1.
Literature
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Literature, in its broadest sense, is any single body of written works. Its Latin root literatura/litteratura was used to refer to all written accounts, developments in print technology have allowed an evergrowing distribution and proliferation of written works, culminating in electronic literature. There have been attempts to define literature. Simon and Delyse Ryan begin their attempt to answer the question What is Literature, with the observation, The quest to discover a definition for literature is a road that is much travelled, though the point of arrival, if ever reached, is seldom satisfactory. Most attempted definitions are broad and vague, and they change over time. In fact, the thing that is certain about defining literature is that the definition will change. Concepts of what is literature change over time as well, definitions of literature have varied over time, it is a culturally relative definition. In Western Europe prior to the century, literature as a term indicated all books. A more restricted sense of the term emerged during the Romantic period, contemporary debates over what constitutes literature can be seen as returning to the older, more inclusive notion of what constitutes literature. Cultural studies, for instance, takes as its subject of both popular and minority genres, in addition to canonical works. The value judgment definition of literature considers it to cover exclusively those writings that possess high quality or distinction and this sort of definition is that used in the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition when it classifies literature as the best expression of the best thought reduced to writing. The formalist definition is that literature foregrounds poetic effects, it is the literariness or poetic of literature that distinguishes it from ordinary speech or other kinds of writing. Etymologically, the term derives from Latin literatura/litteratura learning, a writing, grammar, originally writing formed with letters, in spite of this, the term has also been applied to spoken or sung texts. Poetry is a form of art which uses aesthetic and rhythmic qualities of language to evoke meanings in addition to, or in place of. Possibly as a result of Aristotles influence, poetry before the century was usually less a technical designation for verse than a normative category of fictive or rhetorical art. As a form it may pre-date literacy, with the earliest works being composed within and sustained by an oral tradition, novel, a long fictional prose narrative. It was the close relation to real life that differentiated it from the chivalric romance, in most European languages the equivalent term is roman. In English, the term emerged from the Romance languages in the fifteenth century, with the meaning of news, it came to indicate something new
2.
Novel
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A novel is any relatively long piece of written narrative fiction, normally in prose, and typically published as a book. The genre has also described as possessing, a continuous. This view sees the novels origins in Classical Greece and Rome, medieval, early modern romance, the latter, an Italian word used to describe short stories, supplied the present generic English term in the 18th century. The romance is a closely related long prose narrative, Romance, as defined here, should not be confused with the genre fiction love romance or romance novel. Other European languages do not distinguish between romance and novel, a novel is le roman, der Roman, il romanzo, a novel is a long, fictional narrative which describes intimate human experiences. Most European languages use the word romance for extended narratives, fictionality is most commonly cited as distinguishing novels from historiography. However this can be a problematic criterion, historians would also invent and compose speeches for didactic purposes. Novels can, on the hand, depict the social, political and personal realities of a place and period with clarity. Even in the 19th century, fictional narratives in verse, such as Lord Byrons Don Juan, Alexander Pushkins Yevgeniy Onegin, vikram Seths The Golden Gate, composed of 590 Onegin stanzas, is a more recent example of the verse novel. Both in 12th-century Japan and 15th-century Europe, prose fiction created intimate reading situations, on the other hand, verse epics, including the Odyssey and Aeneid, had been recited to a select audiences, though this was a more intimate experience than the performance of plays in theaters. A new world of Individualistic fashion, personal views, intimate feelings, secret anxieties, conduct and gallantry spread with novels, the novel is today the longest genre of narrative prose fiction, followed by the novella, short story, and flash fiction. However, in the 17th century critics saw the romance as of epic length, the length of a novel can still be important because most literary awards use length as a criterion in the ranking system. Urbanization and the spread of printed books in Song Dynasty China led to the evolution of oral storytelling into consciously fictional novels by the Ming dynasty, parallel European developments did not occur for centuries, and awaited the time when the availability of paper allowed for similar opportunities. By contrast, Ibn Tufails Hayy ibn Yaqdhan and Ibn al-Nafis Theologus Autodidactus are works of didactic philosophy, in this sense, Hayy ibn Yaqdhan would be considered an early example of a philosophical novel, while Theologus Autodidactus would be considered an early theological novel. Epic poetry exhibits some similarities with the novel, and the Western tradition of the novel back into the field of verse epics. Then at the beginning of the 18th century, French prose translations brought Homers works to a wider public, longus is the author of the famous Greek novel, Daphnis and Chloe. Romance or chivalric romance is a type of narrative in prose or verse popular in the circles of High Medieval. In later romances, particularly those of French origin, there is a tendency to emphasize themes of courtly love
3.
