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57-486: Hermia is caught in a romantic entanglement where she loves one man, Lysander , but is being courted by another, Demetrius , whose feelings she does not return. Though she loves Lysander, Hermia's father, Egeus , wants her to marry Demetrius and has appealed to Theseus , the Duke of Athens, for support. Under Athenian law, Hermia's refusal of her father's command would result in her being put to death or being banished to

114-491: A nunnery . Lysander and Hermia then meet Demetrius' former fiancé, and Hermia's lifelong friend, Helena while discussing their run-away plans. Demetrius had abandoned Helena to woo Hermia but Helena is still hopelessly in love with him. Hermia tells Helena not to worry; Hermia will elope with Lysander and Demetrius will no longer see her face. Helena relates Hermia's plan to Demetrius in the hope that he will realize her love for him, but Demetrius pursues Hermia and Lysander into

171-428: A "parallel products of a literate society". All ancient Greek literature was to some degree oral in nature, and the earliest literature was completely so. Homer 's epic poetry, states Michael Gagarin, was largely composed, performed and transmitted orally. As folklores and legends were performed in front of distant audiences, the singers would substitute the names in the stories with local characters or rulers to give

228-569: A Roman audience saw a Latin version of a Greek play. Literature in Latin would flourish for the next six centuries, and includes essays, histories, poems, plays, and other writings. The Qur'an (610 AD to 632 AD), the main holy book of Islam , had a significant influence on the Arab language, and marked the beginning of Islamic literature . Muslims believe it was transcribed in the Arabic dialect of

285-432: A context without the use of writing to record and preserve history, scientific knowledge, and social practices. While some stories were told for amusement and leisure, most functioned as practical lessons from tribal experience applied to immediate moral, social, psychological, and environmental issues. Stories fuse fictional, supernatural, or otherwise exaggerated characters and circumstances with real emotions and morals as

342-405: A means of teaching. Plots often reflect real life situations and may be aimed at particular people known by the story's audience. In this way, social pressure could be exerted without directly causing embarrassment or social exclusion . For example, rather than yelling, Inuit parents might deter their children from wandering too close to the water's edge by telling a story about a sea monster with

399-576: A more dependable method of recording and presenting transactions in a permanent form. Though in both ancient Egypt and Mesoamerica , writing may have already emerged because of the need to record historical and environmental events. Subsequent innovations included more uniform, predictable legal systems , sacred texts , and the origins of modern practices of scientific inquiry and knowledge-consolidation , all largely reliant on portable and easily reproducible forms of writing. Ancient Egyptian literature , along with Sumerian literature , are considered

456-581: A particular subject. Developments in print technology have allowed an ever-growing distribution and proliferation of written works, while the digital era had blurred the lines between online electronic literature and other forms of modern media. Definitions of literature have varied over time. In Western Europe, prior to the 18th century, literature denoted all books and writing. It can be seen as returning to older, more inclusive notions, so that cultural studies , for instance, include, in addition to canonical works , popular and minority genres . The word

513-537: A pouch for children within its reach. The enduring significance of oral traditions is underscored in a systemic literature review on indigenous languages in South Africa, within the framework of contemporary linguistic challenges. Oral literature is crucial for cultural preservation, linguistic diversity, and social justice, as evidenced by the postcolonial struggles and ongoing initiatives to safeguard and promote South African indigenous languages. Oratory or

570-465: A role in an individual's psychological development. Psychologists have also been using literature as a therapeutic tool. Psychologist Hogan argues for the value of the time and emotion that a person devotes to understanding a character's situation in literature; that it can unite a large community by provoking universal emotions, as well as allowing readers access to different cultures, and new emotional experiences. One study, for example, suggested that

627-409: Is "what is literature?" – although many contemporary theorists and literary scholars believe either that "literature" cannot be defined or that it can refer to any use of language. Literary fiction is a term used to describe fiction that explores any facet of the human condition , and may involve social commentary . It is often regarded as having more artistic merit than genre fiction , especially

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684-527: Is a "minimum age constraint for human presence in Victoria ", and also could be interpreted as evidence for the oral histories of the Gunditjmara people, an Aboriginal Australian people of south-western Victoria, which tell of volcanic eruptions being some of the oldest oral traditions in existence. An axe found underneath volcanic ash in 1947 had already proven that humans inhabited the region before

