1.
John Dryden
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John Dryden was an English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who was made Englands first Poet Laureate in 1668. He is seen as dominating the literary life of Restoration England to such a point that the period came to be known in circles as the Age of Dryden. Walter Scott called him Glorious John, Dryden was born in the village rectory of Aldwincle near Thrapston in Northamptonshire, where his maternal grandfather was rector of All Saints. He was a cousin once removed of Jonathan Swift. As a boy Dryden lived in the village of Titchmarsh. In 1644 he was sent to Westminster School as a Kings Scholar where his headmaster was Dr. Richard Busby, having recently been re-founded by Elizabeth I, Westminster during this period embraced a very different religious and political spirit encouraging royalism and high Anglicanism. Whatever Drydens response to this was, he respected the headmaster. As a humanist public school, Westminster maintained a curriculum which trained pupils in the art of rhetoric and this is a skill which would remain with Dryden and influence his later writing and thinking, as much of it displays these dialectical patterns. The Westminster curriculum included weekly translation assignments which developed Drydens capacity for assimilation and this was also to be exhibited in his later works. Busby had first prayed for the King and then locked in his schoolboys to prevent their attending the spectacle, in 1650 Dryden went up to Trinity College, Cambridge. Though there is specific information on Drydens undergraduate years, he would most certainly have followed the standard curriculum of classics, rhetoric. In 1654 he obtained his BA, graduating top of the list for Trinity that year, in June of the same year Drydens father died, leaving him some land which generated a little income, but not enough to live on. Returning to London during the Protectorate, Dryden obtained work with Cromwells Secretary of State and this appointment may have been the result of influence exercised on his behalf by his cousin the Lord Chamberlain, Sir Gilbert Pickering. At Cromwells funeral on 23 November 1658 Dryden processed with the Puritan poets John Milton, shortly thereafter he published his first important poem, Heroic Stanzas, a eulogy on Cromwells death which is cautious and prudent in its emotional display. In 1660 Dryden celebrated the Restoration of the monarchy and the return of Charles II with Astraea Redux, in this work the interregnum is illustrated as a time of anarchy, and Charles is seen as the restorer of peace and order. After the Restoration, as Dryden quickly established himself as the poet and literary critic of his day. Along with Astraea Redux, Dryden welcomed the new regime with two more panegyrics, To His Sacred Majesty, A Panegyric on his Coronation and To My Lord Chancellor and these, and his other nondramatic poems, are occasional—that is, they celebrate public events. Thus they are written for the rather than the self
2.
Alexander Pope
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Alexander Pope was an 18th-century English poet. He is best known for his verse and for his translation of Homer. He is the second-most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations after Shakespeare, Alexander Pope was born to Alexander Pope Senior, a linen merchant of Plough Court, Lombard Street, London, and his wife Edith, who were both Catholics. Ediths sister Christiana was the wife of the miniature painter Samuel Cooper. Pope was taught to read by his aunt, and went to Twyford School in about 1698/99 and he then went to two Catholic schools in London. Such schools, while illegal, were tolerated in some areas, in 1700, his family moved to a small estate at Popeswood in Binfield, Berkshire, close to the royal Windsor Forest. This was due to strong anti-Catholic sentiment and a statute preventing Catholics from living within 10 miles of either London or Westminster, Pope would later describe the countryside around the house in his poem Windsor Forest. He also studied languages and read works by English, French, Italian, Latin. After five years of study, Pope came into contact with figures from the London literary society such as William Wycherley, William Congreve, Samuel Garth, William Trumbull, at Binfield, he also began to make many important friends. One of them, John Caryll, was twenty years older than the poet and had many acquaintances in the London literary world. He introduced the young Pope to the ageing playwright William Wycherley and to William Walsh, a minor poet and he also met the Blount sisters, Teresa and Martha, both of whom would remain lifelong friends. From the age of 12, he suffered health problems, such as Potts disease. His tuberculosis infection caused other problems including respiratory difficulties, high fevers, inflamed eyes. He grew to a height of only 1.37 m. Pope was already removed from society because he was Catholic, although he never married, he had many female friends to whom he wrote witty letters. Allegedly, his lifelong friend Martha Blount was his lover, in May,1709, Popes Pastorals was published in the sixth part of Tonsons Poetical Miscellanies. This brought Pope instant fame, and was followed by An Essay on Criticism, published in May 1711, around 1711, Pope made friends with Tory writers John Gay, Jonathan Swift, Thomas Parnell and John Arbuthnot, who together formed the satirical Scriblerus Club. The aim of the club was to satirise ignorance and pedantry in the form of the fictional scholar Martinus Scriblerus and he also made friends with Whig writers Joseph Addison and Richard Steele. In March 1713, Windsor Forest was published to great acclaim, during Popes friendship with Joseph Addison, he contributed to Addisons play Cato, as well as writing for The Guardian and The Spectator
3.
