1.
Pseudohistory
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In practice, a pseudohistory presents a big lie—sensational claims—about historical fact that would require the revision of the historical record. The term pseudohistory was coined in the early 19th century, an older than the term pseudo-scholarship. Similarly, in an 1815 attestation, it is used to refer to Certamen Homeri et Hesiodi, the pejorative sense of the term, labelling a flawed or disingenuous work of historiography, is found in another 1815 attestation. Writers Michael Shermer and Alex Grobman see pseudohistory as the rewriting of the past for present personal or political purposes, robert Todd Carroll has developed a list of criteria to identify pseudo historic works. He identifies two necessary elements as A complete ignorance of the sources and the repetition of inaccuracies. Other common characteristics of pseudohistory are, The arbitrary linking of disparate events so as to form – in the theorists opinion – a pattern and this is typically then developed into a conspiracy theory postulating a hidden agent responsible for creating and maintaining the pattern. Hypothesising the consequences of events that could have happened, thereby assuming tacitly that they did. Sensationalism, or shock value The following are some categories of pseudohistorical theory. Note that not all theories in a category are necessarily pseudohistorical. Ancient astronauts, Archaeoastronomy and Lost lands Alternative chronologies – revised sequences of events or other alterations to the timeline of ancient history, ethnocentric pseudo-history Most Afrocentric ideas have been identified as pseudohistorical The Indigenous Aryans theories published in Hindu nationalism during the 1990s and 2000s. The crypto-history of Germanic mysticism and Nazi occultism, the Ancient Macedonia continuity theory that postulates demographic, cultural and linguistic continuity between Macedonians of antiquity and the main ethnic group in Republic of Macedonia. Antisemitism inspired The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, a fraudulent work purporting to show a conspiracy for world domination by Jews. The Khazar theory, a fringe theory which postulates that the bulk of European Jewry are of Central Asian origin. In spite of mainstream academic consensus, this theory has been promoted in Anti-Semitic and Anti-Zionist circles alike, pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact excluding the Norse colonization of the Americas and other reputable scholarship Arab or Islamic discovery of the Americas. Gavin Menziess book 1421, The Year China Discovered the World, Psychohistory, the ill-fated attempt to merge psychology with history, replacing historical method. Notably Lloyd deMause, the founder of The Journal of Psychohistory, see also Searches for Noahs Ark The theory of Lemuria and Kumari Kandam. Chariots of the Gods. and other books by Erich von Däniken, publications by Christopher Knight, such as Uriels Machine, claiming ancient technological civilizations. Visits to Earth by spacefaring aliens The Shakespeare authorship question, which claims that other than William Shakespeare of Stratford wrote the works traditionally attributed to him
2.
Literary genre
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A literary genre is a category of literary composition. Genres may be determined by technique, tone, content. The distinctions between genres and categories are flexible and loosely defined, often with subgroups, the most general genres in literature are epic, tragedy, comedy, and creative nonfiction. They can all be in the form of prose or poetry, additionally, a genre such as satire, allegory or pastoral might appear in any of the above, not only as a subgenre, but as a mixture of genres. Finally, they are defined by the cultural movement of the historical period in which they were composed. Genre should not be confused with age categories, by which literature may be classified as adult, young adult. They also must not be confused with format, such as novel or picture book. Just as in painting, there are different types, the landscape, the still life and these types tend to share specific characteristics. Genres describe those works which share specific conventions, Genres are often divided into subgenres. Literature, is divided into the three forms of Ancient Greece, poetry, drama, and prose. Poetry may then be subdivided into the genres of lyric, epic, the lyric includes all the shorter forms of poetry, e. g. song, ode, ballad, elegy, sonnet. Dramatic poetry might include comedy, tragedy, melodrama, and mixtures like tragicomedy, the standard division of drama into tragedy and comedy derives from Greek drama. This parsing into subgenres can continue, comedy has its own subgenres, including, for example, comedy of manners, sentimental comedy, burlesque comedy, and satirical comedy. Often, the used to divide up works into genres are not consistent, and may change constantly. Types of fiction genres are science fiction, fantasy, historical fiction, realistic fiction, semi-fiction spans stories that include a substantial amount of non-fiction. It may be the retelling of a story with only the names changed. The other way around, semi-fiction may also involve fictional events with a semi-fictional character, Genres may easily be confused with literary techniques, but, though only loosely defined, they are not the same, examples are parody, frame story, constrained writing, stream of consciousness. Drama Poem Prose Genre fiction Bakhtin, Mikhail M. Epic, on Narrative, The Law of Genre
3.
Theatre
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The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music, and dance. Elements of art, such as painted scenery and stagecraft such as lighting are used to enhance the physicality, presence, the specific place of the performance is also named by the word theatre as derived from the Ancient Greek θέατρον, itself from θεάομαι. Modern theatre, broadly defined, includes performances of plays and musical theatre, there are connections between theatre and the art forms of ballet, opera and various other forms. The city-state of Athens is where western theatre originated, participation in the city-states many festivals—and mandatory attendance at the City Dionysia as an audience member in particular—was an important part of citizenship. The Greeks also developed the concepts of dramatic criticism and theatre architecture, Actors were either amateur or at best semi-professional. The theatre of ancient Greece consisted of three types of drama, tragedy, comedy, and the satyr play, the origins of theatre in ancient Greece, according to Aristotle, the first theoretician of theatre, are to be found in the festivals that honoured Dionysus. The performances were given in semi-circular auditoria cut into hillsides, capable of seating 10, the stage consisted of a dancing floor, dressing room and scene-building area. Since the words were the most important part, good acoustics, the actors wore masks appropriate to the characters they represented, and each might play several parts. 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 BCE and only 32 of the more than a thousand that were performed in during the 5th century BCE have survived. We have complete texts extant by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, the origins of tragedy remain obscure, though by the 5th century BCE it was institution alised in competitions held as part of festivities celebrating Dionysus. As contestants in the City Dionysias competition playwrights were required to present a tetralogy of plays, the performance of tragedies at the City Dionysia may have begun as early as 534 BCE, official records begin from 501 BCE, when the satyr play was introduced. More than 130 years later, the philosopher Aristotle analysed 5th-century Athenian tragedy in the oldest surviving work of dramatic theory—his Poetics, Athenian comedy is conventionally divided into three periods, Old Comedy, Middle Comedy, and New Comedy. Old Comedy survives today largely in the form of the surviving plays of Aristophanes. New Comedy is known primarily from the papyrus fragments of Menander. Aristotle defined comedy as a representation of people that involves some kind of blunder or ugliness that does not cause pain or disaster. In addition to the categories of comedy and tragedy at the City Dionysia, finding its origins in rural, agricultural rituals dedicated to Dionysus, the satyr play eventually found its way to Athens in its most well-known form. Satyrs themselves were tied to the god Dionysus as his loyal companions, often engaging in drunken revelry
4.
Opera
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Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. In traditional opera, singers do two types of singing, recitative, a style and arias, a more melodic style. Opera incorporates many of the elements of theatre, such as acting, scenery. The performance is given in an opera house, accompanied by an orchestra or smaller musical ensemble. Opera is a key part of the Western classical music tradition, in the 18th century, Italian opera continued to dominate most of Europe, attracting foreign composers such as George Frideric Handel. Opera seria was the most prestigious form of Italian opera, until Christoph Willibald Gluck reacted against its artificiality with his operas in the 1760s. The first third of the 19th century saw the point of the bel canto style, with Gioachino Rossini, Gaetano Donizetti. It also saw the advent of Grand Opera typified by the works of Auber and Meyerbeer, the mid-to-late 19th century was a golden age of opera, led and dominated by Richard Wagner in Germany and Giuseppe Verdi in Italy. The popularity of opera continued through the era in Italy and contemporary French opera through to Giacomo Puccini. During the 19th century, parallel operatic traditions emerged in central and eastern Europe, the 20th century saw many experiments with modern styles, such as atonality and serialism, Neoclassicism, and Minimalism. With the rise of recording technology, singers such as Enrico Caruso, since the invention of radio and television, operas were also performed on these mediums. Beginning in 2006, a number of opera houses began to present live high-definition video transmissions of their performances in cinemas all over the world. In 2009, an opera company offered a download of a complete performance. The words of an opera are known as the libretto, some composers, notably Wagner, have written their own libretti, others have worked in close collaboration with their librettists, e. g. Mozart with Lorenzo Da Ponte. Vocal duets, trios and other ensembles often occur, and choruses are used to comment on the action, in some forms of opera, such as singspiel, opéra comique, operetta, and semi-opera, the recitative is mostly replaced by spoken dialogue. Melodic or semi-melodic passages occurring in the midst of, or instead of, the terminology of the various kinds of operatic voices is described in detail below. Over the 18th century, arias were accompanied by the orchestra. Subsequent composers have tended to follow Wagners example, though some, the changing role of the orchestra in opera is described in more detail below
5.
Film
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A film, also called a movie, motion picture, theatrical film or photoplay, is a series of still images which, when shown on a screen, creates the illusion of moving images due to the phi phenomenon. This optical illusion causes the audience to perceive continuous motion between separate objects viewed rapidly in succession, the process of filmmaking is both an art and an industry. The word cinema, short for cinematography, is used to refer to the industry of films. Films were originally recorded onto plastic film through a photochemical process, the adoption of CGI-based special effects led to the use of digital intermediates. Most contemporary films are now fully digital through the process of production, distribution. Films recorded in a form traditionally included an analogous optical soundtrack. It runs along a portion of the film exclusively reserved for it and is not projected, Films are cultural artifacts created by specific cultures. They reflect those cultures, and, in turn, affect them, Film is considered to be an important art form, a source of popular entertainment, and a powerful medium for educating—or indoctrinating—citizens. The visual basis of film gives it a power of communication. Some films have become popular worldwide attractions by using dubbing or subtitles to translate the dialog into the language of the viewer, some have criticized the film industrys glorification of violence and its potentially negative treatment of women. The individual images that make up a film are called frames, the perception of motion is due to a psychological effect called phi phenomenon. The name film originates from the fact that film has historically been the medium for recording and displaying motion pictures. Many other terms exist for a motion picture, including picture, picture show, moving picture, photoplay. The most common term in the United States is movie, while in Europe film is preferred. Terms for the field, in general, include the big screen, the screen, the movies, and cinema. In early years, the sheet was sometimes used instead of screen. Preceding film in origin by thousands of years, early plays and dances had elements common to film, scripts, sets, costumes, production, direction, actors, audiences, storyboards, much terminology later used in film theory and criticism apply, such as mise en scène. Owing to the lack of any technology for doing so, the moving images, the magic lantern, probably created by Christiaan Huygens in the 1650s, could be used to project animation, which was achieved by various types of mechanical slides
6.
