In literature, an epigraph is a phrase, quotation, or poem that is set at the beginning of a document, monograph or section or chapter thereof. [1] The epigraph may serve as a preface to the work; as a summary; as a counter-example; or as a link from the work to a wider literary canon, [2] with the purpose of either inviting comparison or enlisting a conventional context. [3]
A book may have an overall epigraph that is part of the front matter, or one for each chapter.
Some writers use as epigraphs fictional quotations that purport to be related to the fiction of the work itself. Examples include:
A Wizard of Earthsea is a fantasy novel written by American author Ursula K. Le Guin and first published by the small press Parnassus in 1968. It is regarded as a classic of children's literature and of fantasy, within which it is widely influential. The story is set in the fictional archipelago of Earthsea and centers on a young mage named Ged, born in a village on the island of Gont. He displays great power while still a boy and joins a school of wizardry, where his prickly nature drives him into conflict with a fellow student. During a magical duel, Ged's spell goes awry and releases a shadow creature that attacks him. The novel follows Ged's journey as he seeks to be free of the creature.
Ecclesiastes is one of the Ketuvim ("Writings") of the Hebrew Bible and part of the Wisdom literature of the Christian Old Testament. The title commonly used in English is a Latin transliteration of the Greek translation of the Hebrew word קֹהֶלֶת. An unnamed author introduces "The words of Kohelet, son of David, king in Jerusalem" (1:1) and does not use his own voice again until the final verses (12:9–14), where he gives his own thoughts and summarises the statements of Kohelet; the main body of the text is ascribed to Kohelet himself.
An epigram is a brief, interesting, memorable, sometimes surprising or satirical statement. The word derives from the Greek ἐπίγραμμα. This literary device has been practiced for over two millennia.
Ursula Kroeber Le Guin was an American author best known for her works of speculative fiction, including science fiction works set in her Hainish universe, and the Earthsea fantasy series. She was first published in 1959, and her literary career spanned nearly sixty years, producing more than twenty novels and over a hundred short stories, in addition to poetry, literary criticism, translations, and children's books. Frequently described as an author of science fiction, Le Guin has also been called a "major voice in American Letters". Le Guin said she would prefer to be known as an "American novelist".
The Earthsea Cycle, also known as Earthsea, is a series of high fantasy books written by the American author Ursula K. Le Guin. Beginning with A Wizard of Earthsea (1968), The Tombs of Atuan, (1970) and The Farthest Shore (1972), the series was continued in Tehanu (1990), and Tales from Earthsea and The Other Wind. In 2018, all the novels and short stories were published in a single volume, The Books of Earthsea: The Complete Illustrated Edition, with artwork by Charles Vess.
"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", commonly known as "Prufrock", is the first professionally published poem by American-born British poet T. S. Eliot (1888–1965). The poem relates the varying thoughts of its title character in a stream of consciousness. Eliot began writing "Prufrock" in February 1910, and it was first published in the June 1915 issue of Poetry: A Magazine of Verse at the instigation of fellow American expatriate Ezra Pound. It was later printed as part of a twelve-poem chapbook entitled Prufrock and Other Observations in 1917. At the time of its publication, "Prufrock" was considered outlandish, but the poem is now seen as heralding a paradigmatic shift in poetry from late 19th-century Romanticism and Georgian lyrics to Modernism.
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, or Pearls Before Swine, Kurt Vonnegut's fifth novel, was published in 1965 by Holt, Rinehart and Winston and as a Dell mass-market paperback in 1970. A piece of postmodern satire, it gave context to Vonnegut's following novel, Slaughterhouse-Five and shared in its success.
Ernest Christopher Dowson was an English poet, novelist, and short-story writer who is often associated with the Decadent movement.
A fictional book is a text created specifically for a work in an imaginary narrative that is referred to, depicted, or excerpted in a story, book, film, or other fictional work, and which exists only in one or more fictional works. A fictional book may be created to add realism or depth to a larger fictional work. For example, George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four has excerpts from a book by Emmanuel Goldstein entitled The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism which provides background on concepts explored in the novel.
