1.
Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein
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Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein, known as the Goethe Tischbein, was a German painter from the Tischbein family of artists. His father, Johann Conrad, was the carpenter for the convent in Haina and he began his artistic studies with his uncle, Johann Jacob Tischbein in Hamburg. From 1772 to 1773, he travelled in Holland, studying the Old Masters, after 1777, he established himself as a portrait painter in Berlin and became a member of the Masonic Lodge. He was able to visit Rome in 1779 and continue his studies, during this time, his style progressed from Rococo to Classicism. When he ran out of money in 1781, he settled in Zurich. In 1783, he was able to return to Rome with a grant from Duke Ernest II, obtained upon the recommendation of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and he remained in Italy until 1799 and became friends with Goethe, travelling with him to Naples in 1787. During his last ten years there, he was director of the Accademia di Belle Arti di Napoli and he left following the French occupation, when the anti-royalist Parthenopean Republic was established. After 1808, he worked for Grand Duke Peter I, from then until his death, he was a resident of Eutin. He spent several years after 1810 writing his autobiography, Aus meinem Leben and it was not published until 1861 and has not been reissued since. His son, Peter Friedrich Ludwig Tischbein, was a noted forester, complete text of Aus meinem Leben @ Google Books Media related to Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein at Wikimedia Commons
2.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was a German writer and statesman. In addition, numerous literary and scientific fragments, more than 10,000 letters and he was an early participant in the Sturm und Drang literary movement. He also contributed to the planning of Weimars botanical park and the rebuilding of its Ducal Palace and his first major scientific work, the Metamorphosis of Plants, was published after he returned from a 1788 tour of Italy. During this period, Goethe published his novel, Wilhelm Meisters Apprenticeship, the verse epic Hermann and Dorothea, and, in 1808. Goethes comments and observations form the basis of several biographical works, Goethes father, Johann Caspar Goethe, lived with his family in a large house in Frankfurt, then an Imperial Free City of the Holy Roman Empire. Though he had studied law in Leipzig and had been appointed Imperial Councillor, Johann Caspar married Goethes mother, Catharina Elizabeth Textor at Frankfurt on 20 August 1748, when he was 38 and she was 17. All their children, with the exception of Johann Wolfgang and his sister, Cornelia Friederica Christiana and his father and private tutors gave Goethe lessons in all the common subjects of their time, especially languages. Goethe also received lessons in dancing, riding and fencing, Johann Caspar, feeling frustrated in his own ambitions, was determined that his children should have all those advantages that he had not. Although Goethes great passion was drawing, he became interested in literature, Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock. He also took pleasure in reading works on history and religion. He writes about this period, Goethe became also acquainted with Frankfurt actors, among early literary attempts, he was infatuated with Gretchen, who would later reappear in his Faust and the adventures with whom he would concisely describe in Dichtung und Wahrheit. He adored Caritas Meixner, a wealthy Worms traders daughter and friend of his sister, Goethe studied law at Leipzig University from 1765 to 1768. He detested learning age-old judicial rules by heart, preferring instead to attend the lessons of Christian Fürchtegott Gellert. In Leipzig, Goethe fell in love with Anna Katharina Schönkopf, in 1770, he anonymously released Annette, his first collection of poems. His uncritical admiration for many contemporary poets vanished as he became interested in Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, already at this time, Goethe wrote a good deal, but he threw away nearly all of these works, except for the comedy Die Mitschuldigen. The restaurant Auerbachs Keller and its legend of Fausts 1525 barrel ride impressed him so much that Auerbachs Keller became the real place in his closet drama Faust Part One. As his studies did not progress, Goethe was forced to return to Frankfurt at the close of August 1768, Goethe became severely ill in Frankfurt. During the year and a half that followed, because of several relapses, during convalescence, Goethe was nursed by his mother and sister
3.