Television
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Television or TV is a telecommunication medium used for transmitting moving images in monochrome, or in color, and in two or three dimensions and sound. The term can refer to a set, a television program. Television is a medium for entertainment, education, news, politics, gossip. Television became available in experimental forms in the late 1920s. After World War II, a form of black-and-white TV broadcasting became popular in the United States and Britain, and television sets became commonplace in homes, businesses. During the 1950s, television was the medium for influencing public opinion. In the mid-1960s, color broadcasting was introduced in the US, for many reasons, the storage of television and video programming now occurs on the cloud. At the end of the first decade of the 2000s, digital television transmissions greatly increased in popularity, another development was the move from standard-definition television to high-definition television, which provides a resolution that is substantially higher. HDTV may be transmitted in various formats, 1080p, 1080i, in 2013, 79% of the worlds households owned a television set. Most TV sets sold in the 2000s were flat-panel, mainly LEDs, major manufacturers announced the discontinuation of CRT, DLP, plasma, and even fluorescent-backlit LCDs by the mid-2010s. In the near future, LEDs are gradually expected to be replaced by OLEDs, also, major manufacturers have announced that they will increasingly produce smart TVs in the mid-2010s. Smart TVs with integrated Internet and Web 2.0 functions became the dominant form of television by the late 2010s, Television signals were initially distributed only as terrestrial television using high-powered radio-frequency transmitters to broadcast the signal to individual television receivers. Alternatively television signals are distributed by cable or optical fiber, satellite systems and. Until the early 2000s, these were transmitted as analog signals, a standard television set is composed of multiple internal electronic circuits, including a tuner for receiving and decoding broadcast signals. A visual display device which lacks a tuner is correctly called a video monitor rather than a television, the word television comes from Ancient Greek τῆλε, meaning far, and Latin visio, meaning sight. The Anglicised version of the term is first attested in 1907 and it was. formed in English or borrowed from French télévision. In the 19th century and early 20th century, other. proposals for the name of a technology for sending pictures over distance were telephote. The abbreviation TV is from 1948, the use of the term to mean a television set dates from 1941
7.
Video game
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A video game is an electronic game that involves interaction with a user interface to generate visual feedback on a video device such as a TV screen or computer monitor. The word video in video game referred to a raster display device. Some theorists categorize video games as an art form, but this designation is controversial, the electronic systems used to play video games are known as platforms, examples of these are personal computers and video game consoles. These platforms range from large mainframe computers to small handheld computing devices, the input device used for games, the game controller, varies across platforms. Common controllers include gamepads, joysticks, mouse devices, keyboards, the touchscreens of mobile devices, and buttons, or even, with the Kinect sensor, a persons hands and body. Players typically view the game on a screen or television or computer monitor, or sometimes on virtual reality head-mounted display goggles. There are often game sound effects, music and, in the 2010s, some games in the 2000s include haptic, vibration-creating effects, force feedback peripherals and virtual reality headsets. In the 2010s, the game industry is of increasing commercial importance, with growth driven particularly by the emerging Asian markets and mobile games. As of 2015, video games generated sales of USD74 billion annually worldwide, early games used interactive electronic devices with various display formats. The earliest example is from 1947—a Cathode ray tube Amusement Device was filed for a patent on 25 January 1947, by Thomas T. Goldsmith Jr. and Estle Ray Mann, and issued on 14 December 1948, as U. S. Written by MIT students Martin Graetz, Steve Russell, and Wayne Wiitanens on a DEC PDP-1 computer in 1961, and the hit ping pong-style Pong, used the DEC PDP-1s vector display to have two spaceships battle each other. In 1971, Computer Space, created by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney, was the first commercially sold and it used a black-and-white television for its display, and the computer system was made of 74 series TTL chips. The game was featured in the 1973 science fiction film Soylent Green, Computer Space was followed in 1972 by the Magnavox Odyssey, the first home console. Modeled after a late 1960s prototype console developed by Ralph H. Baer called the Brown Box and these were followed by two versions of Ataris Pong, an arcade version in 1972 and a home version in 1975 that dramatically increased video game popularity. The commercial success of Pong led numerous other companies to develop Pong clones and their own systems, the game inspired arcade machines to become prevalent in mainstream locations such as shopping malls, traditional storefronts, restaurants, and convenience stores. The game also became the subject of articles and stories on television and in newspapers and magazines. Space Invaders was soon licensed for the Atari VCS, becoming the first killer app, the term platform refers to the specific combination of electronic components or computer hardware which, in conjunction with software, allows a video game to operate. The term system is commonly used
8.
Graphic novel
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A graphic novel is a book made up of comics content. Although the word normally refers to long fictional works, the term graphic novel is applied broadly and includes fiction, non-fiction. It is distinguished from the comic book, which is used for comics periodicals. Fan historian Richard Kyle coined the term graphic novel in an essay in the November 1964 issue of the comics fanzine Capa-Alpha, the Book Industry Study Group began using graphic novel as a category in book stores in 2001. In the publishing trade, the term extends to material that would not be considered a novel if produced in another medium. Collections of comic books that do not form a story, anthologies or collections of loosely related pieces. The term is sometimes used to distinguish between works created as standalone stories, in contrast to collections or compilations of a story arc from a comic book series published in book form. As the exact definition of the novel is debated, the origins of the form are open to interpretation. The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck is the oldest recognized American example of comics used to this end, the first American edition was published in 1842 by Wilson & Company in New York City using the original printing plates from the 1841 edition. Another early predecessor is Journey to the Gold Diggins by Jeremiah Saddlebags by brothers J. A. D. and D. F. Read, inspired by The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck. In 1894 Caran dAche broached the idea of a novel in a letter to the newspaper Le Figaro. In the United States there is a tradition of reissuing previously published comic strips in book form. In 1897 the Hearst Syndicate published such a collection of The Yellow Kid by Richard Outcault, the 1920s saw a revival of the medieval woodcut tradition, with Belgian Frans Masereel cited as the undisputed king of this revival. American Lynd Ward also worked in this tradition, publishing Gods Man, in 1929, the 1940s saw the launching of Classics Illustrated, a comic-book series that primarily adapted notable, public domain novels into standalone comic books for young readers. In 1947 Fawcett Comics published Comics Novel #1, Anarcho, Dictator of Death, by the late 1960s, American comic book creators were becoming more adventurous with the form. Gil Kane and Archie Goodwin self-published a 40-page, magazine-format comics novel, savage in 1968—the same year Marvel Comics published two issues of The Spectacular Spider-Man in a similar format. Meanwhile, in continental Europe, the tradition of collecting serials of popular strips such as The Adventures of Tintin or Asterix led to long-form narratives published initially as serials. By 1969, the author John Updike, who had entertained ideas of becoming a cartoonist in his youth, addressed the Bristol Literary Society, on the death of the novel
9.
Alternate history
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Alternate history or alternative history, sometimes abbreviated as AH, is a genre of fiction consisting of stories in which one or more historical events occur differently. These stories usually contain what if scenarios at crucial points in history, the stories are conjectural, but are sometimes based on scientific fact. Alternate history can be seen as a subgenre of fiction, science fiction, or historical fiction. Another term occasionally used for the genre is allohistory, cross-time, time-splitting, and alternate history themes have become so closely interwoven that it is impossible to discuss them fully apart from one another. In French, Italian, Spanish, Catalan and German, the genre of history is called uchronie / ucronia / ucronía / Uchronie. This neologism is based on the prefix ου- and the Greek χρόνος, a uchronia means literally no time. This term apparently also inspired the name of the history book list. Several genres of fiction have been misidentified as alternate history, Science fiction set in what was the future but is now the past, like Arthur C. Clarkes 2001, A Space Odyssey or George Orwells Nineteen Eighty-Four, is not alternate history because the author did not make the choice to change the past at the time of writing, Alternate history is related to, but distinct from, counterfactual history. The earliest example of history is found in Livys Ab Urbe Condita Libri. Livy concluded that the Romans would likely have defeated Alexander, another example is Joanot Martorells 1490 epic romance Tirant lo Blanch, which was written when the loss of Constantinople to the Turks was still a recent and traumatic memory for Christian Europe. It tells the story of the knight Tirant the White from Brittany who travels to the remnants of the Byzantine Empire. He becomes a Megaduke and commander of its armies and manages to fight off the invading Ottoman armies of Mehmet II and he saves the city from Islamic conquest, and even chases the Turks deeper into lands they had previously conquered. In the English language, the first known complete alternate history is Nathaniel Hawthornes short story P. s Correspondence, the first novel-length alternate history in English would seem to be Castello Holfords Aristopia. While not as nationalistic as Louis Geoffroys Napoléon et la conquête du monde, 1812–1823, in Aristopia, the earliest settlers in Virginia discover a reef made of solid gold and are able to build a Utopian society in North America. A number of alternate history stories and novels appeared in the late 19th, in 1931, British historian Sir John Squire collected a series of essays from some of the leading historians of the period for his anthology If It Had Happened Otherwise. In this work, scholars from major universities turned their attention to questions as If the Moors in Spain Had Won. The essays range from serious scholarly efforts to Hendrik Willem van Loons fanciful, among the authors included were Hilaire Belloc, André Maurois, and Winston Churchill
10.
Historical fantasy
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Historical fantasy is a category of fantasy and genre of historical fiction that incorporates fantastic elements into the narrative. There is much crossover with other subgenres of fantasy, those classes as Arthurian, Celtic, stories fitting this classification generally take place prior to the 20th century. In this, it has a similarity to contemporary fantasy. This commonly overlaps with the secret history trope, alternatively, the authors narrative shows or implies that by the present day, magic will have retreated from the world so as to allow history to revert to the familiar version we know. It also can include a history where the past or present has been significantly changed when an actual historical event turned out differently. However, many if not most, works by fantasy authors derive ideas and inspiration from real events, Historical Fantasy may also be set in a fictional world which resembles a period from history but is not that actual history. All four approaches have overlapped with the subgenre of steampunk commonly associated with science fiction literature, however, not all steampunk fantasy belongs to the historical fantasy subgenre. After Antoine Gallands translation of One Thousand and One Nights became enormously popular in Europe, many writers wrote fantasy based on Gallands romantic image of the Middle East, early examples included the satirical tales of Anthony Hamilton, and Zadig by Voltaire. Marion Crawford, and James Elroy Fleckers Hassan, in the late 1970s, interest in the subgenre revived with Hasan by Piers Anthony. Baghdad by Ian Dennis Nights of the Crusades by MJ Alishah Celtic fantasy has links to historical fantasy, Celtic historical fantasy includes such works as Katharine Kerrs Deverry series, or Teresa Edgertons Green Lion trilogy. These works are based on Ancient Celtic cultures, the Welsh tradition has been particularly influential, which has its connection to King Arthur and its collection in a single work, the epic Mabinogion. One influential retelling of this was the work of Evangeline Walton, The Island of the Mighty, The Children of Llyr, The Song of Rhiannon. Fantasy based on the Breton folklore branch of Celtic mythology does not often appear in the English language, however, several noted writers have utilized such material, Robert W. Chambers The Demoiselle dYs and A. Both drew on the Breton legend of the lost city of Ys, while The Lay of Aotrou, wǔxiá figures prominently in the popular culture of Chinese-speaking areas, and the most important writers have devoted followings. The wǔxiá genre is a blend of the philosophy of xiá, a martial artist who follows the code of xiá is called a swordsman, or xiákè. Japans samurai bushidō traditions, Englands knight chivalry traditions, and Americas gunslinger Western traditions all share some aspects with Chinas swordsman xiá traditions, the swordsman, however, need not serve a lord or hold any military power and they are not required to be from an aristocratic class. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Ang Lee Classical Fantasy is a fantasy based on the Greek. Symbolism from classical mythology is enormously influential on Western culture, richard Garnett and John Kendrick Bangs used the Greek myths for satirical purposes
11.
