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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The Coral Island: A Tale of the Pacific Ocean is a novel written in 1858 by Scottish author R. M. Ballantyne. One of the first works of juvenile fiction to feature exclusively juvenile heroes, the story relates the adventures of three boys marooned on a South Pacific island, the only survivors of a shipwreck.
A typical Robinsonade – a genre of fiction inspired by Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe – and one of the most popular of its type, the book first went on sale in late 1857 and has never been out of print. Among the novel's major themes are the civilising effect of Christianity, 19th-century British imperialism in the South Pacific, and the importance of hierarchy and leadership. It was the inspiration for William Golding's 1954 dystopian novel Lord of the Flies, which inverted the morality of The Coral Island; in Ballantyne's story the children encounter evil, but in Lord of the Flies evil is within them.
The novel was considered a classic for elementary-school children of the early 20th century in Britain, and in the United States it was a staple of suggested reading lists for high-school students. Modern critics consider The Coral Island to feature a dated imperialist view of the world, but although it is less popular today than it once was, it was adapted into a four-part children's television drama broadcast by ITV in 2000.
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“ | Words! Mere words! How terrible they were! How clear, and vivid, and cruel! One could not escape from them. And yet what a subtle magic there was in them! They seemed to be able to give a plastic form to formless things, and to have a music of their own as sweet as that of viol or of lute. Mere words! Was there anything so real as words? | ” |
— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray |
More Did you know
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- ... that Miriam Roth grew up in a Hungarian-speaking town, studied at a German-speaking university, and wrote best-sellers in Hebrew?
- ... that in the 1895 play Trilby, the role of Svengali was created by American actor Wilton Lackaye?
- ... that Louisa Venable Kyle wrote a children's book on The Witch of Pungo?
- ... that Walter Arthur Berendsohn, who successfully nominated Nelly Sachs and Willy Brandt for their respective Nobel Prizes, wrote Die humanistische Front, the seminal book on German exile literature?
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Did you know (auto-generated) -
- ... that Cathie Dunsford was unable to find many books about lesbianism in the 1970s, but by the 1980s had herself become a writer and anthologist of lesbian literature?
- ... that Imagining Mars: A Literary History "presents a compelling case that 'Mars matters'"?
- ... that the pastor John Littlejohn went from selling pornographic literature to sailors as a youth to protecting the Declaration of Independence?
- ... that Sheila Egoff, Canada's first professor of children's literature, returned to her library work immediately after retirement?
- ... that a study of Anglo-Saxon literature begun by Bernard Pitt in 1914 was completed by a colleague after Pitt was killed in the First World War?
- ... that 19th-century Polish ethnographer Zorian Dołęga-Chodakowski travelled the countryside as a "wild man" and later appeared as a literary character?
Today in literature
- 1895 - Ngaio Marsh, New Zealand writer born
- 1902 - Halldór Laxness, Icelandic writer born
- 1918 - Maurice Druon, French author born
- 1923 - Avram Davidson, American writer born
- 1948 - Pascal Quignard, French author born
- 1996 - P. L. Travers, Australian author died
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