The literature of Spain has seen swift and sharp fluctuations, not unlike the many changing regimes and cultures the country has undergone throughout its history. From the Arabic influence of the al-Andalus to the epic poems like the tales of legendary hero El Cid to the Catholic-inspired works of the Counter-Reformation and works of Spain’s Golden Age to the realist and modernist reactions to numerous revolutions and counter-revolutions and the censorship under Franco, Spain’s literature often reflects its desire to better define an overall Spanish culture and tradition.

Poets from Spain have long both challenged and reinforced attempts define what it means to be Spanish with repression from both the Catholic Church, monarchy, and fascist regimes all aimed at creating a singular Spanish identity. Even so, Spain’s culture and literature has been shaped by Muslim and Jewish Moors; neighboring European countries like France, Italy, and Germany; and regionalism, like the recent Catalan independence movement. All of these influences have created a modern and contemporary literature that can be both experimental and draw on centuries of tradition.

Historical Background

Prior to its colonization by ancient Rome, the Iberian Peninsula and what is now Spain was largely settled by four main groups: the Iberians, Celts, Lusitanians, and Tartessians. These groups traded frequently with the ancient civilizations of Greece and Carthage before becoming part of the Roman Empire following the Celtiberian Wars in the late 100s BCE. Known as Hispania, the region remained under Roman rule until the 400s CE when the empire collapsed.

With the collapse of the empire, Germanic tribes including the Visigoths, Suebi, Vandals and Alans arrived on the peninsula. Many of these groups had served as foederati under the Roman Empire and felt the region was rightfully theirs as Rome had promised them land in exchange for loyalty but never delivered. The Visigoths slowly converted to Christianity, and their rule lasted until the early 700s when of the Muslim conquests region under the Umayyad Caliphate began. As a result, the earliest literature and poetry found in Spain is that which came out of this Arabic tradition.

Moorish Period and al-Andalus

While Arabic was the primary language of the al-Andalus, it was not the only language in which works were being written. Hebrew, Latin and Romance - the precursor to modern Spanish – were all used for this kind of poetry. Romance emerged in an area of Spain where Late Latin and Vulgar Latin were still being spoken at the time of the Muslim conquest of the area, particularly in Castille. Also known as Mozarabic, it was spoken by Christians known as Mozarabs as well as indigenous Jews known as Muladis. Various dialects of Romance or Mozarabic existed, but it would be the dialect from Castille that eventually evolved into the Spanish that is most common today.

The Arabic conquerors brought with them early forms like the qasida and the maqama with many of the earliest poems coming from this region being poetical boasts about the conquering of the peninsula. One of the unique contributions to poetry from the al-Andalus was the muwashshah, a new type of poetry to the Arab world. The new form used a variety of poetic meters and schemes and include the Romance language, the first case of an Arabic work utilizing other languages in Arab culture as well as showing the synthesis between Arabic and Hispanic cultures. Over the years, the work as sung or performed aloud in Arabic but its scheme and meter changed to meet Romance standards.

The Romance influences on this Arabic form came largely from early Spanish folk poetry as well as the troubadour tradition, which helped spread these works throughout Spain and Europe at large. Examples of this genre include the “Lamma Bada Yatathanna“ and “Jadaka al-Ghaith.” This strophic form features a complex rhyme and metrical scheme with the subject usually reflecting a common theme, often love, praise poems, and wine. It often consists of five strophes of four to six lines, alternating with five or six refrains.Exported back to Arabia, famous writers of this form include Ibn Sanāʾ al-Mulk and ibn Dihya al-Kalby. There are approximately 600 known secular Arabic poems of this form in existence from the al-Andalus and some 250 Hebrew known.

The muwashshah would also typically end with another form developed in the al-Andalus, a closing stanza known as the kharja. This could be recited in either a Romance, Hebrew, or Arabic language, save in praise poems where Arabic was the only language used. There is some debate over whether the kharja evolved independently from the muwashshah or if the two forms evolved together. Some believe the kharja may be more rooted in Romance lyrics, theme, meter, and idiom than Arabic, especially since some early Arabic writers refer to the kharja as “songs in the Christian style.” Also known as a markazi, this final verse there are some 300 of these in Andalusi Arabic and 200 in Standard Arabic as well as 60 in Hebrew and 25 in Romance that survive to this day.

The second major form created in the al-Andalus now common in Arabic poetry is the zajal. A traditional oral strophic poetry form, the zajal is credited to Andalusi poet Ibn Quzman, who likely adapted this verse from the popular Romance poetry languages but with Arabic language. While Arabic meter is typically quantitative, the meter of this stylle is more stress-syllable, like those common in Romance languages. This form was spread into the wider Arabic world following the Reconquista when fleeing Moors brought the style with them to Egypt and the eastern Mediterranean. Semi-improvised and semi-sung, this form is usually in a debate format and may be accompanied by music.

Court poetry was a prominent feature of Andalusi and wider Arabic poetry during this period. Some prominent poets who came out of the al-Andalus include Muhammad ibn Hani al-Andalusi al-Azdi, al-Ghazal, Ziryab, Ibn Sharaf of Qairawan, Abū Isḥāq al-Ilbirī, Ibn Hamdis, Abd al-Majid ibn Abdun, and Ibn Darraj al-Qastalli. Ibn Zaydun of Cordoba, author of the Nūniyya of Ibn Zaydūn, was famously in love with female poet Wallada bint al-Mustakfi. Some poetic patrons were poets themselves, such as the king Al-Mu’tamid ibn Abbad.

Jewish poets also were sponsored by courtiers including Samuel ibn Naghrillah, Joseph ibn Naghrela, and Ibn Sahl al-Isra’ili who wrote in Arabic while others like Dunash ben Labrat, Moses ibn Ezra, and Solomon ibn Gabirol in Hebrew for Jewish patrons. During this era, a type of Hebrew poem known as piyyut developed. A liturgical poem often sung, chanted or recited as part of religious ceremony, this type of poetry is often similar to an acrostic.

As the Reconquista spread, Arabic poets seemed to reflect the decline of their power in their work. Abu al-Baqa ar-Rundi wrote the qasida Elegy for al-Andalus in 1267, while other poets began collecting Arabic poetry from the al-Andalus into anthologies sent to other areas of the Arab world. Even so, the Andalusi poetry was already infiltrating Spanish vernacular and literature with an influence on dialects of Spain and then spread by troubadours.

Medieval

Lasting from 718 until 1492, Spain’s Reconquista really began to gain a foothold in the late 900s and early 1100s with much of the North of Spain falling back under Christian rule. By 1248, the state of Granada remained the only region still under Muslim control and by 1492, that area too had returned to Christian rule. The return of Christianity often meant the expulsion of Jews along with Muslims as well as forced conversions, though the literary influence these cultures had on Spain as a whole were harder to eradicate.

Example of this can be seen on how the kharja of the al-Andalus influenced early Romance or Spanish-language poetry in the north. The first is the Galician-Portuguese cantinga, a type of song that has been preserved in three cancioneros or songbooks from the 1400s. These songs tend to fall into one of three themes: a woman’s lament for her lover or the cantigas de amigo, a man’s lament for his love or cantigas de amor, and an invective verse or cantigas d’escarnho. The similar of content between these first two laments and the kharjas indicate some connection or influence, particularly as kharja were often written in the voice of a woman.

Popular in Castile, villancicos are multiverse refrains repeated before and after every stanza of a poem. Originally from oral literature and music, the first written examples of this technique also appear in the 1400s but it is believed they were being used as far back as the 1100s. They share a refrain structure, content that is often a lament for a lover, and are often meant to be said by women, just like a kharja.

Much of the poetry associated with Spain’s Middle Ages comes from this time period, relating the chivalric tales of Christian noblemen who returned the faith to the peninsula. The most notable of these is what is still considered Spain’s national epic, the Cantar de Mio Cid . About the quasi-historical knight Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, better known as el Cid, the poem was written anonymously about 1140, claiming to have been written 40 years after the real el Cid died. Unlike many of the other epic poems found in Europe at this time, the story of el Cid contains extremely accurate details about landscapes, lives of knights, and even some historical battles.

It is the earliest known example of a Spanish cantar de gesta, the Spanish version of the traditional old French chanson de geste. Unlike their French counterparts, Spanish epic poems of this nature tend to deal more in realism and less in supernatural presences. They also tend to incorporate assonance rather than rhyme and the lines sometimes vary in length in a style known as mester to juglaria. This is a verse form frequently used by troubadours or minstrels.

Outside the legend of El Cid, there were four other major epics that circulated frequently in Spain during this period. The Poema de Fernán González retells the legend of the first Count of Castile, Fernán González, the Cantar de los Siete Infantes de Lara relates the tale of the feuding Lara and Salas families, the Cantar de Bernardo del Carpio that follows an illegitimate nobleman attempting to rehabilitate his family’s honor during the reign of Alfonso the Chaste, and Mocedades de Rodrigo, which is a tale of the youthful adventures of El Cid.

These poems were often recited by juglares or traveling minstrels who were divided into two categories. Epic juglares recited epic narrative poems like the legends of El Cid while lyrical juglares tended to perform sentimental and romantic poetry like serenads, couplets, and the sounds of troubadours. Epic juglares enjoyed prominence in the early medieval period while lyrical juglares became more popular in the later medieval era. There were other specializations these minstrels might have. Remedador were talented mimics or imitators, cazurro who tended to use the tales and subject matter related to the common man, juglar de gesta who specialized in epic poems, and goliardo who often performed alongside musical instruments.

Spanish priests even took on the role as traveling troubadours or Mester de Clerecía. A formal style of poetry with carefully counted syllables, these priests retold Christian legends, the lives of saints, and other tales from classical antiquity often to villagers in public plazas. Both a form of evangelizes and public poetry, it was believed this practice helped priests develop diction and erudition.

Lyric poetry in this period took on three forms: jarchas, popular folk poetry or songs, and courtly poetry written by the nobility. The most famous noble poet was Alfonso X of Castile who wrote Las cantigas de Santa María in the Galician language. Lyricist Arcipreste de Hita authored Libro de buen, a framework tale that includes translations of Ovid, satires, and the first example of small Spanish poems known as serranillas. Considered the last great poet of the Middle Ages in Spain, Jorge Manrique wrote the poem Coplas a la muerte de su padre to lament the death of his father.

Renaissance and Golden Age

The Renaissance is generally said to have begun in Spain in 1492, the same year of Columbus’ voyage on behalf of the Spanish monarchy united under King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Queen Isabella I of Castile. This is also seen as the last year of the Reconquista and the beginning of the Spanish Inquisition. As Muslims and Jews were faced with the question of converting or expulsion, concepts of humanism were also being explored in Spain. Castilian Spanish became the official language of the country and the first Spanish grammar was produced during this era as well.

The 1500s in Spain also marked what was referred to as the El Siglo de Oro or “Golden Century,” a golden age of Spanish literature, arts, and culture and a time when Spain’s empire abroad was at its peak. This period is sometimes said to have begun as early as 1492 and actually lasted nearly two centuries, ending usually around 1681. As such, it encompassed both Spain’s Renaissance and Baroque period. Better known for the emergence of Spanish novels and drama, poetry still played an important role in this era.

One of the truly first Spanish genres to emerge during this period is the romancero, a type of folk ballad that takes its cues from the cantar de gesta and chivarlic romance but often featuring subject matter from the Reconquista as well as older subjects like the Matter of Britain and Matter of France. These ballads still provide a continuous link between Spain’s early epic poems and literature and modern vernacular literature.

There were two major schools of poetry at the beginning of the Renaissance and Golde Agen: the Salmantine and the Sevillian. Based at the University of Salamanca, the Salmantine school features poetry that uses concise language, simply expressed ideas, realistic themes, and short verse. The Sevillian school prefered grandiloquent language, polished verse, a focus on meditation rather than feeling or emotion, documentation of nature and life rather than observation, a widespread use of adjectives and rhetorical language, as well as long, complex verses. The romancero influenced both of these lyric poetry traditions.

While earlier poet Íñigo López de Mendoza, 1st Marquess of Santillana, had introduced the 11-syllable verse into Spanish, Juan Boscán popularized it during the Renaissance as well as was the first poet to introduce Italian meters to Spanish poetry. A close friend of Boscán’s at the Spanish court, Garcilaso de la Vega was also influential in introducing Italian Renaissance style verses forms, poetic techniques, and themes into Spain. Poets who followed their style included Gutierre de Cetina, Baltasar del Alcázar, and Fernando de Herrera.

Numerous officials in the Catholic Church were also producing poetry during this period influenced by the Counter-Reformation and Catholic fervor in the country. This included writers like Santa Teresa de Jesús, San Juan de la Cruz, John of Ávila, and Fray Luis de León. Their works often focused on subjects like religious ecstasy and translations of biblical and Latin Christian works into Spanish. The work of de León was fundamental to establishing the Salmantine School.

As the hope of the Renaissance declined, the literature of the Baroque era turned to intellectual pessimism, disillusionment with those in power, worry about the passage of time, a loss of confidence in ideals, and led to the development of new literary forms like the picaresque. Two major literary concepts emerged in Spanish poetry during this era: culteranismo and conceptismo.

Complex poetry, and hyperbaton, or figures of speech that go against the natural word order. By contrast, conceptismo used new components and resources, comparative and complex sentences, and was largely influenced by Petrarchanism. The culternasimo movement was established by lyric poet Luis de Góngora y Argote, while conceptismo was established by his longtime personal and poetical rival Francisco de Quevedo.

While now remembered more for his drama, Lope de Vega was one of the major poets of the period and was firmly on the side of Quevedo in the culternasimo versus conceptismo debate. He is known for nine epic and lyric poems written between 1598 and 1634. Other prominent poets from the era include Francisco de Rioja, Bartolomé Leonardo de Argensola, Lupercio Leonardo de Argensola, Bernardino de Rebolledo, Rodrigo Caro, and Andrés Rey de Artieda.

Works of this period also often features satires against society and elites, the philosophy of Neostoicism influenced by the medieval, and mythological themes. Poets who criticized the establishment often found themselves severely punished with several imprisoned either for their writing or even mere allegations that they did not follow the Catholic Church. In Spain’s empire abroad, Mexican writer and poet Juana Inés de la Cruz was a nun who wrote on topics like love, feminism, and religion.

Enlightenment and Romanticism

Just as Baroquism was often a reaction to the Renaissance’s failures, the first phase of Enlightenment literature in Spain was anti-Baroquism, a period from 1681 to approximately 1750 that fought against the rhetorical and twisted literary style of the previous generation. Just as much of Europe was, the 1750s reintroduced Neoclassicism where writers imitated the ancient Greek and Roman classics while Pre-Romanticism characterized the rest of the century, leading into the Romanticism of the 1800s.

Lyric poetry remained the main poetical form of the Spanish Enlightenment, though prose and drama were still considered the peak literary forms. While Rococó works sometimes were more ornate, they still included pastoral themes and the ideas of gallant loves, mostly written in epistles, elegies, odes, and romances. Leading figures of this movement included Nicolás Fernández de Moratín, Tomás de Iriarte and Félix María de Samaniego.

Ignacio de Luzán is considered one of the first writers to set down the aesthetics of Spanish Neoclassical poetry, emphasizing works that promoted utility and service to humanity. The artistic ideals of “good taste” brought in from France led to a suppression of feelings and passion in writing with works less spontaneous and more didactic. Neoclassical poetry dealt with historical subject matters as well as satirical themes.

Salamanca and Seville continued to be two of the three main cities where literature was developed alongside their universities while Madrid was the third, with its poetry centered largely around the Fonda de San Sebastián. The Salmantine school of this era was dominated by Juan Meléndez Valdés, considered one of the best poets of the century, though other figures associated with this school include José Cadalso, Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos, and Juan Bautista Pablo Forner. This poetry was initially influenced by the anti-Baroque or Rococo syle but shifted to topics of social reform, criticism of out-of-date customs, and sentimental and reflective works.

The core of the Sevillian group included Manuel María de Arjona, José Marchena, José María Blanco and Alberto Lista while Vicente García de la Huerta, Ramón de la Cruz, Iriarte, Samaniego and the Fernández de Moratíns were the main writers from Madrid. The Sevillian school focused on poems that were patriotic and encouraged fights for freedom, particularly following the invasion of the French, with several of its members going into exile as a result. The Madrid school was associated with the royal court but still had some reformist ideas as well.

The Salmantine school in particular was the forerunner of Romanticism in Spain with Manuel José Quintana emerging as the main figure of early Romanticism and José de Espronceda as encapsulating Romanticism in Spain overall. Characteristics of Spanish Romantic poetry include reflections on the inner self, passionate love as well as disappointment in love, historical and mythical inspiration and subject matter, religious subject matter, social vindication of the marginalized, political satire, and manifestations of nature as personifications of human emotions. Poets often used a wide variety of meters, forms, and styles, breaking out of the strict adherence to form and meter and repeated verse forms of previous generations.

Other important poets of the Romantic movement included Juan Arolas, Nicomedes Pastor Díaz, Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda, Rosalía de Castro, Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, Carolina Coronado, and Pablo Piferrer in Spain as well as writers from the empire abroad including Cuba’s Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda. One of the last great poets of the Romantic Age in Spain was José Zorrilla, who went on to become the country’s poet laureate.

Realism and Modernism

The last part of the 1800s and the early 1900s were a tumultuous period in Spanish history. Following a military coup in 1874, Alfonso XII was proclaimed king of Spain in the Restoration. This included a parliamentary monarchy in which two parties were created on dynastic lines. Rife with election fraud and corruption as well as voter apathy, Spain’s government faced further crisis when losing the Spanish–American War. Many either aligned with far-left anarchists or far-right fascists. Spain remained neutral in World War I, but still found its economy in decline and bipartisanship in the country falling apart.

In 1923, General Miguel Primo de Rivera led a coup and installed himself as dictator. Spain initially seemed ready for an economic upturn, but the Great Depression crashed the country and the king was forced to remove the unpopular de Rivera. He was replaced by a succession of other figureheads until the king was forced to flee, and a second republic was proclaimed in 1931. Presided over by Niceto Alcalá Zamora, the government was initially left-leading until a right-wight government took over following the 1933 elections.

Realism, mixed with Naturalism, was the main focus of literature from the Restoration to the outbreak of the Spanish-American War, though the novel remained the main form of this literature. Poetry and drama seemed a bit stuck in late Romanticism, but the increased industrialization of the country and realities of its corrupt government made it hard for those wanting to create art for art’s sake. The two major poets of this period considered Realists were Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer and Rosalía de Castro., but the two poets most famous at this time were Ramón de Campoamor and Gaspar Núñez de Arce.

A civil servant, de Campoamor tried to create prosaic, simple, and occasionally ironic works with trivial morals. Another government official and governor, de Arce included political artifice in his works and tried to create civic and patriotic works mixed with philosophical musings. Other realist poets from the period include Ventura Ruiz Aguilera, Vicente Wenceslao Querol, Federico Balart, Emilio Ferrari, José Velarde, Manuel Reina, and Joaquín Bartrina.

The so-called Disaster of ‘98 created by the outbreak of the Spanish American War led to the introduction of Modernism or Modernismo and the formation of a group of intellectuals and politicians known as the Generation of ‘98, who demanded reform from the corrupt government. Reactions to the Spanish-American War led to a crisis in Spanish culture and Modernism was rooted in the belief that all traditional forms of art and culture were outdated. This literary movement twinned with the pessimistic attitudes the Spanish had about their own government and where the decadence and political corruption had led them.

Spanish Modernismo was influenced by several other movements including Parnassianism, Symbolism, Futurism, and Creationism. Parnassism was imported from France and focused on beautiful objects and exotic or ornamental subject matter that are also cold or stoic in nature. Also from France was Symbolism, a movement in which the poet is in charge of revealing the symbolic aspects of nature. Out of Italy came Futurism, a social movement that emphasized speed, dynamism, technology, violence, and modern objects. Creationism or creacionismo was begun by Chilean poet Vicente Huidobro and emphasizes that each poem is a truly new thing created by the author for the sake of itself and to please the author rather than the audience.

The literature of Spain from 1898 to the outbreak of the Civil War in 1936 is largely defined by generations though is sometimes overall referred to as Regenerationism because many felt there was a need to reinvent Spanish culture or how things were being done. Members of the Generation of ‘98 included poets like Miguel de Unamuno and Antonio Machado, explored the middle class, Spanish history and geography, incorporated existentialism and a deep sense of malaise at ongoing political and social injustices as well as the cultural divide emerging in the country in light of the war.

They were followed by the Generation of 1914 or the Novecentismo, a next group whose influence began the year the First World War broke out. The main poet of this movement was Juan Ramón Jiménez, and writers from it were largely influenced by the previous generation. They maintained elements of realism as well as works driven by the national existential crisis of identity but approached this with more objectivity and distances. They were also generally more formally academically trained. Juan Ramón’s poetry was more esoteric than some of his fellow writers, focusing on truth and beauty and winning the 1957 Nobel Prize for literature as a vanguard of his generation.

He would be the major influence on the next generation of writers, the Generation of 1927, which mostly consisted of poets in contrast to the previous two generations. These younger arts were focused on literary experimentation, often tied to formal academia focused particularly on the national literary heritage, and launched what many still consider the Silver Age of Spanish literature. Major poets from this period include Pedro Salinas, Jorge Guillén, Federico García Lorca, Gerardo Diego, Vicente Aleixandre, Dámaso Alonso, Rafael Alberti, Luis Cernuda, Miguel Hernandez, and Manuel Altolaguirre.

This was particularly launched by the tricentennial of the death of Luis de Gongora and reached its zenith in 1931 with the launch of Spain’s Second Republic. Afterwards, their literature tends to express the political and social stress that led to the Spanish Civil War. The war ended the movement entirely, with several of the writers forced into exile, Lorca was murdered, and Hernandez died jail under the new dictatorship. Others like Alonso and Diego adapted to the new authoritarian and traditionalist regime with Diego oven openly supporting Diego.

Francoism and Contemporary

The Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936, a culmination of the rising tensions between the two sides of the political spectrum. In 1939, the war was won by the Nazi-supported forces of Francisco Franco, who now became dictator. Franco would remain in charge of Spain until his death in 1975, with Francoist Spain largely seeing the closure of the country and the loss of the remainder of the overseas empire. Only in the later years of Franco’s rule would the so-called Spanish miracle lead to the opening of borders and the development of a new tourism industry.

With many writers from the previous three generations fleeing Spain as a result of the Civil War, literature was not a major focus in the post-Civil War years, especially as issues such as hunger, political repression, and suffering were rampant despite the Franco administration’s insistence the country was into a second golden age. Little literary output came out of Spain between Franco’s ascension in 1939 and the end of the 1940s.

The next generation, known as the Generation of ‘50, the writers of this era were considered the children of the civil war and focused on metaphysical and philosophical techniques as well as preoccupations with language, largely to undermine strict censorship. Eventually, censorship somewhat relaxed and authors were allowed to translate and read the works of writers of the period in Spain. Poets from this movement include Carlos Barral, José Manuel Caballero Bonald, Antonio Gamoneda, Jaime Gil de Biedma, Ángel González, Juan Goytisolo, Rafael Guillén, José Hierro, Claudio Rodríguez, and José Ángel Valente.

Contemporary Spanish history begins with the death of Franco and the third restoration of the Spanish monarch with the accession of Juan Carlos I. Spain became a constitutional monarch in 1977 and adopted a new constitution in 1978. After public criticism, Juan Carlos I abdicated in 2014 in favor of his son and current Spanish King Felipe VI. Amid democracy, Spanish literature again saw a resurgence with writers enjoying success both in Spain and abroad. By the 1990s, publishing had become a major industry in Spain with an explosion of literary awards accompanying it. Literary celebrities began to emerge during this era as well.

Contemporary literature has largely become experimental though still drawing on the themes, styles, and characteristics of traditional Spanish poetry. Many poets veer more toward the traditional while others prefer a more contemporary, exploratory style. New freedoms also meant literature could explore topics previously taboo or censored, such as the rise of Francoism and the negative impacts it had throughout Spain. Much early literature in the 1970s and 1980s focused on the areas of history that writers previously were unable to discuss.

Important poets from this era include surrealist filmmaker Ramón Gómez de la Serna, Communist politician Jorge Semprún who lived in exile during Franco’s regime, José Luis Cano who co-founded the literary magazine Ínsula, and monarchist José María Pemán. Especially efforts like the Catalan independence movement began to launch, new groups of writers not in Spanish but in regional dialects emerged. One of the more famous of these is the Novísimos.

Meaning “newest ones,” this group was identified in an anthology by critic Josep Maria Castellet out of group of experimental writers from the 1970s. These writers were divided into Los Seniors including Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, Antonio Martínez Sarrión and José María Álvarez and La Coqueluche such as Félix de Azúa, Pere Gimferrer, Vicente Molina Foix, Guillermo Carnero, Ana María Moix and Leopoldo María Panero. Writers of this group used freedom in form; automatic writing techniques; exotic elements and artifices; influence from mass media, cinema or pop culture; rejecting of Spanish traditions; and drawing inspiration from the Modernismo movement.

Other well-known poets include Blanca Andreu, Carlos Bousoño, Giannina Braschi, Francisco Brines, José Manuel Caballero Bonald, Matilde Camus, Luisa Castro, Antonio Colinas, Aurora de Albornoz, Francisco Domene, Rafael Pérez Estrada, Gloria Fuertes, Antonio Gamoneda, Enrique García-Máiquez, José Agustín Goytisolo, Félix Grande, Clara Janés, Chantal Maillard, Luis García Montero, Claudio Rodríguez, Elvira Sastre, Jaime Siles, Andrés Trapiello, and José Ángel Valente.

Spanish Poetry Meters

There are several terms used in prosody and scansion in Spanish verse. The final word of a verse determines if it is a verso agudo, verso llano, or verso esdrújulo. An agudo is a verse that ends with an oxytone or a word that is accentuated on its final syllable and counts for two syllables. This is also known as a masculine rhyme. A llano verse ends with a paroxytone or a word that is accentuated on its penultimate syllable with syllables neither added or subtracted. This is also known as a feminine rhyme. The esdrújulo ends with a proparoxytone or a syllable that is accentuated on its antepenultimate syllable and the word loses a syllable in the syllable county.

Both Spanish verse and the Spanish language frequently employ synalepha or the unison or two or more contiguous vowels or vowel sounds between two or three words. It also uses syneresis, the union of two vowels in the same word that are pronounced as two syllables. Other techniques include hiatus and dieresis, the opposite of synalepha and syneresis. Hiatus is the separation of contingous vowels of different words while dieresis is the separation of vowels between a single word. Rhyme in Spanish verse uses consonance, assonance, interior rhyme, feminine and masculine rhymes, blank verse and free verse.

Spanish verses may contain as little as one and as many as 16 syllables per line. However, the most common verses are those using 4,6, 7, 8, 11, and 14 syllables. Those verses that use 4, 6, and 8 syllables are classified as the versos de arte menor or “minor verses” while verses of 7, 11, and 14 are classified as the versos de arte mayor or “major verses.”

The national meter and the most commonly used in Spanish poetry – particularly in epic or lyric poetry – is the eight-syllable romance meter. Also known as romance corto, poems using this meter can be as short as ten verses or as long as 1,000. The cantares de gesta originally used this form and it was popular in the poetry of the Golden Age. This verse is also the origin of the six-syllable romancillo meter that is the second-most common and considered the “other” national meter.

Known as clerecia, the 14-syllable meter is used primarily in Spanish clerical poetry. This is also the French national meter known as the alexandrine and may occasionally be used by modern writers for impact. The 12-syllable verse is also an import from France and is known in Spanish sometimes as alejandrinos as this is the original French alexandrine form. From Italy, Spain adopted both the seven-syllable and 11-syllable meters. These were common in the poetry of the Italy Renaissance.

Spanish Poetry Forms

There are several poetical forms frequently used in Spanish poetry, but there are four major forms that are of purely Spanish origin. The first is the romance, the form used in most epic poetry and narrative poems. This is an eight-syllable form with lines and stanzas of indeterminate length but with the even-numbered verses rhyming in assonance. The second major Spanish poetry form is the redondilla, a stanza of four lines with eight syllables each in rhyming in consonance with an abba pattern.

Made of stanzas of five lines with eight syllables per line, quintillas rhyme in consonance in one of five patterns: ababa, abbab, abaab, aabab, and aabba. The first and final of these five rhyming patterns are the most commonly used. This is also known as a copla real when two types of stanzas are used in repeated fashion. Finally, there is décima, a ten-line poem with eight syllables per line and rhyming in consonance. There is also always a stop after the verse. It can look similar to a quintilla though it tends to adopt an abba:ac cddc rhyme scheme. Some characterize it as closer to two redondillas connected with two additional rhyming verses. Another form of this verse is the décima espinela, named after Golden Age poet Vicente Espinel who used it extensively.

There are also several times of 11-syllable verse forms adapted into Spanish from Italian Renaissance influences. Versos sueltos have no rhyme pattern other than the occasional rhyming couplet using consonance while pareados are couplets that rhyme in consonance, often patterns like AA BB CC DD, etc. The octava real is a stanza of eight 11-syllable lines in an ABABABCC pattern that is often used in epic poetry.

The terceto is a three-line stanza of 11-syllables per line that rhymes in consonance. Patterns for this scheme include ABA BCB CDC DED, AAX BBX CCX or AXA BXB CXC. The last four lines of the poem always have a YZYZ rhyme. These poems are often used in epistolary forms or for elegies. The sonnet or soneto in Spanish as a 14-line stanza composed of two quartets or cuartetos with an ABBA ABBA rhyme scheme followed by two tercetos in an CDE CDE or CDC DCD rhyme scheme. Occasionally there are also 17-line forms that use a shortened verse in the final three lines.

