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 24, 2024
Why Do Languages Die?
How does someone become the last known speaker of a language?
What did Sir Walter Scott write?
What did Sir Walter Scott write?
7 Everyday English Idioms and Where They Come From
How did the proof get in the pudding? Britannica spills the beans on some of the most common idioms!
Diagnosing 9 of Charles Dickens’s Most Famous Characters
Dickens had a knack for expertly portraying human diseases.
author
Author, one who is the source of some form of intellectual or creative work; especially, one who composes a book, article,...
Southeast Asian arts
Southeast Asian arts, the literary, performing, and visual arts of Southeast Asia. Although the cultural development of the...
Latin literature
Latin literature, the body of writings in Latin, primarily produced during the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire, when...
dramatic literature
Dramatic literature, the texts of plays that can be read, as distinct from being seen and heard in performance. The term...
Literature Quizzes
Writers of the Harlem Renaissance
How much do you know about the writers of the Harlem Renaissance? Test your knowledge with this quiz.
Romeo and Juliet
Wherefore art thou Romeo? Think you know all about this famous love story? Test your knowledge with this quiz.
Classic Children’s Books Quiz
Hope you are very hungry for kids’ literature trivia.
Cervantes
Miguel de Cervantes is much more than Spain's most famous novelist. Test what you know about him with this quiz.
Emily Dickinson
How much do you know about Emily Dickinson? Test your knowledge with this quiz.
Magazines: Fact or Fiction?
Test your knowledge of magazines with this fact-or-fiction quiz about the magazine industry’s history.
Nobel Laureates in Literature
Are you a Nobel know-it-all? Match the Nobel laureates in literature to the year they earned the award!
The Brontë Sisters
Think you know Charlotte, Anne, and Emily Brontë, the trio behind some of the greatest Victorian novels? Take this Brontë...
Russian Literature
Do you think you know about Russian literature? Test your knowledge with this quiz.
Punctuation
How do you use the Oxford comma? What’s the difference between an en dash and an em dash? How do you use ellipses? Test your...
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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Tristan and Isolde
legendary figures
- oral literature
- folk literature
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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Batman
fictional character
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the Avengers
fictional superhero team
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Robin
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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Edward R. Murrow
American journalist
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I. F. Stone
American journalist
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Hunter S. Thompson
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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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.
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.
Articles
- journalism
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The Feminine Mystique
work by Friedan
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The Diary of a Young Girl
work by Frank
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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novel
literature
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short story
literature
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The Hunchback of Notre Dame
novel by Hugo
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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St. Ambrose
bishop of Milan
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Isocrates
Greek orator and rhetorician
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oratory
rhetoric
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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Songs of Innocence and of Experience
poetry by Blake
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Leaves of Grass
work by Whitman
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The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
work by Coleridge