New York: Mondial, 2008. — x, 728 pages. — ISBN: 978-1-59569-090-6.The history of Esperanto literature shows two main trends: an attempt to prove that everything that you can find in other literatures is possible in Esperanto, and an attempt to do things yet unattempted. The first results in conventional poetry, traditional novels. You will learn in this volume about many of the writers who have followed this course. If iambic pentameter is possible in a given language, it should be possible in Esperanto, and someone will be out there proving it. Some will do it well, occasionally startlingly well; others will merely imitate. But then there are people working with the language in new ways or to new purpose. Esperantists feel the need simultaneously to prove that their culture is just like everybody else's and that it is unique.This double objective is built into the language itself. Although Zamenhof created a new language, and although he used principles that mark Esperanto off as significantly different from other languages (principles, by the way, that point, above all, to the discoveries of structural linguistics in the following century), he drew on existing languages for the constituent elements of his new language and in the process he carried into Esperanto the common semantics of the major European languages. Thus Zamenhof not only created a present and future for his language, but also a past. The interaction between, on the one hand, new ways (including non European ways) of forming and articulating words and ideas, and, on the other hand, old ways of expression and thought, created in Esperanto a kind of linguistic and semantic dynamism - a tension of old and new – that has been a major factor contributing to the character of the literature in the language.But writers in Esperanto are simultaneously also pursuing a different goal - the strengthening of the language itself. Zamenhof realized early on that one of the best ways of bringing Esperanto to life is through translated literature - through rendering in Esperanto events and ideas, conversations and encounters, that have yet to occur in real life in that language. Literary creation has always broadened our experience beyond the quotidian; it can also broaden a language. Thus translated literature has always played an important pan in the development of original literature in Esperanto, and, given that every writer in Esperanto is at least bilingual and brings his or her own culture with him into the language, there is a splendid richness to the best examples of Esperanto literature. This richness is a product of influences of west and east, north and south, and of small literatures as welt as large. The very structural uniqueness of Esperanto makes it hard to translate into ethnic languages - not least because many of those who write in Esperanto do so out of their rejection of the constriction that they experience when writing in their native languages. Accordingly, they use Esperanto in ways that are quite specifically out of step with their own languages.In this encyclopedia Geoffrey Sutton has brought together a wealth of basic information about Esperanto and about the views of Esperanto speakers on their own writers. It is best used as a work of reference, and as a key that will, in due course, unlock the doors of a remarkable alternative culture - a culture that for over a century has been looking for a humane globalism of the spirit that preserves productive difference while enabling the emergence of a common humanity. This is no hobby, but a serious intellectual endeavor, which the discerning reader will soon recognize through the pages of this impressive book.The Original Literature of Esperanto 1887 – 2007 with biographies, dates, descriptions o f work and concise bibliographies in chronological order
The First Period 1887 -1920: Primitive Romanticism and the Establishment of Style
The Second Period 1921 -30: Mature Romanticism and a Literary Flowering
The Third Period 1931-51: Parnassianism and the Coming of Age
The Fourth Period 1952-74: Post-Parnassianism and Modernism
The Fifth Period 1975 - : Popularization of the Novel. Experimental Poetry, Postmodernism
Outline of Esperanto's Linguistic Structure and Creative Capabilities
Esperanto from the Viewpoint of a Writer (extract) by Claude Piron.
The Structure of Esperanto
Pronunciation
Grammar
Specimen Literary Texts
Vocabulary to the Specimen Literary Texts
Bibliographies
General Bibliography, including sources
Cited Translations from Original Esperanto LiteratureEsperanto Culture - summary
Associated Reference Works in literature, linguistics and allied disciplines
Libraries and further information
