1.
1749 in art
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Events from the year 1749 in art. John Shackleton is appointed Principal Painter in Ordinary to King George II of Great Britain, canaletto completes his painting of Warwick Castle now at the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut. Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin refines technique for reflected light on glass and silver, thomas Hudson paints a portrait of Admiral Byng. Jean-Baptiste Oudry paints Clara the Rhinoceros, a portrait of the rhinoceros Clara at this date on display in Paris, joshua Reynolds paints Commodore the Honourable August Keppel, his first portrait of Keppel. Louis-François Roubiliacs memorial to the Duke of Argyll, his first work in Westminster Abbey, is installed, gervase Spencer paints a miniature self-portrait
2.
English poetry
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This article focuses on poetry written in English from the United Kingdom, England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. The article does not include poetry from other countries where the English language is spoken, the earliest surviving English poetry, written in Anglo-Saxon, the direct predecessor of modern English, may have been composed as early as the 7th century. This is generally taken as marking the beginning of Anglo-Saxon poetry and it is possible to identify certain key moments, however. The Dream of the Rood was written before circa AD700, by and large, however, Anglo-Saxon poetry is categorised by the manuscripts in which it survives, rather than its date of composition. While the poetry that has survived is limited in volume, it is wide in breadth, beowulf is the only heroic epic to have survived in its entirety, but fragments of others such as Waldere and the Finnesburg Fragment show that it was not unique in its time. Other genres include much religious verse, from works to biblical paraphrase, elegies such as The Wanderer, The Seafarer, and The Ruin, and numerous proverbs, riddles. With one notable exception, Anglo-Saxon poetry depends on alliterative verse for its structure, with the Norman conquest of England, beginning in 1111 the Anglo-Saxon language rapidly diminished as a written literary language. The new aristocracy spoke predominantly Norman, and this became the language of courts, parliament. While Anglo-Norman or Latin was preferred for high culture, English literature by no means died out, other transitional works were preserved as popular entertainment, including a variety of romances and lyrics. With time, the English language regained prestige, and in 1362 it replaced French and Latin in Parliament, the reputation of Chaucers successors in the 15th century has suffered in comparison with him, though Lydgate and Skelton are widely studied. A group of Scottish writers arose who were believed to be influenced by Chaucer. The rise of Scottish poetry began with the writing of The Kingis Quair by James I of Scotland, the main poets of this Scottish group were Robert Henryson, William Dunbar and Gavin Douglas. The Renaissance was slow in coming to England, with the generally accepted start date being around 1509 and it is also generally accepted that the English Renaissance extended until the Restoration in 1660. However, a number of factors had prepared the way for the introduction of the new learning long before this start date. A number of medieval poets had, as noted, shown an interest in the ideas of Aristotle. The introduction of printing by Caxton in 1474 provided the means for the more rapid dissemination of new or recently rediscovered writers and thinkers. Caxton also printed the works of Chaucer and Gower and these books helped establish the idea of a poetic tradition that was linked to its European counterparts. In addition, the writings of English humanists like Thomas More and Thomas Elyot helped bring the ideas, the establishment of the Church of England in 1535 accelerated the process of questioning the Catholic world-view that had previously dominated intellectual and artistic life
3.
Samuel Johnson
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Johnson was a devout Anglican and committed Tory, and is described by the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography as arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English history. He is also the subject of perhaps the most famous biography in English literature, born in Lichfield, Staffordshire, Johnson attended Pembroke College, Oxford for just over a year, before his lack of funds forced him to leave. After working as a teacher, he moved to London, where he began to write for The Gentlemans Magazine and his early works include the biography Life of Mr Richard Savage, the poems London and The Vanity of Human Wishes, and the play Irene. After nine years of work, Johnsons A Dictionary of the English Language was published in 1755 and it had a far-reaching effect on Modern English and has been described as one of the greatest single achievements of scholarship. This work brought Johnson popularity and success, until the completion of the Oxford English Dictionary 150 years later, Johnsons was viewed as the pre-eminent British dictionary. His later works included essays, an annotated edition of The Plays of William Shakespeare. In 1763, he befriended James Boswell, with whom he travelled to Scotland. Towards the end of his life, he produced the massive and influential Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, Johnson was a tall and robust man. His odd gestures and tics were disconcerting to some on first meeting him, after a series of illnesses, he died on the evening of 13 December 1784, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. Born on 18 September 1709, to Michael Johnson, a bookseller and he did not cry and, with doubts surrounding the newborns health, his aunt exclaimed that she would not have picked such a poor creature up in the street. Since it was feared that the baby die, the vicar of St Marys was summoned to perform a baptism. Two godfathers were chosen, Samuel Swynfen, a physician and graduate of Pembroke College, Oxford, and Richard Wakefield, a lawyer, coroner, Johnsons health improved and he was put to wet-nurse with Joan Marklew. He soon contracted scrofula, known at time as the Kings Evil because it was thought royalty could cure it. Sir John Floyer, former physician to King Charles II, recommended that the young Johnson should receive the royal touch, however, the ritual was ineffective, and an operation was performed that left him with permanent scars across his face and body. Johnson demonstrated signs of intelligence as a child, and his parents, to his later disgust. His education began at the age of three, and was provided by his mother, who had him memorise and recite passages from the Book of Common Prayer. When Samuel turned four, he was sent to a nearby school, a year later, Johnson went to Lichfield Grammar School, where he excelled in Latin. During this time, Johnson started to exhibit the tics that would influence how people viewed him in his years
4.