Postmodern literature is a form of literature that is characterized by the use of metafiction, unreliable narration, self-reflexivity, intertextuality, and which often thematizes both historical and political issues. This style of experimental literature emerged strongly in the United States in the 1960s through the writings of authors such as Kurt Vonnegut, Thomas Pynchon, William Gaddis, Philip K. Dick, Kathy Acker, and John Barth. Postmodernists often challenge authorities, which has been seen as a symptom of the fact that this style of literature first emerged in the context of political tendencies in the 1960s. This inspiration is, among other things, seen through how postmodern literature is highly self-reflexive about the political issues it speaks to.
Young adult literature (YA) is literature, most often including novels, written for readers from 12 to 18 years of age. The term YA was first used regularly in the 1960s in the United States. The YA category includes most of the genres found in adult fiction, with themes that include friendship, drugs and alcohol, and sexual and gender identity. Stories that focus on the challenges of youth may be categorized as problem novels or coming-of-age novels.
A chapter is any of the main thematic divisions within a writing of relative length, such as a book of prose, poetry, or law. A book with chapters may have multiple chapters that respectively comprise discrete topics or themes. In each case, chapters can be numbered, titled, or both. An example of a chapter that has become well known is "Down the Rabbit-Hole", which is the first chapter from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
The Grass Is Singing, published in 1950, is the first novel by the British author Doris Lessing. It takes place in Southern Rhodesia, in southern Africa, during the 1940s and deals with the racial politics between whites and blacks in that country. It follows an emotionally immature woman's hasty marriage to an unsuccessful farmer, and her ensuing mental deterioration, her murder, and the colonial British society's reactions to it. The novel created a sensation when it was first published and became an instant success in Europe and the United States. A Swedish-made adaptation, Gräset Sjunger, was filmed in English in 1981.
The Book of Counted Sorrows and The Book of Counted Joys are fictional books "quoted" as the source of various epigraphs in many of Dean Koontz's books. The books as cited sources do not actually exist; they are false documents.
The Moonlight Bay Trilogy is an unfinished trilogy of three novels by Dean Koontz. They revolve around the mysterious events in Moonlight Bay, a fictitious Southern California town, that are investigated by the main character Christopher Snow, who suffers from the genetic disorder Xeroderma pigmentosum.
Beyond Belief: A Chronicle of Murder and its Detection is a semi-fictionalized account of the Moors murderers, Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, by the Welsh author and playwright, Emlyn Williams. As such, it may be classified as a nonfiction novel.
The Waste Land is a poem by T. S. Eliot, widely regarded as one of the most important English language poems of the 20th century and a central work of modernist poetry. Published in 1922, the 434-line poem first appeared in the United Kingdom in the October issue of Eliot's magazine The Criterion and in the United States in the November issue of The Dial. Among its famous phrases are "April is the cruellest month", "I will show you fear in a handful of dust", and "These fragments I have shored against my ruins".
Fiction is any creative work, chiefly any narrative work, portraying individuals, events, or places that are imaginary or in ways that are imaginary. Fictional portrayals are thus inconsistent with history, fact, or plausibility. In a traditional narrow sense, "fiction" refers to written narratives in prose – often referring specifically to novels, novellas, and short stories. More broadly, however, fiction encompasses imaginary narratives expressed in any medium, including not just writings but also live theatrical performances, films, television programs, radio dramas, comics, role-playing games, and video games. The publishing industry divides fiction into adult fiction, young adult fiction, new adult fiction, and children's fiction.
Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing is a non-fiction work by Canadian author Margaret Atwood. Cambridge University Press first published it in 2002.
Earthsea is a fictional world originally created by Ursula K. Le Guin for her short story "The Word of Unbinding", published in 1964. Earthsea became the setting for a further six books, beginning with A Wizard of Earthsea, first published in 1968, and continuing with The Tombs of Atuan, The Farthest Shore, Tehanu, Tales from Earthsea and The Other Wind. Nine short stories by Le Guin are also set in Earthsea; the earliest two in her 1975 collection of short stories The Wind's Twelve Quarters, five in Tales from Earthsea, and the final two in an illustrated collection in The Books of Earthsea. Collectively, the series is simply known as Earthsea.
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