Poetry
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Poetry has a long history, dating back to the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh. Early poems evolved from folk songs such as the Chinese Shijing, or from a need to retell oral epics, as with the Sanskrit Vedas, Zoroastrian Gathas, and the Homeric epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey. Ancient attempts to define poetry, such as Aristotles Poetics, focused on the uses of speech in rhetoric, drama, song and comedy. Later attempts concentrated on such as repetition, verse form and rhyme. From the mid-20th century, poetry has sometimes been more generally regarded as a creative act employing language. Poetry uses forms and conventions to suggest differential interpretation to words, devices such as assonance, alliteration, onomatopoeia and rhythm are sometimes used to achieve musical or incantatory effects. The use of ambiguity, symbolism, irony and other elements of poetic diction often leaves a poem open to multiple interpretations. Similarly figures of such as metaphor, simile and metonymy create a resonance between otherwise disparate images—a layering of meanings, forming connections previously not perceived. Kindred forms of resonance may exist, between verses, in their patterns of rhyme or rhythm. Some poetry types are specific to cultures and genres and respond to characteristics of the language in which the poet writes. Much modern poetry reflects a critique of poetic tradition, playing with and testing, among other things, in todays increasingly globalized world, poets often adapt forms, styles and techniques from diverse cultures and languages. Some scholars believe that the art of poetry may predate literacy, others, however, suggest that poetry did not necessarily predate writing. The oldest surviving poem, the Epic of Gilgamesh, comes from the 3rd millennium BCE in Sumer. An example of Egyptian epic poetry is The Story of Sinuhe, other forms of poetry developed directly from folk songs. The earliest entries in the oldest extant collection of Chinese poetry, the efforts of ancient thinkers to determine what makes poetry distinctive as a form, and what distinguishes good poetry from bad, resulted in poetics—the study of the aesthetics of poetry. Some ancient societies, such as Chinas through her Shijing, developed canons of poetic works that had ritual as well as aesthetic importance, Classical thinkers employed classification as a way to define and assess the quality of poetry. Later aestheticians identified three major genres, epic poetry, lyric poetry, and dramatic poetry, treating comedy and tragedy as subgenres of dramatic poetry, Aristotles work was influential throughout the Middle East during the Islamic Golden Age, as well as in Europe during the Renaissance. English Romantic poet John Keats termed this escape from logic Negative Capability and this romantic approach views form as a key element of successful poetry because form is abstract and distinct from the underlying notional logic
4.
Drama
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Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance. The term comes from a Greek word meaning action, which is derived from I do, the two masks associated with drama represent the traditional generic division between comedy and tragedy. They are symbols of the ancient Greek Muses, Thalia, Thalia was the Muse of comedy, while Melpomene was the Muse of tragedy. Considered as a genre of poetry in general, the mode has been contrasted with the epic. The use of drama in a narrow sense to designate a specific type of play dates from the modern era. Drama in this sense refers to a play that is neither a comedy nor a tragedy—for example and it is this narrower sense that the film and television industries, along with film studies, adopted to describe drama as a genre within their respective media. Radio drama has been used in both senses—originally transmitted in a performance, it has also been used to describe the more high-brow. The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative modes of production, the structure of dramatic texts, unlike other forms of literature, is directly influenced by this collaborative production and collective reception. The early modern tragedy Hamlet by Shakespeare and the classical Athenian tragedy Oedipus Rex by Sophocles are among the masterpieces of the art of drama, a modern example is Long Days Journey into Night by Eugene O’Neill. Closet drama describes a form that is intended to be read, in improvisation, the drama does not pre-exist the moment of performance, performers devise a dramatic script spontaneously before an audience. Western drama originates in classical Greece, the theatrical culture of the city-state of Athens produced three genres of drama, tragedy, comedy, and the satyr play. Their origins remain obscure, though by the 5th century BCE they were institutionalised in competitions held as part of celebrating the god Dionysus. The competition for tragedies may have begun as early as 534 BCE, tragic dramatists were required to present a tetralogy of plays, which usually consisted of three tragedies and one satyr play. Comedy was officially recognized with a prize in the competition from 487 to 486 BCE, five comic dramatists competed at the City Dionysia, each offering a single comedy. Ancient Greek comedy is traditionally divided between old comedy, middle comedy and new comedy, following the expansion of the Roman Republic into several Greek territories between 270–240 BCE, Rome encountered Greek drama. While Greek drama continued to be performed throughout the Roman period, from the beginning of the empire, however, interest in full-length drama declined in favour of a broader variety of theatrical entertainments. The first important works of Roman literature were the tragedies and comedies that Livius Andronicus wrote from 240 BCE, five years later, Gnaeus Naevius also began to write drama. No plays from either writer have survived, by the beginning of the 2nd century BCE, drama was firmly established in Rome and a guild of writers had been formed
5.