Genre
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Genre is any form or type of communication in any mode with socially-agreed upon conventions developed over time. Genres form by conventions that change over time as new genres are invented, often, works fit into multiple genres by way of borrowing and recombining these conventions. Stand alone texts, works, or pieces of communication may have individual styles, some genres may be rigid with strictly adhered to guidelines while others may be very flexible. Genre began as a classification system for ancient Greek literature. Poetry, prose, and performance each had a specific and calculated style that related to the theme of the story. Speech patterns for comedy would not be appropriate for tragedy, in later periods genres proliferated and developed in response to changes in audiences and creators. Genre became a tool to help the public make sense out of unpredictable art. Because art is often a response to a state, in that people write/paint/sing/dance about what they know about. Genre suffers from the ills of any classification system. Genre is to be reassessed and scrutinized and to works on their unique merit. While the genre of storytelling has been relegated as lesser form of art because of the heavily borrowed nature of the conventions, proponents argue that the genius of an effective genre piece is in the variation, recombination, and evolution of the codes. The term genre is used in the history and criticism of visual art. These are distinguished from staffage, incidental figures in what is primarily a landscape or architectural painting, Genre painting may also be used as a wider term covering genre painting proper, and other specialized types of paintings such as still-life, landscapes, marine paintings and animal paintings. The concept of the hierarchy of genres was a one in artistic theory. It was strongest in France, where it was associated with the Académie française which held a role in academic art. Genres may be determined by technique, tone, content. Genre should not be confused with age category, by which literature may be classified as adult, young adult. They also must not be confused with format, such as novel or picture book
12.
Fiction
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Fiction is the classification for any story or similar work derived from imagination—in other words, not based strictly on history or fact. Fiction does not refer to a mode or genre, unless used in its narrowest sense to mean a literary narrative. Instead, the context of fiction is generally open to interpretation, characters and events within a fictional work may even be openly set in their own context entirely separate from the known universe, a fictional universe. Science fiction, for example, predicts or supposes technologies that are not realities at the time of the works creation, for example, Jules Vernes novel From the Earth to the Moon was published in 1865 and only in 1969 did astronaut Neil Armstrong first land on the moon. Historical fiction places imaginary characters into real historical events, in the early historical novel Waverley, Sir Walter Scotts fictional character Edward Waverley meets a figure from history, Bonnie Prince Charlie, and takes part in the Battle of Prestonpans. Some works of fiction are slightly or greatly re-imagined based on some originally true story, often, even when the author claims the fictional story is basically true, there may be artificial additions and subtractions from the true story to make it more interesting. One such example would be Tim OBriens The Things They Carried, creators of fantasy sometimes introduce entire imaginary creatures or beings such as dragons and fairies. In terms of the separation between fiction and non-fiction, the lines are now commonly understood as blurred, showing more overlap than mutual exclusion. Even fiction usually has elements of, or grounding in, truth, also, infinite fictional possibilities themselves signal the impossibility of fully knowing reality, provocatively demonstrating that there is no criterion to measure constructs of reality. The Internet has had a impact on the creation and distribution of fiction. Also, digital libraries such as Project Gutenberg make public domain texts more readily available, the combination of inexpensive home computers, the Internet and the creativity of its users has also led to new forms of fiction, such as interactive computer games or computer-generated comics. Countless forums for fan fiction can be online, where loyal followers of specific fictional realms create and distribute derivative stories. Types of literary fiction in prose, Short story, A work of at least 2,000 words, the boundary between a long short story and a novella is vague. Novella, A work of at least 17,500 words, joseph Conrads Heart of Darkness is an example of a novella. Novel, A work of 50,000 words or more, cartoonist Character Fiction writing Legend Mythology Non-fiction Pseudohistory Eco, Umberto 2009. On the ontology of fictional characters, A semiotic approach
13.
Walter Scott
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Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet, FRSE was a Scottish historical novelist, playwright and poet. Many of his works remain classics of both English-language literature and of Scottish literature, famous titles include Ivanhoe, Rob Roy, Old Mortality, The Lady of the Lake, Waverley, The Heart of Midlothian and The Bride of Lammermoor. A prominent member of the Tory establishment in Edinburgh, Scott was an member of the Highland Society. He survived a bout of polio in 1773 that left him lame. To cure his lameness he was sent in 1773 to live in the rural Scottish Borders at his grandparents farm at Sandyknowe, adjacent to the ruin of Smailholm Tower. Here he was taught to read by his aunt Jenny, and learned from her the speech patterns and many of the tales and legends that characterised much of his work. In January 1775 he returned to Edinburgh, and that went with his aunt Jenny to take spa treatment at Bath in England. In the winter of 1776 he went back to Sandyknowe, with another attempt at a cure at Prestonpans during the following summer. In 1778, Scott returned to Edinburgh for private education to him for school. In October 1779 he began at the Royal High School of Edinburgh and he was now well able to walk and explore the city and the surrounding countryside. His reading included chivalric romances, poems, history and travel books and he was given private tuition by James Mitchell in arithmetic and writing, and learned from him the history of the Church of Scotland with emphasis on the Covenanters. Scott began studying classics at the University of Edinburgh in November 1783, at the age of 12, in March 1786 he began an apprenticeship in his fathers office to become a Writer to the Signet. While at the university Scott had become a friend of Adam Ferguson, Scott met the blind poet Thomas Blacklock, who lent him books and introduced him to James Macphersons Ossian cycle of poems. During the winter of 1786–87 the 15-year-old Scott saw Robert Burns at one of these salons, for what was to be their only meeting. When Burns noticed a print illustrating the poem The Justice of the Peace and asked who had written the poem, only Scott knew that it was by John Langhorne, and was thanked by Burns. When it was decided that he would become a lawyer, he returned to the university to study law, first taking classes in Moral Philosophy, after completing his studies in law, he became a lawyer in Edinburgh. As a lawyers clerk he made his first visit to the Scottish Highlands directing an eviction and he was admitted to the Faculty of Advocates in 1792. He had an unsuccessful love suit with Williamina Belsches of Fettercairn, as a boy, youth and young man, Scott was fascinated by the oral traditions of the Scottish Borders
14.
James Fenimore Cooper
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James Fenimore Cooper was a prolific and popular American writer of the early 19th century. His historical romances of frontier and Indian life in the early American days created a form of American literature. He lived most of his life in Cooperstown, New York, Cooper was a lifelong member of the Episcopal Church and, in his later years, contributed generously to it. He attended Yale University for three years, where he was a member of the Linonian Society, but was expelled for misbehavior. Before embarking on his career as a writer, he served in the U. S. Navy as a Midshipman, the novel that launched his career was The Spy, a tale about counterespionage set during the Revolutionary War and published in 1821. He also wrote numerous sea stories, and his works are five historical novels of the frontier period known as the Leatherstocking Tales. Among naval historians, Coopers works on the early U. S. Navy have been well received, among his most famous works is the Romantic novel The Last of the Mohicans, often regarded as his masterpiece. James Fenimore Cooper was born in Burlington, New Jersey in 1789 to William Cooper and Elizabeth Cooper and he was descended from James Cooper of Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England, who emigrated to the American colonies in 1679. James and his wife were Quakers who purchased plots of land in New Jersey, seventy-five years after his arrival in America, his great-grandson William was born on December 2,1754. Shortly after James first birthday, his family moved to Cooperstown, New York, later, his father was elected as a United States Congressman from Otsego County. Their town was in a area of New York that had previously been occupied by the Iroquois of the Six Nations. The Iroquois were forced to cede their territory after British defeat in the Revolutionary War, shortly after the American Revolutionary War, the state opened up these former Iroquois lands for sale and development. Coopers father purchased several acres of land in upstate New York along the head-waters of the Susquehanna River. By 1788, William Cooper had selected and surveyed the site where Cooperstown would be established and he erected a home on the shore of Otsego lake and moved his family there in the autumn of 1790. He soon began construction of the mansion that would be known as Otsego Hall and it was completed in 1799 when James was ten. At age 13, Cooper was enrolled at Yale, but he incited a dangerous prank that involved blowing up another students door — after having already locked a donkey in a recitation room, Cooper was expelled in his third year without completing his degree. Disenchanted with college, he obtained work in 1806 as a sailor and, at age 17, by 1811, he obtained the rank of midshipman in the fledgling United States Navy, conferred upon him on an officers warrant signed by Thomas Jefferson. At 20, Cooper inherited a fortune from his father and he married Susan Augusta de Lancey at Mamaroneck, Westchester County, New York on January 1,1811 at age 21
15.
Leo Tolstoy
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Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy, usually referred to in English as Leo Tolstoy, was a Russian writer who is regarded as one of the greatest authors of all time. Born to an aristocratic Russian family in 1828, he is best known for the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, often cited as pinnacles of realist fiction. He first achieved acclaim in his twenties with his semi-autobiographical trilogy, Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth. Tolstoys fiction includes dozens of stories and several novellas such as The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Family Happiness. He also wrote plays and numerous philosophical essays, in the 1870s Tolstoy experienced a profound moral crisis, followed by what he regarded as an equally profound spiritual awakening, as outlined in his non-fiction work A Confession. His literal interpretation of the teachings of Jesus, centering on the Sermon on the Mount, caused him to become a fervent Christian anarchist and pacifist. Tolstoy also became an advocate of Georgism, the economic philosophy of Henry George. Tolstoy was born at Yasnaya Polyana, a family estate 12 kilometres southwest of Tula, the Tolstoys were a well-known family of old Russian nobility, tracing their ancestry to a mythical Lithuanian noble Indris. He was the fourth of five children of Count Nikolai Ilyich Tolstoy, a veteran of the Patriotic War of 1812, Tolstoys parents died when he was young, so he and his siblings were brought up by relatives. In 1844, he began studying law and oriental languages at Kazan University and his teachers described him as both unable and unwilling to learn. Tolstoy left the university in the middle of his studies, returned to Yasnaya Polyana and then spent much of his time in Moscow, in 1851, after running up heavy gambling debts, he went with his older brother to the Caucasus and joined the army. It was about time that he started writing. Others who followed the path were Alexander Herzen, Mikhail Bakunin. During his 1857 visit, Tolstoy witnessed an execution in Paris. Writing in a letter to his friend Vasily Botkin, The truth is that the State is a conspiracy designed not only to exploit, henceforth, I shall never serve any government anywhere. Tolstoys concept of non-violence or Ahimsa was bolstered when he read a German version of the Tirukkural and he later instilled the concept in Mahatma Gandhi through his A Letter to a Hindu when young Gandhi corresponded with him seeking his advice. His European trip in 1860–61 shaped both his political and literary development when he met Victor Hugo, whose literary talents Tolstoy praised after reading Hugos newly finished Les Misérables, the similar evocation of battle scenes in Hugos novel and Tolstoys War and Peace indicates this influence. Tolstoys political philosophy was influenced by a March 1861 visit to French anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
16.
