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...)
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The Sun Also Rises is a 1926 novel written by American author Ernest Hemingway about a group of American and British expatriates who travel from Paris to the Festival of San Fermín in Pamplona to watch the running of the bulls and the bullfights. An early and enduring modernist novel, it received mixed reviews upon publication, but has since been considered his greatest work. The novel was published in the United States in October 1926 by the publishing house Scribner's.
On the surface the novel is a love story between the protagonist Jake Barnes—a man whose war wound has made him impotent—and the promiscuous divorcée Lady Brett Ashley. Brett's affair with Robert Cohn causes Jake to be upset and break off his friendship with Cohn; her seduction of the 19-year-old matador Romero causes Jake to lose his good reputation among the Spaniards in Pamplona. The novel is a roman à clef; the characters are based on real people and the action is based on real events. In the novel, Hemingway presents his notion that the "Lost Generation", considered to have been decadent, dissolute and irretrievably damaged by World War I, was resilient and strong. Additionally, Hemingway investigates the themes of love, death, renewal in nature, and the nature of masculinity.
Selected excerpt
“ | All these, however, were mere terrors of the night, phantoms of the mind that walk in darkness; and though he had seen many spectres in his time, and been more than once beset by Satan in divers shapes, in his lonely perambulations, yet daylight put an end to all these evils; and he would have passed a pleasant life of it, in despite of the devil and all his works, if his path had not been crossed by a being that causes more perplexity to mortal man than ghosts, goblins, and the whole race of witches put together, and that was—a woman. | ” |
— Washington Irving, "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" |
More Did you know
- ... that And Still I Rise, Maya Angelou's third volume of poetry, contains two of the author's most famous poems?
- ... that Kwee Tek Hoay's stage play Allah jang Palsoe was published seven years before the first canonical Indonesian drama?
- ... that The Monk As Man: The Unknown Life of Swami Vivekananda is one of the many books written on Swami Vivekananda?
- ... that the recent popularity of Amish romance novels has been seen as a reaction to the increasing popularity of erotic fiction such as Fifty Shades of Grey?
- ... that Jacques Rabemananjara, former Vice President of Madagascar, was also an important negritude poet and playwright?
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Did you know (auto-generated) -
- ... that there is a Gambian literature even though it has been argued that there is "minimal basis" for its existence?
- ... that the literary movement of créolie tries to integrate the identity of Réunion with France?
- ... that Alexandre Dumas's travel book Le Corricolo, published in 1843, contains one of the earliest literary accounts of Neapolitan pizza?
- ... that campaign literature in the 1894 Montana capital referendum accused Helena residents of copious Manhattan consumption?
- ... that Bellman's song "Ge rum i Bröllopsgåln din hund!" describes "one of the wildest weddings in Swedish literature"?
- ... 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?
Today in literature
- 1635 - Philippe Quinault, French writer born
- 1844 - Detlev von Liliencron, German poet born
- 1864 - Otto Erich Hartleben, German writer born
- 1926 - Allen Ginsberg, American poet born
- 1931 - John Norman, American author born
- 1964 - Frans Eemil Sillanpää, Finnish writer died
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