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
6.
Comedy
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In a modern sense, comedy refers to any discourse or work generally intended to be humorous or amusing by inducing laughter, especially in theatre, television, film, and stand-up comedy. The origins of the term are found in Ancient Greece, in the Athenian democracy, the public opinion of voters was influenced by the political satire performed by the comic poets at the theaters. The theatrical genre of Greek comedy can be described as a performance which pits two groups or societies against each other in an amusing agon or conflict. Northrop Frye depicted these two opposing sides as a Society of Youth and a Society of the Old, a revised view characterizes the essential agon of comedy as a struggle between a relatively powerless youth and the societal conventions that pose obstacles to his hopes. Satire and political satire use comedy to portray persons or social institutions as ridiculous or corrupt, parody subverts popular genres and forms, critiquing those forms without necessarily condemning them. Similarly scatological humour, sexual humour, and race humour create comedy by violating social conventions or taboos in comic ways, a comedy of manners typically takes as its subject a particular part of society and uses humor to parody or satirize the behaviour and mannerisms of its members. Romantic comedy is a genre that depicts burgeoning romance in humorous terms. The adjective comic, which means that which relates to comedy is, in modern usage. Of this, the word came into usage through the Latin comoedia and Italian commedia and has, over time. The Greeks and Romans confined their use of the comedy to descriptions of stage-plays with happy endings. Aristotle defined comedy as an imitation of men worse than the average, however, the characters portrayed in comedies were not worse than average in every way, only insofar as they are Ridiculous, which is a species of the Ugly. The Ridiculous may be defined as a mistake or deformity not productive of pain or harm to others, the mask, for instance, in the Middle Ages, the term expanded to include narrative poems with happy endings. It is in this sense that Dante used the term in the title of his poem, as time progressed, the word came more and more to be associated with any sort of performance intended to cause laughter. During the Middle Ages, the comedy became synonymous with satire. They disassociated comedy from Greek dramatic representation and instead identified it with Arabic poetic themes and forms and they viewed comedy as simply the art of reprehension, and made no reference to light and cheerful events, or to the troubling beginnings and happy endings associated with classical Greek comedy. After the Latin translations of the 12th century, the term gained a more general meaning in medieval literature. Starting from 425 BCE, Aristophanes, a playwright and satirical author of the Ancient Greek Theater wrote 40 comedies,11 of which survive. Aristophanes developed his type of comedy from the satyr plays
7.
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
8.
Literary nonsense
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Literary nonsense is a broad categorization of literature that balances elements that make sense with some that do not, with the effect of subverting language conventions or logical reasoning. Even though the most well-known form of nonsense is nonsense verse. The effect of nonsense is often caused by an excess of meaning and its humor is derived from its nonsensical nature, rather than wit or the joke of a punchline. Literary nonsense, as recognized since the century, comes from a combination of two broad artistic sources. The first and older source is the folk tradition, including games, songs, dramas. The literary figure Mother Goose represents common incarnations of this style of writing, the second, newer source of literary nonsense is in the intellectual absurdities of court poets, scholars, and intellectuals of various kinds. Todays literary nonsense comes from a combination of both sources, Lewis Carroll continued this trend, making literary nonsense a worldwide phenomenon with Alices Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. Carrolls poem Jabberwocky, which appears in the book, is often considered quintessential nonsense literature. In literary nonsense, certain elements of language and logic that facilitate meaning are balanced by elements that negate meaning. These formal elements include semantics, syntax, phonetics, context, representation, Nonsense tautology, reduplication, and absurd precision have also been used in the nonsense genre. For a text to be within the genre of literary nonsense, if the text employs only occasional nonsense devices, then it may not be classified as literary nonsense, though there may be a nonsensical effect to certain portions of the work. Laurence Sternes Tristram Shandy, for instance, employs the device of imprecision by including a blank page. In Flann OBriens The Third Policeman, on the hand, many of the devices of nonsense are present throughout. Gibberish, light verse, fantasy, and jokes and riddles are sometimes mistaken for literary nonsense, pure gibberish, as in the hey diddle diddle of nursery rhyme, is a device of nonsense, but it does not make a text, overall, literary nonsense. If there is not significant sense to balance out such devices, Nonsense is distinct from fantasy, though there are sometimes resemblances between them. The distinction lies in the coherent and unified nature of fantasy, the nature of magic within an imaginary world is an example of this distinction. Fantasy worlds employ the presence of magic to explain the impossible. In nonsense literature, magic is rare but when it does occur, riddles only appear to be nonsense until the answer is found
9.
