Portal:Literature
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Introduction

Literature is any collection of written work. The term is also used more narrowly for writings considered an art form, especially novels, plays, and poems. It includes 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. It can also have a social, psychological, spiritual, or political role.
Literary criticism is one of the oldest academic disciplines, and is concerned with the literary merit or intellectual significance of specific texts. The study of books and other texts as artifacts or traditions is instead encompassed by textual criticism or the history of the book. "Literature", as an art form, is sometimes used synonymously with literary fiction, fiction written with the goal of artistic merit, but can also include works in various non-fiction genres, such as biography, diaries, memoirs, letters, and essays. Within this broader definition, literature includes non-fictional books, articles, or other written information on a particular subject. (Full article...)
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Sair Tjerita Siti Akbari (Malay for Poem on the Story of Siti Akbari) is an 1884 Malay-language syair (poem) by Lie Kim Hok. Adapted indirectly from the Sjair Abdoel Moeloek, it tells of a woman who passes as a man to free her husband from the Sultan of Hindustan, who had captured him in an assault on their kingdom.
Written over a period of several years and influenced by European literature, Siti Akbari differs from earlier syairs in its use of suspense and emphasis on prose rather than form. It also incorporates European realist views to expand upon the genre, although it maintains several of the hallmarks of traditional syairs. Critical views have emphasised various aspects of its story, finding in the work an increased empathy for women's thoughts and feelings, a call for a unifying language in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), and a polemic regarding the relation between tradition and modernity.
Siti Akbari was a commercial and critical success, seeing two reprints and a film adaptation in 1940. When Sjair Abdoel Moeloek's influence became clear in the 1920s, Lie was criticised as unoriginal. However, Siti Akbari remains one of the better known syairs written by an ethnic Chinese author. Lie was later styled as the "father of Chinese Malay literature".
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| “ | Sleep is a pathless labyrinth, Dark to the gaze of moons and suns, Through which the exile clue of dreams, A gossamer thread, obscurely runs. |
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| — Clark Ashton Smith, "The Maze of Sleep" | ||
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Did you know (auto-generated) -

- ... that a poem by Moses da Rieti includes an encyclopedia of the sciences, a Jewish paradise fantasy, and a post-biblical history of Jewish literature?
- ... that Walid Daqqa wrote several works of prison literature, including a children's novel about a boy who uses magical olive oil to visit his imprisoned father?
- ... that Burmese poet Ko Lay Inwa Gonyi, later a winner of the Lifetime Award for Myanmar Literature, was restricted from publishing for 45 years under the military government?
- ... that the pastor John Littlejohn went from selling pornographic literature to sailors as a youth to protecting the Declaration of Independence?
- ... that eight poems to the 6th-century Brittonic king Urien Rheged may be among the oldest works of vernacular literature in post-classical Europe?
- ... that New Tide was abandoned after many of its contributors left the country or joined the Chinese Literary Association?
Today in literature
- 1812 - Robert Browning, English poet born
- 1861 - Rabindranath Tagore, Indian writer born
- 1867 - Władysław Reymont, Polish writer born
- 1882 - Willem Elsschot, Flemish writer born
- 1935 - Isobel Warren, Canadian author born
- 1960 - Almudena Grandes, Spanish novelist born
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