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literature |
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literature [ˈlɪtərɪtʃə ˈlɪtrɪ-] n 1. written material such as poetry, novels, essays, etc., esp works of imagination characterized by excellence of style and expression and by themes of general or enduring interest 2. the body of written work of a particular culture or people Scandinavian literature 3. written or printed matter of a particular type or on a particular subject scientific literature the literature of the violin 4. printed material giving a particular type of information sales literature 5. the art or profession of a writer 6. Obsolete learning [from Latin litterātūra writing; see letter] Literature See also authors; books; criticism; dante; drama; language; language style; literary style; manuscripts; printing; reading; rhetoric and rhetorical devices; verse; writing. the style and theories of the Greek writers of Alexandria, 325-30 B.C., whose style was highly ornamented and obscure and favored such forms as the elegy, epigram, epyllion, and lyric and also ventured into the drama. — Alexandrianist, n., adj. an art form, as a story, painting, or sculpture, in which the components have a symbolic, figurative meaning. — allegorist, allegorizer, n. — allegorical, adj. the placing of a scene, character, event, etc., where it clearly does not belong, either for special effect or as an oversight. See also anachronism. — anachoristic, adj. an error in chronology, as the placing of an event or figure in a period or scene in which it did not or could not belong. — anachronistic, adj. a collection of stories, poems, or other literary material. See also christianity. — anthologist, n. the satirical or humorous use of a word or phrase to convey an idea exactly opposite to its real significance, as Shakespeare’s “honorable men” for Caesar’s murderers. — antiphrastic, adj. the act or process of plagiarizing one’s own work. the view that literature is a fine art, especially as having a purely aesthetic function. — belletrist, n. — belles lettres, n. — belletristic, adj. an allegorical or moralizing commentary, usually medieval and sometimes illustrated, based upon real or fabled animals. the condition of having a book on the bestseller list. the expurgation of a literary work in a highly prudish manner. Also bowdlerization. — bowdlerize, v. the revival in arts and letters in the 16th century in Italy. — cinquecentist, n., adj. 1. the act or art of analyzing the quality of something, especially a literary or artistic work, a musical or dramatic performance, etc. 2. a critical comment, article, or essay; critique. — critic, n. a person who is well acquainted with culture, as literature, the arts, etc., and who advocates their worth to society. the analysis of original texts or documents. the art and literature of 13th-century Italy. — duecentist, n., adj. the art or practice of writing letters. — epistolographic, adj. an abnormal interest in erotic literature. 1. the habit of writing essays. 2. the quality that allows a composition to be called an essay. — essayist, n. an anthology or select collection of literary pieces. the writing or compilation of marginal or interlinear notes in a manuscript text. — glossographer, n. a scholar of literature who shows parallels or harmony between passages from different authors. See also music. a theory or practice of a group of English and American poets between 1909 and 1917, especially emphasis upon the use of common speech, new rhythms, unrestricted subject matter, and clear and precise images. — Imagist, n. — Imagistic, adj. a member of an order of Armenian monks, founded in 1715 by Mekhitar da Pietro, dedicated to literary work, especially the perfecting of the Armenian language and the translation into it of the major works of other languages. an emphasis in narrative or dramatic literary works on the sensational in situation or action. — melodramatist, n. — melodramatic, adj. the art or practice of writing memoirs. — memoirist, n. the excessively optimistic outlook of Wilkins Micawber, a character from Dickens’s novel David Copperfield. — Micawberish, adj. 1. ancient forms of writing, as in inscriptions, documents, and manuscripts. 2. the study of ancient writings, including decipherment, translation, and determination of age and date. — paleographer, palaeographer, n. — paleographic, palaeographic, adj. the theories and practice of a school of French poets in the 19th century, especially an emphasis upon art for art’s sake, careful metrics, and the repression of emotive elements. — Parnassian, n., adj. the quality of being hypocritical or selfish like Dickens’s character Seth Pecksniff in the novel Martin Chuzzlewit. — Pecksniffery, n. — Pecksniffian, adj. an abnormal interest in pornography. strict adherence to particular concepts, rules, or ideals of form, style, etc., either as formulated by the artist or as dictated by a school with which the artist is allied, See also art; criticism; language. — purist, n., adj. a quality in literature that is the product of fidelity to the habits, speech, manners, history, folklore, and beliefs of a particular geographical section, as Thomas Hardy and Wessex. — regionalist, n. — regionalistic, adj. an ancient commentator on the classics, especially the writing of marginalia (scholia) on grammatical and interpretive cruxes. — scholiastic, adj. the writing of satires. — sillographer, n. the systematic study of folklore and folk literature, especially concerning origin and transmission. — storiologist, n. the actions or characteristics of the imaginary inhabitants of Luggnagg, a country created by Swift in Gulliver’s Travels. the principles of a literary movement originated during the latter part of the 19th century in France and highly influential in literature written in English, characterized especially by an emphasis upon the associative character of verbal, often private, symbols and the use of synesthetic devices to suggest color and music. — Symbolist, n., adj. 1. a type of mythmaking or storytelling in which monsters and marvels are featured. 2. a collection of such stories. — teratologist, n. — teratological, adj. a series of four related works. — tetralogist, n. — tetralogical, adj. the introduction of gods or supernatural entities into a dramatic or literary work, especially to resolve situations. — theotechnic, adj. a series of three related works. — trilogist, n. — trilogical, adj. the condition of having romantic qualities like Werther, a character from Goethe’s The Sorrows of Werther. — Wertherian, adj. a variety of academic or literary research attempting to find the sources behind works of the imagination, named after a noted study of this kind, John Livingston Lowes’ Road to Xanadu (1927), an inquiry into Coleridge’s poem, “Xanadu.” — Xanaduist, n., adj.
