Portal:Literature
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The history of literature begins with the history of writing, in Bronze Age Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt, although the oldest literary texts that have come down to us date to a full millennium after the invention of writing, to the late 3rd millennium BC. The earliest literary authors known by name are Ptahhotep and Enheduanna, dating to ca. the 24th and 23rd centuries BC, respectively.
Letters Written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark (1796) is a deeply personal travel narrative by the eighteenth-century British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. The twenty-five letters cover a wide range of topics, from sociological reflections on Scandinavia and its peoples to philosophical questions regarding identity. Published by Joseph Johnson, it was the last work issued during her lifetime.
Wollstonecraft undertook her tour of Sweden, Norway, and Denmark in order to retrieve a stolen treasure ship for her lover, Gilbert Imlay. Believing that the journey would restore their strained relationship, she eagerly set off. However, over the course of the three months she spent in Scandinavia, she realized that Imlay had no intention of renewing the relationship. The letters which make up the text, drawn from her journal and from missives she sent to Imlay, reflect her anger and melancholy over his repeated betrayals. Letters Written in Sweden is therefore both a travel narrative and an autobiographical memoir.
Using the rhetoric of the sublime, Wollstonecraft explores the relationship between the self and society. She values subjective experience, particularly in relation to nature; champions the liberation and education of women; and illustrates the detrimental effects of commerce on society.
Letters Written in Sweden was Wollstonecraft's most popular book in the 1790s—it sold well and was reviewed positively by most critics. Philosopher William Godwin wrote "if ever there was a book calculated to make a man in love with its author, this appears to me to be the book." It influenced Romantic poets such as William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who drew on its themes and its aesthetic. While the book initially inspired readers to travel to Scandinavia, it failed to retain its popularity after the publication of Godwin's Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman in 1798, which revealed Wollstonecraft's unorthodox private life.
Illustration of Wilhelm Busch's Max and Moritz. (image details)
Image source: drawn by Wilhelm Busch
Oscar Wilde (October 16, 1854 – November 30, 1900) was an Irish playwright, novelist, poet, and author of short stories. Known for his barbed wit, he was one of the most successful playwrights of late Victorian London, and one of the greatest celebrities of his day. As the result of a famous trial, he suffered a dramatic downfall and was imprisoned for two years of hard labour after being convicted of the offence of gross indecency.
... that in August 2006 Nobel Prize laureate Günter Grass (pictured) admitted, 62 years after the fact, to having been a member of the Waffen-SS?
... that The Quare Fellow, a 1954 play by Brendan Behan (Breandán Ó Beacháin) about prison life in 1950s Ireland, was turned into a black-and-white film in 1962 starring Patrick McGoohan as a death-row prison guard with a growing empathy with two condemned prisoners?
... that Radetzkymarsch (Radetzky March) is a family saga by Joseph Roth first published in 1932 about the downfall of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, and that the title of the novel refers to Johann Strauß's "Radetzky March"?
... that a bodice ripper is a genre of romantic fiction, often historical fiction, featuring unrestrained romantic passion and a heroine who initially dislikes and actively resists the hero's seduction, only ultimately to be overcome by desire?
... that "The devil take her!" is the last line of Sir John Suckling's poem "Why So Pale and Wan, Fond Lover?"?
... that the 1982 stage play Die Antrittsrede der amerikanischen Päpstin (El Discurso inaugural de la Papisa americana) by Esther Vilar is set in the year 2022, where Pope Joan II holds her inaugural address sponsored by big money and interrupted by commercial breaks?
... that "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow", "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" and "It Had to Be Murder" are just three of the many short stories which have been adapted into feature-length films?
| “ | The love of learning, the sequestered nooks, And all the sweet serenity of books. |
” |
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- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Morituri Salutamus, 1875
- 1125 - Cosmas of Prague, Bohemian writer died
- 1687 - Sir Edmund Waller, English poet died
- 1772 - Samuel Taylor Coleridge, British poet born
- 1790 - Alphonse de Lamartine, French writer born
- 1847 - Giuseppe Giacosa, Italian writer born
- 1873 - Johan Sebastian Welhaven, Norwegian poet died
- 1904 - Patrick Kavanagh, Irish poet born
- 1931 - Arthur Schnitzler, Austrian writer died
- 1914 - Martin Gardner, American mathematician and writer born
- 1929 - Ursula K. Le Guin, American author born
- 1956 - Carrie Fisher, American actress and writer born
- 1969 - Jack Kerouac, American novelist died
- 11 October, 2007 - Doris Lessing wins the Nobel Prize in Literature. (NPR.org)
- 6 September, 2007 - Madeleine L'Engle (born November 29, 1918), the American writer best known for her children's books, particularly the Newbery Medal-winning A Wrinkle in Time and its sequels A Wind in the Door, A Swiftly Tilting Planet and Many Waters, has died of natural causes on September 6, 2007. (Nytimes.com)
- 25 August, 2007 - The American author Cormac McCarthy has been awarded this year's James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction for his novel The Road. (Prize's homepage)
- 7 August, 2007 - Longlist for the 2007 Man Booker Prize has been revealed. The shortlist will be announced on the 6th of September, and the winner will be known on the 16th of October. (Themanbookerprize.com - list)
Subcategories of Literature:
Anthropomorphism - Books - Children's books - Essays - Essayists- Fiction - Genres - Gothic writing - LGBT literature - Literary awards - Literary characters - Literary concepts - Literary genres - Literary magazines - Literary movements - Literature by nationality - Literature in English - Medieval literature - Minimalism - Motif of harmful sensation - Narratology - Novels - Pataphysics - Plays - Poetry - Short stories - Small press publishers - Literature stubs - Theatre - Traditional stories - Writers - Young adult literature - Zines
WikiProjects connected with literature:
- Copyedit: Cotillion (novel), Imperium (novel), Nikolai Minsky, Die Räuber, Tea Classics, The Thin Red Line, More...
- Wikify: More...
- Merge: More...
- Start an article: fictography, Basque literature, Belarus literature, gutter rhyme, photobiography, seven by nine squares, working class literature, More...
- Expand: alter ego, English studies, Verisimilitude, Flash prose, German literature of the Baroque period, Identification, composite character, hexameter, internal rhyme, hypertextuality, Midnight Magic, Modernist poetry, high burlesque, Swahili literature, The Freedom Writers Diary, More...
