Portal:Literature
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Culture · Geography · Health · History · Mathematics · Nature · Philosophy · Religion · Society · Technology
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...
The Relapse, or, Virtue in Danger is a Restoration comedy from 1696 written by John Vanbrugh. The play is a sequel to Colley Cibber's Love's Last Shift, or, Virtue Rewarded.
In Cibber's Love's Last Shift, a free-living Restoration rake is brought to repentance and reform by the ruses of his wife, while in The Relapse, the rake succumbs again to temptation and has a new love affair. His virtuous wife is also subjected to a determined seduction attempt, and resists with difficulty.
Vanbrugh planned The Relapse around particular actors at Drury Lane, writing their stage habits, public reputations, and personal relationships into the text. One such actor was Colley Cibber himself, who played the luxuriant fop Lord Foppington in both Love's Last Shift and The Relapse. However, Vanbrugh's artistic plans were threatened by a cutthroat struggle between London's two theatre companies, each of which was "seducing" actors from the other. The Relapse came close to not being produced at all, but the successful performance that was eventually achieved in November 1696 vindicated Vanbrugh's intentions, and saved the company from bankruptcy as well.
... that a recurring theme in Eric Ambler's books is having as the main character an amateur who finds himself unwillingly in the company of hardened criminals and/or spies?
... that the title of Bernard MacLaverty's short story about a philosophy don, "Language, Truth and Lockjaw", is an allusion to A. J. Ayer's 1936 seminal work of philosophy, Language, Truth, and Logic? [1]
... that the clerihew was invented by E. C. Bentley?
... that a proscenium arch is a square frame around a raised stage area in traditional theatres which represents a style of theatre which has persisted since the 17th century but has become an almost derogatory term to many modern dramatists?
... that Moral is a 1909 comedy by Bavarian author Ludwig Thoma?
... that the dictum, "Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur", is ascribed to 1st century Roman satirist Petronius?
... that Notes of a Dirty Old Man is a 1969 book by Charles Bukowski, and that his creation — some say alter ego — Henry Chinaski has been ranked among the 100 Best Characters in Fiction Since 1900?
| “ | The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them. | ” |
- 1479 (O.S.) - Giglio Gregorio Giraldi, Italian poet born
- 1837 - Giacomo Leopardi, Italian writer died
- 1899 - Yasunari Kawabata, Japanese writer, Nobel Prize laureate born
- 1986 - Jorge Luis Borges, Argentine 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...
