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, April 11, 2024
What were Sir Walter Scott’s influences?
What were Sir Walter Scott’s influences?
The Time a Law Clerk Successfully Forged a New Shakespeare Play to Impress His Dad
A law clerk once convinced London that he had discovered dozens of documents written by Shakespeare.
Why Do Languages Die?
How does someone become the last known speaker of a language?
8 Influential Abolitionist Texts
Essays and letters that helped break fetters.
African American literature
African American literature, body of literature written by Americans of African descent. Beginning in the pre-Revolutionary...
American literature
American literature, the body of written works produced in the English language in the United States. Like other national...
Yiddish literature
Yiddish literature, the body of written works produced in the Yiddish language of Ashkenazic Jewry (central and eastern European...
Icelandic literature
Icelandic literature, body of writings in Icelandic, including those from Old Icelandic (also called Old Norse) through Modern...
Literature Quizzes
Match the Baby Animal to Its Mama Quiz
Prove you’re the best of the nest
Commonly Confused Words Vocabulary Quiz, Vol. 2
A quiz to (peak/peek/pique) your interest.
Which Came First? Vocabulary Quiz Vol. 2
Tighty-whities or loosey-goosey? Given a pair of words, guess which one entered the English language first.
Challenging Words You Should Know Vocabulary Quiz Vol. 2
It isn’t linguistic hubris if you can back it up.
Commonly Misspelled Words Quiz
Autocorrect can’t save you now.
A Monstrous Vocab Quiz
Words that go bump in the night...
Odd Jobs Vocabulary Quiz
Work smarter, not harder, to figure out these occupations.
Australian Vocabulary Quiz
Go beyond the barbie with these bonzer questions about Aussie words.
Another Great British Vocabulary Quiz, Innit?
A double-decker quiz with words from across the pond.
Little Words, Big Vocabulary Quiz
Time to sweat the small stuff.
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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The Thousand and One Nights
Asian literature
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Brothers Grimm
German folklorists and linguists
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Erasmus
Dutch humanist
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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Don Quixote
fictional character
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Richard III
fictional character
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Hamlet
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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Walter Cronkite
American journalist
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Dan Rather
American newscaster
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Bob Woodward
American journalist and author
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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E.O. Wilson
American biologist
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Georges-Louis Leclerc, count de Buffon
French naturalist
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Pliny the Elder
Roman scholar
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.
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- Spanish literature
- Irish literature
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New Journalism
American literary movement
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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haiku
Japanese literature
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picaresque novel
literature
- metaphor
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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- nonfictional prose
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blog
Internet
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essay
literature
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 Catcher in the Rye
novel by Salinger
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graphic novel
literature
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The Great Gatsby
novel by Fitzgerald
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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oratory
rhetoric
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Tecumseh
Shawnee chief
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Quintilian
Roman rhetorician
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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The Cherry Orchard
play by Chekhov
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Death of a Salesman
play by Miller
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Faust
play by Goethe
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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