American poetry
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Unsurprisingly, most of the early colonists work relied on contemporary British models of poetic form, diction, and theme. However, in the 19th century, a distinctive American idiom began to emerge, the history of American poetry is not easy to know. The received narrative of Modernism proposes that Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot were perhaps the most influential modernist English-language poets in the period during World War I. But this narrative leaves out African American and women poets who were published, by the 1960s, the young poets of the British Poetry Revival looked to their American contemporaries and predecessors as models for the kind of poetry they wanted to write. There are 14 such writers whom we might on that basis call American poets, early examples include a 1616 testimonial poem on the sterling warlike character of Captain John Smith and Rev. One of the first recorded poets of the British colonies was Anne Bradstreet, the poems she published during her lifetime address religious and political themes. She also wrote tender evocations of home, family life and of her love for her husband, edward Taylor wrote poems expounding Puritan virtues in a highly wrought metaphysical style that can be seen as typical of the early colonial period. This narrow focus on the Puritan ethic was, understandably, the dominant note of most of the written in the colonies during the 17th. Of course, being a Puritan minister as well as a poet, a distinctly American lyric voice of the colonial period was Phillis Wheatley, a slave whose book Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, was published in 1773. She was one of the poets of her day, at least in the colonies. The 18th century saw an emphasis on America itself as fit subject matter for its poets. The work of Rebecca Hammond Lard, although old, still apply to life in todays world. She writes about nature, not only the nature of environment, on the whole, the development of poetry in the American colonies mirrors the development of the colonies themselves. The early poetry is dominated by the need to preserve the integrity of the Puritan ideals that created the settlement in the first place, as the colonists grew in confidence, the poetry they wrote increasingly reflected their drive towards independence. This shift in subject matter was not reflected in the mode of writing which tended to be conservative and this can be seen as a product of the physical remove at which American poets operated from the center of English-language poetic developments in London. The first significant poet of the independent United States was William Cullen Bryant, whose contribution was to write rhapsodic poems on the grandeur of prairies. Formed the Fireside Poets were a group of 19th-century American poets from New England, the poets primary subjects were the domestic life, mythology, and politics of the United States, in which several of the poets were directly involved. Other notable poets to emerge in the early and middle 19th century include Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edgar Allan Poe, Henry David Thoreau, Sidney Lanier, and James Whitcomb Riley
5.
