1. Chinese civilization first developed in the Yellow River basin.
2. The Classic of Poetry is a lyric poetry collection that stands at the beginning of the Chinese literary tradition.
3. The fusion of ethical thought and idealized Chou traditions associated with Confucius were recorded in the Analects by Confucius's disciples following his death.
4. The Chuang Tzu offers philosophical meditations in a multitude of forms, ranging from jokes and parables to intricate philosophical arguments.
5. During the period of the Warring States, Ssu-ma Ch'ien produced the popular Historical Records chronicling the lives of ruling families and dynasties in a comprehensive history of China up to the time of Emperor Wu's reign.
6. The end of ancient China is often linked with the rise of the draconian ruler Ch'in Shih-huang.

India’s Heroic Age [Beginnings to 100 A.D.]

1. The ethnic, religious, and linguistic diversity of India's billion people has given rise to a diverse written and oral literary tradition that evolved over 3,500 years.
2. The Vedas are the primary scriptures of Hinduism and consist of four books of sacred hymns that are typically chanted by priests at ceremonies marking rites of passage.
3. The Upanisads argue that the soul is a manifestation of a single divine essence; release comes from understanding the basic unity between the self and the universe.
4. Two epics that express the core values of Hinduism are the Ramayana and the Mahabharata.
5. Dharma is the guiding principle of human conduct and preserves the social, moral, and cosmic integrity of the universe. It refers to sacred duties and righteous conduct, and is related to three other spheres that collectively govern an ideal life: artha (wealth, profit, and political power); kama (love, sensuality); moksa (release, liberation).
6. The belief that all beings are responsible for their own actions and their own suffering is known as karma.
7. Because Buddhism was a more egalitarian and populist religion, it initially gained a following among women, artisans, merchants, and individuals to whom the ritualistic and hierarchical nature of Hinduism seemed constraining.
8. Because Hinduism and its important texts such as the Bhagavad-Gita were able to synthesize tenets and ideas from the other religions, it was able to triumph in India.
9. The idea that moral and spiritual conquest is superior to conquest by the sword is an enduring motif of the time and one that was publicly endorsed by Emperor Asoka.

The Roman Empire [Beginnings to 100 A.D.]

1. With its military victories in North Africa, Spain, Greece, and Asia Minor, the social, cultural, and economic life of Rome changed profoundly.
2. After the fall of the Roman empire, the concept of a world-state was appropriated by the medieval Church, which ruled from the same center, Rome, and laid claim to a spiritual authority as great as the secular authority it succeeded.
3. Literature in Latin began with a translation of the Greek Odyssey and continued to be modeled after Greek sources until it became Christian.
4. The lyric poems that Catullus wrote about his love affair with the married woman he called Lesbia range in tone from passionate to despairing to almost obscene.
5. Left unfinished at the time of his death, Virgil's Aeneid combines the themes of the Homeric epics: the wanderer in search of a home from the Iliad, and the hero at war from the Odyssey.
6. Ovid's extraordinary subtlety and psychological depth make his poetry second only to Virgil's for its influence on Western poets and writers of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and beyond.
7. Probably written by Petronius, and probably written during the principate of Nero, the Satyricon is a satirical work about the pragmatism and materialism of the Roman empire that would soon be supplanted by Christianity.

Roman Empire -> Christian Europe [100 A.D. to 1500]

1. The life of the Hebrew prophet Jesus ended in the agony of the crucifixion by a Roman governor, but his teachings were written down in the Greek language and became the sacred texts of the Christian church.
2. The teachings of Jesus were revolutionary in terms of Greek and Roman feeling, as well as the Hebrew religious tradition.
3. Until Constantine issued the Edict of Milan, declaring tolerance for all religions, in 313, the Christian church was often persecuted by imperial authorities, particularly under the rule of emperors Nero, Marcus Aurelius, and Diocletian.
4. The four Gospels were collected with other documents to form the New Testament, which Pope Damasus had translated from Greek to Latin by the scholar Jerome in 393–405.
5. In his Confessions, Augustine sets down the story of his early life for the benefit of others, combining the intellectual tradition of the ancient world and the religious feeling that would come to be characteristic of the Middle Ages.

