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...)
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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is the 1969 autobiography about the early years of African-American writer and poet Maya Angelou. The first in a seven-volume series, it is a coming-of-age story that illustrates how strength of character and a love of literature can help overcome racism and trauma. The book begins when three-year-old Maya and her older brother are sent to Stamps, Arkansas, to live with their grandmother and ends when Maya becomes a mother at the age of 17. In the course of Caged Bird, Maya transforms from a victim of racism with an inferiority complex into a self-possessed, dignified young woman capable of responding to prejudice.
Angelou uses her autobiography to explore subjects such as identity, rape, racism, and literacy. She also writes in new ways about women's lives in a male-dominated society. Maya, the younger version of Angelou and the book's central character, has been called "a symbolic character for every black girl growing up in America". Angelou's description of being raped as an eight-year-old child overwhelms the book, although it is presented briefly in the text. Rape is used as a metaphor for the suffering of her race. Another metaphor, that of a bird struggling to escape its cage, is a central image throughout the work.
Selected excerpt
“ | I had begun life with benevolent intentions and thirsted for the moment when I should put them in practice and make myself useful to my fellow beings. Now all was blasted; instead of that serenity of conscience which allowed me to look back upon the past with self-satisfaction, and from thence to gather promise of new hopes, I was seized by remorse and the sense of guilt, which hurried me away to a hell of intense tortures such as no language can describe. | ” |
— Mary Shelley, Frankenstein |
More Did you know
- ... that one scholar suggests Louisa May Alcott wrote the sensationalist novella Behind a Mask to subvert the fantasy of the perfect "little woman"?
- ... that the works of Georgette Heyer include her first novel The Black Moth (1921), which she based on a story she wrote for her haemophiliac younger brother?
- ... that British horror novelist Simon Clark wrote a sequel to John Wyndham's The Day of the Triffids?
- ... that Cut Like Wound is Indian novelist Anita Nair's first work of detective fiction?
- ... that some of the most popular nautical fiction works, including those about Horatio Hornblower and Jack Aubrey, were based upon the real adventures of the "sea wolf" – Lord Cochrane?
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Did you know (auto-generated) -
- ... that a 1955 satirical comedy play by Kasymaly Jantöshev was one of the first signs of the relaxation of Soviet literary restrictions after the death of Joseph Stalin?
- ... that The Man Without Talent is an I-novel, a genre of semi-autobiographical confessional literature that has been popular in Japan since the early twentieth century?
- ... that Rudaki is acknowledged as the founder of New Persian poetry in Iran and the father of Tajik literature in Tajikistan?
- ... that there is a Gambian literature even though it has been argued that there is "minimal basis" for its existence?
- ... that Malaysian poet Wong Phui Nam wrote in English, despite feeling no connection to the English literary tradition?
- ... that The Tale of Genji's Kaoru Genji has been called literature's first antihero?
Today in literature
- 1616 - Richard Hakluyt, English writer died
- 1644 - Areopagitica by John Milton is published.
- 1804 - Richard Graves, British writer died
- 1897 - Nirad C. Chaudhuri, Indian writer born
- 1908 - Nelson S. Bond, American science fiction writer born
- 1909 - Nigel Tranter, British historian and writer born
- 1920 - Paul Celan, Romanian-born German poet born
- 1923 - Urmuz, Romanian writer died
- 1931 - Dervla Murphy, Irish traveller and author born
- 1936 - Robert Barnard, British mystery writer born
- 1965 - Jennifer Michael Hecht, American poet born
- 1974 - Cornelius Ryan, Irish-born author died
- 1976 - André Malraux, French author died
- 1990 - Roald Dahl, British author died
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