German literature
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German literature comprises those literary texts written in the German language. This includes literature written in Germany, Austria, the German parts of Belgium and Switzerland, Liechtenstein, South Tyrol in Italy and to a lesser extent works of the German diaspora. German literature of the period is mostly in Standard German. The Old High German period is reckoned to run until about the mid-11th century, the most famous works are the Hildebrandslied, Middle High German starts in the 12th century, the key works include The Ring and the poems of Oswald von Wolkenstein and Johannes von Tepl. The Baroque period was one of the most fertile times in German literature, modern literature in German begins with the authors of the Enlightenment. The Sensibility movement of the 1750s-1770s ended with Goethes best-selling Die Leiden des jungen Werther, the Sturm und Drang and Weimar Classicism movements were led by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller. German Romanticism was the dominant movement of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Biedermeier refers to the literature, music, the visual arts, under the Nazi regime, some authors went into exile and others submitted to censorship. Periodization is not a science but the following list contains movements or time periods typically used in discussing German literature. The closer one nears the present, the more debated the periodizations become, the Old High German period is reckoned to run until about the mid-11th century, though the boundary to Early Middle High German is not clear-cut. The most famous work in OHG is the Hildebrandslied, a piece of Germanic alliterative heroic verse which besides the Muspilli is the sole survivor of what must have been a vast oral tradition. Another important work, in the dialect of Old Saxon, is a life of Christ in the style of a heroic epic known as the Heliand. This was the period of the blossoming of MHG lyric poetry, one of the most important of these poets was Walther von der Vogelweide. The same sixty years saw the composition of the most important courtly romances and these are written in rhyming couplets, and again draw on French models such as Chrétien de Troyes, many of them relating Arthurian material, for example, Parzival by Wolfram von Eschenbach. These high medieval heroic epics are written in rhymed strophes, not the verse of Germanic prehistory. Therefore, the literature of the late 14th and the early 15th century falls, as it were, the Volksbuch tradition which would flourish in the 16th century also finds its origin in the second half of the 15th century. Sebastian Brant Thomas Murner Philipp Melanchthon Sebastian Franck The Baroque period was one of the most fertile times in German literature, many writers reflected the horrible experiences of the Thirty Years War, in poetry and prose. Grimmelshausens adventures of the young and naïve Simplicissimus, in the eponymous book Simplicius Simplicissimus, martin Opitz established rules for the purity of language, style, verse and rhyme
6.
Edo period
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The Edo period or Tokugawa period is the period between 1603 and 1868 in the history of Japan, when Japanese society was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and the countrys 300 regional daimyō. The period was characterized by growth, strict social order, isolationist foreign policies. The shogunate was established in Edo on March 24,1603. The period came to an end with the Meiji Restoration on May 3,1868, instrumental in the rise of the new bakufu was Tokugawa Ieyasu, the main beneficiary of the achievements of Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi. Already powerful, Ieyasu profited by his transfer to the rich Kantō area, after Hideyoshis death, Ieyasu moved quickly to seize control from the Toyotomi family. Ieyasus victory over the western daimyōs at the Battle of Sekigahara gave him control of all Japan. He rapidly abolished numerous enemy daimyō houses, reduced others, such as that of the Toyotomi, Ieyasu still failed to achieve complete control of the western daimyōs, but his assumption of the title of shogun helped consolidate the alliance system. After further strengthening his base, Ieyasu installed his son Hidetada as shogun. The Toyotomi were still a significant threat, and Ieyasu devoted the next decade to their eradication, in 1615, the Tokugawa army destroyed the Toyotomi stronghold at Osaka. The Tokugawa period brought 250 years of stability to Japan, the political system evolved into what historians call bakuhan, a combination of the terms bakufu and han to describe the government and society of the period. In the bakuhan, the shogun had national authority and the daimyōs had regional authority and this represented a new unity in the feudal structure, which featured an increasingly large bureaucracy to administer the mixture of centralized and decentralized authorities. The feudal hierarchy was completed by the classes of daimyō. Closest to the Tokugawa house were the shinpan, or related houses and they were twenty-three daimyōs on the borders of Tokugawa lands, all directly related to Ieyasu. The shinpan held mostly honorary titles and advisory posts in the bakufu, the second class of the hierarchy were the fudai, or house daimyōs, rewarded with lands close to the Tokugawa holdings for their faithful service. By the 18th century,145 fudai controlled such smaller han, members of the fudai class staffed most of the major bakufu offices. Ninety-seven han formed the group, the tozama, former opponents or new allies. The tozama were located mostly on the peripheries of the archipelago, because the tozama were least trusted of the daimyō, they were the most cautiously managed and generously treated, although they were excluded from central government positions. The Tokugawa not only consolidated their control over a reunified Japan, they also had unprecedented power over the emperor, the court, all daimyōs and the religious orders
7.
