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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El Señor Presidente (Mister President) is a 1946 novel written in Spanish by Nobel Prize–winning Guatemalan writer and diplomat Miguel Ángel Asturias (1899–1974). A landmark text in Latin American literature, El Señor Presidente explores the nature of political dictatorship and its effects on society. Asturias makes early use of a literary technique now known as magic realism. One of the most notable works of the dictator novel genre, El Señor Presidente developed from an earlier Asturias short story, written to protest social injustice in the aftermath of a devastating earthquake in the author's home town.
Although El Señor Presidente does not explicitly identify its setting as early twentieth-century Guatemala, the novel's title character was inspired by the 1898–1920 presidency of Manuel Estrada Cabrera. Asturias began writing the novel in the 1920s and finished it in 1933, but the strict censorship policies of Guatemalan dictatorial governments delayed its publication for thirteen years.
On its eventual publication in Mexico in 1946, El Señor Presidente quickly met with critical acclaim. In 1967, Asturias received the Nobel Prize in Literature for his entire body of work. This international acknowledgment was celebrated throughout Latin America, where it was seen as a recognition of the region's literature as a whole.
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“ | When can their glory fade? O the wild charge they made! All the world wonder'd. Honour the charge they made! Honour the Light Brigade, Noble six hundred! |
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— Alfred Tennyson, "The Charge of the Light Brigade" |
More Did you know
- ... that Irish poet John Keegan Casey was released from prison on the condition he leave for Australia, but instead he stayed in Dublin in disguise?
- ... that the 1916 children's novel Just David was the second in a series of four consecutive bestsellers in the United States for Eleanor H. Porter?
- ... that a decasyllabic quatrain is a poetic form in which each stanza consists of four lines of ten syllables, usually with a rhyme scheme of AABB or ABAB?
- ... that in late 2008, Norwegian novelist Johan Harstad won the Brage Prize and was hired as the first in-house playwright at the National Theatre of Norway?
- ... that the Franciscan friar Manuel Antonio de Rivas, who was tried for heresy in 1775 in Mexico, wrote the first science-fiction text in the Americas?
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- ... that the literary movement of créolie tries to integrate the identity of Réunion with France?
- ... that History of the Mission of the Evangelical Brothers in the Caribbean by C. G. A. Oldendorp was the first book to publish Igbo-language terms in 1777?
- ... 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 Charles Larson became one of the first Americans to teach African literature, after working in Nigeria for the Peace Corps to avoid the Vietnam draft?
- ... that the exclusive secret society Hamilton House from the television show Gossip Girl was based on St. Anthony Hall, a social and literary fraternity?
- ... that the Wapsipinicon Almanac was started "to silence anyone who thinks Iowa doesn't have a literary culture"?
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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