Sonnet
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A sonnet is a poem in a specific form which originated in Italy, Giacomo da Lentini is credited with its invention. The term sonnet is derived from the Italian word sonetto, by the thirteenth century it signified a poem of fourteen lines that follows a strict rhyme scheme and specific structure. Conventions associated with the sonnet have evolved over its history, writers of sonnets are sometimes called sonneteers, although the term can be used derisively. The sonnet was created by Giacomo da Lentini, head of the Sicilian School under Emperor Frederick II, guittone dArezzo rediscovered it and brought it to Tuscany where he adapted it to his language when he founded the Siculo-Tuscan School, or Guittonian school of poetry. Other Italian poets of the time, including Dante Alighieri and Guido Cavalcanti, wrote sonnets, other fine examples were written by Michelangelo. The structure of a typical Italian sonnet of the included two parts that together formed a compact form of argument. First, the octave, forms the proposition, which describes a problem, or question, followed by a sestet, typically, the ninth line initiates what is called the turn, or volta, which signals the move from proposition to resolution. Even in sonnets that dont strictly follow the structure, the ninth line still often marks a turn by signaling a change in the tone, mood. Later, the abba, abba pattern became the standard for Italian sonnets, for the sestet there were two different possibilities, cde, cde and cdc, cdc. In time, other variants on this scheme were introduced. Petrarch typically used an abba, abba pattern for the octave, in English, both the English or Shakespearean sonnet, and the Italian Petrarchan sonnet are traditionally written in iambic pentameter. Early twentieth-century American poet Edna St. Vincent Millay also wrote mostly Petrarchan sonnets, on His Blindness by Milton, gives a sense of the Petrarchan rhyme scheme, Most Sonnets in Dantes La Vita Nuova are Petrarchan. Chapter VII gives sonnet O voi che per la via, with two sestets and two quatrains, and Ch. VIII, Morte villana, with two sestets and two quatrains and it was written by Paolo Lanfranchi da Pistoia and is addressed to Peter III of Aragon. It employs the rhyme scheme a-b-a-b, a-b-a-b, c-d-c-d-c-d and this poem is historically interesting for its information on north Italian perspectives concerning the War of the Sicilian Vespers, the conflict between the Angevins and Aragonese for Sicily. It congratulates Robert of Naples on his recent victory, there are also two poorly regarded sonnets by the Italian Dante de Maiano. By the late 17th century poets on increasingly relied on stanza forms incorporating rhymed couplets, and by the 18th century fixed-form poems – and, in particular, the resulting versification – less constrained by meter and rhyme patterns than Renaissance poetry – more closely mirrored prose. The Romantics were responsible for a return to many of the poems used during the 15th and 16th centuries. The sonnet however was used until the Parnassians brought it back into favor
4.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
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Edna St. Vincent Millay was an American poet and playwright. She received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1923, the woman to win the award for poetry. She used the pseudonym Nancy Boyd for her prose work, the poet Richard Wilbur asserted, She wrote some of the best sonnets of the century. Millay was born in Rockland, Maine, to Cora Lounella Buzelle, a nurse, and Henry Tolman Millay and her middle name derives from St. Vincents Hospital in New York, where her uncles life had been saved just before her birth. The familys house was between the mountains and the sea where baskets of apples and drying herbs on the porch mingled their scents with those of the pine woods. In 1904, Cora officially divorced Millays father for financial irresponsibility, Cora and her three daughters, Edna, Norma Lounella, and Kathleen Kalloch, moved from town to town, living in poverty. Cora travelled with a full of classic literature, including Shakespeare and Milton. The family settled in a house on the property of Coras aunt in Camden, Maine. The three sisters were independent and spoke their minds, which did not always sit well with the authority figures in their lives, Millays grade school principal, offended by her frank attitudes, refused to call her Vincent. Instead, he called her