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Literature is literally "an acquaintance with letters", as in the first sense given in the Oxford English Dictionary (from the Latin littera meaning "an individual written character"). The term has generally come to identify a collection of texts or works of art, which in Western culture are mainly prose, both fiction and non-fiction, drama and poetry. In much, if not all of the world, texts can be oral as well, and include such genres as epic, legend, myth, ballad, other forms of oral poetry, and the folktale. The word "literature" as a common noun can refer to any form of writing, such as essays; "Literature" as a proper noun refers to a whole body of literary work.
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...
William Gibson (born March 17, 1948) is an American-Canadian writer who has been called the "noir prophet" of the cyberpunk subgenre of science fiction. Gibson coined the term "cyberspace" in his short story "Burning Chrome" and later popularized the concept in his debut novel, Neuromancer (1984). In visualising cyberspace, Gibson created an iconography for the information age before the ubiquity of the Internet in the 1990s. He is also credited with predicting the rise of reality television and with establishing the conceptual foundations for the rapid growth of virtual environments such as videogames and the Web.
Having moved around frequently with his family as a child, Gibson grew to be a shy, ungainly teenager who took refuge in reading science fiction. After spending his adolescence at a private boarding school in Arizona, Gibson dodged the draft during the Vietnam War by emigrating to Canada in 1967, where he became immersed in the counterculture and after settling in Vancouver eventually became a full-time writer. He retains dual citizenship. Gibson's early works are bleak, noir near-future stories about the effect of cybernetics and computer networks on humans – "lowlife meets high tech". The short stories were published in leading science fiction magazines and eventually revived science fiction, which at the time was widely considered insignificant. The themes, settings and characters developed in these stories culminated in his first novel, Neuromancer, which garnered critical and commercial success, virtually launching the cyberpunk literary movement.
... that Shangri-La, the name chosen by F.D. Roosevelt for what is today known as Camp David, takes its name from the 1933 Utopian novel Lost Horizon by James Hilton?
... that Rupert Brooke (pictured), author of the sonnet "The Soldier" (1915), died of pneumonia in the Aegean Sea on his way to the Battle of Gallipoli, and that he was buried in the Greek island of Skyros?
... that, amongst others, actors Kinya Aikawa, Bruno Cremer, Gino Cervi, Rupert Davies, Jean Gabin, Michael Gambon, Richard Harris, Charles Laughton, Pierre Renoir, Jean Richard, and Heinz Rühmann have all portrayed Georges Simenon's Commissaire Jules Maigret?
... that Ravelstein (2000) is Saul Bellow's final novel, and that the author was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1976?
... that I promessi sposi, a historical novel by Alessandro Manzoni first published in 1827, is considered the most famous and widely read novel of the Italian language?
... that during performances of The Rocky Horror Show audience participation is invited — that the audience are encouraged to dress up as the characters, to shout call-backs at the stage ("arsehole", "slut", etc.), and to throw props onto the stage?
... that the current governor of Lower Austria, Erwin Pröll, once stated in an interview that the only book he had ever finished reading was Karl May's 1890 novel Der Schatz im Silbersee (The Treasure of Silver Lake)?
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Where one begins by burning books, one will end up burning people. |
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- Heinrich Heine
22 August
- 1601 - Georges de Scudéry, French writer born
- 1624 - Jean Renaud de Segrais, French writer born
- 1779 - James Kirke Paulding, American author, poet born
- 1880 - George Herriman, American cartoonist born
- 1891 - Jan Neruda, Czech author died
- 1893 - Dorothy Parker, American writer, humorist born
- 1920 - Ray Bradbury, American writer born
- 1935 - E. Annie Proulx, American author born
- 1958 - Roger Martin du Gard, French writer died
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- Start an article: fictography, Basque literature, Belarus literature, gutter rhyme, photobiography, seven by nine squares, working class literature, More...
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