Two Types Of Literature Are Written And Oral 2o5370

lit·er·a·ture

ˈlidərəCHər,ˈlidərəˌCHooor/ noun 1.

written works, especially those considered of superior or lasting artistic merit. "a great work of literature" synonyms: written works, writings, writing, creative writing, literary texts, compositions; informallit "English literature" o books and writings published on a particular subject. "the literature on environmental epidemiology" synonyms: publications, published writings, texts, reports, studies "the literature on prototype theory" o leaflets and other printed matter used to products or give advice. synonyms printed : matter, brochures, leaflets, pamphlets, circulars, flyers, handouts, handbills,bulletins, f act sheets, publicity, propaganda, notices "election literature" Definition: What is literature? Why do we read it? Why is literature important? Literature is a term used to describe written and sometimes spoken material. Derived from the Latinlitteratura meaning "writing formed with letters," literature most commonly refers to works of the creative imagination, including poetry, drama, fiction, nonfiction, journalism, and in some instances, song. Why do we read literature? Simply put, literature represents the culture and tradition of a language or a people. It's difficult to precisely define, though many have tried, but it's clear that the accepted definition of literature is constantly changing and evolving. For many, the word literature suggests a higher art form, merely putting words on a page doesn't necessarily mean creating literature. A canon is the accepted body of works for a given author. Some works of literature are considered canonical, that is culturally representative of a particlar genre. But what we consider to be literature can vary from one generation to the next. For instance, Herman Melville's 1851 novel Moby Dick was considered a failure by contemporary reviewiers. However, it's since been recognized as a master work, and is frequently cited as one of the best works of western literature for its thematic complexity and use of symbolism to tell the story of Captain Ahab and the white whale. By reading

Moby Dick in the present day, we can gain a fuller understanding of literary traditions in Melville's time. In this way, literature is more than just a historical or cultural artifact, but can serve as an introduction to a new world of experience. Why is literature important? Ultimately, we may discover meaning in literature by looking at what the author writes or says, and how he or she says it. We may interpret and debate an author's message by examining the words he or she chooses in a given novel or work, or observing which character or voice serves as the connection to the reader. In academia, this decoding of the text is often carried out through the use of literary theory, using a mythological, sociological, psychological, historical, or other approach to better understand the context and depth of a work. Works of literature, at their best, provide a kind of blueprint of human civilization. From the writings of ancient civilizations like Egypt, and China, to Greek philosophy and poetry; from the epics of Homer to the plays of Shakespeare, from Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte to Maya Angelou, works of literature give insight and context to all the world's societies. Whatever critical paradigm we use to discuss and analyze it, literature is important to us because it speaks to us, it is universal, and it affects us on a deeply personal level. Even when it is ugly, literature is beautiful. Also Known As: Classics, learning, erudition, belles-lettres, lit, literary works, written work, writings, books. Examples: "The difficulty of literature is not to write, but to write what you mean; not to affect your reader, but to affect him precisely as you wish." -- Robert Louis Stevenson "The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid." -- Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey. “Don't be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth.” -Rumi “I’ll call for pen and ink and write my mind.” -- William Shakespeare, Henry VI.

Two types of literature are written and oral. Oral literature includes ballads, folklore, jokes and fables that are ed down by word of mouth. Written literature includes poetry and novels, with subsections for fiction, prose, myth, short story and novel. FULL ANSWER

A folk ballad is usually impersonal. These stories are short narratives and are meant to be sung. Love, death and the supernatural are popular themes. Incremental repetition advances the action in small but significant ways. A ballad stanza contains four lines. They present brief descriptions, use concise dialogue and end abruptly. A literary ballad, however, purposefully imitates the form and spirit of a ballad but is longer and more involved. An example of a literary ballad is Longfellow's "The Wreck of the Hesperus." The two most general types of literature are fiction and nonfiction. Fiction is literature created through the author's imagination, while nonfiction is literature based on fact. Within these two categories, literature can be broken down into genres and sub-genres. FULL ANSWER

Fiction includes poems, stories, plays and novels. Common genres of fiction are mystery, romance, fantasy and classic literature. Nonfiction includes such types of literature as newspaper articles, editorials, textbooks and legal documents. Readers will find many topics in the nonfiction section of a bookstore or library including biography, business, cooking, self-help, health, pets, crafts, home decorating, language, travel, religion, art, history and much more.

Literature, in its broadest sense, consists of any written productions. More restrictively, it refers to those deemed to have artistic or intellectual value, or which deploy language in ways that differ from ordinary usage. Its Latin root literatura/litteratura(derived itself from littera: letter or handwriting) was used to refer to all written s, though contemporary definitions extend the term to include texts that are spoken or sung (oral literature). Literature can be classified according to whether it isfiction or non-fiction and whether it is poetry or prose; it can be further distinguished according to major forms such as thenovel, short story or drama; and works are often categorized according to historical periods or their adherence to certainaesthetic features or expectations (genre). The concept has changed meaning over time: nowadays it can broaden to include non-written verbal art forms, and thus it is difficult to agree on its origin, which can be paired with that of language or writing itself. Developments in print technology have allowed an evergrowing distribution and proliferation of written works, culminating in electronic literature.

Definitions[edit]

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There have been various attempts to define "literature". [1] Simon and Delyse Ryan begin their attempt to answer the question "What is Literature?" with the observation: The quest to discover a definition for "literature" is a road that is much travelled, though the point of arrival, if ever reached, is seldom satisfactory. Most attempted definitions are broad and vague, and they inevitably change over time. In fact, the only thing that is certain about defining literature is that the definition will change. Concepts of what is literature change over time as well.

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Definitions of literature have varied over time; it is a "culturally relative definition". [3] In Western Europe prior to the eighteenth century, literature as a term indicated all books and writing. [3] A more restricted sense of the term emerged during the Romantic period, in which it began to demarcate "imaginative" literature.[4][5] Contemporary debates over what constitutes literature can be seen as returning to the older, more inclusive notion of what constitutes literature. Cultural studies, for instance, takes as its subject of analysis both popular and minority genres, in addition to canonical works.[3]

The value judgment definition of literature considers it to cover exclusively those writings that possess high quality or distinction, forming part of the so-called belles-lettres ('fine writing') tradition. [6]

This sort of definition is that used in the Encyclopædia BritannicaEleventh Edition (1910–11) when

it classifies literature as "the best expression of the best thought reduced to writing." [7] Problematic in this view is that there is no objective definition of what constitutes "literature": anything can be literature, and anything which is universally regarded as literature has the potential to be excluded, since value judgments can change over time.[6] The formalist definition is that the history of "literature" foregrounds poetic effects; it is the "literariness" or "poeticity" of literature that distinguishes it from ordinary speech or other kinds of writing (e.g., journalism).[8][9] Jim Meyer considers this a useful characteristic in explaining the use of the term to mean published material in a particular field (e.g., "scientific literature"), as such writing must use language according to particular standards.[1] The problem with the formalist definition is that in order to say that literature deviates from ordinary uses of language, those uses must first be identified; this is difficult because "ordinary language" is an unstable category, differing according to social categories and across history.[10] Etymologically, the term derives from Latin literatura/litteratura "learning, a writing, grammar," originally "writing formed with letters," from litera/littera "letter".[11] In spite of this, the term has also been applied to spoken or sung texts.[1][12]

Major forms[edit]

Poetry[edit] Main article: Poetry

A calligram by Guillaume Apollinaire. These are a type of poem in which the written words are arranged in such a way to produce a visual image.

Poetry is a form of literary art which uses aesthetic and rhythmic qualities of language to evoke meanings in addition to, or in place of,prosaic ostensible meaning.[13] Poetry has traditionally been distinguished from prose by its being set in verse;[a] prose is cast insentences, poetry in lines; the syntax of prose is dictated by meaning, whereas that of poetry is held across metre or the visual aspects of the poem.[18] Prior to the nineteenth century, poetry was commonly understood to be something set in metrical lines; accordingly, in 1658 a definition of poetry is "any kind of subject consisting of Rythm or Verses".[13] Possibly as a result of Aristotle's influence (his Poetics), "poetry" before the nineteenth century was usually less a technical designation for verse than a normative category of fictive or rhetorical art.[19] As a form it may pre-date literacy, with the earliest works being composed within and sustained by an oral tradition;[20][21] hence it constitutes the earliest example of literature.

Prose[edit] Main article: Prose Prose is a form of language that possesses ordinary syntax and natural speech rather than rhythmic structure; in which regard, along with its measurement in sentences rather than lines, it differs from poetry.[18][22] On the historical development of prose, Richard Graff notes that "[In the case of Ancient Greece] recent scholarship has emphasized the fact that formal prose was a comparatively late development, an "invention" properly associated with the classical period".[23] 

Novel: a long fictional prose narrative. It was the form's close relation to real life that differentiated it from the chivalric romance;[24][25]in most European languages the equivalent term is roman, indicating the proximity of the forms.[25] In English, the term emerged from the Romance languages in the late fifteenth century, with the meaning of "news"; it came to indicate something new, without a distinction between fact or fiction. [26] Although there are many historical prototypes, so-called "novels before the novel",[27] the modern novel form emerges late in cultural history — roughly during the eighteenth century.[28] Initially subject to much criticism, the novel has acquired a dominant position amongst literary forms, both popularly and critically. [25][29][30]

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Novella: in purely quantitative , the novella exists between the novel and short story; the publisher Melville House classifies it as "too short to be a novel, too long to be a short story". [31]

There is no precise definition in of word or page count. [32] Literary prizes and publishing

houses often have their own arbitrary limits,[33] which vary according to their particular intentions.

Summarising the variable definitions of the novella, William Giraldi concludes "[it is a form] whose identity seems destined to be disputed into perpetuity".[34] It has been suggested that the size restriction of the form produces various stylistic results, both some that are shared with the novel or short story,[35][36]and others unique to the form.[37] 

Short story: a dilemma in defining the "short story" as a literary form is how to, or whether one should, distinguish it from any short narrative; hence it also has a contested origin, [38]

variably suggested as the earliest short narratives (e.g. the Bible), early short story writers

(e.g. Edgar Allan Poe), or the clearly modern short story writers (e.g.Anton Chekhov).[39] Apart from its distinct size, various theorists have suggested that the short story has a characteristic subject matter or structure;[40][41] these discussions often position the form in some relation to the novel.[42]

Drama[edit] Main article: Drama Drama is literature intended for performance.[43] The form is often combined with music and dance, as in opera and musical theatre. A play is a subset of this form, referring to the written dramatic work of a playwright that is intended for performance in a theatre; it comprises chiefly dialogue between characters, and usually aims at dramatic or theatrical performance rather than at reading. A closet drama, by contrast, refers to a play written to be read rather than to be performed; hence, it is intended that the meaning of such a work can be realized fully on the page. [44]

Nearly all drama took verse form until comparatively recently.

Greek drama exemplifies the earliest form of drama of which we have substantial knowledge. Tragedy, as a dramatic genre, developed as a performance associated with religiousand civic festivals, typically enacting or developing upon well-known historical or mythological themes. Tragedies generally presented very serious themes. With the advent of newer technologies, scripts written for non-stage media have been added to this form. War of the Worlds (radio) in 1938 saw the advent of literature written for radio broadcast, and many works of Drama have been adapted for film or television. Conversely, television, film, and radio literature have been adapted to printed or electronic media.

