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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La Peau de chagrin (The Magic Skin or The Wild Ass's Skin) is an 1831 novel by French novelist and playwright Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850). Set in early 19th-century Paris, it tells the story of a young man who finds a magic piece of shagreen that fulfills his every desire. For each wish granted, however, the skin shrinks and consumes a portion of his physical energy. La Peau de chagrin belongs to the Études philosophiques group of Balzac's sequence of novels, La Comédie humaine.
Although the novel uses fantastic elements, its main focus is a realistic portrayal of the excesses of bourgeois materialism. Balzac's renowned attention to detail is used to describe a gambling house, an antique shop, a royal banquet, and other locales. He also includes details from his own life as a struggling writer, placing the main character in a home similar to the one he occupied at the start of his literary career. The central theme of La Peau de chagrin is the conflict between desire and longevity. The magic skin represents the owner's life-force, which is depleted through every expression of will, especially when it is employed for the acquisition of power. Ignoring a caution from the shopkeeper who offers him the skin, the protagonist greedily surrounds himself with wealth, only to find himself miserable and decrepit at the story's end.
Selected excerpt
“ | Don't laugh at the spinsters, dear girls, for often very tender, tragic romances are hidden away in the hearts that beat so quietly under the sober gowns, and many silent sacrifices of youth, health, ambition, love itself, make the faded faces beautiful in God’s sight. Even the sad, sour sisters should be kindly dealt with, because they have missed the sweetest part of life, if for no other reason. And looking at them with compassion, not contempt, girls in their bloom should remember that they too may miss the blossom time. That rosy cheeks don’t last forever, that silver threads will come in the bonnie brown hair, and that, by-and-by, kindness and respect will be as sweet as love and admiration now. | ” |
— Louisa May Alcott, Little Women |
More Did you know
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- ... that Maya Angelou, who recited her poem "On the Pulse of Morning" at President Clinton's 1993 inauguration, was the first poet to read an inaugural poem since Robert Frost at Kennedy's in 1961?
- ... that the author of Awful Splendour: A Fire History of Canada worked 15 years as a wildland firefighter on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon?
- ... that Gambler's Lament, one of the few non–religious poems in the ancient Hindu scripture Rig Veda, testifies to the popularity of gambling among Vedic Aryans?
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Did you know (auto-generated) -
- ... that literary agent Jacques Chambrun sold unauthorized, scandalous excerpts of a Marilyn Monroe memoir to a British tabloid?
- ... 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 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 Inland Whale, by Theodora Kroeber, sought to demonstrate the literary merit of Indigenous American oral traditions?
- ... that the poet Fernando Pessoa considered Alberto Caeiro, one of his own heteronyms, to be his master?
- ... that Gunhild Bergh was the second woman in Sweden to be awarded a PhD in literary history?
Today in literature
- 1627 - Anne, Duchess of Montpensier, French writer born
- 1874 - G. K. Chesterton, English novelist born
- 1892 - Alfonsina Storni, Argentine writer born
- 1906 - T. H. White, British author born
- 1911 - William S. Gilbert, English dramatist died
- 1933 - Edward Whittemore, American writer born
- 1958 - Juan Ramón Jiménez, Spanish writer died
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