Capsules

Literary Criticism

The study, interpretation and evaluation of literature. Its central question is what a text means and who decides, and the answers offered have…

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religion

Sacred Texts

Writings a religious tradition treats as authoritative. What that authority consists of, how the text was fixed, and how it may be interpreted differ…

Drama

Literature written to be performed by actors representing characters. It is distinguished from other literary forms by being incomplete on the page:…

Poetry

Language organised for its sound and rhythm as well as its meaning. It is older than prose literature, older than writing, and its formal constraints…

linguistics

Translation

Rendering meaning from one language into another. It is never a mechanical substitution of words, because languages divide the world differently, and…

The Novel

An extended work of prose fiction. It is among the youngest major literary forms, it became the dominant one within roughly two centuries, and its…

Theory

The Death of the Author

Roland Barthes argued in 1967 that a text's meaning is not fixed by what its writer intended, and that criticism organised around the author's…

Debunked

The Shakespeare Authorship Question

The claim that the works attributed to William Shakespeare were written by someone else. It has attracted eminent supporters for a hundred and…

art

Fact· Historical

Jane Austen

Jane Austen (1775 to 1817) was an English novelist whose sharp, witty stories of love, marriage, and society have made her one of the most beloved…

art

Fact· Historical

Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou (1928 to 2014) was an American poet, memoirist, and civil rights activist whose powerful writing about her life and struggles made her…

art

Fact· Historical

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare (1564 to 1616) was an English playwright and poet, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language. His plays and…