Portal:Literature
Introduction
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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 -
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell is the 2004 first novel by British writer Susanna Clarke. An alternative history set in 19th-century England around the time of the Napoleonic Wars, it is based on the premise that magic once existed in England and has returned with two men: Gilbert Norrell and Jonathan Strange. Centring on the relationship between these two men, the novel investigates the nature of "Englishness" and the boundaries between reason and unreason, Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Dane, and Northern and Southern English cultural tropes/stereotypes. It has been described as a fantasy novel, an alternative history, and a historical novel. It inverts the Industrial Revolution conception of the North/South divide in England: in this book the North is romantic and magical, rather than rational and concrete.
The narrative draws on various Romantic literary traditions, such as the comedy of manners, the Gothic tale, and the Byronic hero. The novel's language is a pastiche of 19th-century writing styles, such as those of Jane Austen and Charles Dickens. Clarke describes the supernatural with mundane details. She supplements the text with almost 200 footnotes, outlining the backstory and an entire fictional corpus of magical scholarship. The novel was well received by critics and reached number three on the New York Times best-seller list. It was longlisted for the 2004 Man Booker Prize and won the 2005 Hugo Award for Best Novel.
Selected excerpt
“ | Words! Mere words! How terrible they were! How clear, and vivid, and cruel! One could not escape from them. And yet what a subtle magic there was in them! They seemed to be able to give a plastic form to formless things, and to have a music of their own as sweet as that of viol or of lute. Mere words! Was there anything so real as words? | ” |
— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray |
More Did you know
- ... that in Googled: The End of the World as We Know It, Ken Auletta uses the story The Purloined Letter to describe the attitude of the traditional media executives toward Google?
- ... that Miriam Roth grew up in a Hungarian-speaking town, studied at a German-speaking university, and wrote best-sellers in Hebrew?
- ... that in the 1895 play Trilby, the role of Svengali was created by American actor Wilton Lackaye?
- ... that Louisa Venable Kyle wrote a children's book on The Witch of Pungo?
- ... that Walter Arthur Berendsohn, who successfully nominated Nelly Sachs and Willy Brandt for their respective Nobel Prizes, wrote Die humanistische Front, the seminal book on German exile literature?
Selected illustration
Did you know (auto-generated) -
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- ... that Bulkboeken ('bulk books') were cheap reprints of Dutch literary classics, published from 1971 to the late 1990s, and again from 2007?
- ... that Malaysian poet Wong Phui Nam wrote in English, despite feeling no connection to the English literary tradition?
- ... that The Inland Whale, by Theodora Kroeber, sought to demonstrate the literary merit of Indigenous American oral traditions?
- ... that Romanian literary scholar Dan Simonescu, who edited a chronicle dealing with the reign of Michael the Brave, had to delete any mention of Michael having "all the Jews murdered"?
- ... that a teacher of medieval literature and comic books writes the blog Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle?
- ... that John Seigenthaler hosted a literary interview program which ran for 42 years on Nashville Public Television?
Today in literature
- 1745 – Henry James Pye, English poet born
- 1751 – Johann Heinrich Voß, German poet born
- 1794 – William Carleton, Irish novelist born
- 1888 – Georges Bernanos, French writer born
- 1893 – Russel Crouse, American playwright born
- 1895 – Frederick Douglass, American abolitionist writer died
- 1912 – Pierre Boulle, French author born
- 1926 – Richard Matheson, American author born
- 1932 – Adrian Cristobal, Filipino writer born
- 1962 – Kenn Nesbitt, American children's author born
- 2003 – Maurice Blanchot, French author died
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Regions: | Australian literature · Indian literature · Persian literature |
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