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.
Literary criticism is one of the oldest academic disciplines, and is concerned with the literary merit or intellectual significance of specific texts. The study of books and other texts as artifacts or traditions is instead encompassed by textual criticism or the history of the book. "Literature", as an art form, is sometimes used synonymously with literary fiction, fiction written with the goal of artistic merit, but can also include works in various non-fiction genres, such as biography, diaries, memoirs, letters, and essays. Within this broader definition, literature includes non-fictional books, articles, or other written information on a particular subject. (Full article...)
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The Hunger Games is a 2008 science fiction novel by the American writer Suzanne Collins. It is written in the voice of 16-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who lives in the dystopian, post-apocalyptic nation of Panem in North America. The Capitol, a highly advanced metropolis, exercises political control over the rest of the nation. The Hunger Games are an annual event in which one boy and one girl aged 12–18 from each of the twelve districts surrounding the Capitol are selected by lottery to compete in a televised battle to the death.
The book received mostly positive feedback from major reviewers and authors. It was praised for its storyline and character development, though some reviewers have noted similarities between Collins' book and Koushun Takami's Battle Royale (1999). In writing The Hunger Games, Collins drew upon Greek mythology, Roman gladiatorial games, and contemporary reality television for thematic content. The novel won many awards, including the California Young Reader Medal, and was named one of Publishers Weekly's "Best Books of the Year" in 2008. The novel is the first in The Hunger Games trilogy, followed by Catching Fire (2009) and Mockingjay (2010). A film adaptation, directed by Gary Ross and co-written and co-produced by Collins herself, was released in 2012.
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“ | It occurred to him that what had appeared perfectly impossible before, namely that he had not spent his life as he should have done, might after all be true. It occurred to him that his scarcely perceptible attempts to struggle against what was considered good by the most highly placed people, those scarcely noticeable impulses which he had immediately suppressed, might have been the real thing, and all the rest false. And his professional duties and the whole arrangement of his life and of his family, and all his social and official interests, might all have been false. He tried to defend all those things to himself and suddenly felt the weakness of what he was defending. There was nothing to defend. | ” |
— Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych |
More Did you know
- ... that Norwegian surrealist poet Triztán Vindtorn changed his first name into the name of his favorite pub?
- ... that The Six Wives of Henry VIII inspired Lecia Cornwall to write historical novels?
- ... that Stolen Childhood was the first full-length book on the history of children enslaved during the American slave-era?
- ... that the Indian poet and philosopher Dwijendranath Tagore wrote the book Boxometry about the construction of boxes?
- ... that The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five, a science fiction novel by Doris Lessing, was adapted for the opera in 1997 by Philip Glass?
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Did you know (auto-generated) -
- ... that Polish Renaissance poet Jan Kochanowski – considered "the founding father of Polish literature" – wrote threnodies, the first Polish-language tragedy, and epigrams?
- ... that Walid Daqqa wrote several works of prison literature, including a children's novel about a boy who uses magical olive oil to visit his imprisoned father?
- ... that in her 2021 book The Origins of Early Christian Literature, Robyn Faith Walsh found that German Romanticists were in part responsible for modern scholarly assumptions about the gospels?
- ... that Bulkboeken ('bulk books') were cheap reprints of Dutch literary classics, published from 1971 to the late 1990s, and again from 2007?
- ... that the lands of the Shirvanshah served as the focal point for Persian literature during the 12th century?
- ... that literary agent Jacques Chambrun sold unauthorized, scandalous excerpts of a Marilyn Monroe memoir to a British tabloid?
Today in literature
- 1638 - Charles Sackville, 6th Earl of Dorset, English poet born
- 1670 - William Congreve, English playwright born
- 1724 - Frances Brooke, English writer born
- 1732 - Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, French playwright born
- 1776 - E.T.A. Hoffmann, German writer born
- 1862 - Edith Wharton, American writer born
- 1888 - Vicki Baum, Austrian writer born
- 1895 - Eugen Roth, German writer born
- 1934 - Stanisław Grochowiak, Polish poet born
- 1998 - Walter D. Edmonds, American author died
- 2005 - Vladimir Savchenko, Ukrainian writer died
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