The arts
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The arts represent an outlet of expression that is usually influenced by culture in society and which in turn helps to change culture. As such, the arts are a manifestation of peoples internal creative impulse. Some art forms combine a visual element with performance or artwork with the written word, from prehistoric cave paintings to modern day films, art serves as a vessel for storytelling and conveying humankinds relationship with its environment. A debate exists in the arts and video game cultures over whether video games can be counted as an art form. In its most basic definition, art is a documented expression of a sentient being through or on an accessible medium so that anyone can view. The act itself of producing an expression can also be referred to as a certain art, or as art in general. If this solidified expression, or the act of producing it, is good or has value depends on those who access and rate it and this public rating is dependent on various subjective factors. Merriam-Webster defines the arts as painting, sculpture, music, theater, literature, etc. considered as a group of activities done by people with skill, and the study and application of the arts to the human environment. In Ancient Greece, all art and craft was referred to by the same word, thus, there was no distinction between the arts. Ancient Greek art brought the veneration of the form and the development of equivalent skills to show musculature, poise, beauty. Ancient Roman art depicted gods as idealized humans, shown with characteristic distinguishing features, in Byzantine and Gothic art of the Middle Ages, the dominance of the church insisted on the expression of biblical and not material truths. Eastern art has worked in a style akin to Western medieval art, namely a concentration on surface patterning. A characteristic of this style is that the colour is often defined by an outline. This is evident in, for example, the art of India, Tibet, religious Islamic art forbids iconography, and expresses religious ideas through geometry instead. The Artes Mechanicae were practised and developed in guild environments, the modern distinction between artistic and non-artistic skills did not develop until the Renaissance. In modern academia, the arts are usually grouped with or as a subset of the humanities, some subjects in the humanities are history, linguistics, literature, theology, philosophy, and/or logic. Drawing is a means of making an image, using any of a variety of tools. It generally involves making marks on a surface by applying pressure from a tool, common tools are graphite pencils, pen and ink, inked brushes, wax colour pencils, crayons, charcoals, pastels, and markers
4.
Visual arts
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The visual arts are art forms such as ceramics, drawing, painting, sculpture, printmaking, design, crafts, photography, video, filmmaking, literature, and architecture. Many artistic disciplines involve aspects of the arts as well as arts of other types. Also included within the arts are the applied arts such as industrial design, graphic design, fashion design, interior design. Current usage of the visual arts includes fine art as well as the applied, decorative arts and crafts. The distinction was emphasized by artists of the Arts and Crafts Movement, Art schools made a distinction between the fine arts and the crafts, maintaining that a craftsperson could not be considered a practitioner of the arts. The increasing tendency to painting, and to a lesser degree sculpture. The Western hierarchy of genres reflected similar attitudes, training in the visual arts has generally been through variations of the apprentice and workshop systems. Visual arts have now become a subject in most education systems. Drawing is a means of making an image, using any of a variety of tools. Digital tools that simulate the effects of these are also used, the main techniques used in drawing are, line drawing, hatching, crosshatching, random hatching, scribbling, stippling, and blending. An artist who excels in drawing is referred to as a draftsman or draughtsman, drawing goes back at least 16,000 years to Paleolithic cave representations of animals such as those at Lascaux in France and Altamira in Spain. In ancient Egypt, ink drawings on papyrus, often depicting people, were used as models for painting or sculpture, drawings on Greek vases, initially geometric, later developed to the human form with black-figure pottery during the 7th century BC. Painting taken literally is the practice of applying pigment suspended in a carrier, like drawing, painting has its documented origins in caves and on rock faces. The finest examples, believed by some to be 32,000 years old, are in the Chauvet, in shades of red, brown, yellow and black, the paintings on the walls and ceilings are of bison, cattle, horses and deer. Paintings of human figures can be found in the tombs of ancient Egypt, in the great temple of Ramses II, Nefertari, his queen, is depicted being led by Isis. The Greeks contributed to painting but much of their work has been lost, one of the best remaining representations are the hellenistic Fayum mummy portraits. Another example is mosaic of the Battle of Issus at Pompeii, Greek and Roman art contributed to Byzantine art in the 4th century BC, which initiated a tradition in icon painting. Apart from the manuscripts produced by monks during the Middle Ages
5.
