Writers
Sumerian
William Hallo first dubbed
Enheduana as the Shakespeare of Sumerian literature after careful analysis of
her brilliant and complex writing style in her most famous poem, nin-me-sara.
Like the controversy surrounding Shakespeare as to whether he actually wrote
all of the plays attributed to him, not all scholars credit Enheduana as the
first named author in literature.
List of En-hedu-Ana's Writings:
1) nin-me-sar-ra "Queen
of countless divine powers" more commonly known as "The Exaltation of
Inanna
3) "e-u-nir": is a Collection
of 42 Temple Hymns written for the temples of Sumer and Akkad
Enheduana wrote many of them and gathered others to make this collection.
Hebrew
Judah ha-Levi
C.1075-1141,
Jewish rabbi, poet, and philosopher, born in Tudela, Spain. His poems-secular,
religious, and nationalist-are filled with a serene and lofty spirit. In his
great philosophic work Sefer ha-Kuzari he emphasized the superiority of religious truths, arrived at through
intuition, over philosophical and speculative truths, arrived at through logic
and reason. In this work he developed a philosophy of history wherein he
explains the force of the "divine influence" at work in the world,
known first by the patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob), through them by the
Jewish people, and ultimately, through the martyrdom of the Jews, by all
mankind.
Egypt
Ali Mustafa Musharaffa
Born: July 11 1898
Died: January 6, 1725
Achievements: Musharaffa is a physicist and the
first Dean of the faculty of science who later become the vice-president of
Cairo University. He is the first scientist to propose that bombs could be made
hydrogen and first to conduct research on the measurement of space. He is the
founder of the Translation Department in Cairo University.
Indian
Rabindranath
Tagore
Born: May 7, 1861
Died: August 7, 1941
Achievements: Rabindranath Tagore became the first Asian to became
Nobel laureate when he won Nobel Prize for his collection of poems, Gitanjali,
in 1913; awarded knighthood by the British King George V; established
Viswabharati University; two songs from his Rabindrasangit canon are now the
national anthems of India and Bangladesh.
Premchad
Born: July 31, 1880
Died: October 8, 1936.
Achievements: Premchand brought realism to Hindi literature.
Premchand wrote on the realistic issues of the day-communalism, corruption,
zamindari, debt, poverty, colonialism etc. He avoided the use of highly
Sanskritized Hindi and instead used the dialect of the common people.
American
Anne
Frank
Born: June
12 1929
Died: March 15 1945
Achievements: Anne frank was one of the million Jewish children who died in
the Holocaust. She was well-acclaimed for her style of writing in her diary,
which she wrote during the Nazi invasion period. Her diary was later adapted
into several plays and films. She was a German national by birth till 1941 but
then she lost her nationality due to the anti-Semitic policies during the Nazi
Germany period (as per the Nuremberg Laws).
Edgar
Allan Poe
Born: January
19, 1809
Died: October 3 1849
Achievements: Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet,
editor and literary critic, who were also associated with the American Romantic Movement. He was better known for his
tales of mystery and macabre. He was amongst the earliest American
practitioners of short story and was generally considered as the inventor of
the detective-fiction genre. Poe is also credited for his contribution in the
emerging genre of science fiction. His works greatly influenced American
literature and also other specialized fields like, cosmology and cryptography.
His best known fiction works were generally Gothic and dealt with themes like
the effects of decomposition, concerns of premature burial, the reanimation of
the dead, and mourning. Poe's works are also considered as the part of dark
romanticism genre. He became famous for his popular poems like, “The Raven” and
“Annabel Lee”.
Japan
Nakane
Kōtei
Born: March 27, 1839
Died: January
20, 1913
Achievements:
Nakane is noted for writing an excellent essay and short biographies. Nakane is not well known today, even in his native Japan,
as he wrote using the old Japanese style of prose, or Classical
Chinese. While Nakane did not write as a
profession, his historical investigations were nonetheless skillfully authored.
Possessing wide interests and a deep culture, Nakane's writings covered the
history of Japan and China, including their literature. Mori Senzō (森 銑三), an expert on old Japanese
literature, remarked that the works of Nakane have the character of a noble Samurai.
Chikamatsu Monzaemon
Born: 1653
Died: January 6, 1725
Achievements: Chikamatsu Monzaemon (Japanese: 近松門左衛門; real
name Sugimori Nobumori, 杉森信盛 was a Japanese dramatist of jōruri, the form of puppet theater that later came to be
known as bunraku, and the live-actor
drama, kabuki.Encyclopædia Britannica writes that he is "widely regarded as the greatest
Japanese dramatist." His
most notable plays deal with double-suicides of honor bound lovers.
