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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Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly, is an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in 1852, the novel "helped lay the groundwork for the Civil War".
Stowe, a Connecticut-born teacher at the Hartford Female Seminary and an active abolitionist, featured the character of Uncle Tom, a long-suffering black slave around whom the stories of other characters revolve. The sentimental novel depicts the reality of slavery while also asserting that Christian love can overcome something as destructive as enslavement of fellow human beings.
Uncle Tom's Cabin was the best-selling novel of the 19th century, and the second best-selling book of that century, following the Bible. It is credited with helping fuel the abolitionist cause in the 1850s. In the first year after it was published, 300,000 copies of the book were sold in the United States; one million copies were sold in Great Britain. In 1855, three years after it was published, it was called "the most popular novel of our day." In recent years, however, negative associations with Uncle Tom's Cabin have, to an extent, overshadowed the historical impact of the book as a "vital antislavery tool."
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“ | The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age. | ” |
— H. P. Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu |
More Did you know
- ... that in his 2013 book, Fresh Off the Boat: A Memoir, food personality Eddie Huang relates his past activities, which include practising law, performing stand-up comedy, and dealing marijuana?
- ... that the Indonesian novel Atheist was decried by religious figures, Marxist–Leninists, and anarcho-nihilists?
- ... that one of the essays in William Gibson's new non-fiction collection Distrust That Particular Flavor caused Wired magazine to be banned in Singapore?
- ... that American poet Peter Filkins was the first to translate Czech writer H. G. Adler's novels, described by The New Yorker as "modernist masterpieces", into English?
- ... that it is widely suggested that the publication of the novel Oromay, depicting the Eritrean War, led to the disappearance of its author, Baalu Girma?
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Did you know (auto-generated) -
- ... that in the Forum of Augustus in Rome, elogia were hung on statues of commanders and Augustus's ancestors?
- ... that Bellman's song "Ge rum i Bröllopsgåln din hund!" describes "one of the wildest weddings in Swedish literature"?
- ... 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 the lands of the Shirvanshah served as the focal point for Persian literature during the 12th century?
- ... that Peter Demetz, who taught German literature at Yale University from 1956 to 1991, was born in Prague where he was persecuted under the Nazis and escaped the Communist regime in 1949?
- ... that 19th-century Polish ethnographer Zorian Dołęga-Chodakowski travelled the countryside as a "wild man" and later appeared as a literary character?
Today in literature
- 1674 - Thomas Traherne, English poet died
- 1691 - Isaac de Benserade, French poet died
- 1827 - Ugo Foscolo, Italian writer died
- 1834 - Aleksis Kivi, Finnish author born
- 1870 - Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin, Russian writer born
- 1875 - Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy, Russian novelist, poet and dramatist died
- 1906 - Rasipuram Krishnaswamy Narayan, Indian novelist born
- 1913 - Claude Simon, French writer born
- 1930 - Mustafa Zaidi, Pakistani poet born
- 1930 - Harold Pinter, English playwright born
- 2004 - Maurice Shadbolt, New Zealand writer died
- 2005 - Wayne C. Booth, American literary critic died
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Regions: | Australian literature · Indian literature · Persian literature |
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