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.
Literature, as an art form, can also include works in various non-fiction genres, such as biography, diaries, memoirs, 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 -
"To Autumn" is a poem by English Romantic poet John Keats. The work was composed on 19 September 1819 and published in 1820 in a volume of Keats's poetry that included Lamia and The Eve of St. Agnes. "To Autumn" is the final work in a group of poems known as Keats's "1819 odes". Although personal problems left him little time to devote to poetry in 1819, he composed "To Autumn" after a walk near Winchester one autumnal evening. The work marks the end of his poetic career, as he needed to earn money and could no longer devote himself to the lifestyle of a poet. A little over a year following the publication of "To Autumn", Keats died in Rome.
The poem has three eleven-line stanzas which describe a progression through the season, from the late maturation of the crops to the harvest and to the last days of autumn when winter is nearing. The imagery is richly achieved through the personification of Autumn, and the description of its bounty, its sights and sounds. The work has been interpreted as a meditation on death; as an allegory of artistic creation; as Keats's response to the Peterloo Massacre, which took place in the same year; and as an expression of nationalist sentiment. One of the most anthologised English lyric poems, "To Autumn" has been regarded by critics as one of the most perfect short poems in the English language.
Selected excerpt
“ | Don't laugh at the spinsters, dear girls, for often very tender, tragic romances are hidden away in the hearts that beat so quietly under the sober gowns, and many silent sacrifices of youth, health, ambition, love itself, make the faded faces beautiful in God’s sight. Even the sad, sour sisters should be kindly dealt with, because they have missed the sweetest part of life, if for no other reason. And looking at them with compassion, not contempt, girls in their bloom should remember that they too may miss the blossom time. That rosy cheeks don’t last forever, that silver threads will come in the bonnie brown hair, and that, by-and-by, kindness and respect will be as sweet as love and admiration now. | ” |
— Louisa May Alcott, Little Women |
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?
Selected illustration
Did you know (auto-generated) -
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/44/Nuvola_apps_filetypes.svg/47px-Nuvola_apps_filetypes.svg.png)
- ... that Sheila Egoff, Canada's first professor of children's literature, returned to her library work immediately after retirement?
- ... that the cultural scholar Hermann Bausinger wrote a book about the history of literature from Swabia from the 18th century to the present, published for his 90th birthday?
- ... that Manuel Carpio's 1849 poem is the earliest literary depiction of the weeping ghost La Llorona?
- ... that Robert Aiello's first novel was published after literary agents turned it down roughly 60 times?
- ... that Soviet German literary critic Richard Knorre was injured in an explosion during the siege of Leningrad?
- ... 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
- 1474 – Ludovico Ariosto, Italian poet born
- 1644 – Francis Quarles, English poet died
- 1645 – Francisco de Quevedo, Spanish writer died
- 1656 – Joseph Hall, English bishop and writer died
- 1682 – Juan Caramuel y Lobkowitz, Spanish writer died
- 1778 – Clemens Brentano, German poet born
- 1783 – N. F. S. Grundtvig, Danish writer and philosopher born
- 1804 – Eduard Mörike, German poet born
- 1830 – Frédéric Mistral, French poet born
- 1886 – Siegfried Sassoon, English poet born
- 1919 – Gianni Brera, Italian writer born
- 1924 – Grace Metalious, American writer (Peyton Place) born
- 1933 – Michael Frayn, British playwright born
- 1947 – Ann Beattie, American writer born
- 1948 – Thomas Mofolo, Lesotho writer died
- 1952 – The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway is published
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