What countries have great contributions to world literature?

Question

What countries have great contributions to world literature?

Answer 1

I would say that this question is impossible to answer. In my estimation, there are 3 great strains of world literature. There is the Western School (Everything that came out of ancient Greek Philosophy), the Mid-Eastern School (The Judeo-Christian Bible, Islam, Arabic and Persian poets), and the Eastern School (the diverse traditions of India, China, Japan, and all of East Asia).

I can only really speak about the westen school, because I do not feel sufficiently educated about the other. The West, which arose out of Greece and Western Turkey around 600-400 b.c.e., contains the writings of Homer, Aeschylus, and Sophocles; as well as the philosophers Socrates, Plato and Aristotle- who theorized about what would later become Western Literature. After Greece, the Roman empire helped to spread literature and writing throughout much of what is modern Europe.

Italy introduced writing for commoners with Dante's trilogy, and Spain created much of the modern novel in Cervantes's Don Quixote. Russia produced many of the finest examples of the novel through Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, while England's tradition of theater through Shakespeare and Johnson, is at the top. Germany produced the Romantic movement which influenced all of Europe, and the French tradition of Radicalism has continued influencing most other Western Writers.

America and Canada are recent additions to the scene, with Americas poetic tradition (Whitman, Dickinson) and gritty 20th century novels (Hammett, Steinbeck, Kerouac) being most notable. I would probably rank them historically, and say:

Greece

Italy

England

Spain

France

in terms of the Western Tradition.  

Answer 2

Germany

The UK

France

Spain

Poland

Answer 3

U.K.

Spain

U.S.A

Russia

Columbia

Argentina

France

Mexico

Germany

Answer 4

I'd say all countries and regions of the world wherever people have produced and enjoy works of creative imagination.

Answer 5

Russia (Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Vladimir Nabokov)

England (Charles Dickens, William Shakespeare, Chaucer, the Brontes, Jane Austen, JR Tolkien, George Orwell, Beatrix Potter, HG Wells, JK Rowling)

Greece (Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Plato/Aristotle)

Italy (Dante, Niccolo Machiavelli)

America (Ben Franklin, JD Salinger, Toni Morrison, Mark Twain, Edgar Allen Poe, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Steinbeck, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Hemingway, Kerouac, Ayn Rand)

Other notable writers, Gandhi (India), Victor Hugo + Rousseau (France), Adam Smith (Scotland), Atwood (Canada), James Joyce and Oscar Wilde (Ireland/Britain)

Answer 6

In addition to the other countries, I will like to name Persia and Arabia.

Persian philosophy is famous all over the world. Its highly spiritual and intellectual. With poets like Rumi, Saedi, Hafez Persia has contributed heavily to the world literature. Not to mention the Eastern versions of Romeo and Juliet - Shirin Farhad and Laila Majnun. Great Persian classics.

So is Arabia. After the rise of Islam in Arab, the spread of culture gained pace. Great advancements were made in the field of Science, Mathematics and Philosophy. The Arabs estabilished great institutions of learning in Spain which were attended by students from all over Europe. This greatly helped Europe to climb out of the Dark ages it was in. The Arabs translated all the literature of the World into Arabic. And the Qur'an, which has served as an original materpiece eversince.

From Indian subcontinent we must not forget to mention Rabindranath Tagore, Ghalib and Iqbal. Great poets and writers and extremely great philosophers of the age. Ghalib for one is credited with revolutionising Urdu poetry.

UK and USA are very recent. Their contributions start much later. After the Rennaisance chiefly. The Arabs and the Persians were rulers of World heritages before that.

TW K