Oxford English Dictionary
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The Oxford English Dictionary is a descriptive dictionary of the English language, published by the Oxford University Press. The second edition came to 21,728 pages in 20 volumes, in 1895, the title The Oxford English Dictionary was first used unofficially on the covers of the series, and in 1928 the full dictionary was republished in ten bound volumes. In 1933, the title The Oxford English Dictionary fully replaced the name in all occurrences in its reprinting as twelve volumes with a one-volume supplement. More supplements came over the years until 1989, when the edition was published. Since 2000, an edition of the dictionary has been underway. The first electronic version of the dictionary was available in 1988. The online version has been available since 2000, and as of April 2014 was receiving two million hits per month. The third edition of the dictionary will probably appear in electronic form, Nigel Portwood, chief executive of Oxford University Press. As a historical dictionary, the Oxford English Dictionary explains words by showing their development rather than merely their present-day usages, therefore, it shows definitions in the order that the sense of the word began being used, including word meanings which are no longer used. The format of the OEDs entries has influenced numerous other historical lexicography projects and this influenced later volumes of this and other lexicographical works. As of 30 November 2005, the Oxford English Dictionary contained approximately 301,100 main entries, the dictionarys latest, complete print edition was printed in 20 volumes, comprising 291,500 entries in 21,730 pages. The longest entry in the OED2 was for the verb set, as entries began to be revised for the OED3 in sequence starting from M, the longest entry became make in 2000, then put in 2007, then run in 2011. Despite its impressive size, the OED is neither the worlds largest nor the earliest exhaustive dictionary of a language, the Dutch dictionary Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal is the worlds largest dictionary, has similar aims to the OED and took twice as long to complete. Another earlier large dictionary is the Grimm brothers dictionary of the German language, begun in 1838, the official dictionary of Spanish is the Diccionario de la lengua española, and its first edition was published in 1780. The Kangxi dictionary of Chinese was published in 1716, trench suggested that a new, truly comprehensive dictionary was needed. On 7 January 1858, the Society formally adopted the idea of a new dictionary. Volunteer readers would be assigned particular books, copying passages illustrating word usage onto quotation slips, later the same year, the Society agreed to the project in principle, with the title A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles. He withdrew and Herbert Coleridge became the first editor, on 12 May 1860, Coleridges dictionary plan was published and research was started
6.
Astrology
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Astrology is the study of the movements and relative positions of celestial objects as a means for divining information about human affairs and terrestrial events. Throughout most of its history astrology was considered a tradition and was common in academic circles, often in close relation with astronomy, alchemy, meteorology. It was present in political circles, and is mentioned in works of literature, from Dante Alighieri and Geoffrey Chaucer to William Shakespeare, Lope de Vega. Astrology thus lost its academic and theoretical standing, and common belief in it has largely declined, Astrology is now recognized to be pseudoscience. The word astrology comes from the early Latin word astrologia, which derives from the Greek ἀστρολογία—from ἄστρον astron, astrologia later passed into meaning star-divination with astronomia used for the scientific term. Many cultures have attached importance to astronomical events, and the Indians, Chinese, the majority of professional astrologers rely on such systems. Astrology has been dated to at least the 2nd millennium BCE, with roots in systems used to predict seasonal shifts. A form of astrology was practised in the first dynasty of Mesopotamia, Chinese astrology was elaborated in the Zhou dynasty. Hellenistic astrology after 332 BCE mixed Babylonian astrology with Egyptian Decanic astrology in Alexandria, Alexander the Greats conquest of Asia allowed astrology to spread to Ancient Greece and Rome. In Rome, astrology was associated with Chaldean wisdom, after the conquest of Alexandria in the 7th century, astrology was taken up by Islamic scholars, and Hellenistic texts were translated