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, and including 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, 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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Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is a 1974 nonfiction narrative book by American author Annie Dillard. Told from a first-person point of view, the book details an unnamed narrator's explorations near her home, and various contemplations on nature and life. The title refers to Tinker Creek, which is outside Roanoke in Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains. Dillard began writing Pilgrim in the spring of 1973, using her personal journals as inspiration. Separated into four sections that signify each of the seasons, the narrative takes place over the period of one year.
The book records the narrator's thoughts on solitude, writing, and religion, as well as scientific observations on the flora and fauna she encounters. Touching upon themes of faith, nature, and awareness, Pilgrim is also noted for its study of theodicy and the inherent cruelty of the natural world. The author has described it as a "book of theology", and she rejects the label of nature writer. Dillard considers the story a "single sustained nonfiction narrative", although several chapters have been anthologized separately in magazines and other publications. The book is analogous in design and genre to Henry David Thoreau's Walden (1854), the subject of Dillard's master's thesis at Hollins College. Critics often compare Dillard to authors from the Transcendentalist movement; Edward Abbey in particular deemed her Thoreau's "true heir".
Selected excerpt
“ | Reader, I think proper, before we proceed any farther together, to acquaint thee that I intend to digress, through this whole history, as often as I see occasion, of which I am myself a better judge than any pitiful critic whatever; and here I must desire all those critics to mind their own business, and not to intermeddle with affairs or works which no ways concern them; for till they produce the authority by which they are constituted judges, I shall not plead to their jurisdiction. | ” |
— Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling |
More Did you know
- ... that Samuel Minturn Peck was the first Poet Laureate of Alabama, a title created for him, from 1930 until his death in 1938?
- ... that James McBride was described as "clearly stunned" when his novel The Good Lord Bird won the National Book Award for Fiction?
- ... that Arishima Ikuma, Japanese novelist, published his new-style poems and short stories as a vehicle to introduce the works of the French impressionist painter Paul Cézanne to the Japanese public?
- ... that German-born Jewish Egyptologist Käte Bosse-Griffiths published a novel in the Welsh language?
- ... that John Fowles' postmodern novel The French Lieutenant's Woman both emulated and parodied popular Victorian novels, like those of Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy?
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Did you know (auto-generated) -
- ... 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 Super Mario 64 has been the subject of medical literature showing a correlation between habitual playing of 3D platformers and increased grey matter in the brain?
- ... that Polish Renaissance poet Jan Kochanowski – considered "the founding father of Polish literature" – wrote threnodies, the first Polish-language tragedy, and epigrams?
- ... that the Wapsipinicon Almanac was started "to silence anyone who thinks Iowa doesn't have a literary culture"?
- ... that Manuel Carpio's 1849 poem is the earliest literary depiction of the weeping ghost La Llorona?
- ... that Māori fiction written in English, now a key part of New Zealand literature, only emerged in the 1950s?
Today in literature
- 1740 - Marquis de Sade, French author born
- 1840 - Thomas Hardy, English writer born
- 1857 - Karl Adolph Gjellerup, Danish writer born
- 1913 - Barbara Pym, English novelist born
- 1935 - Carol Shields, American-born novelist born
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