The combination of seven and 11-syllable verses in a single work is also used in several Italian verse forms adopted into Spanish. Based on the Italian canzone and taken from Petrarchan odes, the canción is a seven and 11-syllable lines mixed in a set pattern where line length and rhyme with stanzas from 9 to 23 verses, though most commonly used 13-line stanzas. These stanzas usually have a AbCAbCc with a sixth verse having 11 syllables and a seventh verse with seven syllables. The last verse of each stanza also frequently as 11 syllables. A special form of the canción is the liras which has consonant rhymes for five lines (popularized by Luis de León) or six lines. These forms use rhyme schemes like aBabB, aBaBcC, abbacC, abABcC and have a last line that is always 11-syllables.

The silva is an unlimited number of lines with seven and 11-syllable lines with varying rhyme schemes but always rhyming in consonance. There are four major rhyme patterns: aAbBcCdDeE; aABbcC where the seven and 11-syllable lines are irregularly place; aABBccdDEd where the line length is irregularly in seven and 11-syllables; and a form where all 11 syllable lines rhyme.

There are also several other minor forms of Spanish poetry that are used less frequently. Some of these have been influenced by poetry from other places while others are purely Spanish in origin. The shadorma is a six-line or sestet stanza where each staza with the syllables in each line are 3/5/3/3/7/5 for a total of 26 total syllables. It is typically unrhymed and can have an unlimited number of stanzas. The soledad is a three-line or three stanza poem with eight syllables per line that has an ABA rhyme scheme with internal consonance and assonance. The word soledad means “solitude” in Spanish and this is sometimes reflected in these works.

The endecha is a stanza of six or seven syllable verses that rhyme with assonance. This form is often used in laments and evolved from the planto commonly used in Iberian music. The glosa or glose is an originally Spanish form that features a quatrain epigraph and four 10-line stanzas. The last line each stanza is the corresponding line of the epigraph or a refrain. This is usually done to show a connection to a prior text and was commonly used in poetic contests during the Spanish Golden Age. It generally follows a ABBAACCDDC rhyme scheme.

The seguidilla originated as an old Castilian folk song style that also is the name of a stanza with four to seven short assonanced lines usually in a mixture of five or seven syllable lines. The letrilla is an eight-syllable form with a one-line refrain or estribillo that is repeated at the end of each stanza. The villancico is another eight-syllable verse form with an estribillo that is usually religious in nature and theme. Another eight-syllable verse form, the pie quebrado is a verse in which one or more lines of each stanza has a shortened verse of verso quebrado, usually shortened to four syllables to compare to the eight in other lines.

A common form throughout Europe throughout the Renaissance, the madrigal is a short poem on a light, usually secular, topic that uses mixed seven and 11 syllable verse. This was adopted from an Italian musical form. Consisting of ten lines with three rhyming couplets and a quatrain, the ovillejo was popularized by Cervantes. The couplet is eight-syllables per line and asks a question while the quatrain has three to four syllables per line and gives a reply to the question. Similar is the pregunta, a collaborative form of poetry that asks and answers a question. The first stanza presents a question or a series of questions while the second stanza presents an answer that apes the style of the first stanza.

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The poetry of indigenous populations is largely overlooked, but examples of the importance and strengths of these often ancient poetic styles and how they are upholding cultural traditions in the modern world is perfectly exemplified by the various populations of poets across Oceania. Pacific Islander poetry and stories have long been part of a wider oral tradition, and it hasn’t been until the modern age that many of these long held poetic traditions weren’t written down until the past 100 years.

Contemporary writers from these cultures continue to draw on their ancient roots even as they express new and modern ideas, sometimes reinterpreting their own traditions or Western forms in new ways and perspectives. While often written in English, these poems can also help preserve indigenous languages while addressing the major issues of socioeconomic injustice, militarization, disease, tourism, urbanization, racism, and environmental degradation these communities face.

Aboriginal Australian Poetry

Australian Aboriginal poetry refers both to works by authors of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander descent. When European colonists arrived in Australia, the indigenous societies that had lived on the continent for possibly 60,000 years had developed their own intricate system of arts and culture but not one of writing in the traditional sense, though there were message sticks used to convey information. While there were rock arts, songs, and oral traditions handed down from generation to generation, much of what is known about early indigenous life was recorded by European outsiders. It wasn’t until the 1900s that the first accounts of aboriginal life, history, and mythology were recorded by actual indigenous Australians.

Poetry has become popular among indigenous populations in Australia, possibly because of its connection to indigenous songs. Originally, this traditional songs followed a strict meter, rhyme, and line but as more modern influences have come into the indigenous world songs has begun to explore new modern forms with loser rhyme. Modern poets often use tactics like changing fonts, loose rhyme, minor repetition, and fragmented lines or phrases to reflect the sounds and vocalizations of traditional songs.

Songlines, also known as yiri, were songs used to pass down oral traditions, lore, culture, and storytelling. These songs also were used to identify landmarks during tracking as well as explaining the cultural history of these landmarks. Songs also detailed family history and culture and in the modern time have come to include facets like social relationships, political controversies and even popular films and music.

Indigenous Australians have also typically published in English despite their being some 150 aboriginal languages still spoken throughout Australia, aboriginal poetry has become an important type of creative writing among the community and is often published in regional and local publications. A lot of aboriginal poetry deals with issues like health, education, legal matters, and government policy as well as appreciating nature and the beauty of life. Poetry is also used as a way of expressing experience, both positive and negative.

One of the first major indigenous poets was Oodgeroo Noonuccal, whose 1964 book We Are Going was the first published work of poetry by an indigenous Australia. A political activist, artists, educator, and campaigner for Aboriginal rights, Oodgeroo became one of the best selling poets of the era but also received harsh criticism from white writers who both were uncomfortable with the subject matter she was drawing attention to - i.e. the oppression of indigenous peoples - as well as those who felt her style was non-traditional.

While described as bitter and polemic by some, Oodgeroo became an important figure for aboriginal writers for the way she celebrated indigenous survival despite oppression, prejudice, and adversity. In 1974, she had was held hostage as part of a plane hijacking and wrote two poems about the experience on an airline sick bag during the experience. Today, the Queensland Poetry Festival gives out a prize in her name to indigenous poets.

Other prominent indigenous Australian poets include Yvette Holt who won the 2005 Queensland Premier’s Literary David Unaipon Award for her poetry. Holt’s works have been translated into Mapuche Chile, Mandarin Chinese, and French. Holt also works with aboriginal groups as a mentor and educator based out of Alice Springs. In 2010, poet Jeanine Leane won the Scanlon Prize for Indigenous Poetry for her work and also won the 2017 Oodgeroo Noonucal Poetry Prize and the University of Canberra Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Poetry Prize. In 2018, modern Indigenous slam poetry queen Melanie Mununggurr-Williams was also crowned as the 2018 Australian Poetry Slam Queen for her work, becoming the first ever indigenous poet to hold the title.

Several resources have also been developed to highlight aboriginal poets. The Aboriginal-owned Koori Mail newspaper regularly publishes poems written by Aboriginal people while AustLit’s BlackWords project provides a comprehensive listing of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Writers and Storytellers. Independent Australian publishers like Readings and Red Room Poetry have also published several collections of poems by indigenous authors to help broaden the audience for this artform. Many works in the traditional languages of the Northern Territory are also preserved in the Living Archive of Aboriginal Languages.

Some contemporary Aboriginal Australian poets who have emerged in recent years include Evelyn Araluen, Ellen van Neerven and Alison Whittaker. Van Neerven’s collection Throat won numerous awards, including the Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry and the Multicultural NSW Award at the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards while Araluen’s Dropbear won the 2022 Stella Prize.

Fijian Poetry

Like many countries in the region, Fiji’s literature began as oral traditions handed down through generations. It wasn’t until the late 1960s and early 1970s around the time the country transitioned into independence that works by Fijian authors in the language of Fiji started to be published. One of the first Fijian poets to see work published as Pio Manoa, who published work in both English and Fijian. The founding of the University of the South Pacific in Suva in 1968 as well as the South Pacific Creative Arts Society founded at the university in 1976 helped publish anthologies of Fijian poetry as well as the magazine Pacific Islands Monthly, which also printed poetry between 1930 and the 2000s.

Well-known Fijian writers include Satendra Nandan who is known for his poetry, short stories and semi-autobiographical novel The Wounded Sea. Musician and writer Daren “D.K.” Kamali has published numerous poetry collections as well as two albums that combine metaphors, imagery, rhyme, rhythm, and from Fijian, English, and Maori. Poet and academic Sudesh Mishra was born into an Indo-Fijian family whose has published two volumes of poetry, Rahu in 1987 and Tandava in 1992. Another prominent Indo-Fijian writer is Jainan Prasad, a civil servant who also serves as President of the Hindi Writers Forum Fiji and has published Hindi literature in Fiji including poetry for youngsters and adults.

Māori Poetry

Like Australian indigenous peoples, the Māori of Aoteaora (New Zealand) also have a long history of oral traditions where narratives, songs, and chants were used to pass down culture, history, and traditions. Speechmaking has an important ritual role in Māori culture that requires the use of traditional narrative techniques and allusions as well as proverbial sayings known as whakatauki. Songs, calls, chants, haka, and formalized speech patterns have all been used to preserve history and tradition. Music, story, and poetry all remain important aspects of modern day Māori culture.

Like a lot of Māori literature, poetry has traditionally always been sung or chanted with musical rhythms rather than linguistic devices used instead of techniques like rhyme or assonance. There is a large store of traditional songs and chants that are considered poetry and still handed down today, and those who study the language can see the stylistic differences between Māori poetry and Māori prose based on diction, theme, the use of synonymous and contrastive opposites, and the repetition of key words. Māori poetry written in the traditional form also still contains archaic words that have lost specific meaning but gained a religious mystique over time.

Māori poems in the traditional sense cover a wide variety of topics from romantic love to war songs to dirges to chants used to help canoers work in time to sacred charms to larger mythological and religious narratives. Māori pakeha poets often recite long elegiac poems that detail history, social customs, romance, and religion. Some of the earliest known examples of these songs outside the oral tradition were a set of songs or waiatas published in 1853 by European colonists.

Two of the more prominent modern day Maori poets were Rowley Habib and Hone Tuwhare. Also known as Rore Hapipi, Rowley Habib was a poet, playwright, and author of Lebanese and Maori descent who identified with the Ngāti Tūwharetoa iwi. When he got a job as a television writer in 1971 he became the first person of Maori descent to write an original television drama and many of his television projects revolved around Maori issues and culture. In 2006, he published a poetry anthology titled The Raw Men and he was a regular contributor as a poet and short story writer to the Maori magazine Te Ao Hou The New World.

Hone Tuwhare was part of the Ngapuhi tribe who learned his storytelling and oration skills from his father had a young age. He began writing seriously in 1956, publishing the 1964 collection No Ordinary Sun, which still remains one of the most widely read poetry collections ever published in New Zealand. His poetry showed a departure from the traditional poetry of New Zealand and provided a distinct, uniquely Maori perspective on issues and life in the country. Tuwhare also showed a talent for being able to move between different topics, changing up the tone of his poetry, and still being able to write in a way that appealed to a widespread audience. He would publish three further collection of poetry that often reflected his home in the Catlins area.

Other influential Maori poets include Arapera Blank who wrote in both te reo Māori and English, Bub Bridger who often performed her own works, poet and musician Hirini Melbourne, poet and librarian Jacquie Sturm, academic and poet Robert Sullivan, and Tayi Tibble who is known for her collections Poūkahangatus and Rangikura.

Micronesian Poetry

A subregion of Oceania, Micronesia includes the around 607 islands affiliated with the Federated States of Micronesia as well as independent nations like Palau, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, Nauru, Guam, Wake Island, and the Mariana Islands. Settlement in this region began about the year 2000 BCE, and while the first European contact was made by Ferdinand Magellan in 1521, it wasn’t until the early 1600s that colonization of the region began. Since that time, the islands have seen a large migration of both European and Asian populations to the region.

Most of the cultures and ethnic groups that inhabit Micronesia have strong oral traditions and are still developing written literary traditions in the modern era. There have been few published writers from the Federated States of Micronesia with Emelihter Kihleng becoming the first writer from the country to publish a collection of poetry in English in 2008. A member of the Pohnpei people, she is was born in Guam where she still lives and works. Her work often touches on the tragedy of colonization while still implementing indigenous humor and culture.

Teresia Teaiwa is the most notable writer and poet to be produced by Kiribati. Teaiwa, who died in 2017, was a groundbreaking scholar in terms of Pacific Island culture and published her collection of poetry Searching for Nei Nim’anoa in 1995. She became one of Kiribati’s national icons for her work in literature, culture, history, and politics. Original from Palau, poet Valentine Namio Sengebau lived in Saipan in the North Mariana Islands were he wrote poems discussing the political and cultural climate of Micronesia. An anthology of his work was published by the Northern Marianas Humanities Council after his death in 2000 and a poetry competition aimed at cultivating young poets has been established in his name as well.

Born in the Marshall Islands and raised in Hawai’i, Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner is a Marshallese poet and climate change activist who performed her piece “Dear Matafele PEinem” at the United Nations Opening in 2014. When she published her first poetry collection Iep Jāltok: Poems from a Marshallese Daughter in 2017 it was widely regarded as the first piece of literature published by a Marshall Islander. Jetnil-Kijiner is still active as a poet and performance artist, working in spoken word and other forms.

Nauru has produced two well-known Micronesian poets. Margaret Hendrie wrote the lyrics for the country’s national anthem and has written other works in the Nauruan language. Nauruan poet Joanne Ekamdeiya Goburne, meanwhile, writes largely in English and her poem “A Beautiful Prayer” has garnered international attention after it was published online because of its religious vocation.

New Guinean

The island of New Guinea is divided politically into the countries of Papua New Guinea and the Western New Guinea region administered by Indonesia, but the island’s indigenous Papuan and Austronesian groups have long occupied the region. The Papua were the first, arriving somewhere between 40,000 and 21,000 years ago to the islands while the Austronesian group came later around 3,500. Despite some minor linguistic and cultural differences, the people native to both sides of the islands share a lot in common.

While oral literary traditions on both sides of the island are strong, written literature is comparatively recent in the culture. The establishment of the University of Papua New Guinea in 1966 and the writing courses it promoted were among the first to stir written literary works in the area. These courses were founded by Ulli Beier, a German Jewish editor who also founded the Papua Pocket Poets series and the literary magazine Kovave, the first in the country. Many of the country’s most well-known writers got their start submitting to the magazine.

One of the most well-known writers from the island is John Kasaipwalova who was originally destined to be a tribal chief but ended up going to a Catholic school and eventually becoming an anti-colonial activist when he attended the University of Papua New Guinea. He has released two major collections of poetry since 1972 and has also written plays, folk operas, short stories, and other works as well as served in local government and tribal political roles.

Politician, poet, and singer Loujaya Kouza began publishing poetry as a student in the 1980s and earned the nickname “PNG’s youngest poet.” By 1985, she began a career as a gospel singer/songwriter and also pursued a career in journalism before turning to politics. Allan Natachee became the first Papuan poet to ever be printed when he published Mekeo Poems and Legends in 1951 and earned the nickname “the Papuan Poet Laureate” because of this. He also worked as a translator before his death.

Nora Vagi Brash was a prominent educator from the area who has held several positions in the public and private sector. She also published and performed in numerous plays dealing with PNG traditions, land issues, culture, and the transition between colonialism and independence. She has also published works of poetry and served as a participant and judge at several literary competitions across Oceania.

Russell Soaba has become one of the most prolific writers from PNG, publishing the vast majority of his work in the 1970s. Educated in Australia and at Brown University in the U.S. in addition to his home country, his first volume of poetry was published in 1977 and his most recent in 2000. He presently works as an editor at Anuki Country Press and a lecturer at the University of Papua New Guinea.

Polynesian Poetry

A subregion of Oceania containing some 1,000 islands, Polynesia technically includes Aotearoa (New Zealand) and Micronesia, but also spreads as far east as Hawai’i. Countries including Samoa, Tonga, Niue, Tuvalu, Rapa Nui, the Marquesas, and several other islands are also part of this region. While the peoples of Polynesia have a shared culture, mythology, and elements of language, they have also become very diverse as a result of the separation and relative isolation of island life. Still, modern forms of communication are allowing peoples from these regions to reconnect culturally with each other.

Like much of the literature of the region, the literature of the island of Niue didn’t begin to develop its literary tradition as something distinct from oral literature until the modern era. One of the major writers to have been produced from Niuean literature is poet and novelist John Pule who has published several works in both English and the Niuean language. Outside of literature, he is also a well-known artist working in painting, drawing, printmaking, filmmaking, performance, and the traditional Polynesian art form of bark cloth painting.

Samoan literature includes traditional oral practices like solo or poetic narratives, folk tales, songs, theatre, and other recited works like family genealogies, histories, and religious legends. Like many other countries in the region, the development of written literature in Samoa didn’t begin until the 1960s. Since then, work has been done to both preserve the oral literary traditions of Samoa as well as utilize written language and new forms of storytelling and writing.

One of the early prominent Samoan poets after the development of writing was Savea Sano Malifa who also founded the Samoa Observer, the island’s main newspaper, in the 1970s. He also written novels, articles, and essays about the rights of Samoan people. Other poets of his generation include Eti Saaga and Sapa’u Ruperake Petaia. Saaga was born in Samoa and studied throughout Oceania and has also worked as a journalist in addition to as a poet. Petaia published his first poetry collection in 1980 and has published several works in the Samoa Observer.

Members of Samoas younger generation of poets and writers include Sia Figiel, who won the Polynesian Literary Competition in 1994 and the 1997 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. Her works have been translated into French, German, Catalan, Danish, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, and Portuguese and often incorporate elements of Samoan culture and poetic tradition. Caroline Sinavaiana-Gabbard has appeared in national and international journals with her book of poetry Alchemies of Distance published in 2002.

Dan Taulapapa McMullin is an American Samoan visual artist, filmmaker, and poet who deals with both Samoan heritage and gender identity while living as an indigenous person but in a westernized world. Albert Wendt is a Samoan poet living and working in Aotearoa (New Zealand) who has written novels and plays in addition to poems. He has also edited important poetry anthologies like 2003’s Whetu Moana: Contemporary Polynesian Poems in English and Mauri Ola: Contemporary Polynesian Poems in English – Whetu Moana II with Māori writer and scholars Reina Whaitiri and Robert Sullivan.

Tongan literature was also relegated to mainly oral traditions until written language was developed in the 1970s and 1970s. Konai Helu Thaman is one of the most popular poets of Tonga, and she has published five collections of poetry since 1974. Her works have since been translated into multiple languages and have been included in several English-language anthologies of Pacific Islander poetry.

Solomon Island Poetry

Written literature did not begin in the Solomon Islands until 1960s when it began to emerge from oral literature. This was happening with Pacific Islander literature as a whole was being developed throughout the region thanks to the development of the University of the South Pacific. Established in 1976 at the university, the art and literature journal Mana became the first to publish work by writers from the Solomon Islands and also published the first anthology of Solomon Islands poetry.

Some notable writers from the Solomon Islands include John Saunana and Celo Kulagoe. Jully Makini is a well-known Solomon Islander poet and women’s rights activist who received the International Women of Courage Award from the U.S. Secretary of State in 2017 for her work. She began her literary career after attending a literary workshop for women held in the Solomon Islands in 1980 and published her poem Civilized Girl the following year, which critiqued how women in the islands were becoming westernized. She published the first anthology of works by female Solomon Islanders, Mi Mere, in 1983.

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Celebrated each April since 1958, National Library Week celebrates the importance libraries and librarians have on communities. Promoting the support and use of libraries, the celebration occurs the first full week of April and has spread across the world from its origins in the U.S. Librarians are an integral part of libraries and ensuring access to information and so much more to the public.

Whether preserving literature, influencing the next generation of readers and writers, or aiding in important research and finding new forms of written entertainment, librarians play an integral role in both maintaining the library as an institution and as a community forum and center. From pioneers in library systems to intentionally famous writers and scholars to barrier breakers in the field, here are 20 more librarians whose lives and work left a massive influence on the world.

Winifred “Ethel” Austin

Born into an affluent family in London in 1873, Winifred “Ethel” Austin didn’t need a job, but at the age of 35 she applied one for the Incorporated National Lending Library for the Blind, now the Royal National Library for the Blind (RNIB). She wasn’t qualified or experienced for the position and was one of few employees at a time when the library was still largely run and managed by volunteers. Austin’s presence would soon change the face of the library forever.

Under her management, the library more than doubled its number of Braille documents from 8,000 to 19,000 in six years. The customer base also grew from 900 to 19,000 members in this same period. She promoted the importance of libraries for the blind around the UK, regularly giving talks and national library conferences and writing for the publication Librarian and Book World. She long advocated for small libraries for the blind located across the country to combine into one organization with a centralized system, allowing resources to be shared.

By 1917, the RNIB had taken over Braille collections no longer maintainable by organizations like the Home Teaching Society, the Girls Friendly Society, and the Catholic Trust Society as well as incorporated the Library of Manchester and the Salford Blind Aid Society into a new northern branch of RNIB. By 1918, she was overseeing the circulation of 100,000 documents for the blind. In 1918, Austin died at her family home from appendicitis. At the time, she was engaged to her longtime love and library coworker Louis Stanley Jast. A good friend of British writer and feminist Naomi Royde-Smith , Austin inspired the main character of Annette Willoughby in Royde-Smith’s 1948 novel Love in Mildensee and is also the subject of the book’s dedication.

Augusta Braxton Baker

Known both as a librarian and a skilled storyteller, Augusta Braxton Baker is perhaps best remembered for her contributions to children’s literature and encouraging the portrayal of black Americans in children’s literature. Her collection of literature aimed at giving black children positive representation and encouragement of writers and publishers to explore diverse works led to her becoming the first African-American librarian in an administration position in the New York Public Library system.

Born to parents who were both schoolteachers, Baker developed a love of reading from her parents and a love of storytelling from her grandmother and namesake Augusta Fax. Baker began reading before entering elementary school and graduated from high school early at the age of 16 before enrolling in the University of Pittsburgh. She met and married James Baker her sophomore year, and then moved with him to Albany, New York. She attempted to transfer to Albany Teacher’s College but was initially refused due to the school’s racial policy. However, Eleanor Roosevelt – wife of then governor and future president Franklin Delano Roosevelt – was a member of the Albany Interracial Council (now the Albany Urban League) and personally took up Baker’s cause. As a result, she was admitted to the school, earning a bachelor’s degree in education and a second in library science. She then became the first African-American to earn a master’s degree in librarianship from the college.

After teaching school for a few years, she was hired by the New York Public LIibrary in 1937 to serve as the children’s library at the 135th Street Branch, now the Countee Cullen Regional Branch, in Harlem. Baker realized that a lot of the children’s books contained negative portrayals of black people, using stereotypes and rude dialect. In 1939, she founded a new collection to give a positive image of African-Americans to her readers and began publishing bibliographies of books for and about black children. She also reached out to authors, illustrators, publishers, and other libraries and librarians to encourage more positive representation in books.

In 1944, she published a groundbreaking pamphlet titled Books about Negro Life for Children (later renamed The Black Experience in Children’s Books), which provided a resource for educators, librarians, and parents to recommend books for uplifting the black experience. From 1954 to 1961, she was the assistant coordinator and storytelling specialist for the entire NYPL system. In 1961, she became the first African American coordinator for children’s services in the library.

In these roles, she sought to bring diverse content and programming to all 82 library branches as well as improve access to high-quality and inclusive books. Her work in New York soon trickled down to libraries across the country, setting new standards for representation in children’s library collections. She also personally influenced a number of now beloved children’s authors and illustrators including Ezra Jack Keats, Maurice Sendak, John Steptoe, Lee Bennet Hopkins, and Madeleine L’Engle.

Baker also became a prominent figure in the American Library Associations’ Children’s Services Division, now the Association for Library Service to Children. She also chaired the committees that awarded the Newberry and Caldecott medals and consultant on the newly created children’s television series Sesame Street. She retired in 1974 but in 1980 took a position as the storyteller-in-residence at the University of South Carolina, retiring from that role in 1994. She died in 1998 at the age of 86, but inspired a local storytelling festival that still continues at the University of South Carolina.

Anastasius Bibliothecarius

The term bibliothecarius literally meaning “librarian” or “head of archives” in Latin and this title became the name of a translator, author, librarian, and brief papal claimant who managed the Vatican’s library system in the 800s. Little is known about the early life of Anastasius Bibliothecarius other than he was the nephew of Arsenius of Orte, an important bishop and papal legate. He received an education unusual for the era in Greek and was considered the most learned eclessiastic in his era. He was eventually appointed abbot of Santa Maria in Trastevere, and during the pontificate Pope Nicholas I of came into the pope’s employ.

At this time, he was unofficially working as the official papal librarian but also working to translate the Greek contents of the library to Latin. Additionally, he was employed as a ghost writer for much of the pope’s correspondence. When Pope Adrian II, he made Anastasius officially the head of archives or bibliothecarius, a position that gave him considerable influence at the papal court. In 869, he was sent to Constantinople by Holy Roman Emperor Louis II to negotiate a marriage between Louis’ daughter Ermengard and the future Leo VI the Wise, oldest son of the Eastern Roman emperor Basil I. Anastasius was also able to attend the last session of the Fourth Council of Constantinople.

On the way back from this visit, the papal legates who had attended this conference were robbed and their Latin copies of the acts of the council stolen. Anastasius had recorded the acts in Greek and was able to bring them to the pope then translate them into Latin. When Adrian II died, Pope John VIII kept Anastasius on as his head librarian and also encouraged him to undertake further literary works. He continued writing correspondence for the pope and scholarship has determined he was often used to disseminate papal claims and beliefs through the letters he exchanged.

Some have claimed that Anastasius Bibliothecarius is also the same Anastasius who was elected antipope after the death of Pope Leo IV in 855. It is known that the rightfully elected Pope Benedict III was kind to his attempted usurper named Anastasius. However, Benedict III’s successor, Adrian II, would grow to regret the leniency shown the former antipope at his court.

Legend holds that the antipope Anastasius found himself excommunicated and deposed from his positions in Rome after his brother Eleutherius abducted then killed the daughter of Pope Adrian II as well as her mother and the pope’s former wife Stephania in a plot Anastasius instigated. The Holy Roman Emperor intervened and was able to restore Anastasius to his place at the papal court. As there is only one account claiming the two are the same men, many maintain that this Anastasius was not the archivist and librarian but rather a presbyter. In either case, Anastasius Bibliothecarius is believed to have died around 879 when a new head of the archives is first mentioned.

William Howard Brett

Head librarian for the Cleveland Public Library, president of the American Library Association, and father and namesake of the director of the U.S. Mint under President Dwight D. Eisenhower, William Howard Brett was the first to introduce the “open shelf” concept for libraries, an advocate for children’s libraries and professional development for librarians, instrumental in the installation of libraries to serve military members, and a major contributor to the concept of library sciences as a field of study.

Brett’s library career began at the age of 14 when he was appointed librarian of his high school library where he was said to know “very book in the library, its place on the shelves and what it contained between its cover.” After one year at the University of Michigan, he moved to Ohio, married and began working in the wholesale book distribution business. In 1884, he was appointed head librarian for the Cleveland Public Library, the first large library system in the country, where he implemented the “open shelf” motto that allowed patrons to select their own books. He envisioned libraries not just as depository for books but as community centers that catered to students, working professionals, and gathering places.

He particularly championed children’s rooms in public libraries as well as school libraries, feeling it was important for children to have sections of the library dedicated to their needs. He also advocated for specific training for children’s librarians to cater to children’s needs and partnered with schools to establish both libraries for children as well as higher education programs to establish children’s library training. His belief in the need for professional development in library science led him to spearheading a program at Western Reserve University (now Case Western Reserve University), and he eventually became dean of the library sciences program in 1903.

He would serve as president of the American Library Association and first president of the Ohio Library Association. A veteran of the U.S. Civil War, he also advocated for libraries that served American soldiers and sailors both in the country and overseas. Between 1917 and 1920, he worked for the American Library Association’s Library War Service. His donations of books and encouragement of volunteer service led to the establishment of the American Library in Paris.

Callimachus

An ancient Greek poet, scholar, and author of more than 800 literary works in his lifetime, Callimachus wrote many of his works while employed as a librarian at the famed Library of Alexandria. A native of Cyrene in modern-day Libya, he was educated in Alexandria and worked as a school teacher before being hired by King Ptolemy II Philadelphus to work at the famous library. One of his most lasting contributions as a librarian was the compsotion of Pinakes, a comprehensive catalogue of all Greek literature.

While most of his work is either lost or surviving only in fragments, it is known he was admired of Homer and wrote works of philosophy, poetry, and hymns. His surviving works include Aetia, a four-book aetiological poem, six religious hymns, around 60 epigrams, a collection of satirical iambs, and a narrative poem entitled Hecale. Unlike many of his contemproaries, he was notable for refusing to write epic poetry and instead wrote poetry on a smaller scale. He was also an aesthetic philosopher and his work went on to influence numerous Roman figures including Catullus, Horace, Virgil, Propertius, and Ovid. While not as well known as many of his contemporaries, he is among the most influential Greek poets because of his writing during the Hellenistic age and his expertise on ancient Greek literature.

Isaac Casaubon

A French Huguenot in the tumultuous period of the French Wars of Religion, Isaac Casaubon was a classical scholar, philologist, and librarian who rose to prominent positions in two European courts and endured numerous trials and tribulations as a result. His reputation as a scholar led to him inspiring characters in works by writers like Umberto Eco, George Eliot, and others. He helped correct translation errors in the King James Version of the Bible and conducted correspondence with scholars and librarians across Europe.