into Arabic and Persian. In the 12th century, Arabic texts were imported to Europe, major astronomers including Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler and Galileo practised as court astrologers. Astrological references appear in literature in the works of such as Dante Alighieri and Geoffrey Chaucer. Throughout most of its history, astrology was considered a scholarly tradition and it was accepted in political and academic contexts, and was connected with other studies, such as astronomy, alchemy, meteorology, and medicine. At the end of the 17th century, new concepts in astronomy. Astrology thus lost its academic and theoretical standing, and common belief in astrology has largely declined, Astrology, in its broadest sense, is the search for meaning in the sky. This was a first step towards recording the Moons influence upon tides and rivers, by the 3rd millennium BCE, civilisations had sophisticated awareness of celestial cycles, and may have oriented temples in alignment with heliacal risings of the stars. Scattered evidence suggests that the oldest known references are copies of texts made in the ancient world. The Venus tablet of Ammisaduqa thought to be compiled in Babylon around 1700 BCE, a scroll documenting an early use of electional astrology is doubtfully ascribed to the reign of the Sumerian ruler Gudea of Lagash
7.
Chemistry
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Chemistry is a branch of physical science that studies the composition, structure, properties and change of matter. Chemistry is sometimes called the science because it bridges other natural sciences, including physics. For the differences between chemistry and physics see comparison of chemistry and physics, the history of chemistry can be traced to alchemy, which had been practiced for several millennia in various parts of the world. The word chemistry comes from alchemy, which referred to a set of practices that encompassed elements of chemistry, metallurgy, philosophy, astrology, astronomy, mysticism. An alchemist was called a chemist in popular speech, and later the suffix -ry was added to this to describe the art of the chemist as chemistry, the modern word alchemy in turn is derived from the Arabic word al-kīmīā. In origin, the term is borrowed from the Greek χημία or χημεία and this may have Egyptian origins since al-kīmīā is derived from the Greek χημία, which is in turn derived from the word Chemi or Kimi, which is the ancient name of Egypt in Egyptian. Alternately, al-kīmīā may derive from χημεία, meaning cast together, in retrospect, the definition of chemistry has changed over time, as new discoveries and theories add to the functionality of the science. The term chymistry, in the view of noted scientist Robert Boyle in 1661, in 1837, Jean-Baptiste Dumas considered the word chemistry to refer to the science concerned with the laws and effects of molecular forces. More recently, in 1998, Professor Raymond Chang broadened the definition of chemistry to mean the study of matter, early civilizations, such as the Egyptians Babylonians, Indians amassed practical knowledge concerning the arts of metallurgy, pottery and dyes, but didnt develop a systematic theory. Greek atomism dates back to 440 BC, arising in works by such as Democritus and Epicurus. In 50 BC, the Roman philosopher Lucretius expanded upon the theory in his book De rerum natura, unlike modern concepts of science, Greek atomism was purely philosophical in nature, with little concern for empirical observations and no concern for chemical experiments. Work, particularly the development of distillation, continued in the early Byzantine period with the most famous practitioner being the 4th century Greek-Egyptian Zosimos of Panopolis. He formulated Boyles law, rejected the four elements and proposed a mechanistic alternative of atoms. Before his work, though, many important discoveries had been made, the Scottish chemist Joseph Black and the Dutchman J. B. English scientist John Dalton proposed the theory of atoms, that all substances are composed of indivisible atoms of matter. Davy discovered nine new elements including the alkali metals by extracting them from their oxides with electric current, british William Prout first proposed ordering all the elements by their atomic weight as all atoms had a weight that was an exact multiple of the atomic weight of hydrogen. The inert gases, later called the noble gases were discovered by William Ramsay in collaboration with Lord Rayleigh at the end of the century, thereby filling in the basic structure of the table. Organic chemistry was developed by Justus von Liebig and others, following Friedrich Wöhlers synthesis of urea which proved that organisms were, in theory
8.