by any name that started with a V. At Camden High School, Millay began developing her talents, starting at the schools literary magazine. While at school, she had relationships with women, including Edith Wynne Matthison. Millay entered Vassar College in 1913 when she was 21 years old and she had relationships with several fellow students during her time there and kept scrapbooks including drafts of plays written during the period. After her graduation from Vassar in 1917, Millay moved to New York City and she lived in a number of places in Greenwich Village, including a house owned by the Cherry Lane Theatre and 75½ Bedford Street, renowned for being the narrowest in New York City. The critic Floyd Dell wrote that the red-haired and beautiful Millay was a young woman, with a brand-new pair of dancing slippers. Millay described her life in New York as very, very poor, while establishing her career as a poet, Millay initially worked with the Provincetown Players on Macdougal Street and the Theatre Guild. In 1924 Millay and others founded the Cherry Lane Theater to continue the staging of experimental drama, magazine articles under a pseudonym also helped support her early days in the village. Millay’s fame began in 1912 when she entered her poem Renascence in a poetry contest in The Lyric Year, the poem was widely considered the best submission and when it was ultimately awarded fourth place, it created a scandal which brought Millay publicity
5.
Geoffrey Chaucer
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Geoffrey Chaucer, known as the Father of English literature, is widely considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages. He was the first poet to be buried in Poets Corner of Westminster Abbey, among his many works are The Book of the Duchess, The House of Fame, The Legend of Good Women and Troilus and Criseyde. He is best known today for The Canterbury Tales, Chaucers work was crucial in legitimizing the literary use of the Middle English vernacular at a time when the dominant literary languages in England were French and Latin. Geoffrey Chaucer was born in London sometime around 1343, though the precise date and his father and grandfather were both London vintners, several previous generations had been merchants in Ipswich. In 1324 John Chaucer, Geoffreys father, was kidnapped by an aunt in the hope of marrying the boy to her daughter in an attempt to keep property in Ipswich. The aunt was imprisoned and the fine levied suggests that the family was financially secure. In the City Hustings Roll 110,5, Ric II, dated June 1380, Geoffrey Chaucer refers to himself as me Galfridum Chaucer, filium Johannis Chaucer, Vinetarii, Londonie. He also worked as a courtier, a diplomat, and a civil servant, as well as working for the king from 1389 to 1391 as Clerk of the Kings Works. In 1359, in the stages of the Hundred Years War, Edward III invaded France and Chaucer travelled with Lionel of Antwerp, 1st Duke of Clarence, Elizabeths husband. In 1360, he was captured during the siege of Rheims, Edward paid £16 for his ransom, a considerable sum, and Chaucer was released. After this, Chaucers life is uncertain, but he seems to have travelled in France, Spain, around 1366, Chaucer married Philippa Roet. She was a lady-in-waiting to Edward IIIs queen, Philippa of Hainault, and a sister of Katherine Swynford and it is uncertain how many children Chaucer and Philippa had, but three or four are most commonly cited. His son, Thomas Chaucer, had a career, as chief butler to four kings, envoy to France. Thomass daughter, Alice, married the Duke of Suffolk, thomass great-grandson, John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln, was the heir to the throne designated by Richard III before he was deposed. Geoffreys other children probably included Elizabeth Chaucy, a nun at Barking Abbey, Agnes, an attendant at Henry IVs coronation, Chaucers Treatise on the Astrolabe was written for Lewis. According to tradition, Chaucer studied law in the Inner Temple at this time and he became a member of the royal court of Edward III as a valet de chambre, yeoman, or esquire on 20 June 1367, a position which could entail a wide variety of tasks. His wife also received a pension for court employment and he travelled abroad many times, at least some of them in his role as a valet. In 1368, he may have attended the wedding of Lionel of Antwerp to Violante Visconti, daughter of Galeazzo II Visconti, two other literary stars of the era were in attendance, Jean Froissart and Petrarch
6.
