![]() This development was particularly visible in the Arabic world, which had acquired the secret of making paper from China and turned it into a thriving industry. And new readers meant new stories started to appear, catering to these readers’ tastes and interests. Both inventions lowered the cost of literature, which meant that new groups of readers could have access to written stories. To give her novel the status of high literature, she included nearly eight hundred poems.Īs more and more parts of the world became literate, new technologies, above all paper and print, increased the reach and influence of written stories. When she became a Lady-in-Waiting at the secretive court of Japan, she used this knowledge to compose a portrait of life at court, full of detail and psychological insight, producing a masterpiece that grew to over a thousand pages. Its author, Murasaki Shikibu, had to teach herself Chinese poetry, by spying on her brother’s lessons with a tutor, since women were not expected to know Chinese literature. The importance of poetry also shaped one of the first great novels in world literature: the Tale of Genji. (When Japan sought cultural independence from China, it did so by creating its own poetry collection.) The Book of Songs enshrined poetry as the most important form of literature across East Asia. An aspiring bureaucrat of China’s vast government apparatus had to pass through the rigorous imperial examination system, which required a detailed knowledge of poetry, and higher government officials were expected to be able to dash off casual poems on a whim. Poetry was not only the province of professional poets. Chinese literature is based on the Book of Songs, a collection of deceptively simple poems that have since accrued a large body of interpretation and commentary. This epic literature served as a common reference points for entire cultures, telling their audiences where they came from and who they were.īut not all literary traditions begin with epic narratives of kings and conquests. Homer’s Iliad was typical of early works such as the Epic of Gilgamesh of Mesopotamia or the Mayan Popol Vuh. Alexander’s successors built the great libraries of Alexandria and of Pergamum that would preserve Homer for the future. Having drawn inspiration from the epic, Alexander gave back to Homer by turning Greek into the common language of a large region, thus laying the infrastructure for turning the Iliad into world literature. The influence between the Iliad and Alexander went both ways. For the entire duration of his conquest, he would sleep on his copy of the Iliad, the one annotated by his teacher Aristotle. When he embarked on his conquests, Homer’s story of an earlier Greek expedition to Asia Minor served as a blueprint, and he stopped at Troy, even though the city had no military significance, to re-enact scenes from the Iliad. He had learned to read and write by studying this text as a young man, and thanks to his teacher, the philosopher Aristotle, he had done so with unusual intensity. Not only did he secure the safety of his kingdom, but he also defeated the entire Persian Empire, conquering a vast realm that stretched from Egypt to Northern India.Īlexander possessed an additional weapon: Homer’s Iliad. When his father was assassinated Alexander ascended the throne, he quickly exceeded all expectations. The small kingdom in northern Greece was perpetually at war with its neighbors, above all Persia, which meant that Alexander had to learn how to lead armies into battle. History of Storytelling How stories have shaped the worldįrom a young age, Alexander the Great was groomed to be the leader of Macedonia. ![]()
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