Craft
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A craft is a pastime or a profession that requires particular skills and knowledge of skilled work. The traditional terms craftsman and craftswoman are nowadays often replaced by artisan, the beginning of crafts in areas like the Ottoman empire involved the governing bodies requiring members of the city who were skilled at creating goods to open shops in the center of town. These people slowly stopped acting as subsistence farmers and began to represent what we think of a craftsman today, historically, craftsmen tended to concentrate in urban centers and formed guilds. The households of craftsmen were not as self-sufficient as those of people engaged in agricultural work, once an apprentice of a craft had finished his apprenticeship, he would become a journeyman searching for a place to set up his own shop and make a living. After he set up his own shop, he could call himself a master of his craft. But crafts have undergone deep structural changes during and since the era of the Industrial Revolution, thus, they participate in a certain division of labour between industry and craft. There are three aspects to human creativity - Art, Crafts, and Science, roughly determinated, art relies upon intuitive sensing, vision and expression, crafts upon sophisticated technique and science upon knowledge. Handicraft is the main sector of the crafts, it is a type of work where useful. Usually the term is applied to traditional means of making goods, the individual artisanship of the items is a paramount criterion, such items often have cultural and/or religious significance. Items made by mass production or machines are not handicraft goods, handicraft goods are made with craft production processes. Crafts practiced by independent artists working alone or in groups are often referred to as studio craft. Studio craft includes studio pottery, metal work, weaving, wood turning, paper and other forms of working, glass blowing. A craft fair is an event to display and sell crafts. There are craft shops where such goods are sold and craft communities, such as Craftster, a tradesperson is a skilled manual worker in a particular trade or craft. Economically and socially, a status is considered between a laborer and a professional, with a high degree of both practical and theoretical knowledge of their trade. In cultures where professional careers are highly prized there can be a shortage of skilled manual workers, media related to Crafts at Wikimedia Commons
9.
Fine art
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Historically, the five main fine arts were painting, sculpture, architecture, music and poetry, with performing arts including theatre and dance. Today, the fine arts commonly include additional forms, such as film, photography, video production/editing, design, sequential art, conceptual art, and printmaking. However, in some institutes of learning or in museums, fine art, in that sense, there are conceptual differences between the fine arts and the applied arts. The word fine does not so much denote the quality of the artwork in question and this definition originally excluded the applied or decorative arts, and the products of what were regarded as crafts. According to some writers the concept of a category of fine art is an invention of the early modern period in the West. Larry Shiner in his The Invention of Art, A Cultural History locates the invention in the 18th century, There was a traditional “system of the arts” in the West before the eighteenth century. ”Similar ideas have been expressed by Paul Oskar Kristeller, Pierre Bourdieu, and Terry Eagleton, though the point of invention is often placed earlier, in the Italian Renaissance. The separation of arts and crafts that often exists in Europe, in Japanese aesthetics the activities of everyday life are depicted by integrating not only art with craft but man-made with nature. Traditional Chinese art distinguished within Chinese painting between the mostly landscape painting of scholar gentlemen and the artisans of the schools of court painting. A high status was given to many things that would be seen as craft objects in the West, in particular ceramics, jade carving, weaving. Drawing is a form of expression and is one of the major forms of the visual arts. Common instruments include graphite pencils, pen and ink, inked brushes, wax color pencils, crayons, charcoals, chalk, pastels, markers, stylus, There are a number of subcategories of drawing, including cartooning. Mosaics are images formed with pieces of stone or glass. They can be decorative or functional, an artist who designs and makes mosaics is called a mosaic artist or a mosaicist. Printmaking is the process of making artworks by printing, normally on paper, except in the case of monotyping, the process is capable of producing multiples of the same piece, which is called a print. Each print is considered an original, as opposed to a copy, the reasoning behind this is that the print is not a reproduction of another work of art in a different medium — for instance, a painting — but rather an image designed from inception as a print. An individual print is also referred to as an impression, prints are created from a single original surface, known technically as a matrix. But there are other kinds, discussed below. Multiple nearly identical prints can be called an edition, in modern times each print is often signed and numbered forming a limited edition
10.