Classics
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Classics or Classical Studies is the study of classical antiquity. It encompasses the study of the Graeco-Roman world, particularly of its languages, and literature but also it encompasses the study of Graeco-Roman philosophy, history, and archaeology. Traditionally in the West, the study of the Greek and Roman classics was considered one of the cornerstones of the humanities and it has been traditionally a cornerstone of a typical elite education. The word Classics is derived from the Latin adjective classicus, meaning belonging to the highest class of citizens, the word was originally used to describe the members of the highest class in ancient Rome. By the 2nd century AD the word was used in literary criticism to describe writers of the highest quality, for example, Aulus Gellius, in his Attic Nights, contrasts classicus and proletarius writers. By the 6th century AD, the word had acquired a meaning, referring to pupils at a school. Thus the two meanings of the word, referring both to literature considered to be of the highest quality, and to the standard texts used as part of a curriculum. In the Middle Ages, classics and education were tightly intertwined, according to Jan Ziolkowski, while Latin was hugely influential, however, Greek was barely studied, and Greek literature survived almost solely in Latin translation. The works of even major Greek authors such as Hesiod, whose names continued to be known by educated Europeans, were unavailable in the Middle Ages. Along with the unavailability of Greek authors, there were differences between the classical canon known today and the works valued in the Middle Ages. Catullus, for instance, was almost entirely unknown in the medieval period, the Renaissance led to the increasing study of both ancient literature and ancient history, as well as a revival of classical styles of Latin. From the 14th century, first in Italy and then increasingly across Europe, Renaissance Humanism, Humanism saw a reform in education in Europe, introducing a wider range of Latin authors as well as bringing back the study of Greek language and literature to Western Europe. This reintroduction was initiated by Petrarch and Boccaccio who commissioned a Calabrian scholar to translate the Homeric poems, the late 17th and 18th centuries are the period in Western European literary history which is most associated with the classical tradition, as writers consciously adapted classical models. Classical models were so prized that the plays of William Shakespeare were rewritten along neoclassical lines. From the beginning of the 18th century, the study of Greek became increasingly important relative to that of Latin, in this period Johann Winckelmanns claims for the superiority of the Greek visual arts influenced a shift in aesthetic judgements, while in the literary sphere, G. E. Lessing returned Homer to the centre of artistic achievement, in the United Kingdom, the study of Greek in schools began in the late 18th century. The poet Walter Savage Landor claimed to have one of the first English schoolboys to write in Greek during his time at Rugby School. The 19th century saw the influence of the world, and the value of a classical education, decline, especially in the US
17.
Mythology
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Mythology refers variously to the collected myths of a group of people or to the study of such myths. Myths are the people tell to explain nature, history. Myth is a feature of every culture, mythologizing continues, as shown in contemporary mythopoeia such as urban legends and the expansive fictional mythoi created by fantasy novels and comics. A cultures collective mythology helps convey belonging, shared and religious experiences, behavioral models, the study of myth began in ancient history. Rival classes of the Greek myths by Euhemerus, Plato and Sallustius were developed by the Neoplatonists, the nineteenth-century comparative mythology reinterpreted myth as a primitive and failed counterpart of science, a disease of language, or a misinterpretation of magical ritual. Recent approaches often view myths as manifestations of psychological, cultural, or societal truths, the term mythology predates the word myth by centuries. It first appeared in the fifteenth-century, borrowed from the Middle French term mythologie, the word mythology, comes from Middle French mythologie, from Late Latin mythologia, from Greek μυθολογία mythología from μῦθος mythos and -λογία -logia. The word mythología appears in Plato, but was used as a term for fiction or story-telling of any kind, combining mỹthos. From Lydgate until the seventeenth or eighteenth-century, mythology was similarly used to mean a moral, fable, from its earliest use in reference to a collection of traditional stories or beliefs, mythology implied the falsehood of the stories being described. It came to be applied by analogy with similar bodies of traditional stories among other cultures around the world. The Greek loanword mythos and Latinate mythus both appeared in English before the first example of myth in 1830, in present use, mythology usually refers to the collected myths of a group of people, but may also mean the study of such myths. For example, Greek mythology, Roman mythology and Hittite mythology all describe the body of myths retold among those cultures, dundes defined myth as a sacred narrative that explains how the world and humanity evolved into their present form. Lincoln defined myth as ideology in narrative form, scholars in other fields use the term myth in varied ways. In a broad sense, the word can refer to any traditional story, due to this pejorative sense, some scholars opted for the term mythos. Its use was similarly pejorative and now commonly refers to its Aristotelian sense as a plot point or to a collective mythology. The term is distinguished from didactic literature such as fables. Main characters in myths are usually gods, demigods or supernatural humans, however, many exceptions or combinations exist, as in the Iliad, Odyssey and Aeneid. Myths are often endorsed by rulers and priests and are linked to religion or spirituality
18.
Folklore
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Folklore is the body of expressive culture shared by a particular group of people, it encompasses the traditions common to that culture, subculture or group. These include oral traditions such as tales, proverbs and jokes and they include material culture, ranging from traditional building styles to handmade toys common to the group. Folklore also includes customary lore, the forms and rituals of celebrations like Christmas and weddings, folk dances, each one of these, either singly or in combination, is considered a folklore artifact. Just as essential as the form, folklore also encompasses the transmission of these artifacts from one region to another or from one generation to the next, for folklore is not taught in a formal school curriculum or studied in the fine arts. Instead these traditions are passed along informally from one individual to another either through verbal instruction or demonstration, the academic study of folklore is called folkloristics. To fully understand folklore, it is helpful to clarify its component parts and it is well-documented that the term was coined in 1846 by the Englishman William Thoms. He fabricated it to replace the contemporary terminology of popular antiquities or popular literature, the second half of the compound word, lore, proves easier to define as its meaning has stayed relatively stable over the last two centuries. Coming from Old English lār instruction, and with German and Dutch cognates, it is the knowledge and traditions of a particular group, the concept of folk proves somewhat more elusive. When Thoms first created this term, folk applied only to rural, frequently poor, a more modern definition of folk is a social group which includes two or more persons with common traits, who express their shared identity through distinctive traditions. Folk is a concept which can refer to a nation as in American folklore or to a single family. This expanded social definition of folk supports a view of the material, i. e. the lore. These now include all things people make with words, things they make with their hands, Folklore is no longer circumscribed as being chronologically old or obsolete. The folklorist studies the traditional artifacts of a group and how they are transmitted. Transmission is a part of the folklore process. Without communicating these beliefs and customs within the group over space and time, for folklore is also a verb. These folk artifacts continue to be passed along informally, as a rule anonymously, the folk group is not individualistic, it is community-based and nurtures its lore in community. As new groups emerge, new folklore is created… surfers, motorcyclists, in direct contrast to high culture, where any single work of a named artist is protected by copyright law, folklore is a function of shared identity within the social group. Having identified folk artifacts, the professional folklorist strives to understand the significance of these beliefs, customs, for these cultural units would not be passed along unless they had some continued relevance within the group
19.
Epic poetry
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An epic poem, epic, epos, or epopee is a lengthy narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation. Milman Parry and Albert Lord have argued that the Homeric epics and these works form the basis of the epic genre in Western literature. Nearly all Western epic self-consciously presents itself as a continuation of the tradition begun by these poems, classical epic employs dactylic hexameter and recounts a journey, either physical or mental or both. Epics also tend to highlight cultural norms and to define or call into question cultural values, another type of epic poetry is epyllion, which is a brief narrative poem with a romantic or mythological theme. The term, which means little epic, came into use in the nineteenth century, the most famous example of classical epyllion is perhaps Catullus 64. The first epics were products of preliterate societies and oral history poetic traditions, in these traditions, poetry is transmitted to the audience and from performer to performer by purely oral means. Early twentieth-century study of living oral traditions in the Balkans by Milman Parry. What they demonstrated was that oral epics tend to be constructed in short episodes, each of equal status, interest and this facilitates memorization, as the poet is recalling each episode in turn and using the completed episodes to recreate the entire epic as he performs it. Parry and Lord also contend that the most likely source for written texts of the epics of Homer was dictation from an oral performance, poets in literate societies have sometimes copied the epic format. The earliest surviving European examples are the Argonautica of Apollonius of Rhodes and Virgils Aeneid, other obvious examples are Nonnus Dionysiaca, Tulsidas Sri Ramacharit Manas. In his work Poetics, Aristotle defines an epic as one of the forms of poetry, contrasted with lyric poetry, an attempt to delineate ten main characteristics of an epic, Begins in medias res. The setting is vast, covering many nations, the world or the universe, Begins with an invocation to a muse. Begins with a statement of the theme, contains long lists, called an epic catalogue. Shows divine intervention on human affairs, features heroes that embody the values of the civilization. Often features the tragic heros descent into the Underworld or hell, the hero generally participates in a cyclical journey or quest, faces adversaries that try to defeat him in his journey and returns home significantly transformed by his journey. The epic hero illustrates traits, performs deeds, and exemplifies certain morals that are valued by the society the epic originates from, many epic heroes are recurring characters in the legends of their native culture. Conventions of epics, Preposition, Opens by stating the theme or cause of the epic and this may take the form of a purpose, of a question, or of a situation. Invocation, Writer invokes a Muse, one of the nine daughters of Zeus, the poet prays to the Muses to provide him with divine inspiration to tell the story of a great hero
20.
Jane Austen
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Jane Austen was an English novelist known primarily for her six major novels, which interpret, critique and comment upon the British landed gentry at the end of the 18th century. Austens plots often explore the dependence of women on marriage in the pursuit of social standing. Her works critique the novels of sensibility of the half of the 18th century and are part of the transition to 19th-century literary realism. With the publications of Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park and Emma and she wrote two additional novels, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, both published posthumously in 1818, and began another, eventually titled Sanditon, but died before its completion. Her novels have rarely been out of print, although they were published anonymously, a significant transition in her posthumous reputation occurred in 1869, fifty-two years after her death, when her nephews publication of A Memoir of Jane Austen introduced her to a wider audience. Austen has inspired a number of critical essays and literary anthologies. Her novels have inspired many films, from 1940s Pride and Prejudice to more recent productions, Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austens use of biting irony, along with her realism and social commentary have earned her great and historical importance to critics and scholars. The Bank of England has confirmed that the face of the new plastic £10 note will be Austen, the notes are expected to be released in summer 2017. There is little information about Jane Austens life except the few letters that survive. During her lifetime Austen wrote approximately 3,000 letters but only about 160 survive, many of the letters were written to Austens older sister Cassandra, who in 1843 burned the greater part of them and cut pieces out of those she kept. Cassandra believed that in the interest of tact and Janes penchant for forthrightness, the paucity of record of Austens life leaves modern biographers little to work with. The situation was compounded as successive generations of the family expunged and sanitized the already opaque details of Austens biography, Jane Austen was born in Steventon, Hampshire, on 16 December 1775. She was born a month later than her parents expected, her father wrote of her arrival in a letter that her mother certainly expected to have brought to bed a month ago. He added that her arrival was particularly welcome as a companion to her sister. The winter of 1776 was particularly harsh and it was not until 5 April that she was baptised at the church with the single name Jane. For much of Janes life, George Austen served as the rector of the Anglican parishes at Steventon, and he came from an old, respected, and wealthy family of wool merchants. Over the centuries as each generation of eldest sons received inheritances their wealth was consolidated and he and his two sisters were orphaned as children and had to be taken in by relatives. His sister Philadelphia went to India to find a husband and George entered St Johns College, Oxford on a fellowship and she came from the prominent Leigh family, her father was rector at All Souls College, Oxford, where she grew up among the gentry
21.
