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.
The term is sometimes used synonymously with literary fiction, which encompasses fiction written with the goal of literary merit.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...)
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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
“ | 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 Meralda Warren and several children on Pitcairn Island wrote the first book published in both English and Pitkern, a South Pacific creole language?
- ... that octogenarian poet Joyce La Mers donated $500,000 to Light Quarterly, the US's only literary magazine devoted to light verse?
- ... that the non-fiction book The Siege: The Attack on the Taj is set during the 2008 Mumbai attacks?
- ... that Lancelot de Carle, an eyewitness to the trial and execution of Anne Boleyn, wrote a poem detailing her life and the circumstances surrounding her death?
- ... that writer Hu Yepin was betrayed by rival communists, arrested by the British police, and executed by the Kuomintang?
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Did you know (auto-generated) -
- ... that Romanian literary scholar Dan Simonescu, who edited a chronicle dealing with the reign of Michael the Brave, had to delete any mention of Michael having "all the Jews murdered"?
- ... that the poet Fernando Pessoa considered Alberto Caeiro, one of his own heteronyms, to be his master?
- ... that literary fiction novel Agatha of Little Neon's title stems from a house that is "the color of Mountain Dew"?
- ... that Emelia Quinn argues that "monstrous vegans" have recurred in literature since Mary Shelley's Frankenstein?
- ... that Edo literature was influenced by British colonialism in the late 19th century, which introduced the Roman script and Christianity to the Edo people?
- ... 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?
Today in literature
- 1547 - Philipp Nikodemus Frischlin, German philologist and poet born
- 1658 - Georg Philipp Harsdorffer, German poet died
- 1680 - Barthold Heinrich Brockes, German poet born
- 1722 - John Home, Scottish writer born
- 1743 - Quintin Craufurd, British author born
- 1788 - Theodore Edward Hook, English author born
- 1923 - Dannie Abse, Welsh poet and writer born
- 1924 - Rosamunde Pilcher, English novelist born
- 1947 - Robert Morace, American writer born
- 1988 - Rais Amrohvi, Pakistani poet died
- 2002 - Jan de Hartog, Dutch-born writer died
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