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literature noun 1. writings, letters, compositions, lore, creative writing, written works, belles-lettres classic works of literature 2. information, publicity, leaflet, brochure, circular, pamphlet, handout, mailshot, handbill I'm sending you literature from two other companies. see figures of speech, Shakespeare Quotations "It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature" [Henry James Hawthorne] "Remarks are not literature" [Gloria Steinem Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas] "Literature is mostly about having sex and not much about children; life is the other way around" [David Lodge The British Museum is Falling Down] "Literature is news that STAYS news" [Ezra Pound ABC of Reading] "Literature is a luxury. Fiction is a necessity" [G.K. Chesterton The Defendant] "Literature is where I go to explore the highest and lowest places in human society and in the human spirit, where I hope to find not absolute truth but the truth of the tale, of the imagination and of the heart" [Salman Rushdie] "When once the itch of literature comes over a man, nothing can cure it but the scratching of a pen" [Samuel Lover Handy Andy] LiteratureLiterature terms allegory, alliteration, allusion, amphigory or amphigouri, Angry Young Men, anti-hero, antinovel, anti-roman, aphorism, archaism, Augustan, Bakhtinian, bathos, Beat Generation or Beats, belles-lettres, belletrist, bibliography, Bildungsroman, black comedy, Bloomsbury group, bodice-ripper, bombast, bowdlerization, Brechtian, bricolage, Byronic, carnivalesque, campus novel, causerie, Celtic Revival, cento, chiller, Ciceronian, classicism, coda, colloquialism, comedy, comedy of manners, commedia dell'arte, conceit, courtly love, cultural materialism, cut-up technique, cyberpunk, death of the author, decadence, deconstruction, denouement, Derridian, dialectic, dialogue, Dickensian, discourse, double entendre, drama, epic, epilogue, epistle, epistolary novel, epitaph, erasure, essay, exegesis, expressionism, fable, fabulist, faction, fantastique, fantasy, feminist theory, festschrift, figure of speech, fin de siècle, foreword, Foucauldian, Futurism, gloss, Gongorism, Gothic, hagiography, Hellenism, hermeneutics, historical novel, historicism, Homeric, Horatian, hudibrastic verse, imagery, interior monologue, intertextuality, invective, Jacobean, Janeite, Johnsonian, journalese, Joycean, Juvenalian, Kafkaesque, kailyard, kenning, kiddy lit, lampoon, Laurentian or Lawrentian, legend, literary criticism, littérateur, locus classicus, Lost Generation, magic realism or magical realism, marxist theory, maxim, melodrama, metafiction, metalanguage, metaphor, mock-heroic, modernism, motif, myth, mythopoeia, narrative, narratology, narrator, naturalism, new criticism, new historicism, nom de plume, nouveau roman, novel, novelette, novella, onomatopoeia, oxymoron, palindrome, paraphrase, parody, pastiche, pastoral, pathos, picaresque, plagiarism, plot, polemic, pornography, post-colonialism, postmodernism, post-structuralism, post-theory, pot-boiler, queer theory, realism, Restoration comedy, roman, roman à clef, Romanticism, saga, samizdat, satire, science fiction or SF, sentimental novel, shopping-and-fucking or S & F novel, short story, signifier and signified, simile, sketch, socialist realism, splatterpunk, Spoonerism, story, stream of consciousness, structuralism, Sturm und Drang, subplot, subtext, Surrealism, Swiftian, theme, theory, thesis, tragedy, tragicomedy, trope, verse, vignette Literary characters
Translations literature [ˈlɪtərɪtʃəʳ] N 1. (= writings) → literatura f 2. (= promotional material) → información f, publicidad f 3. (= learned studies of subject) → estudios mpl, bibliografía f literature [ˈlɪtrətʃər] n (= novels, poetry, plays) → littérature f I'm studying English Literature → J'étudie la littérature anglaise. (= information) → prospectus mpl literature n → Literatur f; (inf: = brochures etc) → Informationsmaterial nt; (= specialist literature) → (Fach)literatur f literature [ˈlɪt/ərɪtʃəʳ] n (publications) (Literature) → letteratura; (brochures) → opuscoli mpl, materiale m, informativo literature [ˈlɪt/ərɪtʃəʳ] n (publications) (Literature) → letteratura; (brochures) → opuscoli mpl, materiale m, informativo n literature [ˈlitrətʃə] poems, novels, plays etc in verse or prose, especially if of fine quality. literatuur أدَب литература literatura litteratur die Literatur λογοτεχνία literatura kirjandus ادبیات kaunokirjallisuus littérature סַפרוּת साहित्य književnost irodalom sastra bókmenntir letteratura 文学 문학 literatūra literatūra karya sastera literatuur litteratur literatura literatura literatură художественная литература literatúra književnost književnost litteratur วรรณคดี edebiyat 文學作品 література ادب văn học 文学作品 literature → أدب literatura litteratur Literatur λογοτεχνία literatura kirjallisuus littérature književnost letteratura 文学 문학 literatuur litteratur literatura literatura литература litteratur วรรณคดี edebiyat văn học 文学作品 How to thank TFD for its existence? Tell a friend about us, add a link to this page, add the site to iGoogle, or visit webmaster's page for free fun content. |
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| ? Mentioned in | ? References in classic literature | |
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Such an anthology, the compass and variety of our prose literature being considered, might well follow exclusively some special line of interest in it; exhibiting, for instance, what is so obviously striking, its imaginative power, or its (legitimately) poetic beauty, or again, its philosophical capacity. The two grand divisions under which Literature is usually arranged in these days occupied the customary places in it. Literature really means letters, for it comes from a Latin word littera, meaning a letter of the alphabet. |
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