Lyric poetry
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Lyric poetry is a formal type of poetry which expresses personal emotions or feelings, typically spoken in the first person. The term derives from a form of Ancient Greek literature, the lyric, the term owes its importance in literary theory to the division developed by Aristotle between three broad categories of poetry, lyrical, dramatic and epic. Much lyric poetry depends on regular meter based either on number of syllables or on stress, the most common meters are as follows, Iambic – two syllables, with the short or unstressed syllable followed by the long or stressed syllable. Trochaic – two syllables, with the long or stressed syllable followed by the short or unstressed syllable, in English, this metre is found almost entirely in lyric poetry. Pyrrhic – Two unstressed syllables Anapestic – three syllables, with the first two short or unstressed and the last long or stressed, dactylic – three syllables, with the first one long or stressed and the other two short or unstressed. Spondaic – two syllables, with two successive long or stressed syllables, some forms have a combination of meters, often using a different meter for the refrain. For the ancient Greeks, lyric poetry had a technical meaning, verse that was accompanied by a lyre, cithara. Because such works were sung, it was also known as melic poetry. The lyric or melic poet was distinguished from the writer of plays, the writer of trochaic and iambic verses, the writer of elegies, the scholars of Hellenistic Alexandria created a canon of nine lyric poets deemed especially worthy of critical study. These archaic and classical musician-poets included Sappho, Alcaeus, Anacreon, archaic lyric was characterized by strophic composition and live musical performance. Some poets, like Pindar extended the metrical forms to a triad, including strophe, antistrophe, among the major extant Roman poets of the classical period, only Catullus and Horace wrote lyric poetry, which however was no longer meant to be sung but instead read or recited. What remained were the forms, the meters of the Greeks adapted to Latin. Catullus was influenced by both archaic and Hellenistic Greek verse and belonged to a group of Roman poets called the Neoteroi who spurned epic poetry following the lead of Callimachus, instead, they composed brief, highly polished poems in various thematic and metrical genres. The varying forms of the new Chu ci provided more rhythm, originating in 10th-century Persian, a ghazal is a poetic form consisting of couplets that share a rhyme and a refrain. Formally, it consists of a short lyric composed in a meter with a single rhyme throughout. Notable authors include Hafiz, Amir Khusro, Auhadi of Maragheh, Alisher Navoi, Obeid e zakani, Khaqani Shirvani, Anvari, Farid al-Din Attar, Omar Khayyam, and Rudaki. The ghazal was introduced to European poetry in the early 19th century by the Germans Schlegel, Von Hammer-Purgstall, and Goethe, lyric in European literature of the medieval or Renaissance period means a poem written so that it could be set to music—whether or not it actually was. A poems particular structure, function, or theme might all vary, the lyric poetry of Europe in this period was created by the pioneers of courtly poetry and courtly love largely without reference to the classical past
10.