Romantic nationalism
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Romantic nationalism is the form of nationalism in which the state derives its political legitimacy as an organic consequence of the unity of those it governs. This includes, depending on the manner of practice, the language, race, culture, religion. Such downward-radiating power might ultimately derive from a god or gods, among the key themes of Romanticism, and its most enduring legacy, the cultural assertions of romantic nationalism have also been central in post-Enlightenment art and political philosophy. The ideas of Rousseau and of Johann Gottfried von Herder inspired much early Romantic nationalism in Europe, in 1784 Herder argued that geography formed the natural economy of a people, and that their customs and society would develop along the lines that their basic environment favored. The Brothers Grimm, inspired by Herders writings, put together a collection of tales. Because of the Germans role in the Protestant Reformation, Hegel argued that his historical moment had seen the Zeitgeist settle on the German-speaking peoples. In continental Europe, Romantics had embraced the French Revolution in its beginnings, in Prussia, the development of spiritual renewal as a means to engage in the struggle against Napoleon was argued by, among others, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, a disciple of Kant. The word Volkstum, or folkhood, was coined in Germany as part of resistance to French hegemony. In the Balkans, Romantic views of a connection with classical Greece, verdis opera choruses of an oppressed people inspired two generations of patriots in Italy, especially with Va pensiero. In Norway, romanticism was embodied, not in literature, but in the movement toward a national style, following the Congress of Vienna, and subsequent Concert of Europe system, several major empires took control of European politics. Among these were the Russian Empire, the restored French monarchy, the German Confederation, under the dominance of Prussia, the Austrian Empire, the conservative forces held sway until the Revolutions of 1848 swept across Europe and threatened the old order. Numerous movements developed around various cultural groups, who began to develop a sense of national identity, Romantic nationalists expected patriots to then learn that language and raise their children speaking that language – as part of a general program to establish a unique identity. Katharevousa Greek was constructed as a form of Modern Greek drawing on classical Greek morphology, the linguistic processes of romantic nationalism demanded linguistic culture models. Romantic historiography was centered on biographies and produced culture heroes, the modern Italian of Risorgimento patriots like Alessandro Manzoni was based on the Tuscan dialects sanctified by Dante and Petrarch. In English, Shakespeare became an iconic figure, Romantic nationalism inspired the collection of folklore by such people as the Brothers Grimm. The Brothers Grimm were criticized because their first edition was insufficiently German and they also altered the language used, changing each Fee to an enchantress or wise woman, every prince to a kings son, every princess to a kings daughter. Discussing these views in their editions, they particularly singled out Giambattista Basiles Pentamerone as the first national collection of fairy tales. Among those influenced were the Russian Alexander Afanasyev, the Norwegians Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe, many artists and writers also drew on their native countries folklore and folktunes for their own work to express their nationalism
22.
Scotland
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Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and covers the northern third of the island of Great Britain. It shares a border with England to the south, and is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, with the North Sea to the east. In addition to the mainland, the country is made up of more than 790 islands, including the Northern Isles, the Kingdom of Scotland emerged as an independent sovereign state in the Early Middle Ages and continued to exist until 1707. By inheritance in 1603, James VI, King of Scots, became King of England and King of Ireland, Scotland subsequently entered into a political union with the Kingdom of England on 1 May 1707 to create the new Kingdom of Great Britain. The union also created a new Parliament of Great Britain, which succeeded both the Parliament of Scotland and the Parliament of England. Within Scotland, the monarchy of the United Kingdom has continued to use a variety of styles, titles, the legal system within Scotland has also remained separate from those of England and Wales and Northern Ireland, Scotland constitutes a distinct jurisdiction in both public and private law. Glasgow, Scotlands largest city, was one of the worlds leading industrial cities. Other major urban areas are Aberdeen and Dundee, Scottish waters consist of a large sector of the North Atlantic and the North Sea, containing the largest oil reserves in the European Union. This has given Aberdeen, the third-largest city in Scotland, the title of Europes oil capital, following a referendum in 1997, a Scottish Parliament was re-established, in the form of a devolved unicameral legislature comprising 129 members, having authority over many areas of domestic policy. Scotland is represented in the UK Parliament by 59 MPs and in the European Parliament by 6 MEPs, Scotland is also a member nation of the British–Irish Council, and the British–Irish Parliamentary Assembly. Scotland comes from Scoti, the Latin name for the Gaels, the Late Latin word Scotia was initially used to refer to Ireland. By the 11th century at the latest, Scotia was being used to refer to Scotland north of the River Forth, alongside Albania or Albany, the use of the words Scots and Scotland to encompass all of what is now Scotland became common in the Late Middle Ages. Repeated glaciations, which covered the land mass of modern Scotland. It is believed the first post-glacial groups of hunter-gatherers arrived in Scotland around 12,800 years ago, the groups of settlers began building the first known permanent houses on Scottish soil around 9,500 years ago, and the first villages around 6,000 years ago. The well-preserved village of Skara Brae on the mainland of Orkney dates from this period and it contains the remains of an early Bronze Age ruler laid out on white quartz pebbles and birch bark. It was also discovered for the first time that early Bronze Age people placed flowers in their graves, in the winter of 1850, a severe storm hit Scotland, causing widespread damage and over 200 deaths. In the Bay of Skaill, the storm stripped the earth from a large irregular knoll, when the storm cleared, local villagers found the outline of a village, consisting of a number of small houses without roofs. William Watt of Skaill, the laird, began an amateur excavation of the site, but after uncovering four houses
23.
Poland
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Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe, situated between the Baltic Sea in the north and two mountain ranges in the south. Bordered by Germany to the west, the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south, Ukraine and Belarus to the east, the total area of Poland is 312,679 square kilometres, making it the 69th largest country in the world and the 9th largest in Europe. With a population of over 38.5 million people, Poland is the 34th most populous country in the world, the 8th most populous country in Europe, Poland is a unitary state divided into 16 administrative subdivisions, and its capital and largest city is Warsaw. Other metropolises include Kraków, Wrocław, Poznań, Gdańsk and Szczecin, the establishment of a Polish state can be traced back to 966, when Mieszko I, ruler of a territory roughly coextensive with that of present-day Poland, converted to Christianity. The Kingdom of Poland was founded in 1025, and in 1569 it cemented a political association with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania by signing the Union of Lublin. This union formed the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, one of the largest and most populous countries of 16th and 17th century Europe, Poland regained its independence in 1918 at the end of World War I, reconstituting much of its historical territory as the Second Polish Republic. In September 1939, World War II started with the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany, followed thereafter by invasion by the Soviet Union. More than six million Polish citizens died in the war, after the war, Polands borders were shifted westwards under the terms of the Potsdam Conference. With the backing of the Soviet Union, a communist puppet government was formed, and after a referendum in 1946. During the Revolutions of 1989 Polands Communist government was overthrown and Poland adopted a new constitution establishing itself as a democracy, informally called the Third Polish Republic. Since the early 1990s, when the transition to a primarily market-based economy began, Poland has achieved a high ranking on the Human Development Index. Poland is a country, which was categorised by the World Bank as having a high-income economy. Furthermore, it is visited by approximately 16 million tourists every year, Poland is the eighth largest economy in the European Union and was the 6th fastest growing economy on the continent between 2010 and 2015. According to the Global Peace Index for 2014, Poland is ranked 19th in the list of the safest countries in the world to live in. The origin of the name Poland derives from a West Slavic tribe of Polans that inhabited the Warta River basin of the historic Greater Poland region in the 8th century, the origin of the name Polanie itself derives from the western Slavic word pole. In some foreign languages such as Hungarian, Lithuanian, Persian and Turkish the exonym for Poland is Lechites, historians have postulated that throughout Late Antiquity, many distinct ethnic groups populated the regions of what is now Poland. The most famous archaeological find from the prehistory and protohistory of Poland is the Biskupin fortified settlement, dating from the Lusatian culture of the early Iron Age, the Slavic groups who would form Poland migrated to these areas in the second half of the 5th century AD. With the Baptism of Poland the Polish rulers accepted Christianity and the authority of the Roman Church
24.
Partitions of Poland
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The First Partition of Poland was decided on August 5,1772. Two decades later, Russian and Prussian troops entered the Commonwealth again, Austria did not participate in the Second Partition. The Third Partition of Poland took place on October 24,1795, with this partition, the Commonwealth ceased to exist. In Polish, there are two words for the two meanings. In Polish historiography, the term Fourth Partition of Poland has also been used, the term Fourth Partition in a temporal sense can also mean the diaspora communities that played important political role in re-establishing the Polish sovereign state after 1918. A single member of parliaments belief that a measure was injurious to his own constituency, even after the act had been approved and it became increasingly difficult to undertake action. The liberum veto also provided openings for foreign diplomats to get their ways and this applies particularly to the last Commonwealth King Stanisław August Poniatowski, who for some time had been a lover of Russian Empress Catherine the Great. Their alliance later became known in Poland as the Alliance of the Three Black Eagles, the Commonwealth could never be liquidated unless its long-time ally, Austria, allowed it, so Catherine had to use diplomacy to win Austria to her side. Frederick II retaliated by ordering enough Polish currency counterfeited to severely affect the Polish economy and this new constitution undid the reforms made in 1764 under Stanisław II. The liberum veto and all the old abuses of the last one, the irregular and poorly commanded Polish forces had little chance in the face of the regular Russian army and suffered a major defeat. In 1769 Austria annexed a small territory of Spisz and in 1770 – Nowy Sącz and these territories had been a bone of contention between Poland and Hungary, which was a part of the Austrian crown lands. In February 1772, the agreement of partition was signed in Vienna, early in August, Russian, Prussian and Austrian troops simultaneously invaded the Commonwealth and occupied the provinces agreed upon among themselves. The partition treaty was ratified by its signatories on September 22,1772, to Austria fell Zator and Auschwitz, part of Lesser Poland embracing parts of the counties of Kraków and Sandomir and the whole of Galicia, less the city of Kraków. Catherine of Russia was also very satisfied, by this diplomatic document Russia came into possession of that section of Livonia that had remained in Commonwealth control, and of Belarus embracing the counties of Vitebsk, Polotsk and Mstislavl. By this partition, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth lost about 30% of its territory and half of its population, by seizing northwestern Poland, Prussia instantly gained control over 80% of the Commonwealths total foreign trade. Through levying enormous customs duties, Prussia accelerated the collapse of the Commonwealth, after having occupied their respective territories, the three partitioning powers demanded that King Stanisław and the Sejm approve their action. By 1790 the First Polish Republic had been weakened to such a degree that it was forced into an unnatural and terminal alliance with its enemy, the Polish–Prussian Pact of 1790 was signed. The conditions of the Pact contributed to the succeeding and final two partitions of Poland–Lithuania, the May Constitution of 1791 enfranchised the bourgeoisie, established the separation of the three branches of government, and eliminated the abuses of the Repnin Sejm
25.