Born in Geneva to two French Huguenot refugees in 1559, Casaubon returned with his family to France at the age of three when the Edict of Saint-Germain allowed their safe return. His father was a Protestant minister and was responsible for Casaubon’s education until he was 19. His father spent long periods away from the family for his safety, and the family also often had to hide from armed Catholics who patrolled the area where they lived. Casaubon would later recall getting his first lesson in the Greek language from his father in a cave while hiding from roaming mobs after the St Bartholomew’s Day’s Massacre.

At 19, he went to the Academy of Geneva to further his Greek studies and, after the death of his professor two years later, was himself appointed professor. He spent all of the money he could spare on books and copied classics that were not then in print. He received little support from other university officials – including his own father-in-law Henri Estienne – and often found himself in conflict with Catholic officials in the area. He began to cultivate relationships with foreign scholars, particularly as Geneva was then the center of Calvinism and attracted scholars from all over Europe as a result. He kept up lengthy correspondence with many of them and in 1959, their support landed him a position the University of Montpellier as an advisor to the king and professor of languages and literature. Badly treated and poorly paid, he decided to focus on editing Greek books and published an edition of Strabo in 1587.

He soon published numerous editions of the works of Polyaenus, Aristotle, Pliny, and Theophrastus. His magnum opus, a commentary on Athenaeus, was printed in Lyon in 1598 and during this time he was also presented to King Henry IV of France. He was drawn into Huguenot politics unwittingly during the same time he was invited by the king to settle in Paris on a royal pension, initially with goals of reopening the University of Paris. When the king’s sub-librarian Jean Gosselin died, Casaubon was then appointed to that position.

The ten years as the royal librarian were the best in Casaubon’s life. He earned a reputation as one of the most important literary and scholarly men in Paris and was allowed to worship generally unmolested. Still, his religion left him somewhat insecure, particularly against mob violence. He also faced intense pressure to convert to Catholicism to advance his career. When King Henry IV was assassinated in 1610, the rise of the Ultramontane party put Casaubon and other Huguenots in great danger. Using his overseas connections, he eventually fled to England under the care of the English ambassador and was received at the court of English King James I.

In England, Causabon was well received by the Anglican ministers and bishops who were glad to have a well-educated layman on their side at a time when there was increased conflict between the Anglican church and the rising Puritan sect as well as English Catholics. Casaubon still retained his positions in France as he had obtained a leave of absence to visit England, but to prevent him from settling in the country permanently, Marie de Medici refused to allow Casaubon’s personal library to be sent to him in England.

He would never return to France, and though his life in England was more secure in terms of religion, Casaubon now found himself amid a new type of political turmoil. While he made great friends with English bishops and scholars, he found that aligning himself with these figures and King James I meant he was also a common target when those figures proved unpopular with the English populace.

Courtiers were also jealous that a foreigner should be so close to the king and other high profile figures. He often found himself attacked and his children were harassed in the street. While he could read and write in English, Casaubon could not speak the language and was often taken advantage of because of this. He also found he could not focus on his work, being constantly summoned to converse on scholarly matters with the King. He died in London from a congenital deformation of his bladder exacerbated by his over-study and anxiety.

Cassiodorus

A writer, statesman, scholar, and administrator, the libraries and archives of Catholic monasteries in the medieval age would have looked markedly different without the influence of Cassiodorus. He notably founded the Vivarium, a monastery that became a center for biblical studies and whose literary collection of Christian, Greek, and Latin classical literature would preserve important works of theology, medicine, and scholarship. Many of those manuscripts would eventually become part of the Vatican Library.

Born Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator, he was born to a prominent Christian Roman family who had the word Senator as part of their family name rather than a rank. Born in what is now Calabria, his family was Syrian in origin with his grandfather serving as a high-ranking military official and among the members of the Roman embassy to Atilla the Hun while his father was a Praetorian Guard to Theoderic the Great and a financial official under Odovacer. It was while his father was in the Praetorian guard that Cassiodorus received several appointments of his own under Theoderic, including as quaestor sacri palatii, a consul, and magister officiorum.

As he worked as an administrative professional, Cassiodorus gained a reputation for taking copious and accurate records and notes concerning public affairs. His literary and rhetorical skills found him put in charge of drafting significant public documents, and he eventually rose to become the prime minister of the Ostrogothic civil government. Retiring from this role, he then began collaborating with Pope Agapetus I on the idea of establishing a library of classical Greek and Latin texts with the aims of creating a Christian school in Rome. This led to the founding of the Vivarium on his family estates.

The “monastery school” offered a retreat for those monks who wanted a more solitary life and a more traditional order, allowing both communal and hermit monks to coexist on the same property. He also composed Institutiones, a written guide to the works of literature Cassiodorus felt were most important to the scholastic studies of monks. It contained sections on essential texts for both secular and divine learning.

His “secular” section reflected what would become the Trivium and Quadrivium curriculum for most medieval universities, including grammar, rhetoric, dialectic, arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy, and medicine. He felt a well-rounded education was necessary for all Christians. To this end, the Vivarium collected one of the largest libraries at the time. To further help disseminate the works Cassiodorus felt were essential to Christian learning, he worked to preserve and explore classical literature and created a more vigorous and widespread system by which manuscripts were copied and reproduced.

Rather than assigning this work to often illiterate and inexperienced or physically infirm monks, he made it a specialization and presented it as a high religious calling to preserve knowledge as well as an exercise in discipline. As the Ostrogoths continued to pillage the fallen Roman Empire, his work and that of the monks at the Vivarium preserved much ancient literature that would have otherwise been lost. Some of the works he preserved included the medical texts of Galen, Hippocrates and of the pharmacist Dioscorides, which would guide European medicine for generations.

Ina Coolbrith

Both the first California Poet Laureate and first poet laureate of any state, Ina Coolbrith’s work drew the praise and friendship of Mark Twain, Bret Harte, Gertrude Atherton, Ambrose Bierce, and Alfred Lord Tennyson. She held literary salons in her home that introduced writers and publishers. She was influential in helping the careers of Joaquin Miller, Jack London, Gelett Burgess, and Laura Redden Searing. Much of this she also did while working as a librarian.

Josephina Donna Smith was the niece of Mormon church founder Joseph Smith, but left the community in her teens and remade herself in Los Angeles, going by the tame “Ina” and adopting her mother’s maiden name “Coolbrith” as her own. Influenced at a young age by Shakespeare, Coolbrith began writing poetry at age 11 and publishing her first poem in a California newspaper at the age of 15. Following a brief and unhappy marriage at 17 that ended in a sensational divorce trial, she moved to San Francisco and began working as an English teacher.

She continued publishing poetry and began publishing works in numerous monthly literary magazines. She gained a reputation as an arbiter of taste and – along with Bret Harte and Charles Warren Stoddard – was a member of the Golden Gate Trinity. Her poetry often focused on life in California and its wilderness but also had influences of poets she admired, like Shakespeare and Lord Byron. In 1874, she became the second of only four women ever elected an honorary member of the white-male only Bohemian Club, and when she was forced to move from San Francisco to Oakland to set up a bigger house to care for ailing family members, her friends helped get her the position as the librarian of the for the Oakland Free Library, the second free public library in the state. She would hold the position for nearly 20 years, but would publish less poetry as a result of the role.

She was known for discussing literary interests with patrons and selecting books best on them. She was a mentor to young Jack London, who called her his “literary mother,” and also helped a young Isadora Duncan select books to broaden her horizons. She created a faceted classification for the library and cultivated a reading-room-like atmosphere at the library. She also hosted a literary salon and poetry readings in the European tradition at her home, which drew most of California’s literati.

Eventually, she lost her position as librarian to her own nephew after the trustees decided she was spending too much time writing poetry and not enough at the library. She eventually was hired into other library positions, as the librarian for the San Francisco’s Mercantile Library Association and another part-time position with the Bohemian Grove library. During the great earthquake and fire of 1906, Coolbrith lost her home and her collection of 3,000 books, including numerous signed first editions, as well as her personal letters and a nearly complete manuscript on the California literary scene.

Already suffering from ill health, she lived with friends while work was done to raise money to build her a home. She finally moved into the new home in 1910 and the following year became the state’s poet laureate. Her final work was published in 1917 and she spent her last years with debilitating arthritis. She died in 1928, but several pieces of her work were published posthumously. In 1933, the University of California established a poetry prize in her honor while the city of Berkeley installed a poetry walk including her works.

Charles Ammi Cutter

While physical card catalogs have largely been replaced with digital systems, Charles Ammi Cutter is the man to thank for America’s first public card catalog and helping both librarians and patrons have more flexibility in finding what they were looking for. Eventually, his card catalog model was adopted internationally and his centralized style cataloging of books was adopted by institutions like the Library of Congress.

His system, the Cutter Expansive Classification, later evolved into what is today the Library of Congress classification.Born in Boston, Cutter’s first library job was as the assistant librarian at Harvard’s Divinity School from 1857 to 1859. During this time, he began updating the library’s outdated classification system and soon found that he enjoyed this project more than earning his degree from the school.

He ended up becoming apprenticed to Ezra Abbot and, after graduation, was selected as head librarian of the Boston Athenaeum in 1868 mainly because of his cataloging system. While working there, he was also hired by the U.S. Bureau of Education to write a report about the state of libraries in the country and improvements that could be made to cataloging systems. He introduced practices like inter-library loan and card pouches to keep track of circulation status.

From 1891 to 1893, he was the editor of Library Journal. His expansive classification system soon brought him into conflict with Melvil Dewey and the two often experienced tension while working for the ALA. After decades in Boston, he was lured away to be the first head librarian of the new Forbes Library in Northampton, N.H. While there, he continued to develop his systems. Cutter’s system was particularly popular with smaller libraries who didn’t need to deal with long classification numbers. He developed more specific tables for larger libraries with his system, but died in 1903 before he could finish this task.

Sadie Peterson Delaney

Soldiers who passed through the library at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Tuskegee, Ala., would also come into contact with Sadie Peterson Delaney. Chief librarian of the facility nearly 35 years, she was a pioneer in what is now the field of bibliotherapy, learning patients interests and engaging with them through recommending books and discussions about what they were reading. She worked with doctors and medical staff at the hospital.

Born in Rochester, N.Y., and growing up in Poughkeepsie, Delaney was recognized for her writing and poetry at an early age, working as a Sunday school teacher, and serving as president of the J. W. Hood Literary Society all before attending the College of the City of New York. After graduating in 1919, she went to work at the New York Public Library School for a year and then at the famed 135th Street Branch – now the Countee Cullen Library.

She worked to increase story hours, discussion groups, and events for children – some aimed specifically at juvenile delinquents, immigrant children, and blind children. She learned both the Braille and Moon Code, which would help her in her later work at Tuskegee. She also helped develop the library’s African American literature collection and often connected publishers with black authors. She also established the first African American art exhibit at the library. Eventually, her collected papers and correspondence would be held by the NYPL.

For this work, Delaney was approached about heading the library for the VA hospital in Tuskegee where the most physically and mentally disabled African-American war veterans resided. When she took on the job in 1924, the library had only 200 books in the collection. She made the library more welcoming with plants, wall hangings, flowers, and other cozy elements. She also grew the library collection to 4,000 volumes for patron and 85 for the medical professionals at the hospital with a circulation of 1,000 within a single year. By the time she retired in 1954, she had increased the patient library to 13,000 and the medical library to 3,000.

In her 34 years, she worked to ensure veterans had access to current events, reference materials, and books that positively portrayed African Americans at the segregated all-black hospital. She also developed special programs for patients, instituted monthly book talks, programs, story hours, and book clubs. She also encouraged the library space to be used for stamp and coin collecting clubs.

She ran a book cart to bring reading material to bed-bound patients. She arranged for books to be projected onto the wall for those unable to hold books and taught Braille reading to blind patients. By 1927, the library began to host a program on the local radio station with the patients delivering talks about books and hosting art fairs to show their work to the public. Outside of Tuskegee, she started the Disabled Veterans’ Literary Society, which earned her praise from the VA. Delaney’s library at Tuskegee became a model for libraries at veteran’s hospitals across the country.

She was admitted as a member of the American Library Association, the International Library Association, and a member of the Library of Congress’ Committee for Work with the Blind but was never allowed to join the Alabama Library Association because of her race. She was only inducted into the Alabama Associations Hall of Fame in 1982. She trained students from universities across the country, Europe, and South Africa in bibliotherapy. Numerous scholarships and libraries have been opened in her name since her death.

Theresa West Elmendorf

Theresa West Elmendorf is largely remembered as the first female president of the American Library Association but she was also the first woman to become the director of a library system for a major city in the U.S. Born Theresa Hubbel West in Pardeeville, Wisconsin, she joined the Milwaukee Public Library in 1877 after graduating from Vassar. She was hired as an assistant compiling the library’s catalog and at the age of 25 was promoted to deputy librarian. That same year, the library’s growth prompted its move to a larger location.

In 1882, at the age of 27, she became the first member of the American Library Association from Wisconsin and, after attending the ALA conference of 1890, she promoted the creation a Wisconsin chapter in 1891. The next year, she became the head librarian of the Milwaukee Public Library and was the first woman to hold the job in a major city. Her predecessor had stepped down after it had been found that he was embezzling money from the library – forcing him to both quit his job as president of the library and president of the ALA. In 1895, Elmendorf herself was elected vice president of the ALA.

She would maintain the role as head librarian in Milwaukee until 1896 when she married fellow librarian Henry Elmendorf. The pair briefly lived on London before moving to Buffalo where he was selected as director of the Buffalo Public Library. When her husband died in 1906, Elmendorf was selected as the vice president of the Buffalo Public Library, a position she held until retiring in 1926. From 1911 to 1912, she served as the first female president of the ALA and was also the editor of its Catalog of Books for Small Libraries.

Samuel Swett Green

Samuel Swett Green was born into a prominent family on Worcester, Mass., where he would later become only the second person to head the Worcester Public Library. His father, James Green, was a well-known local apothecary and his uncle, Dr. John Green, had established the library and heavily funded it as the Worcester Free Public Library. Swett attended but did not graduate from Harvard Divinity School due to health issues. Deciding not to become a minister, he was appointed head of the library in 1867.

He soon became interested in the technical side of librarianship and would develop numerous concepts and practices that revolutionized libraries across the country. He felt that the purpose of libraries were to serve as “an instrument for popular education and a practical power in the community.” He wrote numerous articles on library topics, many of which became the backbone of the emerging field of library sciences and were studied not just in the U.S. but also in France, Germany, Denmark, and Great Britain. His public library was the first to open on Sundays, mainly to help the working class and school children access library services on their one day off, and established interlibrary loans.

An avid lover of art, he worked on both the creation of the Worcester Art Museum as well as established the first lending collection of artwork in a public library. He also used space in the library to serve as exhibitions of photographs, paintings, and sculptures as well as collections of these items. He was one of the co-founders of the American Library Association (ALA) and a paper he delivered at the 1876 conference formed the basis of modern reference services. He was also the first to suggest libraries have telephones to accommodate reference needs. Today, he is considered the father of modern research librarians.

David Hume

The famed Scottish philosopher, historian, economists, and essayist David Hume is considered one of the greatest minds of the Enlightenment Era. Highly intelligent from a young age, he attended the University of Edinburgh at an age years younger than the typical pupil and by the age of 28, had published the landmark A Treatise of Human Nature. A younger son, Hume needed a way to make ends meet and thought academia was the best route.

Because of his unconventional beliefs, Hume was not hired as a professor at his alma mater, but his literary success prompted the University of Edinburgh to hire him as a librarian. Access to the library without having to maintain a professorship gave Hume the ability to work more on his writing and philosophy. It also gave him access to the vast catalogs of the University’s Library for his research. This resulted in his authoring The History of England, for many years considered the quintessential English history book and a best-seller for decades. Hume would later describe his love for literature as an “overruling passion” and his desire to do nothing but read and write for 10 years led him to what would now be considered a mental breakdown.

Two of his other works, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding and An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, are now considered some of the greatest works of moral philosophy. Eventually, Hume left the library during the Jacobite Uprisings and after being refused a role in the university’s philosophy department, serving as a private tutor, personal secretary, and attempting to become a professor of philosophy at the University of Glasglow – a position he was again refused for his religious beliefs. In 1751, he was hired to serve as a librarian again, this time for the Faculty of Advocates in Edinburgh. While the pay was poor, Hume was again happy to have “the command of a large library.”

He continued to research and write, being invited in 1763 to serve as personal secretary to the British embassy in France. He met Rousseau and then returned to England in 1766 where the two men had a falling out. He spent his final year writing his own autobiography before dying from abdominal cancer in Edinburgh. His works would go on to influence the fields of contemporary philosophy and cognitive science, rationalism, political philosophy, economics, and even Einstein’s theory of relativity.

Clara Stanton Jones

Born in St. Louis, Clara Stanton Jones career as a librarian began when she started to frequent the public library near her grandmother’s house, one of the few black children to do so. Growing up in a highly segregated neighborhood under Jim Crow, Jones sought out mentors in her community and her parents emphasized the importance of education. In 1930, she left home to attend the Milwaukee State Teacher’s College.

She then transferred to Spelman College in Atlanta, getting her degree in history and English. Florence Read, then president of Spelman, noticed her typing skills and offered her a job was a typist with the new library at Atlanta University where Jones was encouraged to further pursue a career as a librarian. As a result, she earned a degree in library science from the University of Michigan, working at libraries in New Orleans and Baton Rogue before eventually being hired as the Detroit Public Library, only the third black librarian ever hired in the city.

In 1970, she was selected as the director of the library, making her the first African-American woman to serve as director of a major library system. Her hiring made three high ranking library officials resign and the Friends of the Library organization withdrew their previous offer to supplement the wages of a new directory. She often experienced racism from her colleagues but never discussed them in public, focusing on using her power and resources on behalf of others.

She particularly used her role to develop library branches and bring outreach to inner-city residents. In 1977, she was selected as the first African-American to serve as president of the ALA. She retired from her job as head of the Detroit Public Library in 1978 and moved with her husband to Oakland, Calif. However, she wouldn’t stay completely retired.

The same year she retired, she was appointed by President Jimmy Carter to serve on the National Commission on Libraries and Information Science from 1978 to 1982. Along with Aileen Clarke Hernandez, she worked in advocacy for black women in the San Francisco Bay area as well. The Black Caucus of the American Library Association gave her their highest award, the Trailblazer Award, in 1990. She died in 2012 at the age of 99 and was posthumously inducted into the Michigan Women’s Hall of Fame. Her family founded a scholarship in her name for University of Michigan School of Information master’s students, mainly those interested in urban librarianship.

Peter Lambeck

German historian, writer, and librarian Peter Lambeck was born in Hamburg and was the nephew of Lucas Holstenius, one of the most recognized philologians and thinkers in Germany at the time. Recognizing similar gifts in his nephew, Holstentius arranged for the 12-yearold Lambeck to study at the University of Amsterdam, then in Paris, and introduced him to numerous other scholars. He took a tour of France and Italy, meeting back up with his uncle who was serving as the papal librarian at the time.

When he finally returned to his native Hamburg in 1652, the 24-year-old Lambeck was given a professor of history at the gymnasium or secondary school there and by 1660 had become rector of the local college. His quick rise to success saw him acquire many enemies, who accused him of atheism to force him out of his position. He decided to leave the country and return to Rome, entering the Roman Catholic Church.

Impressed by Lambeck’s skills, Emperor Leopold appointed him librarian and court historiographer in Vienna. Lambeck was given the task of cataloging the numerous treasures of the royal library, and his catalogs are still used today for the contributions they made to the understanding and preservation of Old German language and literature. He wrote numerous books on the history of German language and literature as well as one of the first histories of Hamburg as well as the early history of the Byzantine Empire. As royal librarian, he also had the role of making reading recommendations to the emperor and the two formed a close friendship.

Lambeck’s work saw the increase in the royal library’s already substantial holdings as well as the preservation of numerous manuscripts, prints, and curiosities brought to the emperor. His classification of the some 100,000 volumes in the library is still used by officials today and he preserved numerous works that turned out to be the sole surviving copy, allowing them to still be accessed in modernity. His records of the emperor’s visits to the library as well as the foreign and court guests he brought with them provide insight into the workings of the library at that time.

Margaret Mann

A native of Iowa, Margaret Mann entered the library field when she attended a vocational school in Chicago. She had been unable to finish high school because of her family’s finances, but after two years of study at the Armour Institute, she had so impressed the faculty that they offered her a position at the library. In 1897, the Institute and Mann’s position were both transferred to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she would work for the next six years. With assistance from students, she completely transformed the library’s cataloging system in her first year and worked as a teacher.

Mann then took a position as the cataloging director of the Carnegie Library in Pittsburgh and then the Engineering Societies Library in New York City. She was well-known for her attention to detail, classification work, and role as a supervisor. In 1924, she went to the ALA School in Paris to teach cataloging and classification to students. In 1926, she was hired as one of the the first professors at the University of Michigan‘s new library sciences department. She authored several textbooks that became standards in the field and emphasized the important of librarianship as a public service. She retired in 1938 but continued in the role of professor emeritus.

Anne Carroll Moore

The longtime head of children’s library services for the New York Public Library system and herself a Newberry Medal-nominated children’s author, Anne Carroll Moore was an educator, writer, and advocate for children’s libraries. Initially wanting to follow in her father’s footsteps as a lawyer, the death of both of her parents led her to attending the Pratt Institute Library as a student in the emerging field of librarianship. After graduating in 1896, Pratt was asked to design a children’s room at the Pratt Institute after a paper she and Lutie E. Stearns presented before the ALA while still in school.

At this point, children were generally forbidden from visiting libraries with most banning patrons under the age of 14. However, new research into early childhood education and the concept of kindergartens showed there was a need for children’s space in libraries. In her research, Moore visited ethnic neighborhoods, interviewed children, and use her research to create a welcoming space for children in libraries with child-sized furniture, open stacks, reading areas, story times, puppet shows, unique programming, and age-appropriate literature. Having a separate space for children in libraries allowed for them to engage in the institution on their own level without creating concern for other patrons.

In 1900, Moore founded the Club of Children’s Librarians with the ALA, now the Association for Library Service to Children. After 14 years at Pratt, she accepted a position of superintendent for the department of work wtih children with the New York Public Library system. She was in charge of all children’s programming in the system and overseeing the Central Children’s Room, which opened in 1911. She developed training programs for children’s services staff, organized events, and lobby for and received permission to allow children to take out loans from the library.

Moore also found it important to celebrate the ethnic diversity of the city and worked to acquire books and programming in different languages to cater to different communities. By 1913, her involvement led to children being responsible for a third of all library loans in the system. In 1918, she delivered a lecture series to New York publishers and book sellers about the need for quality writing for children, especially at a time when most children’s books were seen as vehicles for morality lessons. She did a second tour in England and France in 1921, meeting figures like Walter de la Mare, L. Leslie Brooke, and Beatrix Potter and introducing their works to American readers.

She also took on a position as a children’s book reviewer, first for The Bookman and then for the New York Herald Tribune and The Horn Book Magazine. Her approval – or disproval – of a book could make or break it in terms of being purchased by customers and libraries. She famous despised some popular books like Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown, and refused to allow it into the NYPL for several years. She was forced into retirement in 1941 at the age of 70, but keep writing and teaching for her remaining years. She died in 1961 at the age of 89.

Isadore Gilbert Mudge

Raised in Brooklyn, Isadore Gilbert Mudge was the daughter of an attorney and the granddaughter of the head librarian of the University of Michigan. A graduate of Brooklyn’s Adelphi Academy and Cornell University, she was a member of the first Greek fraternity for women and considered an outstanding student throughout her academic career.

Seeing her interest in the subject, legendary professor and librarian George Lincoln Burr encouraged her to pursue her own degree in library sciences, and she went to attend the New York State Library School in Albany. There she studied under library scholar Dunkin Van Rensselaer Johnston.Her first position was as head reference librarian at the University of Illinois: Urbana and as an association professor at the university’s library school. After three years, she left the school to be the head librarian at Bryn Mawr College for five years and spent three years working, writing, and traveling to Europe.

She also took a part-time position as an instructor Simmons College before finally being hired at Columbia University to work as the associate professor in the new school of library services, teaching primarily bibliography. She also was hired by the ALA to update the Guide to Reference Books from its original edition. She would serve as editor of the guide for its next four editions over the next 20 years, guiding librarians across the country about what resources were available. She also wrote numerous writings about library sciences that were circulated around the profession. Since 1958, ALA’s Reference and User Services Association and EBSCO have presented an award in her name.

Sima Qian

A Chinese historian, astrologer, and court scribe, Sima Qian is most famous as the father of Chinese historiography for the Shiji, also known as Records of the Grand Historian, covering the history of China from the rise of the Yellow Emperor into his own time. At the time, the court historian was in charge of recording the emperor’s reign, maintaining the imperial library and archives, and as a major figure in court politics.

Sima’s father Sima Tan serve as the tàishǐ (太史) or grand historian of the imperial court. While a low-ranking position, the main duty of this role was to maintain the imperial calendar and identify which dates were auspicious for major events as well as recording the daily life of the emperor. By the age of 10, Sima had shown himself a considerable scholar and was raised in the Confucian environment of the court. By age 20, he was sent on an extensive tour of China where he visited notable landmarks. Returning from his travels, he was selected to serve as a palace attendant and travel with the emperor across the country.

At 35, he was sent on a military expedition against the barbarian tribes but was brought back after his father fell ill after not being invited to an important imperial event. Sima returned to be at his father’s bedside, and after his father died, was appointed to his father’s position at court. His father had begun a historical work intended as a sequel to the Spring and Autumn Annals, the first major Chinese chronicle but only an outline existed. Sima decided to finish his father’s work, which became the Shiji. Unlike previous historians, Sima was more objective than flattering and working not just on his own observances but researching using books in the library and doing interviews with those who had either witnessed or knew about the events.

Sima became embroiled in an event known as the Ling Affair and after being imprisoned, was given the choice of paying a fine, living as a eunuch or committing ritual suicide. Unable to pay the fine, he chose the life of a eunuch to keep working on his historical text. Many were surprised as it was expected for gentlemen scholars to chose death. Upon his release from prison, he was given a new position as a court archivist or zhongshuling (中書令), a role reserved for eunuchs that had considerably higher status and pay.

He eventually did complete the 500,000 character, 130-chapter Shiji. The book became the model of biographical literature and historiography in Chinese literature and became one of the greatest texts in Chinese history and a major reference work. His reliance on the royal archives meant that works later lost in purges by subsequent emperors managed to live on through the Shiji, preserving information that would have otherwise been lost to history.

Forrest Spaulding

Most famous as the author of the Library Bill of Rights, a document advocating for the continued intellectual freedom of libraries, Forrest Spaulding was a humanitarian, activist, and journalist. Born in New Hampshire, Spaulding graduated from New York Public Library’s library school in 1913 and worked at the system afterwards until moving to Des Moines in 1917 to serve as director of the Des Moines Public Library. America was mobilizing for World War I, and it was then that Spaulding took up his first battle against censorship.

German-language books and newspapers were being challenged and removed from libraries as part of the war effort, and the Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917 made it illegal for foreign language works to be sent through the U.S. mail without being accompanied by a certified translation. Public institutions were also banned from using any language but English. While Spaulding was uncomfortable with these orders, even as he took over responsibility ensuring that the Des Moines Public Library supplied reading materials to soldiers at nearby Camp Dodge.

He worked at the library until 1919 when, during the “Red Scare” of that year, he wouldn’t permit Socialist Kate Richards O’Hare to give a speech in the library auditorium. The following year, he moved to Peru, working as a correspondent for the Associated Press and overseeing the libraries and museums. He returned to Des Moines in 1927 and would remain director of the library there until 1952. He was an early adopter of radio as a way to conduct library outreach, establishing the WHO radio station in 1928.

As the world geared up for another war in 1938, Spaulding grew concerned again about the mounting censorship. He presented his library bill of rights before the library board and it was passed a proclamation that they would not bend to censorship pressure. This included not banning Hitler’s Mein Kampf with Spaulding saying he felt Hitler would have been stopped sooner if more people had read the book. The ALA later adopted Spaulding’s bill of rights and has continued to amend it as censorship issues continue to present themselves while maintaining Spaulding’s original intent of guaranteeing the rights of the public to access information.

Spaulding was one of the first librarians to recognize censorship as an issue in the profession. Beyond this, Spaulding also advocated for inclusion of literary and artistic works by African Americans in libraries and was a champion for civil rights as early as the 1930s. He created a men’s reading room to allow working class men in the community a place for recreation and to access reading materials as well as receive technical and vocational education to improve their lives. He also made the library a refuge for many residents during the Great Depression. In 1948, he received an award from the National Conference of Christians and Jews for his role in the struggle against racial intolerance.

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Celebrated each April since 1958, National Library Week celebrates the importance libraries and librarians have on communities. Promoting the support and use of libraries, the celebration occurs the first full week of April and has spread across the world from its origins in the U.S. Librarians are an integral part of libraries and ensuring access to information and so much more to the public.

Whether preserving literature, influencing the next generation of readers and writers, or aiding in important research and finding new forms of written entertainment, librarians play an integral role in both maintaining the library as an institution and as a community forum and center. From rural pioneers to the founders of esteemed university libraries to major influences on important literary movements to ancient writers and philosophers who collected early knowledge, here are 20 librarians whose lives and work left a massive influence on the world.