Mythopoeia
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Mythopoeia is a narrative genre in modern literature and film where a fictional or artificial mythology is created by the writer of prose or other fiction. This meaning of the word mythopoeia follows its use by J. R. R. Tolkien in the 1930s, the authors in this genre integrate traditional mythological themes and archetypes into fiction. Mythopoeia is also the act of making mythologies, notable mythopoeic authors include Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, William Blake, H. P. Lovecraft, Lord Dunsany, Mervyn Peake and George MacDonald. While many literary works carry mythic themes, only a few approach the dense self-referentiality and it is invented mythology that, rather than arising out of centuries of oral tradition, are penned over a short period of time by a single author or small group of collaborators. Mythopoeia are almost invariably created entirely by an individual, like the world of Middle-earth, the term mythopoeia is from Greek μυθοποιία, myth-making. In early uses, it referred to the making of myths in ancient times and it was adopted and used by Tolkien as a title of one of his poems, written in 1931 and published in Tree and Leaf. The poem popularized the word mythopoeia as a literary and artistic endeavor, works of mythopoeia are often categorized as fantasy or science fiction but fill a niche for mythology in the modern world, according to Joseph Campbell, a famous student of world mythology. Campbell spoke of a Nietzschean world which has today outlived much of the mythology of the past. He claimed that new myths must be created, but he believed that present culture is changing too rapidly for society to be described by any such mythological framework until a later age. For example, the noted folklorist Alan Dundes argued that any novel cannot meet the criteria of myth. A work of art, or artifice, cannot be said to be the narrative of a sacred tradition. Perhaps the first attempt to construct mythology was the book of Pherecydes of Syros, Pherecydes transformed the Greek pantheon beyond recognition, with Zas rather than Zeus as the king of the gods, and Chronos rather than Kronos as Zass father. Pherecydess book was a key turning-point in the Greek movement towards scientific, Lord Dunsanys book The Gods of Pegana, published in 1905, is a series of short stories linked by Dunsanys invented pantheon of deities who dwell in Pegāna. It was followed by a further collection Time and the Gods and by some stories in The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories, in 1919 Dunsany told an American interviewer In The Gods of Pegana I tried to account for the ocean and the moon. I dont know anyone else has ever tried that before. Dunsanys work influenced J. R. R. Tolkiens later writings, the poem refers to the creative human author as the little maker wielding his own small golden sceptre ruling his subcreation. Tolkiens legendarium includes not only origin myths, creation myths and a poetry cycle. At about the time, he addressed the same topics in the form of a short story
11.
Chivalric romance
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As a literary genre of high culture, romance or chivalric romance is a type of prose and verse narrative that was popular in the aristocratic circles of High Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Popular literature also drew on themes of romance, but with ironic, satiric or burlesque intent. Still, the image of medieval is more influenced by the romance than by any other medieval genre, and the word medieval evokes knights, distressed damsels, dragons. Originally, romance literature was written in Old French, Anglo-Norman, Occitan, and Provençal, during the early 13th century, romances were increasingly written as prose. In later romances, particularly those of French origin, there is a tendency to emphasize themes of courtly love. Unlike the later form of the novel and like the chansons de geste, the earliest forms were invariably in verse, but the 15th century saw many in prose, often retelling the old, rhymed versions. Many influences are clear in the forms of chivalric romance, the epics of Charlemagne, unlike such ones as Beowulf, already had feudalism rather than the tribal loyalties, this was to continue in romances. The romance form is distinguished from the epics of the Middle Ages by the changes of the 12th century. This occurred regardless of congruity to the material, Alexander the Great featured as a fully feudal king. Chivalry was treated as continuous from Roman times, historical figures reappeared, reworked, in romance. The entire Matter of France derived from known figures, and suffered somewhat because their descendents had an interest in the tales that were told of their ancestors, unlike the Matter of Britain. Hereward the Wakes early life appeared in chronicles as the embellished, romantic adventures of an exile, complete with rescuing princess, fulk Fitzwarin, an outlaw in King Johns day, has his historical background a minor thread in the episodic stream of romantic adventures. The earliest medieval romances dealt heavily with themes from folklore, which diminished over time, morgan le Fay never loses her name, but in Le Morte dArthur, she studies magic rather than being inherently magical. Still, fairies never completely vanished from the tradition, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a late tale, but the Green Knight himself is an otherworldly being. In Italy there is the story called Il Bel Gherardino and it is the most ancient prototype of an Italian singing fairy tale by an anonymous Tuscan author. It tells the story of a young Italian knight, depleted for its magnanimitas, other examples of Italian poetry tales are Antonio Puccis literature, Gismirante, Il Brutto di Bretagna or Brito di Bretagna and Madonna Lionessa. Another work of a second anonymous Italian author that is worth mentioning is Istoria di Tre Giovani Disperati e di Tre Fate, some romances, such as Apollonius of Tyre, show classical pagan origins. Tales of the Matter of Rome in particular may be derived from such works as the Alexander Romance
12.