741-641: Is also used in reference to non-written works: to " oral literature " and "the literature of preliterate culture". Etymologically , the term derives from Latin literatura/litteratura , "learning, writing, grammar," originally "writing formed with letters," from litera/littera , "letter." In spite of this, the term has also been applied to spoken or sung texts. Literature is often referred to synecdochically as "writing," especially creative writing , and poetically as "the craft of writing" (or simply "the craft"). Syd Field described his discipline, screenwriting , as "a craft that occasionally rises to

798-416: Is believed to have been recited or sung, employed as a way of remembering history , genealogy , and law. In Asia, the transmission of folklore, mythologies as well as scriptures in ancient India, in different Indian religions, was by oral tradition, preserved with precision with the help of elaborate mnemonic techniques . The early Buddhist texts are also generally believed to be of oral tradition, with

855-455: Is but little, she is fierce." Lysander and Demetrius resolve to settle their rivalry with swords and separately head further into the forest. Wearied by the conflict and the chase, and with Puck providing some magic assistance, the four young Athenians fall asleep in the forest. Puck places the antidote on Lysander's eyes but not on Demetrius'. The four wake up the next morning when Theseus, Hippolyta , his betrothed, and Egeus find them. This

912-523: Is in love with Egeus 's daughter Hermia . However, Egeus does not approve of Lysander and prefers his daughter to marry a man called Demetrius . Meanwhile, Hermia's friend Helena has fallen in love with Demetrius. When Hermia is forced to choose between dying, becoming a nun, or marrying Demetrius by the next full moon, she and Lysander run away into the forest near Athens. After Lysander is put under Puck's spell, being mistaken for Demetrius he falls in love with Helena, but Helena loves Demetrius. Eventually,

969-461: Is instead encompassed by textual criticism or the history of the book . "Literature", as an art form, is sometimes used synonymously with literary fiction , fiction written with the goal of artistic merit , but can also include works in various non-fiction genres, such as biography , diaries , memoirs , letters , and essays . Within this broader definition, literature includes non-fictional books , articles, or other written information on

1026-416: Is the day Hermia is to make her choice: marry Demetrius, enter a nunnery or die. However, the lovers wake up dazed; Unable to explain how they fell asleep, they talk about a strange dream. Demetrius, now permanently under the love flowers spell, says that he loves only Helena. With Demetrius out of the picture, Theseus overrules Egeus, freeing Hermia from her obligation. Hermia and Lysander marry each other at

1083-641: The Late Bronze Age and the Iron Age . The period between approximately the 6th to 1st centuries BC saw the composition and redaction of the two most influential Indian epics, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana , with subsequent redaction progressing down to the 4th century AD such as Ramcharitmanas . The earliest known Greek writings are Mycenaean ( c.  1600 –1100 BC), written in

1140-567: The Linear B syllabary on clay tablets. These documents contain prosaic records largely concerned with trade (lists, inventories, receipts, etc.); no real literature has been discovered. Michael Ventris and John Chadwick , the original decipherers of Linear B, state that literature almost certainly existed in Mycenaean Greece , but it was either not written down or, if it was, it was on parchment or wooden tablets, which did not survive

1197-925: The Quraysh , the tribe of Muhammad . As Islam spread, the Quran had the effect of unifying and standardizing Arabic. Theological works in Latin were the dominant form of literature in Europe typically found in libraries during the Middle Ages . Western Vernacular literature includes the Poetic Edda and the sagas , or heroic epics, of Iceland, the Anglo-Saxon Beowulf , and the German Song of Hildebrandt . A later form of medieval fiction

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1254-575: The Vedas , dating back to 1500–1000 BC, and continues with the Sanskrit Epics of Iron Age India . The Vedas are among the oldest sacred texts . The Samhitas (vedic collections) date to roughly 1500–1000 BC, and the "circum-Vedic" texts, as well as the redaction of the Samhitas, date to c.  1000 ‒500 BC, resulting in a Vedic period , spanning the mid-2nd to mid-1st millennium BC, or

1311-748: The Vedas , the Torah , the Bible, and the Quran . The King James Version of the Bible has been called "the most influential version of the most influential book in the world, in what is now its most influential language", "the most important book in English religion and culture", and "arguably the most celebrated book in the English-speaking world ," principally because of its literary style and widespread distribution. Prominent atheist figures such as

