Asian and 21st Century Literature

Module 1: Asian and 21st Century Literature

• Asian literature originates from the largest continent with a diverse culture, long history, and is key to civilization.
• 21st Century Literature is gender-sensitive, tech-alluding, culturally pluralistic, extreme reality/fiction, and questions norms.

Representative Texts & Authors from Asia

• Illustrado: Miguel Syjuco, Philippines; won the Man Asian Literary Prize in 2008; is a half-autobiography with cultural criticism and meta-criticism on Filipino literature.
• Three Sisters: Bi Feiyu, China; won the Man Booker Prize in 2010; covers female psyche, Cultural Revolution, power struggles, and feminism.
• Please Look After Mother: Shin Kyung-sook, South Korea; won the Man Asian Literary Prize in 2012; explores psychological depth, family, modernization, and guilt.
• Govind Vinayak Karandikar (India): Marathi poet, writer, critic, and translator.
• Yosuke Tanaka (Japan): A poet with a diverse style, incorporating humor and nature, representing Japanese literary tradition.

Module 2: North American Literature

• North American Literature is shaped by history, themes of identity, differences, bullying, and the American Dream.

Representative Texts & Authors from North America

• James Patterson (New York): Author of thrillers and crime fiction; a bestselling author who is in the Guinness World Record; wrote "The President Is Missing".
• Nicholas Sparks (North Carolina): A romance, bestselling novelist who wrote "The Notebook," which later had film adaptations.
• John Green (Indiana): Writes young adult fiction, author of, "Looking for Alaska", and "The Fault in Our Stars" and winner of the Printz Award; also known as a YouTube creator.
• Suzanne Collins (Connecticut): Author of "The Hunger Games" trilogy, which covers dystopian fiction, war and poverty themes, and film adaptations; she is also a bestselling Kindle author.
• Billy Collins (New York): Poet Laureate from 2001–2003 who writes modern American poetry with relatable middle-class themes.

Module 3: European Literature

• European Literature includes diverse languages, strong classical and medieval traditions, with significant global influence.
• Notable Literary Figures from Europe: Homer, Virgil, Dante, and Chaucer are key figures in the Western Canon.

21st Century Representative Texts & Authors from Europe

• J.K. Rowling (UK): Author of the "Harry Potter" series, is known as a bestselling fantasy author and also writes crime fiction ("Cormoran Strike"), and is a philanthropist.
• Stephen King (USA): (Note: Not European); Author of horror and supernatural fiction like, "The Shining", and "It".
• Neil Gaiman (UK): Author of fantasy and comics like "The Sandman","Coraline", and "American Gods;" he's a genre-crossing author.
• George R.R. Martin (USA): Wrote "A Song of Ice and Fire", which became the epic fantasy, HBO's "Game of Thrones", that was influenced by medieval history.

Module 4: Latin American Literature

• Latin American Literature includes the oral and written traditions in diverse languages, such as Spanish, Portuguese, and the Indigenous languages of the Americas.
• Latin is the base language of Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and French.
• Latin American Boom: the 20th Latin movement
• History of Latin American Literature: Has a rich and complex tradition of literary production dating back many centuries.
• Pre-Columbian Literature was primarily oral, while the Aztecs and Mayans produced elaborate codices.
• Colonial Literature: When Europeans encountered the New World, early explorers and conquistadores produced written accounts of "crónicas" of their experience.
• Nineteenth Century Literature: Period of foundational fictions which attempted to establish a sense of national identity and focused on the role or the dichotomy of “civilization or barbarism”, and the time of gradual increase in women’s education, writing that brought more women writers to the forefront.
• Modernismo, the Vanguards, and Boom precursors emerged in the late 19th century and was a poetic movement that was made famous by the Nicaraguan Ruben Dario’s Azul, becoming the first Latin American literary movement to influence literary culture outside the region.
• National differences no longer were an issue and poetry had the renovation of poetic form and techniques, extending the use of free verse.
• Avant-Garde (vanguadria): the next artistic movement after Modernismo, instituted a radical search for new, daring, confrontational themes and shockingly novel forms.
• The Boom: literary movement of the 1960s and 1970s, after World War II.
• Boom Writers: ventured outside traditional narrative structures, embracing non-linearity and experimental narration.
• Post-Boom and Contemporary Literature: characterized by a tendency towards irony and humor and towards the use of popular genres.
• Contemporary Literature: vibrant and varied, ranging from the best-selling Paulo Coelho and Isabel Allende to the more avant-garde and critically acclaimed work of writers such as: DiamelaEltit, and GianninaBraschi.

