History of literature

History of literature by era
Ancient (corpora)
Bronze Age Ancient Egyptian Akkadian Elamite Hattic Hittite Hurro-Urartian Luwian Lydian Sumerian Ugarit Classical Ancient Greek Ancient Hebrew Ancient Prakrit Aramaic Classical Chinese Classical Latin Parthian Phrygian Old Persian Old Tamil Sanskrit Syriac
Early medieval
Arabic Armenian Bactrian Byzantine Greek Coptic Gandhari Prakrit Geʽez Georgian Japanese Kannada Maharashtri Prakrit Pre-Proto-Mongolic Old Church Slavonic Old English Old German Old Khmer Old Malay Old Turkic Norse Pali Sabaic Saka Sogdian Telugu Tibetan Tocharian Welsh
Medieval by century
10th 11th 12th 13th 14th
Early modern by century
15th 16th 17th
Modern by century
18th 19th
Contemporary by century
20th 21st
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History of literature by region or country
General topics
Basic topics Literary terms Criticism Theory World literature Types Epic Novel Poetry Prose Romance Lists Books Authors
Middle Eastern
Ancient Sumerian Babylonian Hebrew Pahlavi Persian Arabic Israeli
European
Armenian Greek Latin Early Medieval Matter of Rome Matter of France Matter of Britain Medieval Renaissance Modern Structuralism Poststructuralism Deconstruction Modernism Postmodernism Post-colonialism Hypertexts
North and South American
American Canadian Jamaican Latin American Argentine Brazilian Chilean Colombian Cuban Mexican Peruvian
Oceanian
Australian New Zealand
Asian
East Chinese Japanese Korean Mongolian Southeast Burmese Philippine Thai Vietnamese South Ancient Meitei Telugu Tamil Sanskrit Indian Pakistani Assamese Bengali Gujarati Hindi Kannada Kashmiri Malayalam Marathi Modern Meitei Nepali Rajasthani Sindhi Urdu Indian writing in English
African
North Egyptian Ancient Egyptian Moroccan Sub-Saharan Nigerian South African Swahili
Related topics
History of science fiction List of years in literature Literature by country History of theatre History of ideas Intellectual history
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The history of literature is the historical development of writings in prose or poetry that attempt to provide entertainment or education to the reader, as well as the development of the literary techniques used in the communication of these pieces. Not all writings constitute literature. Some recorded materials, such as compilations of data (e.g., a check register) are not considered literature, and this article relates only to the evolution of the works defined above.