History of literature
The history of literature is the story of how prose and poetry came to entertain and educate readers, and how the techniques behind those works developed over time. Not everything written counts. A compilation of data, like a check register, is recorded material but it is not literature. The earliest stories were never written down at all. They lived in the oral tradition of hunter-gatherer bands, passed mouth to mouth as myth and folklore. Storytelling emerged as the human mind learned to apply causal reasoning and to structure events into narrative. It let early humans warn one another about dangers, teach social norms, and entertain around the fire. Writing itself arrived much later, and in several places at once that had no contact with one another. So how did a tool first used for accounting become the vehicle for epic poems, philosophy, drama, and the novel? Why did some civilizations build literature around heroes while others suppressed the individual entirely? And what did it take for a form as familiar as the novel to finally appear?
Around 3200 BC in Mesopotamia, writing began independently, and the same invention arose separately in Ancient China around 1250 BC and in Mesoamerica around 650 BC. Literature did not ride in on the first symbols. Writing served simpler ends, chiefly accounting, before anyone thought to record a story with it. Sumerian literature is the oldest known literature, written in Sumer, and its types were not clearly defined. Every Sumerian work carried poetic aspects, with lines, imagery, and metaphor, and its characters could be humans, gods, talking animals, or even inanimate objects. Suspense and humor both found a place in these stories. They were shared mostly aloud, though scribes also recorded them, and some works were tied to specific musical instruments or settings. Sumerian literature used no titles at all. A work was simply named by its first line. Akkadian literature grew out of later Mesopotamian societies such as Babylonia and Assyria, spanning the third to first millennia BC, and spreading to Egypt, Ugarit, and Hattusa. Kings commissioned many of these works through scribes and scholars in their service, some celebrating the ruler or the divine, others preserving instructions for religious practice or medicine. Among the earliest surviving works are The Maxims of Ptahhotep, the Instructions of Shuruppak, and the Classic of Poetry, each from a different corner of the ancient world.
Epic poetry stands as the pinnacle of ancient literature, the long narrative poem recounting the feats of mythic heroes set in a nation's early history. In the Old Kingdom of Egypt, literature grew directly from paperwork during the Fifth Dynasty. Lists of offerings to the gods were rewritten as prayers, and dry statistical records of state officials swelled into autobiographies meant to exemplify their subjects' virtues. Kings went unwritten beyond clerical records, though poetry was performed at their funerals as religious ritual. The Instructions, a form of wisdom literature, taught maxims that blended pragmatic thought with religious speculation. By the Middle Kingdom of Egypt, the king stepped into literature directly through royal testaments addressed to a successor, and fiction and the analysis of good and evil emerged. The New Kingdom of Egypt kept wisdom and educational writing popular while favoring teachings and stories over discourses, and entertainment literature, with its myth, folklore, hymns, and love songs, delighted the nobility. Homer is credited with codifying epic poetry in Ancient Greece through the Iliad and the Odyssey, composed in dactylic hexameter. Hesiod built a tradition of poetry from catalogues and genealogies, seen in the Megala Erga and the Theogony. The Aeneid by Virgil closely followed the formula Homer established, carrying the epic into Latin.
Ancient Greek plays began as the chorus plays of Athens in the 6th century BC, a tradition honoring Dionysus, the god of theater and wine. They became known for elaborate costumes, complex choreography, scenic architecture, and the mask, often staged as a tetralogy of three tragedies followed by a satyr play. Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides won fame for tragedy, while Aristophanes and Menander were known for comedy. Sophocles is best remembered for Oedipus Rex, which set an early example of literary irony. Thales of Miletus was the first person in recorded history to engage in Western philosophy. Plato wove philosophical debate into dialogues built on Socratic questioning, and his student Aristotle wrote dozens of works across many scientific disciplines. Aristotle's Poetics laid groundwork for literary criticism and literary theory. In the Roman Republic, literature took the form of tragedy, comedy, epic, and history, and Livius Andronicus is recognized as the originator of literature in the Latin language. Plautus drew crowds with comedies built on humor and popular culture. The Golden Age of Latin literature arrived with poets such as Virgil, Horace, Propertius, and Ovid. Apuleius wrote The Golden Ass in the later Empire, possibly the world's oldest novel, while Augustine of Hippo turned Christianity into Latin literature through confessional writing such as the Confessions.
Confucius collected the Six Classics as the founding texts of Confucianism, and they became the measure against which all other Chinese works were compared. His sayings were later gathered by his students into the Analects, and Confucianism dominated literary taste from the Warring States period onward. Chinese culture by the Zhou dynasty prized the community over the individual, which discouraged grand mythological tales of great personages. The Classic of Poetry, oldest surviving anthology of Chinese poetry, gathers 305 works by anonymous authors dating from the 12th to 7th centuries BC. The Zuo Zhuan is considered the first large-scale narrative work in Chinese literature, and The Art of War by Sun Tzu still circulates as a book on military strategy. Historical literature was transformed by the Records of the Grand Historian, the first general history of ancient times and the largest work of literature up to that point. In India, knowledge passed down through the two traditions of Shruti and Smriti, that which is learnt and that which is experienced, including the Vedas. The Indian epics Ramayana and Mahabharata influenced countless later works, from Balinese Kecak to shadow puppetry known as wayang. Classical Tamil literature, dating from 300 BC to 300 AD, is the earliest secular literature of India, dwelling mainly on love and war.