21st Century Representative Texts and Authors from Latin America

• Gabriel Garcia Marquez (6 March 1927 – 17 April 2014): Famous Colombian novelist, short story writer journalist, and screenwriter; Nobel Prize winner in 1982; familiarly known as "Gabo," and one of the greatest authors of the 20th century.
  • Works: "One Hundred Years of Solitude", "Chronicle of a Death Foretold", "Love in time of Cholera", "Autumn of the Patriarch", Neustadt International Prize for Literature (1972), and Nobel Prize in Literature awardee (1982).
• Carlos Fuentes Macías (11 November 1928-15 May 2012): Mexican novelist and essayist who was described by The New York Times as “one of the most admired writers in the Spanish Speaking World," and the Latin American Boom; also called by The Guardian "Mexico’s most celebrated novelist".
  • Literary honors include the Miguel de Cervantes Prize, Belisario Dominguez Medal of Honor (1999).
    • Works: "The Death of Artemio Cruz", "Aura", "Terra Nostra", "The Old Gringo", and "Christopher Unborn".
• Mario Vargas Llosa (28 March 1936): Peruvian Spanish writer whose commitment to social change is evident in his novels, plays, and essays; he was awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature and was an unsuccessful candidate for president in Peru in 1990
  • Awarded the Cervantes Prize in the same year as "A Fish in the Water: A Memoir" (1993).
    • Works: "The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto” (1997), "The feast of the Goat" (2000, filmed 2005), "The Way to Paradise" (2003), "The Bad Girl" (2006), "The Dream of the Celt" (2010), and "The Discreet Hero" (2013).
• Julia Alvarez (27 March 1950): Dominican-American poet, novelist, and essayist and many literary critics regard her as one of the most significant Latina writers, achieving an international scale.
  • Works: "How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents" (1991), "In the Time of the Butterflies" (1994), and "Yo!" (1997).
  • Works as a poet: "Homecoming" (1984), and "The Woman I kept to Myself" (2004).

Module 5: African Authors and Literature

• African Literature: Comprehensive, complex and creative literature of and from Africa.

Contemporary African Writers

• Chinua Achebe: Nigerian novelist, poet, professor, and critic who is widely recognized as the father of modern African literature; he passed away on March 21, 2013, in Boston, at the age of 82.
  • Works Include: "Things Fall Apart" (1958), "Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness" (1899).
• Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: Nigerian writer who writes novels, short stories, and nonfiction.
  • Awards include the Orange Prize and Booker Prize
    • Novels include: "Purple Hibiscus" (2003) and "Americanah" (2013).
• Ayi Kwei Armah: Ghanaian writer, essayist, poet, and author of short stories and children's books; his works were influenced by French existential philosophers like Jean Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, with themes of despair, disillusionment, and irrationality.
  • The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born (1968)
• Mariama Bâ: Senegalese author and feminist whose French Language novels were both translated into more than a dozen languages and is known for her feminist texts that feature gender inequality in her native Senegal and Africa.
  • One of Africa’s most influential women authors.
  • Long A Letter (1981)
• Nuruddin Farah: Somali novelist who has also written plays for stage and radio plus short stories and essays.
  • A Crooked Rib (1970)

Module 6: Asian Literature

• Asian literature refers to the literature that was written over a period of thousands of years, in a variety of countries in Asia and is divided and characterized based on religion, zone region, ethnic group, literary genre, historical perspective or language of origin.

Haiku

• Haiku: Unrhymed poetic form of 17 syllables arranged in three lines of 5, 7, and 5 syllables and is a nature poem that revolves around seasons and nature.

Science Fiction

• Science fiction (sci-fi or SF): Speculative fiction genre that features imagined elements that don’t exist in the real world.

Folklore

• Folklore: the expressive body of culture shared by a particular group of people; and covers traditions common to that culture, subculture, or group, e.g., oral traditions such as tales, proverbs and jokes.
• Haruki Murakami was born in Kyoto, Japan, on January 12, 1949; grew up in Kobe, later moving to Tokyo, and attended Waseda University and is a famous Japanese author whose works have been translated into several languages; he has won prizes offered in Japan, including the "Yomiuri Literary Prize".

Module 13: Figures of Speech and other Literary Techniques

Euphemism

• Euphemisms: Pleasant words that replace words that seem unpleasant or harsh.