Mary Eileen Ahern

Known as “Miss Public Libraries” for her advocacy and leadership in the field of library science, Mary Eileen Ahern began her career in her home state of Indiana. Born in 1860 to Irish immigrants, she graduated high school in 1878 and then teacher’s college in 1881. She worked as a public school teacher in Indiana until 1889 when she was appointed as the assistant state librarian for the state of Indiana. In 1893, she was selected to serve as the state librarian and held the position for two years.

A political appointment, it was her outspoken advocacy and fights for change to how the state library was run that led to the state depoliticizing the position and putting it under the Indiana Department of Education. While Ahern’s fight was successful, the fruits of her labor would only be seen by her successors as she agreed to step down from the position in exchange for her reforms being implemented. Instead, she turned to helping found a new journal Public Libraries that encouraged the development of the modern public library movement and on the value of public education through public libraries. She was editor of the paper until 1931 when failing eyesight forced her to step away from it.

Outside the journal, she was elected three times as president of the Illinois Library Association and served actively in the American Library Association. During World War I, she distributed books to members of the U.S. military in France. Ahern died in 1938 and was remembered for her advocacy of public libraries and women in the profession. She was inducted into the National Library Hall of Fame in 1951 and was listed in 1999 as one of American Libraries Most Important Library Leaders.

Sarah B. Askew

Born in rural Alabama, Sarah Byrd Askew would go on to pioneer the creation of county libraries throughout the U.S., eventually leading the New Jersey Public Library Commission for nearly 40 years. After graduating from high school in Atlanta, she attended business school and briefly worked as a stenographer before taking temp work at the Cleveland Public Library while visiting her sister in Ohio.

The stint made Askew decided to pursue a library career full time, so she enrolled in the Pratt Institute’s School of Information and Library Science in New York, graduating in 1904. She was hired the following year by the New Jersey Public Library Commission to travel between the various libraries in the state and offer training. There were only 66 libraries in the entire state at the time, and Askew was instrumental in establishing a county library program that gave a regional approach to library services. As a result, this allowed libraries to serve smaller towns that might not be able to support a library on their own.

She also personally oversaw the establishment of 12 libraries in New Jersey. She founded a summer school for staff of small libraries to learn knowledge and skills as well as began sending “traveling libraries” that contained about 300 books to communities in rural areas without libraries. She designed one of the earliest bookmobiles in 1920, personally driving her Ford Model T to those who didn’t have library access. She also pioneered the practice of interlibrary loan and organized a program to send books overseas to soldiers during both World Wars.

During her career, she also served in numerous civic organizations. She was president of the New Jersey Library Association twice, vice president of the American Library Association, chair of children’s reading for the National Congress of Parents and teachers, and served on the Trenton, N.J. Board of Education. She was named to the Library Hall of Fame in 1951 and the New Jersey Library Association still gives out an award in her honor.

Thomas Bodley

An English diplomat, scholar, and bibliophile, Sir Thomas Bodley is famous for founding the Bodleian Library, the first legal deposit library in England, and saving some of the most important and historic literary works of his time. Today, the library he established in 1602 is a core feature of the University of Oxford as well as one of the most famous libraries in the world, boasting a collecting of more than 12 million items including numerous medieval manuscripts, four copies of the Magna Carta, the letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley, a Gutenberg Bible, and Shakespeare’s First Folio.

Born in Exeter in the final years of the reign of Henry VIII, Bodley was one of seven sons of a Protestant merchant who fled the country when Roman Catholic monarch Mary I took the throne. The family sought refuge in the Protestant duchy of Cleves and living in Wesel and then the free city of Frankfurt before moving to Geneva. There, Bodley learned at the academy erected by John Calvin and attended lectures and services led by figures like Theodore Beza, John Knox, Matteus Beroaldus, and Antoine Chevallier. His family returned to English upon the ascension of Elizabeth I and Bodley enrolled at Magdalen College, Oxford, earning a bachelor’s degree and then becoming a fellow of Merton College.

He became the college’s first lecturer in ancient Greek and served numerous offices at Oxford until 1576.That year, he had obtained a grant to study abroad, allowing him to tour France, Italy, and the Holy Roman Empire. Already knowing Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, he now added French, Italian, and Spanish to this repertoire. Upon his return, he was appointed a gentleman usher to the queen and entered the House of Commons in 1584. The following year, he was sent to form a league between Frederick II of Denmark and several German princes, sending him secretly into France and the Hague, where he helped fight back against Spanish control of the Netherlands. Recalled back to England in 1596, the public servant retired.

It was in his retirement that Bodley began his biggest project: the restoration of Duke Humfrey’s Library, the oldest reading room in the present-day Bodleian Library. Established by a younger son of Henry IV of England, the library contains the duke’s collection of 281 books dating prior to his death in 1447. At this time, Oxford only had 20 books itself. During the Reformation in the 1550s, the library had been stripped bare and nearly abandoned, so Bodley took it upon himself in 1598 to restore it to its former glory. He began collecting new books in 1600 and used his affluent friends and colleagues to help raise the necessarily material and funds for the restoration.

He also made an agreement between the library and the Royal Stationer’s Company, which printed all materials related to the crown and gave permission for anything to be printed, that they would send the library a copy of every book in their register. In exchange, any books needed back for reprinting could then be borrowed by the company. This made the Bodleian library England’s first legal deposit library and it is one of six such libraries for the UK government today.

Within two years of starting the project, Bodley had amassed some 2,000 books in English as well as Hebrew, Turkish, Arabic, Persian, and Chinese. He reopened in the library in 1602 on this new collection and in 1604, King James I knighted him for his efforts. Bodley died in 1613 and was buried in the Merton College Chapel. The library he helped rebuild was later named in his honor in recognition of the effort he put into its restoration. Bodley died without children and left the bulk of his estate to the library to ensure it would continue on long after him.

Since then, the library has become the second largest library in England after the British Library in London. The library has been nearly constantly rebuilt to accommodate the numerous items in its holdings and has items stored in, among other places, a former salt mine in Cheshire and a facility in Swindon with more than 150 miles of shelving for maps. The library’s new biggest project is to digitize many of its items along with the Oxford Digital Library to give the world access to some of the most rare and unusual items in the collection. Since Bodley, there have been a total of 25 librarians who have served “Bodley’s Librarian” since Bodley’s first appointee Thomas James.

Arna Bontemps

Largely known as a poet and novelist involved in the Harlem Renaissance, Arna Bontemps was also an important figure in library science, helping to secure important items and archives highlighting African-American literature and culture. He helped establish African-American literature as a legitimate object of both study and preservation both in libraries and academia at large. Born into a Creole family in Louisiana, Bontemps was the son of a schoolteacher and a contractor who moved the family to Los Angeles during the Great Migration

They settled in the Watts area of the city where Bontemps attended public schools. He graduated from Pacific Union College in 1923 with a major in English, After this, he met and befriended author Wallace Thurman who convinced him to move to Harlem where Bontemps became part of the Harlem Renaissance. His first poem “Hope” was published in the August 1924 issue of the NAACP’s Crisis magazine. He also began teaching at Harlem Academy, publishing poetry and receiving the National Urban League’s Pushkin Prize as well as the Crisis Poetry Prize.

During his time in New York, he met numerous Harlem Renaissance luminaries like Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, W.E.B. Du Bois, Zora Neale Hurston, James Weldon Johnson, Claude McKay, and Jean Toomer. However, the Great Depression and Bontemps need to provide for his growing family prompted him to move to Alabama to take a teaching position. He continued to publish more poetry and his first novel in 1931 as well as wrote several children’s books. He collaborated with friends like Cullen and Hughes on projects. Due to political pressure he faced during the trial of the Scottsboro boys in nearby Decatur, Bontemps ended up giving up his teaching position in Alabama and returned back to California with his family.

As he wasn’t making enough of a living from his writing to support his family, Bontemps went back to school and earned a master’s degree in library science from the University of Chicago in 1943. He was then appointed as head librarian of the historically-black Fisk University in Nashville, developing important archives and collections there such as works by Langston Hughes. After retiring from Fisk in 1964, he maintained a residence in Nashville but also worked as the University of Illinois and as curator of the James Weldon Johnson Collection at Yale. He also continued to write and publish his own works as well as edited anthologies of African-American writers. He died of a heart attack at his Nashville home in 1973. He has since been remembered both as an influential author as well as a leading figure in African-American studies and preservation.

John Cotton Dana

John Cotton Dana began his career as a lawyer but ended it one of the most influential librarians of his age. He worked tirelessly to improve the condition of libraries and museums across America, working to assure their status as important cultural institutions and public resources. He also pioneered giving more freedom to library patrons and innovated new services for libraries to offer, expanding their use and impact. Originally from Vermont, Dana graduated with a law degree from Dartmouth in 1878 and moved to Colorado, practicing law in Denver for three years before moving to New York state.

After two years of practicing law in New York, he took a job as a newspaper editor then moved to Minnesota and finally back to Colorado where he married. In 1889, he was appointed as the first librarian to head the new Denver Public Library. At the time, it was the convention for librarians to fetch books for patrons to read without allowing the patrons into the stacks themselves. Dana became one of the first librarians to give patrons the use of open stacks, letting them browse freely instead of relying on staff. He also created the first-ever collection devoted specifically to children’s literature at a public library and offered continuing education programs for school teachers.

Dana left Denver to serve as librarian in Springfield, Mass., in 1898 until 1902 and continued many of the policies he had begun in Denver there. He also opened up the library’s floor plan to allow easier access for patrons. In 1902, he took a position at the Newark Public Library in New Jersey, which he would hold until his death in 1929. There he established foreign language literary collections to reach out to the city’s immigrant population and a special collection to be used as a resource by the business community known as The Business Branch. He founded the Special Libraries Association and served as its first president from 1909 until 1911. He also founded the Newark Museum in 1909, which included local folk art and factory made products rather than traditional European oil paintings and items.

After his death, Dana was proclaimed “the First Citizen of Newark” for his contributions to the community and the New Jersey School of Law was renamed Dana College in his honor. The Rutgers-Newark Library main branch is named in his honor and Oct. 6 is honored as John Cotton Dana Day in the city. The Special Libraries Association, American Library Association, and New Jersey Association of Museums give out annual awards named in his honor.

Melvil Dewey

Most famous as the creator of the library classification system known as the Dewey Decimal system, Melville “Melvil” Louis Kossuth Dewey was an influential librarian and educator whose interest in education reform began when he was a student attending schools in rural New York. He earned both a bachelor’s and master’s degree from Amherst College in Massachusetts and while still a student founded the Library Bureau, a group that sold index cards and filing cabinets that established the standard dimensions for catalog cards.

He also was a member of the spelling reform movement, which was why he changed his name from “Melville” to “Melvil” and also briefly spelled his surname as “Dui.” Beginning in 1877, he moved to Boston and became the founder and first editor of The Library Journal as well as one of the cofounders of the American Library Association, which he served as secretary of from 1876 until 1891 and president of from 1891 to 1893. From 1883 to 1888, he was the chief librarian for Columbia University followed by director of the New York State Library from 1888 to 1906 as well as secretary of executive officer of the University of the State of New York.

During this time, he established a program of traveling libraries. In 1905, he also established the American Library Institute, which studied and discussed issues in the field of library science. Despite his many achievements in life, Dewey’s legacy has been clouded by incidents of sexual harassment, racism, and anti-semitism he perpetrated against others, most notably in his role as founder of the Lake Placid Club. In recent time, stories of his sexual impropriety with female coworkers and even his own daughter-in-law, resulting in several lawsuits.

El Sayed Mahmoud El Sheniti

One of the most influential librarians in the modern Arab world, Dr. El Sayed Mahmoud El Sheniti was an Egyptian academic and government official who oversaw much of the development of library science in his homeland. He is also the first Egyptian and person of Arab-descent to earn a doctorate in library science in the U.S. Earning his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Cairo University and Alexandria University respectively, he also earned a doctorate in library science from the University of Chicago in 1960, he served in various roles in his homeland, promoting libraries and education.

Among the titles he held included librarian of Alexandria University Library, 1949-51; Assistant Librarian of the UNESCO Fundamental Education Center in Sirs El Layyan, Mounefia, Egypt, 1952-54; Director of the American University in Cairo Library, 1958-63; UNESCO Documentation and Publications Expert stationed at the UNESCO Regional Center of Community Development for the Arab States in Sirs El Layyan, Egypt, 1963-68; Under Secretary of State for the Egyptian National Library and Archives, 1968-71; Senior Under Secretary of State for the Ministry of Culture and Chairman of the General Egyptian Book Organization (GEBO), 1971-77; Deputy Minister of Culture and Chairman of GEBO, 1977-78; and Director of the UNESCO Publication Center in Cairo, 1982-95.

From 1964 until his death in 1995, El Sheniti presided over the Egyptian Library, information, and Archives Association as well as was an expert consulted both within Egypt and to other Arabic-language libraries in other countries. He helped define classification systems to better suit the needs of the Arabic language and helped with the foundation of numerous facilities for book development, bibliography, computer usage, and microfilming. He also founded the Arab Center for Research and Publishing along with other Arabic scholars, which embarked on publishing Arabic texts that had gone out of print.

Eratosthenes of Cyrenes

Eratosthenes is known for numerous accomplishments as a mathematician, geographer, poet, and astronomer. He was the first person to calculate the circumference of the earth, the first to calculate the tilt of the earth’s axis, and may have also calculated the distance from the earth to the Sun to create the first Leap Day. He also created the first map to feature parallels and meridians, is the founder of scientific chronology, and the father of geography. A man of lifelong learning, it shouldn’t be surprising that his day job was the chief librarian of the Library of Alexandria. Born in what is now Libya in 276 BCE, Eratosthenes hometown was the capital of the ancient Greek colony of Pentapolis in North Africa, having been conquered by Alexander the Great and now ruled by the Ptolemaic dynasty that included Cleopatra.

After learning physical skills, social discourse, reading, writing, arithmetic, poetry and music at home, Eratosthenes went to Athens to further his studies and soon became a well-known poet and author. This success led to the pharaoh Ptolemy III asking him to take a job as librarian at the famed Library of Alexandria in 345 BCE. Eratosthenes would live there for the rest of his life and would also tutor the pharaoh’s children, including future pharaoh Ptolemy IV.

One of the most famous scholars of the ancient world, Eratosthenes wrote on topics ranging from geography and mathematics to philosophy and history to literary criticism, grammar, poetry, and Greek comedy. He also greatly expanded the holdings of the Library of Alexandria, being the librarian who ordered the library practice of forcing all books that entered the port to be surrendered for duplication. He created a whole section of the library devoted exclusively to the work of Homer and acquired original copies of works of some of the greatest Greek dramatists.

Eratosthenes life ended tragically when, around 195 BCE he came down with what is now known as ophthalmia and lost his sight. Unable to read or observe nature, he fell into a deep depression and starved himself to death the following year. He was 82 when he died. Unfortunately, much of his work is lost to history because of the destruction of the Library of Alexandria. The fragments of his work that remain have become influential both on his contemporaries and modern scholars, covering a vast array of topics.

Virginia Proctor Powell Florence

The first black woman in the U.S. to earn a degree in library science and only the second African-American to be formally trained in librarianship, Virginia Proctor Powell Florence worked as a librarian at various institutions for more than 40 years, blazing a trail for African-American women in the field. Throughout her career, she often found herself denied for jobs because of her race but still remained dedicated to the field, even after her retirement.

Florence was born in Pennsylvania, where she lived until she was 16 when both of her parents died. She then moved to Pittsburgh to live with her aunt, graduating from high school there and following in her mother’s footsteps to attend Oberlin College in Ohio. She earned a bachelor’s degree in English literature and moved back to Pittsburgh, hoping to find a teaching position. However, she was informed that the predominantly white students of the local public school system would not respect a black teacher and therefore would not be hired. Instead, she turned to working at her aunt’s beauty salon to make ends meet. She briefly moved to St. Paul, Minn., to work as a secretary for the YWCA, but after a year returned to Pittsburgh.

It was her future husband, Charles Wilbur Florence, who encouraged Florence to combine her love of children, education, and books and pursue a career as a librarian. With his encouragement, she applied to the Carnegie Library School - now the University of Pittsburgh of Information Sciences - and was accepted, despite apprehensions about admitting a black student by the school. Upon graduation, she applied to libraries she thought would be the most accepting of her race and was hired by the New York Public Library System in 1923. She decided to become a school librarian in 1927 and became the first African-American to take and pass the New York high school librarian’s examination, allowing her to be appointed the librarian of Seward Park High School in Brooklyn.

After her marriage in 1931, she moved to Jefferson City, Mo., where her husband was president of Lincoln University of Missouri. The couple then moved to Richmond, Va., in 1938 where she took a position as the librarian of Cordoza High School in Washington, D.C., until 1945. After a brief health issue, she returned to library work at Maggie L. Walker Senior High School, finally retiring from that position in 1965. She and her husband remained active in social justice reform and the Civil Rights movement. She died at the age of 93 in 1991.

Since then, Florence has been acknowledged in her important role in breaking down barriers in library sciences. She was honored with a special award by the University of Pittsburgh in 1981 and then again posthumously in 2004. The American Library Association recognized her as one of the most important library leaders of the 20th Century. Her and her husband’s papers are part of the collection of Pittsburgh University’s library and are available online through its digital collections.

Benjamin Franklin

Founding Father and jack-of-all trades Benjamin Franklin made numerous contributions to American life and culture. A politician, polymath, postmaster, scientist, inventor, humorist, civic activist, diplomat, author, printer, and civic leader, he is known for helping foster institutions like Philadelphia’s first fire department and the University of Pennsylvania. Among his long list of accomplishments, Franklin also founded the Library Company of Philadelphia.

Still in operation in Philadelphia, this library contains one of the most significant collections of historical manuscripts in the U.S. and served as an inspiration for libraries across the country. The Library Company began with a discussion group centered around Franklin and his friends known as the Junto or the Leather Apron Club. This colonial group of intellectuals included printers, surveyors, a cabinetmaker, clerk, merchants, a scrivener, a glazier, and bartender. The group decided to found a local library in 1731 because their discussions often flagged without reference material. At the time, there were few books in Colonial Pennsylvania, largely because colonists largely had to purchase books printed and then shipped from London. While individually these men couldn’t amass a great deal of books, by pooling their money together they could purchase more volumes.

They hired the first librarian in U.S. history, who was soon replaced by Franklin himself in 1734. The institution quickly became what was known as a subscription library where books were only allowed to be read or lent to those who were members of the library company. In 1741, the library was opened to those who weren’t subscribing members on the condition that these members could only check out a book if they provided enough money to buy a new copy provided they didn’t return the book. Subscribers invented 40 shillings initially and then 10 shillings per year from then on, making the Library Company of Philadelphia the “mother of all subscription libraries” in the U.S. Additionally, members of the company who were printers would also donate copies from their presses.

A catalog of the library’s inventory from 1741 shows that a third of its 375 holdings were historical works, geographies, or accounts of voyages and travel while a fifth were literature, largely poetry and plays. The success of the Library Company prompted the founding of similar institutions along the Atlantic Coast, as far south as Charleston, S.C., and as far north as New York. The library hosted meetings of the First and Second Continental Congress as well as the Constitutional Convention. Nine of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were members of the library and it served in the same role as the Library of Congress until that library was established. One of the “five great libraries” of the U.S. in the 1800s, the library company suffered under the Great Depression but still exists as a vital center for research and education.

Eliza Atkins Gleason

Just like Virginia Proctor Powell Florence before her, Eliza Atkins Gleason broke through barriers in library science when she became the first African American to receive a doctorate in library science in 1941 and the first African American to serve on the board of the American Library Association. She wrote one of the very first histories of libraries in relation to the African-American community and served in numerous roles as a librarian and educator, creating a library education program that educated 90% of the country’s black librarians by 1986.

Born in Winston-Salem, N.C., Gleason’s mother was a teacher and her father was the founder and first president of Slater State College, now known as Winston-Salem University. Like her parents, she pursued an in depth education for herself, earning a bachelor’s degree from the University of Illinois in 1931. Afterwards, she took a job as a librarian at Louisville Municipal College in Kentucky and soon became the head librarian of the all-black university. In 1936, she earned her master’s degree from the University of California at Berkeley and then moved to Chicago where she earned her doctorate in library sciences from the University of Chicago. Her dissertation published in 1941 was the first complete history of library access in the Southern U.S. with a particular focus on African-American libraries and the African-American community.

That same year, she was hired as the director of libraries at Talladega College in Alabama and established and then became first dean of the School of Library Service at Atlanta University. She stayed there until 1946 when she moved to Illinois with her husband and daughter. She worked as a librarian and guest lecturer at several institutions including Woodrow Wilson Junior College, the Chicago Teachers College, and the University of Chicago before becoming an associate professor in library science at the South Chicago branch of the Illinois Teacher College. In 1978, she was appointed to the Chicago Public Library board. Gleason died in 2009 at the age of 100 and was posthumously inducted into the Louisville College of Arts and Sciences Hall of Honor. The American Library Association gives out the Eliza Atkins Gleason Book Award every three years in her honor, going to the best written book on the field of library history.

Caroline Hewins

Known in Hartford as the “First Lady of the Library,” Caroline Hewins was an influential figure in children’s library services both in a public and school setting as well as an advocate for library access for all people. She wrote numerous books about children’s literature and how to select children’s literature that helped with the expansion of children’s collections in both public libraries and private homes. Under her 50-year leadership, Hartford’s library went from a small subscription library to a large public library, reaching out to more patrons than ever before.

Hewin had learned to read by the age of four and had a private education before high school, learning folk and fairytales, English classics, and Greek, Roman, and European literary traditions. She graduated from Eliot High School and then graduated from Girls’ High and Normal School. She was hired to do Civil War research by the Boston Athenaeum where she gained her library training under William Frederick Poole. She was then hired as the librarian of the Young Men’s Institute of Hartford in 1875, a Catholic fraternal organization that later became the Hartford Public Library. When she began her career, the library was a subscription library with some 600 subscribers.

The Young Men’s Institute merged with the Hartford Library Association in 1878 and ten years later was given a large grant to extend. Hewins oversaw this change from a private institution to a public one and from 600 patrons to thousands. Of course, Hewins is most known for her work in children’s library services, which barely existed up until her time. In fact, children under 12 were still not allowed in some libraries. She created programs for children and wrote scholarly articles and reading lists for other librarians considering making their own similar program. She added a children’s room to the Hartford Library in 1904 and soon other libraries began following the example. In 1907, she also hired the first known librarian hired specifically for children’s collections.

Hewins fostered connections between the public library and local schools, allowing children better access to library associations and help founding the precursor to Hartford’s Parent-Teacher Association. She allowed children from local schools to have book groups, theatrical skills, exhibits, and parties in the library to encourage them to read and worked to raise funds for students who couldn’t afford library cards before the library became a free service in 1892. She was also one of the chief campaigners for free public libraries.

She also refused to ban content like Tom Sawyer that many felt were not appropriate for children. Her 1882 Books for the Young was the first bibliography of children’s literature ever written and was used by the ALA. Her scholarly works in Atlantic Monthly also led to children’s literature being considered a worthy scholarly subject. In 1891, Hewins founded the Connecticut State Library Committee and served as its executive secretary. In this role, she drove her horse and buggy across the state to encourage cooperation between libraries as well as between libraries and local schools. She set up traveling libraries and book depositories around the state at settlement houses, schools, factories, and other places the public had easy access to. One of the early members of the ALA, she used the organization to help galvanize children’s literature in libraries across the country and show their importance to local librarians.

She died of pneumonia at the age of 80 just a month after publishing her memoir, but her death didn’t stop her service to libraries. She bequeathed her personal library of more than 4,000 volumes to the Connecticut Historical Society and the Hartford Public Library. Her personal doll collection from her travels is also one of the collections of the Hartford Public Library. A lecture series was begun in her name and a scholarship has been established in her name for those going into children’s library services. She was inducted into the ALA Library Hall of Fame in 1951 and the Connecticut Women’s Hall of Fame in 1995. The Hartford Public Library gives an award in her name and a children’s book has been published telling her story.

Virginia Lacy Jones

During her 50 year career, Virginia Lacy Jones was on the forefront for the push for library integration on both the public and academic level and became one of the first African Americans to earn a doctorate in library science. She was the first African-American to be elected president of the Association for Library and Information Science Education and was responsible for reports on children’s and youth services after her appointment to the President’s Advisory Committee on Library Research and Training Projects.

Born in Cincinnati and raised in Clarksburg, W.Va., she had access to integrated libraries in her hometown. She entered the high school where her uncle taught and it was while working on a school project that a helpful librarian at the St. Louis Public Library made her decided on becoming a librarian herself. She enrolled in the Hampton Institute in Virginia, which was at the time the only library school open to African-Americans in the South. She graduated and then took a job as an assistant librarian at the African-American branch of the segregated University of Louisville.

Jones’ fair complexion allowed her to pass as white and so when she went with other African-American librarians to an ALA conference in the 1930s, she was the only one allowed to attend regular meetings and stay at the hotel with the white participants. This led to her realization of the importance of African-American libraries for both schools and the public. By 1936, she was the head librarian at Louisville Municipal College and had begun developing courses and professional development programs for African-American librarians. Jones left Louisville in 1938 and obtained her master’s degree in library science before briefly returning to Louisville, only to be forced out by new leadership. She instead took a job as a catalog librarian at Atlanta University, which was establishing its own library science program, and played a role in planning the Atlanta University School of Library Service.

She went across the U.S. seeing various programs at different libraries and returned back in 1941 to help train librarians and improve library services. In 1945, she became dean of the Atlanta University School of Library Service after Eliza Atkins Gleason held the position. She retired and was selected as the first director of the Robert W. Woodruff Library from 1982 until 1983. She also became the first African-American to receive both the ALA’s Melville Dewey Award and the Joseph E. Lippincott Award. Jones won numerous awards during her career and was elected to honorary membership at ALA, its highest honor. After her death in 1984 at the age of 82, she donated her papers and personal collections to the Robert W. Woodruff Library. It now has 18.5 linear feet of papers as well as her correspondences, personal letters, and photographs.

Laozi

Also known as Lao Tzu and Lao-Tze, the author of the Tao Te Ching and founder of Taoism is known today as a semi-legendary philosopher and writer. A contemporary of Confucius, he lived during China’s Warring States period and has become a central figure in Chinese culture with both imperial families and commoners tracing their ancestry to him. According to accounts of his life, Laozi would have never had his philosophical revelations if it hadn’t been for his career as an imperial librarian. Born in the state of Chu around 601 BCE, the first record of Laozi’s existence doesn’t come until about 400 years after his supposed dead.

According to these traditional accounts, he was the keeper of the archives for the royal court of Zhou, allowing him broad access to early Chinese literary classics. He attracted a large number of pupils and disciplines, teaching what he had learned from the library to others. Allegedly, he grew weary of the moral decline of the empire and ventured westward to live as a hermit for the rest of his life. Some hold that he traveled as far as India and became the teacher of Buddha.

Laozi remains an important figure in the development of Chinese and eastern philosophy as a whole. The Tang monarchs would later claim descent from them as part of their right to power and helped promote the religion based on his philosophy. Even today, some consider him an immortal figure with his image appearing on various natural and geographic landmarks.

Charles Martel

The creator of the Library of Congress Classification, Charles Martel would be influential in forging a relationship between the Library of Congress and the libraries at the Vatican. Born Karl David Hanke in Zurich, Switzerland, Martel’s father was an antiquarian book dealer who surrounded his son with literature. At the age of 16, he went with his brother to America to visit the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia and also attended the American Library Association’s first conference that same year.

Martel returned to Switzerland to finish his studies and care for his ailing father until his father’s death in 1878. He permanently moved to the U.S., changing his name to Charles Martel and taking up residence in Missouri and then Iowa. In 1892, he was hired as an assistant cataloger for the Newberry Library in Chicago, working under William F. Poole and James C.M. Hanson. The three men would later work together again at the Library of Congress. Martel was hired by the library in 1897, the same year it had opened its new location in Washington, D.C. he was given the task of helping classify the library’s collection.

At the time, the Library of Congress was still operating under the system developed by Thomas Jefferson and based on the one used by Sir Francis Bacon. A new committee was formed to try to devise a more accurate classification system. The Dewey Decimal system was considered but ultimately rejected. The end product was the creation of the Library of Congress Classification (LC) system that drew on various other catalogs. To help other libraries navigate the system, Martel had a catalog system printed out on cards. By 1900, the reclassification began in earnest.

In 1927, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Vatican Library sent two catalogers to the Library of Congress to see the LC system in order for categorizing the Vatican works. They worked with Martel about how he developed his system and forged a relationship between the Library of Congress and the Vatican. Martel helped adapt the LC rules for the Vatican’s archives and collection, one of the first exchanges in American and European cataloging practices. Martel retired in 1929 as chief classifier and chief of the catalog division at the Library of Congress. He remained a consultant with the library until his death in 1945.

S.R. Ranganathan

A mathematician and librarian, Siyali Ramamrita Ranganathan’s book of five laws of library science and development of the first major faceted classification system has led him to be called the father of library science, documentation, and information science in India. Outside his homeland, he is known for his major influence on the field. His birthday is still celebrated in India as National Librarian’s Day for the country, honoring both Ranganathan and all those who follow in his footsteps.

Born in what is today Sirkazhi in what was then British-ruled India and is now Tamil Nadu, Ranganathan received his early education at the Hindu High School in Shiyali and at the Madras Christian College where he earned his bachelor’s and master’s degree in mathematics. He then went to the teacher’s college in Saidapet before joining the faculty of the Government College in Mangalore in 1917. He would also teach at universities in Coimbatore and Madras as a mathematics professor, though the public speaking part of his career was often hindered by the stammer he had suffered from since a youth.

