M.A Part 1 - Sem II - Blog on 2.3 Advanced studies in English Language.

 2.3 Advanced studies in the English language. - Blog

Introduction:

 The term “third world” was coined by a French demographer, anthropologist, and historian Alfred Sauvy in 1952. He used the term to denote those nations during the Cold War who were neither aligned with either the Communist Soviet bloc or the Capitalist NATO bloc. The history of third-world countries is marked by anticolonialism, the war of liberation from foreign rule, and mass movements. It comprises almost all the African, Asian, and Latin American nations of the world. The Third World can be understood “as a time-space of subject formation, necessarily determined by imperialism, colonialism, developmentalism and experimentation with bourgeois democracy and other forms of nation-statehood. Not just geography with its millennia of cultural history – not, for instance, “India”, from the Vedic past to the neo-Vedic present – but India after its occupation and transformation by imperialist rulers.”

One might define Third World literature as composing the literature of Asia, Africa, and Latin America—perhaps together with their respective metropolitan Diasporas. But this could only work if the category was effectively restricted to works written after the end of World War II. And that still leaves the question of whether Third World literature continues to be written or does it captures the ideology, sentiments, and energies of nations struggling for liberation.

Asian literature:

The Asian literature comprises of - Storytelling which compares the ways in which artists over the last five hundred years have retold and reinterpreted five epic works of Asian literature: the Mahabharata and Ramayana from India, Shahnameh from Iran, Journey to the West from China, and Tale of Genji from Japan.

Famous authors of Asian Literature:

The polymath Rabindranath Tagore, a Bengali poet, dramatist, and writer who was an Indian, became in 1913 the first Asian Nobel laureate. He won his Nobel Prize in Literature for notable impact his prose works and poetic thought had on English, French, and other national literatures of Europe and the Americas.

The earliest known piece of literature in Ancient China is "The Book of Songs" by Shijing or Shi Jing, also known as the "Classic of Poetry" or "Odes." It is a collection of 305 poems that date back to the Western Zhou period (1046–771 BCE) and possibly even earlier.

 

African literature:

African literature is literature from Africa, either oral ("orature") or written in African and Afro-Asiatic languages. Examples of pre-colonial African literature can be traced back to at least the fourth century AD. The best-known is the Kebra Negast, or "Book of Kings" from the 14th century AD.

Famous authors of African literature:

1. Chinua Achebe. It's impossible to talk about African literature without mentioning Chinua Achebe. His two best-known books, Things Fall Apart and No Longer at Ease, have left a lasting mark on literature from the continent.

The oldest literary works in Africa date from about the 4th century CE, but most written African literature dates from the 20th century or later. Much African literature is written in such European languages as English, French, and Portuguese, but the number of works in African languages is growing.

 

Literature from Latin America.

Some of the most famous literary works from Latin America are One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez, The Death of Artemio Cruz by Carlos Fuentes, and Hopscotch by Julio Cortázar.

Four key themes in Latin American literature include civilization vs. barbarism, politics and resistance, the construction of identity, and the construction of reality.

 

Conclusion

To sum up, Third World literature is more about reality and lessons to be learnt from different forms of life.