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 Author's Farce and the Pleasures of the Town is a play by the English playwright and novelist Henry Fielding, first performed on 30 March 1730 at the Little Theatre, Haymarket. Written in response to the Theatre Royal's rejection of his earlier plays, The Author's Farce was Fielding's first theatrical success. The Little Theatre allowed Fielding the freedom to experiment, and to alter the traditional comedy genre. The play ran during the early 1730s and was altered for its run starting 21 April 1730 and again in response to the Actor Rebellion of 1733. Throughout its life, the play was coupled with several different plays.
The first and second acts deal with the attempts of the central character, Harry Luckless, to woo his landlady's daughter, and his efforts to make money by writing plays. In the second act, he finishes a puppet theatre play titled The Pleasures of the Town, about the Goddess Nonsense's choice of a husband from allegorical representatives of theatre and other literary genres. After its rejection by one theatre, Luckless's play is staged at another. The third act becomes a play within a play, in which the characters in the puppet play are portrayed by humans. The Author's Farce ends with a merging of the play's and the puppet show's realities.
Selected excerpt
“ | Something I may not win attracts me ever,— Something elusive, yet supremely fair, Thrills me with gladness, but contents me never, Fills me with sadness, yet forbids despair. |
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— Florence Earle Coates, "The Ideal" in Poems |
More Did you know
- ... that Meralda Warren and several children on Pitcairn Island wrote the first book published in both English and Pitkern, a South Pacific creole language?
- ... that octogenarian poet Joyce La Mers donated $500,000 to Light Quarterly, the US's only literary magazine devoted to light verse?
- ... that the non-fiction book The Siege: The Attack on the Taj is set during the 2008 Mumbai attacks?
- ... that Lancelot de Carle, an eyewitness to the trial and execution of Anne Boleyn, wrote a poem detailing her life and the circumstances surrounding her death?
- ... that writer Hu Yepin was betrayed by rival communists, arrested by the British police, and executed by the Kuomintang?
Selected illustration
Did you know (auto-generated) -
- ... that campaign literature in the 1894 Montana capital referendum accused Helena residents of copious Manhattan consumption?
- ... that literary agent Jacques Chambrun sold unauthorized, scandalous excerpts of a Marilyn Monroe memoir to a British tabloid?
- ... that Manuel Carpio's 1849 poem is the earliest literary depiction of the weeping ghost La Llorona?
- ... 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 The Inland Whale, by Theodora Kroeber, sought to demonstrate the literary merit of Indigenous American oral traditions?
- ... that the literary movement of créolie tries to integrate the identity of Réunion with France?
Today in literature
- 1880 - Andrei Bely, Russian writer born
- 1890 - Carlo Collodi, Italian writer died
- 1911 - Sorley MacLean, Scottish poet born
- 1925 - Jan Wolkers, Dutch author born
- 1941 - Arkady Gaidar, Russian children's writer died
- 1945 - Pat Conroy, American writer born
- 1952 - Andrew Motion, English poet born
- 1957 - Nikos Kazantzakis, Greek writer died
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