10,807 articles
Bianwen
Bianwen (变文) are Tang dynasty Chinese popular narrative texts that combine prose and rhymed verse, used by monks and storytellers to present Buddhist sutra stories and folk legends to lay audiences.
Bibliography
Bibliography (from Greek biblion, book): a systematic, standardized list of sources consulted or relevant, spanning enumerative, descriptive, and analytical branches, national bibliographies, annotated bibliographies, and modern bibliographic databases and standards.
Bibliomania (ビブリオマニア) (manga)
Bibliomania (ビブリオマニア, BIBLIOMANIA) is a 12-chapter Japanese web manga by ORVAL (story) and Macchiro (art), serialized on KAI-YOU.net 2016–2018, an Alice-in-Wonderland-based SF dark fantasy published in one print volume and translated into Spanish, French, and Italian.
Bibliotheca (Photius)
The Bibliotheca, also known as the Myriobiblos, is a ninth-century collection of summaries and critical judgments of several hundred books read by Photius, patriarch of Constantinople.
Bibliothèque bleue
The Bibliothèque bleue was a French collection of cheap, small booklets with blue covers, printed chiefly at Troyes from about 1600 and spread across the countryside by peddlers.
Bích Câu kỳ ngộ
Bích Câu kỳ ngộ is a Vietnamese Nôm verse romance in lục bát meter telling how the poor scholar Trần Tú Uyên meets and marries the fairy Giáng Kiều.
Bichitra Ramayana
Bichitra Ramayana (ବିଚିତ୍ର ରାମାୟଣ, "the Wonderful Ramayana") is the shared name of two Odia retellings of the Rama story, by Sarala Das and Biswanath Khuntia.
Bidagdha Chintamani
Bidagdha Chintamani (ବିଦଗ୍ଧ ଚିନ୍ତାମଣି) is an 18th-century Odia kavya by Abhimanyu Samanta Singhara, telling the love story of Radha and Krishna and counted as the longest kavya in Odia literature.
Bidrohi
Bidrohi (বিদ্রোহী, "The Rebel") is a Bengali revolutionary poem by Kazi Nazrul Islam, written in December 1921 and published in 1922, which earned him the title Bidrohi Kavi, the Rebel Poet.
Big Book Prize
The Big Book Prize (Национальная литературная премия «Большая книга») is a Russian national literary award established in 2005 and awarded annually for works written in Russian.
Big Breasts and Wide Hips
Big Breasts and Wide Hips (丰乳肥臀) is a 1995 novel by Mo Yan, written after his mother's death, following Shangguan Lu and her nine children through twentieth-century Chinese history.
Big Brother (Nineteen Eighty-Four)
Big Brother is the fictional supreme ruler of Oceania in Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), seen only on posters and telescreens with the slogan "Big Brother is watching you", now a byword for intrusive surveillance.
Big Game (comics)
Big Game (comics): 2023 Image Comics five-issue limited series by Mark Millar and Pepe Larraz, a crossover uniting over twenty Millarworld franchises including Kick-Ass, Kingsman, Nemesis, and The Magic Order, published on the 20th anniversary of Wanted.
Big Hero 6 (comics)
Big Hero 6 is a Marvel Comics superhero team created by Steven T. Seagle and Duncan Rouleau, debuting in 1998 as Japan's government-sanctioned team (Silver Samurai, Sunfire, Hiro Takachiho, Baymax, Honey Lemon, Go-Go Tomago), later rebooted in 2008 and adapted into Disney's 2014 animated film.
Big Little Lies (novel)
Big Little Lies is Liane Moriarty's 2014 sixth novel, a murder mystery about three mothers at Pirriwee Public School on Sydney's northern beaches; it debuted at No. 1 on the NYT list and inspired HBO's Emmy-winning 2017 series.
Bihari Satsai
The Bihari Satsai (बिहारी सतसई) is a collection of about seven hundred doha couplets in Braj Bhasha composed by the poet Bihari Lal around 1662.
Bijak
The Bijak (बीजक) is the principal collection of the verses of Kabir, the fifteenth-century weaver-poet of Varanasi, and the most sacred scripture of the Kabir Panth religious order.
Bilangan Fu
Bilangan Fu is a 2008 Indonesian novel by Ayu Utami, her third, following the rock climber Sandi Yuda in rural Java; it won the 2008 Khatulistiwa Literary Award.
Bilanka Ramayana
Bilanka Ramayana (ବିଲଙ୍କା ରାମାୟଣ) is an Odia poetic retelling of the Ramayana, attributed to Sarala Das, in which Rama, aided by Sita, kills a thousand-headed Ravana in the subterranean city of Bilanka.
Bilbo Baggins
Bilbo Baggins (Bilba Labingi), Tolkien's hobbit hero of The Hobbit (1937) and figure in The Lord of the Rings: found the One Ring in T.A. 2941, first bearer to give it up voluntarily, sailed West aged 131.
Bill Sikes
Bill Sikes (William Sikes) is the brutal housebreaker of Dickens's Oliver Twist (1837-39), a member of Fagin's gang, Nancy's lover, owner of the dog Bull's-eye, and Nancy's murderer.
Bill Tanner
Bill Tanner (William Tanner) is M's Chief of Staff at MI6 in Ian Fleming's James Bond novels and the Eon films, one of Bond's few friends in the Service, played on screen by Michael Goodliffe, James Villiers, Michael Kitchen, and currently Rory Kinnear.
Bill Watterson
Bill Watterson (William Boyd Watterson II, born 1958) is the American cartoonist who created Calvin and Hobbes (1985–1995), refused all merchandising licensing, won Reuben Awards in 1986 and 1988 and the 2014 Angoulême Grand Prix, and returned in 2023 with The Mysteries.
Billiards at Half-Past Nine
Billiards at Half-Past Nine (German: Billard um halb zehn) is a 1959 novel by the West German writer Heinrich Böll, following three generations of the Fähmel family.
Billy Bathgate
Billy Bathgate is a 1989 E. L. Doctorow novel (Random House) about a fifteen-year-old Bronx boy who becomes Dutch Schultz's apprentice in 1935, ending in Schultz's Newark murder. Adapted into a panned 1991 Robert Benton film with Dustin Hoffman and Nicole Kidman.
Billy Bones
Billy Bones, the old pirate and former first mate of Captain Flint in Stevenson's 1883 Treasure Island, lodges at the Admiral Benbow Inn, pays Jim to watch for a one-legged man, dies of a stroke after receiving the black spot, and leaves the treasure map in his sea chest.
Billy Budd
Billy Budd, Sailor (An Inside Narrative) is Herman Melville's unfinished novella about a sailor falsely accused of mutiny and hanged after a drumhead court; discovered 1919, published 1924, disputed by editors and critics ever since.
Billy Bunter
Billy Bunter (William George Bunter), the Fat Owl of the Remove at Greyfriars School, fictional schoolboy created by Charles Hamilton as Frank Richards in The Magnet from 1908, later star of 38 novels, comics, and BBC TV (1952–1961).
Billy Butcher
Billy Butcher, William J. "Billy" Butcher, is the vengeful antihero leader of the Boys in Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson's The Boys comics (2006–2012) and Karl Urban's TV counterpart. Comic final antagonist killed by Hughie; TV Butcher kills Homelander in the 2026 finale.
Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, Ben Fountain's 2012 debut novel (Ecco), follows Bravo Squad during a Thanksgiving Dallas Cowboys game; it won the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award and was adapted by Ang Lee in 2016.