1368-617: The destruction of the Mycenaean palaces in the twelfth century BC . Homer 's epic poems , the Iliad and the Odyssey , are central works of ancient Greek literature . It is generally accepted that the poems were composed at some point around the late eighth or early seventh century BC. Modern scholars consider these accounts legendary . Most researchers believe that the poems were originally transmitted orally . From antiquity until

1425-696: The invention of printing . Prior to printing, distributed works were copied manually, by scribes . The Chinese inventor Bi Sheng made movable type of earthenware c.  1045 and was spread to Korea later. Around 1230, Koreans invented a metal type movable printing. East metal movable type was spread to Europe between the late 14th century and early 15th century. In c.  1450 , Johannes Gutenberg invented movable type in Europe. This invention gradually made books less expensive to produce and more widely available. Early printed books, single sheets, and images created before 1501 in Europe are known as incunables or incunabula . "A man born in 1453,

1482-399: The utilitarians and Benthamites , promoted the possibility of including courses in English literary study in the newly formed London University ". This further developed into the idea of the study of literature being "the ideal carrier for the propagation of the humanist cultural myth of a well educated, culturally harmonious nation". The widespread education of women was not common until

1539-585: The European Romantic era. Jane Austen (1775 – 1817) is the first major English woman novelist, while Aphra Behn is an early female dramatist. Nobel Prizes in Literature have been awarded between 1901 and 2020 to 117 individuals: 101 men and 16 women. Selma Lagerlöf (1858 – 1940) was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature , which she was awarded in 1909. Additionally, she

1596-567: The European canon of Romantic literature , there is one notable exception, the French novelist and memoirist Amantine Dupin (1804 – 1876) best known by her pen name George Sand . One of the more popular writers in Europe in her lifetime, being more renowned than both Victor Hugo and Honoré de Balzac in England in the 1830s and 1840s, Sand is recognised as one of the most notable writers of

1653-665: The Grand Historian , c.  94 BC ). Ancient Chinese literature had a heavy emphasis on historiography, with often very detailed court records. An exemplary piece of narrative history of ancient China was the Zuo Zhuan , which was compiled no later than 389 BC, and attributed to the blind 5th-century BC historian Zuo Qiuming . In ancient India , literature originated from stories that were originally orally transmitted. Early genres included drama , fables , sutras and epic poetry . Sanskrit literature begins with

1710-526: The Latin littera , "letter," essentially writing. Alternatives such as "oral forms" and "oral genres" have been suggested, but the word literature is widely used. Australian Aboriginal culture has thrived on oral traditions and oral histories passed down through tens of thousands of years. In a study published in February 2020, new evidence showed that both Budj Bim and Tower Hill volcanoes erupted between 34,000 and 40,000 years ago. Significantly, this

1767-520: The art of public speaking was considered a literary art for a significant period of time. From Ancient Greece to the late 19th century, rhetoric played a central role in Western education in training orators, lawyers, counselors, historians, statesmen, and poets. Around the 4th millennium BC, the complexity of trade and administration in Mesopotamia outgrew human memory, and writing became

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1824-485: The definition has expanded to include oral literature , much of which has been transcribed. Literature is a method of recording, preserving, and transmitting knowledge and entertainment . It can also have a social, psychological, spiritual, or political role. Literary criticism is one of the oldest academic disciplines, and is concerned with the literary merit or intellectual significance of specific texts. The study of books and other texts as artifacts or traditions

1881-541: The earliest and most influential works of ancient Greek literature. Classical Greek genres included philosophy, poetry, historiography, comedies and dramas. Plato (428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) and Aristotle (384–322 BC) authored philosophical texts that are regarded as the foundation of Western philosophy , Sappho ( c.  630  – c.  570 BC ) and Pindar were influential lyric poets , and Herodotus ( c.  484  – c.  425 BC ) and Thucydides were early Greek historians. Although drama

1938-547: The eruption of Tower Hill. Oral literature is an ancient human tradition found in "all corners of the world." Modern archaeology has been unveiling evidence of the human efforts to preserve and transmit arts and knowledge that depended completely or partially on an oral tradition, across various cultures: The Judeo-Christian Bible reveals its oral traditional roots; medieval European manuscripts are penned by performing scribes; geometric vases from archaic Greece mirror Homer's oral style. (...) Indeed, if these final decades of