In 1923, the University of Madras created a new librarian position to oversee its library collection. Ranganathan was selected out of a pool of 900 applicants and sent to London to study contemporary Western practices in librarianship. He did so at University College London, which at that point housed the only library science graduate program in the UK. His mathematical mind quickly caught on classification and quickly found flaws in the popular decimal system. He began exploring new mathematically-based classification systems on his own including systems that allowed for better cross-referencing.

This system became known as the colon classification system. He practiced it on his way back to India with the library available on the ship he was traveling on and returned back to India where he served as the University of Madras’ university librarian for 20 years. He founded the Madras Library Association and lobbied for the establishment of free public libraries throughout India.

He also lobbied for the creation of a national library. He published treatises on his five laws of library science in 1931 and his colon classification system in 1933. He also worked to encourage libraries to become more involved in civil discourse and civil disobedience as the Indian independence movement gained steam, seeing this revolution as a means to educate more people and make libraries available to all people. After two decades with the university, he retired from his position after a conflict with new leadership. He then took a professorship in library science at Banaras Hindu University in Varanasi.

From 1944 to 1953, he was also the head of the Indian Library Association and held an honorary professorship at Delhi University, helping to build the library programs at the university. He also released an album in 1951 of himself reading from the Bhagavad Gita in Sanskrit. He moved to Zurich briefly from 1955 to 1957 after his son’s marriage to a European world. His final major achievement was the establishment of the Documentation Research and Training Centre in the Indian Statistical Institute in Bangalore in 1962. He served as its honorary director for five years and in 1965, he was proclaimed by the government of India as a “national research professor” for his contributions to academia.

Suetonius

Most famous for his biographies of the early caesars of ancient Rome, many are unaware that the reason the writer Suetonius had access to information about these important historical figures was because of his position as secretary of studies and director of the imperial archives under the emperor Trajan. Suetonius was basically the official imperial librarian for the Roman caesar for several years, eventually becoming the secretary of the emperor Hadrian - who later fired him for being over familiar with the empress.

Born around 69 CE in the small north African town of Hippo Regius in what is now modern-day Algeria, Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus was the son of a tribune in the thirteenth legion and was sent to Rome to be educated at the height of Roman rhetoric. He became a close friend of letter-writer and senator Pliny the Younger who introduced him to the emperor Trajan. While he is remembered for his The Twelve Caesars, Suetonius also wrote numerous other texts detailing the lives of famous senators, grammarians, poets, historians, and the history of Greek games that survive in some form to this day. He also wrote numerous lost works that we know of from other Roman writers.

Gottfried van Swieten

A Dutch-born Austrian diplomat and government official, Gottfried van Swieten is often remembered today as a major patron as some of the greatest composer the Classical era ever produced such as Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. However, he also had a major influence on library science. During his service as prefect of the Imperial Library in Vienna, van Swieten implemented the very first card catalog known to exist, allowing patrons to have easier access to the library’s contents. He also saw a major expansion of the imperial library’s collection.

Godefridus Bernardus “Godfried” van Swieten was born in Leiden in the Dutch Republic and lived there until the age of 11 when his father was hired as the personal physician to Austrian Empress and Holy Roman Empress Maria Theresa. The family moved to Vienna where the young van Swieten was educated for national service at an elite Jesuit school named after the empress. An excellent student, he learned languages rapidly and was given several diplomatic posts in Brussels, Paris, Warsaw, and finally to the Prussian emperor in Berlin.

When he finally returned to Vienna in 1777, van Swieten was appointed prefect of the imperial library, a post that had been vacant for five years since the death of his father who had also held the position. Van Swieten would remain the imperial librarian for the rest of his life. In 1780, he created the first card catalog, replacing the previous method of having a book with the library’s contents listed. The new cards allowed for books to be more easily searched and for more people to search at the same time. When Emperor Joseph II began dissolving monasteries in the country, van Swieten was able to take the books from those institution. He also greatly added to the library’s science collection.

Under the emperor, his career flourished with van Swieten being appointed a councilor of the state, director of the state education commission, and director of the censorship commission. He also suggested the adoption of copyright laws to protect the intellectual property of writers and musicians, but the emperor rejected the idea. Outside of his career, van Swieten was a primary patron to many of the period’s greatest composers.

He met a young Mozart and allowed the prodigy access to his own collection of works by Bach and Handel. After Mozart’s unexpected death, he paid for the funeral and may have financially supported the remaining Mozart family members for several years afterwards, even sponsoring a benefit concert of Mozart’s work for Mozart’s widow. He also became the patron of Hadyn after the death of the composer’s previous patron and the two developed a working relationship. Van Swieten was also an early supporter of Beethoven.

Louis Timothee

Also known as Lewis Timothy, this French Huguenot immigrant was both a prominent printer of the colonial era and the first known professional librarian in American history. Born in Holland to French parents who had escaped there before their protestant religion, Timothee grew up in Rotterdam and learned the printing trade there from his father. After marrying another French Huguenot, he and his family moved to American in 1731, giving up his French and Dutch citizenship.

He and Franklin quickly became friends because of their interest in scholarly pursuits and their backgrounds in printing. Timothee had attempted to publish his own newspapers in Philadelphia as a side business, but his venture into a German language paper aimed at the immigrant population failed. Franklin hired him to work at the Pennsylvania Gazette and briefly as the librarian at the Philadelphia Library Company. It turned out Franklin was more impressed with Timothee’s print work than his library work.

Timothee moved with his family to Charleston, S.C., and began to print the South Carolina Gazette, a floundering newspaper Franklin had purchases as an imprint of his Philadelphia Gazette. Timothee quickly turned the paper around and even became the official public printer for the colony, meaning that he was charged with all of the printing done on behalf of the colonial legislature.

However, South Carolina was a dangerous place at the time because of its location and Timothee’s predecessor at the paper had died from yellow fever and the two others before him had died quickly as well. In 1738, Timothee himself was stricken with one of the many diseases common in the swampy environs and died in 1739. He had arranged for the paper to be inherited by his son in the event of his untimely death, but when he died his son was still an apprentice and still too young to run the paper. In his place, Elizabeth Timothee became the printer of the paper and possibly the first known woman to print and publish a newspaper in the U.S.

Edward Christopher Williams

A writer and the first African-American professionally-trained librarian in the U.S., Edward Christopher Williams was on track to become the first African-American doctorate of library science before his unexpected death at the age of 58. Born in Ohio to an African-American father and an Irish mother, Williams father was a respected member of the Cleveland community. Williams received his education in Cleveland public schools before attending Adelbert College of Western Reserve University, graduating as class valedictorian in 1892.

He married the daughter of famous writer Charles Waddell Chesnutt and the same years as his graduation began his career as a library assistant at the Hatch Library of Western Reserve University. He was promoted to library director two years later. In 1898, he took a sabbatical from WRU to earn his master’s degree in library science from New York State Library, completing the two-year course in one year and resuming his duties at WRU as the librarian and as an instructor until 1909. Under his tenure, the school’s library doubled in size and he helped establish the school’s college of library science in 1904. Williams left WRU in 1909 to take a position at the M Street High School, better known as the famed Dunbar High School, in Washington, D.C. He served as principal of the school for seven years before he was selected as the head librarian of Howard University in 1916.

While at Howard, Williams developed its collections as well as served as a professor and director of the library training program. He advocated for professional personnel in the library department and worked tirelessly to improve the quality of the library’s resources. Outside of his day job, he was a member and founder of numerous organizations. He was a founding member of the Ohio Library Association, lecturer at the Ohio Institute of Library Workers, and a member of the American Library Association, working to give particular focuses to libraries that served African-American communities.

He also helped plan the first ever conference for African-American librarians at Fisk University in 1930. Williams was also an author and professional translator, contributing numerous works to newspapers as well as publishing translation of Italian and other texts. His own writings dealt with the issues faced by Washington D.C’s black community and many of his stories were collected into the posthumously published When Washington Was in Vogue in 2004, a novel depicting the Harlem Renaissance era in D.C.

While preparing to earn the first doctorate degree in library science offered by New York’s Columbia University, Williams died unexpectedly at the Freedman’s Hospital. His funeral was held in the chapel of Howard University with its president presiding over the ceremony. Williams reputation remains not just as an important figure for librarians but also as an important social activist for the black community. In 1999, he was named one of the most important library leaders of the century by American Libraries.

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Outside of Japan, the words Japanese poetry probably immediately bring up the word “haiku,” but this short form of poetry that has taken the West by storm in recent decades is just a drop in the bucket of the centuries long poetical tradition in Japan. Just as in China, some of Japan’s earliest literary works are those of poetry, and the poetry of this country has developed strict traditions around everything from number of lines to meters to themes and subject matter.

Japan traces its earliest poetry back to the gods themselves, believing poetry as a divine gift to humanity. Poetry became intricately intertwined with the life of the imperial court and nobility with poetry a required course of study for anyone who wanted to advance themselves. As Japan’s borders began to open, Japanese writers began learning new styles of modernist poetry while international writers took up traditional Japanese styles. Even today, there is still great debate over the merits of traditional Japanese forms and styles and the influence of Western conventions.

Historical Background

Early Influences and Nara Period

Some of the earliest preserved works of literature from Japan are poetry or have mentions of poetry in them. Japanese mythology holds that poetry was invented by celestial deities, particularly the goddess Izanami and god Izanagi. People began living on what was then the Japanese archipelago dating as far back as 40,000 years ago though the first major distinct cultures didn’t begin to arise there until somewhere between 14,500 and 12,000 BCE.

This Jomon culture gave way to the Yayoi Period beginning around 800 BCE and then the Kofun Period between 250 BCE and 538 CE in what is known as the Classical Period. It was during the Kofun period that Japan was first united under a single dynasty. During the Asuka Period between 538 and 710, Buddhism was first introduced to the islands and Japan adopted systems of writing, literature, and other cultural queues from China.

It would be during the Nara Period (710-794) that Japanese poetry saw its first major influence with Tang Dynasty poetry styles from China were brought into the country. During this period, the first two books detailing early Japanese legends and linking the imperial family to the gods first appeared. Both the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki both had references to poetry created by these early gods and heroes of Japanese lore as well as poetry themselves. The creation of waka poetry was also attributed to ancient heroes and said to be a kami or divine creation. Japanese waka poetry, influenced by works from the Tang Dynasty, began to evolve under the works of poets like Ōtomo no Tabito, Yamanoue no Okura, and Yamabe no Akahito.

It was also during this period that the country’s first poetic anthology, the Man’yoshu, was published. Literally meaning “Collection of Ten Thousand Leaves,” this anthology is the first pure collection of Japanese poetry and contains classical Japanese waka poetry. One of the most revered complications of poetry, even in modern-day Japan, it is believed to have been compiled by Ōtomo no Yakamochi and contains works written by Japanese poets including Princess Nukata, Kakinomoto no Hitomaro, Yamabe no Akahito, Yamanoue no Okura, Ōtomo no Tabito and his son Ōtomo no Yakamochi. Many of these early poets were court figures though some poems in the anthology are attributed to commoners. While the waka form was used for all of the poems in the collection, these poems covered a diverse range of topics ranging from love to sorrow to war to satire to victory to riddles and more.

Heian Period

Japanese culture, language, and Japan itself began to evolve a more distinct style in the Heian Period, which also some of the biggest developments in poetry. Lasting from 794 to 1185, this period saw the development of the Kanbun system of writing that adapted Classical Chinese characters for use in the Japanese language as well as the evolution of the kana writing system that encouraged vernacular poetry and developments in the waka poetry form. This was also the period that introduced collaborative poetry, a form in which multiple writers would contribute to a piece for collection in an anthology.

There was still considerable Chinese influence on Japanese culture during this period as evidenced by the use of Chinese writing styles and the kanshi poetry of the early Heian period. Kanshi poetry written in Chinese by Japanese writers and was one of the more popular styles of poetry among aristocrats in the early Han period. Some poets even went to China to study Chinese types of poetry and were fluent in Chinese. Others hosted Chinese diplomats and officials in Japan to learn from them, writing letters back and forth in kanji or Chinese characters to improve their skills. Most kanshi of this period had lines of five of seven what in the West is considered syllables, but is more accurately known as on or morae, in poems of four to eight lines on a very strict rhyme scheme. Chanting these poems aloud is known as shigin and is still done in Japan today.

It is believed the final version of the Man’yoshu was published sometime during this era and it is for this reason that waka rose to an early prominence in the Heian Period. While many Japanese writers were still emulating the poetry of China, waka was becoming a more distinctly Japanese artform during this period. The Heian period was also the time period in which the waka poetry anthology Kokin wakashu was published, which showcased the talents of the Rokkasen or “Six Poetry Immortals” of the period: Ōtomo no Kuronushi, Ono no Komachi, Ariwara no Narihira, Kisen Hōshi, Sōjō Henjō, and Fun’ya no Yasuhide.

Of the six, Ariwara no Narihira contributed the most to the famed anthology. Eventually, this list of six immortal poets would be supplanted by Fujiwara no Kintō’s list of Thirty-Six Immortals of Poetry later on in the Heian Period and set the stage for creations of similar lists of important poets and examples of their works published in anthologies. The Kokin wakashu would also be the first in 21 poetic anthologies compiled at the request of the emperor to highlight its evolution.

Waka poetry was typically a literature reserved for the elite, including courtesans, concubines, and other court ladies. Instead of writing prose letters, many courtiers exchanged waka and waka were often incorporated into daily conversation among the high society. Waka poetry was also often exchanged between lovers and many waka poems from this era reflect that. Waka in particular was exchanged upon partings between lovers and in the famed Pillow Book written in this period, it was said the emperor himself memorized more than 1,000 waka for this purpose.

Recitation contests between the elite known as uta-awase began to evolve during this period, beginning in the 880s. Sometimes, poets competed on teams, reciting waka on various themes to gain points. The team with the highest score won the contest and both the winning poet and winning team received a prise. Emperors and the highest ranked members of the court were the only ones allowed to host these events. This era also saw the creation of roei style waka, which was a vocal style of recitation. Segments of classical poetry were often recited by individuals following a chorus and often on certain themes. Fujiwara no Kinto compiled an anthology an anthology of these poems known as Wakan roeishu around 1013.

Period of Cloistered Rule

The cloistered rule system or insei describes the period of Japanese rule between the end of the Heian dynasty and the beginning of the Kamakura period. In this system, Japanese emperors could abdicate the throne to younger successors but still had a considerable influence over the government from their position as “retired” emperors in Buddhist monasteries. At the end of the Heian period in particular, a number of retired emperors were alive at the same time, leading to the government splintering into factions supporting current and former emperors leading to a civil war known as the Genpei War, which was resolved with the establishment of the Kamakura shogunate where the emperor became a figurehead but the military leader known as a shogun held the real power.

This period saw the evolution of two new styles of waka poetry as well as the emergence of two new poetic forms in Japanese literature. In waka, there was a split between those who favored a more contemporary and modern style and those who remained traditionalists of the genre. Both of these schools of approach worked to compile anthologies of waka written by both current and historical emperors to better show the strength of the form. Outside of waka, the poetic styles of imayo and renga began to appear around this time.

Imayo is a lyrical form descended from the poetic form known as ryukoka. These poems consist of four lines in eight then five or seven then five on. These poems were sung aloud usually accompanied with instrumental music and dancing. These female dancers known as shirabyoshi were prominent in the Japanese Imperial court and often performed dressed as men. There is some misconception that these women were prostitutes or courtesans and while some did develop relationships with noble patrons, these women were actually dancers by trade. They were also required to be educated in order to read, write, and compose their own poems, music, songs, and dances.

The second major poetry form that began to evolve during this period was renga, which was included for the first time in the imperially commissioned anthologies of waka that began to appear at the time. Renga was still very much a variant of waka at this time than the more evolved form we see today. These renga, also known as collaborative poetry, often involved the work of two persons each writing a waka. Later on, these poems would become more complex and involve many more than two authors.

Kamakura, Nanbuko-cho, Muromachi, and Sengoku Periods

These three dynastic periods were marked by the rise of the shogunate, the emergence of the samurai as a warrior caste, the establishment of feudalism in Japanese society, the division of Japan into a northern and southern court, the introduction of western influences and new religions like Zen Buddhism, Shinto, and Christianity to Japan, and finally a period of warring states where the shogunate fell apart and new groups began to come to power. The Kamakura period lasted from 1185 to 1333, the Nanbuko-cho between 1334 and 1392, the Muromachi Period from 1336 to about 1500 and the Segoku period or “Warring States Period” from about 1500 to 1600.

The Kamakura period is known for the publication of three major poetic anthologies. The first was Shin Kokin Wakashu, the eighth collection of imperial-commissioned waka poetry that was patroned by abdicated emperor Go-Toba who also edited the publication along with Fujiwara no Teika and Kamo no Chomei. After this publication, 14 additional waka anthologies were published under imperial edict: the 13-part Nijūichidaishū and the Shin’you Wakashu of 1381. These anthologies give insight into the tastes of the nobility and imperial courts of the period as well as what was considered ideal waka. The patrons and writers of these collections were often politically linked. These collections also show how the members of the military were starting to become important aristocrats.

In the Nanboku-cho Period, the renga form of poetry was starting to become more prominent. Also known as the Northern and Southern Courts period because of the division at the time, this period saw the publication of the renga anthology Tsukubashū, the first ever imperially-commissioned anthology of renga, in 1356. Renga poets, critics, and theorists were starting to develop shikimoku or the rules and conventions of the renga style. Renga was also parodied in the style known as Haikai no renga. A collaborative form of poetry, renga was also influential in the development of Noh plays and poetry during this period, though waka also influenced the Noh genre.

After a brief imperial restoration, the Muromachi period began with the establishment of a new shogunate and a development of an exchange of power between the shogun and new regional leaders known as daimyos. Expanded trade with China brought in the influence of Chinese books and literature while Zen Buddhism and renewed interest in Shinto began to influence arts and literature. Renga and waka poetry continued to develop in this and the following Sengoku period, wherein violence and constant power struggles became the norm for the Japanese.

Edo and Tokugawa Period

Considered the pre-modern period of Japanese history, the Edo or Tokugawa period marked a settling down of the previous warring factions and an explosion of cultural development. Japan was closing its doors to much of the outside world, reflecting in ward and allowing for a flourishing of culture. A stable population, the lack of conflict, economic growth, and a strictly enforced social order all contributed to the reason why literature and arts were able to flourish during this period while they had been somewhat stymied in the years before.

One of the biggest evolutions of poetry was the style of renku also known as haikai no renga and later haikai that came out of the renga style. Matsuo Bashō became a great master of haikai at this time and became a major influence on both his contemporaries and future poets. He also famous wrote in a style known as haibun that combined prose and the style we know today as haiku. One of the most famous examples of this was his Oku no Hoshomichi or “The Narrow Road to the Interior.” It was during Basho’s time that hokku - also known as hokku renga and its later version renku - began to appears as an independent poem rather than part of larger renga works. The combination of prose or haibun was also seen in hokku.

Of course, the most famous Japanese style to begin in this period was haikai, which later evolved into the style we know today as haiku. Like hokku, the haikai style was once part of longer renga poems but was separated out into its own form by Basho and others. While haikai and hokku were related, their forms were vastly different. The Edo master of the haikai was Karai Senryū, who wrote one of the first anthologies of haikai. He was so prolific that haikai written in a style similar to his became known as senryū after him. These haikai are generally more satirical and taken from daily life but still follow the traditional 5-7-5 on patterns.

In addition to the continued collaboration of different poets on works, the Edo period saw the rise in collaboration between poets and artists wherein poems often appeared on the works of painters. While there were some artists who were both poet and painters - particularly those from the Shujo school - many others worked together collaboratively. Poetry schools, like the Danrin school that taught haikai poetry, also flourished at this time.

One of the most prominent poet-painters was Yosa Buson who began his career as a painter but later developed as a master of renku poetry. He also often incorporated haikai or haiku into his paintings. into a style now known as haiga. Waka poetry also began to undergo a revival in this era because of kokugaku or the study of Japanese classics. Another type of popular waka that began to make appearances at this time was a satirical style known as kyoka, literally translating as “mad song.”

Modern and Contemporary

Most modern Japanese poetry evolved after the 1900s at a time when Japanese borders were opened and there was more influence from the outside world. More western styles like free verses and less restrictions on syllables also began to appear. While there were female poets in prior generations - and many works written anonymously may be attributed to women - the number of female Japanese poets far exceeds male poets in the modern era. Most poems in this era also began to stray away from traditional styles, sometimes using regional styles or fusing traditional aspects with new forms.

A new wave of western influence saw the emergence of several new poetry styles: shintai-shi or new form poetry and jiyu-shi or freestyle poetry. These poems still relied on the traditional 5-7 on patterns though with more western forms and motifs. Between 1912 to 1926, poets began writing in a looser metric. During this period kanshi began to go out of fashion and traditional Japanese influences became more important that Chinese literary knowledge. Afterwards, forms known as kindai-shi or modern poetry began to evolve though since World War II the term gendai-shi meaning “contemporary poetry” was more used among poets like Kusano Shinpei, Tanikawa Shuntaro, and Ishigaki Rin.

Traditional styles like waka and haiku also began to see new forms during these periods after being revived by writers like Yosano Tekkan and Masaoka Shiki. These became the forms known today as haiku, derived from earlier hokku, and tanka, derived from the waka of the Heian era, particularly emulating that of the Man’yoshu. Writers like Yosano Akiko, Ishikawa Takuboku, and Hagiwara Sakutaro both used traditional forms like waka and haiku as well as newer style forms like haiku and tanka.

While everything after 1900 is often defined as the “modern” period of poetry, the period between the end of World War II in 1945 and the death of Emperor Hirohito in 1989 is generally considered to be the “post-war period” while that since 1989 is considered the “New Modernism” period. Both of these periods marked Japan trying to reinvent itself, including the reinvention of literature and other cultural aspects. These poems reflected a new sense of creativity and liberation from the militarist oppression of the previous generations as well as were opened up to more experimentation with form and style. Japan also saw a stark change in its sense of identity following the atomic bomb.

New Modernism began to more fully evolved after the death of Japanese post-war avant garde poet Yoshioka Minoru. Poets like Hiraide Takashi and Inagawa Masato were already blurring the boundaries between post-war poetry and new emerging forms of poetry and prose. In the contemporary era, Japan has more than 2,000 active poets and more than 200 poetry magazines. While not all Western poets appeal to Japanese tastes, French poets in particular seem to be the most influential of outside genres. French writers like Paul Valéry, Arthur Rimbaud, Charles Baudelaire, and Rainer Maria Rilke, are favorites of poetry writers and students.

Modern poets are divided into five groups: New Humanists who group publish the Japanese poetry magazine Vou, the school known as Jikon or time that use neo-realism as their motto to depict the gap between reality and socialist ideals, Communist poets, Rekitei or progress that mixes Chinese Han poetry and Japanese traditional lyric poetry, and the Arechi or wasteland style.

Japanese Poetic Forms

Meter is synonymous with poetic form in Japanese poetry. In the Western world, meter is often defined by syllables and how they are expressed. However, Japanese is not a language of syllables but rather a moraic language. A mora (plural morae and symbolized as μ in linguistics) is a smaller unit of timing than even a syllable. As a result, consonants in Japanese have more syllable weight than vowels. Japanese is one of several languages that feature mora, including Sanskrit, ancient Greek, Old English, Hawai’ian, and the Kirbati language of Gilbertese.

Developed toward the end of the Edo period, dodoitsu poems are typically comical concerning love and work, often times with funny or unexpected twists at the end. Other types of dodoitsu look at nature and aesthetic concepts. Most of these poems consist of four lines with a 7-7-7-5 on structure and no rhymes. Being that it uses 26 on or morae it is one of the longer forms of Japanese poetry. The form, tone, and structure are all believed to derive from earlier Japanese folk song traditions. The form may have its roots in the agricultural areas of the Gombei and other backcountry areas of Japan. The majority of older forms were handed down through oral traditions and sometimes performed accompanied by a three-stringed instrument known as a shamisen.

A type of form that combines both prose and haiku, haibun sometimes cover non-fiction topics such as autobiography, diaries, essays, prose poetry, short stories, and travel journals. The term was first used by Matsuo Basho in the 1600s in a letter to one of his disciples to describe the emerging genre which was combining the classical elements of Chinese prose genres and Japanese vernacular and language. Basho himself wrote haibun as travel accounts, most famously Narrow Road to the Interior. The traditional haibun offers a short description of a place, person, or object or details an experience or event. No longer confined to Japan, it has gained momentum in English literature since the late 1980s and early 1990s.

A style of Japanese painting that incorporates the aesthetics of haikai and haiku, haigu are paintings typically accompanied by a haiku poem and is based on simple but often profound observations of the everyday world. The painting that accompanies the poem itself can range from minimalist, zen painting set to reflect the simplicity of the poem to intense, aesthetic works if the nanga tradition. Calligraphy and poetic images are often used to add depth to the painting. Well-known symbols like the moon, Zen circles, Mount Fuji, nature, and animals are also often found in these works.

Literally meaning “comic” or “unorthodox,” haikai is often a shortened form of haikai no renga that became a popular style of renga verse in the 1500s. The term refers both to this poetry itself as well as similar types of poetry that embrace the aesthetics of haikai. Only orthodox renga and waka poetry are never categorized in the haikai genre. These poems often employ both comical sentiment and profundity, dealing with the everyday lives of commoners and popular objects rather than detailing noble courts. Haiku, hokku, and zappai are all considered offshoots of this genre.

One of the most famous types of Japanese poetry, haiku are actually much more complex than lines of 5-7-5 on. The essence of haiku is kiru or “cutting,” demonstrated both through the juxtaposition of two seemingly opposite ideas or concepts in the poem as well as the placement of a kireji or “cutting” word that is often used to separate these concepts. Haiku often features a kigo or seasonal reference, usually drawn from a well-defined and extensive list of natural terms or saijiki. Modern haiku are known as gendai-haiku and sometimes show more western influence than older versions, which began to emerge toward the end of the 1800s.

Meaning “starting verse,” a hokku is the opening stanza of an orthodox renga or collaborative poem or its later derivative known as renku or haikai no renga. Hokku began to appear independently from the poems they originally introduced during the late 1600s and was also incorporated into the emerging form of haibun. The term haiku was also later applied to what was originally known as hokku. The term is still used in its original sense as part of a linked poems. Just like haiku, a hokoku has 17 morae or on and is composed in lines of 5-7-5. Hokku also typically contains a kigo, or seasonal word or phrase, often reflecting the environment of the poem.

Developed during the Period of Cloistered Rule, imayo poems are typically four lines with 12 on in each line with a caesura or pause between the first 7 on and the final 5 on. This split into five and seven on is often seen throughout Japanese poetry. Imayo poetry was originally written as lyrics for songs, but are now recited in other ways. Unlike many genres, imayo poetry is often free to explore a variety of topics rather than being confined to certain subject matters. Originally a type of folk art, the form was later embraced by the imperial courts and famous courtesans as well as incorporated into kabuki theatre.

A form developed in the Heian era, iroha was originally attributed to the Shingon Esoteric set of Buddhism but more modern scholarship has found that the form began to evolve later on in the Heian period. These poems are often pangrams, containing each character in the Japanese syllabary once. The first appearance of the form came in “Readings of Golden Light Sutra,” which was a seven line poem that had six lines with seven morae or on and one that had five. These poems also appeared in the Man’yogana. Today, the poem still follows the traditional line and syllable pattern but pangrams are no longer required.

While traditional Japanese death poems can be written in forms including waka and kanshi or in more modern haiku, the most famous type is the jisei written in the tanka form of waka with a 5-7-5-7-7 on pattern. More than half of surviving traditional death poems are written this way. Death poems are typically emotionally neutral but contain elements of the graceful and natural, often reflecting Buddhist and Shinto teachings. Imagery like sunsets, autumn, falling cherry blossoms, and other metaphorical references from nature are common. Often times, a jitsei was composed on the deathbed of prominent Japanese aristocrats and figures. Death poems are a common feature of the literary tradition of many Asian countries.

A form of Japanese poetry that uses Chinese characters, kyoshi was popular for a brief period of time between 1770 and 1800. Avoiding typical poetic forms, these poems often include humorous expressions or puns, twisting the meaning of Japanese characters. They were often written by low-ranking people in Japanese society to imitate the comic style of waka known as kyoka. Lower class samurai and townspeople or chonin were the main groups that exchanged and created this form.

Also known in Japan as shichigon-zekku, qijue is a style of poetry that was adapted from the traditional Chinese style of jueju and are found in both kanshi poems that imitate traditional Chinese styles and Japanese chanted poetry known as shigin. These poems consist of four phrases that employ seven Chinese characters or kanji in each line. Just like jueju poetry, these qijue poems follow a strict set of rules. The first phrase is called qiju meaning “bringing into being” and depicts a scene. The second phrase is chengju or “understanding” and adds further illustration and detail to the first verse. The second phrase is zhuanju or “changing,” and is a phrase where some change in action reveals the true essence of the poem. The fourth phrase is jueju or “drawing together” and draws the previous three phrases together to complete the poem.

Literally collaborative poetry, this style was one of the most important literary arts during the Edo period, also known as pre-modern Japan. Of course, renga dates back even further than that with examples of renga appearing in some of the earliest known Japanese poetic anthologies. Renga were often exchanged by two parties with one consisting of 5-7-5 on and a response of 7-7 on. This traditional two stanza - or two ku - style is known as tan-renga or “short renga.”

There is also a longer style known as cho-renga or “long renga” and a tradition of linked verse of lian ju also evolved in China at the same time, possibly influencing the Japanese style of verse. Rules of renga known as shikimoku evolved during the Kamakura and Muromachi eras and by the late medieval and Edo periods, renga was the domain of high society. Longer renga evolved with hyakuin renga having 100 linked verses, kasen a chain of 36 verses referring to specific natural elements, and hokku, the first stanza of renga from which the modern haiku descends.