Ewald Christian von Kleist
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Ewald Christian von Kleist was a German poet and cavalry officer. His vast family was well-established in Farther Pomerania,58 male members of his family fought in Frederick the Greats army of the Seven Years War, Kleist was born at Zeblin, near Köslin in Farther Pomerania, to the von Kleist family of cavalry leaders. The Kleist family is an old, established one in Farther Pomerania whose roots date to the 12th century, Kleists father, Joachim Ewald, son of Ewald von Kleist, had been born on the family estate. On 7 July,1710, he married Marie Juliane von Manteuffel from Groß-Poplow and she died on 9 November 1719 after the birth of the sixth child. Ewald Christian, the child of this marriage, lived with his only brother, Franz Casimir, one year older, at the estate of a paternal uncle, Christian von Manteuffel. Either on the completion of his studies, or because his father was unhappy with the direction his studies took he entered the Danish army and he served in a unit commanded by a friend of his father. After distinguishing himself at the Battle of Mollwitz and the siege of Neisse, he was promoted to captain in 1749, quartered during the winter of 1757-1758 in Leipzig during the Seven Years War, he found relief from his irksome military duties in the society of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. Shortly afterwards in the battle of Kunersdorf, on 12 August 1759, he was wounded in the forefront of the attack. Kleists chief work is a poem in hexameters, Der Frühling and it earned him the nickname the Poet of the Spring. In his description of the beauties of nature Kleist shows poetical genius and he noted in his letters that Carl Wilhelm Ramler had given him belated commentary and improvements on his poem, which he self-published in December 1749. Subsequently, his poem received considerable notice, even from Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis, after his death his friend Karl Wilhelm Ramler published an edition of Kleists Sämtliche Werke in 2 vols. A critical edition was published by August Sauer, in 3 vols, see also Arthur Chuquet, De Ewaldi Kleistii vita et scriptis, and Heinrich Pröhle, Friedrich der Grosse und die deutsche Literatur. Research places the three Kleist poets—Ewald, Franz Alexander von Kleist and Heinrich von Kleist to the same forefather at the start of the 15th century
8.
James Thomson (poet, born 1700)
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James Thomson was a Scottish poet and playwright, known for his poems The Seasons and The Castle of Indolence, and for the lyrics of Rule, Britannia. James Thomson was born in Ednam in Roxburghshire around 11 September 1700 and he was the fourth of nine children of Thomas Thomson and Beatrix Thomson. Beatrix Thomson was born in Fogo, Berwickshire and was a distant relation of the house of Hume, Thomas Thomson was the Presbyterian minister of Ednam until eight weeks after Thomson’s birth, when he was admitted as minister of Southdean, where Thomson spent most of his early years. Thomson may have attended the school of Southdean before going to the grammar school in Jedburgh in 1712. He failed to distinguish himself there and he was, however, encouraged to write poetry by Robert Riccaltoun, a farmer, poet and Presbyterian minister, and Sir William Bennet, a whig laird who was a patron of Allan Ramsay. While some early poems by Thomson survive, he burned most of them on New Year’s Day each year, Thomson entered the College of Edinburgh in autumn 1715, destined for the Presbyterian ministry. At Edinburgh he studied metaphysics, Logic, Ethics, Greek, Latin and he completed his arts course in 1719 but chose not to graduate, instead entering Divinity Hall to become a minister. In 1716 Thomas Thomson died, with legend saying that he was killed whilst performing an exorcism. At Edinburgh Thomson became a member of the Grotesque Club, a literary group, after the successful publication of some of his poems in the ‘’Edinburgh Miscellany’’ Thomson followed Mallet to London in February 1725 in an effort to publish his verse. In London, Thomson became a tutor to the son of Charles Hamilton, Lord Binning, through David Mallet, by 1724 a published poet, Thomson met the great English poets of the day including Richard Savage, Aaron Hill and Alexander Pope. Thomson’s mother died on 12 May 1725, around the time of his writing ‘Winter’, ‘Winter’ was first published in 1726 by John Millian, with a second edition being released later the same year. By 1727, Thomson was working on Summer, published in February, and was working at Watt’s Academy, a school for young gentlemen, in the same year Millian published a poem by Thomson titled ‘A Poem to the Memory of Sir Isaac Newton’. He wrote Spring in 1728 and finally Autumn in 1730, when the set of four was published together as The Seasons, during this period he also wrote other poems, such as to the Memory of Sir Isaac Newton, and his first play, The Tragedy of Sophonisba. In 1730, he became tutor to the son of Sir Charles Talbot, then Solicitor-General, on his return Talbot arranged for him to become a secretary in chancery, which gave him financial security until Talbots death in 1737. Meanwhile, there appeared his next work, Liberty. In 1740, he collaborated with Mallet on the masque Alfred which was first performed at Cliveden, the Prince gave him a pension of £100 per annum. He had also introduced him to George Lyttelton, who became his friend and patron. In later years, Thomson lived in Richmond upon Thames, and it was there that he wrote his final work The Castle of Indolence, which was published just before his untimely death on 27 August 1748
9.
