Portal:Literature
Introduction
Literature is any collection of written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially novels, plays, and poems. It includes both print and digital writing. In recent centuries, the definition has expanded to include oral literature, much of which has been transcribed. Literature is a method of recording, preserving, and transmitting knowledge and entertainment. It can also have a social, psychological, spiritual, or political role.
Literary criticism is one of the oldest academic disciplines, and is concerned with the literary merit or intellectual significance of specific texts. The study of books and other texts as artifacts or traditions is instead encompassed by textual criticism or the history of the book. "Literature", as an art form, is sometimes used synonymously with literary fiction, fiction written with the goal of artistic merit, but can also include works in various non-fiction genres, such as biography, diaries, memoirs, letters, and essays. Within this broader definition, literature includes non-fictional books, articles, or other written information on a particular subject. (Full article...)
General images -
The Diary of a Nobody is an English comic novel written by the brothers George and Weedon Grossmith, with illustrations by the latter. It originated as an intermittent serial in Punch magazine in 1888–89 and first appeared in book form, with extended text and added illustrations, in 1892. The Diary records the daily events in the lives of a London clerk, Charles Pooter, his wife Carrie, his son Lupin, and numerous friends and acquaintances over a period of 15 months.
Although its initial public reception was muted, the Diary came to be recognised by critics as a classic work of humour, and it has never been out of print. It helped to establish a genre of humorous popular fiction based on lower or lower-middle class aspirations, and was the forerunner of numerous fictitious diary novels in the later 20th century. The Diary has been the subject of several stage and screen adaptations, including Ken Russell's "silent film" treatment of 1964, a four-part TV film scripted by Andrew Davies in 2007, and a widely praised stage version in 2011, in which an all-male cast of three played all the parts.
Selected excerpt
“ | Something incomprehensible, vexatious and hopeless takes possession of the man's whole being. He forgets his comrade who is awaiting him, forgets the work that is to be accomplished that night, and with his whole excited spirit abandons himself to the dumb dog. He cannot convince himself that the dog does not comprehend either the danger, or his words, or the necessity of going home at once. He lifts him angrily by the skin of his neck and so carries him ten steps nearer to the house. There he deposits him carefully on the snow and commands: "Away with you, go home!" | ” |
— Leonid Andreyev, The Burglar |
More Did you know
- ... that Samuel Minturn Peck was the first Poet Laureate of Alabama, a title created for him, from 1930 until his death in 1938?
- ... that James McBride was described as "clearly stunned" when his novel The Good Lord Bird won the National Book Award for Fiction?
- ... that Arishima Ikuma, Japanese novelist, published his new-style poems and short stories as a vehicle to introduce the works of the French impressionist painter Paul Cézanne to the Japanese public?
- ... that German-born Jewish Egyptologist Käte Bosse-Griffiths published a novel in the Welsh language?
- ... that John Fowles' postmodern novel The French Lieutenant's Woman both emulated and parodied popular Victorian novels, like those of Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy?
Selected illustration
Did you know (auto-generated) -
- ... that Hammersmith by Gustav Holst was acclaimed by Frederick Fennell for having "some of the most treacherous stretches of music making" in band literature?
- ... that a study of Anglo-Saxon literature begun by Bernard Pitt in 1914 was completed by a colleague after Pitt was killed in the First World War?
- ... that Polish Renaissance poet Jan Kochanowski – considered "the founding father of Polish literature" – wrote threnodies, the first Polish-language tragedy, and epigrams?
- ... that Cathie Dunsford was unable to find many books about lesbianism in the 1970s, but by the 1980s had herself become a writer and anthologist of lesbian literature?
- ... that Peter Demetz, who taught German literature at Yale University from 1956 to 1991, was born in Prague where he was persecuted under the Nazis and escaped the Communist regime in 1949?
- ... that History of the Mission of the Evangelical Brothers in the Caribbean by C. G. A. Oldendorp was the first book to publish Igbo-language terms in 1777?
Today in literature
- 1292 - Sheikh Saadi, Persian Sufi poet died
- 1544 - Teofilo Folengo, Italian poet died
- 1608 - John Milton, English poet born
- 1636 - Fabian Birkowski, Polish writer died
- 1854 - Almeida Garrett, Portuguese writer died
- 1891 - Maksim Bahdanovič, Belarusian poet born
- 1899 - Jean de Brunhoff, French author born
- 1901 - Ödön von Horváthh, Hungarian-born writer born
- 1905 - Dalton Trumbo, American writer born
- 1918 - Jerome Beatty Jr, American author born
- 1926 - Jan Křesadlo, Czech writer born
- 1941 - Dmitry Merezhkovsky, Russian writer and philosopher died
- 1964 - Dame Edith Sitwell, British poet and critic died
- 1995 - Toni Cade Bambara, American author died
- 2005 - Robert Sheckley, American author died
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Regions: | Australian literature · Indian literature · Persian literature |
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