1995-515: The first by comparing inconsistencies in the transmitted versions of literature from various oral societies such as the Greek, Serbia and other cultures, then noting that the Vedic literature is too consistent and vast to have been composed and transmitted orally across generations, without being written down. According to Goody, the Vedic texts likely involved both a written and oral tradition, calling it

2052-572: The forest with Helena in pursuit. Demetrius tries to persuade Helena to stop following him but Helena declares her love. Oberon is the king of the fairies. He is invisible to humans and has been watching the story unfold. He orders his sprite, Puck , to place a drop from a magical flower on the sleeping Demetrius' eyelids so that he will fall in love with Helena when he wakes, and everyone will be content. However, Puck mistakes Lysander for Demetrius; when Lysander awakes, he sees Helena and falls deeply in love with her, forsaking Hermia. After discovering

2109-590: The genre. The Hebrew religious text, the Torah , is widely seen as a product of the Persian period (539–333 BC, probably 450–350 BC). This consensus echoes a traditional Jewish view which gives Ezra , the leader of the Jewish community on its return from Babylon, a pivotal role in its promulgation. This represents a major source of Christianity's Bible, which has had a major influence on Western literature. The beginning of Roman literature dates to 240 BC, when

2166-495: The grave and oblivion. The very best in literature is annually recognized by the Nobel Prize in Literature , which is awarded to an author from any country who has, in the words of the will of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel , produced "in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction" (original Swedish: den som inom litteraturen har producerat det mest framstående verket i en idealisk riktning ). Some researchers suggest that literary fiction can play

2223-436: The level of art." A value judgment definition of literature considers it as consisting solely of high quality writing that forms part of the belles-lettres ("fine writing") tradition. An example of this is in the 1910–1911 Encyclopædia Britannica , which classified literature as "the best expression of the best thought reduced to writing". The use of the term "literature" here poses some issues due to its origins in

2280-431: The millennium have taught us anything, it must be that oral tradition never was the other we accused it of being; it never was the primitive, preliminary technology of communication we thought it to be. Rather, if the whole truth is told, oral tradition stands out as the single most dominant communicative technology of our species as both a historical fact and, in many areas still, a contemporary reality. The earliest poetry

2337-451: The mistake, Oberon places a drop of the magical flower on Demetrius' eyes. Demetrius awakes and his love for Helena is now rekindled; he joins Lysander in the quest for Helena's hand. With both Demetrius and Lysander pursuing her, Helena becomes angry. Because Lysander's love for Hermia was so great and Demetrius had been wooing her in accordance with her father's wishes, Helena believes that they are cruelly mocking her. When Hermia returns to

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2394-576: The most commercially oriented types, but this has been contested in recent years, with the serious study of genre fiction within universities. The following, by the British author William Boyd on the short story, might be applied to all prose fiction: [short stories] seem to answer something very deep in our nature as if, for the duration of its telling, something special has been created, some essence of our experience extrapolated, some temporary sense has been made of our common, turbulent journey towards

2451-569: The nineteenth century, and because of this, literature until recently was mostly male dominated . George Sand was an idea. She has a unique place in our age. Others are great men ... she was a great woman. Victor Hugo , Les funérailles de George Sand There were few English-language women poets whose names are remembered until the twentieth century. In the nineteenth century some notable individuals include Emily Brontë , Elizabeth Barrett Browning , and Emily Dickinson (see American poetry ). But while generally women are absent from

2508-432: The presence of familiar cultural values in literary texts played an important impact on the performance of minority students. Psychologist Maslow's ideas help literary critics understand how characters in literature reflect their personal culture and the history. The theory suggests that literature helps an individual's struggle for self-fulfillment. Religion has had a major influence on literature, through works like

2565-415: The present day, the influence of Homeric epic on Western civilization has been significant, inspiring many of its most famous works of literature, music, art and film. The Homeric epics were the greatest influence on ancient Greek culture and education; to Plato , Homer was simply the one who "has taught Greece" – ten Hellada pepaideuken . Hesiod 's Works and Days (c.700 BC) and Theogony are some of

2622-450: The scene, Helena accuses her of being part of the joke. Hermia feels betrayed by the accusation and asserts that she would never hurt her friend that way. Accusations and challenges fly between Lysander and Demetrius and between Helena and Hermia. Hermia now thinks the two swains prefer Helena because she is taller and offers to fight Helena. Helena asks for protection because Hermia was a scrapper in their younger years, saying, "And though she