After the fall of Rome in roughly 476, the literary styles of the Greeks and Romans fell out of favor in Europe, and medieval literature turned more and more toward faith. Many Greek works survived only because Muslim scribes preserved and copied them carefully, while the Islamic emphasis on scientific investigation later shaped European literature in turn. Hagiographies, the lives of the saints, ran frequent among early medieval texts, and Bede continued the faith-based historical tradition begun by Eusebius in the early 4th century. Thomas Aquinas, more than anyone, turned theology into a kind of science, drawing on Aristotle as those works returned to Europe in the 13th century. Religious literature in languages other than Latin spread during the 13th century, written for and often by women, who were not permitted to learn Latin. Literature in the modern English language began with Geoffrey Chaucer in the 14th century and The Canterbury Tales. The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri, completed around 1321, follows the poet through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, guided by Virgil and by Beatrice, his idealized woman. Long ignored, it was rediscovered by William Blake and other 19th century Romanticist writers, later influencing T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio, published in 1351, framed ten people each telling ten stories, introduced the term novella, and inspired Chaucer's own tales.
The Book of One Thousand and One Nights took form in the 10th century and reached its final shape by the 14th, a compilation of folk tales told by the Persian Queen Scheherazade. It became influential in the West only after Antoine Galland translated it in the 18th century, prompting many imitations, especially in France. Ferdowsi's Shahnameh, the national epic of Iran, is the longest epic poem ever written, a heroic retelling of Persian history. The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, by the mathematician and astronomer who lived from 1048 to 1122, gathers quatrains of four lines and became the most famous Persian book in the West. In Japan, literature first diverged from Chinese literature around the eighth century, and waka poetry grew essential to the Heian aristocracy in both social life and courtship. The Man'yoshu is the oldest collection of Japanese poetry, written in Japanese through Man'yogana and compiling waka from the fifth to eighth centuries. The Tale of Genji, written in the 11th century, became Japan's next major prose work, its realism and romantic idealization shaping later Heian fiction. In mid-imperial China, a copy of the Diamond Sutra, found sealed in a cave, carries a printed date of 868, making it the oldest known dated printed book. The Yuan dynasty produced two of the earliest Chinese novels, Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Water Margin.
The invention of the printing press in the mid-15th century changed European literature, allowing uniformity in texts and the spread of literacy. Petrarch popularized the sonnet, Francois Rabelais rejuvenated satire with Gargantua and Pantagruel, and Michel de Montaigne single-handedly invented the essay to catalog his life and ideas. A treatise printed in Nuremberg, De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium, saw Nicolaus Copernicus remove the Earth from its privileged place in the universe, with far-reaching effects on literature's approach to hierarchy and truth. William Shakespeare became the most notable early modern playwright, recognized as the greatest author in the English language for his comedies, dramas, and histories, and his use of blank verse, sonnet, and soliloquy. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe is considered the first modern English novel, written in a realistic style and first marketed as a true autobiography with no mention of its author. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes, published in the early 17th century, parodied chivalric romance during the Spanish Golden Age. Across the Atlantic, The Power of Sympathy by William Hill Brown was the first American novel, and the first Canadian novel, The History of Emily Montague, appeared in 1769. Contemporary literature is defined as that written after the end of World War II in 1945, and popular literature grew its own genres of fantasy and science fiction, with critical awards such as the Nebula Award, given since 1965, to honor them.
Common questions
What is the history of literature?
The history of literature is the historical development of writings in prose or poetry meant to entertain or educate readers, along with the literary techniques used to communicate them. It excludes recorded materials such as data compilations like a check register.
When and where did writing first begin in the history of literature?
Writing began independently in different parts of the world, in Mesopotamia about 3200 BC, in Ancient China about 1250 BC, and in Mesoamerica about 650 BC. Literature was not part of early writing, which was used first for simpler purposes such as accounting.
What is the oldest known literature in the history of literature?
Sumerian literature is the oldest known literature, written in Sumer. It used no titles, and each work was referred to by its first line. All Sumerian literature carried poetic aspects such as lines, imagery, and metaphor.
Who is credited with codifying epic poetry in ancient Greek literature?
Homer is credited with the codification of epic poetry in Ancient Greece through the Iliad and the Odyssey, composed in dactylic hexameter. Virgil's epic poem the Aeneid later closely followed the formula Homer established.
What is considered the first modern English novel in the history of literature?
Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe is considered the first modern English novel. It was written in a realistic style and its original edition was marketed as a true autobiography without any mention of Defoe as its author.
What is the oldest known dated printed book in the history of literature?
A copy of the Diamond Sutra, a key Buddhist text found sealed in a cave in China, is the oldest known dated printed book, with a printed date of 868. It was produced using block printing.
When does contemporary literature begin in the history of literature?
Contemporary literature is defined as literature written after the end of World War II in 1945. Popular literature developed its own genres such as fantasy and science fiction, supported by awards like the Nebula Award since 1965.