History[edit] Main articles: History of literature and History of modern literature

Egyptian hieroglyphs withcartouches for the name "Ramesses II", from the Luxor Temple, New Kingdom

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The history of literature follows closely the development of civilization. When defined exclusively as written work, Ancient Egyptian literature,[45] along with Sumerian literature are considered the world's oldest literatures.[46] The primary genres of the literature of Ancient Egypt—didactic texts, hymns and prayers, and tales—were almost entirely written in verse;[47]while use of poetic devices is clearly recognisable, the prosody of the verse is unknown.[48] Different historical periods are reflected in literature. National and tribal sagas, s of the origin of the world and of customs, and myths which sometimes carry moral or spiritual messages predominate in the pre-urban eras. The epics of Homer, dating from the early to middle Iron age, and the great Indian epics of a slightly later period, have more evidence of deliberate literary authorship, surviving like the older myths through oral tradition for long periods before being written down. “The roots of all our modern academic fields can be found within the pages of literature.”

[49]

Literature

in all its forms can be seen as written records, whether the literature itself be factual or fictional, it is still quite possible to decipher facts through things like characters’ actions and words or the authors’ style of writing and the intent behind the words. The plot is for more than just entertainment purposes; within it lies information about economics, psychology, science, religions, politics, cultures, and social depth. Studying and analyzing literature becomes very important in of learning about our history. Through the study of past literature we are able to learn about how society has evolved and about the societal norms during each of the different periods all throughout history. This can even help us to understand references made in more modern literature because authors often make references to Greek mythology and other old religious texts or historical moments. Not only is there literature written on each of the aforementioned topics themselves, and how they have evolved throughout history (like a book about the history of economics or a book about evolution and science, for example) but we can also learn about these things in fictional works. Authors often include historical moments in their works, like when Lord Byron talks about the Spanish and the French in ‘‘Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage: Canto I’’[50] and expresses his opinions through his character Childe Harold. Through literature we are able to continuously uncover new information about history. It is easy to see how all academic fields have roots in literature. [49] Information became easier to down from generation to generation once we began to write it down. Eventually everything was written down, from things like home remedies and cures for illness, or how to build shelter to traditions and religious practices. From there people were able to study literature, improve on ideas, further our knowledge, and academic fields such as the medical field or trades could be started. In

much the same way as the literature that we study today continue to be updated as we continue to evolve and learn more and more. As a more urban culture developed, academies provided a means of transmission for speculative and philosophical literature in early civilizations, resulting in the prevalence of literature in Ancient China, Ancient India, Persia and Ancient Greece and Rome. Many works of earlier periods, even in narrative form, had a covert moral or didactic purpose, such as the Sanskrit Panchatantra or the Metamorphoses of Ovid. Drama and satire also developed as urban culture provided a larger public audience, and later readership, for literary production. Lyric poetry (as opposed to epic poetry) was often the speciality of courts and aristocratic circles, particularly in East Asia where songs were collected by the Chinese aristocracy as poems, the most notable being the Shijing or Book of Songs. Over a long period, the poetry of popular pre-literate balladry and song interpenetrated and eventually influenced poetry in the literary medium. In ancient China, early literature was primarily focused on philosophy, historiography, military science, agriculture, and poetry. China, the origin of modern paper making andwoodblock printing, produced the world's first print cultures.[51] Much of Chinese literature originates with the Hundred Schools of Thought period that occurred during the Eastern Zhou Dynasty (769-269 BCE). The most important of these include the Classics of Confucianism, of Daoism, of Mohism, of Legalism, as well as works of military science (e.g. Sun Tzu's The Art of War) and Chinese history (e.g. Sima Qian's Records of the Grand Historian). Ancient Chinese literature had a heavy emphasis on historiography, with often very detailed court records. An exemplary piece of narrative history of ancient China was the Zuo Zhuan, which was compiled no later than 389 BCE, and attributed to the blind 5th century BCE historian Zuo Qiuming. In ancient India, literature originated from stories that were originally orally transmitted. Early genres included drama, fables, sutras and epic poetry. Sanskrit literature begins with the Vedas, dating back to 1500–1000 BCE, and continues with the Sanskrit Epics of Iron Age India. The Vedas are among the oldest sacred texts. The Samhitas (vedic collections) date to roughly 1500–1000 BCE, and the "circum-Vedic" texts, as well as the redaction of the Samhitas, date to c. 1000-500 BCE, resulting in a Vedic period, spanning the mid 2nd to mid 1st millennium BCE, or the Late Bronze Age and the Iron Age.[52] The period between approximately the 6th to 1st centuries BC saw the composition and redaction of the two most influential Indian epics, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, with subsequent redaction progressing down to the 4th century AD. In ancient Greece, the epics of Homer, who wrote the Iliad and the Odyssey, and Hesiod, who wrote Works and Days and Theogony, are some of the earliest, and most influential, of Ancient Greek literature. Classical Greek genres included philosophy, poetry, historiography, comedies and dramas. Plato and Aristotle authored philosophical texts that are the

foundation of Western philosophy, Sappho and Pindar were influential lyric poets, and Herodotus and Thucydides were early Greek historians. Although drama was popular in Ancient Greece, of the hundreds of tragedies written and performed during the classical age, only a limited number of plays by three authors still exist: Aeschylus, Sophocles, andEuripides. The plays of Aristophanes provide the only real examples of a genre of comic drama known as Old Comedy, the earliest form of Greek Comedy, and are in fact used to define the genre. [53]

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,German writer and author of the Faustbooks

Roman histories and biographies anticipated the extensive mediaeval literature of lives of saints and miraculous chronicles, but the most characteristic form of the Middle Ages was the romance, an adventurous and sometimes magical narrative with strong popular appeal. Controversial, religious, political and instructional literature proliferated during the Renaissance as a result of the invention of printing, while the mediaeval romance developed into a more character-based and psychological form of narrative, the novel, of which early and important examples are the Chinese Monkey and the German Faust books. In the Age of Reason philosophical tracts and speculations on history and human nature integrated literature with social and political developments. The inevitable reaction was the explosion of Romanticism in the later 18th century which reclaimed the imaginative and fantastical bias of old romances and folk-literature and asserted the primacy of individual experience and emotion. But as the 19th-century went on, European fiction evolved towards realism and naturalism, the meticulous documentation of real life and social trends. Much of the output of naturalism was implicitly polemical, and influenced social and political change, but 20th century fiction and drama moved back towards the subjective, emphasising unconscious motivations and social and environmental pressures on the individual. Writers such asProust, Eliot, Joyce, Kafka and Pirandello exemplify the trend of documenting internal rather than external realities. Genre fiction also showed it could question reality in its 20th century forms, in spite of its fixed formulas, through the enquiries of the skeptical detective and the alternative realities of science

fiction. The separation of "mainstream" and "genre" forms (including journalism) continued to blur during the period up to our own times. William Burroughs, in his early works, and Hunter S. Thompson expanded documentary reporting into strong subjective statements after the second World War, and post-modern critics have disparaged the idea of objective realism in general.

Types of Literature There are many types, forms, genres, and ways to categorize literature. Here, we list the two main types of literature along with their sub-categories. TAGGED UNDER: Literature ment

"Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree." ― Ezra Pound Every language has its own literature. A majority of world's national literature can be broadly classified into English, Greek, Latin, Roman, African, Indian, American, French, Irish, Spanish, Chinese, Italian, Japanese, Persian, Sanskrit, Nepali, Russian, African-American, Canadian literature, etc. Literature is a form of language that deeply influences the minds of people of all ages. Moreover, literature is also studied as a scientific language for various aspects like grammar, usage, lexis, semantics, pragmatics, etc. Literature is the mirror of society. Thus a book written in a particular time defines people, their thoughts, and the influences of that era. The works of Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci depict the era of Italian Renaissance, whereas Greek literature mostly comprises the s of Greek Gods and Goddesses. Romanticism is about nature and simplicity, while classicism defines complexity. A classic example is that of William Wordsworth who romanticized the Romantic era with his naturalistic writing. As time changed, so did people and their work, and of course, literature. Today we're in the post-modernism era, where literary works include a mix of critical and artificial tone of language. Most of the skeptical elements like ambiguity, satire, parody, etc. are the most prominent features found in the current era. These days some authors choose long composition methods to interlink and present more than one story. Forms of Literature Written ~ Fiction - Drama, novel, poetry, short story, and frame narrative.

~ Non-Fiction - Autobiography, biography, essay, journal, diary, travel literature, literary criticism, media, and outdoor literature. Oral Oral literature, epic and mock epic, proverbs, oral poetry, and folklore. Types of Literature Oral and written literature are the two major forms of literature. As we all know, almost all type of literature is available in written form. A lot of oral literature too has been made available in the form of books. We will now look into fiction and non-fiction literature as two major types of literature, and also consider the various types of oral literature. While prose and verse are the two forms of writings. Every piece of writing that has sentence form or paragraphs is the prose, whereas verse is the poetic form of writing. Example of prose Drama, novel, newspapers, short story, biography, essay, journal, philosophy, travel literature, children's literature, fantasy and scientific writings, historical writing, diary, etc. Example of Verse - Poetry. Thus we can conclude that fictional and non-fictional literature are mostly prose literature, except for poetry. Interestingly, if you come across a verse form in a drama, it is termed as dramatic poetry or verse drama! Fiction Literature - Drama Drama consists of theatrical dialogs performed on stage, it consists of 5 acts. A drama that has just one act is a 'one-act play'. Flash play is the shortest 10-minute play. According to Aristotle, there are six elements of drama plot, diction, character, thought, spectacle, and song. Tragedy A scene from Shakespeare's tragedy - 'King Lear' It revolves around the main character, his life, struggle, misfortune and grief, or sometimes, death of the dear ones or the main character. The monologue element is the easiest way in which the misfortune of the main character is expressed, whereas prophecy by witch, ghost etc. are the dark elements used to give tragedy a feel of horror. Examples of tragedies are 'The Illiad' and 'The Odyssey' by Homer - the two famous Greek tragedies. The four popular tragedies of William Shakespeare are - Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, and Othello. Comedy A scene from Shakespeare's comedy - 'Much Ado About Nothing' Comedy is full of laughter wherein incidents are handled very lightly. The elements used in

comedy are romanticism, exaggeration, surprise, and a comic view of a particular event. Farce, comedy of manners are some of the sub-types of comedy. e.g. Ben Jonson's 'Comedy of Humours', 'The Importance of Being Earnest' by Oscar Wilde, 'Much Ado About Nothing' by William Shakespeare etc. Comedy - Farce The word origins from Latin word 'farcire' means 'to fill or stuff'. Thus, 'farce' is a light comic event inserted in the middle of a play or movie to lighten the scene. It intends to make the audience laugh for a while, when the plotline seems to be serious. It can be through humor, nonsense, over exaggeration, or jokes. E.g. Chaucer's 'The Canterbury Tales', Oscar Wilde's 'The Importance of Being Earnest', Robin Hawdon's 'Perfect Wedding', etc. Comedy - Comedy of Manners When you laugh due to the class, fashion, or manners of stereotypical character, it's Comedy of Manners. e.g. Richard Sheridan's 'The School for Scandal' (1777), Oliver Goldsmith's 'She Stoops to Conquer (1773), Harold Pinter's 'The Homecoming' (1964), etc. Comedy - Melodrama Melodrama is a blend of two nouns - 'melody' and 'drama'. Currently the term is used for works that lack sophistication, but in 1840s, it was used to denote a musical play. e.g. 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' is one of the popular plays describing cruelty of labor life. It emphasizes sensationalism and in the end, the play concludes with a 'happy ending.' Comedy - Tragicomedy The play that begins with serious mode, but has a happy ending is tragicomedy. e.g. 'The Visit' by Friedrich Dürrenmatt. Fiction Literature - Novel Novel is a simple narration of a story without any dialogs like drama. It can be comic, romantic, criminal, detective, adventurous, or a political story, etc. Novel - Allegory The story revolves around more than one meaning. What the writer says directly is symbolic and totally different from the meaning conveyed at the end. Political and historical allegory are two forms of allegory. E.g. 'Tughlak' is a political allegory written by Girish Karnad, while John Bunyan's 'Pilgrim's Progress' is a historical allegory. Novel - Epistolary Epistolary novels are a collection of letters and mails. Samuel Richardson's 'Pamela' and Henry Fielding's 'Joseph Andrew' are a few notable examples of epistolary novels. Novel - Feminist Feminist novels are written by women around the world about women's issues in a maledominated society. Simone de Beauvoir ('She Came to Stay', 'The Mandarins,' and 'The Second Sex'), Betty Friedan ('The Feminine Mystique') and Virginia Woolf ('A Room of one's Own') are a few popular feminist novelists. You'll surprised to know that a few female writers used male