India’s Classical Age [100 A.D. to 1500]

1. During the rule of the Guptas in ancient India, great achievements were made in mathematics, logic, astronomy, literature, and the fine arts.
2. Classical Sanskrit literature deals extensively with courtly culture and life. Aiming to evoke aesthetic responses, many of the works admitted into the literary canon were poetic works written and performed by learned poets (kavi) who were under the patronage of kings. A highly stylized form of poetry, kavya literature consists of four main genres—the court epic, short lyric, narrative, and drama.
3. In contrast to the elegant and formal works of the kavya genre are two important collections of tales that have influenced tales around the world—the Pañcatantra and the Kathasaritsagara.
4. Women in classical literature are rarely portrayed as one-dimensional characters who are victims of circumstance.
5. The kavya tradition is concerned with the universe and ideals. Heroes and heroines are rarely individuals; rather, they represent "universal" types.

China’s Middle Period [100 A.D. to 1500]

1. The "middle period" of Chinese literature occupies a central place in that nation's cultural history; to many it is the era during which Chinese thought and letters achieved its highest form.
2. During China's "middle period," Confucianism declined in importance; Taoism and Buddhism in fact began to acquire a more important status. With an emphasis on personal salvation, they offered an alternative to the Confucian ideals of social and ethical collective interests.
3. Because of the way that it was integrated into life during this period, the T'ang Dynasty is often considered a period when poetry flourished.
4. Thanks to the development of printing, the vernacular traditions emphasizing storytelling have coexisted and evolved along with classical literature up to present times.

Islam [100 A.D. to 1500]

1. God's revelations were first received around 610 by the prophet Muhammad, whose followers later collected them into the Koran, which became the basis for a new religion and community known today as Islam.
2. Though most of the pre-Islamic literature of Arabia was written in verse, prose became a popular vehicle for the dissemination of religious learning.
3. As its title "the Recitation" suggests, the Koran was made to be heard and recited; because it is literally the word of God, Muslims do not accept the Koran in translation from Arabic.
4. Although Persian literature borrowed from Arabic literary styles, it also created and enhanced new poetic styles, including the ruba'i (quatrain), ghazal (erotic lyric), and masnavi (narrative poem).
5. More widely known than any other work in Arabic, the Thousand and One Nights is generally excluded from the canon of classical Arabic literature due to its extravagant and improbable fabrications in prose, a form that was expected to be more serious and substantial than verse.

Formation of Western Literature [100 A.D. to 1500]

1. Contrary to popular belief, the medieval period cannot be characterized as entirely barbaric. During this period, national literatures in the vernacular appeared.
2. Due to their disparate influences, literature and culture in medieval Europe were very diverse, drawing from different, often conflicting sources.
3. Composed around 850, the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf speaks about the warring lifestyle of the Germanic and Scandinavian groups that conquered the Roman empire.
4. Not only does the Song of Roland set the foundation for the French literary tradition, but it also establishes the narrative about the foundation of France itself.
5. Writing in the twelfth century, Marie de France helped establish the major forms and themes of vernacular literature, especially for what we now call romances, novelistic narrative's that deal with adventure and love.
6. The thirteenth-century story Thorstein the Staff-Struck is a short example of the Icelandic saga tradition that speak's about the lives of men and women who lived in Iceland and Norway between the ninth and eleventh centuries.
7. Beginning in Provence around 1100, the love lyric spread to Sicily, Italy, France, Germany, and eventually England.
8. The Divine Comedy offers Dante's controversial political and religious beliefs within a formal and cosmological framework that evoke's the three-in-one of the Christian Trinity: God the Father; God the Son; and God the Holy Spirit.
9. Best known for his Decameron, Giovanni Boccaccio was one of the many medieval writers who contributed to the revival of classical literary traditions that would come to fruition in the Italian Renaissance and later spread to other parts of Europe.
10. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight revives the "native" Anglo-Saxon tradition first seen in Beowulf that had apparently been submerged between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries following the Norman Conquest.
11. Although Chaucer's Canterbury Tales does not appear to be overtly political, it was written during a period of considerable political and religious turmoil that would eventually give rise to the Protestant Reformation.
12. Anonymously written plays such as Everyman focused on morality or were dramatic enactments of homilies and sermons.

