Literature
In the field of literature, Late Antiquity is known for the declining use of classical Greek and Latin, and the rise of literary cultures in Syriac, Armenian, Arabic, Coptic, vulgar Latin and, eventually, Romance dialects. It also marks a shift in literary style, with a preference for encyclopedic works in a dense and allusive style, consisting of summaries of earlier works (anthologies, epitomes) often dressed up in elaborate allegorical garb (e.g. De Nuptiis Mercurii et Philologiae (The Marriage of Mercury and Philology) of Martianus Capella, and the De Arithmetica, De Musica, and Consolatio Philosophiae of Boethius—both later key works in Medieval education). The 4th and 5th centuries also saw an explosion of Christian literature, of which Greek writers such as Eusebius of Caesarea, Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus and John Chrysostom, and Latin writers as Ambrose of Milan, Jerome and Augustine of Hippo are only among the most renowned representatives. On the other hand, authors such as Ammianus Marcellinus (4th century) or Procopius of Caesarea (6th century) were able to keep the tradition of classical historiography alive.
Read more about this topic: Late Antiquity
Famous quotes containing the word literature:
“One thing that literature would be greatly the better for
Would be a more restricted employment by authors of simile and
metaphor.”
—Ogden Nash (1902–1971)
“Literature that is not the breath of contemporary society, that dares not transmit the pains and fears of that society, that does not warn in time against threatening moral and social dangers—such literature does not deserve the name of literature; it is only a façade. Such literature loses the confidence of its own people, and its published works are used as wastepaper instead of being read.”
—Alexander Solzhenitsyn (b. 1918)
“A book is not an autonomous entity: it is a relation, an axis of innumerable relations. One literature differs from another, be it earlier or later, not because of the texts but because of the way they are read: if I could read any page from the present time—this one, for instance—as it will be read in the year 2000, I would know what the literature of the year 2000 would be like.”
—Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986)