names as their pen names to hide their identity, because male author's works were supposed to be taken seriously without any bias. Novel - Gothic Gothic fiction is a combination of both horror and romance. Melodrama and parody are the elements of Gothic plays. e.g. 'The Castle of Otranto' (1764) by Horace Walpole is honored as the first Gothic play in literature. Novel - Ironic Ironic novels are known for excessive use of narrative technique. It is a kind of satire on contemporary society about their cultural, social, and political issues. e.g. Charles Dickens' 'A Tale of Two Cities.' Novel - Realism The realistic novels are based on the truths of society and their problems. It focuses on the plot, structure, and the characters of the novel. e.g. 'Pride and Prejudice' (1813) by Jane Austen. Novel - Romance Romantic novels favor love and relationship, the stories revolve around love affairs of main characters. Some popular sub-categories of romantic novels are paranormal, erotic, suspense, multicultural, and inspirational romance. e.g. 'Wuthering Heights' (1847) by Emily Brontë and 'Portrait of a Lady' (1881) by Henry James. Novel - Narration In narrative style, the writer becomes a third-person narrator who narrates the whole story around its characters. When you're reading narratives, you feel like you are witnessing a play. As a reader, you get involved in the play and visualize it as if you were present there at that time. Emily Bronte's 'Wuthering Heights' is best narrative example of all time, wherein there are two main narrators, Lockwood and Nelly Dean, while there are many characters in between the play. Another example is 'Diary of Catherine' that highlights the life of a protagonist. Novel - Naturalism Naturalism is based on the theory of Darwin. The concept is as simple, natural, and real as the word 'naturalism'! In a nutshell, environment has its impact on human beings. So naturalist writers write about reality of life of a person or/and social issues like poverty, violence, corruption, politics etc. As opposed to romanticism, readers find naturalist plays pessimistic and their tone a bit philosophical. E.g. Rebecca Harding Davis' 'Life in the Iron Mills (novella)', Kate Chopin's 'The Awakening', Ernest Hemingway's 'Indian Camp', 'The Sun Also Rises'', and 'A Farewell to Arms'. Novel - Picaresque A scene from Dickens's 'David Copperfield', where young David is outside his aunt's house Like naturalism, Picaresque is also quite contrasting to the concept of romanticism. It involves ideals, themes, and principles that refuse the so-called prejudices of the society. In this type,

there is no plot, the main character is a poor, jobless, and always a social victim. Few science fiction and fantasy novels have the style of picaresque novels. Besides adventure as a prime characteristic, picaresque novel has first-person narration. E.g. Charles Dickens' ''Great Expectations'' and ''David Copperfield'', etc. Novel - Psychological These novel is lay greater emphasis on the psychological perspectives of characters. You must have heard about stream of consciousness, flashback, soliloquies etc., these features reveal the psychology of a person. e.g. Samuel Richardson's ''Pamela'', Henry James' ''The Portrait of a Lady'', etc. Novel - Satire Though satire is a common form seen in comedy novels, this literary device tries to focus on facts of the society and their issues. These novels criticize the contemporary society. e.g. ''Gulliver's Travels'' (1726), by Lemuel Gulliver, ''Adventures of Huckleberry Finn'' (1884) by Mark Twain, Kingsley Amis' ''Lucky Jim'' (1954), George Orwell's ''Animal Farm'' (1945), Randell Jarrell's ''Pictures from an Institution'' (1954), etc. Novel - Stream of Consciousness Also known as 'interior monologues', stream of consciousness is all about the thoughts coming up in the minds of the character. You will not find any sequential narration in such technique of writing. The term has been coined by James Joyce, Dorthy Richardson, and Virginia Woolf. James Joyce used this term in his book, 'The Principles of Psychology' (1890), wherein he defined the concept as: "Consciousness, then, does not appear to itself chopped up in bits. Such words as 'chain' or 'train' do not describe it fitly as it presents itself in the first instance. It is nothing ted; it flows. A 'river' or a 'stream' are the metaphors by which it is most naturally described. In talking of it hereafter, let us call it the stream of thought, of consciousness, or of subjective life...." Novel - Science Fiction It's the most popular form. Everyone likes to dream, imagine life in space and to know about aliens, robots, paranormal activities and what not. e.g. 'The Time Machine', 'Dune', 'Brave new world', 'Harry Potter', 'Ringworld', 'Planet of Adventure', 'Level 7', 'Voyage', (the list goes on and on...) etc. A novel may also cover diverse categories on social and political aspects like proletarian, protest, government, didactic, materialist, allegorical, Marxist, radical, revolutionary, anti-war, utopian, futuristic, anarchist, social philosophy, speculative, problem play, and novel of ideas, etc. Fiction Literature - Poetry Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility. - William Wordsworth. How well these words explain the sentiment of poetic composition! Free verse is generally found in Greek poetry, whereas rhyming pattern is

seen in Persian poems. Sonnet Sonnet is the short poem of 14 lines. E.g. 'To Fanny' by John Keats and Shakespeare's collection of sonnets are a few famous examples. Sonnet 18 - 'Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?' is the most popular sonnet that deserves a mention. Sonnet 18 - Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer's lease hath all too short a date: Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimmed, And every fair from fair sometime declines, By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed: But thy eternal summer shall not fade, Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st, Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st, So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. Elegy Elegy is a mournful poem wherein the poet is lamenting for the dead person or his near ones. e.g. 'Elegy Written in Country Churchyard' by Thomas Gray is one of the famous elegies marked as the saddest poem of the ages. The curfew tolls the knell of parting day, The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea, The plowman homeward plods his weary way, And leaves the world to darkness and to me. Ode Ode is the formal and long poem, serious in nature. It addresses a person, place, or thing. Previously ode was composed along with music and dance due to its melody. When romantic poets started using it to express their sentiments, it was constrained to the lyrical form. E.g. "Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood" by William Wordsworth The rainbow comes and goes, And lovely is the rose; The moon doth with delight, Look round her when the heavens are bare; Waters on a starry night,

Are beautiful and fair; The sunshine is a glorious birth; But yet I know, where'er I go, That there hath 'd away a glory from the earth. Allegory Allegory has two symbolic meanings. One is the literal meaning and another is the deep/symbolic meaning. E.g. 'The Faerie Queene' by Edmund Spenser is the longest poem written in Spenserian stanza. You will be amazed to see the use of extended metaphor in the poem. Lyric It has Greek origin. Lyric is a short poem which has song-like quality. It is poet's appeal to his readers about any incident or historical event. If you have read a lyric, you might know that the form of Lyric is almost similar to odes or sonnets. E.g. Emily Dickinson's 'I Felt a Funeral in my Brain' I felt a Funeral, in my Brain, And Mourners to-and-fro, Kept treading - treading - till it seemed, That Sense was breaking through And when they all were seated, A Service, like a, Drum - Kept beating - beating - till I thought, My Mind was going numb. Fiction Literature - Short Story Short Stories are wonderful tales of quests and fantasies. The small commercial fiction, true or imaginary, smaller than a novel is known as short story. Short stories have a well-defined structure - easy and no complexity in the beginning, concrete theme, some dialogs and end with resolution. Short stories can be oral and short-lived tales. Flash fiction is a short story, less than 1000 word count. e.g. Thomas Hardy's 'The Three Strangers', Rudyard Kipling's 'Jungle Book', etc. Fiction Literature - Frame Narrative Here we find a story within the main story. You must be wondering why would a writer prefer a story within a story and how does he present it? Well, it's one way to allow the reader to interpret every character in detail. Like... the story about a particular character's nature, family, work, and attitude etc. to make the character more lively. There are lots of methods to write a frame narrative. Some writers use dream within a story, some opt for series of stories in the main story, or they use imagery language to represent plots. In an adventure story, the character narrates his own story (main story), within that he mentions different places and people, and their stories etc. are the frame tales. Some of the popular

examples of frame narratives are Pegasus, Wuthering Heights, The Flying Horse, The Three Pigs, A Time to keep and the Tasha Tudor Book of Holidays, etc. Non-fictional Literature Nonfiction literature is about real things and incidents, so they're informative and comprise interesting facts, with a total amalgam of analysis and illustrations. The various types have been explained below. Autobiography and Biography An autobiography is the story of the author's own life written by the author himself. For example, 'Family Life at the White House' by Bill Clinton is about his life and achievements. 'Wings of fire' by Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam is the success story of a poor child, and how he became the President of India. 'Mein kampf' by Adolph Hitler not only reveals Hilter's love for paintings and his career, but also focuses on the history of second World War. Barack Obama's 'Dream From My Father' is one of the best-selling books in the world. When an author writes about another person's life story, it is a biography. For example, Plutarch's 'Parallel Lives' written in the 1st century covers all famous Greek and Roman people of that time. Also 'Steve Jobs' (2001) by Walter Isaacson, 'Unbroken' by Laura Hillenbrand (about Louis Zamperini). Essay Generally, the authors' point of view about any particular topic explained in detail is called an essay. Essay has a simple way of narrating the main subject. Therefore they are descriptive, lengthy, subject-oriented, and comparative. The different types of essays are classified as personal, expository, response, process, persuasive, argumentative, critical, interview, reflective, evaluative, application, compare and contrast essay, and narrative essay, etc. Journal Journals somewhat look like diaries, but they are different because they record infinite information, analysis, thoughts, experiences, etc. A personal journal is for personal analysis, where one can write his goal, daily thoughts, events, and situations. Academic journals are for students who do research or dissertation on a particular subject. Creative journals are the imaginative writing of a story, poem, or narrative. Trade journals are used by industries where they dictate practical information. Dialectical journals is used by students to write on a double-column notebook. The left side is for resources, wherein quotations, references, examples, facts, experiments, and observation are written. The right side can be a series of thoughts, following response, explanations and evaluation. Diary

