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Tranströmer, Tomas

(Encyclopedia)Tranströmer, Tomas, 1931–2015, Swedish poet, b. Stockholm, grad. Stockholm Univ. (1956), Sweden's (and Scandinavia's) greatest late 20th- and early 21st-century poet. First published in the 1950s, ...

Mistral, Gabriela

(Encyclopedia)Mistral, Gabriela mēsträlˈ [key], 1889–1957, Chilean poet whose original name was Lucila Godoy Alcayaga. She was a teacher in and director of rural schools in Chile before she attained wider acc...

Polish literature

(Encyclopedia)Polish literature, the literary works of Poland. The regaining of Polish independence in 1919 after generations of partition inspired new literary activity. The Skamander group of urban poets, inclu...

Brodsky, Joseph

(Encyclopedia)Brodsky, Joseph (Iosif Aleksandrovich Brodsky) brätˈskē, brädˈ–, Rus. yôsˈyĭf əlyĭksänˈdrəvyĭch brôtˈskē [key], 1940–96, Russian-American poet, b. Leningrad (St. Petersburg). A di...

Indian literature

(Encyclopedia)Indian literature. Oral literature in the vernacular languages of India is of great antiquity, but it was not until about the 16th cent. that an extensive written literature appeared. Chief factors in...

Gide, André

(Encyclopedia)Gide, André äNdrāˈ zhēd [key], 1869–1951, French writer. He established a reputation as an unconventional novelist with The Immoralist (1902, tr. 1930), a partly autobiographical work in which ...

Morrison, Toni

(Encyclopedia)Morrison, Toni, 1931–2019, American writer, b. Lorain, Ohio, as Chloe Ardelia (later Anthony) Wofford; B.A. Howard Univ., 1953, M.F.A. Cornell, 1955. Her fiction is noted for its poetic language, lu...

Finnish literature

(Encyclopedia)Finnish literature. The first printed work in Finnish was the ABC book published c.1542 by Bishop Michael Agricola (1508–57). In 1642 the first complete translation of the Bible in Finnish appeared ...

Jelinek, Elfriede

(Encyclopedia)Jelinek, Elfriede yĕlˈĭnĕk [key], 1946–, Austrian novelist and playwright, b. Mürzzuschlag. A trained musician who also studied art history and theater, she began her literary career with the p...

Munro, Alice

(Encyclopedia)Munro, Alice, 1931–, Canadian writer, b. Wingham, Ont., as Alice Ann Laidlaw. Much acclaimed as one of the finest contemporary short-story writers, Munro is known for quiet, insightfully realistic, ...
 

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