Also meaning “linked verse,” renku is a form of haikai or renga is comic-linked verse that is done collaboratively. This style developed out of the Japanese poetic tradition known as ushin renga or orthodox collaborative linked verse. Poets would gather together at specific renku gatherings with poets taking turns providing alternative verses of 17 and 14 on or morae. Earlier verses were often vulgar and coarse before growing into a more legitimate artistic tradition. The term renku wasn’t associated with the style until after 1904 when it became more common.

A more contemporary form of renga and renku, renshi is a type of linked, collaborative poetry that was pioneered in the 1980s by Makoto Ōoka. Unlike its predecessors, this modern form doesn’t adhere to traditional strictures on length, rhythm, or diction but keeps the element of composition being done by groups of poets collaborating on the writing process in sessions that last for several days. This form has also expanded to include the work of foreign poets working in sync with Japanese poets.

Translating literally as “river willow,” senyru is similar to haiku in construction in that it contains three lines and 17 morae or on. The difference is that senyru tend to be about human foibles instead of nature and are more cynical or with a sense of black comedy to them, less serious than haiku. Additionally, senyru doesn’t contain the cutting word or kireji or the season word or kigo that is required in haiku. Senryu is named after the haikai poet Senryu Karai who pioneered the genre in the Edo period. The genre was introduced to English in the 1970s.

Meaning “short poem,” tanka is a genre of short Japanese poems that initially evolved to separate shorter waka or tanka from longer waka known as choka or “long poems.” By the 800s and 900s, the shorter tanka form had become the dominant form of waka, and the two terms were often used interchangeably. The traditional tanka poem consists of five lines in a 5-7-5-7-7 on pattern. The 5-7-5 section is known as the kami-no-ku or “upper phrase” while the 7-7 section is known as the shimo-no-ku or “lower phrase.” Tanka were often written in prose rather than as rhymes and were often exchanged by lovers instead of the western love letter. There were also numerous rituals surrounding the presentation of waka depending on who was writing and who was receiving the poem.

One of the most common types Japanese poetry, waka has evolved into numerous types and subtypes over the years. The shortest type of waka is known as katauta and is half of an exchange of tanka with a 5-7-7 on scheme. The long choka form was a reputation of 5-7 on phrases or syllables that eventually end with a 5-7-7 scheme, usually followed by a hanka or envoi. Tanka, the most widely composed is the 5-7-5-7-7 variety. Composed in two sets of 5-7-7 - or two katauta - is a sedoka poem. Sedoka poems can be divided into mondoka or “dialogue poem” or an exchange between lovers known as smonoka. A tank with an extra 7 on added at the end to create a 5-7-5-7-7-7 scheme is known as a bussokusekika.

Rooted in haiki and related to but separate from haiku and senryu, zappai is often defined as more miscellaneous in subject matter than haiku or senryu. These poems include the 17 on 5-7-5 line structure but do not have the technical or proper formal requirements of haiku.

Symbolism and Themes

Aesthetic sensibilities, creating layers of meaning, and reflecting the cultural values of a period are common themes within Japanese poetry. There are three main themes that appear again and again in Japanese poetry over the centuries. Wabi is the preference for things in their natural state, often expressing qualities of harmony, tranquility and balance. Sabi is the fleeting nature of beauty and the transience of all things. Yugen is a sense of mystery and depth, coming from a Buddhist concept of the unknowable.

Often times, elements of nature are themselves symbolic of deeper concepts and philosophies. Changing seasons often symbolize the changing nature of human emotions as well as the passage of time. Different aspects of seasons – such as blooming blossoms or falling leaves – have meanings of impermanence and beauty. In fact, the Japanese term mono no aware is a bittersweet awareness of the transient nature of all things on earth. Nature is often used to capture the ephemeral and cyclical nature of life. Shinto teachings particularly emphasize the personification of nature while Buddhist beliefs reflect cycles, the beauty of nature, and related philosophical underpinnings.

Poetry is also a place to express emotions that otherwise would be inappropriate. As a result, there is a wide expression of both romantic and platonic love in poetry with common themes including unrequited love, longing, separation, and using nature symbolism to convey emotional states. Poetry has been used to express vast emotions like sorrow, satire, anger, or praise. Many collections of poetry over the centuries have been organized based on not just themes but sub-themes as well.

Just as the amount of on or morae can define a specific form of poetry, certain types of Japanese poetry tends to feature certain themes or symbols. Haiku is known for its nature symbolism while waka and tanka are commonly about longing and separation in relationships. Humor, wit, and wordplay are particularly important in haikai and renku poetry, particularly because of their collaborative nature.

Juxtaposition, puns, and wordplay are also important techniques and symbols in Japanese poetry. Juxtaposition of two opposing seasons, emotions, or ideas can create tension or emphasis theme. Pivot words known as kakeotoba can give multiple meanings to a poem, allowing for different or layered interpretation. Words that are associated or engo can help link a theme through a poem while makurakotoba or pillow words are epithets that can introduce themes and imagery. All of these are used to add depth to a poem.

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From Renaissance writers like Dante, Petrarch, and Boccacio to modern writers like Saba, Ungaretti, and Montale, Italian poetry has both echoed the political tumult of the country and influenced writers and literature across Europe and the Western world. Poetic forms like the sonnet, terza rima, and octave all have their origins with Italian poetry, which both embraces the modern and draws on ancient traditions from Rome and Greece.

While much Italian poetry drew inspiration from French works in the early Middle Ages, the development of Italy’s Renaissance created other Renaissance movements across Europe, bringing with it Italian poetical forms. The influence of the ancient works of Greece and Italy also continued to impact Italian poetry, even as revolutions and Romanticism became the major literary movements of Europe. Today, modern writers like Montale, Saba, and Ungaretti are charting a new way forward for contemporary Italian poets.

Historical Background

Medieval Poetry

The concept of Italy and the Italian language both developed through a long, slow process than began with the fall of the Roman Empire and the beginning of the Middle Ages. By the time of the reign of Odoacer in the late 400s, Vulgar Latin had become the primary language of much of the former Roman Empire across Europe, particularly in the Italian Peninsula. It began to develop both into the various Romance Languages as well as the regional dialects, one of which became Italian. Other dialects found across Italy are not dialects of the Italian language itself but rather sister languages.

Most of the literary tradition was preserved either through the Catholic Church with the later establishment of medieval universities like Bologna, Padua, Vicenza, Naples, Salerno, Moden, and Parmo helped spread both culture and vernacular literature. However, the earliest vernacular literature to begin influencing new Italian traditions came not from what is now Italy but the Occitan, now most associated with France. This language was also widely spoken in northwest Italy at the time but traced its origins back to Poitou.

The vernacular lyric poetry of the Occitan was spread into Italy by at least the early 1100s via the French troubadours or trovatori in Italian. The high aristocracy of this part of Italian was eager to patronize these performers, and the Occitan language itself soon became a language of poetic expression in this region. Four major noble houses in northwest Italy were major contributors to this: the House of Este, the Da Romano, House of Savoy, and the Malaspina.

Azzo VI of Este was one of the most important patrons of these trovatori and his daughter Beatrice became the focus of numerous poems on courtly love. Some of the visiting performers entertained at his court included Aimeric de Belenoi, Aimeric de Peguilhan, Albertet de Sestaro, and Peire Raimon de Tolosa from Occitania and Rambertino Buvalelli from Bologna. His son, Azzo VII, continued the tradition hosting the likes of Elias Cairel and Arnaut Catalan.

In Genoa, the margraves of Montferrat—Boniface I, William VI, and Boniface II introduced Occitan poets like Lanfranc Cigala, Calega Panzan, Jacme Grils, and Bonifaci Calvo. Genoa also named several trovatori as podestà, giving them a political office and hiring them to write political poetry on their behalf. Most of this poetry was centered around the Guelph or Ghibelline parties with Luca Grimaldi and Luchetto Gattilusio writing for the Guelphs and Perceval and Simon Doria for the Ghibellines.

One of the earliest types of publication of the works of trovatori were chansonniers, songbooks that included both their courtly and epic poetry as well as new Italian prose forms like vidas and razos. The two most famous authors included in these were Uc de Saint Circ from Occitan and the Italian Sordello. By 1220, trovatori were arriving in the Kingdom of Sicily with Obs de Biguli performing at the coronation of Emperor Frederick II. Afterwards, the emperor always kept Occitan poets at his court including Guillem Augier Novella and Guilhem Figueira. Following the Albigensian Crusade, even more Occitan troubadours fled into Italy and many began to turn their pens and voices against papal authority, the cause of their displacement.

The influence of the chivalric romances of France, Britain, and the Occitan soon began to influence Italian writers. Pulling from the literature of ancient Rome, Historia de excidio Trojae, attributed to Dares Phrygius, was an early chivalric tale that claimed to have been written by an eyewitness to the Trojan War. Guido delle Colonne composed a similar romance, the Historia destructionis Troiae, who used Latin history but the French style.

Soon, authors across Italy were rewriting Roman classics and new French romances in the new chivalric style known in France as chansons de geste. Quilichino of Spoleto wrote notably about Alexander the Great while the anonymously penned Entrée d'Espagne turned the French Roland into the Italian Orlando. Many of these texts were written in a hybrid of French and Italian dialects, often using French root words but Italian endings and pronouncing French words according to Latin or Italian rules.

Vernacular Poetry

By the early 1300s, the vernacular literature of Italy was replacing French and Occitan languages with hybridism continuing but no longer dominating works. Some of the first poetry written in Italian vernacular, known as the “Archaic Works” or Componimenti, show how vernacular existed but that it didn’t yet have uniform stylistic or linguistic traits.

The Ritmo cassinese is a verse allegory told as a meeting between the Occident and the Orient in 96 verses and 12 strophes in a central-southern Italian dialect. A life of Alexius of Rome, the Ritmo di Sant’Alessio is a metrical story in the Lombard dialect based on an earlier Old French composition while the surviving fragment of the Ritmo bellunese points to an early Venetian dialect. Both the Ritmo lucchese and Ritmo laurenziano are among the earliest poems written in Tuscan.

In 1230, the Sicilian School began to create the first standard Italian language with poets from the school often writing love songs based on the Provençal poetry. Less erotic and more platonic than French varieties, these poets largely were based in Palermo but traveled throughout Italy. Headed by Giacomo da Lentini, more than 300 works of courtly love poetry came out of this school.

Other poets associated with the school include Stefano Protonotaro, Giacomino Pugliese, Perceval Doria, Rugieri d’Amici, Guido delle Colonne, Pier delle Vigne, and Cielo d’Alcamo, whose poem Rosa fresca aulentissima may have inspired the balcony scene in Rome and Juliet. The downside to the school was the Emperor Frederick, its patron severely limited what topics authors could cover, a tradition carried on by his son Manfred of Sicily. After Manfred’s death, Guittone d’Arezzo refounded the school in Tuscany, where many of the poems from the school were preserved.

An outgrowth of the Sicilian School was the Dolce Stil Novo or “sweet new style,” a literary movement that incorporated divine love as its theme. The poetry from this movement includes adoration of the human form, vivid descriptions of female beauty, and often comparing women to creatures from the biblical paradise. Guido Guinizelli became the leader of this style with his Canzoni the premier text of the movement. The poetry is also marked by introspection and a use of the Tuscan vernacular language, which eventually developed into modern-day Italian. This style would be taken up by Dante, one of three major writers who emerged during the Italian Renaissance.

Others across Italy were soon imitating the work coming out of Tuscany. Dante da Majano brought Tuscan-style literature to Sicily while Cecco Angiolieri died the same in Siena and Guittone d’Arezzo in Bologna. Brunetto Latini, who would be a major influence on Dante, wrote several allegorical poems in the Dolce Stil Novo style including Tesoretto, a short poem in seven-syllable lines with rhyming couplets. Tuscan Francesco da Barberino also wrote two allegorical poems still studied at this time as well. Other members of the school include Lapo Gianni, Guido Cavalcanti, and Cino da Pistoia.

The Three Crowns

The works of Dante Alighieri made lyric poetry exclusively associated with Tuscany and his 1293 La Vita Nuova cemented his reputation across Italy. His most iconic work, the Divine Comedy, chronicles his travel through the three realms of the dead with the Latin poet Virgil. His use of the Florentine dialect for both the Divine Comedy and The New Life helped cement its use while Dante himself defended the use of vernacular poetry in De vulgari eloquentia. Dante is also considered the first to use the terza rima rhyming scheme.

Dante was the first of three men during this period dubbed il Sommo Poeta (”the Supreme Poet”). Following in his footsteps was the poet Petrarch, described as both a lyric poet and the first humanist. Originally from Arezzo, his rediscovery of the letters of Cicero are credited with initiating the Renaissance, but many admire him for his use of what became known as the Petrarchan sonnet or the Italian sonnet. Petrarch did not develop this sonnet, and he was not the first to use it. In fact, the structure of the Italian language made it preferable to many Italian poets because of how it flowed with their language.

One of Petrarch’s most influential works was the Rerum vulgarium fragmenta (”Fragments of Vernacular Matters”), a collection of 366 lyric poems published as a chansonniers or canzoniere as these songbooks were known in Italy. His six-part narrative poem I trionfi (”The Triumphs“) draws particular inspiration from the work of Dante. Unlike Dante, however, Petrarch preferred to write in Latin rather than vernacular as he was primarily a scholar. Just as Dante had a muse in Beatrice Portinari, Petrarch also became known for his poetry about his muse Laura, a woman many historians have connected with Laura de Noves, who was married to a French nobleman Petrarch knew while living in Avignon.

Because she was already married, she refused Petrarch and he wrote a number of poems out of grief when she died in 1348. Others have theorized Laura had more of a linguistic connection to the laureal wreath or to the wind, which in Italian is l’aura. Regardless, there are definite connections to the earlier connection of courtly love as well as the mystic Christian in many of Petrarch’s sonnets.

The third man to be dubbed Italy’s greatest poet and who completes the threesome known as the tre corone (”three crowns”) of Italian literature is the contemporary and frequent correspondent of Petrarch’s Giovanni Boccaccio. Both men had a love for new Italian literature as well as an affinity for historical texts and their translations. Both were also associated with the humanist movement, and both were associated primarily with a style of poetry the did not invent.

For Boccaccio, this was the octave stanza which he became the first to use in a work of length and artistic merit as well as used frequently in his poetic writing. His first use was in the poem Teseida delle nozze di Emilia, considered the oldest Italian romantic poem. His Filostrato draws the myth of Troilus and Cressida, which some believe the Celtic story of Tristan and Iseult, also draws inspiration. He also authored the 50-canot allegorical poem Amorosa visione and Fiammetta before beginning his major work, a collection of short stories known as The Decameron.

Numerous other Renaissance writers would attempt to copy the work of the Three Crowns. Federico Frezzi aped the Divine Comedy while Giovanni Fiorentino wrote in Boccacio’s style. Franco Sacchetti also collected his own tales from Florentine history with his own personal reflections while Giovanni Sercambi attempted to write novels in the image of Boccaacio. Later poets who also capitalized on styles similar to the Three Crowns include Masuccio Salernitano and Antonio Cornazzano.

Renaissance Poetry

The 1400s or the Quattrocento is considered the beginning of Italy’s Reniassance, particularly as humanism was beginning to challenge the medieval traditions of scholasticism. Florence and Naples became the two centers of this movement with Florence’s scholarly pursuits financed by the powerful Medici. In fact, Lorenzo de’ Medici was known as a poet in his own right producing works like the Amori di Venere and various Canto carnascialesco. Another popular poet of this period was the Florentine Poliziano, who also used realism in his work and used sources from ancient Greece.

Both wrote in the Canto carnascialesco genre, which was a type of poetry accompanied by symbolic masquerade and using meter similar to that of a ballate. These were commonly performed during Carnival celebrations and Lorenzo de Medici personally directed numerous ones. Perhaps his most famous work of this kind is the Bacco ed Arianna.

A style of epic poetry known as cantari was also taking shape. Performed by two people, these romantic poems includd Buovo d’Antona and the Morgante Maggiore, written by Luigi Pulci. It was Pulci who was the first to reintroduce this style with the Morgante, which is take from an obscure poem recently rediscovered by Pio Rajna. Matteo Boiardo also authored Orlando innamorato, an epic poem inspired by Carolingian legends while Francesco Bello wrote Mambriano basd on the Round Table romances.

The end of the Renaissance in the 1500s or Cinquecento is considered the literary epoch of the movement. Often a product of the social and political conditions of the century, this epoch is generally send to have ended with Charles VIII invaded the country. During this period, poet and religious scholar Pietro Bembo helped develop the Tuscan language into a medium for all of Italy, reviving the interest in Petrarch’s works and holding Tuscan Italian as a model for all language.

Perhaps the most well-known poet of this period was Torquato Tasso, who wrote pastoral drama, discourses, and works that relied on the rigid rules of Greek and Latin poems. His Gerusalemme is considered one of the best heroic poems in Italy though his use of metaphor and antithesis rely to heavily on classical models. Simiarly, the Ferrarese poet Giovanni Battista Guarini wrote the immensely popular pastoral poem Il pastor fido that was translated numerous times into different languages. Other minor writers included Gian Giorgio Trissino, Giovanni Guidiccioni, Francesco Molza, Giovanni della Casa, Isabella di Morra, Vittoria Colonna, Veronica Gambara, Tullia d'Aragona, Giulia Gonzaga, and Pietro Bembo.

Baroque Era, Reason, and Reform

The Renaissance over, the Seicento saw Italy ruled over by foreign factions and marked an emergence of literary theory applied to poetry. Emanuele Tesauro advocated using Aristotle’s Rhetoric rather than his Poetics as a basis for writing as well as using metaphor and concettismo. Giambattista Marino gave rise to the literary movement known as Marinism which broke literary rules and precepts in order to shock readers. He used a variety of existing poetic forms as well as innovated fluid structures and line lengths. Sense and sensuality became the dominant elements though love, women, and nature remained common themes.

Poets influenced by Marinism include Gabriello Chiabrera, Carlo Alessandro Guidi, and Fulvio Testi. The sensual metaphors of this poetry plus its non-epic structure caused great debate in the Accademia dell’Arcadia, a literary academy founded in Rome by Giovanni Mario Crescimbeni and Gian Vincenzo Gravina. The members of this school utilized sonnets, madrigals, canzonette and blank verse. Poets associated with the academy include Paolo Rolli, Carlo Innocenzo Frugoni, Vincenzo da Filicaja, and the sole woman elected on poetical merits Maria Antonia Scalera Stellini.

The 1700s brought the Italian Enlightenment and Settecento, seeing Italy primarily ruled by the Holy Roman Empire. This age brought more scientific works as well as the beginning of opera, development in theaters, novels, and questions about the purism of language, particularly as French expressions began to creep into Italian conversation.

The leading poetic figure of this era was Giuseppe Parini who at 23 years of age published a collection of poetry whose satire and innovation in lyrics led to a literary revival. He rejected the traditional concepts of Petrarch and the previous generation, returning to more classical formers. Followers of his work included Vittorio Alfieri, Ugo Foscolo and Vincenzo Monti. Other minor writers of the era included Giovanni Battista Niccolini who imitated ancient literature in plays and poetry.

Revolution and Romanticism

Just as the ideas coming out of the Italian Renaissance had led to a similar movement in France, the ideas behind the French Revolution soon spread to Italy in the later part of the 1700s. Liberty and equality as well as a desire to improve the condition of the country from despotism in politics and religion soon became common themes in literature. Many of these writers harkened back to the ideals of ancient Greece and Rome, utilizing stories of those period to illustrate liberty against tyranny.

Dramatist and poet Vittorio Alfieri led the charge in this movement and is considered the “father of Italian tragedy” for his works. Vincenzo Monti revived classical poetry styles and was considered one of the best neoclassicist writers, particularly known for his translation of the Illiad. He also wrote poems including Visione d’Ezechiello (”Ezekiel’s vision”), La bellezza dell’universo, the Ode al signor di Montgolfier, La Feroniade, Bassvilliana (“The Death of Bassville”), Al Principe Don Sigismondo Chigi, Il bardo della selva nera, and Pensieri d’amore among others.

Both Monti and Ugo Foscolo were inspired by Goethe‘s The Sorrows of Young Werther for its combination of romance and patriotism, particularly in the age of Napoleon. Foscolo’s Dei Sepolcri is considered his best. He also contributed to English magazines like the Edinburgh Review and Quarterly Review discussing Italy’s great poets in English, helping bring new appreciation of these writers to England.

A reaction to Enlightenment and following this period of Revolution in Europe came the Romanticism that swept the continent in the 1700s. In Italy, the German concepts of Romanticism were planted in 1818 with the literary magazine Conciliatore, whose contributors included poets like Silvio Pellico, Tommaso Grossi, Giovanni Berchet, and Alessandro Manzoni. Manzoni was the primary figure of this era, promoting the Italian concepts of il vero storico and il vero morale that were foundational to the Italian Romanticism movement.

Along with this movement in Italy came the concept of Risorgimento or the patriotic belief in the unification of Italy. This also believed in the development of a modern and unified Italian language. Giacomo Leopardi is another great poet of the period who was admired by Manzoni despite the fact the two writers tended to be diametrically opposed. Still, Leopardi’s lyrical poetry soon gained him national and international acclaim.

Giuseppe Giusti was perhaps the most famous poet associated with the Revolutions of 1848. A satirist, his first work to gain him notice was La Ghigliottina (the guillotine) followed by his poem criticizing treasury officials Gingillino, which has become a classic of Italian satire. He referred to several of his early works as scherzi (”jokes,” or “light, playful verse”), though he eventually departed from this and the traditional Tuscan style to develop his own voice that aspired to honest, frankness, clarity, and simplicity while showcasing the dishonesty of social niceties. Other minor Romantic poets included Giovanni Prati, Olindo Guerrini, and Aleardo Aleardi.

Movements in reaction to the Romantics included Scapigliatura, which felt foreign influence was overtaking Italian culture. The Nobel Prize-winner Giosuè Carducci was the leader of this movement who felt Italy should ignore the European influence of Romanticism in favor of traditional ancient meters. The second movement was Decadentism based on the Decadent style in England and France. Giovanni Pascoli, best known for his Myricae and Poemetti, and Gabriele D’Annunzio are some of the better known writers of this movement that championed irrationality over rationalism and originality. Dialect poets were also still writing including Giuseppe Gioacchino Belli, Renato Fucini, Cesare Pascarella, Ada Negri, and Annie Vivanti. Epic poetry also continued in Italy through the works of Arturo Graf, Guido Mazzoni and Giovanni Marradi.

Modern Era

In the 1900s, two major poetical groups emerged in Italy thaat served as precursors tot he Modernist movement in Italy: the Crepuscolari and the Futurists. Meaning “twilight poets,” the Poeti Crepuscolari were named such by Giuseppe Antonio Borgese to classify the works of a number of poets whose melancholy in their writing was a reaction to modernization. Not particularly an organized movement, the writers who fall into this category include Guido Gozzano, Nino Oxilia, Corrado Govoni, Marino Moretti, Sergio Corazzini and Fausto Maria Martini. These works were seen often as a reaction to the style of poets like Carducci and D’Annunzio. They were often affiliated with the French symbolist movement.

An artistic and social movement that originated in Italy, Futurism emphasized speed, technology, youth violence, and modern technology. An artistic movement initially, it spread into other elements of culture including dance, music, and architecture. Poetry was the predominant medium of Futurist writers and F. T. Marinetti’s Manifesto of Futurism laid out the rules these poets should aspire to. Chief among them were parole in libertà (word autonomy), which rejected meter and other poetical conventions as a form of free expression. Some poets who came out of this movement include Mario Carli, Gerardo Dottori, Farfa, and Filippo Tommaso Marinetti.

The Modernism that succeeded these two movements brought out writers like Nobel Prize-winners Salvatore Quasimodo and Eugenio Montale as well as Giuseppe Ungaretti and Umberto Saba. Montale, Ungaretti, and Saba are sometimes seen as the modern successors to the Three Crowns. Critics described these writers as hermeticists, referring to a style of obscure and difficult poetry that came out of the Symbolist school but also had roots going as far back as the Renaissance. The movement corresponded largely to the interwar period and was associated with the artistic movement known as Novecento Italiano.

While its foundations began in the interwar period, the Neorealism developed in the 1940s and 1950s after the fall of fascism, particularly because it was suppressed during the Fascist regime. Many of the writers of this movement were influenced by American writers of the Lost Generation including Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, John Steinbeck, and John Dos Passos. This movement also allowed numerous writers to express their experiences from the war.

Poets have been afforded less prestige than novelists in Italy since the 1950s with the lyric poem for which the country has long been notable also in decline. Critics are also beginning to reassess some of the non-Hermeticist poets of the 1900s, re-evaluating works by writers like Carlo Betocchi, Sandro Penna, Camillo Sbarbaro, Delio Tessa, and Clemente Rebora.

Italian Poetic Meters

Both meter and rhythm are essential to Italian poetry, providing emotional impact, aesthetic appeal, and the basic structure and flow of poetry forms. Different types of poems tend to have different rules for meter and rhythm with much of these structured patterns rooted stressed and unstressed syllables as well as with a numerical basis for syllables per line. Most of the meter schemes for these lines are numerical in name as well as use with the two most common being the undecassilabo or hendecasyllable in English and settenario or septenary in English.

The arrangement of meters and pauses creates the rhythm, which is used to convey both emotion and atmosphere. Poems will quicken their rhythm to show excitement or anger and slow them to show melancholy. Being able to adjust rhythm to emotion is an essential skill Italian poets must master with Petrarch seen as one of the ultimate examples of how this can be accomplished. Other techniques like pauses can help encapsulate inner struggles or moments of reflection.

Other important terms to know in Italian poetry are strofa meaning “stanza,” rima meaning “rhyme,” metro meaning “meter,” alliterazione meaning “alliteration,” and assonaza meaning “assonace.” These are all techniques and terms that Italian poets use to convey emotion, aesthetic, and structure within their works and serve as essential elements for poetry. Additionally, most Italian poets stress not the last syllable of a line but the second to last symbol known as a piane. This may something held over from the early Middle Ages when Italian poetical style was largely attempting to imitate French.

Verses associated with an odd number have been seen as more acceptable for high-brow poetry, especially since Dante commonly used this meter. Even-numbered verses have a reputation for sounding musical, lending themselves more to popular poetry and song than the odd numbered meters. It is also very unusual in Italian poetry to find a poem that uses both odd and even syllable lines together.

The most common of the seven common meters in Italian poetry is the 11-syllable endecasillabo. If the fourth syllable is stressed, this is known as an endecasillabo a minore while if the sixth syllable is stressed it is an endecassillabo a maoire. Other sr varities stress both. The second most common, the settenario or seven syllable meter has two secondary stresses, one on the sixth syllable and the second on any other syllable though usually not the fifth.

Rare up until the 1800s, the novenario has nine syllables with the two most frequent type stressing either the second, fifth, and eighth syllables or the third, fifth, and eighth syllable. Often defined by its stressed ninth syllable, the 10-syllable decasillabo usually also has a fixed meter that accents the third and sixth syllable too. Related is the eight-syllable ottonario that also tends to have a fixed stress pattern on the third and seventh syllables. The third fixed-stress syllable is the six-syllable senario with a stress on the second syllable and fifth. The five-syllable quinario has a stressed fourth and first syllable with some poets choosing to emphasize the second but rarely the third.

Italian Poetic Forms

There some Italian poetic forms that remain popular to this day – both in Italy and across the world – and those that are more common only during certain periods of time in Italian history. Other forms remain in Italian because they are suited to the way Italian language sounds but not so much in English. Some English writers have also adapted Italian forms, employing the same number of lines or rhyme schemes but changing the syllables or when they are stressed.

The ballata or ballate if pluralized is a poetic and musical form that was popular largely from the late 1200s until the 1400s in Italian and was likely influenced by the French fixed-form known as the virelai, not the French ballade as the name might suggest. This form has a AbbaA form with the first and last stanzas repeating the same line. The two repeated lines are known as a ripresa while the “b” lines are piedi or feet. The fourth line is known as the volta or “turn.” The rhyme scheme may be repeated multiple times. Examples of this include the songs sung at the end of each day in the Decameron as well as in the Rossi Codex.

Another verse form influenced by the French troubadours is the canzone, literally meaning “song.” This is the form based on the French ballad and is also similar to a madrigal in lyric. Sometimes compositions are designated as canzones if they are non-Italian and the term is used interchangeably with canzona, a musical form popular in the late 1500s and 1600s. These works typically have five to seven stanzas, often set to music, with each stanza repeating the first in rhyme scheme in number of lines. It is typically written in the 11-syllable meter and was popular at the court of Emperor Frederick II.

A form of secular vocal music, the madrigal was popular in the 1400s through 1650s. Often written with two or three tercets followed by one or two couplets, these were written to be sung aloud by as few as two and as many as eight voices though typically they were performed by three to six people. These could be further divided into the three-to-four voice frottola, the polyphonic motet, canzonetta and the mascherata. Latin prosody was often used despite the fact that most madrigals were secular in nature and used vernacular language.

Known as the sonnetto in Italian and the sonnet in England, this may be the most famous poetic form to come out of Italy. Meaning “little song,” this fixed form consists of 14 lines adhering to a set rhyming scheme that originated in Italy in the 1200s and was typically used in romantic poetry. Giacomo da Lentini is credited with inventing the form at the court of Frederick II during the days of the Sicilian School with this original form consisting of a pair of quatrains followed by a pair of tercets in an ABABABAB CDCDCD rhyme scheme. Th break between the two stanzas often sent the poem in a new direction. Brought to Tuscany by Guittone d’Arezzo, the form evolved into a first octave form that was a proposition or described a problem or question followed by two tercets or a sestet that proposed a resolution. The ninth line was a turn or volta. Numerous rhyme schemes also developed.

