Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Africa [1500-1650]
1. The founding of the Mali empire is attributed to Son-Jara Keita, whose life and
exploits are the subject of the Son-Jara, the national epic of the Manding people.
2. The rise of ancient Mali in the thirteenth century is closely associated with the
spread of Islam into the region, which had begun in the seventh century.
3. The principal custodians of the oral tradition are professional bards, known
among the Manding as dyeli or belein-tigui.
4. The epic of Son-Jara developed by accretion, which together with its oral
transmission may account for its three distinct generic layers.
5. The ideological function of the epic is the construction of a Manding common
identity under a founding hero.
The Renaissance [1500-1650]
1. During the Renaissance, notions of Europe's and of humankind's centrality in the
world were challenged and partially discredited by advances in scientific theory, a
rediscovery of Greco-Roman culture, and the so-called discovery of the
Americas.
2. The Renaissance reached its peak at different times in different cultures,
beginning in Italy with the visual arts and, nearly two centuries later, working its
way as far as England, where its achievements are most recognized in drama.
3. An interest in the nature of this life rather than in the life to come is of central
importance in the works of Petrarch and Erasmus.
4. The Renaissance tendency toward perfection is well illustrated by Machiavelli's
ideal prince and Castiglione's ideal courtier, but is also illustrated in the reworking
of older literary traditions such as in Ariosto's Orlando Furioso.
5. French rulers and aristocrats adopted the artistic, literary, and social values of
the more sophisticated Italian city-states such as Castiglione's Urbino.
6. Spain's major contributions to Renaissance literature can be traced to Cervantes
and Lope de Vega.
7. Works from the English tradition, including Paradise Lost, Hamlet, and Othello,
question the values of the Renaissance.
Decolonization [1900s]
1. With the spread of Western colonialism from Europe and North America to Asia,
Africa, and South America also came the spread of its by-product; Western
modernism.
2. Though early criticisms were leveled at former colonial subjects who wrote in the
colonizer's language since such writing was considered to reflect "impoverished"
experiences, more recent evaluations point to the ways that the writings of former
colonial subjects have enriched European languages.
3. Though social-realist movements varied considerably within Chinese, Indian, and
Soviet contexts, in general they denounced the bourgeois and colonialist values
expounded in Western art and literature.
4. Though English-language literatures are well known outside India, literatures in
regional languages such as Kannada, Urdu, Sindhi, Bengali, Hindi, and Tamil
represent other aspects of Indian life.
5. The literary traditions of the diverse countries that the West calls "the Middle
East" reflect the multiple histories and cultural traditions of the region.
6. In addition to experiences of Western colonialism in Africa, African writers also
address issues related to the slave trade and to the African diaspora.
7. The generally political nature of magical realism in South American writing was
often missed by earlier generations of Western readers, who were too amazed
by the imaginative creativity of magical realism.
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