1. The Art of Being Human, 7/e
Chapter 4 –
Literature
PowerPoint by Julie Rodakowski
©2003 Pearson Education, Inc., publishing as Longman
Publishers.

2. LITERATURE AS HISTORY
People in the past, just
as people today, needed
to define themselves and
their times, and they did
so through their writings.
• Gilgamesh
• Homer’s Iliad
©2003 Pearson Education, Inc., publishing as Longman
Publishers.

3. POETRY
People in the past, just as people
today, needed to share thoughts
and ideas in a more elevated
style than prose offered, and they
did so through POETRY.
TWO OF SEVERAL TYPES OF POETRY:
•sonnet
•haiku
©2003 Pearson Education, Inc., publishing as Longman
Publishers.

4. SOME FAMOUS POETS:
• Sappho—the first poet?
• Petrarch—sonnets
• Shakespeare—sonnets
• Lorca—sonnets (Spanish poet)
• John Donne—sonnets
• Basho—haiku
• Issa—haiku
• William Blake—simple forms / profound meanings
• Emily Dickinson—a modern poet
• Georgia Douglas Johnson—Afro-American
• Archibald MacLeish—Ars Poetica (defining a poem)
©2003 Pearson Education, Inc., publishing as Longman
Publishers.

5. THE NOVEL
People in the past, just as people
today, needed a more complex literary
form that was not based in the ―real‖
events of the past or of the present;
thus, the fictional NOVEL was
developed.
• A PICARESQUE NOVEL—
Cervantes’s Don Quixote
• AN AMERICAN CLASSIC—
Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby
©2003 Pearson Education, Inc., publishing as Longman
Publishers.

6. THE SHORT STORY
People in the past, just as people
today, needed a literary form that
could be read in one sitting, and the
SHORT STORY was developed.
• Edgar Allan Poe defined and wrote classic
short stories.
• Shirley Jackson also wrote a classic short
story called ―The Lottery.‖
©2003 Pearson Education, Inc., publishing as Longman
Publishers.