The Petrarchan sonnet, also known as the Italian sonnet, was not developed by Petrarch himself but by a series of poets to better coincide with the Italian language. This version has a total of 14, 11-syllable lines in two parts, the first being an octave and the second a sestet. The octave typically follows a ABBAABBA rhyme scheme while the sestet has a more flexible rhyme scheme. Petrarch himself tended to employ a CDECDE or CDCDCD scheme though others have used CDDCDD, CDDECE, and CDDCCD in their verses. This form was adopted by early English sonneteers like Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, both of whom are also known for their translations of Petrarch’s work into English.

The verse form known as the octave, meaning “eighth part,” is a verse that contains eight lines usually in iambic pentameter or 11-syllables with either rhymed or unrhymed meter. It is also sometimes described as the first part of a Petrarchan sonnet with a contrasting sestet. The most common rhyme scheme is ABBA. Related is the Sicilian octave, a form of this poem that was popular in Sicily that is also a variant of the strambotto. The strambotto used eight or six 11-syllable lines with a varying rhyme scheme, though ABABCCDD was the most common. This early form was used primarily in Sicily and Tuscany and developed into an octave after the Renaissance. It is seldom used in English though it was popularized by Boccaccio.

Another similar form is the ottava rima, a rhyming stanza used for long or epic poetry and then again in mock-heroic works. Boccacio again was one of the first writers to us this form that employs eight iambic lines – usually pentameters – with an ABABABCC rhyme scheme. It is believed to be derived from the Sicilian octave, but its stanza form influenced by the canzone rather than the sonnet.

The terza rima is a poem where each section consists of tercets or three-line stanzas with an interlocking three-line rhyme scheme. The last word in the second line of on tercet will also provide the rhyme for the first and third lines if it follows an ABA BCB CDC rhyme scheme. The poem or each section typically ends with a single line or a couplet that repeats the rhyme of the middle line in the previous tercet such as YZY Z or YZY ZZ. This is the scheme that Dante invented for the Divine Comedy, which he used for 11-syllable lines though English poets typically employ iambic pentameter. One of the more challenging forms to use outside of Italian, the form may have been influenced by a lyric poetry form known as sirventes, used by Provençal troubadours.

Combing aspects of the terza rima and the French villanelle, a terzanelle is a 19-line poem with five triplets and a concluding quatrain. The middle line of each triple stanza is repeated as the third line of the following stanza and the first and third lines of the initial stanza is used as the second and final lines of the concluding quatrain. In total, seven lines of the poem are repeated. This can be scanned as A¹BA² bCB cDC dED eFE fA¹FA². Another tercet form is the stornello, which has three line stanzas with 11-syllables per line and an AAA end rhyme scheme.

Meaning jest the brazeletta is a popular verse form used by frottola or comic secular composers in Italy in the 1400s and 1500s. Using eight syllables per line and in a trochaic meter, it consists of a reprisa that has four rhyming lines in an ABBA or ABAB scheme, a stanza, and a volta. A lively and dance-like verse, it has heavy accents on cadences. The rispetto is an older Italian form of poem or song written one of two ways. The first is a poem of two quatrains in iambic tetrameter with 8 syllables per line while the second is a poem or song of 11-syllables per line in one stanza. Both tend to follow a ababccdd rhyme scheme.

Italian Poetic Devices

Poetic devices have become crucial not only in Italy poetry but in all forms of Italian literature, creating a complexity of emotion and ideas as well as language. Imagery and metaphors in particular are used throughout Italian literature with the idea to use vivid pictures to evoke the senses and provide deeper meaning. Descriptive language are used to evoke imagery, known as immagini, while metaphors, or metafora, try to compare dissimilar things to show an underlying similarity.

Two other tools are symbolism and irony – simbolismo and ironia in Italian – to add multiple layers to the work. Symbolism employs objects, characters, and colors to carry deeper and even abstract meanings while irony, often in a situation, drama, or verbal means, highlights differences between perception and reality or an expected result and what really happens. This gives a reader deeper understanding of the poet’s meaning in their work.

Alliteration, personification, and chiasmus are two other devices commonly used in Italian sonnets, especially those from the renaissance. Personification is the giving human characteristics or aspects to objects or inhumane things like landscapes while chiasmus is a reversal of structure in a poem that does not repeat words. Words or phrases that are similar may be used but for the point of conveying an opposite or juxtaposed meaning. This crisscrossing of ideas or passages may be to show parralels between concepts and ideas and are often done employing metaphors to create connections between two seemingly different concepts.

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When most think of Irish poetry, they think of the more modern works of W.B. Yeats, Seamus Heaney, Katharine Tynan, Samuel Beckett, James Joyce, or Thomas Kinsella. However, most of these writers were drawing on a much older tradition dating back into ancient times and Ireland’s pre-history where the job of poet was an essential part of society, preserving both history and culture through poetry and song. The rediscovery of these ancient traditions and stories was part of a wider revival and revolution in Ireland.

The Irish language itself is only recently coming back to Ireland as a spoken, written, and read language after years of being suppressed in favor of English. Even today choosing to write and publish works in Irish can be seen as a deeply political act. Yet there is a deep tradition of poetry written, performed, and read in Irish that was nearly lost. While Irish poetic traditions are unique, they also fit into the larger Celtic poetical traditions found across the British Isles and France.

Historical Background

Early Irish Poetry

The Irish language, known today as Irish Gaelic or simply Gaelic, is a member of the Goidelic language family from which Scottish Gaelic and Manx both descend. Goidelic is one of two language groups of Insular Celtic, the other of which are Brittonic languages Up until the 1800s, Gaelic was the primary language of Ireland meaning it is the predominant language for most of Irish history.

Like in many cultures around the world, the first Irish poetry was likely part of an oral tradition that predates the introduction of Christianity and thus much of recorded history in Ireland. It is known that prior to the arrival of Christian chroniclers Ireland had several classes of poets or bards who operated similarly to bardic traditions in both Wales and Scotland.

The lowest classes were bards who were a lesser class below the fili or filid, a class of poets in medieval Ireland and Scotland who were believed to have magical powers in addition to preserving oral traditions of clan chieftains, subkings, and kings. Some historians have argued there were no difference between regular bards and filid until the arrival of Christianity, at which time filid began to be associated with the church and took more prominence. Above the filid was the Ollamh Érenn or ollam, the chief bard of a province or kingdom who would have been a social equal to a provincial king.

While these groups may have been differentiated between class, they often had similar duties. This included preserving king lists, legends, histories, and sometimes serve as soothsayers, advisors, or priests. In addition to a deep knowledge of clan history, traditions, and the area, these bards had to know how to use technical and syllabic verses while employing techniques like assonance, half rhyme and alliteration. They also served as satirists who used the bardic satire of glam dicenn to deliver insults.

A lot of what is known about these early bards is preserved in the Lebor Gabála Érenn (literally “The Book of Ireland’s Taking” written in the 1100s with stories about the aos sí in the Irish colony of Tuatha Dé Danann reflecting the bardic traditions. One of the earliest mentioned bards in Irish mythology is Amergin Glúingel, who allegedly served as chief ollam during the reign of the Milesians, portrayed in Irish mythology as the final race to settle the island. Welsh poems and themes attributed to the Welsh poet Taliesin in the Book of Taliesin echo the Irish stories of Amergin.

These bards often tested their poetic abilities in contests known as Cúirt, similar to the Viking Flyting; a mixture of debate poetry and the improvised trading of insults in verse. As time went on and the English began to conquer much of Ireland, the Cúirt often imitated and lampooned the English court system with “bailiffs” issuing humourous “warrants” with the chief poet or Ollamh acting as a “judge.” This tradition continued into at least the 1790s.

The first Irish writing system, Ogham, dates back to at least the 300s though some scholars have traced it back as far as the 100 BCE. As a result, Irish has one of the oldest vernacular literatures in Western Europe. One of the oldest known Ogham works is the Bríatharogaim which offered two-word kennings that equated Ogham letters with the name of trees. One of the reasons some scholars believe that the Ogham script dates back further than the 300s is because it contains letters representing archaic phonemes no longer used by the 400s when much of the surviving scripts is found. It is also possible ogham was modeled on an even older script now lost.

Most examples of Ogham inscription are found on monuments throughout Ireland and Wales with a few also found in Devon and Cornwall in England, the Isle of Man, and areas of Scotland including the Shetland Isles. These monuments mainly serve as grave stones though a few are written on standing stones. Early Irish sagas also indicate this language was written in wood or metal for shorter messages. Beginning in the 500s, Ogham began to transition into what is known as its “scholastic” form” and was gradually replaced by Latin script in the 600s. The transition into Latin script also prompted a transition from the language stage known as Primitive Irish into the stage known as Old Irish.

Medieval Poetry

By the 1000s, Old Irish had evolved into Middle Irish, a language spoken not only in Ireland but also on the Isle of Man and Scotland. Middle Irish is notable as the primary language of the Ulster Cycle and other prominent forms of medieval Irish literature. Bards were still prominent figures during this period, and the earliest recorded example of bardic poetry survives in the Metrical Dindshenchas, or Lore of Places. This anthology contains some 176 poems that describes significant places in the Irish landscape and their associated legends. It was likely compiled from sources across Ireland.

This is also when the first recorded versions of Ossianic poetry and Fianna Cycle or Fenian Cycle begin to appear. Originally sung, these tales of the legendary Irish bard Fionn mac Cumhaill, his son and epic poet Ossian, and figures including Diarmuid, Caílte, and Fionn’s rival Goll mac Morna. This poetic cycle is the third of the four major mythological cycles of Ireland chronologically with the Mythological Cycle and Ulster Cycle coming before and the Kings’ Cycles coming after.

The Mythological Cycle includes both prose tales and verse texts that are often pseudo-historical and perhaps not completely accurate as they were largely written by early Christian writers about local pagan traditions. Most of what we know of these tales were preserved on medieval vellum manuscripts, recording folk tales and oral traditions. The Cycle of Kings contains legends about both historical and semi-historical figures of Ireland that had long been preserved by court poets while the Ulster Cycle followed the legends and sagas of the Ulaid.

It is within this work that Ireland’s national epic poem, the Táin Bó Cúailnge or “Cattle Raid of Cooley”, is first recorded. The Ulster Cycle is written in both Old and Middle Irish with prose occasionally interspersed with verse, the oldest versions of which date to the 1100s. Early manuscripts that preserve this cycle include the Lebor na hUidre, “The Book of the Dun Cow”, written at least before 1106, and the The Book of Leinster, like compiled around 1160. Older manuscripts likely existed and have been referenced but since lost to history.

The language stage known as Early Modern Irish, began to appear in the 1200s and was the basis for the literature of both Ireland and Gaelic-speaking Scotland. In the 1300s, the first group of Irish poems with an English influence appeared in the country. The Kildare Poems were written in an Irish dialect of Middle English and contain sixteen poems of religious and satirical content.

English Reconquest

The Elizabethan reconquest of Ireland began in the 1500s and brought with it the first English writer who had a cultural impact both on Irish literature and the literature of England. Poet Edmund Spenser’s time in Munster provided a backdrop and influence for his most famous work, The Faerie Queene. However, his polemic treatise A View of the Present State of Ireland gave the English a negative opinion of the Irish, describing them as immoral, rebellious, and criminal and in need of subjugation by the English.

The arrival of Anglo-Irish landlords following the reconquest also disrupted the traditional relationship between bards and their aristocratic patrons. As bards continued to cling to their traditional clan chiefs, the elimination of that class in favor of overlords of English origin saw the decline of the bardic class as well as traditional Irish clans.

The defeat of Aodh Mór Ó Néill at the Battle of Kinsale in 1601 saw the English coming in control of education and patronage across the country. The hereditary bards lost their influence and a new type of Gaelic poetry took root that focused more on the marginalization of Irish speaking society. This saw the emergence of Early Modern Irish and became the primary language of Irish poetry. In addition to adapting to a new societal structure, poets changed their style from the syllabic verse of the bards to the accentual meters. Much of the poetry of the period dealt with political and historical themes as well as a sense of a “lost world.”

To adapt to their new situation, some Irish poets sought patronage from the Anglo-Irish landowners coming into the country through the Plantations of Ireland. Other bardic families sent their sons to Irish Colleges in Catholic Europe. As a result, much of this poetry reflected the influence of the Counter-Reformation. The fervor fromt his movement may have contributed to the Irish Rebellion of 1641 when tensions between the largely Catholic native Irish upper classes rebelled against their subjugation. Irish poets wrote in support of this revolt and supported the brief self-governance period known as Confederate Ireland.

Pádraigín Haicéad wrote several poems in support of the movement including Éirigh mo Dhúiche le Dia (”Arise my Country with God”) and Muscail do mhisneach a Banbha (’Gather your courage oh Ireland’) in favor of the removal of Protestantism from Ireland. Following the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland that saw the defeat of the Irish Confederacy, an anonymous poet penned an Siogai Romanach to lament the Irish fallen.

What few Irish poets had obtained patronage lost it in the wake of this conquest with a ripple effect leading to many Irish Catholics supporting the Jacobite cause in the Williamite War in Ireland. Poets like Dáibhí Ó Bruadair, Piaras Feiritéar, and Aogán Ó Rathaille wrote poems praising the Jacobites. Ó Rathaille is also credited with introducing the aisling or vision poem genre after the Battle of the Boyne.

Three notable female poets also began to emerge at the end of this period. Brighid Nic Gearailt is famed for being the wife of a nobleman who left Ireland during the Flight of the Earls and for her surviving poem, Mhacaoimh Dhealbhas an Dán, a reply to a poem sent to her by Eochaidh Ó hEoghusa. Fionnghuala Ní Bhriain (Inghean Dhomhnaill Uí Bhriain) wrote a surviving lament for her husband Uaithne Ó Lochlainn, Chief of the Name, and Caitilín Dubh, also associated with the O’Brien dynasty, wrote several laments in this period.

English and Vernacular

Beginning in the 1750s, a lot of the Irish language was lost as outside forces worked to make English the island’s predominant language. Anglo-Irish administrators and landlords made English the primary language of law, business, and government while the Catholic Church supported the use of English over Irish. Speaking English became associated with higher social class and, as a result, there was a transitional period in which many monolingual Irish speaking grandparents had bilingual children speaking both Irish and English but grandchildren who only spoke in English. Furthermore, one-third of those still speaking Irish in Ireland immigrated during the Great Famine, further marginalizing the language.

Irish writers continued to use accentual meters over the elaborate syllabic meters that had prevailed in the previous centuries. These accentual meters were still somewhat complex and may have been rooted in early bardic traditions. With few patrons willing to support Irish-speaking writers, most had to support themselves in other professions and write when they were able. Ó Rathaille served as a bridge between the days of the reconquest and the new reality. A professional poet in a society that no longer used them, he preserved traditional attitudes but wrote in more modern meters.

Dublin became the center of Irish-language poetry with a circle of writers gathering around Seán Ó Neachtain, his son Tadhg. While both wrote in English, Irish was their primary language and Seán in particular became known for his poems on subjects including love, drinking songs, satires, religion, and Fenian politics.

Outside of Dublin, Munster was perhaps the second best city for Irish writers where local gatherings known as cúirteanna filíochta or “courts of poetry” preserved the early flyting tradition. They also served similar to the bardic academies of previous generations. Poets from Munster included Seán Ó Tuama, Seamus McMurphy, Aindrias Mac Craith, and Liam Ruadh Mac Coitir. Their work often touched on everyday life and the roles of people in Irish society. Perhaps the most famous Munster poet was Eoghan Rua Ó Súilleabháin, a rake, schoolmaster, and military man whose musical and fine-tuned verse were parodied by Brian Merriman in his lengthy comic poem Cúirt An Mheán Oíche.

Other poets returned to their oral roots, particularly the caoineadh or traditional lament. Dominated by women and often performed at funerals, these poems were often performed by professional mourners known as keening or sean-nós singing. One of the few surviving works from this period in this genre is the Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire by Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill about the extrajudicial execution of her husband after he refused to sell his prized stallion to a local Anglo-Irish judge. Notably, she was the aunt of Daniel O’Connell.

The most prominent Irish writer and poet who wrote primarily in English during this period is undoubtedly Jonathan Swift. Though better known for his prose works today, he was just as savagely satirical in his poetry and published translations of poems from Irish for English audiences. He was also friends with and influenced by English poets like Pope and Dryden. Often considered a British writer today, Oliver Goldsmith was an Anglo-Irish writer who is also mainly remembered for his prose, but his two long poems The Traveller and The Deserted Village, had a major impact on English pastoral poetry.

Not quite English or Irish literature exclusive, the Ulster Weaver Poets wrote in an Ulster Scots dialect that often touched on topics of the working-class. Usually self-published in newspapers and journals, the promotion of standardized English reduced the visibility of this poetry and academic interest in the works were limited until the 1950s. A lot of these works were also more influenced by the Scottish tradition of Robert Burns.

Musical and folk traditions had largely preserved Irish poetry into the 1800s with songs about mythology, ancient heroes, lullabies, folktales, satires, humorous tales, religious songs, love, and laments keeping ancient traditions alive even as the Irish-speaking population began to dwindle. Some songs were written about the famine itself, but most traditionally preserved songs and poetry dated to before then. Some of the last pre-famine Irish language poets were Antoine Ó Raifteiri and Tomás Rua Ó Súilleabháin, who also copied older manuscripts for preservation.

With English now the dominant language of Ireland, English poets began mining Irish folklore and heritage for their stories. Irish writers like Thomas Moore wrote for English audiences and drew on Irish themes but often used stereotyped images of the Irish to help sell books.

Meanwhile, a new group was emerging called the Young Irelanders, poets who advocated for a free Ireland. Thomas Davis’ poem A Nation Once Again was written in English but became a battle cry for Irish Nationalists. Along with James Clarence Mangan, Charles Gavan Duffy, and John Blake Dillon, Davis was a founder and contributor to The Nation, a nationalist newspaper that also published poetry. Mangan in particular became a poète maudit and modern bard agitating for Irish nationalism. Two other poets loosely associated with this movement included Samuel Ferguson and William Allingham. Ferguson’s research into Irish heritage would help connect ancient Irish poetry with the modern nationalist causes.

Celtic Revival

The Celtic Revival – also known as the Celtic Twilight – marks a period in which there was a revival in interest in the Gaelic language and literature of Ireland, the Welsh language and literature, and the insular art that occurred across Britain and Ireland in the medieval era. A reaction to modernization as well as a rebellion against English rule at a time of rising nationalism, this revival was seen in Brittany, Cornwall, the Isle of Man, Scotland, and Wales but is perhaps best exemplified by the Irish movement.

Also known as the Irish Literary Renaissance, the Irish Literary Revival created a flowering of art, music, and literature in the late 1800s and early 1900s as part of the larger Celtic Revival. The Irish Revival also had a different context than some of the other Celtic Revival movements because it was – both correctly and incorrectly – associated with Irish nationalism and republicanism. Early members of the literary revival included Douglas Hyde, whose Beside the Fire, a collection of folklore in Irish in 1890 inspired one of the foremost and driving figures of this movement was the poet: W. B. Yeats.

With Hyde’s help, Yeats published the 1888 collection Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Pesantry, an anthology of Irish authors. Perhaps Yeats’ most famed work for the movement was The Celtic Twilight, published until 1893. This name was used to describe the movement at the time and closed with the poem “Into the Twilight.” Other poets emerging from this movement included T. W. Rolleston, Charles Gavan Duffy, John Todhunter, John Millington Synge, and the more radical William Rooney. Founded in 1894 by a Catholic priest, New Ireland Review, became the literary magazine of the movement and was edited by Hyde with Duffy and Rolleston being frequent contributors. Yeats, playwright Edward Martyn, Lady Gregory, and poet George Moore also worked toward creating an Irish theatrical tradition with the establishment of the Irish Literary Theatre.

Nationalism in the late 1800s also began what is known as the Gaelic Revival, a revival in both the Irish language as well as Irish Gaelic culture, such as sport, music, folklore, and mythology. Eoin MacNeill established the Gaelic League (Conradh na Gaeilge) in 1893 to promote Gaelic language and culture, publishing a newspaper in Irish and campaigning to have the language restored to school curriculum.

Important poets from this movement included Mary Balfour, who wrote original poems in Irish and translated Irish poetry into English, and Aodh Mac Domhnaill (Hugh McDonnell, a poet who worked to help the movement collect songs, folklore, and manuscripts. Patrick Pearse (Pádraig Mac Piarais), was the editor of the group’s newspaper, An Claidheamh Soluis, and wrote poetry, short stories, and other works that led to him being called the first modernist Irish writer. Despite having some similar goals, the Gaelic Revival still had difficult relationships with movements like the Pan-Celtic movement and the Irish Literary Revival.

As the century turned, Patrick S. Dinneen began publishing ancient Irish texts, such as the poems of Aogán Ó Rathaille and Piaras Feiritéar, while female writers established organizations like Inghinidhe na hÉireann and contributed their own revolutionary writing. Notable female poets from this society included Alice Furlong, Annie Egan, Ethna Carbery and Sinéad O’Flanagan. Outside the society, there were female poets like Dora Sigerson Shorter and Katharine Tynan.

Other emerging Irish writers at this time included the likes of Padraic Colum, Oliver St John Gogarty, George Roberts, James Stephens, F. R. Higgins, Thomas MacDonagh, James Cousins, Joseph Mary Plunkett, Lennox Robinson, and William Sharp who often wrote under the pen name Fiona Macleod. By 1910, numerous Irish language literary reviews and magazines had also been founded for the publication of these works including Dana, the Irish Review, and the The Dublin Magazine.

Modernism

In the 1910s, Yeats became friends with James Joyce and Ezra Pound and himself began shifting into modernism along with them, though Yeats didn’t particularly like the term “modernist” himself. The movement was focused more on technical and intellectual innovation with many of its early writers also associated with the Easter Rising. Verse often had Catholic and nationalistic themes though the works also often reflected on Irish history. The “peasant poet” Francis Ledwidge is another notable example of an Irish Volunteer who was lost during World War I, making him a symbol and a martyr for many.

Poets influenced by Yeats and the modernist movement in its second wave included the likes of Pádraic Colum, F. R. Higgins, and Austin Clarke. This next generation often satirized Irish society and religious practice as well as engage in experimental writing. Of course, the most famous writer of this generation is undoubtedly the poet and playwright Samuel Beckett who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969. Other second generation modernist Irish poets included Brian Coffey, Denis Devlin, Thomas MacGreevy, Blanaid Salkeld, and Mary Devenport O’Neill.

Experimental writers like Kate O’Brien and Elizabeth Bowen challenged the concept of Irish modernism, not engaging fully with modernist ideals or experiments and instead focusing on self-consciousness and reflexiveness. Others who rebelled against Yeats’ style included the poet Patrick Kavanagh who focused on the frustrations of rural life, John Hewitt who is considered to be the founding father of Northern Irish poetry, and more political writers like Louis MacNeice, W. H. Auden and Stephen Spender.

Hewitt in particular became associated with a group called the Northern School. With its large Protestant minority and links to Great Britain, the culture and life of Northern Ireland differs from the rest of the island with noticeable impacts on its literature and poetry. Other writers from this school include the likes of Robert Greacen, Valentin Iremonger, Roy McFadden, Padraic Fiacc, John Montague, Michael Longley, Derek Mahon, Séamus Heaney, and Paul Muldoon. With the rise of the Troubles in the 1960s, many of these poets began to reflect that in their work. Heaney would win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995 for his work.

The Post-Modern period began in the 1950s and produced writers like Antony Cronin, Pearse Hutchinson, John Jordan, Thomas Kinsella and John Montague. Most of these writers were based in or around Dublin as were a number of new literary magazines founded in the 1960s and 1970s in Ireland such as Poetry Ireland, Arena, The Lace Curtain, and Cyphers. Experimental poetry also began to emerge in the 1960s with writers like Michael Smith and Trevor Joyce founding the publishing house New Writers Press and a journal called The Lace Curtain. They were soon joined by likeminded writers such as Geoffrey Squires, Maurice Scully, William Wall, Randolph Healy, Brian Coffey and Denis Devlin.

Surrealist poets followed with the likes of Ciaran O’Driscoll, John W. Sexton, Medbh McGuckian, Tony Kitt and Tony Bailie. Another loose group often known as the Outsiders began to emerge in the second-half of the 1900s including writers like Thomas Kinsella, John Jordan, Basil Payne, and Hugh McFadden. Female poets like Eavan Boland, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Vona Groarke, Kerry Hardie, Kate Newmann, Medbh McGuckian, Paula Meehan, and Rita Ann Higgins also began to explore feminist themes and explore how Ireland’s history and culture impacted women.

Contemporary

In the 1970s and 1980s, radical young poets like Liam Ó Muirthile, Gabriel Rosenstock, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, Louis de Paor and Cathal Ó Searcaigh began to reflect more international influence. Irish language poetry is once again becoming more popular and common in Ireland as the language is being learned in schools and this was seen with the publication of modern Irish language poetry. Many of these writers are women such as Rita Kelly (widow of Eoghan Ó Tuairisc), Biddy Jenkinson (a nom de plume), Áine Ní Ghlinn and Bríd Ní Mhóráin, and younger writers such as Ciara Ní É, Doireann Ní Ghríofa and Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh.

Others who publish and write in Irish but don’t live in Ireland include ex-pats like Derry O’Sullivan, Tomás Mac Síomóin, Pádraig Mac Fhearghusa, the longtime editor of Feasta. Many contemporary Irish language poets still see writing and publishing in the language as a political action because much of Irish-language education and publication still relies on government patronage and cultural activism to exist. The majority of publishing firms in Ireland still prefer English language texts.

Bilingualism is another feature of some modern Irish writers with several choosing to write in both languages, like Michael Hartnett and Eoghan Ó Tuairisc. Other Irish poets are translating English works into Irish such as Muiris Sionóid’s 2009 translation of William Shakespeare‘s 154 sonnets into Connacht Irish under the title Rotha Mór an Ghrá (”The Great Wheel of Love”) and Máire Mhac an tSaoi‘s literary translations of Rainer Maria Rilke‘s Duino Elegies from German into Munster Irish.

Today, digital work continues to preserve and spread Ireland’s poetry. The Irish Poetry Reading Archive is hosted by UCD’s Digital Library and is part of the James Joyce Library. It has an archive of contemporary Irish poets writing in both English and Irish as well as experimental and emigrant poets. It contains both handwritten copies of works as well as recorded readings as an attempt to preserve Irish poetry and literature for the next generation.

Irish Poetry Meters

Different styles of poetic meter were used in Ireland as different forms of types of poetry were popular or common in different era. Much of what is known about early Irish poetry comes from the rules written down about it in later eras when this style was still being used. Irish syllabic poetry, also known as Dán díreach, was popular from the 1200 to 1600 but dates back to at least the 700s. This syllabic poetry was complex because of the nature of the Irish language, and was borrowed by monastic poets writing both in Irish and Latin to create elaborate verses on religious subjects and nature.

The meter – known as known as metre meadaracht - was also used by the highly trained professional poets in more secular contexts with the complexity of the meter reflecting the fact that poetry was the domain of the social and intellectual elite of the period. Attending a bardic school or scoileanna often helped this class learn the meter as well as poetical forms. Poetic diction was subtle but cultivated, making it hard to separate these meters from their cultural contexts.

Most formal Irish verse had seven to eight syllable lines with a specific end rhyme, internal rhyme, and alliteration. Most poems were written in quatrains with the final word of each verse or couplet including rhyme or consonance. Likewise, each line had usually four stressed syllables – with these stressed syllables often alliterated - with a pause or caesura dividing the line into two halves. Half-lines were required to end with disyllables. Four complex vernacular meters developed from this tradition: deibhidhe, rannaigheacht, and séadna.

The most common meter was deibhidhe, which had a complex list of rules. These include the last words of the first and third line must rhyme with an unstressed final syllable in lines two and four, internal rhymes required between the third and fourth line, two words in each line alliterating with each others, and the final word of line four alliterating with the preceding stressed word. From deibhidhe grew the rannaigheacht meter, which is divided further into rainnaigheacht mhór and rannaigheacht bheag. This followed the first two rules of deibhidhe with at least two internal rhymes in each couple, the final words of line three rhyming with an interior word of line four, two words in each line alliterating, and the final word of line for alliterating with the preceding stressed word.

In the séadna, two internal rhymes are required between lines three and four, the final words of lines two and four must rhyme with each other, the final word of line three must rhyme with the stressed word preceding the final word in line four, the final word of line 1 must alliterate with the following stressed word in line 2, the two final words in each line must alliterate with each other, and the final word of line four must alliterated with the preceding stressed word. Furthermore, there were six classes of consonants for cosonant rhymes in the Irish language, meaning that certain groups of consonants could only be rhymed with each other. A lot of bardic poetry also featured a dunadh, or a word that was used to both begin and end a poem.

By the 1700s, the syllabic poetry was replaced by accentual verse. English speakers arriving in great numbers had little concern for preserving the old traditions and while poets lamented the change in the old meter, poets who wanted to make a living through patronage shifted to the new. The new accentual verse had a fixed number of stressed per line and was more in fit with English. Many nursery rhymes or skipping rope rhymes follow the accentual verse roles with this type of verse known for its musicality and flexibility as well as typically being adopted by languages where it follows natural speech patterns.

