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 prose, fiction, drama, poetry, and including both print and digital writing. In recent centuries, the definition has expanded to include oral literature, also known as orature much of which has been transcribed. Literature is a method of recording, preserving, and transmitting knowledge and entertainment, and can also have a social, psychological, spiritual, or political role.
Literature, as an art form, can also include works in various non-fiction genres, such as biography, diaries, memoir, letters, and essays. Within its broad 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
“ | Sleep is a pathless labyrinth, Dark to the gaze of moons and suns, Through which the exile clue of dreams, A gossamer thread, obscurely runs. |
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— Clark Ashton Smith, "The Maze of Sleep" |
More Did you know
- ... that Irish poet John Keegan Casey was released from prison on the condition he leave for Australia, but instead he stayed in Dublin in disguise?
- ... that the 1916 children's novel Just David was the second in a series of four consecutive bestsellers in the United States for Eleanor H. Porter?
- ... that a decasyllabic quatrain is a poetic form in which each stanza consists of four lines of ten syllables, usually with a rhyme scheme of AABB or ABAB?
- ... that in late 2008, Norwegian novelist Johan Harstad won the Brage Prize and was hired as the first in-house playwright at the National Theatre of Norway?
- ... that the Franciscan friar Manuel Antonio de Rivas, who was tried for heresy in 1775 in Mexico, wrote the first science-fiction text in the Americas?
Selected illustration
Did you know (auto-generated) -
- ... that the Three Bards are the most celebrated poets in the history of Polish literature?
- ... that Swedish writer Hedda Anderson began her literary career at the age of 58, following her husband's death in 1888?
- ... that the pastor John Littlejohn went from selling pornographic literature to sailors as a youth to protecting the Declaration of Independence?
- ... that The Tale of Genji's Kaoru Genji has been called literature's first antihero?
- ... that Emelia Quinn argues that "monstrous vegans" have recurred in literature since Mary Shelley's Frankenstein?
- ... that 19th-century Polish ethnographer Zorian Dołęga-Chodakowski travelled the countryside as a "wild man" and later appeared as a literary character?
Today in literature
- 1815 - Anthony Trollope, English novelist born
- 1852 - Vasily Zhukovsky, Russian poet died
- 1905 - Robert Penn Warren, American poet born
- 1940 - Sue Grafton, American author born
- 1942 - Karin Boye, Swedish author died
- 1942 - Lucy Maud Montgomery, Canadian author died
- 1947 - Willa Cather, American writer died
- 1980 - Alejo Carpentier, Cuban writer died
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