Portal:Literature
Introduction
Literature is any collection of written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially novels, plays, and poems, and including both print and digital writing. In recent centuries, the definition has expanded to include oral literature, much of which has been transcribed. Literature is a method of recording, preserving, and transmitting knowledge and entertainment, and can also have a social, psychological, spiritual, or political role.
Literature, as an art form, can also include works in various non-fiction genres, such as biography, diaries, memoir, letters, and essays. Within its broad definition, literature includes non-fictional books, articles or other written information on a particular subject. (Full article...)
General images -
Sair Tjerita Siti Akbari (Malay for Poem on the Story of Siti Akbari) is an 1884 Malay-language syair (poem) by Lie Kim Hok. Adapted indirectly from the Sjair Abdoel Moeloek, it tells of a woman who passes as a man to free her husband from the Sultan of Hindustan, who had captured him in an assault on their kingdom.
Written over a period of several years and influenced by European literature, Siti Akbari differs from earlier syairs in its use of suspense and emphasis on prose rather than form. It also incorporates European realist views to expand upon the genre, although it maintains several of the hallmarks of traditional syairs. Critical views have emphasised various aspects of its story, finding in the work an increased empathy for women's thoughts and feelings, a call for a unifying language in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), and a polemic regarding the relation between tradition and modernity.
Siti Akbari was a commercial and critical success, seeing two reprints and a film adaptation in 1940. When Sjair Abdoel Moeloek's influence became clear in the 1920s, Lie was criticised as unoriginal. However, Siti Akbari remains one of the better known syairs written by an ethnic Chinese author. Lie was later styled as the "father of Chinese Malay literature".
Selected excerpt
“ | I was awakened the next morning by an eerie sense of something unreal and terrible. I fought to adjust myself, and rose on the bed to peer out. I could see nothing except a yellow mass of something plastered against the window, and I fell back on the bed. Strangely, at the same time, I had a curious sensation of being both awake and in full possession of my senses, and in the grip of some awful nightmare. I was vaguely aware of a noise outside, and finally identified it positively as Buck's raging voice. There was a heavy, nauseous scent in my nostrils, but finally I shook myself awake and leaped out of bed. Just at that moment the window shattered and the terrible, complete reality of what was outside burst upon me with all the sharpness of a stinging whip lash. | ” |
— Jim Kjelgaard, "The Fangs of Tsan-Lo" |
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Did you know (auto-generated) -
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Today in literature
- 1779 - Thomas Moore, Irish poet born
- 1849 - Anne Brontë, English author died
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