2679-602: The spell is reversed and Lysander marries Hermia. There is a party at the end where the Mechanicals perform their play and Hermia and Lysander get married. This article about a literature character is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Literature Literature is any collection of written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially novels , plays , and poems . It includes both print and digital writing . In recent centuries,

2736-624: The stories a local flavor and thus connect with the audience by making the historicity embedded in the oral tradition as unreliable. The lack of surviving texts about the Greek and Roman religious traditions have led scholars to presume that these were ritualistic and transmitted as oral traditions, but some scholars disagree that the complex rituals in the ancient Greek and Roman civilizations were an exclusive product of an oral tradition. Writing systems are not known to have existed among Native North Americans (north of Mesoamerica) before contact with Europeans. Oral storytelling traditions flourished in

2793-539: The wedding. As Hermia's name comes from the god of trade, there may have been an economic reason for Demetrius' courtship and Egeus' insistence on their marriage. In film versions, Hermia was played by Olivia de Havilland in the 1935 version and by Anna Friel in the 1999 release Lysander (Shakespeare) Lysander is a fictional character in William Shakespeare 's play A Midsummer Night's Dream . A handsome young man of Athens, Lysander

2850-488: The world's oldest literatures . The primary genres of the literature of ancient Egypt — didactic texts, hymns and prayers, and tales—were written almost entirely in verse; By the Old Kingdom (26th century BC to 22nd century BC), literary works included funerary texts , epistles and letters, hymns and poems, and commemorative autobiographical texts recounting the careers of prominent administrative officials. It

2907-633: The world's first print cultures . Much of Chinese literature originates with the Hundred Schools of Thought period that occurred during the Eastern Zhou dynasty (769‒269 BC). The most important of these include the Classics of Confucianism , of Daoism , of Mohism , of Legalism , as well as works of military science (e.g. Sun Tzu 's The Art of War , c.  5th century BC ) and Chinese history (e.g. Sima Qian 's Records of

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2964-582: The year of the fall of Constantinople, could look back from his fiftieth year on a lifetime in which about eight million books had been printed, more perhaps than all the scribes of Europe had produced since Constantine founded his city in A.D. 330." Eventually, printing enabled other forms of publishing besides books. The history of newspaper publishing began in Germany in 1609, with the publishing of magazines following in 1663. In late 1820s England, growing political and social awareness, "particularly among

3021-567: Was not until the early Middle Kingdom (21st century BC to 17th century BC) that a narrative Egyptian literature was created. Many works of early periods, even in narrative form, had a covert moral or didactic purpose, such as the Sanskrit Panchatantra ( 200 BC – 300 AD), based on older oral tradition. Drama and satire also developed as urban cultures, which provided a larger public audience, and later readership for literary production. Lyric poetry (as opposed to epic poetry)

3078-626: Was often the speciality of courts and aristocratic circles, particularly in East Asia where songs were collected by the Chinese aristocracy as poems, the most notable being the Shijing or Book of Songs (1046– c.  600 BC ). In ancient China , early literature was primarily focused on philosophy, historiography , military science , agriculture, and poetry . China, the origin of modern paper making and woodblock printing , produced

3135-435: Was popular in ancient Greece, of the hundreds of tragedies written and performed during the classical age , only a limited number of plays by three authors still exist: Aeschylus , Sophocles , and Euripides . The plays of Aristophanes ( c.  446  – c.  386 BC ) provide the only real examples of a genre of comic drama known as Old Comedy , the earliest form of Greek Comedy, and are in fact used to define

3192-641: Was the romance , an adventurous and sometimes magical narrative with strong popular appeal. Controversial, religious, political and instructional literature proliferated during the European Renaissance as a result of the Johannes Gutenberg 's invention of the printing press around 1440, while the Medieval romance developed into the novel. Publishing became possible with the invention of writing but became more practical with

3249-621: Was the first woman to be granted a membership in The Swedish Academy in 1914. Feminist scholars have since the twentieth century sought to expand the literary canon to include more women writers. A separate genre of children's literature only began to emerge in the eighteenth century, with the development of the concept of childhood . The earliest of these books were educational books, books on conduct, and simple ABCs—often decorated with animals, plants, and anthropomorphic letters. A fundamental question of literary theory

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