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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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
“ | Away with your fictions of flimsy romance, Those tissues of falsehood which Folly has wove; Give me the mild beam of the soul-breathing glance, Or the rapture which dwells on the first kiss of love. |
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— Lord Byron, "The First Kiss of Love" |
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 Hadriana in All My Dreams, published in 1988, was the first novel by a Haitian author to win a major French literary award?
- ... that the poet Fernando Pessoa considered Alberto Caeiro, one of his own heteronyms, to be his master?
- ... that more than 1000 tons of paper were used every year printing car literature for the British Motor Corporation by the in-house Nuffield Press?
- ... that the Three Bards are the most celebrated poets in the history of Polish literature?
- ... that the pastor John Littlejohn went from selling pornographic literature to sailors as a youth to protecting the Declaration of Independence?
- ... that Soviet German literary critic Richard Knorre was injured in an explosion during the siege of Leningrad?
Today in literature
- 1617 - Barnabe Rich, English soldier and writer died
- 1644 - Luís Vélez de Guevara, Spanish writer died
- 1728 - Oliver Goldsmith, English playwright born
- 1759 - Friedrich von Schiller, German writer born
- 1772 - Pedro Correia Garção, Portuguese poet died
- 1871 - Winston Churchill, American novelist born
- 1879 - Vachel Lindsay, American poet born
- 1887 - Arnold Zweig, German author born
- 1893 - John P. Marquand, American writer born
- 1891 - Arthur Rimbaud, French poet died
- 1909 - Renee Vivien, American poet died
- 1960 - Neil Gaiman, English writer born
- 1995 - Ken Saro-Wiwa, Nigerian writer died
- 2001 - Ken Kesey, American author died
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