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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"A Song for Simeon" is a 37-line poem written in 1928 by American-English poet T. S. Eliot. It is one of five poems that Eliot contributed to the Ariel poems series of 38 pamphlets by several authors published by Faber and Gwyer. "A Song for Simeon" was the sixteenth in the series and included an illustration by avant garde artist Edward McKnight Kauffer. The poems, including "A Song for Simeon", were later published in both the 1936 and 1963 editions of Eliot's collected poems.
In 1927, Eliot had converted to Anglo-Catholicism and his poetry, starting with the Ariel Poems, took on a decidedly religious character. "A Song for Simeon" is seen by many critics and scholars as a discussion of the conversion experience. In the poem, Eliot retells the story of Simeon from the second chapter of the Gospel of Luke, a just and devout Jew who encounters Mary, Joseph and the infant Jesus entering the Temple of Jerusalem. Promised by the Holy Ghost that he would not die until he had seen the Saviour, Simeon sees in the infant Jesus the Messiah promised by the Lord and asks God to permit him to "depart in peace" (Luke 2:25–35). Several critics have debated whether Eliot's depiction of Simeon is a negative portrayal of a Jewish figure and evidence of anti-Semitism on Eliot's part.
Selected excerpt
“ | Don't laugh at the spinsters, dear girls, for often very tender, tragic romances are hidden away in the hearts that beat so quietly under the sober gowns, and many silent sacrifices of youth, health, ambition, love itself, make the faded faces beautiful in God’s sight. Even the sad, sour sisters should be kindly dealt with, because they have missed the sweetest part of life, if for no other reason. And looking at them with compassion, not contempt, girls in their bloom should remember that they too may miss the blossom time. That rosy cheeks don’t last forever, that silver threads will come in the bonnie brown hair, and that, by-and-by, kindness and respect will be as sweet as love and admiration now. | ” |
— Louisa May Alcott, Little Women |
More Did you know
- ... that the 1993 romance novel Just This Once was authored by a computer in collaboration with its programmer?
- ... that, as a publisher and literary critic, Drago Siliqi increased translation of foreign literature into Albanian and encouraged Ismail Kadare to write his first novel, The General of the Dead Army?
- ... that Charlotte Mary Sanford Barnes' play Octavia Bragaldi moves the Kentucky Tragedy from 1825 to 15th century Milan?
- ... that novelist Shirley Barker's first book of poetry enraged poet Robert Frost?
- ... that Shackles was the first Indonesian novel to portray a prostitute sympathetically?
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Did you know (auto-generated) -
- ... that Rudaki is acknowledged as the founder of New Persian poetry in Iran and the father of Tajik literature in Tajikistan?
- ... that despite a career writing queer literature, Chen Xue's 2019 novel Fatherless City had a "putatively straight premise"?
- ... that Emelia Quinn argues that "monstrous vegans" have recurred in literature since Mary Shelley's Frankenstein?
- ... that the North-Western Regional Committee of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) ran an underground network to distribute literature to German soldiers in occupied areas?
- ... that Children's Fantasy Literature is the first work to address the genre's 500-year history in depth?
- ... that Bulkboeken ('bulk books') were cheap reprints of Dutch literary classics, published from 1971 to the late 1990s, and again from 2007?
Today in literature
- 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
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