Tragedy
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Tragedy is a form of drama based on human suffering that invokes an accompanying catharsis or pleasure in audiences. In the wake of Aristotles Poetics, tragedy has been used to make genre distinctions, in the modern era, tragedy has also been defined against drama, melodrama, the tragicomic, and epic theatre. Drama, in the sense, cuts across the traditional division between comedy and tragedy in an anti- or a-generic deterritorialisation from the mid-19th century onwards. Both Bertolt Brecht and Augusto Boal define their epic theatre projects against models of tragedy, taxidou, however, reads epic theatre as an incorporation of tragic functions and its treatments of mourning and speculation. The word tragedy appears to have used to describe different phenomena at different times. It derives from Classical Greek τραγῳδία, contracted from trag-aoidiā = goat song, scholars suspect this may be traced to a time when a goat was either the prize in a competition of choral dancing or was that around which a chorus danced prior to the animals ritual sacrifice. In another view on the etymology, Athenaeus of Naucratis says that the form of the word was trygodia from trygos and ode. There is some dissent to the origins of tragedy, mostly based on the differences between the shapes of their choruses and styles of dancing. A common descent from pre-Hellenic fertility and burial rites has been suggested, friedrich Nietzsche discussed the origins of Greek tragedy in his early book The Birth of Tragedy. Here, he suggests the name originates in the use of a chorus of goat-like satyrs in the original dithyrambs from which the genre developed. Scott Scullion writes, There is abundant evidence for tragoidia understood as song for the prize goat, and as prize was established the billy goat, the clearest is Eustathius 1769.45, They called those competing tragedians, clearly because of the song over the billy goat. Athenian tragedy—the oldest surviving form of tragedy—is a type of dance-drama that formed an important part of the culture of the city-state. Having emerged sometime during the 6th century BCE, it flowered during the 5th century BCE, no tragedies from the 6th century and only 32 of the more than a thousand that were performed in the 5th century have survived. We have complete texts extant by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, Athenian tragedies were performed in late March/early April at an annual state religious festival in honor of Dionysus. The presentations took the form of a contest between three playwrights, who presented their works on three successive days, each playwright offered a tetralogy consisting of three tragedies and a concluding comic piece called a satyr play. The four plays sometimes featured linked stories, only one complete trilogy of tragedies has survived, the Oresteia of Aeschylus. The Greek theatre was in the air, on the side of a hill. Performances were apparently open to all citizens, including women, the theatre of Dionysus at Athens probably held around 12,000 people
13.
Tragicomedy
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Tragicomedy is a literary genre that blends aspects of both tragic and comic forms. Most often seen in literature, the term can variously describe either a tragic play which contains enough comic elements to lighten the overall mood or a serious play with a happy ending. There is no formal definition of tragicomedy from the classical age. It appears that the Greek philosopher Aristotle had something like the Renaissance meaning of the term in mind when, in Poetics, he discusses tragedy with a dual ending. In this respect, a number of Greek and Roman plays, for instance Alcestis, may be called tragicomedies, the word itself originates with the Roman comic playwright Plautus, who coined the term somewhat facetiously in the prologue to his play Amphitryon. For rule mongers, mixed works such as mentioned above, more recent romances such as Orlando Furioso. Two figures helped to elevate tragicomedy to the status of a regular genre, Giovanni Battista Giraldi Cinthio, in the mid-sixteenth century, both argued that the tragedy-with-comic-ending was most appropriate to modern times and produced his own examples of such plays. Even more important was Giovanni Battista Guarini, Guarinis Il Pastor Fido, published in 1590, provoked a fierce critical debate in which Guarinis spirited defense of generic innovation eventually carried the day. Guarinis tragicomedy offered modulated action that never drifted too far either to comedy or tragedy, mannered characters, all three became staples of continental tragicomedy for a century and more. In England, where practice ran ahead of theory, the situation was quite different, for the law of writ and the liberty, these are the only men. Some aspects of this romantic impulse remain even in the work of more sophisticated playwrights, Shakespeares last plays, by the early Stuart period, some English playwrights had absorbed the lessons of the Guarini controversy. John Fletchers The Faithful Shepherdess, an adaptation of Guarinis play, was produced in 1608. Fletchers definition focuses primarily on events, a genre is determined by whether or not people die in it. Some of Fletchers contemporaries, notably Philip Massinger and James Shirley, wrote successful, richard Brome also essayed the form, but with less success. And many of their writers, ranging from John Ford to Lodowick Carlell to Sir Aston Cockayne. Tragicomedy remained fairly popular up to the closing of the theaters in 1642, the old styles were of course cast aside as tastes changed in the eighteenth century, the tragedy with a happy ending eventually developed into melodrama, in which form it still flourishes. The more subtle criticism that developed after the Renaissance stressed the thematic and formal aspects of tragicomedy, gotthold Ephraim Lessing defined it as a mixture of emotions in which seriousness stimulates laughter, and pain pleasure. Even more commonly, tragicomedys affinity with satire and dark comedy have suggested a tragicomic impulse in modern absurdist drama, friedrich Dürrenmatt, the Swiss dramatist, suggested that tragicomedy was the inevitable genre for the twentieth century, he describes his play The Visit as a tragicomedy