Teutonic Order
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The Order of Brothers of the German House of Saint Mary in Jerusalem, commonly the Teutonic Order, is a Catholic religious order founded as a military order in the 12th century in Acre. Purely religious since 1929, it still confers limited honorary knighthoods, the order was formed to aid Christians on their pilgrimages to the Holy Land and to establish hospitals. Formed in the year 1190 in Acre, in the Levant, after Christian forces were defeated in the Middle East, the Order moved to Transylvania in 1211 to help defend the South-Eastern borders of the Kingdom of Hungary against the Kipchaks. Starting from there, the Order created the independent Monastic State of the Teutonic Knights, adding continuously the conquered Prussians territory, the Order theoretically lost its main purpose in Europe with the Christianization of Lithuania. However, it initiated numerous campaigns against its Christian neighbours, the Kingdom of Poland, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and the Novgorod Republic. The Teutonic Knights had an economic base, and so hired mercenaries from throughout Europe to augment their feudal levies. In 1410, a Polish-Lithuanian army decisively defeated the Order and broke its military power at the Battle of Grunwald, however, the capital of the Teutonic Knights was successfully defended in the following Siege of Marienburg and the Order was saved from collapse. In 1515, Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I made an alliance with Sigismund I of Poland-Lithuania. Thereafter, the empire did not support the Order against Poland, in 1525, Grand Master Albert of Brandenburg resigned and converted to Lutheranism, becoming Duke of Prussia as a vassal of Poland. Soon after, the Order lost Livonia and its holdings in the Protestant areas of Germany, the Order did keep its considerable holdings in Catholic areas of Germany until 1809, when Napoleon Bonaparte ordered its dissolution and the Order lost its last secular holdings. However, the Order continued to exist as a charitable and ceremonial body and it was outlawed by Adolf Hitler in 1938, but re-established in 1945. Today it operates primarily with charitable aims in Central Europe, the Knights wore white surcoats with a black cross. A cross pattée was sometimes used as their coat of arms, the motto of the Order was, Helfen, Wehren, Heilen. The full name of the Order in German is Orden der Brüder vom Deutschen Haus St. Mariens in Jerusalem or in Latin Ordo domus Sanctæ Mariæ Theutonicorum Hierosolymitanorum, thus, the term Teutonic refers to the German origins of the order in Latin. It is commonly known in German as the Deutscher Orden, historically also as Deutscher Ritterorden, Deutschherrenorden, Deutschritterorden or Die Herren im weißen Mantel. However, based on the model of the Knights Templar, it was transformed into an order in 1198. It received papal orders for crusades to take and hold Jerusalem for Christianity, during the rule of Grand Master Hermann von Salza the Order changed from being a hospice brotherhood for pilgrims to primarily a military order. The Order was founded in Acre, and the Knights purchased Montfort, northeast of Acre, the Order also had a castle at Amouda in Armenia Minor
26.
Cossacks
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Cossacks are a group of predominantly East Slavic-speaking people who became known as members of democratic, self-governing, semi-military communities, predominantly located in Ukraine and in Russia. The origins of the first Cossacks are disputed, though the 1710 Constitution of Pylyp Orlyk claimed Khazar origin, the Zaporizhian Sich were a vassal people of Poland–Lithuania during feudal times. Under increasing pressure from the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, in the century the Sich declared an independent Cossack Hetmanate. Afterwards, the Treaty of Pereyaslav brought most of the Ukrainian Cossack state under Russian rule, the Sich with its lands became an autonomous region under the Russian-Polish protectorate. The Don Cossack Host, which had established by the 16th century. Together they began a systematic conquest and colonisation of lands in order to secure the borders on the Volga, the whole of Siberia, and the Yaik, Cossack communities had developed along the latter two rivers well before the arrival of the Don Cossacks. By the 18th century, Cossack hosts in the Russian Empire occupied effective buffer zones on its borders, the expansionist ambitions of the Empire relied on ensuring the loyalty of Cossacks, which caused tension given their traditional exercise of freedom, democratic self-rule, and independence. By the end of the 18th century, Cossack nations had transformed into a special military estate. The government provided only firearms and supplies for them, Cossack service was considered the most rigorous one. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Tsarist regime used Cossacks extensively to perform police service and they also served as border guards on national and internal ethnic borders. During the Russian Civil War, Don and Kuban Cossacks were the first nations to open war against the Bolsheviks. By 1918, Cossacks declared the independence of their nations and formed the independent states, the Ukrainian State, the Don Republic. The Cossack troops formed the core of the anti-Bolshevik White Army. With the victory of the Red Army, the Cossack lands were subjected to Decossackization, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Cossacks made a systematic return to Russia. Many took a part in Post-Soviet conflicts and Yugoslav Wars. In Russias 2010 Population Census, Cossacks have been recognized as an ethnicity, there are Cossack organizations in Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Poland, and the United States. Max Vasmers etymological dictionary traces the name to the Old East Slavic word козакъ, kozak, the ethnonym Kazakh is from the same Turkic root. In written sources the name is first attested in Codex Cumanicus from the 13th century, in English, Cossack is first attested in 1590
27.
Sweden
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Sweden, officially the Kingdom of Sweden, is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. It borders Norway to the west and Finland to the east, at 450,295 square kilometres, Sweden is the third-largest country in the European Union by area, with a total population of 10.0 million. Sweden consequently has a low density of 22 inhabitants per square kilometre. Approximately 85% of the lives in urban areas. Germanic peoples have inhabited Sweden since prehistoric times, emerging into history as the Geats/Götar and Swedes/Svear, Southern Sweden is predominantly agricultural, while the north is heavily forested. Sweden is part of the area of Fennoscandia. The climate is in very mild for its northerly latitude due to significant maritime influence. Today, Sweden is a monarchy and parliamentary democracy, with a monarch as head of state. The capital city is Stockholm, which is also the most populous city in the country, legislative power is vested in the 349-member unicameral Riksdag. Executive power is exercised by the government chaired by the prime minister, Sweden is a unitary state, currently divided into 21 counties and 290 municipalities. Sweden emerged as an independent and unified country during the Middle Ages, in the 17th century, it expanded its territories to form the Swedish Empire, which became one of the great powers of Europe until the early 18th century. Swedish territories outside the Scandinavian Peninsula were gradually lost during the 18th and 19th centuries, the last war in which Sweden was directly involved was in 1814, when Norway was militarily forced into personal union. Since then, Sweden has been at peace, maintaining a policy of neutrality in foreign affairs. The union with Norway was peacefully dissolved in 1905, leading to Swedens current borders, though Sweden was formally neutral through both world wars, Sweden engaged in humanitarian efforts, such as taking in refugees from German-occupied Europe. After the end of the Cold War, Sweden joined the European Union on 1 January 1995 and it is also a member of the United Nations, the Nordic Council, Council of Europe, the World Trade Organization and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Sweden maintains a Nordic social welfare system that provides health care. The modern name Sweden is derived through back-formation from Old English Swēoþēod and this word is derived from Sweon/Sweonas. The Swedish name Sverige literally means Realm of the Swedes, excluding the Geats in Götaland, the etymology of Swedes, and thus Sweden, is generally not agreed upon but may derive from Proto-Germanic Swihoniz meaning ones own, referring to ones own Germanic tribe
28.
Nobel Prize in Literature
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Though individual works are sometimes cited as being particularly noteworthy, here work refers to an authors work as a whole. The Swedish Academy decides who, if anyone, will receive the prize in any given year, the academy announces the name of the chosen laureate in early October. Although the Nobel Prize in Literature has become the worlds most prestigious literature prize, many authors who have won the prize have fallen into obscurity, while others rejected by the jury remain widely studied and read. The prize has become seen as a political one - a peace prize in literary disguise, whose judges are prejudiced against authors with different political tastes to them. Tim Parks has expressed skepticism that it is possible for Swedish professors, as of 2016,16 of the 113 recipients have been of Scandinavian origin. The Academy has often been alleged to be biased towards European, Nobels vague wording for the criteria for the prize has led to recurrent controversy. In the original Swedish, the word translates as either idealistic or ideal. The Nobel Committees interpretation has varied over the years, in recent years, this means a kind of idealism championing human rights on a broad scale. Though Nobel wrote several wills during his lifetime, the last was written a little over a year before he died, Nobel bequeathed 94% of his total assets,31 million Swedish kronor, to establish and endow the five Nobel Prizes. Due to the level of surrounding the will, it was not until 26 April 1897 that the Storting approved it. The executors of his will were Ragnar Sohlman and Rudolf Lilljequist, the members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee that were to award the Peace Prize were appointed shortly after the will was approved. The prize-awarding organisations followed, the Karolinska Institutet on 7 June, the Swedish Academy on 9 June, the Nobel Foundation then reached an agreement on guidelines for how the Nobel Prize should be awarded. In 1900, the Nobel Foundations newly created statutes were promulgated by King Oscar II, according to Nobels will, the Royal Swedish Academy was to award the Prize in Literature. Each year, the Swedish Academy sends out requests for nominations of candidates for the Nobel Prize in Literature and it is not permitted to nominate oneself. Thousands of requests are sent out each year, and as of 2011 about 220 proposals are returned and these proposals must be received by the Academy by 1 February, after which they are examined by the Nobel Committee. By April, the Academy narrows the field to around twenty candidates, by May, a short list of five names is approved by the Committee. The subsequent four months are spent in reading and reviewing the works of the five candidates. In October, members of the Academy vote and the candidate who receives more than half of the votes is named the Nobel laureate in Literature
29.