Golden Age of Japanese Culture [100 A.D. to 1500]

1. Although Japanese poetry, drama, literature and other writings of the Golden Age elaborate on a wide range of philosophical, aesthetic, religious, and political topics, and while literature and culture have flourished in Japan for over a thousand years, many misconceptions about Japanese literature persist.
2. One of the earliest monuments of Japanese literature, the Man'yoshu (The Collection of Ten Thousand Leaves), appears to have been intended as an anthology of poetry anthologies.
3. The Kokinshu combines great poems of the past with great poems of the present; it also integrates short poems into longer narrative sequences, thereby becoming more than a mere collection of poems.
4. Murasaki Shikibu's Tale of Genji, arguably the first significant novel in world literature, was written in the early eleventh century.
5. The Pillow Book is a seemingly unstructured collection of personal observations, random thoughts, and perceptions that entered the mind of the author.
6. Not only did the Tale of the Heike help to create the samurai ideal, it has served as an inspiration for more writers in more genres than any other single work of Japanese literature.
7. Although Shintoism, the native religion emphasizing the protective powers of supernaturalism, enjoyed widespread popularity, Buddhism began to play an increasingly important role in premodern Japan, most notably in the arenas of literature and drama.
8. No (translated as "talent" or "skill"), Japan's classical theater, is a serious and stylized art form that is produced without most of the artifices of Western theater such as props and scenery.

Mystical Poetry of India [100 A.D. to 1500]

1. The literary genre of India's medieval era, lyric poetry, was associated with bhakti, or mystical devotion to God.
2. Bhakti is a populist literary form that is usually composed by poet-saints of all castes and both genders in their native tongues.
3. Each poem positions the devotee and God in a particular relationship, but the most popular relationship is that of erotic love between a male god and a female devotee.
4. Bhakti poetry is composed in many different regional languages and elegizes Siva, Krishna, and other important Hindu deities.
5. The emotive quality of the poems, their ability to provide social critique and the representation of love that crosses boundaries between the secular and sacred have made Krishna poetry appealing and accessible to many groups.

Africa [1500-1650]

1. The founding of the Mali empire is attributed to Son-Jara Keita, whose life and exploits are the subject of the Son-Jara, the national epic of the Manding people.
2. The rise of ancient Mali in the thirteenth century is closely associated with the spread of Islam into the region, which had begun in the seventh century.
3. The principal custodians of the oral tradition are professional bards, known among the Manding as dyeli or belein-tigui.
4. The epic of Son-Jara developed by accretion, which together with its oral transmission may account for its three distinct generic layers.
5. The ideological function of the epic is the construction of a Manding common identity under a founding hero.

The Renaissance [1500-1650]

1. During the Renaissance, notions of Europe's and of humankind's centrality in the world were challenged and partially discredited by advances in scientific theory, a rediscovery of Greco-Roman culture, and the so-called discovery of the Americas.
2. The Renaissance reached its peak at different times in different cultures, beginning in Italy with the visual arts and, nearly two centuries later, working its way as far as England, where its achievements are most recognized in drama.
3. An interest in the nature of this life rather than in the life to come is of central importance in the works of Petrarch and Erasmus.
4. The Renaissance tendency toward perfection is well illustrated by Machiavelli's ideal prince and Castiglione's ideal courtier, but is also illustrated in the reworking of older literary traditions such as in Ariosto's Orlando Furioso.
5. French rulers and aristocrats adopted the artistic, literary, and social values of the more sophisticated Italian city-states such as Castiglione's Urbino.
6. Spain's major contributions to Renaissance literature can be traced to Cervantes and Lope de Vega.
7. Works from the English tradition, including Paradise Lost, Hamlet, and Othello, question the values of the Renaissance.