Anne saying goodbye to her cat in 'Diary of a Young Girl' Diaries are the incidents recorded by the author without any means of publishing them. It is the rough work of one's daily routine, happenings, memorable days or events in their life. E.g. Anne Frank's 'Diary of a Young Girl' was published by her father in 1940s; it's a story of a girl trapped during German invade Amsterdam. Second example is 'The Paris Diary of Ned Rorem' by Ned Rorem. Diaries consist of business letters, newsletters, weather listing. Some profound forms of diaries are online diary, travel, fictional, dream, and death diaries. that the diary, blog and journal mean different things, though they can be used interchangeably. When you write something private it's a diary, when you go one step ahead and add few event or business documents to it, then it becomes journal. Blogs can be in form of a diary or journal, the only difference is that a blog is online. Blogs are digital, while the diary and journal are handwritten. Travel literature It is the narration of any tour or foreign visit. Travel literature has details of events, dates, places, languages, culture along with the author's views. As the author shares his experiences, such piece of writing is also called itinerary or travelogue. A few of sub-categories of travel literature include Travel guide, Travel journal, and Travel writing for newspapers and magazines. For example, Francis Bacon's natural philosophies in the middle of Seventeenth century is one of the famous examples of travel literature. Literary criticism Literary criticism is the critical study of a piece of literature wherein critics apply different theories, evaluations, discussions, and explanations to the text or essay. This way the work will be studied, criticized, and judged by a set of critics. Plato, Aristotle (Poetics), T.S. Eliot, Saussure and Frye were some of the famous critics. There are lot of general theories, therefore it is a tough task for a critic to know which theory goes along with the work while criticizing and analyzing it thoroughly. So there are fewer critics than the authors. You will get books on literary criticism in series, or essays published in journals. Media Different categories under media Media includes newspaper, magazine, movies, Internet, radios, etc. It is the newest and widely acceptable type of literature. Everyone follows it due to its multiple objectives to learn, entertain and promote. Newspapers are a collection of daily or weekly news of politics, sports, leisure, fashion, movies, business etc. Magazines are all about current affairs, events, interviews, and opinions on several issues. It definitely won't be an exaggeration to say that movies, audio and video CDs that we see today

are also a form of digital literature. Have you heard about digital poetry, it is an trend in poetry. Outdoor literature Outdoor literature is the literature of adventure devoted to the whole exploration of an event. Writing about leisure time, or hobbies like horse riding, fishing, trekking can be a part of literature. Some outdoor books are 'The Adventures of Tom Sawyer' by Mark Twain, 'Treasure Island' by Robert Louis, 'Voyages' by Richard Hakluyt and 'A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush' by Eric Newby. Oral Literature Oral Literature, also known as Orature includes folklore, joke, fable, parable, hearsay, and legend etc. Folklore is a traditional story that has been generating interest since ancient times. Now, almost all oral literature is available so far in written form, they are generally categorized into fictional literature. Folklores are generally superstitious and religious stories. Every nation has its own oral history in their respective languages like Chinese, African, Indian, American folks, etc. Epic and Mock Epic Epic is the narrative poem that conveys moral and culture of that period. For example, "The Odyssey" and "Iliad" are one of the largest philosophical epics written by Samuel Butler. If you're fond of mock epic, read 'Rape of the Lock'. It's interesting to see how a minor incident of cutting of curls can give birth to a great mock epic of 794 lines. Proverbs They are traditional sayings that influence the lifestyle of people through their culture. You must have heard of these wisdom proverbs, 'All that glitters is not gold', 'Even a small star shines in the darkness', 'The pen is mightier than the sword', etc. Proverbs are memorable sayings that are ed from one generation to another. Proverbs are thoughts of wisdom and experiences. You can relate proverbs with your real-life experiences and take them as advice to overcome a situation. So it's an oral gift we have to on to the next generation. Oral poetry - Hymns Poem that is written for praising god or some supernatural being is hymn. It can be in the form of prayer, song, ode etc. Oral poetry - Psalms They are sacred songs used in worship of Christian and Jewish religions. E.g. The Bible "When my spirit grows faint within me, it is You Who know my way. In the path where I walk men have hidden a snare for me." Psalm 142:3 (NIV) Oral poetry - Ballad Group of children singing ballads

Ballad is a narrative poem sung by the poet or group of singers. Its narrative style makes it more lively as if the narrator is taking the listeners to that time and telling a story. Generally, ballads are oral literature, but as we progress, it takes the form of written literature. If Bishop Thomas Percy would have not published 'Reliques of Ancient English Poetry' (1765), we would have been without the knowledge of this ancestral treasure of poetry. His collection of popular ballads are the first written form of ballad. (Please note, some of the ballads in the book are not written by him). An example of a ballad is 'Lord Lovel'. 'Lord Lovel was gone just a year and a day, New countries for to see, When languishing thoughts came over his mind, Lady Nancy he must go see, see, see, Lady Nancy he must go see.' Folklore - Fairy tales Hansel and Gretel looking at the gingerbread house Any traditional stories, proverbs or songs are Folklore. Folklore studies culture, its rituals, traditions, and artifacts. A popular type of folklore is a fairy tale. Fairy tales are not real and they are told by someone with a starting phrase like, 'Once upon a time, there was-'. that takes you back to your childhood days. Popular fairy tales include Hansel and Gretel, Cindrella, Tom Thumb, etc. These tales have fictional characters, dragons, witches, spirits, elves as well as supernatural elements like magic and some far-reaching powers, etc. Folklore - Tall Tales Tall tales are those wherein you find the exaggeration, imaginary animals and humans performing unbelievable things, and you will laugh at the end due to its humorous nature. While some tall tales end with a moral. They are the basic element of American folk literature, like storytelling. 'Callin' the Dog' from 'A Mississippi Tall Tale'. "One man offered a hound dog pup to the person who could tell the biggest lie. Well, those stories started rollin' in, each one bigger and harder to believe than the one before. Now, the last man to talk knew he didn't have a chance of winnin' that there pup on of all them tall-tales the others told was so good. So he just said: "I never told a lie in my life." "You get the pup!" Said the owner of the hound dog. And everyone else agreed with him. Folklore - Parables Parables are the religious or moral stories. They can be written or told in a prose or verse form,

they are always found in a narrative form. There are no animal characters (which show emotions) like we have in Fables, and parables describe a universal truth. Bible is an example of parable. Folklore - Myth Myths are sacred, so they've a deep meaning. These are the tales of origin of the world and people. That's why you will find gods and goddesses in Greek mythology. You will find lots of adventure, magic, supernatural elements (creatures, giants) in them although they lack scientific proof. Nature myth has stories of the stars and moon, weather, etc. e.g. Zeus is the god of thunder, lightening. Do you believe in afterlife? Well Chinese, Greek, Roman cultures had myths on rebirth, afterlife, and concepts of hell and heaven. Other types of folklore include fables (stories with moral), cumulative, trickster (stories of god, goddess, man, spirit, or animal who disobeys normal rules and behavior), beliefs (power that controls human beings), ghost stories, and legends (collection of ancient religious stories of origin and human civilization such as story of Robin Hood), etc. The above article includes the many types of literature that are known in English literature. Also, there are other types like comic books, cartoons, eBook, and online stories that are constantly adding up to new forms of literature, with every ing day. Read more at Buzzle: http://www.buzzle.com/articles/types-of-literature.html

Rgis guy is the shakespeare of phillipinesFrancisco Baltazar (popularly known as Francisco Balagtas) was born on April 2, 1788 in Bigaa, Bulacan. He learned how to write poetry from another famous Filipino poet, José de la Cruz. Because ofhim, Balagtas was constantly pushed to develop and progress his writing. Considered the Filipino version of William

Shakespeare, most of his early workswere, like Shakespeare, comedies. Also like Shakespeare, his work graduallymatured over time; Balagtas' masterpiece entitled Florante at Laura is an epicwritten when he was imprisoned during the 19thcentury.This high regard given toBalagtas is the reason why the poetic form, balagtasan, is given its name. AsBalagtas is the reason why the poetic form, balagtasan, is given its name. Asstated before, the name of the form itself was coined outside the range of ourresearch; however the turmoil happening from the early 1900's were influentialin creating the literary form as it is today. Balagtasan came about, at least politically, as the manifestation of Filipino sentiment in that a sense of selfand identity was lost due to American rule. It strives to declare independencefrom America by highlighting Filipino culture such as their old customs andtraditions.

William Shakespeare (/ˈʃeɪkspɪər/;[1] 26 April 1564 (baptised) – 23 April 1616)[nb 1] was an English poet, playwright, and actor, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist.[2] He is often called England'snational poet, and the "Bard of Avon".[3][nb 2] His extant works, including collaborations, consist of approximately 38 plays,[nb 3]

154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His

plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright.[4] Shakespeare was born and brought up in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Sometime between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part-owner of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as theKing's Men. He appears to have retired to Stratford around 1613, at age 49, where he died three years later. Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive, which has stimulated considerable speculation about such matters as his physical appearance,sexuality, and religious beliefs, and whether the works attributed to him were written by others.[5] Shakespeare produced most of his known work between 1589 and 1613. [6][nb 4] His early plays were primarily comedies and histories, and these are regarded as some of the best work ever produced in these genres. He then wrote mainly tragedies until about 1608, including Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth, considered some of the finest works in the English language.[2] In his last phase, he wrote tragicomedies, also known as romances, and collaborated with other playwrights. Many of his plays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracy during his lifetime. In 1623, however, John Heminges andHenry Condell, two friends and fellow actors of Shakespeare, published a more definitive text known as the First Folio, a posthumous collected edition of his dramatic works that included all but two of the plays now recognised as Shakespeare's. [7] It was prefaced with a poem by Ben Jonson, in which Shakespeare is hailed, presciently, as "not of an age, but for all time".[7] In the 20th and 21st centuries, his works have been repeatedly adapted and rediscovered by new movements in scholarship and performance. His plays remain highly popular, and are constantly studied, performed, and reinterpreted in diverse cultural and political contexts throughout the world.

Early life William Shakespeare was the son of John Shakespeare, an alderman and a successful glover originally from Snitterfield, and Mary Arden, the daughter of an affluent landowning farmer.[8] He was born in Stratford-upon-Avon and baptised there on 26 April 1564. His actual date of birth remains unknown, but is traditionally observed on 23 April, Saint George's Day.[9] This date, which can be

traced back to an 18th-century scholar's mistake, has proved appealing to biographers, since Shakespeare died on 23 April 1616.[10] He was the third child of eight and the eldest surviving son.[11] Although no attendance records for the period survive, most biographers agree that Shakespeare was probably educated at the King's New School in Stratford,[12] a free school chartered in 1553, [13]

about a quarter-mile (400 m) from his home. Grammar schools varied in quality during the

Elizabethan era, but grammar school curricula were largely similar: the basic Latin text was standardised by royal decree,[14] and the school would have provided an intensive education in grammar based upon Latin classical authors.[15]

John Shakespeare's house, believed to be Shakespeare's birthplace, in Stratford-upon-Avon

At the age of 18, Shakespeare married 26-year-old Anne Hathaway. The consistory court of the Diocese of Worcester issued a marriage licence on 27 November 1582. The next day, two of Hathaway's neighbours posted bonds guaranteeing that no lawful claims impeded the marriage. [16]

The ceremony may have been arranged in some haste, since the Worcester chancellor allowed

the marriage banns to be read once instead of the usual three times,[17] and six months after the marriage Anne gave birth to a daughter, Susanna, baptised 26 May 1583.[18] Twins, son Hamnet and daughter Judith, followed almost two years later and were baptised 2 February 1585.[19] Hamnet died of unknown causes at the age of 11 and was buried 11 August 1596.[20]

Shakespeare's coat of arms, as it appears on the rough draft of the application to grant a coat-of-arms to John Shakespeare. It features a spear as a pun on the family name.[nb 5]

After the birth of the twins, Shakespeare left few historical traces until he is mentioned as part of the London theatre scene in 1592. The exception is the appearance of his name in the "complaints bill" of a law case before the Queen's Bench court at Westminster dated Michaelmas Term 1588 and 9 October 1589.[21] Scholars refer to the years between 1585 and 1592 as Shakespeare's "lost years". [22]

Biographers attempting to for this period have reported

many apocryphal stories. Nicholas Rowe, Shakespeare's first biographer, recounted a Stratford legend that Shakespeare fled the town for London to escape prosecution for deer poaching in the estate of local squire Thomas Lucy. Shakespeare is also supposed to have taken his revenge on Lucy by writing a scurrilous ballad about him.[23] Another 18th-century story has Shakespeare starting his theatrical career minding the horses of theatre patrons in London. [24]John Aubrey reported that Shakespeare had been a country schoolmaster.[25] Some 20th-century scholars have suggested that Shakespeare may have been employed as a schoolmaster by Alexander Hoghton of Lancashire, a Catholic landowner who named a certain "William Shakeshafte" in his will. [26] Little evidence substantiates such stories other than hearsay collected after his death, and Shakeshafte was a common name in the Lancashire area.[27]

London and theatrical career "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts ..." —As You Like It, Act II, Scene 7, 139–42[28]