Antithetical couplet
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In Chinese poetry, a couplet is a pair of lines of poetry which adhere to certain rules. Outside of poems, they are seen on the sides of doors leading to peoples homes or as hanging scrolls in an interior. Although often called antithetical couplet, they can better be described as a form of counterpoint. The two lines have a correspondence in their metrical length, and each pair of characters must have certain corresponding properties. A couplet is ideally profound yet concise, using one character per word in the style of Classical Chinese, a special, widely seen type of couplet is the spring couplet, used as a New Years decoration that expresses happiness and hopeful thoughts for the coming year. A couplet must adhere to the rules, Both lines must have the same number of Chinese characters. The lexical category of each character must be the same as its corresponding character, the tone pattern of one line must be the inverse of the other. This generally means if one character is of the level tone, the last character of the first line should be of an oblique tone, which forces the last character of the second line to be of a level tone. The meaning of the two lines need to be related, with pair of corresponding characters having related meanings too. Often, couplets are written on red paper and stuck on walls, sometimes, they are carved onto plaques of wood for a more permanent display. Dueling couplets are a popular pastime with Chinese speakers, a game of verbal and intellectual dexterity, wit, a notable modern-day example occurs at the 7,24 point of the second segment of the satirical machinima War of Internet Addiction. Couplet China the beautiful web site on duilian and chunlian Hubert Delahaye, The duilian, parallel, a few sociological aspects, Études chinoises, vol
7.
Chinese New Year
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Chinese New Year, also known as the Spring Festival in modern Mainland China, is an important Chinese festival celebrated at the turn of the traditional lunisolar Chinese calendar. Celebrations traditionally run from the preceding the first day, to the Lantern Festival on the 15th day of the first calendar month. The first day of the New Year falls on the new moon between 21 January and 20 February, in 2017, the first day of the Chinese New Year was on Saturday,28 January, initiating the year of the Rooster. The New Year festival is centuries old and gains significance because of several myths, traditionally, the festival was a time to honor deities as well as ancestors. Chinese New Year is considered a holiday for the Chinese and has had influence on the lunar new year celebrations of its geographic neighbors. Within China, regional customs and traditions concerning the celebration of the Chinese New Year vary widely, often, the evening preceding Chinese New Years Day is an occasion for Chinese families to gather for the annual reunion dinner. It is also traditional for every family to clean the house, in order to sweep away any ill-fortune. Windows and doors are decorated with red color paper-cuts and couplets with popular themes of fortune or happiness, wealth. Other activities include lighting firecrackers and giving money in red paper envelopes, in about one third of the Mainland population, or 500 million Northerners, dumplings feature prominently in the meals celebrating the festival. It is one of the worlds most prominent and celebrated festivals, the lunisolar Chinese calendar determines the date of Chinese New Year. In the Gregorian calendar, Chinese Lunar New Year begins at the new moon that falls between 21 January and 20 February, the median date of Chinese New Years Day is lichun on 4 or 5 February, the solar term next to Dahan. In the Chinese calendar, winter solstice must occur in the 11th month, to determine whether a year has an intercalary month, one only needs to check whether Chinese New Year is within the month of January. The Gregorian Calendar dates for Chinese New Year from 1912 to 2101 are below, along with the years presiding animal zodiac, the traditional Chinese calendar follows a Metonic cycle, and returns to the same date in Gregorian calendar roughly. The names of the Earthly Branches have no English counterparts and are not the Chinese translations of the animals, alongside the 12-year cycle of the animal zodiac there is a 10-year cycle of heavenly stems. Each of the ten heavenly stems is associated with one of the five elements of Chinese astrology, namely, Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, the elements are rotated every two years while a yin and yang association alternates every year. The elements are distinguished, Yang Wood, Yin Wood, Yang Fire, Yin Fire. These produce a cycle that repeats every 60 years. For example, the year of the Yang Fire Rat occurred in 1936, many people inaccurately calculate their Chinese birth-year by converting it from their Gregorian birth-year
8.
