<P> The ballet is a distinctively Western form of performance dance . The ballroom dance is an important Western variety of dance for the elite . The polka, the square dance, and the Irish step dance are very well known Western forms of folk dance . </P> <P> The soap opera, a popular culture dramatic form, originated in the United States first on radio in the 1930s, then a couple of decades later on television . The music video was also developed in the West in the middle of the 20th century . </P> <P> While epic literary works in verse such as the Mahabharata and Homer's Iliad are ancient and occurred worldwide, the prose novel as a distinct form of storytelling, with developed, consistent human characters and, typically, some connected overall plot (although both of these characteristics have sometimes been modified and played with in later times), was popularized by the West in the 17th and 18th centuries . Of course, extended prose fiction had existed much earlier; both novels of adventure and romance in the Hellenistic world and in Heian Japan . Both Petronius' Satyricon (c. 60 CE) and the Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu (c. 1000 CE) have been cited as the world's first major novel but they had a very limited long - term impact on literary writing beyond their own day until much more recent times . </P> <P> Tragedy, from its ritually and mythologically inspired Greek origins to modern forms where struggle and downfall are often rooted in psychological or social, rather than mythical, motives, is also widely considered a specifically European creation and can be seen as a forerunner of some aspects of both the novel and of classical opera . </P>

According to christendom another name for medieval western europe is course hero