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Performance
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A performance, in the performing arts, generally comprises an event in which a performer or group of performers present one or more works of art to an audience. Usually the performers participate in rehearsals beforehand, the means of expressing appreciation can vary by culture. Chinese performers will clap with the audience at the end of a performance, in Japan, folk performing-arts performances commonly attract individuals who take photographs, sometimes getting up to the stage and within inches of performers faces. Sometimes the dividing line between performer and the audience may become blurred, as in the example of theatre where audience members get involved in the production. Theatrical performances can take place daily or at some other regular interval, performances can take place at designated performance spaces, or in a non-conventional space, such as a subway station, on the street, or in somebodys home. Theatrical performances, especially when the audience is limited to only a few observers and this increase takes place in several stages relative to the performance itself, including anticipatory activation, confrontation activation and release period. The same physiological reactions can be experienced in other mediums, such as instrumental performance, heart rate shares a strong, positive correlation with the self reported anxiety of performers. Other physiological responses to public performance include perspiration, secretion of the adrenal glands, a performance may also describe the way in which an actor performs. In a solo capacity, it may refer to a mime artist, comedian, conjurer. Audio electronics Entertainment Live sound mixing Performance science Rock festival Sound technology Spectacle Stadium Stagecraft Theater
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Play (theatre)
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A play is a form of literature written by a playwright, usually consisting of dialogue between characters, intended for theatrical performance rather than just reading. Plays are performed at a variety of levels, from Broadway, Off-Broadway, regional theater, to Community theatre, there are rare dramatists, notably George Bernard Shaw, who have had little preference as to whether their plays were performed or read. The term play can refer to both the works of playwrights and to their complete theatrical performance. Comedies are plays which are designed to be humorous, comedies are often filled with witty remarks, unusual characters, and strange circumstances. Certain comedies are geared toward different age groups, comedies were one of the two original play types of Ancient Greece, along with tragedies. An example of a comedy would be William Shakespeares play A Midsummer Nights Dream, a generally nonsensical genre of play, farces are often overacted and often involve slapstick humor. An example of a farce includes William Shakespeares play The Comedy of Errors, a satire play takes a comic look at current events people while at the same time attempting to make a political or social statement, for example pointing out corruption. An example of a satire would be Nikolai Gogols The Government Inspector, satire plays are generally one of the most popular forms of comedy, and often considered to be their own genre entirely. This is a genre that explored relationships between men and women, and was considered risqué in its time, however, since restoration comedy dealt with unspoken aspects of relationships, it created a type of connection between audience and performance that was more informal and private. It is commonly agreed that restoration comedy has origins in Molière’s theories of comedy, the inconsistency between restoration comedy’s morals and the morals of the era is something that often arises during the study of this genre. This may give clues as to why, despite its original success, however, in recent years, it has become a topic of interest for theatre theorists, who have been looking into theatre styles that have their own conventions of performance. These plays contain darker themes such as death and disaster, often the protagonist of the play has a tragic flaw, a trait which leads to their downfall. Tragic plays convey all emotions and have extremely dramatic conflicts, tragedy was one of the two original play types of Ancient Greece. Some examples of tragedies include William Shakespeares Hamlet, and also John Websters play The Duchess of Malfi and these plays focus on actual historical events. They can be tragedies or comedies, but are neither of these. History as a genre was popularized by William Shakespeare. Examples of historical plays include Friedrich Schillers Demetrius and William Shakespeares King John, ballad opera, a popular theatre style at the time, was the first style of musical to be performed in the American colonies. The first musical of American origin was premiered in Philadelphia in 1767, and was called “The Disappointment”, however, around the 1920s, theatre styles were beginning to be defined more clearly
