Portal:Literature
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The history of literature begins with the history of writing, in the Bronze Age of Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt, although the oldest literary texts date to a full millennium after the invention of writing, to the late 3rd millennium BC. The earliest literary authors known by name are Ptahhotep and Enheduanna, dating to ca. the 24th and 23rd centuries BC, respectively. More about Literature...
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| 1897 illustration of Z. Marcas, Adrien Moreau |
Z. Marcas is an 1840 novelette by French author Honoré de Balzac. Set in contemporary Paris, it describes the rise and fall of a brilliant political strategist who is abandoned by the politicians he helps into power. Destitute and forgotten, he befriends a pair of students who live next door to him in a boarding-house. The story follows their many discussions about the political situation in France.
Balzac was inspired to write the story after he spotted the name "Z. Marcas" on a sign for a tailor's shop in Paris. It was published in July 1840, in the Revue Parisienne, a magazine he had founded that year. One year later it appeared in a collection from various authors under the title La Mort d'un ambitieux ("The Death of an Ambitious Man"). Balzac later placed it in the Scènes de la vie politique section of his vast novel sequence La Comédie humaine.
Although Z. Marcas features characters from other Balzac stories and elements of literary realism – both hallmarks of Balzac's style – it is remembered primarily for its political themes. Balzac, a legitimist, believed that France's lack of bold leadership had led to mediocrity and ruin, and that men of quality were being ignored or worse. He maintained that the youth of France were in danger of being abandoned by the government, and predicted unrest in the years to come.
The story also explores Balzac's conviction that a person's name is a powerful indicator of his or her destiny, an idea he drew from the work of Laurence Sterne. The title character, with his keen intellect, is based on Balzac's conception of himself: a visionary genius who fails to achieve his true potential because of less talented individuals with more social power.
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Did you know ...
... that "Sapere aude!" ("Dare to know!") is a Latin phrase famously used by Kant at the end of the first paragraph of his 1784 essay, "Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung?" (pictured)?
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... that David Guterson's novel Snow Falling on Cedars is set in 1954 in the fictional San Piedro Island off the Washington coast in the Pacific Northwest, and that it is about Japanese American internment during World War II?
... that Grendel is a monster defeated barehandedly by Beowulf when the latter succeeds in ripping his arm off in a brawl, causing him to bleed to death in his gloomy cave home?
... that "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously" is a sentence composed by Noam Chomsky in 1957 as an example of a sentence whose grammar is correct but whose meaning is nonsensical?
... that, in British English, a ticket tout is someone who engages in ticket resale?
... that George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, Sidney and Beatrice Webb, Annie Besant, Graham Wallas, Hubert Bland, Edith Nesbit, Sydney Olivier, and Emmeline Pankhurst were all Fabians?
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| “ | This paperback is very interesting, but I find it will never replace a hardcover book — it makes a very poor doorstop. | ” |
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- Alfred Hitchcock (1899 - 1980)
A day in literature
- 1714 - Kristijonas Donelaitis, Lithuanian poet born
- 1797 - Mirza Ghalib, Indian poet born
- 1896 - Louis Bromfield, American writer born
- 1910 - Charles Olson, American poet born
- 1917 - Onni Palaste, Finnish writer born
- 1925 - Sergei Yesenin, Russian poet died
- 1938 - Osip Mandelstam, Russian poet died
- 1953 - Julian Tuwim, Polish poet died
- 1966 - Wendy Coakley-Thompson, American writer born
- 1992 - Kay Boyle, American writer died
News
- 17 November, 2009 - Jon Meacham's American Lion won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Biography.
- 22 September, 2009 - English poet and playwright Tony Harrison has won the inaugural PEN/Pinter prize. Guardian
- 25 August, 2009 - The Hugo Awards for the best science fiction or fantasy were given, Hugo Award for Best Novel went to Neil Gaiman for The Graveyard Book.worldswithoutend.com
- 25 August, 2009 - Michael Holroyd was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his biography A Strange Eventful History.Guardian
- 3 June, 2009 - American author Marilynne Robinson wins the Orange Prize for Fiction for her novel, Home. BBC
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Subcategories of Literature:
Anthropomorphism – Books – Children's books – Essays – Essayists – Fiction – Genres – Gothic writing – LGBT literature – Literary awards – Literary characters – Literary concepts – Literary genres – Literary magazines – Literary movements – Literature by nationality – Literature in English – Medieval literature – Minimalism – Narratology – Novels – Pataphysics – Plays – Poetry – Short stories – Small press publishers – Literature stubs – Theatre – Traditional stories – Writers – Young adult literature – Zines
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