Chinese characters
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Chinese characters are logograms used in the writing of Chinese and some other Asian languages. In Standard Chinese, and sometimes also in English, they are called hànzì. They have been adapted to write a number of languages including, Japanese, where they are known as kanji, Korean, where they are known as hanja. Collectively, they are known as CJK characters, in English, they are sometimes called Han characters. Chinese characters constitute the oldest continuously used system of writing in the world, Chinese characters number in the tens of thousands, though most of them are minor graphic variants encountered only in historical texts. Studies in China have shown that literacy in written Chinese requires a knowledge of between three and four thousand characters. In Japan,2,136 are taught through secondary school, the characters used in Japan are distinct from those used in China in many respects. There are various national standard lists of characters, forms, in South Korea, when Chinese characters are used they are of the traditional variant and are almost identical to those used in places like Taiwan and Hong Kong. In Old Chinese, most words were monosyllabic and there was a correspondence between characters and words. Rather, a character almost always corresponds to a syllable that is also a morpheme. However, there are a few exceptions to this correspondence, including bisyllabic morphemes. Modern Chinese has many homophones, thus the same syllable may be represented by many characters. A single character may also have a range of meanings, or sometimes quite distinct meanings, cognates in the several varieties of Chinese are generally written with the same character. They typically have similar meanings, but often quite different pronunciations and these foreign adaptations of Chinese pronunciation are known as Sino-Xenic pronunciations, and have been useful in the reconstruction of Middle Chinese. When the script was first used in the late 2nd millennium BC, words of Old Chinese were generally monosyllabic, increasing numbers of polysyllabic words have entered the language from the Western Zhou period to the present day. The process has accelerated over the centuries as phonetic change has increased the number of homophones and it has been estimated that over two thirds of the 3,000 most common words in modern Standard Chinese are polysyllables, the vast majority of those being disyllables. The most common process has been to form compounds of existing words, words have also been created by adding affixes, reduplication and borrowing from other languages. Polysyllabic words are written with one character per syllable
9.
