Literature
The earliest datable text in Manx, a poetic history of the Isle of Man from the introduction of Christianity, dates to the 16th century at the latest.
Christianity has been an overwhelming influence on Manx literature. Religious literature was common, but surviving secular writing much rarer. The Book of Common Prayer and Bible were translated into Manx in the 17th and 18th centuries. The first Manx Bible was printed between 1771 and 1775 and is the source and standard for modern Manx orthography. The first printed work in Manx, Coyrle Sodjeh, dates from 1707: a translation of a Prayer Book catechism in English by Bishop Thomas Wilson.
With the revival of Manx, new literature has appeared, including Contoyryssyn Ealish ayns Cheer ny Yindyssyn a Manx translation of Alice in Wonderland by Brian Stowell, published in 1990.
Read more about this topic: Culture Of The Isle Of Man
Famous quotes containing the word literature:
“Woe to that nation whose literature is cut short by the intrusion of force. This is not merely interference with freedom of the press but the sealing up of a nation’s heart, the excision of its memory.”
—Alexander Solzhenitsyn (b. 1918)
“A person of mature years and ripe development, who is expecting nothing from literature but the corroboration and renewal of past ideas, may find satisfaction in a lucidity so complete as to occasion no imaginative excitement, but young and ambitious students are not content with it. They seek the excitement because they are capable of the growth that it accompanies.”
—Charles Horton Cooley (1864–1929)
“Life’s so ordinary that literature has to deal with the exceptional. Exceptional talent, power, social position, wealth.... Drama begins where there’s freedom of choice. And freedom of choice begins when social or psychological conditions are exceptional. That’s why the inhabitants of imaginative literature have always been recruited from the pages of Who’s Who.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)