Literature
With the development of language, the human imagination has found a way to create and communicate through the written word. A literary work can transport us into a fictional, fantastic new world, describe a fleeting feeling, or simply give us a picture of the past through novels, poems, tragedies, epic works, and other genres. Through literature, communication becomes an art, and it can bridge and bond people and cultures of different languages and backgrounds.
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Featured content, September 21, 2023
What jobs did Sir Walter Scott have?
What jobs did Sir Walter Scott have?
Why Is There an R in Mrs.?
There’s no r in missus, so what’s it doing in the abbreviation?
5 Creepy Things from The Thousand and One Nights
Shahrazad or Stephen King?
5 Good Books That Inspired Bad Deeds
Words gone wild.
Celtic literature
Celtic literature, the body of writings composed in Gaelic and the languages derived from it, Scottish Gaelic and Manx, and...
romance
Romance, literary form, usually characterized by its treatment of chivalry, that came into being in France in the mid-12th...
Irish literature
Irish literature, the body of written works produced by the Irish. This article discusses Irish literature written in English...
Latin American literature
Latin American literature, the national literatures of the Spanish-speaking countries of the Western Hemisphere. Historically,...
Literature Quizzes
Spanish Idioms in English
Put your knowledge of Spanish to the test. See whether you know these phrases common among native speakers. Be careful of...
Challenging Words You Should Know Vocabulary Quiz
This is not a quiz for the pusillanimous.
Slang Through the Ages Vocabulary Quiz
Find out if you’re a space cadet or the bee’s knees.
Words Named After People Vocabulary Quiz
Find out who’s behind leotard, morphine, and more.
The Great British Vocabulary Quiz
Make sure you know the difference between a loo and a lift.
What’s on the Menu? Vocabulary Quiz
Sink your teeth into these questions about food.
Face Your Fears Vocabulary Quiz
Everybody's scared of something, from insects to a whole country. See if you can figure out these phobias.
Figure Out the Acronyms ASAP Vocabulary Quiz
Acronyms are abbreviations that can be said as words, such as AWOL, NASA, and ASAP. See if you can figure out the words within...
Commonly Confused Words Vocabulary Quiz
Take a (break/brake) and (pore/pour) over this (cash/cache/cachet) of questions about commonly confused words.
Fashionable Words Vocabulary Quiz
A vocab quiz with panache
Literature Videos
Literature Subcategories
Folk Literature & Fable
Step into the world of folklore, fables, legends, tall tales, and epics, in which heroes are known to undertake arduous journeys and dragons, fairies, and giants abound. Stories such as these circulated long before systems of writing were developed; ballads, folktales, poems, and the like were transmitted exclusively by word of mouth before written languages took over, and they continue to captivate listeners and readers to this day.
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guslar
Balkan singers
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praise song
African literature
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Tristan and Isolde
legendary figures
Fictional Characters
Here you'll find some of your favorite fictional characters from literature, film, television, and the like, whether it's the analytical mastermind Sherlock Holmes and his endearing associate Dr. Watson or the menacing and helmeted Darth Vader, the ill-tempered Donald Duck, or the teenage sleuth Nancy Drew.
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Spider-Man
fictional character
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Sherlock Holmes
fictional character
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Batman
fictional character
Journalism
Extra, extra! Although the content and style of journalism and the medium through which it is delivered have varied significantly over the years, journalism has always given us a way to keep up with current events, so that we always have our fingers on the pulse.
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Ida B. Wells-Barnett
American journalist and social reformer
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Seymour Hersh
American journalist
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Tim Russert
American journalist
Libraries & Reference Works
Looking to impress your friends with your expansive knowledge of historical events, philosophical concepts, obscure words, and more? We may be biased, but it seems fair enough to say that reference works such as dictionaries, encyclopedias, and textbooks have provided such a service for years (in some cases, hundreds or even thousands of years). You can look for them at your local public library, which likely stores books, manuscripts, journals, CDs, movies, and other sources of information and entertainment.
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al-Bīrūnī
Persian scholar and scientist
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Library of Alexandria
ancient library, Alexandria, Egypt
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Folger Shakespeare Library
research centre, Washington, District of Columbia,...
Literatures of the World
Literature knows no geographical bounds; authors can be found in nearly all corners of the globe. Find out more about regional literary styles and forms.
Articles
Literary Criticism
Everyone's a critic. But not all literary criticism involves judging the quality of a text; it can also focus on interpreting the meaning of a work or evaluating an author's place in literary history.
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Edward Said
American professor and literary critic
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Harold Bloom
American literary critic and author
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Charles Baudelaire
French author
Literary Terms
Want to be able to distinguish your limericks from your haikus and your paeans from your panegyrics? Dive deep into literary terms and forms.
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novel
literature
- nonfictional prose
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tragedy
literature
Nonfiction
The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth! Or that's the idea, at least. Nonfiction works center on facts and real events. Although there is some debate about which kinds of literature qualify as nonfiction, the genre typically includes books in the categories of biography, memoir, science, history, self-help, cooking, health and fitness, business, and more.
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The Feminine Mystique
work by Friedan
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The Diary of a Young Girl
work by Frank
- nonfictional prose
Novels & Short Stories
Whether it's Don Quixote, Pride and Prejudice, The Great Gatsby, or The Fall of the House of Usher, novels and short stories have been enchanting and transporting readers for a great many years. There's a little something for everyone: within these two genres of literature, a wealth of types and styles can be found, including historical, epistolary, romantic, Gothic, and realist works, along with many more.
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The Book of Negroes
novel by Hill
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Dracula
novel by Stoker
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The Castle of Otranto
novel by Walpole
Oratory
I have a dream... Four score and seven years ago... It's not a fluke that these phrases came to be so widely known and remembered. Truly great and persuasive speeches elicit strong emotional reactions in their audiences and may have broad historical repercussions. Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream speech and Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, quoted above, are two iconic examples of successful oratory, as are Elizabeth I's speech to the troops at Tilbury and Winston Churchill's first speech as prime minister to the House of Commons.
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Tacitus
Roman historian
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Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet
French bishop
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Honoré-Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau
French politician and orator
Plays
All the world's a stage, as Shakespeare put it in As You Like It; and the stage is where you'll find performances of works by such famed playwrights as Anton Chekhov, Eugene O'Neill, and the Bard himself, among many others.
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Hamlet
work by Shakespeare
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Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
play by Albee
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Henry IV, Part 1
work by Shakespeare
Poetry
Poetry is a vast subject that encompasses much more than just your average Roses are red, violets are blue poem. Delve into the category of literature that Percy Bysshe Shelley called a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted; sonnets, haikus, nursery rhymes, epics, and more are included.
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sonnet
poetic form
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The Waste Land
poem by Eliot
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Songs of Innocence and of Experience
poetry by Blake