10,807 articles
Literary anecdote
The literary anecdote (литературный анекдот) is a written short narrative about an incident in the life of a historical figure, an independent genre before larger prose forms absorbed it.
Literary cycle
A literary cycle is a set of works of one genre, also called a story cycle or novel sequence, linked by shared characters, themes, or a compositional frame, each work remaining structurally autonomous, from medieval Arthurian cycles to modern novels-in-stories.
Literary device
Literary device: deliberate word, structure, or imagery techniques, from tropes (metaphor, irony, metonymy, synecdoche) to schemes like allegory, traced to classical rhetoric and Aristotle's Poetics and studied via close reading and NLP.
Literary fairy tale
The literary fairy tale (Kunstmärchen) is a fairy tale consciously shaped by a named author, beginning in Germany with Goethe's 1795 Das Märchen and Romantic writers like Tieck.
Literary fiction
Literary fiction: a prestige-oriented publishing and reception category, defined by negation from genre fiction, named around the 1970s, shaped by publishers, prizes like the Booker, and institutional consecration rather than formal plot traits.
Literary modernism
Literary modernism: international experimental literary movement, c. 1880-1950, also called modernisms; defined by break with tradition, formal experimentation, stream of consciousness, and global pluralism, reacting to industrialization and colonialism.
Literary nonsense
Literary nonsense, or nonsense literature, is a genre of writing that playfully subverts language and logic, established by Edward Lear's 1846 A Book of Nonsense.
Literatura abolicionista
Literatura abolicionista (abolitionist literature) is a body of 19th-century writing, including Brazilian and Cuban traditions, that denounced slavery through poetry, novels, and journalism.
Literatura de terror brasileira
Brazilian horror literature (Literatura de terror brasileira) is the body of Brazilian fiction meant to produce fear, long marginalized by critics and an organized academic field since the 2010s.
Literatura del yo
Literatura del yo, meaning literature of the self, is a Spanish-language critical label for first-person writing, including autofictions, autobiographies, and intimate diaries, and is especially prominent in Argentine literature.
Literotica
Literotica (literotica.com) is a free erotic fiction site launched November 21, 1998, owned by Sunlane Media, hosting over 1.5 million user-submitted stories in 32 categories with about 45 million monthly visits.
Lithoko tsa marena
Lithoko tsa marena, Sesotho for "praise poems of the chiefs," are the heroic praise poems of the Basotho, composed for chiefs, kings, and warriors and first printed by Zakea D. Mangoaela.
Litikai
Litikai (লিটিকাই) is a poetry collection by the Assamese poet Nalinibala Devi, known only from its listing in a Sahitya Akademi monograph on her works.
LitRPG
LitRPG (literary role-playing game) is a fiction genre with visible in-world RPG mechanics such as stat screens and levels. Coined by Russia's EKSMO in 2013, it grew in English via Royal Road, Patreon, and Kindle Unlimited; Matt Dinniman's Dungeon Crawler Carl has sold 10 million copies.
Littattafan soyayya
Littattafan soyayya, Hausa for "books of love," is a genre of popular romance fiction in the Hausa language, known in English as Kano market literature.
Little Busters! (リトルバスターズ！)
Little Busters! (リトルバスターズ！) is Key's sixth visual novel, released in 2007, about childhood friends who form a school baseball team. Ecstasy (2008) added three routes; it was adapted into a J.C. Staff anime and manga.
Little Dorrit
Little Dorrit is Charles Dickens's 1855–1857 novel, serialized by Bradbury and Evans in 19 monthly parts, about Amy Dorrit, born in the Marshalsea debtors' prison, Arthur Clennam, and the satirical Circumlocution Office.
Little Fires Everywhere (miniseries)
Little Fires Everywhere is a 2020 American drama miniseries on Hulu, developed by Liz Tigelaar from Celeste Ng's 2017 novel and starring Reese Witherspoon and Kerry Washington in eight episodes.
Little Fires Everywhere (novel)
Little Fires Everywhere, Celeste Ng's 2017 second novel (Penguin Press), set in Shaker Heights, Ohio, follows the Richardsons and artist Mia Warren amid a custody battle; 48-week NYT bestseller, adapted as a 2020 Hulu series with Witherspoon and Washington.
Little Gidding
Little Gidding is a 1942 poem by T. S. Eliot, the fourth and final of his Four Quartets, named for a Huntingdonshire village and written during the London Blitz.
Little House on the Prairie
Little House on the Prairie is Laura Ingalls Wilder's 1935 children's novel, third in her eight-book Little House series, following the Ingalls family from Wisconsin to a Kansas homestead near Independence, with Osage encounters, the 1974 Michael Landon TV series, and a 2026 Netflix adaptation.
Little Jack Horner
Little Jack Horner is a six-line English nursery rhyme first recorded in Henry Carey's 1725 Namby Pamby, with a disputed Glastonbury legend about steward Thomas Horner, a Christmas pie, and Mells Manor.
Little Lord Fauntleroy
Little Lord Fauntleroy is Frances Hodgson Burnett's 1886 children's novel about Cedric Errol, an American boy who inherits the title Lord Fauntleroy from his grandfather the Earl of Dorincourt, and whose velvet suit and lace collar launched a boys' fashion craze.
Little Men
Little Men (1871), full title Life at Plumfield with Jo's Boys, is Louisa May Alcott's sequel to Little Women, set at Jo Bhaer's progressive Plumfield school, modeled on Bronson Alcott's Temple School, followed by Jo's Boys.
Little Mountain
Little Mountain (Al-Jabal al-Saghir, الجبل الصغير) is a 1977 novel by Elias Khoury that depicts the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War in Beirut through three contradictory narrators.
Little My (ちびのミイ)
Little My (ちびのミイ, Lilla My, Pikku Myy) is Tove Jansson's tiny, fearless Mymble girl from the Moomin books: first in Moominpappa's Memoirs (1950), Snufkin's half-sister, adopted by the Moomins, never sad, only glad or angry.
Little Orphan Annie
Little Orphan Annie, Harold Gray's American comic strip debuting August 5, 1924 in the New York Daily News, ran 86 years to 2010; also known simply as Annie, it spawned a radio serial, the 1977 Broadway musical, and films.
Little Red-Haired Girl
Little Red-Haired Girl: unseen Peanuts character, Charlie Brown's unrequited love, first mentioned November 19, 1961, never named in the strip; inspired by Donna Mae Wold; named Heather in 1977 TV specials.
Little Reunions
Little Reunions (小團圓, Xiao tuanyuan) is the final, most autobiographical novel of the Chinese writer Eileen Chang, completed in 1976 and published posthumously in 2009.
Little Women
Little Women, Louisa May Alcott's 1868–1869 two-part novel, follows the March sisters in Civil War-era Massachusetts; an instant bestseller, never out of print, endlessly adapted and critically reevaluated.