Techniques for Creating Euphemisms

• Masks a rude or impolite expression conveying the concept clearly and politely.
  • Abbreviations: E.g., O. (body odor) or W.C. (toilet).
  • Foreign words: Used to replace an impolite expression, e.g., faux (fake) or faux pas (foolish error).
  • Abstractions: E.g., before I go (before I die).
  • Indirect expressions: Replace direct ones that may sound offensive, e.g., rear-end (one’s back side or buttocks), unmentionables (underwear or lingerie).
  • Longer words or phrases can also mask unpleasant words, e.g., flatulence (farting), perspiration (sweat), or mentally challenged (stupid).
  • Technical terms may reduce the rudeness exhibited by certain words, e.g., gluteus maximus (backside, butt, or buttocks).
  • Deliberately mispronouncing an offensive word may reduce its severity, e.g., darn (damn), and shoot (shit).
• Euphemisms become a problem when they turn into doublespeak which is used deliberately to mislead or deceive the public about unpleasant realities.

Module 14: Editorial Cartoon

• Editorial Cartooning: Process of drawing or sketching pictorial caricatures of a person or object in order to inform, influence, argue, criticize, praise and interpret a certain event or to entertain.
• Cartoon: derived from caricature and lampoon.
• Caricature: An exaggerated description generally in a sketching done in a super-likeness manner using scale and distortion to suggest the artist’s feeling toward the subject; it is also a pictorial representation of a person or an object in which the defects or peculiarities are exaggerated so as to produce an amusing effect.
• Lampoon: A piece of harsh satire usually directed against an individual.
  • Cartoons differ from the original picture, telling tell something funny or hilarious.
  • They differ from posters and paintings are usually used in comics and drawing is used for trivia.
• Editorial cartoons throughout history have use of the following techniques:
  • Symbolism: Use of an object to stand for an idea.
  • Caricature: Exaggeration of a physical feature.
  • Captioning and Labels: For clarity and emphasis.
  • Analogy: Comparison of two unlike things that share some characteristics.
  • Irony: The difference between the way things are and the way things should be, or the way things are expected to be.
  • Juxtaposition: Positioning people or objects near each other for effect.
  • Exaggeration: Overstating or magnifying a problem.

Elements of Cartooning

• Composition: Arrangement of all the elements of a good drawing to produce the desired form and specifications.
• Balance: Stability from even distribution of those elements with respect to the whole.
• Unity: Condition of harmony and also the resulting singleness of effect or symmetry and consistency of style and character.

Elements of a Good Editorial Cartoon

• Offer insight, influence and change beliefs and spark discussion, give life to ideas and provoke thought.
• Express the artist’s ideas and thoughts without requiring a lot of explanations and be able to stand on its own and be more than a mere graphic depiction of the editorials it shares the page with.
• Dwell on subject matters that are current and very relevant to the readers and what they are thinking.

Module 15: Multimedia Form of Interpreting Literary Text: Still Images

Visual Elements

• Help readers 'see' what they're reading; these include pictures, drawings, comics, cartoons, and diagrams.

Multimedia Elements

• Combine more than one type of medium, typically in digital form, such as on computers, audio players, tablets, smartphones, and other technology.
• Still image: a photograph, drawing, or painting; it is a single static image and important element of a multimedia project or a website.

Types of Still Images

Bitmaps

• Derived from the words ‘bit,’ meaning the simplest element in which only two digits are used, and ‘map,’ which is a two-dimensional matrix of these bits.
• A data matrix describing the individual dots of an image that are the smallest elements (pixels) of resolution on a computer screen or print where pixels are units of measurement used for computer graphics.
• Image format best for photo-realistic images, complex drawings, and images that require fine detail, known as paint graphics.
• Can have varying bit and color depths where more bits provide more color depth, hence more photo-realism, but require more memory and processing power.
  • Monochrome just requires one bit per pixel, representing black or white.
  • Eight bits per pixel allows 256 distinct colors.
• Can be inserted using clip art galleries, bitmap software, capturing and editing images, and scanning images.

File Formats

• Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG): Designed to store high-resolution photographic images and display them attractively on screen.

• Graphic Interchange Format (GIF): Can be viewed on Macintosh, Windows, and UNIX platforms and are compressed to produce small file sizes making them useful for transmitting electronically over the phone lines.

• Portable Network Graphics (PNG): Almost the same as GIF but doesn't support the animation format.

• Other formats: BMP (recognized by many programs on both Macs and PCs), PSD (Photoshop Document, is the default format that Photoshop), TIFF/TIF(Tagged Information File Format, is excellent for both screen display and printed output), EPS (Encapsulated PostScript, are ideal for storing images that are intended to be printed on high-resolution imagesetters or laser printers), PCX, ICO.

• Vector-drawn images are created from geometric objects such as lines, rectangles, ovals, polygons using mathematical formulas.