Irish Poetic Forms

There are several Irish poetry forms that date back or are related to the bardic traditions with a few that are newer. Many of these forms are subforms or subgenres of other common structures. This includes using the “harmony of sound” concept or cywydd in Welsh and the dunadh, or ending the poem with the same word or phrase with which it was begun. Most Irish poetry is also in the quatrain form, though the number of quatrains used in a poem may differ.

Varieties of deibhidhe are written in the bardic deibhidhe meter mentioned above. The deibhidhe baise fri toin differs from the classic form in that it deviates from the consistent syllable count into a 3-7-7-1 pattern with a light aa, bb rhyme scheme and two-syllable words ending the first and second lines. In deibhidhe guilnech, there is an aabb rhyme scheme with the end rhymes all being stressed. The deibhdhe guilebnech dialatch requires all end-words to consonate with an aabb rhyme scheme.

There are several varieties ofthe rannaigheacht poem. The cethramtu rannaigecht moire is a syllabic quatrain with three syllables in each line with an xaxa xbxb rhyme scheme. Rannaigheact bheag has an 8-6-8-6 syllable pattern, two word alliteration per line, an internal and aicill rhyme, and all end words being two syllables and consonate – something not very easy to accomplish in English. Rainnaicheact ghairid has a 3-7-7-7 syllable pattern, two word alliteration in each line, an AABA rhyme scheme with the end word of the third line rhymed in the first half of line four.

Rannaigheact Mhor, meaning “great versification” has seven-line syllables, two word alliteration, a consonating abab rhyme scheme, end words rhymed internally rather than couplets rhyming together, and the final word of the third line rhyming with a word in the middle of the fourth. The end word of the fourth line also alliterates with the preceding word. A clipped version of the previous, rainnaigheact mor gairit has an aaba rhyme scheme and employs aicill if the third line ends in a two-syllable word. That word must also rhyme internally in line four. The rainnaigheact chethar chubaid grair form is a 3-7-7-7 syllable quatrain with two alliterated words per line, and an aicill rhyme. Finally, the Trian Rannaigechta Moireis written in short lines with consonant rhymes, four syllables per line and an xaba xcdc rhyme scheme and an aicill rhyme.

Varieties of séadna include the séadna mheadhanach, which has the same aforementioned elements of the séadna but the end words of the first and third lines are three syllable words while the end words of the second and fourth line are two syllables. In a séadna mòr, the second and fourth line end in three-syllable words.

A quatrain form with alternating line lengths, dechnad cummaisc and the related dechnad mor are both marked by their use of consonant rhymes. They have an 8-4-8-4 or 8-4-4-8 syllable pattern and have a consonance scheme of abab cdcd. They usually employ two-syllable end words and the aicill rhyme.

The rionnard is a quatrain form with 6-syllable lines and two-syllable end words where the first and third line consonate. A variety of this is the rionnaird tri-nard, which requires the second and fourth line rhyme and the third line consonates with them. It also includes an aicill rhymed once in the first couplet and twice in the second, alliteration in each line, and the last syllable of the first line alliterating with the first accented word of the second line.

Ae freislighe meaning “lying down poetry” and is a seven-syllable quatrain form that has alternating three syllable and two syllable end rhymes. There is two word alliteration in each line and often rhymed with an abab, cbdc, etc., pattern. Meaning “dream” in Gaelic and sometimes called vision poetry, an aisling is a more modern form developed in the late 1700s and early 1800s. It grew out of early love poem styles and may have been influenced by the French reverdie. Later aisling were more political in nature and often feature a woman lamenting over the state of Ireland.

The breccbairdne requires all end words are two syllables and is typically written in a quatrain form. It is either rhymed as xaxa xbxb or unrhymed and is often written with a first line in five syllables and the remaining three lines have six syllables. A type of cross rhymes, casbairdne is a quatrain poem with each line having seven syllables with the second and fourth line rhyming and the first and third line consonate with the rhyme. There are also at least two internal cross rhymes in each couplet and two words alliterated in each line. The final syllable of line four alliterates with the preceding stressed word.

Meaning “wailing together,” coronach is a type of ancient dirge or funeral song found in both Ireland and Scotland and is specifically performed by women. It features the dunadh with seven-syllable lines in a quatrain, an xaxa or abab rhyme scheme. A quatrain form with alternating lines of five and seven syllables, cro cumaisc etir casbairdni ocus lethrannaighecht has an abab cdcd rhyme scheme with the third line ending on a two-syllable word and the fourth line rhyming internally, known as an aicill rhyme. The first and third line can also be written with three-syllable end words.

A loose stanzaic form written in either octaves or quatrains, droigneach. poems have 9 to 13 syllables per line with three-syllable end words. The rhyme scheme is abab with at least two cross rhymes in each couplet and alliteration in each line. Usually, the final word of the line alliterates with the preceding stressed word, particularly in the last line. A casual structure from early Irish, lethrannaegecht mor. is a quatrain of five syllables in each line, an xaxa rhyme scheme, the first and second lines linked by assonance, the first and third line consonating with the end rhyme of the second and fourth line respectively.

The snam saud is an eight-line poem with three syllables per line in an aaxbcccb rhyme scheme. The fourth and eighth line must end in three-syllable words. The sneadhbairdne form is an 8-4-8-4 syllable quatrain with alliteration on each line, two syllable end words on each line, and a rhyme on the end of the second and fourth line that consonates with the third line. Additionally, every stressed syllable in the fourth line must rhyme.

Meaning “triple key,” treochair is a 3-7-7 tercet poem with the first line carrying two stresses, the second carrying three, and the third carrying two. It employs an axa bxb rhyme scheme and is generously alliterated. The triad is a mono-rhymed triplet that often lists three related things and considers their impact with no set rhyme scheme and often utilizing free verse in its modern form.

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Poetry has been written in India since the Bronze Age when the Sanskrit religious texts known as the Vedas were written and has continued to be an important tradition across the entire subcontinent ever since. However, the concept of “Indian poetry” is a broader subject than most national poetry as India is home to more than 450 languages that fit into five major language families. Each of these languages have their own literary traditions with some languages prominent in ancient or classical times while others became more common in the modern era.

As these languages helped Indian develop unique poetry traditions, the introduction of English via the British Raj began has influenced a great deal of modern poetics in this country. Despite this influence, poetry in India’s various languages and cultures still maintain popularity, one of the many ways India is a modern civilization that still preserves deep ties to its ancient past. The poetry of India is as vast and diverse as the country itself.

Historical Background

Ancient Poetry (3300 - 250 BCE)

By 3300 BCE, there are perhaps as many as 5 million people living in the Indus Valley region and the language of Sanskrit was beginning to emerge, replacing older languages spoken in prehistoric times. The scared language of Hinduism as well as many of the historical and philosophical texts linked to India’s two other main religions - Buddhism and Jainism - Sanskrit is still associated with high culture and the arts with the Sanskrit revival bringing the language back to the fore since the 1800s. This was also the time period when India’s earliest script, Indus script, was created though it still remains largely undeciphered.

The Vedic Period began around 1500 BCE when the Indo-Aryan tribes moved into Punjab in several waves, composing the Vedas, liturgical hymns and texts still considered vital to Hinduism today. Prior to being written, the Vedas had been spread orally in the Old Indo-Aryan language but were first written in the form of Sanskrit known as Vedic Sanskrit. There are two main types of texts in Vedic Sanskrit: Śruti,, meaning “that which is heard or revealed” and Smṛti, meaning “that which is remembered.” Śruti is generally applied to religious texts believed to have been divinely inspired while Smrti tends to refer to more secular works, though these works can often have religious themes.

Some of the earliest genres of poetry in Vedic Sanskrit were stotras, suktas, and stutis. Stotras are typically defined as being similar to eulogies or odes in the West while suktas are defined as recitations of the Rig-Veda and stutis as prayers. A lot of early While some are prose texts, the Samhitas were written in a religious meter known as mantras and the hymns, liturgies, melodies, and chants are very poetic in nature, particularly the Rig-Veda, Sama-Veda and Atharva-Veda with the Rig-Veda and Atharva-Veda largely written by authors considered to be poets.

The late Vedic and post-Vedic era of Sanskrit, also known as Classical Sanskrit, lasts from around 700 BCE into 1350 CE. While this seemed to be a major language shift at the time, most modern readers find little difference in how Vedic and Classical Sanskrit are written but rather than accents, semantics, and syntax have changed. Grammar also greatly evolved during this transition. Some of the earliest ancient works of Classical Sanskrit include the Upanishads, which were adopted into early Vedic literature and helped cement the central religious concepts of Hinduism.

These works would go on to greatly influence Western writers and poets. Vedic literature also served as the basis for Vedic Studies in the Post-Vedic Period at about 1000 BCE, notability including works of the Vedanga such as the Chandas covering poetic meter, the Vyākaraṇa covering grammar, and the Nirukta etymology, and linguistics, all of which studied Vedic traditions for their use in later poetry.

Outside of religious texts, early Sanskrit poetry can be divided into three categories: epics, court poetry known as kavya, and lyric poetry. Vedic literature still provides the basis for many of the earliest epic poems and are likely carry-overs from songs of praise or heroic songs once preserved orally and often at important ceremonies and events like the aśvamedha. Epic poems were often performed by a specific cast of bards known as sūtas as well as a related group of traveling bards known as kusilavas whose job it was to follow the warrior caste and keep track of their deeds for poems or songs.

Only two main epic cycles have survived from this period: the Mahābhārata and the Rāmāyaṇa. of The Mahābhārata is a collection of texts of which the Bhagavadgītā is perhaps the most famous because of its infusion with Hindu religious beliefs. Another part is the Harivanhśa, which focuses on the figure of Krishna. The Rāmāyaṇa is shorter but is the blueprint for many subsequent epic poems, particularly translations of the Mahābhārata and Rāmāyaṇa into other languages as well as specific epic poetry adopted by other languages around India. These include the Five Great Epics of Tamil literature and Sangam literature, which were inspired by or retellings of earlier Sanskrit epics.

Kavya is known for its use of metaphors, similes, and hyperbole as well as other figures of speech to create an emotional impact. Very few examples of this court poetry survives before 400 BCE though later quotations, such as those in the grammatical treatise the Mahābhāṣya written in the 300s – show that this type of poetry was being written. Similarly, the Buddhacarita, a kavya-style epic poem about the life of the Buddha, was written in the 300s, but the first known intact version survives not in Sanskrit but in a Chinese translation made 100 years later.

One of the few non-religious poetic texts that is attributed to this time period is the Panchatantra, a collection of moral tales and fables both written in verse and prose and attributed to the poet Vishnusharma. This work largely survives because of its translation into Persian nearly a thousand years after it was written, making it hard to discern when it really was authored. The original was written in Sanskrit and is generally attributed to have been written sometime between 600 and 400 BCE.

At the same time Sanskrit was beginning to take on its classical form, the colloquial dialects known as Prakrits were also beginning to evolve. Lasting from about 500 BCE to 1200 CE, there is still debate about how Sanskrit is related to this language with some believing it was a vernacular of the common man that evolved independently while others hold that it was language that evolved from Sanskrit. The earliest poetical works of this language have their roots in kavya and begin to appear about 100 CE such as the Hāla‘s Gaha Sattasai, the now lost God of Vie Arrows at Play by Ananda-vardhana, and the epic poems such as Sarvasena‘s Hari-vijaya and Pravarasena II‘s Ravana-vaho. Many scholars felt that Prakrit was most suitable to fictional romances such as Palitta’s Tarangavati authored during this period.

While Sanskrit was evolving in what would become the north of India, Sangam literature was evolving in the south. The precursor to modern-day Tamil language in literature in the same way Sanskrit provides a basis for languages like Hindi, much of what survives today from this ancient literary tradition was written in the Sangam period from 100 BCE to 250 CE. The oldest surviving Tamil texts are known as the Eighteen Greater Texts and the grammar Tolkappiyam, all of which are considered Sangam literature because of when they were written. These poems were likely written earlier and transmitted orally, but were first written and collected into anthologies during the Sangam period.

These 18 major anthologies include 2,381 poems that are attributed with 473 poets, 16 of whom are credited with about half of the total work. A total of 102 poems are attributed to anonymous writers while many others are attributed to ancient Tamil kings. The Eighteen Greater Texts are further split into two categories: the Eight Anthologies and the Ten Idylls. Also known as the Eṭṭuttokai or the Eight Collections, this work consists of 2,371 poems varying in size from three lines in the Ainkurnuru to 40 lines in the Purananuru. They use the akaval, kali, and paripaadal meters. Meanwhile the Pattuppāṭṭu or Ten Lays contains ten longer poems ranging from about 100 to 800 lines each and including Nakkīrar’s Tirumurukāṟṟuppaṭai as the most prominent work. .

Classical (200 BCE-650 CE)

The “classical” period of India doesn’t necessarily line up with the period in which Classical Sanskrit began the primary language of literature, instead falling between the decline of the Maurya Empire finished its unification of India and the rise of the Gupta Empire, under which the Golden Age of India occurred. In addition to these two empires, there were smaller “middle kingdoms” located around India who often controlled parts of the country between the Maurya’s fall and the Gupta’s rise. During this period, the Silk Road also facilitated the transmission of Buddhism across the subcontinent.

During the waning days of the Maurya Empire, Vātsyāyana authored the mix of poetry and prose philosophical text the Kama Sutra, which is a guide in the nature of love and fulfillment despite being primarily thought of today in the West as a sex manual. One of the most influential early poets from the Gupta period was Kālidāsa, a Classical Sanskrit author considered the greatest poet and playwright in India. Much of his work is based on the Puranas. He is the author of two epic poems or mahākāvyas and several minor poems.

His epic poem Kumārasambhava follows the life of Pārvatī up until the birth of her son Kumāra while the Raghuvaṃśa focuses on the kings of the Raghu dynasty. His surviving minor poem or khaṇḍakāvya is known as the Meghadūta or The Cloud Messenger. This story follows Yakṣa trying to send a message to his lover through a cloud and is written in the mandākrāntā meter. From the kayva tradition and the texts of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana evolved the court poetry or mahākāvya. In addition to Kālidāsa’s Kumārasambhava, the Kiratarjuniya. of Bharavi is considered a peak example of this form. Other examples include the Naiśadha-carita by Shriharsha, the Śiśupāla-vadha by Māgha, and the Bhaṭṭikāvya by Bhaṭṭi. Other well-known poets from this period include Bhatta Narayana and Mayurbhatta.

Gupta monarch Samudragupta was also known not just as a poet but as the “king of poets” and his coinage includes images of him playing the veena, an ancient style arched harp that was often played while reciting lyric poetry. Harisena, was a kavya poet and chief minister during the reign of Samudragupta, one of the more prominent rulers of the Gupta Empire in India. His works include the Apabramsa Dharmapariksa, Karpuraprakara (Suktavall), the medical treatise Jagatsundari-Yogamaladhikara, Yasodharacanta, Astahnikakatha and Brhatkathakosa. Bhartṛhari, a philosopher and poet, is known ore for his commentaries on grammar but also published the 300-verse collection Śatakatraya.

Outside the Gupta Empire, the Sanskrit poet Bāṇabhaṭṭa worked at the court of the Emperor Harsha, a member of the Vardhana dynasty in northern India. His main job was to praise the emperor and while most of his poetry does not survive, his two most notable works are a romantic novel and the earliest known Indian biography, focusing on his patron.

As Buddhism spread, the Pali language and literature of the ancient kingdom of Magadha was also beginning to take root. This language is most associated with the Theravada canon, the texts used by one of the oldest schools of Buddhism and who still uses Pali as their sacred language. Also known as the Pali Canon, these books include three categories or pitaka, meaning “basket” with the largest basket, the Sutta Piṭaka, including some religious poetry.

Other examples of Pali poetry include the bodies of work known as the Jātaka tales that relate the early life of the Buddha, including those written by Kumāralāta. The Mahāvaṃsa, the epic poem that chronicles the early days of Sri Lanka is also written in Pali and related deeply to the spread of Buddhism in the island. The Dhammapada are a collection of sayings of the Buddha in verse form and remains one of the most widely known and read Buddhist scriptures.In secular terms, Pali literature adapted some Sanskrit rules for grammar as well as the kavya tradition as early as the 500s BCE.

The ancient Meitei literature – also known as Old Manipuri literature – also began to emerge in this period. Notable works from this language include the poetic epic the Poireiton Khunthok, which chronciles the ancient Meiti’s colonization of their land under Poireiton,, the Khencho, and the epic poems Nungpan Ponpi Luwaopa, and Numit Kappa. This ancient language was largely ignored until efforts began in the 2010s to classify Meiti as an official Classical language of India.

The Post-Sangam period between 250 and 500 CE also includes the Eighteen Lesser Texts, poetical works that were not included in the earlier collection. Shorter and written in the venpa meter, most of these works deal with morals and ethics. Most of the works in this collection contain somewhere between 40 and 150 poems are attributed to the same author or cover the same topics. The Nālaṭiyār notably contains 400 poems of four lines each, the Paḻamoḻi Nāṉūṟu 400 poems using old Tamil proverbs, and the Tirukkuṛaḷ or simply Kural some 1,330 short couplets or kurals of seven words each, divided into three categories.

Early Medieval (650-1200)

The early medieval period of Indian literature begins around the period of the Bhakti movement, a religious movement that sought to reform Hinduism. The movement inspired numerous poet-saints whose work championed the religious reforms and ideas of the period, namely the Sri Vaishnava and Shaiva Siddhanta traditions. Roots of the movement come from sources including the final verses of the Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad, Bhagavad Gita, and the Devi Mahatmya. One of the most important works of the movement is the Tirumurai, a collection of verses by poet saints. The poetry of this period was influential in spreading the movement’s ideas across India in the later medieval period. While the movement began around 650, it wouldn’t full encompass India’s north until the 1400s and reached its zenith between the 1400s and the 1600s.

Sanskrit was still being used by some poets and scholars like Akalajalada, Paṭṭattu Vāsudeva Bhaṭṭatiri who authored the Yudhiṣṭhiravijayaṃ, court poet Rajashekhara, Ratnākara who wrote the longest mahakayva poem known as the Haravijaya, poetic commentator Kuntaka, Līlāśuka who wrote the romantic epic Kṛśṇa-karaṇāmṛta, and female poets Shilabhattarika and Vijja. Jain poet Asaga wrote the epic poem Vardhamana Charitra on the life of Vardhamana, the earliest available biography of the last tirthankara of Jainism.

The medieval era is also when distinct literary traditions begin to emerge in the many vernacular languages starting to appear across India. While the language existed before then, the earliest surviving example of Kannada poetry is the Kappe Arabhatta, published around 700. Kannada also became known for its vachanas, witty comments on social, religious, and economic conditions of the time that also held a mirror up to society.

The first known Kannada poet, Adikavi Pampa, lived around 900 and wrote in the Old Kannada or Halegannada with his classic works Vikramarjuna Vijaya and Adipurana still the standard today. His poetry was in the style known as champu, a mix of prose and poetry popular both in Kannada and Telugu literature. Other well-known Kannada poets of the period include Devara Daasimayya, Gajaga, Nāgavarma, Ponna, Ranna, Madara Chennaiah, Somadeva who wrote Kathasaritsagara,

While kavya is still considered the highest form of verse in Telugu, the poetics of this language have various strict genres and styles. Champu is one of the most popular genres from this period that still exists while Telugu was also creating the dwipada, a style of couplet; lyric poems known as padam; recited poems known as chatus; and anthologies known as shataka. Also found in Sanskrit, these anthologies contain one hundred verses each with popular Telugu shataka from this period including the Sumathi Satakam, The first book on Telugu prosody was the Kavijanasrayam, published by Malliya Rechana around 940. Between 1020 and 1400, the Telugu language also had its “trinity of poets” or Kavi Trayam: Nannayya, Tikkana and Yerrapragada. The first major Telugu epic poem is the Andhra Mahabharatam by Nannaya. Other works include the Vaddaradhane by Shivakotiacharya.

The earliest surviving Punjabi poetry comes from around 700, a doha couplet dated to 760 by Saraha, a Vajrayana Mahasiddha saint. The epic poem Sandeśarāsaka by Addahamāṇa appears around 1000 though it is the Sufi poetry of Baba Farid collected in the Adi Granth that really began to launch poetry in this language. Also beginning around the 700s is the Rajasthani poetic tradition, which is attributed mainly to the charan caste. Poet historians such as Suryamal Misran, Kaviraja Bankidas, Kaviraja Dayaldas and Kaviraja Shyamaldas wrote in multiple languages, often translating epic poems as well as writing their own. Their works included eulogies of gods known as stavana, praise poems known as viradavalo, war poems known as varanno, eulogies of living people known as Marsiya, love stories, descriptions of beauty, descriptions of weapon, and descriptions of suffering. Sain tliterature also became popular as the Bakhti movement arrived here.

Composed in the 1000s, the earliest examples of Bengali literature are mystic hymns composed by Buddhist monks including Luipada, Kanhapada, and Kukkuripada. Gujarati literature also began to emerge around this same period, one of the few Indian literary traditions to emerge despite the fact there was no patronage from royal houses or the nobility. Jain monk and scholar Hemacandrācārya authored the Kavyanushasana (Poetics), a handbook or manual of poetry, one of the earliest Gujarati texts on the subject. Authors from this tradition were known for two main types of poems: Rāsas and Phāgus.

Rāsas are long, narrative poems that often included biographies of historic characters as well as descriptive imagery of nature the seasons. Early examples include Śālībhadra Sūri’s Bharateśvara Bāhubalī rāsa, Vijayasena’s Revantagiri-rāsa, Ambadeva’s Samararasa and Vinayaprabha’s Gautama Svāmi rāsa. The phāgus portray the nature of the spring festival Vasanta with the most famous being the Vasanta-vilāsa.

Around 1050, Hindi literature also began to emerge as a distinct tradition. One of the earliest works is Prithviraj Raso, an epic poem written by Chand Bardai, who was the official court poet of Prithviraj Chauhan. While other literature from this time was written, much of it was destroyed by the army of Muhammad of Ghor. Meanwhile, Prominent poets in Tamil include Avvaiyar, known for her Vinayagar Agaval; poet saint Sundarar who authored the Tirumurai, the twelve-volume compendium of Shaiva Siddhanta; poet saint Manikkavacakar who wrote the Thiruvasagam and Thirukkovaiyar; and Pattinathar. Early Kashmiri poet Anandavardhana authored the Dhvanyāloka, or A Light on Suggestion, a dhvani or commentary on divine aesthetic in poetry while Rudrata wrote the Kavyalankara, and Kavi Bilhana wrote the Caurapañcāśikā.

Late Medieval (1200-1526)

With the end of the Gupta Empire and Muslim conquests into India, numerous kingdoms and sultanates began to spring up throughout the region. Older languages like Sanskrit and Prakhti began to disappear into the realm of scholarship only while regional language continued to grow. The rise of academic and religious institutions as well as the patronage of storytellers, singers, and performers at royal courts helped produce literary texts, but this meant that folk literature was not as well preserved. In India’s north, most poets came from highly educated classes and royal courts while the South permitted both upper- and lower-class poets.

Members of the Delhi Sultanate introduced Persian literature to India and offered positions at court to Persian courts. Under both this sultanate and the later Mughal Empire, Persian actually became the primary lingua franca of India upon the arrival of the British. These poets already had their own praise poems similar to the kayva of India but also introduced forms like rubaʿi and qasidah. They also brought with them the Sufi religion and literature. This created a style of poetry known as sabk-e-Hindi. Notable poets of this tradition include Urfi Shirazi, Faizi, Sa’ib, and Bedil with other Sufi poets including Nasiruddin Chiragh Dehlavi, Amir Khusrau, Nasiruddin Chiragh Dehlavi, Amir Khusrau, Abdul Quddus Gangohi, and Shah Muhammad Saghir. Additionally, a number of Persian words came into Indian languages at loan words.

Poets connected to religious traditions still continued to flourish in India with some of the greatest poets of medieval India connected to this tradition such as Kubir, Guru Nanak, and Tulsidas. The bhakti movement also continued into this period, producing reformer poets and philosophers like Basava, Haralayya, Jayadeva who wrote the Gita Govinda, Gora Kumbhar, Bhalan, Ravidas, and Bhagat Sain.

Assamese literature begins to emerge into its own in the 1200s with poet scholar Hema Saraswati adapting the Vamana Purana into the language while Kaviraja Madhava Kandali translated the Ramayana. Chand Bardai wrote the Braj language epic poem Prithviraj Raso about the life of Prithviraj Chauhan. In the Marathi language, poet-saints Namdev and and Dnyaneshwar produced some of the earliest known literature.

As the Bengali alphabet began to solidify, works by Ramai Pandit and Halayudh Misra rose to prominence. Lyric Chandidas began translating Sanskrit works into Bengali as well as composing his own works on Radha and Krishna such as the Shreekrishna Kirtana. Vidyapati drew inspiration from earlier Maithili traditions while Maladhar Basu based his Sri Krishna Vijaya on the Bhagavata Purana, the oldest Bengali versi Narahari Sonar, Ramananda, on of the Krishna legend. Court poet Dhoyin produced the Pavanadūta while Khana brought the vachana tradition into Tamil. When Islam was introduced to Bengal around 1350, the influence of Arabic texts like the Thousand and One Nights and Shahnameh. Notable Muslim Bengali poets and works from this era included Shah Muhammad Sagir’s works on Yusuf and Zulaikha, Nabibangsha by Syed Sultan, and Rasul Bijoy by Shah Barid as well as the works of Zainuddin and Sabirid Khan.

Kannada poet Harihara authored the Girijakalyana and was one of the earliest Veerashaiva writers. Kambar wrote the Tamil version of the Ramayana known as the Kambaramayanam while Kaviraja Pandithar translated the Saundarya Lahari into Tamil. Female poet Akka Mahadevi wrote 430 vachanas. Other Kannada poets from this era include Nagachandra, Allamaprabhu, Raghavanka, Rudabhatta, Janna, Kesiraja, Chamarasa,

Prominent Tamil poets from this period include the Ten Medieval Commentators consisting of Manakkudavar, Dhamatthar, Nacchar, Paridhi, Pariperumal, also known as Kaliperumal, Thirumalaiyar, Mallar, Kaalingar, Dharumar, and Parimelalhagar. During this period, the Tamil language also produced the Irattaipulavar (meaning “the twin poets”). The older twin Mudhusuriyar or ‘Old Sun’ was born lame while the younger, Ilanjchuriyar or ‘Young Sun,’ was blind.

Telugu poet Nanne Choda wrote the Kumara Sambhavam and became the first composer of Prabandha. He was part of the Śivakavitrayam or Trio of Savite Poets along with Mallikarjuna Panditaradhya and Palkuriki Somanatha. The official songmaster of the Simhachalam Temple, Sri Kantha Krishnamacharyulu wrote 400,000 keertana songs, in praise of Sri Varahalakshmi Narasimha Swamy. Mallikarjuna Panditaradhyudu wrote the first independent Telugu work, the Śivatattvasāramu. Other Telugu poets from this era include Srinatha, Yerrapragada, Srinatha, Dhurjati, Jakkana, Atukuri Molla, Suranna, Allasani Peddana, Pothana, and Madayyagari Mallana.

Mughal Period (1526-1858)

Founded in 1526, the Mughal Empire began its decline in 1760 and was formally dissolved by the takeover of the British in 1858. Sustained primarily through military warfare, this era was known for the synthesis of Persian and Indian culture into a new culture. It also marked the emergence of Urdu in Northern India, particularly as British colonial rule expanded into that area. While new traditions were brought in, old ones remain with poets still primarily relying on the patronage of rulers to support their craft.

While Persian became the dominant literary form during this era, there was still room for local vernacular languages to flourish, particularly as the empire began to fragment toward its end. The introduction of the printing press to India during this period also made it easier for writers to disseminate their works. Islamic, Persian, and traditional Indian culture, stories, and poetic conventions were combined into a cultural melting pot as well, reflecting in much of the work from the era. Works of this era were also often illuminated with intricate calligraphy.

Two of the most notable poets of this period include Amir Khusrau, a Sufi singer, musician, poet, and scholar who wrote primarily in Persian but also in Hindavi and Punjabi. He is considered the “father of qawwali,“ a devotional form of singing of the Sufis in the Indian subcontinent, and introduced the ghazal to India. Also known as Bedil Azimabadi, Abdul-Qādir Bedil’s work is representative of the later phrase of Indian Persian poetry and considered one of the most technically advanced writers of ghazal and rubayee poetry.

Writing in Arabic, Persian, and Urdu, Azad Bilgrami wrote several notable anthologies and biographies of poets in India. Sufism also took a hold in India during this time, leading to great influence in a culture that already valued religious aspects to its poetry. Notable Indian Sufi poets include Ghanimat Kunjahi, Shan Inat Rizvi, and Mirza Mazhar Jan-e-Janaan, Gani Kashmiri, Mir Hasan, Mirza Ghazi Beg, Urdu ghazal poet Ghulam Ali Hamdani, Mizra Muhammad Rafi Sauda, and Inamullah Khan Yaqeen.

Examples of non-Persian or Urdu language writers include Saraiki writer Lutf Ali, Braj writer Banarasidas, Sindhi poet Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai, Punjabi revolutionary and poet Bulleh Shah, Bengali poet Ghanaram Chakrabarty, and Rajasthani poet Dariyavji. Khushal Baba was a Pashtun poet and warrior who promoted Pashtun nationalism in the last years of his life through poetry.

British Raj (1858-1947)

While the East India Company had been interacted and in some cases controlling parts of India since the 1700s, the Indian Rebellion of 1857 saw the control of India switch from Company Rule to dominion by the British crown. Burma was added to this territory in 1886 and remained part of the Raj until 1937 when it became a separate colony. Independence movements and the results of the disastrous Partition of India led to the ending of British rule in India in 1947.