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...)
General images -
Z. Marcas is a novelette by French author Honoré de Balzac first published in 1840. Set in contemporary Paris, it describes the rise and fall of a brilliant political strategist who is abandoned by the politicians he helps into power. Destitute and forgotten, he befriends a pair of students who live next door to him in a boarding-house. The story follows their many discussions about the political situation in France.
Although Z. Marcas features characters from other Balzac stories and elements of literary realism – both hallmarks of Balzac's style – it is remembered primarily for its political themes. Balzac, a legitimist, believed that France's lack of bold leadership had led to mediocrity and ruin, and that men of quality were being ignored or worse. He maintained that the youth of France were in danger of being abandoned by the government, and predicted unrest in the years to come.
The story also explores Balzac's conviction that a person's name is a powerful indicator of his or her destiny, an idea he drew from the work of Laurence Sterne. The title character, with his keen intellect, is based on Balzac's conception of himself: a visionary genius who fails to achieve his true potential because of less talented individuals with more social power.
Selected excerpt
“ | I don’t know why it should be so, but it is an undeniable fact that there is nothing makes a man look so supremely ridiculous as losing his hat. The feeling of helpless misery that shoots down one’s back on suddenly becoming aware that one’s head is bare is among the most bitter ills that flesh is heir to. And then there is the wild chase after it, accompanied by an excitable small dog, who thinks it is a game, and in the course of which you are certain to upset three or four innocent children—to say nothing of their mothers—butt a fat old gentleman on to the top of a perambulator, and carom off a ladies’ seminary into the arms of a wet sweep. | ” |
— Jerome K. Jerome, Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow |
More Did you know
- ... that the John Steinbeck play adaptation Of Mice and Men debuted on Broadway while the novel of the same name was still on the best seller lists?
- ... that Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Eminent Characters series includes: a lawyer, a speaker, a Unitarian, a general, a rebel, a betrayer, a poet, an actress, a philosopher, a friend, a playwright and a lord?
- ... that The Insider, a roman à clef, was Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao's first novel?
- ... that a possible source for the poem The Fox, the Wolf and the Husbandman, by the 15th-century Scottish poet Robert Henryson, was Aesop's Fables as published by William Caxton?
- ... that Maria Konopnicka's poem Rota became so popular it was seen as an unofficial anthem of Poland?
Selected illustration
Did you know (auto-generated) -
- ... that literary fiction novel Agatha of Little Neon's title stems from a house that is "the color of Mountain Dew"?
- ... that campaign literature in the 1894 Montana capital referendum accused Helena residents of copious Manhattan consumption?
- ... that medieval literature scholar Theodore Silverstein's unit in World War II took over the Eiffel Tower to intercept communications of German aircraft?
- ... that The Inland Whale, by Theodora Kroeber, sought to demonstrate the literary merit of Indigenous American oral traditions?
- ... 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 Polish Renaissance poet Jan Kochanowski – considered "the founding father of Polish literature" – wrote threnodies, the first Polish-language tragedy, and epigrams?
Today in literature
- 1540 - Helius Eobanus Hessus, German poet died
- 1606 - Philippe Desportes, French poet died
- 1713 - Denis Diderot, French philosopher and encyclopedist born
- 1889 - Teresa de la Parra, Venezuelan writer born
- 1911 - Flann O'Brien, Irish humorist born
- 1928 - Louise Fitzhugh, American author born
- 1936 - Václav Havel, playwright and President of the Czech Republic born
- 1936 - J. Slauerhoff, Dutch poet and novelist died
- 1939 - Marie-Claire Blais, French Canadian author and playwright born
- 1946 - Zahida Hina, Pakistani columnist and story writer born
- 1948 - Zoran Živković, Serbian writer born
- 1952 - Clive Barker, English writer born
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