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, and including 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, 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...)
General images -
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
“ | It all seemed too good to be true. Hither and thither through the meadows he rambled busily, along the hedgerows, across the copses, finding everywhere birds building, flowers budding, leaves thrusting—everything happy, and progressive, and occupied. And instead of having an uneasy conscience pricking him and whispering "whitewash!" he somehow could only feel how jolly it was to be the only idle dog among all these busy citizens. After all, the best part of a holiday is perhaps not so much to be resting yourself, as to see all the other fellows busy working. | ” |
— Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows |
More Did you know
- ... that Polish writer Irena Jurgielewiczowa was also an underground teacher and a resistance fighter in WWII?
- ... that Kwee Tek Hoay's novel Drama dari Krakatau blames the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa on deliberate damage to a Vishnu statue?
- ... that a famous line by Li E reads "rain/wash/autumn/lush/people/pale"?
- ... that the memoir Wave is based on the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami?
- ... that George Packer's book The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America won the 2013 National Book Award for Nonfiction?
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Did you know (auto-generated) -
- ... that in the Forum of Augustus in Rome, elogia were hung on statues of commanders and Augustus's ancestors?
- ... that Al-Wishah fi Fawa'id al-Nikah, a 15th-century Islamic sex manual by Egyptian writer Al-Suyuti, was based on both traditional hadith literature and material influenced by Indian erotology?
- ... that Hammersmith by Gustav Holst was acclaimed by Frederick Fennell for having "some of the most treacherous stretches of music making" in band literature?
- ... that The Tale of Genji's Kaoru Genji has been called literature's first antihero?
- ... that the poet Fernando Pessoa considered Alberto Caeiro, one of his own heteronyms, to be his master?
- ... that Susan Chitty's memoir on her mother, Antonia White, was viewed as a "literary assassination" when published?
Today in literature
- 1621 - Jean de la Fontaine, French writer born
- 1889 - The first issue of the Wall Street Journal is published
- 1892 - Richard Aldington, English poet born
- 1987 - Gerardo Diego, Spanish poet died
- 2004 - Paula Danziger, American author died
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