World Literature Masterworks Flashcards

Grade 12 · English · Flashcards

Essential authors, texts, movements, and concepts from the global literary canon.

Flashcards

Epic of Gilgamesh

Mesopotamian epic (c. 2100 BCE), one of the oldest surviving texts; explores friendship, mortality, and the futile search for immortality.

Homer — The Iliad & Odyssey

Ancient Greek epic poems; *Iliad* covers the Trojan War's final weeks; *Odyssey* follows Odysseus's decade-long homeward journey.

The Tale of Genji

Written by Murasaki Shikibu c. 1000 CE; considered the world's first novel; explores Heian-era Japanese court society and psychological interiority.

One Thousand and One Nights

Arabic-language frame narrative in which Scheherazade tells stories to survive; origin of Aladdin, Ali Baba, and Sinbad tales.

Gabriel García Márquez

Colombian novelist and Nobel laureate; author of *One Hundred Years of Solitude* (1967); the defining figure of magical realism.

Chinua Achebe

Nigerian author of *Things Fall Apart* (1958); a foundational postcolonial novel reclaiming Igbo culture and voice from colonial narrative distortion.

Postcolonial Literature

Works engaging with the experience and legacy of colonialism; often reclaims indigenous identity, critiques Eurocentric narratives, and explores hybrid cultural identity.

Haruki Murakami

Contemporary Japanese novelist (*Norwegian Wood*, *Kafka on the Shore*); blends Western cultural references with Japanese sensibility and surrealist elements.

Rabindranath Tagore

Bengali poet, novelist, and philosopher; first non-European Nobel Prize in Literature laureate (1913); known for *Gitanjali* (Song Offerings).

Franz Kafka

Prague-born German-language author of *The Metamorphosis* and *The Trial*; his name gave English the adjective 'Kafkaesque'—denoting absurd, dehumanizing bureaucratic systems.

Mahabharata

Ancient Sanskrit epic attributed to Vyasa; the longest epic ever composed (~100,000 couplets); includes the *Bhagavad Gita*, a key Hindu philosophical text.

Rumi

13th-century Persian Sufi mystic poet; author of *Masnavi*; one of the best-selling poets in the United States, celebrated for verse on love, longing, and union with the divine.

Translation and World Literature

Critical awareness of how translation choices (word selection, syntax, cultural concepts) shape meaning; readers should note translator's name and ideally compare versions.

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