Yes, but didn't Penn Bowl have a 1/1 distribution of popular/"trash" literature? That would skew the percentages... Personally, I tend to go with something like this in a 4/4 lit distribution: 2 20th 3 18th/19th c. 2 15th-17th c. 1 pre-1350 (I usually write a question on something Greek or Roman. Could be a second one here, if I write on Dante or some 11th-century Chinese work or something. Basically, "before Chaucer".) Though chronology is really only a secondary concern... the main axis I plot the questions on is geographical... or to combine them: 2 American (1 19th-century (or early 20th), 1 20th century) 2 British (1 pre-1798, 1 1798 or later) 2 European (from different countries/time periods) 1 non-European or American 1 "other" (a repeat of one of the previous 4 categories (though very rarely American, as 2 is enough IMO), or Greco-Roman literature, some kind of question on theory or terms or something, a bonus on authors from multiple countries, whatever) ...incorporating prose, poetry, and drama as appropriate. (Really, I tend not to think of literature that way. I mean, take the 16th century in England. Everyone wrote poetry, few people wrote drama until the last 10-20 years or so, and prose wasn't very common at all. So questions on British literature before Marlowe and Shakespeare and them showed up are almost always going to be poetry questions. By contrast, almost everyone today is writing prose. There are a few playwrights and poets hanging around, but prose is What Is Being Written. And that's just a function of the times.) But... yeah, 56% questions on the 20th century is too much, even considering the unusual nature of the Penn Bowl distribution. I won't try to comment on the history stuff.
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