It is not known definitively when Shakespeare began writing, but contemporary allusions and records of performances show that several of his plays were on the London stage by 1592. [29] By then, he was sufficiently known in London to be attacked in print by the playwrightRobert Greene in his Groats-Worth of Wit: ... there is an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tiger's heart wrapped in a Player's hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you: and being an absolute Johannes factotum, is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country.[30] Scholars differ on the exact meaning of Greene's words,[31] but most agree that Greene is accusing Shakespeare of reaching above his rank in trying to match such university-educated writers as Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Nashe and Greene himself (the so-called"university wits").[32] The italicised phrase parodying the line "Oh, tiger's heart wrapped in a woman's hide" from

Shakespeare's Henry VI, Part 3, along with the pun "Shake-scene", clearly identify Shakespeare as Greene's target. As used here, Johannes Factotum ("Jack of all trades") refers to a second-rate tinkerer with the work of others, rather than the more common "universal genius". [31][33] Greene's attack is the earliest surviving mention of Shakespeare's work in the theatre. Biographers suggest that his career may have begun any time from the mid-1580s, to just before Greene's remarks.[34] After 1594, Shakespeare's plays were performed only by the Lord Chamberlain's Men, a company owned by a group of players, including Shakespeare, that soon became the leading playing company in London.[35] After the death of Queen Elizabeth in 1603, the company was awarded a royal patent by the new King James I, and changed its name to the King's Men.[36] In 1599, a partnership of of the company built their own theatre on the south bank of the River Thames, which they named the Globe. In 1608, the partnership also took over the Blackfriars indoor theatre. Extant records of Shakespeare's property purchases and investments indicate that his association with the company made him a wealthy man, [37] and in 1597 he bought the second-largest house in Stratford, New Place, and in 1605, invested in a share of the parish tithes in Stratford.[38] Some of Shakespeare's plays were published in quarto editions beginning in 1594, and by 1598, his name had become a selling point and began to appear on the title pages.[39]Shakespeare continued to act in his own and other plays after his success as a playwright. The 1616 edition of Ben Jonson's Works names him on the cast lists for Every Man in His Humour (1598) and Sejanus His Fall (1603).[40] The absence of his name from the 1605 cast list for Jonson's Volpone is taken by some scholars as a sign that his acting career was nearing its end.[41] The First Folio of 1623, however, lists Shakespeare as one of "the Principal Actors in all these Plays", some of which were first staged after Volpone, although we cannot know for certain which roles he played. [42] In 1610, John Davies of Hereford wrote that "good Will" played "kingly" roles.[43] In 1709, Rowe ed down a tradition that Shakespeare played the ghost of Hamlet's father.[44] Later traditions maintain that he also played Adam in As You Like It, and the Chorus in Henry V,[45] though scholars doubt the sources of that information.[46] Throughout his career, Shakespeare divided his time between London and Stratford. In 1596, the year before he bought New Place as his family home in Stratford, Shakespeare was living in the parish of St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, north of the River Thames.[47][48] He moved across the river to Southwark by 1599, the same year his company constructed the Globe Theatre there. [47][49] By 1604, he had moved north of the river again, to an area north of St Paul's Cathedral with many fine houses. There he rented rooms from a FrenchHuguenot named Christopher Mountjoy, a maker of ladies' wigs and other headgear.[50]

Later years and death Rowe was the first biographer to record the tradition, repeated by Johnson, that Shakespeare retired to Stratford "some years before his death".[51][52] He was still working as an actor in London in 1608; in an answer to the sharers' petition in 1635 Cuthbert Burbage stated that after purchasing the lease of the Blackfriars Theatre in 1608 from Henry Evans, the King's Men "placed men players" there, "which were Heminges, Condell, Shakespeare, etc.".[53] However it is perhaps relevant that the bubonic plague raged in London throughout 1609.[54][55] The London public playhouses were repeatedly closed during extended outbreaks of the plague (a total of over 60 months closure between May 1603 and February 1610),[56] which meant there was often no acting work. Retirement from all work was uncommon at that time.[57] Shakespeare continued to visit London during the years 1611–1614.[51] In 1612, he was called as a witness in Bellott v. Mountjoy, a court case concerning the marriage settlement of Mountjoy's daughter, Mary.[58] In March 1613 he bought a gatehouse in the former Blackfriars priory;[59] and from November 1614 he was in London for several weeks with his son-in-law, John Hall.[60] After 1610, Shakespeare wrote fewer plays, and none are attributed to him after 1613.[61] His last three plays were collaborations, probably with John Fletcher,[62] who succeeded him as the house playwright of the King's Men. [63]

Shakespeare's funerary monument in Stratford-upon-Avon.

Shakespeare died on 23 April 1616, at the age of 52. [64] He died within a month of g his will, a document which he begins by describing himself as being in "perfect health". No extant contemporary source explains how or why he died. Half a century later, John Ward, the vicar of Stratford, wrote in his notebook: "Shakespeare, Drayton and Ben Jonson had a merry meeting and, it seems, drank too hard, for Shakespeare died of a fever there contracted", [65][66] not an impossible scenario, since Shakespeare knew Jonson and Drayton. Of the tributes from fellow authors, one refers to his relatively sudden death: "We wondered, Shakespeare, that thou went'st so soon/From the world's stage to the grave's tiring room."[67] He was survived by his wife and two daughters. Susanna had married a physician, John Hall, in 1607,[68] and Judith had married Thomas Quiney, avintner, two months before Shakespeare's death. [69]

Shakespeare signed his last will and testament on 25 March 1616; the following day his new son-

in-law, Thomas Quiney was found guilty of fathering an illegitimate son by Margaret Wheeler, who had died during childbirth. Thomas was ordered by the church court to do public penance, which would have caused much shame and embarrassment for the Shakespeare family.[70] Shakespeare bequeathed the bulk of his large estate to his elder daughter Susanna [71] under stipulations that she it down intact to "the first son of her body". [72] The Quineys had three children, all of whom died without marrying.[73] The Halls had one child, Elizabeth, who married twice but died without children in 1670, ending Shakespeare's direct line. [74] Shakespeare's will scarcely mentions his wife, Anne, who was probably entitled to one third of his estate automatically.[75] He did make a point, however, of leaving her "my second best bed", a bequest that has led to much speculation.[76] Some scholars see the bequest as an insult to Anne, whereas others believe that the second-best bed would have been the matrimonial bed and therefore rich in significance. [77] Shakespeare was buried in the chancel of the Holy Trinity Church two days after his death.[78] The epitaph carved into the stone slab covering his grave includes a curse against moving his bones, which was carefully avoided during restoration of the church in 2008: [79]

Shakespeare's grave, next to those of Anne Shakespeare, his wife, andThomas Nash, the husband of his granddaughter.

Good frend for Iesvs sake forbeare, To digg the dvst encloased heare. Bleste be

man

And cvrst be he

spares thes stones, moves my bones.[80][nb 6]

(Modern spelling: Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbear, / To dig the dust enclosed here. / Blessed be the man that spares these stones, / And cursed be he that moves my bones.) Sometime before 1623, a funerary monument was erected in his memory on the north wall, with a half-effigy of him in the act of writing. Its plaque compares him to Nestor, Socrates, and Virgil.[81] In 1623, in conjunction with the publication of the First Folio, the Droeshout engraving was published.[82] Shakespeare has been commemorated in many statues and memorials around the world, including funeral monuments in Southwark Cathedral and Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey.[83][84]

Plays

Procession of Characters from Shakespeare's Plays by an unknown 19th-century artist

Main articles: Shakespeare's plays and William Shakespeare's collaborations Most playwrights of the period typically collaborated with others at some point, and critics agree that Shakespeare did the same, mostly early and late in his career.[85] Some attributions, such as Titus Andronicus and the early history plays, remain controversial, while The Two Noble Kinsmen and the lost Cardenio have well-attested contemporary documentation. Textual evidence also s the view that several of the plays were revised by other writers after their original composition. The first recorded works of Shakespeare are Richard III and the three parts of Henry VI, written in the early 1590s during a vogue for historical drama. Shakespeare's plays are difficult to date, however,[86] and studies of the texts suggest that Titus Andronicus, The Comedy of Errors, The Taming of the Shrew and The Two Gentlemen of Verona may also belong to Shakespeare's earliest period.[87] His first histories, which draw heavily on the 1587 edition of Raphael

Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland,[88]dramatise the destructive results of weak or corrupt rule and have been interpreted as a justification for the origins of the Tudor dynasty.[89] The early plays were influenced by the works of other Elizabethan dramatists, especially Thomas Kyd and Christopher Marlowe, by the traditions of medieval drama, and by the plays of Seneca. [90]

The Comedy of Errors was also based on classical models, but no source for The Taming of the

Shrew has been found, though it is related to a separate play of the same name and may have derived from a folk story.[91] Like The Two Gentlemen of Verona, in which two friends appear to approve of rape,[92] the Shrew's story of the taming of a woman's independent spirit by a man sometimes troubles modern critics and directors.[93]

Oberon, Titania and Puck with Fairies Dancing. By William Blake, c. 1786. Tate Britain.

Shakespeare's early classical and Italianate comedies, containing tight double plots and precise comic sequences, give way in the mid-1590s to the romantic atmosphere of his most acclaimed comedies.[94] A Midsummer Night's Dream is a witty mixture of romance, fairy magic, and comic lowlife scenes.[95] Shakespeare's next comedy, the equally romantic Merchant of Venice, contains a portrayal of the vengeful Jewish moneylender Shylock, which reflects Elizabethan views but may appear derogatory to modern audiences.[96] The wit and wordplay of Much Ado About Nothing,[97] the charming rural setting of As You Like It, and the lively merrymaking of Twelfth Night complete Shakespeare's sequence of great comedies.[98] After the lyrical Richard II, written almost entirely in verse, Shakespeare introduced prose comedy into the histories of the late 1590s, Henry IV, parts 1 and 2, and Henry V. His characters become more complex and tender as he switches deftly between comic and serious scenes, prose and poetry, and achieves the narrative variety of his mature work.[99] This period begins and ends with two tragedies: Romeo and Juliet, the famous romantic tragedy of sexually charged adolescence, love, and death;[100]and Julius Caesar—based on Sir Thomas North's 1579 translation of Plutarch's Parallel Lives—which introduced a new kind of drama.[101]According to Shakespearean scholar James Shapiro, in Julius Caesar "the various strands of politics, character, inwardness, contemporary events, even Shakespeare's own reflections on the act of writing, began to infuse each other".[102]

Hamlet, Horatio, Marcellus, and the Ghost of Hamlet's Father. Henry Fuseli, 1780–5. Kunsthaus Zürich.

