Portal:General literature

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
General Literature

Literature (from Latin litterae (plural); letter) is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources (although, under circumstances they can be exempt). Literally translated, the word literature means "acquaintance with letters" (as in the "arts and letters"). The two most basic written literary categories include fiction and non fiction.

Genre

Colour photograph of the top of old books on a shelf, with frayed edges, warped pages and similar signs of age.
Old book bindings at the Merton College, Oxford library.

Genre (from the French "genre" meaning "kind" or "sort") is the term for any category of literature based on some set of stylistic criteria. Genres are formed by conventions that change over time as new genres are invented and the use of old ones are discontinued. Often, works fit into multiple genres by way of borrowing and recombining these conventions.

The following portals list works on Wikisource sorted by genre:

Journalism

Verse

1835 painting of Lord Byron in Albanian dress

Poetry (from the Greek poiesis, with a broad meaning of a "making") is a form of literary art which uses the aesthetic qualities of language to evoke meanings in addition to, or in place of, the prosaic ostensible meaning.

Wikisource has a main portal for poetry as well as portals that collect works by period, subject, or form:

Period
Type
Subject
Form
Nation

External resources