Native America and Europe in the New World [1500-1650]

1. On November 8, 1519, Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés and a battalion of four hundred soldiers entered and seized Tenochtitlán, the Aztec capital of the emperor Montezuma.
2. Although contact with the Europeans devastated the cultures of the Native American groups, efforts were also made to preserve Aztec verbal arts.
3. Though many Aztec and Mayan works were translated into European languages, they were not made available in native languages for fear of encouraging native religious practices.
4. Much of the literary work in Native American cultures belongs to three basic genres of the oral tradition—song, narrative, and oratory.
5. How is it possible for "outsiders" to appreciate fully the complexity of literary works that are inextricably linked to indigenous cultural practices and mores?

Vernacular Literature in China [1650-1800]

1. When the Mongol (Yüan) armies overran northern China and the southern Sung dynasties, they established themselves as a dynasty, abolishing governmental principles derived from Confucian teachings.
2. Often building on works of classical literature, vernacular literature (dealing with sex, violence, satire, and humor) became known for its ability to elaborate creatively on plots of earlier works by filling in details or perhaps even by articulating what had been omitted.
3. Under the Ch'ing Dynasty, and especially during the period known as the "literary inquisition," classical Chinese writing suffered a devastating blow.
4. China's autonomy and cultural self-confidence were decimated in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, when European colonial powers began to exert control over China's economy.

Ottoman Empire [1650-1800]

1. On the tenth night of Muharram in 1040 (August 19, 1630), Evliya «elebi dreamed that the Prophet Muhammad appeared to him and encouraged him to pursue his wanderlust.
2. Sometimes traveling in an official capacity and sometimes traveling as a private individual, Evliya «elebi recorded his observations in a vivid anecdotal style.
3. After the destruction of the Saljuqid state in the thirteenth century, the Ottomans established themselves as an independent dynasty in northwestern Anatolia, from which they expanded into Greece, Macedonia, Bulgaria, and the Balkans.
4. Under Mehmed II the Conqueror, the Ottomans established an architectural style that symbolized their imperial ambitions, a new legal code, and a policy of imperial expansion. They continued and enriched Arabic and Persian literary traditions.

Enlightenment in Europe [1650-1800]

1. In the midst of the massive—and often cataclysmic—social changes that violently reshaped Europe during the eighteenth century, philosophers and other thinkers championed reason and the power of the human mind, contributing to the somewhat misleading appellation of this prerevolutionary period as an "Age of Enlightenment."
2. Because literature was produced by a small cultural elite, it tended to address limited audiences of the authors' social peers, who would not necessarily notice the class- and race-specific values that served as a basis for proper conduct and actions outlined in poems, novels, and belles lettres.
3. The notion of a permanent, divinely ordained, natural order offered comfort to those aware of the flaws in the actual social order.
4. Reliance on convention as a mode of social and literary control expresses the constant efforts to achieve an ever-elusive stability in the eighteenth century.
5. By exercising their right to criticize their fellow men and women, satirists evoked a rhetorical ascendancy that was obtained by an implicit alliance with literary and moral tradition.
6. Though she outwardly declared her humility and religious subordination, Sor (Sister) Juana InÈs de la Cruz managed to advance claims for women's rights in a more profound and far-reaching way than anyone had achieved in the past.

Popular Arts in Pre-Modern Japan [1650-1800]

1. To sustain peace, the Tokugawa shoguns expelled Portuguese traders and Christian missionaries, who tended to play one feudal baron against another in order to subvert local power, and prohibited any Japanese from traveling abroad.
2. During this period of peace and stability, the role of samurai retainers in maintaining shogunal authority shifted from warriors to bureaucrats.
3. Often indifferent to tradition, this new merchant class developed a culture of its own, reflecting the fast pace of urban life in woodblock prints, short stories, novels, poetry, and plays.
4. Ihara Saikaku is known as a founder of new, popular "realistic" literature, writing about the foibles of the merchant class in urban Osaka.
5. Cultivating the persona of the lonely wayfarer, Matsuo Basho's austere existence was the antithesis to Saikaku's prosperity.
6. Ueda Akinari is known for his successful insinuation of the supernatural into everyday life and his keen understanding of the irrational implications of erotic attachment.