Quo Vadis (novel)
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Quo Vadis, A Narrative of the Time of Nero, commonly known as Quo Vadis, is a historical novel written by Henryk Sienkiewicz in Polish. Quo vadis, Domine. is Latin for Where are you going, Lord. And appears in Chapter 69 of the novel in a retelling of a story from the apocryphal Acts of Peter, in which Peter flees Rome but on his way meets Jesus and asks him why he is going to Rome. Jesus says, If thou desert my people, I am going to Rome to be crucified a second time, the novel Quo Vadis tells of a love that develops between a young Christian woman, Ligia, and Marcus Vinicius, a Roman patrician. It takes place in the city of Rome under the rule of emperor Nero, Sienkiewicz studied the Roman Empire extensively prior to writing the novel, with the aim of getting historical details correct. Consequently, several historical figures appear in the book, as a whole, the novel carries an outspoken pro-Christian message. Published in installments in three Polish dailies in 1895, it out in book form in 1896 and has since been translated into more than 50 languages. This novel contributed to Sienkiewiczs Nobel Prize for literature in 1905, several movies have been based on Quo Vadis including two Italian silent films—Quo Vadis and Quo Vadis —a Hollywood production—Quo Vadis —and an adaptation by Jerzy Kawalerowicz, Quo Vadis. Marcus Vinicius, a tribune and Roman patrician who recently returned to Rome. On arrival he meets and falls in love with Ligia and he seeks the counsel of his uncle Petronius to find a way to possess her. Calina, usually known as Ligia, the daughter of a king of the Ligians. Ligia is technically a hostage of the Senate and people of Rome, a great beauty, she has converted to Christianity, but her religion is originally unknown to Marcus. Gaius Petronius, titled the arbiter of elegance, former governor of Bithynia, Petronius is a member of Neros court who uses his wit to flatter and mock him at the same time. He is loved by the Roman mob for his liberal attitudes, somewhat amoral and a bit lazy, he tries to help his nephew, but his cunning plan is thwarted by Ligias Christian friends. Eunice is a beautiful young Greek woman who has fallen in love with her master, Chilon Chilonides, a charlatan and a private investigator. He is hired by Marcus to find Ligia and this character is severely reduced in the 1951 film and the 1985 miniseries, but in the novel itself, as well as in the Polish miniseries of 2001, Chilon is a major figure as doublecrossing traitor. His end is clearly inspired by Saint Dismas, Nero, Emperor of Rome, portrayed as incompetent, petty, cruel, and subject to manipulation by his courtiers. He listens most intently to flatterers and fools, Tigellinus, the prefect of the feared Praetorian Guard
30.
Nero
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Nero was Roman Emperor from 54 to 68, and the last in the Julio-Claudian dynasty. Nero was adopted by his great-uncle Claudius to become his heir and successor, during his reign, the redoubtable general Corbulo conducted a successful war and negotiated peace with the Parthian Empire. His general Suetonius Paulinus crushed a revolt in Britain, Nero annexed the Bosporan Kingdom to the empire and may have begun the First Jewish–Roman War. In 64 AD, most of Rome was destroyed in the Great Fire of Rome, Suetonius, writing a generation later, claims that many Romans believed Nero himself had started the fire, in order to clear land for his planned palatial complex, the Domus Aurea. In 68, the rebellion of Vindex in Gaul and later the acclamation of Galba in Hispania drove Nero from the throne, facing a false report of being denounced as a public enemy who was to be executed, he committed suicide on 9 June 68. His death ended the Julio-Claudian dynasty, sparking a period of civil wars known as the Year of the Four Emperors. Neros rule is often associated with tyranny and extravagance and he is known for many executions, including that of his mother, and the probable murder by poison of his stepbrother Britannicus. Nero was rumored to have had captured Christians dipped in oil and this view is based on the writings of Tacitus, Suetonius and Cassius Dio, the main surviving sources for Neros reign, but a few sources paint Nero in a more favourable light. Some sources, including some mentioned above, portray him as an emperor who was popular with the common Roman people, some modern historians question the reliability of ancient sources when reporting on Neros tyrannical acts. Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, Nero, was born on 15 December 37 in Antium and he was the only son of Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus and Agrippina the Younger, sister of Emperor Caligula. Neros father, Gnaeus, was the son of Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, Gnaeus was thus the grandson of Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus and probably Aemilia Lepida on his fathers side, and the grandson of Mark Antony and Octavia Minor on his mothers side. Thus, Nero had as his paternal grandmother Antonia Major, through Octavia, Nero was the great-nephew of Caesar Augustus. Neros father had employed as a praetor and was a member of Caligulas staff when the latter travelled to the East. Neros father was described by Suetonius as a murderer and a cheat who was charged by Emperor Tiberius with treason, adultery, Tiberius died, allowing him to escape these charges. Neros father died of edema in 39 when Nero was two, Neros mother was Agrippina the Younger, a great-granddaughter of Caesar Augustus and his wife Scribonia through their daughter Julia the Elder and her husband Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa. Agrippinas father, Germanicus, was a grandson of Augustuss wife, Livia, on one side and Mark Antony, Germanicus mother Antonia Minor was a daughter of Octavia Minor and Mark Antony. Germanicus was also the son of Tiberius. Agrippina poisoned her second husband Passienus Crispus, so many ancient historians also accuse her of murdering her third husband, the emperor Claudius
31.
Roman Empire
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Civil wars and executions continued, culminating in the victory of Octavian, Caesars adopted son, over Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC and the annexation of Egypt. Octavians power was then unassailable and in 27 BC the Roman Senate formally granted him overarching power, the imperial period of Rome lasted approximately 1,500 years compared to the 500 years of the Republican era. The first two centuries of the empires existence were a period of unprecedented political stability and prosperity known as the Pax Romana, following Octavians victory, the size of the empire was dramatically increased. After the assassination of Caligula in 41, the senate briefly considered restoring the republic, under Claudius, the empire invaded Britannia, its first major expansion since Augustus. Vespasian emerged triumphant in 69, establishing the Flavian dynasty, before being succeeded by his son Titus and his short reign was followed by the long reign of his brother Domitian, who was eventually assassinated. The senate then appointed the first of the Five Good Emperors, the empire reached its greatest extent under Trajan, the second in this line. A period of increasing trouble and decline began with the reign of Commodus, Commodus assassination in 192 triggered the Year of the Five Emperors, of which Septimius Severus emerged victorious. The assassination of Alexander Severus in 235 led to the Crisis of the Third Century in which 26 men were declared emperor by the Roman Senate over a time span. It was not until the reign of Diocletian that the empire was fully stabilized with the introduction of the Tetrarchy, which saw four emperors rule the empire at once. This arrangement was unsuccessful, leading to a civil war that was finally ended by Constantine I. Constantine subsequently shifted the capital to Byzantium, which was renamed Constantinople in his honour and it remained the capital of the east until its demise. Constantine also adopted Christianity which later became the state religion of the empire. However, Augustulus was never recognized by his Eastern colleague, and separate rule in the Western part of the empire ceased to exist upon the death of Julius Nepos. The Eastern Roman Empire endured for another millennium, eventually falling to the Ottoman Turks in 1453, the Roman Empire was among the most powerful economic, cultural, political and military forces in the world of its time. It was one of the largest empires in world history, at its height under Trajan, it covered 5 million square kilometres. It held sway over an estimated 70 million people, at that time 21% of the entire population. Throughout the European medieval period, attempts were made to establish successors to the Roman Empire, including the Empire of Romania, a Crusader state. Rome had begun expanding shortly after the founding of the republic in the 6th century BC, then, it was an empire long before it had an emperor
32.
Early Christianity
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Early Christianity is the period of Christianity preceding the First Council of Nicaea in 325. It is typically divided into the Apostolic Age and the Ante-Nicene Period, the early Gospel message was spread orally, probably in Aramaic, but almost immediately also in Greek. After the conversion of Paul the Apostle, he claimed the title of Apostle to the Gentiles, Pauls influence on Christian thinking is said to be more significant than that of any other New Testament author. As the New Testament canon developed, the Pauline epistles, the canonical gospels, Early Christians demonstrated a wide range of beliefs and practices, many of which were later denounced as heretical. The earliest followers of Jesus composed an apocalyptic, Second Temple Jewish sect, the first part of the period, during the lifetimes of the Twelve Apostles, is called the Apostolic Age. The relationship of Paul the Apostle and Judaism is still disputed although Pauls influence on Christian thinking is said to be more significant than any other New Testament author and they think the Christians the cause of every public disaster, of every affliction with which the people are visited. The first action taken against Christians by the order of an emperor occurred half a century earlier under Nero after the Great Fire of Rome in 64 AD. During the Ante-Nicene Period following the Apostolic Age, a diversity of views emerged simultaneously with strong unifying characteristics lacking in the apostolic period. Part of the trend was an increasingly harsh anti-Judaism and rejection of Judaizers. Early Christianity gradually grew apart from Judaism during the first two centuries and established itself as a predominantly gentile religion in the Roman Empire. From the writings of early Christians, historians have tried to piece together an understanding of various early Christian practices including worship services, customs, Early Christian writers such as Justin Martyr described these practices. Early Christian beliefs regarding baptism probably predate the New Testament writings and it seems certain that numerous Jewish sects and certainly Jesuss disciples practised baptism, which became integral to nearly every manifestation of the religion of the Jews. John the Baptist had baptized many people, before took place in the name of Jesus Christ. Many of the interpretations that would later become Orthodox Christian beliefs concerning baptism can be traced to such as Paul. On the basis of this description, it was supposed by some modern theologians that the early Christians practised baptism by submersion and this interpretation is debated between those Christian denominations who advocate immersion baptism exclusively and those who practice baptism by affusion or aspersion as well as by immersion. Yet the Didache, one of the earliest Christian writings on liturgical practices, the Orthodox Church continues this practice, submerging the baptized and then pouring water on the head in that formula. Infant baptism was practised at least by the 3rd century. Others believe that infants were excluded from the baptism of households, citing verses of the Bible that describe the baptized households as believing, in the 2nd century, Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons, may have referred to it
33.
Quo Vadis (1913 film)
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Quo Vadis. is an Italian film made directed by Enrico Guazzoni for Cines in 1913, based on the 1896 novel of the same name written by Henryk Sienkiewicz. It was arguably the first blockbuster in the history of cinema, with 5,000 extras, lavish sets, a worldwide success, it premièred in Germany at the opening night of the Ufa-Pavillon am Nollendorfplatz, on 19 March 1913. In an unusual departure from normal practice, the crowd scenes were reinforced with special mobs of live costumed actors in the auditorium. Quo Vadis. was the first film to be projected in a first-class Broadway theater, the films first screening in London was for King George V, in the Royal Albert Hall, who complimented the performers. Another Italian director, Giovanni Pastrone, would direct Cabiria – which holds many similarities with Quo Vadis, but is longer, more thematically complex, the story is set during the early years of rule by the emperor Nero. He is a man obsessed with gaining absolute power. In addition, the cruel Nero kidnaps the pair and sends them into an arena to fight lions. of Cinema Peplum Dominic Cammarota, fanucci,87, p. 15th The Dictionary of film Mereghetti-2002-cards, ed. Baldini & Castoldi,2001, p.1711. Quo Vadis at the Internet Movie Database
34.