In the early 17th century, Shakespeare wrote the so-called "problem plays" Measure for Measure, Troilus and Cressida, and All's Well That Ends Well and a number of his best known tragedies.[103] Many critics believe that Shakespeare's greatest tragedies represent the peak of his art. The titular hero of one of Shakespeare's most famous tragedies, Hamlet, has probably been discussed more than any other Shakespearean character, especially for his famous soliloquy which begins "To be or not to be; that is the question".[104] Unlike the introverted Hamlet, whose fatal flaw is hesitation, the heroes of the tragedies that followed, Othello and King Lear, are undone by hasty errors of judgement.[105] The plots of Shakespeare's tragedies often hinge on such fatal errors or flaws, which overturn order and destroy the hero and those he loves. [106] In Othello, the villain Iago stokes Othello's sexual jealousy to the point where he murders the innocent wife who loves him.[107] In King Lear, the old king commits the tragic error of giving up his powers, initiating the events which lead to the torture and blinding of the Earl of Gloucester and the murder of Lear's youngest daughter Cordelia. According to the critic Frank Kermode, "the play-offers neither its good characters nor its audience any relief from its cruelty".[108] In Macbeth, the shortest and most compressed of Shakespeare's tragedies,[109] uncontrollable ambition incites Macbeth and his wife, Lady Macbeth, to murder the rightful king and usurp the throne, until their own guilt destroys them in turn.[110] In this play, Shakespeare adds a supernatural element to the tragic structure. His last major tragedies, Antony and Cleopatra and Coriolanus, contain some of Shakespeare's finest poetry and were considered his most successful tragedies by the poet and critic T. S. Eliot.[111] In his final period, Shakespeare turned to romance or tragicomedy and completed three more major plays: Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale and The Tempest, as well as the collaboration, Pericles, Prince of Tyre. Less bleak than the tragedies, these four plays are graver in tone than the comedies of the 1590s, but they end with reconciliation and the forgiveness of potentially tragic errors. [112] Some commentators have seen this change in mood as evidence of a more serene view of life on Shakespeare's part, but it may merely reflect the theatrical fashion of the day.[113] Shakespeare collaborated on two further surviving plays, Henry VIII and The Two Noble Kinsmen, probably with John Fletcher.[114]

Performances Main article: Shakespeare in performance It is not clear for which companies Shakespeare wrote his early plays. The title page of the 1594 edition of Titus Andronicus reveals that the play had been acted by three different troupes.[115] After the plagues of 1592–3, Shakespeare's plays were performed by his own company at The Theatre and the Curtain in Shoreditch, north of the Thames.[116]Londoners flocked there to see the first part of Henry IV, Leonard Digges recording, "Let but Falstaff come, Hal, Poins, the rest ... and you scarce shall have a room".[117] When the company found themselves in dispute with their landlord, they pulled The Theatre down and used the timbers to construct the Globe Theatre, the first playhouse built by actors for actors, on the south bank of the Thames at Southwark.[118] The Globe opened in autumn 1599, with Julius Caesar one of the first plays staged. Most of Shakespeare's greatest post-1599 plays were written for the Globe, including Hamlet, Othello and King Lear.[119]

The reconstructed Globe Theatre, London.

After the Lord Chamberlain's Men were renamed the King's Men in 1603, they entered a special relationship with the new King James. Although the performance records are patchy, the King's Men performed seven of Shakespeare's plays at court between 1 November 1604 and 31 October 1605, including two performances of The Merchant of Venice.[120] After 1608, they performed at the indoor Blackfriars Theatre during the winter and the Globe during the summer.[121] The indoor setting, combined with the Jacobean fashion for lavishly staged masques, allowed Shakespeare to introduce more elaborate stage devices. In Cymbeline, for example, Jupiter descends "in thunder and lightning, sitting upon an eagle: he throws a thunderbolt. The ghosts fall on their knees." [122] The actors in Shakespeare's company included the famous Richard Burbage, William Kempe, Henry Condell and John Heminges. Burbage played the leading role in the first performances of many of Shakespeare's plays, including Richard III, Hamlet, Othello, and King Lear.[123]The popular comic actor Will Kempe played the servant Peter in Romeo and Juliet and Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing, among other characters.[124] He was replaced around 1600 by Robert Armin, who played

roles such as Touchstone in As You Like It and the fool in King Lear.[125] In 1613, Sir Henry Wotton recorded that Henry VIII "was set forth with many extraordinary circumstances of pomp and ceremony".[126] On 29 June, however, a cannon set fire to the thatch of the Globe and burned the theatre to the ground, an event which pinpoints the date of a Shakespeare play with rare precision. [126]

Textual sources

Title page of the First Folio, 1623. Copper engraving of Shakespeare byMartin Droeshout.

In 1623, John Heminges and Henry Condell, two of Shakespeare's friends from the King's Men, published the First Folio, a collected edition of Shakespeare's plays. It contained 36 texts, including 18 printed for the first time.[127] Many of the plays had already appeared in quartoversions—flimsy books made from sheets of paper folded twice to make four leaves.[128] No evidence suggests that Shakespeare approved these editions, which the First Folio describes as "stol'n and surreptitious copies".[129] Nor did Shakespeare plan or expect his works to survive in any form at all; those works likely would have faded into oblivion but for his friends' spontaneous idea, after his death, to create and publish the First Folio.[130] Alfred Pollard termed some of the pre-1623 versions as "bad quartos" because of their adapted, paraphrased or garbled texts, which may in places have been reconstructed from memory.[131] Where several versions of a play survive, each differs from the other. The differences may stem from copying or printing errors, from notes by actors or audience , or from Shakespeare's

own papers.[132] In some cases, for example Hamlet, Troilus and Cressida and Othello, Shakespeare could have revised the texts between the quarto and folio editions. In the case of King Lear, however, while most modern editions do conflate them, the 1623 folio version is so different from the 1608 quarto that the Oxford Shakespeare prints them both, arguing that they cannot be conflated without confusion.[133]

Poems In 1593 and 1594, when the theatres were closed because of plague, Shakespeare published two narrative poems on erotic themes,Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece. He dedicated them to Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton. In Venus and Adonis, an innocent Adonis rejects the sexual advances of Venus; while in The Rape of Lucrece, the virtuous wife Lucrece is raped by the lustfulTarquin.[134] Influenced by Ovid's Metamorphoses,[135] the poems show the guilt and moral confusion that result from uncontrolled lust.[136]Both proved popular and were often reprinted during Shakespeare's lifetime. A third narrative poem, A Lover's Complaint, in which a young woman laments her seduction by a persuasive suitor, was printed in the first edition of the Sonnets in 1609. Most scholars now accept that Shakespeare wrote A Lover's Complaint. Critics consider that its fine qualities are marred by leaden effects.[137] The Phoenix and the Turtle, printed in Robert Chester's 1601 Love's Martyr, mourns the deaths of the legendary phoenix and his lover, the faithful turtle dove. In 1599, two early drafts of sonnets 138 and 144 appeared in The ionate Pilgrim, published under Shakespeare's name but without his permission.[138]

Sonnets Main article: Shakespeare's sonnets

Title page from 1609 edition of Shake-Speares Sonnets.

Published in 1609, the Sonnets were the last of Shakespeare's non-dramatic works to be printed. Scholars are not certain when each of the 154 sonnets was composed, but evidence suggests that Shakespeare wrote sonnets throughout his career for a private readership. [139] Even before the two unauthorised sonnets appeared in The ionate Pilgrim in 1599, Francis Meres had referred in 1598 to Shakespeare's "sugred Sonnets among his private friends". [140] Few analysts believe that the published collection follows Shakespeare's intended sequence. [141] He seems to have planned two contrasting series: one about uncontrollable lust for a married woman of dark complexion (the "dark lady"), and one about conflicted love for a fair young man (the "fair youth"). It remains unclear if these figures represent real individuals, or if the authorial "I" who addresses them represents Shakespeare himself, though Wordsworth believed that with the sonnets "Shakespeare unlocked his heart".[142] "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate ..." —Lines from Shakespeare's Sonnet 18.[143]

The 1609 edition was dedicated to a "Mr. W.H.", credited as "the only begetter" of the poems. It is not known whether this was written by Shakespeare himself or by the publisher, Thomas Thorpe, whose initials appear at the foot of the dedication page; nor is it known who Mr. W.H. was, despite numerous theories, or whether Shakespeare even authorised the publication. [144] Critics praise the Sonnets as a profound meditation on the nature of love, sexual ion, procreation, death, and time.[145]

Style Main article: Shakespeare's style Shakespeare's first plays were written in the conventional style of the day. He wrote them in a stylised language that does not always spring naturally from the needs of the characters or the drama.[146] The poetry depends on extended, sometimes elaborate metaphors and conceits, and the language is often rhetorical—written for actors to declaim rather than speak. The grand speeches in Titus Andronicus, in the view of some critics, often hold up the action, for example; and the verse in The Two Gentlemen of Verona has been described as stilted.[147] Soon, however, Shakespeare began to adapt the traditional styles to his own purposes. The opening soliloquy of Richard III has its roots in the self-declaration of Vice in medieval drama. At the same time, Richard's vivid self-awareness looks forward to the soliloquies of Shakespeare's mature plays.[148] No single play marks a change from the traditional to the freer style. Shakespeare combined the two throughout his career, with Romeo and Juliet perhaps the best example of the mixing of the styles.[149] By the time of Romeo and Juliet, Richard II, and A Midsummer Night's

Dream in the mid-1590s, Shakespeare had begun to write a more natural poetry. He increasingly tuned his metaphors and images to the needs of the drama itself.

Pity by William Blake, 1795, Tate Britain, is an illustration of two similes in Macbeth: "And pity, like a naked new-born babe, Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubim, hors'd Upon the sightless couriers of the air."[150]

Shakespeare's standard poetic form was blank verse, composed in iambic pentameter. In practice, this meant that his verse was usually unrhymed and consisted of ten syllables to a line, spoken with a stress on every second syllable. The blank verse of his early plays is quite different from that of his later ones. It is often beautiful, but its sentences tend to start, pause, and finish at the end of lines, with the risk of monotony.[151] Once Shakespeare mastered traditional blank verse, he began to interrupt and vary its flow. This technique releases the new power and flexibility of the poetry in plays such as Julius Caesar and Hamlet. Shakespeare uses it, for example, to convey the turmoil in Hamlet's mind:[152] Sir, in my heart there was a kind of fighting That would not let me sleep. Methought I lay Worse than the mutines in the bilboes. Rashly— And prais'd be rashness for it—let us know Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well ... — Hamlet, Act 5, Scene 2, 4–8[152] After Hamlet, Shakespeare varied his poetic style further, particularly in the more emotional ages of the late tragedies. The literary critic A. C. Bradley described this style as "more

concentrated, rapid, varied, and, in construction, less regular, not seldom twisted or elliptical". [153] In the last phase of his career, Shakespeare adopted many techniques to achieve these effects. These included run-on lines, irregular pauses and stops, and extreme variations in sentence structure and length.[154] In Macbeth, for example, the language darts from one unrelated metaphor or simile to another: "was the hope drunk/ Wherein you dressed yourself?" (1.7.35–38); "... pity, like a naked new-born babe/ Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubim, hors'd/ Upon the sightless couriers of the air ..." (1.7.21–25). The listener is challenged to complete the sense. [154] The late romances, with their shifts in time and surprising turns of plot, inspired a last poetic style in which long and short sentences are set against one another, clauses are piled up, subject and object are reversed, and words are omitted, creating an effect of spontaneity.[155] Shakespeare combined poetic genius with a practical sense of the theatre. [156] Like all playwrights of the time, he dramatised stories from sources such as Plutarch andHolinshed.[157] He reshaped each plot to create several centres of interest and to show as many sides of a narrative to the audience as possible. This strength of design ensures that a Shakespeare play can survive translation, cutting and wide interpretation without loss to its core drama.[158] As Shakespeare's mastery grew, he gave his characters clearer and more varied motivations and distinctive patterns of speech. He preserved aspects of his earlier style in the later plays, however. In Shakespeare's late romances, he deliberately returned to a more artificial style, which emphasised the illusion of theatre. [159]

Influence Main article: Shakespeare's influence

Macbeth Consulting the Vision of the Armed Head. By Henry Fuseli, 1793–94. Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington.

Shakespeare's work has made a lasting impression on later theatre and literature. In particular, he expanded the dramatic potential ofcharacterisation, plot, language, and genre.[160] Until Romeo and Juliet, for example, romance had not been viewed as a worthy topic for tragedy.[161] Soliloquies had been used mainly to convey information about characters or events; but Shakespeare used them to explore characters' minds.[162] His work heavily influenced later poetry. The Romantic poets attempted to revive Shakespearean verse drama, though with little success. Critic George Steiner described all English verse dramas from Coleridge to Tennyson as "feeble variations on Shakespearean themes."[163] Shakespeare influenced novelists such as Thomas Hardy, William Faulkner, and Charles Dickens. The American novelist Herman Melville's soliloquies owe much to Shakespeare; his Captain Ahab in Moby-Dick is a classic tragic hero, inspired by King Lear.[164] Scholars have identified 20,000 pieces of music linked to Shakespeare's works. These include two operas by Giuseppe Verdi, Otello and Falstaff, whose critical standing compares with that of the source plays. [165]

Shakespeare has also inspired many painters, including the Romantics and thePre-Raphaelites.

