(from the Latin Littera meaning 'letters’ and referring to an

acquaintance with the written word) is the written work of a specific culture, sub-
culture, religion, philosophy or the study of such written work which may appear
in poetry or in prose.

literature

Poetry prose

Non-
Dramatic fiction
lyric narrative Fiction

Ode epic comedy

Sonnet
ballad tragic

songs lay romance

haiku metrical Melodrama

tale

farce

elegy idyll

metrical
allegory
Japan- Land of the Rising Sun
Japanese theater has a long, rich
history. There are four main types of
traditional theater in Japan. These are
noh, kyogen, kabuki, and bunraku.
Each of these forms of theater
performance is very distinct and
unique from the another.
Noh theater, also called nogaku, is a
form of musical drama. The Japanese
started performing Noh in the
fourteenth century. Most of the
characters in these plays are
concealed by masks, and men play
both the male and female roles.
Kabuki is a form of Japanese theater
that combines drama, dance, and
music and is the most well-known to
people around the world. Okunis
performed the Kabuki plays. Kabuki
theater is very lively. Swordfights
and wild costumes are the norm in the
stage productions.
Bunraku is Japanese theater that uses
puppets. Puppets and Bunraku were
used in Japanese theatre as early as
the Noh plays. Medieval records
prove the use of puppets actually in
Noh plays. The puppets were 3- to 4-
foot-tall (0.91 to 1.52 m) dolls
manipulated by puppeteers in full
view of the audience. The puppeteers
controlling the legs and hands are
dressed entirely in black, while the
head puppeteer is wearing colorful
clothing. Music and chanting is a
popular convention of bunraku, and
the shamisen player is usually
considered to be the leader of the
production.
Earliest Writings
Although Japanese and Chinese are
different languages, the Japanese
borrowed and adapted Chinese
ideographs early in the 8th cent. in
order to render their spoken language
in written form. Because Japanese is
better suited to phonetic transcription,
the result is a language of extremely
complicated linguistic construction.
In 712 the new writing system was
used in the compilation of orally
preserved poems and stories into the
Kojiki [records of ancient matters], an
account of the divine creation of
Japan and its imperial clan. Another
historical work, the Nihon-shoki
[chronicles of Japan] (721), was
written in Chinese. The oldest
anthology of Japanese verse,
Manyoshu [collection of a myriad
leaves] (760), contains about 4,500
poems, many from much earlier
times. A number of the poems in this
collection are more varied in form and
more passionate in statement than
those written in later eras.
"Haiku" is a traditional form of
Japanese poetry. Haiku poems
consist of 3 lines. The first and last
lines of a Haiku have 5 syllables and
the middle line has 7 syllables. The
lines rarely rhyme.
The Japanese tanka is a thirty-
one-syllable poem, traditionally
written in a single unbroken line.
A form of waka, Japanese song
or verse, tanka translates as
“short song," and is better known
in its five-line, 5/7/5/7/7 syllable
count form.
Pearl of the Orient
The Red Dragon
There are approximately 50,000
Chinese characters in existence,
but only between three and four
thousand are in regular use.
The Five Classics and Four
Books were the basis of the civil
examination in imperial China
and can be considered the
Confucian canon. The Five
Classics consists of the Book of
Odes, Book of Documents, Book
of Changes, Book of Rites, and
the Spring and Autumn Annals.
- The Gift of the Nile
- The Jewel In the Crown
The earliest works of india were
orally transmitted.
Classical Sanskrit is defined by
the oldest surviving Sanskrit
grammar
The Rigveda is an ancient Indian
collection of Vedic Sanskrit
hymns. It is one of the four
canonical sacred texts (śruti) of
Hinduism known as the
Vedas.[2][3] The text is a
collection of 1,028 hymns and
10,600 verses, organized into ten
books (Mandalas).
- Land of the
Morning Calm
Hangul- the Korean alphabet, is
the alphabet that has been used to
write the Korean language since
the 15th century.
- Dark Continent
Africa was called the Dark
Continent - not because of the
complexion of many of its
people, but because knowledge
of its interior was so very
limited. (The words vision and
wisdom are cognates.)

- Cradle of Islam