Quo Vadis (1924 film)
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Quo Vadis is a 1924 Italian silent historical film directed by Gabriellino DAnnunzio and Georg Jacoby and starring Emil Jannings, Elena Sangro and Lillian Hall-Davis. It is based on the novel Quo Vadis by Henryk Sienkiewicz which was later adapted into a 1951 film. In Rome, during the reign of Nero, a young Roman general named Marco Vinicio falls in love with a beautiful Christian slave and their love is impossible, for the contrast of religions, and so Nero, when he learns, imprisons both of them. The emperor also intends to extend his domination of Rome and burns the city, blaming the Christians, the film was produced by the ambitious Unione Cinematografica Italiana. DAnnunzio, the son of the poet Gabriele DAnnunzio, was considered a rising director and it was one of several attempts in early Fascist Italy to recapture the success of the historical epics of the previous decade. Rudolph Valentino was invited to star in the film, but was forced to turn the offer due to contractual reasons. Production quickly became troubled - the film ran seriously over-budget, the new backers insisted that a German director, Jacoby, be appointed to co-direct. The film was a critical and commercial failure on its release, in its review the New York Times described it as excellent as spectacle, but is too tedious in many sequences to be a good entertainment. DAnnunzio never directed or wrote another film, jacobys reputation also suffered heavily, and he switched to working on musicals and comedies. Emil Jannings performance, on the hand, received moderate praise. The New Yorker noted that Jannings was the one item beside boredom the movie had, hedy Lamarr, The Most Beautiful Woman in Film. Holston, Kim R. Movie Roadshows, A History and Filmography of Reserved-Seat Limited Showings, the A to Z of Italian Cinema. Cinema and Fascism, Italian Film and Society, 1922–1943, whither Quo Vadis, Sienkiewiczs Novel in Film and Television. Film Stardom, Myth and Classicism, The Rise of Hollywoods Gods, Quo Vadis at the Internet Movie Database
35.
Quo Vadis (1951 film)
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Quo Vadis is a 1951 American epic film made by MGM in Technicolor. It was directed by Mervyn LeRoy and produced by Sam Zimbalist, from a screenplay by John Lee Mahin, S. N. Behrman and Sonya Levien, the novel had previously been made into an Italian film Quo Vadis. The music score was by Miklós Rózsa and the cinematography by Robert Surtees, the title refers to an incident in the apocryphal Acts of Peter, see Quo Vadis. The film stars Robert Taylor, Deborah Kerr, Leo Genn, and Peter Ustinov, and features Patricia Laffan, Finlay Currie, Felix Aylmer, and Abraham Sofaer. Sophia Loren and Carlo Pedersoli were both cast in the movie as uncredited extras, and Sergio Leone worked on it as an assistant director of the Italian company. The main subject is the conflict between Christianity and the corruption of the Roman Empire, especially in the last period of the Julio-Claudian line, the characters and events depicted are a mixture of actual historical figures and situations and fictionalized ones. Their love story is told against the historical background of early Christianity. Though she grew up Roman as the daughter of a retired general, Aulus Plautius. Marcus persuades Nero to give her to him for services rendered, Lygia resents this, but still falls in love with Marcus. Meanwhile, Neros atrocities become increasingly more outrageous and his acts more insane, when he burns Rome and blames the Christians, Marcus goes off to save Lygia and her family. Nero captures them and all the Christians, and condemns them to be killed in the arena, Marcus is arrested for trying to save Lygia. Poppaea, Neros wife, who lusts after Marcus, devises a diabolical revenge for his rejection of her, Lygia is tied to a wooden stake in the arena. A wild bull is also placed there, and Lygias bodyguard giant, Ursus must try to kill it with his bare hands, Marcus is tied to the spectators box and forced to watch, much to the horror of his officers, who also attend the spectacle. When all seems hopeless, Ursus is able to break the bulls neck, hugely impressed by Ursuss courage, the crowd exhorts Nero to spare them, which the emperor is not willing to do. However, Neros four other retainers Seneca, architect Phaon, poet Lucan, the crowd, now firmly believing that Nero, and not the Christians, is responsible for the burning of Rome, revolts. Nero flees to his palace, where he strangles Poppaea to death, then Acte, a palace slave who was once in unrequited love with Nero, appears and offers to aid him in ending his own life before the mob storms the palace. The cowardly Nero cannot bring himself to do it, so Acte drives the dagger into his chest, Marcus, Lygia and Ursus are now free and leave Rome. By the roadside, Peters crook, which he had left behind when he returned to Rome, has miraculously sprouted flowers, the radiant light intones, I am the way, the truth, and the life
36.
Sigrid Undset
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Sigrid Undset was a Norwegian novelist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1928. Undset was born in Kalundborg, Denmark, but her family moved to Norway when she was two years old, in 1924, she converted to Catholicism. She fled Norway for the United States in 1940 because of her opposition to Nazi Germany and the German invasion and occupation of Norway, but returned after World War II ended in 1945. Her best-known work is Kristin Lavransdatter, a trilogy about life in Scandinavia in the Middle Ages and its three volumes were published between 1920 and 1922. Sigrid Undset was born on 20 May 1882 in the town of Kalundborg, Denmark, at the childhood home of her mother. Undset was the eldest of three daughters and she and her family moved to Norway when she was two. She grew up in the Norwegian capital, Oslo, when she was only 11 years old, her father, the Norwegian archaeologist Ingvald Martin Undset, died at the age of 40 after a long illness. She joined the Norwegian Authors Union in 1907 and from 1933 through 1935 headed its Literary Council, while employed at office work, Undset wrote and studied. She was 16 years old when she made her first attempt at writing a set in the Nordic Middle Ages. The manuscript, a novel set in medieval Denmark, was ready by the time she was 22. It was turned down by the publishing house, nonetheless, two years later, she completed another manuscript, much less voluminous than the first at only 80 pages. She had put aside the Middle Ages and had produced a realistic description of a woman with a middle-class background in contemporary Kristiania. This book was refused by the publishers at first but it was subsequently accepted. The title was Fru Marta Oulie, and the opening sentence scandalised readers, thus, at the age of 25, Undset made her literary debut with a short realistic novel on adultery, set against a contemporary background. It created a stir, and she found herself ranked as a young author in Norway. During the years up to 1919, Undset published a number of set in contemporary Kristiania. Her contemporary novels of the period 1907–1918 are about the city and they are stories of working people, of trivial family destinies, of the relationship between parents and children. Her main subjects are women and their love, or, as she herself put it—in her typically curt and ironic manner—the immoral kind
37.
Kristin Lavransdatter
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Kristin Lavransdatter is a trilogy of historical novels written by Nobel laureate Sigrid Undset. The individual novels are Kransen, first published in 1920, Husfrue, published in 1921, and Korset, published in 1922. Kransen and Husfrue were translated from the original Norwegian as The Bridal Wreath and The Mistress of Husaby, respectively, in the first English translation by Charles Archer and J. S. Scott. This work formed the basis of Undset receiving the 1928 Nobel Prize in Literature and her work is much admired for its historical and ethnological accuracy. The cycle follows the life of Kristin Lavransdatter, a fictitious Norwegian woman living in the 14th century, Kristin grows up in Sel in the Gudbrand Valley, the daughter of a well-respected and affluent farmer. She experiences a number of conflicts in her relationships with her parents and she finds comfort and conciliation in her Catholic faith. Raised in a loving and devoutly religious family, Kristin develops a sensitive but wilful character, defying her family in small, at an early age, she is exposed to various tragedies. After an attempted rape raises questions about her reputation, she is sent to Nonneseter Abbey, Oslo, a Benedictine nunnery, which proves to be a turning point in her life. Despite being betrothed since childhood to a neighboring landowners son, Simon Darre, Kristin falls in love with Erlend Nikulaussøn and they have had two children together, Orm and Margret, who have no legal rights since they were born of an adulterous relationship. Erlend and Kristin begin a romance which is sealed with Erlends seduction of Kristin. Lavrans forbids their relationship, but after three years of Kristins defiance and the death of Ulvhild, he no longer has the strength to oppose Kristin and he consents to her marriage to Erlend. Erlend and Kristin are formally betrothed, but she becomes pregnant before the wedding, out of shame, she keeps this a secret from everyone, including Erlend, and is wed with her hair loose and wearing the family bridal crown —- privileges reserved for virgin brides. This section of the trilogy is named for the golden wreath Kristin wears as a young girl, which is reserved for virgins of noble family. It symbolizes her innocent life before she meets Erlend, after he seduces her, she is no longer entitled to wear it, the second book opens with Kristins arrival at Husaby. She is suffering from remorse for her sins and fears for her unborn child and her relationship with Erlend is no longer the careless one of days past, as she can see that he is impetuous and wasteful of his possessions although his passion for her is unchanged. She gives birth to a son, Nikulaus, who to her surprise is healthy, after confessing to her parish priest, Kristin undertakes a pilgrimage to St. Olavs shrine in Trondheim to do penance and give thanks for her sons birth. She donates her golden wreath, which she wore undeservedly after her seduction by Erlend, over the following years, Kristin and Erlend have six more sons together and Kristin becomes the head of the household. She must deal with her husbands weaknesses while running the estate, raising her children as well as those of Erlends former mistress, during these years, her parents die and her remaining sister Ramborg is married to Simon Darre, although he secretly still loves Kristin
38.
Norway
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The Antarctic Peter I Island and the sub-Antarctic Bouvet Island are dependent territories and thus not considered part of the Kingdom. Norway also lays claim to a section of Antarctica known as Queen Maud Land, until 1814, the kingdom included the Faroe Islands, Greenland, and Iceland. It also included Isle of Man until 1266, Shetland and Orkney until 1468, Norway has a total area of 385,252 square kilometres and a population of 5,258,317. The country shares a long border with Sweden. Norway is bordered by Finland and Russia to the north-east, Norway has an extensive coastline, facing the North Atlantic Ocean and the Barents Sea. King Harald V of the Dano-German House of Glücksburg is the current King of Norway, erna Solberg became Prime Minister in 2013, replacing Jens Stoltenberg. A constitutional monarchy, Norway divides state power between the Parliament, the Cabinet and the Supreme Court, as determined by the 1814 Constitution, the kingdom is established as a merger of several petty kingdoms. By the traditional count from the year 872, the kingdom has existed continuously for 1,144 years, Norway has both administrative and political subdivisions on two levels, counties and municipalities. The Sámi people have an amount of self-determination and influence over traditional territories through the Sámi Parliament. Norway maintains close ties with the European Union and the United States, the country maintains a combination of market economy and a Nordic welfare model with universal health care and a comprehensive social security system. Norway has extensive reserves of petroleum, natural gas, minerals, lumber, seafood, the petroleum industry accounts for around a quarter of the countrys gross domestic product. On a per-capita basis, Norway is the worlds largest producer of oil, the country has the fourth-highest per capita income in the world on the World Bank and IMF lists. On the CIAs GDP per capita list which includes territories and some regions, from 2001 to 2006, and then again from 2009 to 2017, Norway had the highest Human Development Index ranking in the world. It also has the highest inequality-adjusted ranking, Norway ranks first on the World Happiness Report, the OECD Better Life Index, the Index of Public Integrity and the Democracy Index. Norway has two names, Noreg in Nynorsk and Norge in Bokmål. The name Norway comes from the Old English word Norðrveg mentioned in 880, meaning way or way leading to the north. In contrasting with suðrvegar southern way for Germany, and austrvegr eastern way for the Baltic, the Anglo-Saxon of Britain also referred to the kingdom of Norway in 880 as Norðmanna land. This was the area of Harald Fairhair, the first king of Norway, and because of him
