Portal:Literature
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The history of literature begins with the history of writing, in the Bronze Age of Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt, although the oldest literary texts date to a full millennium after the invention of writing, to the late 3rd millennium BC. The earliest literary authors known by name are Ptahhotep and Enheduanna, dating to ca. the 24th and 23rd centuries BC, respectively. More about Literature...
It is unclear when literacy first came to Ireland. The earliest Irish writings are inscriptions, mostly simple memorials, on stone in the ogham alphabet, the earliest of which date to the fourth century. The Latin alphabet was in use by 431, when the fifth century Gaulish chronicler Prosper of Aquitaine records that Palladius was sent by Pope Celestine I as the first bishop to the Irish believers in Christ. Pelagius, an influential British heretic who taught in Rome in the early 5th century, fragments of whose writings survive, is said by Jerome to have been of Irish descent. Coelius Sedulius, the 5th century author of the Carmen Paschale, who has been called the "Virgil of theological poetry", was probably also Irish: the 9th century Irish geographer Dicuil calls him noster Sedulius ("our Sedulius"), and the Latin name Sedulius usually translates the Irish name Siadal.
The Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw.
... that in 1966 American writer and folk singer Richard Fariña died in a motorcycle accident only two days after the publication of his novel, Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me?
... that "Call the roller of big cigars, / The muscular one, and bid him whip / In kitchen cups concupiscient curds" are the first lines of Wallace Stevens's (pictured) 1922 poem, "The Emperor of Ice Cream", and that it is about a wake?
... that Ernest J. Gaines grew up as the eldest of twelve children in old slave quarters on a Louisiana plantation, and that he wrote his first novel, Catherine Carmier, at the age of 17 while babysitting his youngest brother?
... that "Exit" is a theatrical term instructing an actor to leave the scene?
... that Scarlett O'Hara, Rhett Butler, and Ashley and Melanie Wilkes are the main characters in Margaret Mitchell's 1936 novel, Gone with the Wind?
... that books do furnish a room?
... that 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, a revenge tragedy by John Ford set in Italy, is about an incestuous relationship between brother and sister?
| “ | I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library. | ” |
- 1627 - Anne, Duchess of Montpensier, French writer born
- 1874 - G. K. Chesterton, English novelist born
- 1892 - Alfonsina Storni, Argentine writer born
- 1906 - T. H. White, British author born
- 1911 - William S. Gilbert, English dramatist died
- 1933 - Edward Whittemore, American writer born
- 1958 - Juan Ramón Jiménez, Spanish writer died
- 4 May, 2008 - Richard Morgan's Black Man wins the 2008 Arthur C. Clarke Award. (Guardian)
- 14 March, 2008 - Novelist Kate Christensen has won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction for her novel The Great Man. (Guardian)
New books
- Unaccustomed Earth (April 1) by Jhumpa Lahiri
- All the Sad Young Literary Men (April 10) by Keith Gessen
- The Enchantress of Florence (June 3) by Salman Rushdie
- A Mercy (November 11) by Toni Morrison
Subcategories of Literature:
Anthropomorphism – Books – Children's books – Essays – Essayists – Fiction – Genres – Gothic writing – LGBT literature – Literary awards – Literary characters – Literary concepts – Literary genres – Literary magazines – Literary movements – Literature by nationality – Literature in English – Medieval literature – Minimalism – Motif of harmful sensation – Narratology – Novels – Pataphysics – Plays – Poetry – Short stories – Small press publishers – Literature stubs – Theatre – Traditional stories – Writers – Young adult literature – Zines
WikiProjects connected with literature:
- Copyedit: Cotillion (novel), Imperium (novel), Nikolai Minsky, Die Räuber, Tea Classics, The Thin Red Line, More...
- Wikify: More...
- Merge: More...
- Start an article: fictography, Basque literature, Belarus literature, gutter rhyme, photobiography, seven by nine squares, working class literature, More...
- Expand: alter ego, English studies, Verisimilitude, Flash prose, German literature of the Baroque period, Identification, composite character, hexameter, internal rhyme, hypertextuality, Midnight Magic, Modernist poetry, high burlesque, Swahili literature, The Freedom Writers Diary, More...
