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 prose, fiction, drama, poetry, and including both print and digital writing. In recent centuries, the definition has expanded to include oral literature, also known as orature much of which has been transcribed. Literature is a method of recording, preserving, and transmitting knowledge and entertainment, and 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, memoir, 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
“ | The entire world hung for months over this obscure problem—the most obscure, it seems to me, that has ever challenged the perspicacity of our police or taxed the conscience of our judges. The solution of the problem baffled everybody who tried to find it. It was like a dramatic rebus with which old Europe and new America alike became fascinated. That is, in truth—I am permitted to say, because there cannot be any author's vanity in all this, since I do nothing more than transcribe facts on which an exceptional documentation enables me to throw a new light—that is because, in truth, I do not know that, in the domain of reality or imagination, one can discover or recall to mind anything comparable, in its mystery, with the natural mystery of "The Yellow Room." | ” |
— Gaston Leroux, The Mystery of the Yellow Room |
More Did you know
- ... that in Juliet H. Lewis Campbell's novel Eros and Antieros the hero raises and marries the daughter of his unrequited love?
- ... that protests were organized against and calls were made out to expel writer Ekrem Eylisli from his native Azerbaijan following the publication of his novella?
- ... that most epic poems about the Babi Yar massacres were written by Russian and Ukrainian Jews who managed to survive the Holocaust?
- ... that Charles Stross's science-fiction novel Singularity Sky inspired a proposal to undermine the Taliban by giving every Afghan a free mobile phone?
- ... that after having written a poem on the 1625 great plague of London, the poet Abraham Holland died of the plague the following year?
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Did you know (auto-generated) -
- ... that Emelia Quinn argues that "monstrous vegans" have recurred in literature since Mary Shelley's Frankenstein?
- ... that the pastor John Littlejohn went from selling pornographic literature to sailors as a youth to protecting the Declaration of Independence?
- ... that Galadriel's gift of some of her hair to Gimli in The Lord of the Rings has echoes in both English literature and Norse legend?
- ... that Gunhild Bergh was the second woman in Sweden to be awarded a PhD in literary history?
- ... that Romanian literary scholar Dan Simonescu, who edited a chronicle dealing with the reign of Michael the Brave, had to delete any mention of Michael having "all the Jews murdered"?
- ... that in the Forum of Augustus in Rome, elogia were hung on statues of commanders and Augustus's ancestors?
Today in literature
- 1860 - J. M. Barrie, Scottish author born
- 1920 - Richard Adams, English author born
- 1920 - William Tenn, American author born
- 1921 - Mona Van Duyn, American poet born
- 1934 - Alan Bennett, British author born
- 1977 - James Jones, American writer died
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