Literature (from Latin litterae (plural); letter) is the art of written work and can, in some circumstances, refer exclusively to published sources. The word literature literally means "things made from letters" and the pars pro toto term "letters" is sometimes used to signify "literature," as in the figures of speech "arts and letters" and "man of letters." Literature is commonly classified as having two major forms—fiction and non-fiction—and two major techniques—poetry and prose.
Literature may consist of texts based on factual information (journalistic or non-fiction), as well as on original imagination, such as polemical works as well as autobiography, and reflective essays as well as belles-lettres. Literature can be classified according to historical periods, genres, and political influences. The concept of genre, which earlier was limited, has broadened over the centuries. A genre consists of artistic works which fall within a certain central theme, and examples of genre include romance, mystery, crime, fantasy, erotica, and adventure, among others. Important historical periods in English literature include Old English, Middle English, the Renaissance, the 17th Century Shakespearean and Elizabethan times, the 18th Century Restoration, 19th Century Victorian, and 20th Century Modernism. Important political movements that have influenced literature include feminism, post-colonialism, psychoanalysis, post-structuralism, post-modernism, romanticism, and Marxism.
Read more about Literature: History, Poetry, Essays, Other Prose Literature, Drama, Oral Literature, Other Narrative Forms, Genres of Literature, Literary Techniques
Other articles related to "literature":
... poetry as well as subject matter came from legends, mythology, and literature ... this period, called for the development of high quality American literature ... a character says We want a national literature commensurate with our mountains and rivers.. ...
... Literature 1935–1971 (Icaros 1977) Tasos Lignadis Elytis' Axion Esti (1972) Lili Zografos Elytis – The Sun Drinker (1972) as well as the special issue of the American magazine ... Poet of Time, Poet of Space', in Comparative Literature, 36(3), 1984 A ... Decavalles 'Odysseus Elytis in the 1980s', in World Literature Today, 62(l), 1988 ...
... Pastoral, including the work in a long list of revolutionary literature that the protagonist's daughter reads ...
... One Canada Square previously appeared in the Virgin Missing Adventures novel Millennial Rites in which the top floor was the headquarters of a yuppie who inadvertently turned London into a "dark fantasy" kingdom in which he was a powerful sorcerer, with the tower as his citadel and the Past Doctor Adventures novel The Time Travellers, in which it was the headquarters of the British Army in an alternate timeline ... One Canada Square also features prominently in an early issue of the Grant Morrison comic series The Invisibles, in which Dane MacGowan is encouraged to jump from the top by his mentor, Tom O'Bedlam, as an initiation rite that will allow him to see beyond reality and join The Invisibles. ...
... Like Manners' England's Trust and Plea for National Holy-days (1843), George Smythe's Historical Fancies (1844) earnestly imagines a revival of feudalism, but the solutions both Manners and Smythe offer for industrial disorder are, in spite of the increasingly urban character of Victorian society, chiefly agrarian ... Disraeli's trilogy Coningsby (1844), Sybil (1845), and Tancred (1847) details the intellectual arguments of Young England while showing an informed sympathy for England's poor ...
Famous quotes containing the word literature:
“In literature the ambition of the novice is to acquire the literary language: the struggle of the adept is to get rid of it.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“If a nation’s literature declines, the nation atrophies and decays.”
—Ezra Pound (1885–1972)
“[The] attempt to devote oneself to literature alone is a most deceptive thing, and ... often, paradoxically, it is literature that suffers for it.”
—Václav Havel (b. 1936)