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.
Literary criticism is one of the oldest academic disciplines, and is concerned with the literary merit or intellectual significance of specific texts. The study of books and other texts as artifacts or traditions is instead encompassed by textual criticism or the history of the book. "Literature", as an art form, is sometimes used synonymously with literary fiction, fiction written with the goal of artistic merit, but can also include works in various non-fiction genres, such as biography, diaries, memoirs, letters, and essays. Within this broader definition, literature includes non-fictional books, articles, or other written information on a particular subject. (Full article...)
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The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare between 1599 and 1602. Set in the Kingdom of Denmark, the play dramatizes the revenge Prince Hamlet exacts on his uncle Claudius for murdering King Hamlet, who is Claudius's brother and Prince Hamlet's father, and then succeeding to the throne and taking as his wife Gertrude, the old king's widow and Prince Hamlet's mother. The play vividly portrays both true and feigned madness—from overwhelming grief to seething rage—and explores themes of treachery, revenge, incest, and moral corruption.
Shakespeare based Hamlet on the legend of Amleth, preserved by 13th-century chronicler Saxo Grammaticus in his Gesta Danorum as subsequently retold by 16th-century scholar François de Belleforest. He may also have drawn on or perhaps written an earlier (hypothetical) Elizabethan play known today as the Ur-Hamlet.
Hamlet is Shakespeare's longest play and among the most powerful and influential tragedies in English literature, with a story capable of "seemingly endless retelling and adaptation by others." The play was one of Shakespeare's most popular works during his lifetime and still ranks among his most-performed, topping the Royal Shakespeare Company's performance list since 1879. It has been described as "the world's most filmed story after Cinderella".
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“ | Words! Mere words! How terrible they were! How clear, and vivid, and cruel! One could not escape from them. And yet what a subtle magic there was in them! They seemed to be able to give a plastic form to formless things, and to have a music of their own as sweet as that of viol or of lute. Mere words! Was there anything so real as words? | ” |
— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray |
More Did you know
- ... that And Still I Rise, Maya Angelou's third volume of poetry, contains two of the author's most famous poems?
- ... that Kwee Tek Hoay's stage play Allah jang Palsoe was published seven years before the first canonical Indonesian drama?
- ... that The Monk As Man: The Unknown Life of Swami Vivekananda is one of the many books written on Swami Vivekananda?
- ... that the recent popularity of Amish romance novels has been seen as a reaction to the increasing popularity of erotic fiction such as Fifty Shades of Grey?
- ... that Jacques Rabemananjara, former Vice President of Madagascar, was also an important negritude poet and playwright?
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Did you know (auto-generated) -

- ... that the Lviv branch of the Ukrderzhnatsmenvydav was the main publisher of Polish literature in the Soviet Union by 1941?
- ... that according to The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, the 1913 Polish novel The Cross and the Crescent is "perhaps the first example" of the genre of military science fiction in Polish literature?
- ... that the 1985 manga series Tomoi contains the first depiction of HIV/AIDS in any literary medium in Japan?
- ... that the futurist novel Man of Smoke, according to a scholar, contains a hidden legal code for readers to piece together?
- ... that Edo literature was influenced by British colonialism in the late 19th century, which introduced the Roman script and Christianity to the Edo people?
- ... that The Tale of Genji's Kaoru Genji has been called literature's first antihero?
Today in literature
- 1768 - Laurence Sterne, Irish writer died
- 1840 - William Cosmo Monkhouse, English poet and critic born
- 1842 - Stéphane Mallarmé, French poet born
- 1893 - Wilfred Owen, English poet born
- 1904 - Srečko Kosovel, Slovenian poet born
- 1915 - Richard Condon, American novelist born
- 1932 - John Updike, American novelist, poet and critic born
- 1996 - Odysseus Elytis, Greek poet died
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