Early Tragedies Kawabata was born on June 14, 1899, in Osaka, Japan. He was orphaned at an early age. His father died when he was two, and his mother died the following year. Biographers point out that the young Kawabata suffered several other losses and earned the nickname Master of Funerals for the number of ceremonies he attended in his youth, including those of his grandparents, with whom he lived after his parents died, and that of his only sister. Kawabata... 

Czech writer Franz Kafka is one of the founders of modern literature. His most famous works, including ‘‘The Metamorphosis,’’ The Trial, and The Castle have come to be seen as stories of the struggles of individuals to preserve their dignity and humanity in an increasingly faceless and bureaucratic world. Kafka’s masterful use of the German language and his odd blend of the surreal and the mundane combine to create a unique style of fiction that has... 

James Joyce is considered the most prominent English-speaking literary figure of the first half of the twentieth century. His short-story collection and three novels redefined the form of modern fiction and have inspired countless writers in his wake. Works in Biographical and Historical Context James Joyce Joyce, James, photograph. The Library of Congress. One Child among Many in Dublin, an Irish Exile in Paris James Augustus Aloysius Joyce was born on February... 

Ben Jonson was a prolific Elizabethan dramatist and a man of letters who profoundly influenced the coming Augustan age through his emphasis on the principles of Horace, Aristotle, and other classical thinkers. While he is now remembered primarily for his satirical comedies, he also distinguished himself as a poet, a preeminent writer of masques, a careful defender of his work, and the originator of English literary criticism. Jonson’s professional reputation... 

BORN: 1709, Lichfield, Staffordshire, England DIED: 1784, London, England NATIONALITY: British GENRE: Fiction, poetry, drama, nonfiction, criticism MAJOR WORKS: Plan for a Dictionary of the English Language (1747) The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749) Preface to a Dictionary of the English Language (1755) The Idler (1758-1760) The Patriot (1774) Perhaps the best-known and most often-quoted English writer after William Shakespeare, Samuel Johnson ranks as England’s... 

Juan Ramo´n Jime´nez dominated Spanish poetry for the first three decades of the twentieth century. At the outbreak of the Spanish civil war in 1936 he was still a figure of influence and importance. Later, in exile in the United States and Puerto Rico, he expanded his already considerable influence, making the acquaintance of such esteemed fellow poets as Robert Frost and Ezra Pound. Works in Biographical and Historical Context Early Privilege... 

Austrian novelist Elfriede Jelinek was the surprise choice for the 2004 Nobel Prize in Literature. Jelinek’s fiction, relatively unknown outside of the German-speaking world, is rife with passages of psychological and physical cruelty, reflecting its author’s belief that all humans carry an overpowering degree of inner turmoil and that the world is a tremendously unjust place, especially for women. Works in Biographical and Historical Context Writing Through...