Talk:Literature/Related Articles

English literature

Is it ONLY confined to the British isles? I myself, if I use the phrase, tend to include (perhaps incorrectly) anything written by an American in the English language. I know that Henry James is a tricky case, since, although American, one thinks of him as being a British writer, but what about Mark Twain? I remember being forced to take an English 101 course at Harvard where the lecturer was a semi-celebrated Richard Poirier, and some of his lectures involved Twain and other Americans. (He insisted, by the way, that for a nom de plume, the FULL name HAD to used, ie, you always referred to Mark Twain and NEVER to Twain. He used to drive me crazy.) Hayford Peirce (talk) 20:41, 12 September 2020 (UTC)

Me too, but your question actually straddles a raft of topics, including American cultural nationalism. As I understand it, in the decades after the Am. Revolution there was a vast and far-reaching debate over this very question, and then a couple of generations of writers from Hawthorne to Whitman made the convincing case (by example and polemic) that American literature was a thing unto itself and different from "Brit Lit" (which I took from a similar pendant who also drove me crazy!) Roger A. Lohmann (talk) 22:16, 12 September 2020 (UTC)

Shore wish Edmund "Bunny" Wilson was still with us -- he could set us straight on this point. I just finished about 1300 pages of his various essays and he was very much at home with the whole Hawthorne, Whitman, earlier, and later people, including dozens that I had never even HEARD of. A true polymath, at least in the fields of writing, literature, and, I guess, Communism.... By the way, what do the WP people say at THEIR article on "English literature"? Hayford Peirce (talk) 22:26, 12 September 2020 (UTC)

This is what WP says when you go to "English literature": This article is focused on English-language literature rather than the literature of England, so that it includes writers from Scotland, Wales, the Crown dependencies, and the whole of Ireland, as well as literature in English from countries of the former British Empire, including the United States. However, until the early 19th century, it only deals with the literature of the United Kingdom, the Crown dependencies and Ireland. It does not include literature written in the other languages of Britain. Hayford Peirce (talk) 22:32, 12 September 2020 (UTC)

So, depending on how you feel about this, maybe you should create an "American literature" article. Or go along with the WP peeps on this. It's tricky. If only we had Howard, Martin M-B, and Professor Jensen here to advise us! Hayford Peirce (talk) 22:32, 12 September 2020 (UTC)

New Categories

So, are you going to put in an American Literature category?

And then, down below, what about Science Fiction; Young Adult; and Fantasy? Science Fiction and Fantasy are frequently classified together, as, say, Science Fiction and Fantasy or some variation on that....Hayford Peirce (talk) 19:04, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

Yet another category or subcategory: Blockheads

I created this one in the early days of CZ as a lark -- and everyone, including Larry seemed to take it in good spirits. https://en.citizendium.org/wiki/BlockheadsHayford Peirce (talk) 21:56, 21 September 2020 (UTC)