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Today's featured article

Front cover of the first edition

The Structure of Literature is a 1954 book of literary criticism by Paul Goodman, the published version of his doctoral dissertation. It proposes a mode of formal literary analysis in which Goodman defines a formal structure within an isolated literary work, finds how parts of the work interact with each other to form a whole, and uses those definitions to study other works. He analyzes multiple literary works as examples with close reading and genre discussion. Goodman finished his dissertation in 1940, but took 14 years to publish it. In mixed reviews, critics described the book as falling short of its aims; engaging psychological insight and incisive asides were mired in glaring style issues and jargon that made passages impenetrable or obscured his argument. Though Goodman contributed to the development of the Chicago School of Aristotelian formal literary criticism, he neither received wide academic recognition for his dissertation nor was his method accepted by his field. (Full article...)

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Joseph Redding

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On this day...

May 7

Maximilien Robespierre

1487 – Granada War: Forces of Aragon and Castile began a siege of Málaga, a Muslim city in the south of the Iberian Peninsula.
1794 – French Revolution: Maximilien Robespierre (pictured) established the Cult of the Supreme Being as the new state religion of the French First Republic.
1798 – War of the First Coalition: A British garrison repelled a French attack on the Îles Saint-Marcouf off the Normandy coast, inflicting heavy losses.
1937 – Employees at Fleischer Studios in New York City went on strike in the animation industry's first major labor strike.
1946 – Masaru Ibuka and Akio Morita founded the telecommunications corporation Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo, later renamed Sony.

Mary of Modena (d. 1718)
Tore Wretman (b. 1916)
Willard Boyle (d. 2011)

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Today's featured picture

The Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125, is a choral symphony, the final complete symphony by Ludwig van Beethoven, composed between 1822 and 1824. It was first performed in Vienna on 7 May 1824. The symphony is regarded by many critics and musicologists as a masterpiece of Western classical music. It is one of the best-known works in common practice music and one of the most frequently performed symphonies worldwide. Symphony No. 9 was the first example of a major composer scoring vocal parts in a symphony. In the 20th century, an instrumental arrangement of the chorus was adopted by the Council of Europe, and later the European Union, as the Anthem of Europe. This photograph displays page 12 of Beethoven's original manuscript, which is currently held in the collection of the Berlin State Library.

Manuscript credit: Ludwig van Beethoven

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