Used in the following areas

• Computer-aided design (CAD) programs, graphic artists designing for the print media, 3-D animation programs, and applications requiring drawing of graphic shapes.

Difference between Vector Drawn Images and Bitmaps

• Vector images use less memory space and have a smaller file size as compared to bitmaps and the pages that use vector graphics in plug-ins download faster, and when used for animation, draw faster than bitmaps.
• Vector images cannot be used for photorealistic images, with bitmaps not being easily scalable and resizable.

Module 16: Blog

Blog

• Short term for “we blog,” it is the act of creating and maintaining a blog that is regularly updated and typically run by an individual or small group, written informallt and conversationally.

Popular Blogging Platforms

• Wordpress: World’s most popular blogging software that started in 2003 where more than 30% of all websites on the internet can have full control over your blog's future.
• Blogger: Free blogging service by Google that offers a quick and easy way to create a blog for non-tech-savvy users, needing only a Google account to start.
• Tumblr: Microblogging platform with social networking features, including following other blogs, reblogging, and built-in sharing tools.
• Medium: Launched in 2012, that has grown into a community of writers, bloggers, journalists, and experts as an easy-to-use blogging platform that has limited social networking features available.
• Ghost: Minimalist blogging platform with features entirely focused on writing blog posts, started in 2013,is both available as a hosted platform and as a software in which its up to the user to install/host.

Types of Literary Blogs

• Poetry Blog: Poetry has become a relevant niche for blogs that is a versatile form of literature and is continuously carried over through innovations and evolutions in order to bringing longevity to the art, increasing its visibility and sparking interest from the online.
• Short Story Blog: Types of blogs that are good for creative people with a keen eye in telling a work of fiction that can be read in one sitting and give readers all the compelling characters, drama, and descriptive language of great fiction, but in a compact package.
• Music Blogs: Has an audience wideley searching for critiques on the best and trending music like jazz, pop, heavy metal, famous singers, and more.
• Personal Blogs: Belong to individual writers sharing their experiences, adventures, and daily life with their audience in an effort to influence readers with own views through positivity. Movie Blogs: Share news and reviews on new movies and the film industry in general that has a large audience on the internet because bloggers are invited to watch premium shows before the public release of movies to write their reviews and generate buzz about an upcoming movie.

Module 17: Adapting Literary Text

Literary Adaptation

• The adapting of literary source (e.g., a novel, a short story, play, poem) to another genre or medium, such as music, a stage play, a ballet, an opera, a film, or even an animation in adapting for a smaller/larger cast, in a smaller/larger venue, or for a different demographic group.
• “To Adapt" means to transpose from one medium to another and is the ability to fit or to suit by changing or adjusting and to modify something to create a change in structure, function and form which produces an adjustment.

Three Types of Adaptation

Close Adaptation

• An adaptation that preserves the dialogue and actions.
  • Example: Jhumpa Lahiri’s "The Namesake," adapted by Mira Nair, remains true to its source novel in terms of plots, characters, themes and settings to over 90 percent of similarity between novel and film.

Intermediate Adaptation

• Adaptation based on a literary or other original source which captures the essence of the original often using cinematic equivalents for specific literary techniques.
• Example: The novella Susanna’s Seven Husbands where the filmmaker has expanded the plots and characters to make a full-fledged film is recognizable as the movie altering the basic theme of the story.

Loose Adaptation

• An adaptation where its resemblance is only purely superficial to the original source..
• Example:8 “The blockbuster Hindi film 3 Idiots, loosely adapted from Chetan Bhagat’s novel Five Points Someone - What not to do at IIT where the film uses only the plot and characters but they have drastically expanded the plots and characters for a better film.
• Adaptation writers must consider the legal side of the process involving copyright and plagiarism, and the ethical process in the preservation of the original idea.
• The process of adapting literature is ever changing using ICT skills to recreate the story for readers and reflects a technological culture, breaking writing rules.
  • Examples are Wattpad stories, social media stories, and flash fiction and graphic novels.

Module 18: Self-Assessment

Self Assesment

• Synonymous to evaluation or examination that identifies or measures a worth of something, or determine if a product achieved a certain standars of examination.
• A learning technique where a person evaluates the quality of his work, or the practice of monitoring personal progress and recognizing strengths and weaknesses.
• Self-assessment provides true insights and helps one notice holes in what has been learned, enhance the self-awareness to correct right sway that motivates better performance, promoting critical reviewing skills to be subjective.
• It gifts a sense of control of your learning, making knowledge more independent to acquire.