Muses
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The Muses are the inspirational goddesses of literature, science, and the arts in Greek mythology. They were considered the source of the knowledge embodied in the poetry, lyric songs and they were later adopted by the Romans as a part of their pantheon. In current English usage, muse can refer in general to a person who inspires an artist, writer, the earliest known records of the Nine Muses are from Boeotia, the homeland of Hesiod. Some ancient authorities thought that the Nine Muses were of Thracian origin, there, a tradition persisted that the Muses had once been three in number. They were again called Melete or Practice, Mneme or Memory, three ancient Muses were also reported in Plutarchs Quaestiones Convivales. According to Pausanias in the second century AD, there were three original Muses, worshiped on Mount Helicon in Boeotia, Aoidḗ, Melétē, and Mnḗmē. Together, these three form the picture of the preconditions of poetic art in cult practice. In Delphi three Muses were worshiped as well, but with other names, Nḗtē, Mésē, and Hýpatē, alternatively they later were called Kēphisṓ, Apollōnís, and Borysthenís, which names characterize them as daughters of Apollo. In later tradition, a set of four Muses were recognized, Thelxinóē, Aoidḗ Archē, one of the people frequently associated with the Muses was Pierus. By some he was called the father of a total of seven Muses, called Neilṓ, Tritṓnē, Asōpṓ, Heptápora, Achelōís, Tipoplṓ, and Rhodía. According to Hesiods Theogony, they were daughters of Zeus, the second king of the gods. For Alcman and Mimnermus, they were even more primordial, springing from the deities, Uranus. Sometimes the Muses are referred to as water nymphs, associated with the springs of Helicon and it was said that the winged horse Pegasus touched his hooves to the ground on Helicon, causing four sacred springs to burst forth, from which the muses were born. Athena later tamed the horse and presented him to the muses, classical writers set Apollo as their leader, Apollon Mousagetēs. In one myth, the Muses judged a contest between Apollo and Marsyas and they also gathered the pieces of the dead body of Orpheus, son of Calliope, and buried them. In a later myth, Thamyris challenged them to a singing contest and they won and punished Thamyris by blinding him and robbing him of his singing ability. He thus challenged the Muses to a match, resulting in his daughters, Pausanias records a tradition of two generations of Muses, the first are the daughters of Uranus and Gaia, the second of Zeus and Mnemosyne. Another, rarer genealogy is that they are daughters of Harmonia, some Greek writers give the names of the nine Muses as Kallichore, Helike, Eunike, Thelxinoë, Terpsichore, Euterpe, Eukelade, Dia, and Enope
11.
