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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The Duino Elegies are a collection of ten elegies written by the Bohemian-Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926). Rilke, who is "widely recognized as one of the most lyrically intense German-language poets," began writing the elegies in 1912 while a guest of Princess Marie von Thurn und Taxis (1855–1934) at Duino Castle, near Trieste on the Adriatic Sea. The poems, 859 lines long in total, were dedicated to the Princess upon their publication in 1923. During this ten-year period, the elegies languished incomplete for long stretches of time as Rilke suffered frequently from severe depression—some of which was caused by the events of World War I and being conscripted into military service. Aside from brief episodes of writing in 1913 and 1915, Rilke did not return to the work until a few years after the war ended. With a sudden, renewed inspiration—writing in a frantic pace he described as a "boundless storm, a hurricane of the spirit"—he completed the collection in February 1922 while staying at Château de Muzot in Veyras, in Switzerland's Rhone Valley. After their publication in 1923 and Rilke's death in 1926, the Duino Elegies were quickly recognized by critics and scholars as his most important 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" |
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- ... that in the 1895 play Trilby, the role of Svengali was created by American actor Wilton Lackaye?
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- ... that Walter Arthur Berendsohn, who successfully nominated Nelly Sachs and Willy Brandt for their respective Nobel Prizes, wrote Die humanistische Front, the seminal book on German exile literature?
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Did you know (auto-generated) -
- ... that Imagining Mars: A Literary History "presents a compelling case that 'Mars matters'"?
- ... that the Lviv branch of the Ukrderzhnatsmenvydav was the main publisher of Polish literature in the Soviet Union by 1941?
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- ... that Hammersmith by Gustav Holst was acclaimed by Frederick Fennell for having "some of the most treacherous stretches of music making" in band literature?
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- ... that there is a Gambian literature even though it has been argued that there is "minimal basis" for its existence?
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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