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The Literary Portal
Literature is literally "an acquaintance with letters", as in the first sense given in the Oxford English Dictionary (from the Latin littera meaning "an individual written character"). The term has generally come to identify a collection of texts or works of art, which in Western culture are mainly prose, both fiction and non-fiction, drama and poetry. In much (if not all) of the world, texts can be oral as well, and include such genres as epic, legend, myth, ballad, other forms of oral poetry, and the folktale. The word "literature" as a common noun can refer to any form of writing, such as essays; "Literature" as a proper noun refers to a whole body of literary work.
The history of literature begins with the history of writing, in the Bronze Age of Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt, although the oldest literary texts date to a full millennium after the invention of writing, to the late 3rd millennium BC. The earliest literary authors known by name are Ptahhotep and Enheduanna, dating to ca. the 24th and 23rd centuries BC, respectively. More about Literature...
Selected article
Fun Home (subtitled A Family Tragicomic) is a 2006 graphic memoir by American writer Alison Bechdel, author of the comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For. It chronicles the author's childhood and youth in rural Pennsylvania, USA, focusing on her complex relationship with her father. The book addresses themes of sexual orientation, gender roles, suicide, dysfunctional family life, and the role of literature in understanding oneself and one's family. Writing and illustrating Fun Home took seven years, in part because of Bechdel's laborious artistic process, which includes photographing herself in poses for each human figure.
Fun Home has been both a popular and critical success, and spent two weeks on the New York Times Best Seller list. Fun Home also generated controversy: a public library in Missouri removed Fun Home from its shelves for five months after local residents objected to its contents.
Selected picture
Peter Rabbit and family, from Beatrix Potter's The Tale of Peter Rabbit (1902) (image details)Image credit:Beatrix Potter
Did you know ...
... that Henry Denker's play about Sigmund Freud (pictured), A Far Country, premiered on Broadway at the Music Box Theatre in 1961, and that Curd Jürgens played Freud in a 1979 German language production at the Theater in der Josefstadt, Vienna?
... that Lawrence Ferlinghetti's best-known collection of poetry is entitled A Coney Island of the Mind?
... that Cordelia Grey, Kate Brannigan, Bertha Cool, V. I. Warshawski, Tally McGinnis (created by Nancy Sanra), and Precious Ramotswe are female private investigators?
... that Nils Holgersson is a boy who takes great delight in hurting the animals on his father's farm?
... that U.S. literary critic Leslie Fiedler was one of the first to question the notion of a gap between "high art" and popular art", in his 1972 book, Cross the Border—Close the Gap?
... that during her lifetime two plays were written about Mary Frith, an English pickpocket?
... that The Doors took their name from the title of a book by Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception, a phrase which was in turn borrowed from William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell?
Topics
New pages
Quotes
“ When a book and a head collide and there is a hollow sound, is that always in the book? ” Original: "Wenn ein Buch und ein Kopf zusammenstoßen und es klingt hohl, ist das allemal im Buche?"
A day in literature
24 November
- 1394 - Charles, Duke of Orléans, French poet born
- 1583 - Juan Martínez de Jáuregui y Aguilar, Spanish poet born
- 1632 - Baruch Spinoza, Dutch philosopher born
- 1713 - Laurence Sterne, Irish novelist born
- 1801 - Ludwig Bechstein, German poet born
- 1826 - Carlo Collodi, Italian author born
- 1849 - Frances Hodgson Burnett, British-born author born
- 1859 - Charles Darwin publishes The Origin of Species.
- 1870 - Comte de Lautréamont, French writer died
- 1888 - Dale Carnegie, American writer born
- 1925 - William F. Buckley, Jr., American writer born
- 1927 - Ahmadou Kourouma, Ivorian writer born
- 1973 - John Neihardt, American writer died
- 1996 - Sorley MacLean, British poet died
- 2004 - Arthur Hailey, British-born author died
News
- 6 October, 2011 - Nobel prize in literature goes to Tomas Tranströmer.Guardian
- 6 September, 2011 - Shortlist for the 2011 Man Booker Prize for Fiction is announced. themanbookerprize.com
- 19 April, 2011 - A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan wins the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.Guardian
Categories
Subcategories of Literature:
Anthropomorphism – Books – Children's books – Essays – Essayists – Fiction – Genres – Gothic writing – LGBT literature – Literary awards – Literary characters – Literary concepts – Literary genres – Literary magazines – Literary movements – Literature by nationality – Literature in English – Medieval literature – Minimalism – Narratology – Novels – Plays – Poetry – Short stories – Small press publishers – Literature stubs – Theatre – Traditional stories – Writers – Young adult literature – Zines
WikiProjects
WikiProjects connected with literature:
- Literature
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- Children's literature
- Comics (Also under Visual arts)
- Anime and manga
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- Indian literature
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- Persian literature
- Philosophy
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- Philosophical literature
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Things you can do
Here are some Open Tasks :
- Copyedit: Cotillion (novel), Imperium (novel), Nikolai Minsky, Die Räuber, Tea Classics, The Thin Red Line, More...
- Wikify: More...
- Merge: More...
- add images Category:Wikipedia requested photographs of writers,Category:Wikipedia requested photographs of publications
- Start an article: Belarus literature, gutter rhyme, seven by nine squares, working class literature, storycraft, structural exegesis, Structural Irony, Summary Theme, threnos More...
- Expand: alter ego, English studies, Verisimilitude, Flash prose, German literature of the Baroque period, Identification, composite character, hexameter, internal rhyme, hypertextuality, Midnight Magic, Modernist poetry, high burlesque, Swahili literature, The Freedom Writers Diary, More...
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