Poetry
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Poetry has a long history, dating back to the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh. Early poems evolved from folk songs such as the Chinese Shijing, or from a need to retell oral epics, as with the Sanskrit Vedas, Zoroastrian Gathas, and the Homeric epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey. Ancient attempts to define poetry, such as Aristotles Poetics, focused on the uses of speech in rhetoric, drama, song and comedy. Later attempts concentrated on such as repetition, verse form and rhyme. From the mid-20th century, poetry has sometimes been more generally regarded as a creative act employing language. Poetry uses forms and conventions to suggest differential interpretation to words, devices such as assonance, alliteration, onomatopoeia and rhythm are sometimes used to achieve musical or incantatory effects. The use of ambiguity, symbolism, irony and other elements of poetic diction often leaves a poem open to multiple interpretations. Similarly figures of such as metaphor, simile and metonymy create a resonance between otherwise disparate images—a layering of meanings, forming connections previously not perceived. Kindred forms of resonance may exist, between verses, in their patterns of rhyme or rhythm. Some poetry types are specific to cultures and genres and respond to characteristics of the language in which the poet writes. Much modern poetry reflects a critique of poetic tradition, playing with and testing, among other things, in todays increasingly globalized world, poets often adapt forms, styles and techniques from diverse cultures and languages. Some scholars believe that the art of poetry may predate literacy, others, however, suggest that poetry did not necessarily predate writing. The oldest surviving poem, the Epic of Gilgamesh, comes from the 3rd millennium BCE in Sumer. An example of Egyptian epic poetry is The Story of Sinuhe, other forms of poetry developed directly from folk songs. The earliest entries in the oldest extant collection of Chinese poetry, the efforts of ancient thinkers to determine what makes poetry distinctive as a form, and what distinguishes good poetry from bad, resulted in poetics—the study of the aesthetics of poetry. Some ancient societies, such as Chinas through her Shijing, developed canons of poetic works that had ritual as well as aesthetic importance, Classical thinkers employed classification as a way to define and assess the quality of poetry. Later aestheticians identified three major genres, epic poetry, lyric poetry, and dramatic poetry, treating comedy and tragedy as subgenres of dramatic poetry, Aristotles work was influential throughout the Middle East during the Islamic Golden Age, as well as in Europe during the Renaissance. English Romantic poet John Keats termed this escape from logic Negative Capability and this romantic approach views form as a key element of successful poetry because form is abstract and distinct from the underlying notional logic
12.
Tragedy
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Tragedy is a form of drama based on human suffering that invokes an accompanying catharsis or pleasure in audiences. In the wake of Aristotles Poetics, tragedy has been used to make genre distinctions, in the modern era, tragedy has also been defined against drama, melodrama, the tragicomic, and epic theatre. Drama, in the sense, cuts across the traditional division between comedy and tragedy in an anti- or a-generic deterritorialisation from the mid-19th century onwards. Both Bertolt Brecht and Augusto Boal define their epic theatre projects against models of tragedy, taxidou, however, reads epic theatre as an incorporation of tragic functions and its treatments of mourning and speculation. The word tragedy appears to have used to describe different phenomena at different times. It derives from Classical Greek τραγῳδία, contracted from trag-aoidiā = goat song, scholars suspect this may be traced to a time when a goat was either the prize in a competition of choral dancing or was that around which a chorus danced prior to the animals ritual sacrifice. In another view on the etymology, Athenaeus of Naucratis says that the form of the word was trygodia from trygos and ode. There is some dissent to the origins of tragedy, mostly based on the differences between the shapes of their choruses and styles of dancing. A common descent from pre-Hellenic fertility and burial rites has been suggested, friedrich Nietzsche discussed the origins of Greek tragedy in his early book The Birth of Tragedy. Here, he suggests the name originates in the use of a chorus of goat-like satyrs in the original dithyrambs from which the genre developed. Scott Scullion writes, There is abundant evidence for tragoidia understood as song for the prize goat, and as prize was established the billy goat, the clearest is Eustathius 1769.45, They called those competing tragedians, clearly because of the song over the billy goat. Athenian tragedy—the oldest surviving form of tragedy—is a type of dance-drama that formed an important part of the culture of the city-state. Having emerged sometime during the 6th century BCE, it flowered during the 5th century BCE, no tragedies from the 6th century and only 32 of the more than a thousand that were performed in the 5th century have survived. We have complete texts extant by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, Athenian tragedies were performed in late March/early April at an annual state religious festival in honor of Dionysus. The presentations took the form of a contest between three playwrights, who presented their works on three successive days, each playwright offered a tetralogy consisting of three tragedies and a concluding comic piece called a satyr play. The four plays sometimes featured linked stories, only one complete trilogy of tragedies has survived, the Oresteia of Aeschylus. The Greek theatre was in the air, on the side of a hill. Performances were apparently open to all citizens, including women, the theatre of Dionysus at Athens probably held around 12,000 people
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