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.
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 Raven" is a narrative poem by American writer Edgar Allan Poe. Its publication made Poe widely popular in his lifetime. Although it did not bring him much financial success it was soon reprinted, parodied, and it nevertheless remains one of the most famous poems ever written.
First published in January 1845, the poem is often noted for its musicality, stylized language, and supernatural atmosphere. It tells of a talking raven's mysterious visit to a distraught lover, tracing the man's slow fall into madness. The lover, often identified as being a student, is lamenting the loss of his love, Lenore. Sitting on a bust of Pallas, the raven seems to further instigate his distress with its constant repetition of the word "Nevermore". The poem makes use of a number of folk and classical references.
Poe claimed to have written the poem very logically and methodically, intending to create a poem that would appeal to both critical and popular tastes, as he explained in his 1846 follow-up essay "The Philosophy of Composition". The poem was inspired in part by a talking raven in the novel Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty by Charles Dickens. Poe borrows the complex rhythm and meter of Elizabeth Barrett's poem "Lady Geraldine's Courtship", and makes use of internal rhyme as well as alliteration throughout.
Selected excerpt
“ | It occurred to him that what had appeared perfectly impossible before, namely that he had not spent his life as he should have done, might after all be true. It occurred to him that his scarcely perceptible attempts to struggle against what was considered good by the most highly placed people, those scarcely noticeable impulses which he had immediately suppressed, might have been the real thing, and all the rest false. And his professional duties and the whole arrangement of his life and of his family, and all his social and official interests, might all have been false. He tried to defend all those things to himself and suddenly felt the weakness of what he was defending. There was nothing to defend. | ” |
— Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych |
More Did you know
- ... that John Donne's Devotions upon Emergent Occasions is one of only seven printed works he acknowledged authorship of?
- ... that Amir Hamzah left one of his fifty poems in his prison cell before being executed?
- ... that the Hongwu Emperor was so fond of Gao Ming's play The Lute that he ordered it to be performed every day at court?
- ... that both the Star Trek novels The Tears of the Singers and Uhura's Song included Uhura as a main character as the authors thought she was underdeveloped in the show?
- ... that author Colum McCann described the subject of his 2003 novel Dancer, Rudolf Nureyev, as "a monster"?
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Did you know (auto-generated) -
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/44/Nuvola_apps_filetypes.svg/47px-Nuvola_apps_filetypes.svg.png)
- ... that the lands of the Shirvanshah served as the focal point for Persian literature during the 12th century?
- ... that literary fiction novel Agatha of Little Neon's title stems from a house that is "the color of Mountain Dew"?
- ... that in her 2021 book The Origins of Early Christian Literature, Robyn Faith Walsh found that German Romanticists were in part responsible for modern scholarly assumptions about the gospels?
- ... that Alexandre Dumas's travel book Le Corricolo, published in 1843, contains one of the earliest literary accounts of Neapolitan pizza?
- ... that History of the Mission of the Evangelical Brothers in the Caribbean by C. G. A. Oldendorp was the first book to publish Igbo-language terms in 1777?
- ... that Bellman's song "Ge rum i Bröllopsgåln din hund!" describes "one of the wildest weddings in Swedish literature"?
Today in literature
- 1796 - Robert Burns, Scottish poet died
- 1899 - Ernest Hemingway, American writer born
- 1911 - Marshall McLuhan, Canadian author born
- 1938 - Owen Wister, American author died
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