The Swiss Romantic artist Henry Fuseli, a friend of William Blake, even translated Macbeth into German.[166] Thepsychoanalyst Sigmund Freud drew on Shakespearean psychology, in particular that of Hamlet, for his theories of human nature.[167] In Shakespeare's day, English grammar, spelling and pronunciation were less standardised than they are now,[168] and his use of language helped shape modern English. [169] Samuel Johnson quoted him more often than any other author in his A Dictionary of the English Language, the first serious work of its type.[170] Expressions such as "with bated breath" (Merchant of Venice) and "a foregone conclusion" (Othello) have found their way into everyday English speech. [171]

Critical reputation Main articles: Shakespeare's reputation and Timeline of Shakespeare criticism "He was not of an age, but for all time." —Ben Jonson[172]

Shakespeare was not revered in his lifetime, but he received a large amount of praise. [173] In 1598, the cleric and author Francis Meressingled him out from a group of English writers as "the most excellent" in both comedy and tragedy.[174] The authors of the Parnassus plays at St John's College, Cambridge numbered him with Chaucer, Gower and Spenser.[175] In the First Folio, Ben Jonson called Shakespeare the "Soul of the age, the applause, delight, the wonder of our stage", though he had remarked elsewhere that "Shakespeare wanted art".[176]

A recently garlanded statue of William Shakespeare in Lincoln Park, Chicago, typical of many created in the 19th and early 20th century.

Between the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660 and the end of the 17th century, classical ideas were in vogue. As a result, critics of the time mostly rated Shakespeare below John Fletcher and Ben Jonson.[177] Thomas Rymer, for example, condemned Shakespeare for mixing the comic with the tragic. Nevertheless, poet and critic John Dryden rated Shakespeare highly, saying of Jonson, "I ire him, but I love Shakespeare".[178] For several decades, Rymer's view held sway; but during the 18th century, critics began to respond to Shakespeare on his own and acclaim what they termed his natural genius. A series of scholarly editions of his work, notably those of Samuel Johnson in 1765 and Edmond Malone in 1790, added to his growing reputation.[179] By 1800, he was firmly enshrined as the national poet.[180] In the 18th and 19th centuries, his reputation also spread abroad. Among those who championed him were the writers Voltaire, Goethe, Stendhal andVictor Hugo.[181] During the Romantic era, Shakespeare was praised by the poet and literary philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge; and the critic August Wilhelm Schlegel translated his plays in the spirit of German Romanticism.[182] In the 19th century, critical iration for Shakespeare's genius often bordered on adulation.[183] "That King Shakespeare," the essayist Thomas Carlyle wrote in 1840, "does not he shine, in crowned sovereignty, over us all, as the noblest, gentlest, yet strongest of rallying signs; indestructible".[184] The Victorians produced his plays as lavish spectacles on a grand scale. [185] The

playwright and critic George Bernard Shaw mocked the cult of Shakespeare worship as "bardolatry", claiming that the new naturalism of Ibsen's plays had made Shakespeare obsolete.[186] The modernist revolution in the arts during the early 20th century, far from discarding Shakespeare, eagerly enlisted his work in the service of the avant-garde. The Expressionists in and the Futurists in Moscow mounted productions of his plays. Marxist playwright and director Bertolt Brecht devised an epic theatre under the influence of Shakespeare. The poet and critic T.S. Eliot argued against Shaw that Shakespeare's "primitiveness" in fact made him truly modern. [187] Eliot, along with G. Wilson Knight and the school of New Criticism, led a movement towards a closer reading of Shakespeare's imagery. In the 1950s, a wave of new critical approaches replaced modernism and paved the way for "post-modern" studies of Shakespeare.[188] By the 1980s, Shakespeare studies were open to movements such asstructuralism, feminism, New Historicism, African-American studies, and queer studies.[189][190] In a comprehensive reading of Shakespeare's works and comparing Shakespeare literary accomplishments to accomplishments among leading figures in philosophy and theology as well, Harold Bloom has commented that, "Shakespeare was larger than Plato and than St. Augustine. He encloses us, because we see with his fundamental perceptions."[191]

Works Further information: Shakespeare bibliography and Chronology of Shakespeare's plays

Classification of the plays

The Plays of William Shakespeare. By Sir John Gilbert, 1849.

Shakespeare's works include the 36 plays printed in the First Folio of 1623, listed according to their folio classification as comedies,histories and tragedies.[192] Two plays not included in the First Folio, The Two Noble Kinsmen and Pericles, Prince of Tyre, are now accepted as part of the canon, with today's scholars agreeing that Shakespeare made major contributions to the writing of both. [193]

No Shakespearean poems were included in the First Folio.

In the late 19th century, Edward Dowden classified four of the late comedies as romances, and though many scholars prefer to call themtragicomedies, Dowden's term is often used.[194] In 1896, Frederick S. Boas coined the term "problem plays" to describe four plays: All's Well That Ends Well, Measure for Measure, Troilus and Cressida and Hamlet.[195] "Dramas as singular in theme and temper cannot be strictly called comedies or tragedies", he wrote. "We may therefore borrow a convenient phrase from the theatre of today and class them together as Shakespeare's problem plays."[196] The term, much debated and sometimes applied to other plays, remains in use, thoughHamlet is definitively classed as a tragedy.[197]

Speculation about Shakespeare

Authorship Main article: Shakespeare authorship question Around 230 years after Shakespeare's death, doubts began to be expressed about the authorship of the works attributed to him.[198] Proposed alternative candidates includeFrancis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe, and Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford.[199] Several "group theories" have also been proposed.[200] Only a small minority of academics believe there is reason to question the traditional attribution,[201] but interest in the subject, particularly the Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare authorship, continues into the 21st century.[202]

Religion Main article: Religious views of William Shakespeare Some scholars claim that of Shakespeare's family were Catholics, at a time when practicing Catholicism in England was against the law.[203] Shakespeare's mother, Mary Arden, certainly came from a pious Catholic family. The strongest evidence might be a Catholic statement of faith signed by his father, John Shakespeare, found in 1757 in the rafters of his former house in Henley Street. The document is now lost, however, and scholars differ as to its authenticity.[204] In 1591 the authorities reported that John Shakespeare had missed church "for fear of process for debt", a common Catholic excuse.[205] In 1606, the name of William's daughter Susanna appears on a list of those who failed to attend Easter communion in Stratford.[205] As several scholars have noted, whatever his private views, Shakespeare "conformed to the official state religion", as Park Honan put it.[206][207] Also, Shakespeare's will uses a Protestant formula, and he was a confirmed member of the Church of England, where he was married, his children were baptized, and where he is buried. Other authors argue that there is a lack of evidence about Shakespeare's religious beliefs. Scholars

find evidence both for and against Shakespeare's Catholicism, Protestantism, or lack of belief in his plays, but the truth may be impossible to prove.[208]

Sexuality Main article: Sexuality of William Shakespeare Few details of Shakespeare's sexuality are known. At 18, he married 26-year-old Anne Hathaway, who was pregnant. Susanna, the first of their three children, was born six months later on 26 May 1583. Over the centuries, some readers have posited that Shakespeare's sonnets are autobiographical,[209] and point to them as evidence of his love for a young man. Others read the same ages as the expression of intense friendship rather than romantic love. [210] The 26 socalled "Dark Lady" sonnets, addressed to a married woman, are taken as evidence of heterosexual liaisons.[211]

Portraiture Main article: Portraits of Shakespeare No written contemporary description of Shakespeare's physical appearance survives, and no evidence suggests that he ever commissioned a portrait, so the Droeshout engraving, which Ben Jonson approved of as a good likeness,[212] and his Stratford monument provide perhaps the best evidence of his appearance. From the 18th century, the desire for authentic Shakespeare portraits fuelled claims that various surviving pictures depicted Shakespeare. That demand also led to the production of several fake portraits, as well as mis-attributions, repaintings and relabelling of portraits of other people.[213]

Sonnet From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about the form of poetry. For other uses, see Sonnet (disambiguation).

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A sonnet is a poetic form which originated in Italy; Giacomo Da Lentini is credited with its invention. The term sonnet is derived from the Italian word sonetto (from Old Provençal sonet a little poem, from son song, from Latin sonus a sound). By the thirteenth century it signified a poem of fourteen lines that follows a strict rhyme scheme and specific structure. Conventions associated with the sonnet have evolved over its history. Writers of sonnets are sometimes called "sonneteers", although the term can be used derisively.

The Sonnet by Melissa J. Sites

A sonnet is a one-stanza poem of fourteen lines, written in iambic pentameter. One way to describe a verse line is to talk about how many stressed and unstressed syllables are in the line. A simple grouping of syllables, some stressed, some unstressed, is called a foot. The iambic foot is an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable.Pentameter means there are five feet in the line. "Iambic Pentameter," then, means a line of ten syllables, which alternates unstressed and stressed syllables according to the iambic rhythm.

The rhyme scheme of a sonnet refers to the pattern formed by the rhyming words at the end of each line. Each end-rhyme is assigned a letter, and the fourteen letters assigned to the sonnet describe the rhyme scheme. Different kinds of sonnets have different rhyme schemes. The Petrarchan or Italian sonnet, named after the fourteenth century Italian poet Petrarch, has the rhyme scheme ABBAABBA CDECDE. [You might imagine the endrhymes represented by the letters to be something like cat log hog bat, rat bog tog fat, long neck noose, song heck loose]. The first eight lines, which all end in either rhyme A [at] or B [og], form the octave. The last six lines, which end in C [ong], D [eck], or E [oose], form the sestet. Variant rhyme schemes for the sestet also include CDCDCD and CDEDCE. There is usually a pause or break in thought between the octave and sestet called the volta, or turn. Traditionally, one main thought or problem is set out in the octave and brought to a resolution in the sestet. The Shakespearean or English sonnet was actually developed in the sixteenth century by the Earl of Surrey, but is named after Shakespeare because of his great sonnet sequence (a series of sonnets all exploring the same theme) printed in 1609 . The Shakespearean sonnet has the rhyme scheme ABAB CDCD EFEF GG, forming threequatrains (four lines in a group) and a closing couplet (two rhymed lines). The problem is usually developed in the first three quatrains, each quatrain with a new idea growing out of the previous one. Sometimes the first two quatrains are devoted to the same thought, resembling the octave of the Petrarchan sonnet, and followed by a similar volta. Most strikingly unlike the Petrarchan version, the Shakespearean sonnet is brought to a punchy resolution in the epigrammatic final couplet. The Spenserian sonnet is a variation of the English sonnet with the rhyme scheme ABAB BCBC CDCD EE, in which the quatrains are linked by a continuation of one end-rhyme from the previous quatrain. The Miltonic sonnet is a Petrarchan sonnet which omits the volta. Wordsworth often used the Petrarchan form, but changed the octave to ABBA ACCA because it is harder to find rhyming words in English than in Italian. The traditional subject of the sonnet has primarily been Love. Petrarch wrote his great sonnet sequence to his beloved, Laura. Many of Shakespeare's sonnets are also about Love, but Shakespeare mocked the standard worshipful attitude of the Petrarchan sonnet in his famous "My Mistress's eyes are nothing like the sun." Development of the English sonnet led to consideration of other topics, including mortality, mutability, politics, and writing itself. Donne turned from the secular subject of Love to

consideration of sacred themes in a group of nineteen Holy Sonnets. Milton, instead of writing a sequence about Love, wrote individual sonnets about serious ideas, political themes, or public occasions. After Milton the sonnet declined in popularity-until it was taken up again with fervor during the Romantic period.