Revolution and Romanticism in Europe and America [1800-1900]

1. Emerging in the late eighteenth century and extending until the late nineteenth century, Romanticism broke with earlier models of thinking that were guided by rationalism and empiricism.
2. After the American and French revolutions, faith in social institutions declined considerably; no longer were systems that were organized around hierarchy and the separation of classes considered superior.
3. As manufacturing and industrialization developed, resulting in a decline in the agricultural economy, a "middle class" began to emerge in England and other parts of Europe.
4. Breaking with the Christian belief that the self is essentially "evil" and fallible, Romantic poets and authors often explored the "good" inherent in human beings.
5. As the middle class rose to ascendancy in the nineteenth century, new approaches to science, biology, class, and race began to shake middle-class society's values.
6. Imagination was seen as a way for the soul to link with the eternal.
7. The new thematic emphases of poetry—belief in the virtues of nature, the "primitive," and the past—engendered a form of alienation that was described in the "social protest" poetry of Romantic poets.

Urdu Lyric Poetry in Northern India [1800-1900]

1. The most popular lyric genre of Urdu, a hybrid language developed from the interaction of Hindi and Persian, is the ghazal.
2. Derived from the Arabic praise poem (qasidah), ghazal reflects on love—human, divine, and spiritual.
3. Formal and thematic conventions are important to the ghazal tradition.
4. Mirza Asadullah Khan, or Ghalib (Conqueror) as he is more commonly known, is considered the most important poet associated with this tradition.

Realism, Naturalism, and Symbolism in Europe [1800-1900]

1. Nourished by the political and social aspirations of the middle class, nationalism and colonialism came to dominate the nineteenth century in Europe.
2. Though its first literary use was in Germany at the turn of the nineteenth century, the term realism did not become a commonly accepted literary and artistic slogan until French critics began to use it in the 1850s.
3. Though the realist program made innumerable subjects available to art, it narrowed the themes and methods of literature.
4. Contrary to what they might think, realist writers did not make a complete break with past literary conventions, nor did they follow "to the letter" the theories and slogans they propounded.
5. As prose looked outward at the world around it, poetry looked inward at its very construction as language.
6. Inspired by Baudelaire's The Flowers of Evil, Symbolism's manifesto appeared in 1886, thereby not including the great midcentury poems by Baudelaire, Verlaine, Rimbaud, and MallarmÈ.

The 20^th Century: European Modernisms [1900s]

1. In the twentieth century, modernization was used in tandem with colonization as a means to legitimize the often forced adoption of Western concepts of "progress" in different parts of the world. As such, modernization also became a stimulus for movements that rejected "progress" in favor of "tradition."
2. European writers and thinkers looked beyond models of scientific rationalism for means of expressing knowledge of the world and lived experience that could not be apprehended by intellect alone.
3. Literary and linguistic systems were seen as games in which "pieces" (words) and "rules" (grammar, syntax, and other conventions) were combined with playfulness and sometimes with pathos to emphasize the instabilities of language.
4. The twentieth century is sometimes called a "century of isms" as different groups of European artists and intellectuals attempted to give expression to contemporary history and subjectivity.
5. Western modernism is too conceptually limited to describe much of the cultural productions of older nations in North America such as the Navajo, Zuni, and Inuit.

Decolonization [1900s]

1. With the spread of Western colonialism from Europe and North America to Asia, Africa, and South America also came the spread of its by-product; Western modernism.
2. Though early criticisms were leveled at former colonial subjects who wrote in the colonizer's language since such writing was considered to reflect "impoverished" experiences, more recent evaluations point to the ways that the writings of former colonial subjects have enriched European languages.
3. Though social-realist movements varied considerably within Chinese, Indian, and Soviet contexts, in general they denounced the bourgeois and colonialist values expounded in Western art and literature.
4. Though English-language literatures are well known outside India, literatures in regional languages such as Kannada, Urdu, Sindhi, Bengali, Hindi, and Tamil represent other aspects of Indian life.
5. The literary traditions of the diverse countries that the West calls "the Middle East" reflect the multiple histories and cultural traditions of the region.
6. In addition to experiences of Western colonialism in Africa, African writers also address issues related to the slave trade and to the African diaspora.
7. The generally political nature of magical realism in South American writing was often missed by earlier generations of Western readers, who were too amazed by the imaginative creativity of magical realism.