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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The Penelopiad is a novella by Margaret Atwood. It was published in 2005 as part of the first set of books in the Canongate Myth Series where contemporary authors rewrite ancient myths. In The Penelopiad, Penelope reminisces on the events during the Odyssey, life in Hades, Odysseus, Helen, and her relationships with her parents. A chorus of the twelve maids, whom Odysseus believed were disloyal and whom Telemachus hanged, interrupt Penelope's narrative to express their view on events. The maids' interludes use a new genre each time, including a jump-rope rhyme, a lament, an idyll, a ballad, a lecture, a court trial and several types of songs.
The novella's central themes include the effects of story-telling perspectives, double standards between the sexes and the classes, and the fairness of justice. Atwood had previously used characters and storylines from Greek mythology in fiction such as her novel The Robber Bride, short story The Elysium Lifestyle Mansions and poems "Circe: Mud Poems" and "Helen of Troy Does Counter Dancing" but used Robert Graves' The Greek Myths and E. V. Rieu and D. C. H. Rieu's version of the Odyssey to prepare for this novella.
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 a stage adaptation of Kwee Tek Hoay's novel The Rose of Cikembang was made before he even finished writing it?
- ... that Shabnam Shakeel was a Pakistani Urdu poet who won the "President's Pride of Performance award" in 2004?
- ... that the 1987 novel The Firebrand, written by American author Marion Zimmer Bradley, depicts the Trojan War from the perspective of the prophet Kassandra, daughter of King Priam?
- ... that the admirers of poet Mary Elizabeth McGrath Blake included Theodore Roosevelt and Oliver Wendell Holmes?
- ... that one reason the medieval English writer Robert of Cricklade's biography of Thomas Becket may have been lost is it was too favourable to the side of King Henry II of England rather than Becket?
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Did you know (auto-generated) -
- ... that the poet Fernando Pessoa considered Alberto Caeiro, one of his own heteronyms, to be his master?
- ... that Alexandre Dumas's travel book Le Corricolo, published in 1843, contains one of the earliest literary accounts of Neapolitan pizza?
- ... 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 Emelia Quinn argues that "monstrous vegans" have recurred in literature since Mary Shelley's Frankenstein?
- ... that the North-Western Regional Committee of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) ran an underground network to distribute literature to German soldiers in occupied areas?
- ... that The Tale of Genji's Kaoru Genji has been called literature's first antihero?
Today in literature
- 1123 - Omar Khayyám, Persian poet died
- 1555 - Heinrich Meibom, German historian and poet born
- 1595 - Jean Chapelain, French writer born
- 1609 - Alexander Hume, Scottish poet died
- 1612 - Samuel Butler, English poet born
- 1649 - William Drummond of Hawthornden, Scottish poet died
- 1679 - Thomas Hobbes, English philosopher died
- 1732 - John Gay, British playwright died
- 1777 - Madame de Récamier, French writer born
- 1795 - Thomas Carlyle, British writer and historian born
- 1835 - Samuel Butler, British writer born
- 1875 - Rainer Maria Rilke, Austrian poet born
- 1903 - Cornell Woolrich, American writer born
- 1916 - Ely Jacques Kahn, Jr., American writer born
- 1933 - Stefan George, German poet died
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Regions: | Australian literature · Indian literature · Persian literature |
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