Tamil literature
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Tamil literature refers to the literature in the Tamil language. Tamil literature has a rich and long literary tradition spanning more than two thousand years, the oldest extant works show signs of maturity indicating an even longer period of evolution. Contributors to the Tamil literature are mainly from Tamil people from South India, including the land now comprising Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Sri Lankan Tamils from Sri Lanka, and from Tamil diaspora. The history of Tamil literature follows the history of Tamil Nadu, the early Sangam literature, starting from the period of 2nd century BCE, contain anthologies of various poets dealing with many aspects of life, including love, war, social values and religion. This was followed by the early epics and moral literature, authored by Hindu, Jain and Buddhist authors, from the 6th to 12th century CE, the Tamil devotional poems written by Nayanmars and Azhvars, heralded the great Bhakti movement which later engulfed the entire Indian subcontinent. The later medieval period saw many assorted minor literary works and also contributions by a few Muslim and European authors. A revival of Tamil literature took place from the late 19th century when works of religious, with growth of literacy, Tamil prose began to blossom and mature. Short stories and novels began to appear, modern Tamil Literary criticism also evolved. The popularity of Tamil cinema has also interacted with Tamil literature in some mutually enriching ways, Sangam literature comprises some of the oldest extant Tamil literature, and deals with love, war, governance, trade and bereavement. Unfortunately much of the Tamil literature belonging to the Sangam period has been lost, the literature currently available from this period is perhaps just a fraction of the wealth of material produced during this golden age of Tamil civilization. The available literature from this period has been divided in antiquity into three categories based roughly on chronology. These are, the Major Eighteen Anthology Series comprising the Eight Anthologies and the Ten Idylls, Tolkaappiyam, a commentary on grammar, phonetics, rhetoric and poetics is dated from this period. Tamil legends hold that these were composed in three successive poetic assemblies that were held in ancient times on a now vanished continent far to the south of India. A significant amount of literature could have preceded Tolkappiyam as grammar books are written after the existence of literature over long periods. Tamil tradition holds the earliest Sangam poetry to be over twelve millennia old, modern linguistic scholarship places the poems between the 1st century BC and the 3rd century AD. Sangam age is considered by the Tamil people as the era of Tamil language. This was the period when the Tamil country was ruled by the three crowned kings the Cheras, Pandyas and the Cholas, the land was at peace with no major external threats. Asokas conquests did not impact on the Tamil land and the people were able to indulge in literary pursuits, the poets had a much more casual relationship with their rulers than can be imagined in later times
10.
Wikisource
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Wikisource is an online digital library of free content textual sources on a wiki, operated by the Wikimedia Foundation. Wikisource is the name of the project as a whole and the name for each instance of that project, the projects aims are to host all forms of free text, in many languages, and translations. Originally conceived as an archive to store useful or important historical texts, the project officially began in November 24,2003 under the name Project Sourceberg. The name Wikisource was adopted later that year and it received its own domain name seven months later, the project has come under criticism for lack of reliability but it is also cited by organisations such as the National Archives and Records Administration. The project holds works that are either in the domain or freely licensed, professionally published works or historical source documents, not vanity products. Verification was initially made offline, or by trusting the reliability of digital libraries. Now works are supported by online scans via the ProofreadPage extension, some individual Wikisources, each representing a specific language, now only allow works backed up with scans. While the bulk of its collection are texts, Wikisource as a whole hosts other media, some Wikisources allow user-generated annotations, subject to the specific policies of the Wikisource in question. Wikisources early history included several changes of name and location, the original concept for Wikisource was as storage for useful or important historical texts. These texts were intended to support Wikipedia articles, by providing evidence and original source texts. The collection was focused on important historical and cultural material. The project was originally called Project Sourceberg during its planning stages, in 2001, there was a dispute on Wikipedia regarding the addition of primary source material, leading to edit wars over their inclusion or deletion. Project Sourceberg was suggested as a solution to this, perhaps Project Sourceberg can mainly work as an interface for easily linking from Wikipedia to a Project Gutenberg file, and as an interface for people to easily submit new work to PG. Wed want to complement Project Gutenberg--how, exactly, and Jimmy Wales adding like Larry, Im interested that we think it over to see what we can add to Project Gutenberg. It seems unlikely that primary sources should in general be editable by anyone -- I mean, Shakespeare is Shakespeare, unlike our commentary on his work, the project began its activity at ps. wikipedia. org. The contributors understood the PS subdomain to mean either primary sources or Project Sourceberg, however, this resulted in Project Sourceberg occupying the subdomain of the Pashto Wikipedia. A vote on the name changed it to Wikisource on December 6,2003. Despite the change in name, the project did not move to its permanent URL until July 23,2004, since Wikisource was initially called Project Sourceberg, its first logo was a picture of an iceberg