What is a Sonnet Poem? A Sonnet is a poem of an expressive thought or idea made up of 14 lines, each being 10 syllableslong. Its rhymes are arranged according to one of the schemes – Italian, where eight lines called an octave consisting of two quatrains which normally open the poem as the question are followed by six lines called a sestet that are the answer, or the more common English which is three quatrains followed by a rhyming couplet.

Shakespeare’s sonnets are written in a strict poetic form that was very popular during his lifetime. Broadly speaking, each sonnet engages images and sounds to present an argument to the reader.

Sonnet Characteristics A sonnet is simply a poem written in a certain format. You can identify a sonnet if the poem has the following characteristics: 

14 lines. All sonnets have 14 lines which can be broken down into four sections called quatrains.



Written in iambic Pentameter. Sonnets are written in iambic pentameter, a poetic meter with 10 beats per line made up of alternating unstressed and stressed syllables. A sonnet can be broken down into four sections called quatrains. The first three quatrains contain four lines each and use an alternating rhyme scheme. The final quatrain consists of just two lines which both rhyme. Each quatrain should progress the poem as follows:

1.

First quatrain: This should establish the subject of the sonnet. Number of lines: 4. Rhyme Scheme: ABAB

2.

Second quatrain: This should develop the sonnet’s theme. Number of lines: 4. Rhyme Scheme: CDCD

3.

Third quatrain: This should round off the sonnet’s theme. Number of lines: 4. Rhyme Scheme: EFEF

4.

Fourth quatrain: This should act as a conclusion to the sonnet. Number of lines: 2. Rhyme Scheme: GG a poem of fourteen lines using any of a number of formal rhyme schemes, in English typically having ten syllables per line.

A biography is the story of a person's life in the words of another person, while an autobiography is the story of a person's life in his own words. A biography is typically written in third person, while an autobiography is typically written in first person.

FULL ANSWER

While an autobiography is usually written by the subject instead of another writer, some individuals hire a writer to assist with the document. Usually, this results in a dual by-line that includes both names. Some of the most famous autobiographies include "The Diary of a Young Girl" by Anne Frank, "Night" by Ellie Wiesel and "Long Walk to Freedom" by Nelson Mandela. Famous biographies include "Steve Jobs" by Walter Isaacson, "John Adams" by David McCullough and "Team of Rivals: The Political Genious of Abraham Lincoln" by Doris Kearns Goodwin.

An autobiography is the story describing a person's life that is told by the individual himself. Sometimes, an autobiography can be written with the help of a co-author, as long as the story remains in firstperson.

Transcript of AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND BIOGRAPHY COMPARISON AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND BIOGRAPHY COMPARISON An Autobiography is a story about a person written by the same person. It is a first-person and sometimes the story can be highly personalized. It may include photos about the person's events or newspaper articles showing what the person accomplished and what were the news about him/her. BIOGRAPHY A Biography is the story of someone's life but it is written by someone else that studied that person's life. This stories normally have accurate history about the person's life and makes reflection about the time and place in which the person's events happened. It is also written in chronological time. Similarities One similarity between an Autobiography and a Biography is that they both write about a person's life. Also, the historical facts in the person's life have to be accurate and they are normally written in chronological time. DIFFERENCES The main differences between an autobiography and a biography are, first of all, biography is written by a person that studied a lot about another and a autobiography is written by himself/herself.Another main difference is that in a biography the author has to strictly study the persons life while in a autobiography the person enjoys more the writing. Similarites and differences between Autobiography and Biography Autobiography Examples For example: in a book called "Who Was Dr. Seuss?", someone called Janet Pascal, wrote the story. Unlike an autobiography, Nelson Mandela wrote the book, "Nelson Mandela", by himself. Even though, autobiographies and biographies seem similar, there are main differences that make them different types of writing. References “ Barnes and Nobles” BarnesandNobles.com 27 August 2013 http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/?category_id=925843

Routman, Reggie. “Genre Characteristics” ux1.eiu.edu 27 August 2013 http://www.ux1.eiu.edu/ ~cfder/GenreCharacteristicsChart.pdf

Autobiography By: Alejandro Char Jorge Dangond Autobiography: Alejandro Char Jorge Dangond

It was the day; the 27 of July, 2001. At 8:38 pm, at the city of Miami in the Jackson Hospital, one mom was giving birth to a wonderful child. My name: Alejandro Char, son of Alejandro Char and Katia Nule. I was born in the city of Miami, but at one week I was back at Colombia to visit my dad and all of my family. Since the day I visited Colombia, my life began and I got educated since then. Even though I had another sister, I enjoyed my only child life until my sister was born one year and a half later, on a 3rd of December, 2002. Before I entered school, I went to other Kindergartens called “Baby Gym” and “Caritas Alegres”. When I entered school, I was 3 years old and it was when I met most of my friends. As I grew, I started to feel ion for sports, for example, soccer and tennis were the ones I played more as a child. When I was in pre-school, the only thing I did in all the day was kick soccer balls all the day, in the school and in my house too. When I entered elementary, things in school got harder because I had to study in school two more hours. But, I felt the same ion for sports. Always, my favorite soccer team has been Junior, the Barranquilla team. It has won seven championships and is looking for more. Talking about teams and players, I got interested in tennis because of a great all-time player called Roger Federer. He inspired me to start playing tennis in second grade, and that’s where my tennis carrier begins. I practiced both, soccer and tennis in the country club, during third grade. Two days I had soccer practice, and the other two days I practiced tennis. But, after that, I went to practice at, “La Liga De Tenis del Atlantico”, where tennis practices were more intense. Since that moment, I felt more ion in tennis than soccer. So, by the start of fourth grade, I practiced tennis six hours a week. I did all of fourth grade playing tennis intensely, while soccer was only one day a week. When I got to fifth grade I made a decision that, in my opinion, changed a lot in my life: I decided to just focus on playing tennis and taking no more soccer

practices. So, since that moment, I only practiced tennis and started playing national tennis tournaments. During fifth grade period I got to some semifinals and doubles finals. But, when I entered sixth grade, I started playing bigger, better, stronger, and with more power. And after that I’ve won 5 double championships and I have reached 3 singles finals. This, for me, is a great achievement, but I have the rest of my life to play. So, my life has only been lived 12 years, and I have much more to live during my life. And the last thing I’ve done, was telling you my story in Mrs. Van Loo’s class…. THE END!!! Alejandro Char CITATIONS

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Difference between Biography and Autobiography November 1, 2014 By Surbhi S Leave a Comment

The two traditional forms of literature that describe the character sketch and course of the life of a person are biography and autobiography. Both of these two presents the view of, what happened in the past where the author lived. These are non-fiction books, written in chronological order, tells a story about the person who made a significant contribution in a specific field. The noticeable difference between a biography and autobiography is that while the former is the life history of an individual, written by someone else, the latter is an expression of a person’s

life, written by self. This article presents you the important differences between these two subjects, have a look.

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Content: Biography Vs Autobiography 1.

Comparison Chart

2.

Definition

3.

Key Differences

4.

Conclusion Comparison Chart

BASIS FOR COMPARISON

BIOGRAPHY

Meaning

Biography refers to an that tells someone else's life story.

Authorization

Can be written, with or without the authorization of the subject.

Written in

Third person

Purpose

To inform

Outlook

Based on facts collected by the author.

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Definition of Biography

A biography also referred as ‘bio’ is a detailed of a person’s life written or produced by another person. It gives an elaborate information regarding the birth-place, educational background, work, relationships and demise of the person concerned. It presents the subject’s intimate details about life, focusing on the highs and lows and analyzing their whole personality. A biography is usually in the written form but can also be made in other forms of a music composition or literature to film interpretation. It is the recreation of the life of an individual composed of words by another person. The author collects every single detail about the subject and presents those facts in the biography, which are relevant and interesting, to engross the readers in the story. Definition of Autobiography

An autobiography is the life sketch of a person written by that person himself or herself. The word auto means ‘self.’ Therefore, autobiography contains all the elements of a biography but composed or narrated by the author himself. He/She may write on their own or may hire ghostwriters to write for them. An autobiography presents the narrator’s character sketch, the place where he is born and brought up, his education, work, life experiences, challenges, and achievements. This may include events and stories of his childhood, teenage, and adulthood.

Key Differences Between Biography and Autobiography The difference between biography and autobiography are discussed in detail in the following points:

1.

Biography is a detailed of a person’s life written by someone else, while autobiography is written by the subject themselves.

2.

Biography can be written with (authorized) or without permission (unauthorized) from the person/heir’s concerned. Therefore, there are chances of factual mistakes in the information. On the other hand, autobiographies are selfwritten and therefore doesn’t require any authorization.

3.

Biographies contain information that is collected over a period of time from different sources and thus, it projects a different outlook to the readers. On the other hand, autobiographies are written by the subject themselves, therefore, the writer presents the facts and his thinking in his own way, thus providing an overall narrow and biased perspective to the readers.

4.

In an Autobiography, the author uses the first narrative like I, me, we, he, she, etc. This, in turn, makes an intimate connection between the author and the reader since the reader experience various aspects as if he/she is in that time period. As opposed a biography is from a third person’s view and is much less intimate.

5.

The purpose of writing a biography is to introduce and inform the readers about the person and his life whereas an autobiography is written in order to express, the life experiences and achievements of the narrator. Conclusion

There are several autobiographies which are worth mentioning like ‘The Story of My Life’ by Helen Keller, ‘An Autobiography’ by Jawaharlal Nehru, ‘The Diary of a Young Girl’ by Anne Frank, ‘Memoirs of the Second World War’ by Winston Churchill, ‘Wings of Fire’ by A. P. J. Abdul Kalam and many more. Examples of some famous biographies are- Tolstoy: A Russian Life by Rosamund Bartlett, His Excellency: George Washington by Joseph J. Ellis, Einstein: The Life and Times by Ronald William Clark, Biography of Walt Disney: The Inspirational

Life Story of Walt Disney – The Man Behind “Disneyland” by Steve Walters, Princess Diana- A Biography Of The Princess Of Wales by Drew L. Crichton.

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Difference Between Autobiography and Biography • Categorized under Language,Miscellaneous | Difference Between Autobiography and Biography

Autobiography and biography are both of a particular individual’s life. The factuality of either one is not necessarily relevant in these , though generally it is distinguished in the description of most autobiographical and biographical works. There are also a number of subtleties to consider in the distinguishing between these. An autobiography is technically a work that describes a life that is created by that individual. In general this refers to a book that is written by the individual about their life. Autobiographies can vary in

their artistic and reporting approach. Some may be intentionally entertaining and other intentionally informative. Typically they are intended to be fairly accurate regarding hard facts. Something that is common among some autobiographies is the work of a ghost-writer. A ghost writer may have a varying role in different projects. For example in one work they may simply create an outline or edit a work. In others, they may actually help in the writing of the text. Usually if a ghost-writer writes the entire book you would expect the work to be labeled a biography. A biography is also a work that describes a life. These works however are created by an individual other than the individual that the work is about. Biographies are typically considered to be accurate in regard to hard facts also. These works however are instances where differences even in the reporting of hard facts become evident. Some biographies, especially when written about living individuals can be the cause of controversy and the terming ‘unauthorized biography’ has become rather common. These distinctions and the greater possibility of revealing unwanted information attract a number of individuals to biographies for reading. Biographies can be written by anyone and about anyone. As a result it is less common that ghost-writers work on biographies, but it isn’t unheard of. Autobiographies and biographies can provide information that is collected through time consuming research. It can inform an audience and bring them closer to the people they want to know. Many however,

shouldn’t be considered the same types of reference works as encyclopedias and dictionaries.

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