Irish poetry
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Irish poetry includes poetry in two languages, Irish and English. The earliest surviving poems in Irish date back to the 6th century and this culminated in the work of the poets of the Irish Literary Revival in the late 19th and early 20th century. Poetry in Irish represents the oldest vernacular poetry in Europe, the earliest examples date from the 6th century, and are generally short lyrics on themes from religion or the world of nature. They were frequently written by their authors in the margins of the illuminated manuscripts that they were copying. The best known example is Pangur Bán and it was practical for poems to be short because the Irish recognized that it was necessary to use any means necessary to make the poems lasting in their oral culture. To accomplish such a feat as well as they have, they used complicated rhyme schemes that would render a poem nonsensical if any of the key words were changed from the original version, in an oral culture, Irish poetry had many uses. A poem could be used to both the poet and the subject of the poem, oftentimes kings would commission poets to create a piece about them. Such poems would be passed on to descendants so they would remember the deeds of past generations. Kings would also commission poets to write poems of advertisement, speaking of the greatness and worthiness. Oral poetry, because it was in the vernacular, was used for entertainment. Poems that were entertaining could also be informative, teaching people lessons or offering them wisdom of experience for dealing with situations they would encounter in their everyday lives. Finally, poems, especially those featured in the sagas, were thought to be an instrument of the supernatural, Another source of early Irish poetry is the poems in the tales and sagas, such as the Táin Bó Cúailnge. Unlike many other European epic cycles, the Irish sagas were written in prose, Irish bards formed a professional hereditary caste of highly trained, learned poets. As officials of the court of king or chieftain, they performed a number of official roles and they were chroniclers and satirists whose job it was to praise their employers and damn those who crossed them. It was believed that a well-aimed bardic satire, glam dicin, the Metrical Dindshenchas, or Lore of Places, is probably the major surviving monument of Irish bardic verse. It is a great onomastic anthology of naming legends of significant places in the Irish landscape, the earliest of these date from the 11th century, and were probably originally compiled on a provincial basis. As a national compilation, the Metrical Dindshenchas has come down to us in two different recensions. Knowledge of the real or putative history of local places formed an important part of the education of the elite in ancient Ireland, verse tales of Fionn and the Fianna, sometimes known as Ossianic poetry, were extremely common in Ireland and Scotland throughout this period
10.
The Vanity of Human Wishes
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The Vanity of Human Wishes, The Tenth Satire of Juvenal Imitated is a poem by the English author Samuel Johnson. As the subtitle suggests, it is an imitation of Satire X by the Latin poet Juvenal, unlike Juvenal, Johnson attempts to sympathize with his poetic subjects. Also, the focuses on human futility and humanitys quest after greatness like Juvenal. It was Johnsons second imitation of Juvenal, unlike London, The Vanity of Human Wishes emphasizes philosophy over politics. The poem was not a success, but later critics, including Walter Scott and T. S. Eliot. Howard D. Weinbrot called it one of the poems in the English language. In 1738 Johnson composed London, his first imitation of Juvenals poetry, when Johnson replaced Edward Cave with Robert Dodsley as his publisher, he agreed with Dodsley that he would need to change the focus of his poetry. Johnsons London is concerned primarily with issues, especially those surrounding the Walpole administration. In a conversation with George Steevens, Johnson recounted that he wrote the first seventy lines in the course of one morning, Johnson claimed that The whole number was composed before I committed a single couplet to writing. To accomplish this feat, Johnson relied on an oral form of composition which was only possible because of his extraordinary memory. Johnson told Boswell that when he was writing poetry, he often from laziness only wrote down the first half of each line. Although Johnson was busy after 1746 working on his Dictionary, he found time to work on The Vanity of Human Wishes and complete his play. The first edition was published on 9 January 1749 and it was the first publication by Johnson to feature his name on the title page. It was not a success and only earned Johnson fifteen guineas. A revised version was published in the 1755 edition of Dodsleys anthology A collection of Poems by Several Hands, a third version was published posthumously in the 1787 edition of his Works, evidently working from a copy of the 1749 edition. However, no independent version of the poem was published during Johnsons life beyond the initial publication, the Vanity of Human Wishes is a poem of 368 lines, written in closed heroic couplets. Johnson loosely adapts Juvenals original satire to demonstrate the inability of the world. Both themes are explored in one of the most famous passages in the poem, in a passage dealing with the life of a writer, Johnson drew on his own personal experience
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