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Book
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A book is a set of written, printed, illustrated, or blank sheets, made of paper, parchment, or other materials, fastened together to hinge at one side, with text and/or images printed in ink. A single sheet within a book is a leaf, and each side of a leaf is a page, a set of text-filled or illustrated pages produced in electronic format for reading on a computer screen, smartphone or e-reader device is known as an electronic book, or e-book. The term books may refer the body of works of literature. In library and information science, a book is called a monograph, to distinguish it from serial periodicals such as magazines, journals, in novels and sometimes other types of books, a book may be divided into several large sections, also called books. An avid reader or collector of books or a lover is a bibliophile or colloquially. A shop where books are bought and sold is a bookshop or bookstore, Books are also sold in some department stores, drugstores and newspaper vendors. Books can also be borrowed from libraries, google has estimated that as of 2010, approximately 130,000,000 distinct titles had been published. In some wealthier nations, printed books are giving way to the usage of electronic or e-books, the word book comes from Old English bōc, which in turn comes from the Germanic root *bōk-, cognate to beech. Similarly, in Slavic languages буква is cognate with beech, in Russian and in Serbian and Macedonian, the word букварь or буквар refers specifically to a primary school textbook that helps young children master the techniques of reading and writing. It is thus conjectured that the earliest Indo-European writings may have been carved on beech wood, similarly, the Latin word codex, meaning a book in the modern sense, originally meant block of wood. When writing systems were created in ancient civilizations, a variety of objects, such as stone, clay, tree bark, metal sheets, the study of such inscriptions forms a major part of history. The study of inscriptions is known as epigraphy, the Ancient Egyptians would often write on papyrus, a plant grown along the Nile River. At first the words were not separated from other and there was no punctuation. Texts were written right to left, left to right. The technical term for that last type of writing is boustrophedon, a tablet might be defined as a physically robust writing medium, suitable for casual transport and writing. See also stylus, the instrument used to write on a tablet, clay tablets were flattened and mostly dry pieces of clay that could be easily carried, and impressed with a stylus. They were used as a medium, especially for writing in cuneiform, throughout the Bronze Age. Tablets were used by traders to record sales of such as bushels of grain
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History of literature
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Some recorded materials, such as compilations of data are not considered literature, and this article relates only to the evolution of the works defined above. Literature and writing, though connected, are not synonymous, scholars have often disagreed concerning when written record-keeping became more like literature than anything else, the definition is largely subjective. Moreover, given the significance of distance as a cultural isolator in earlier centuries, the historical development of literature did not occur at an even pace across the world. Much has been written, for example, about the destruction of the Library of Alexandria in the 1st century BC, the deliberate suppression of texts by organisations of either a spiritual or a temporal nature further shrouds the subject. Certain primary texts, however, may be isolated which have a role as literatures first stirrings. Many texts handed down by oral tradition over several centuries before they were fixed in form are difficult or impossible to date. The core of the Rigveda may date to the mid 2nd millennium BC, the Pentateuch is traditionally dated to the 15th century, although modern scholarship estimates its oldest part to date to the 10th century BC at the earliest. Homers Iliad and Odyssey date to the 8th century BC and mark the beginning of Classical Antiquity and they also stand in an oral tradition that stretches back to the late Bronze Age. The great Hindu epics were also transmitted orally, likely predating the Maurya period, the Classic of Poetry is the oldest existing collection of Chinese poetry, comprising 305 works by anonymous authors dating from the 11th to 7th centuries BC. The Chu Ci anthology is a volume of poems attributed to or considered to be inspired by Qu Yuans verse writing. Qu Yuan is the first author of verse in China to have his name associated to his work and is regarded as one of the most prominent figures of Romanticism in Chinese classical literature. The first great author on military tactics and strategy was Sun Tzu, among the earliest Chinese works of narrative history, Zuo Zhuan is a gem of classical Chinese prose. This work and the Shiji or Records of the Grand Historian, were regarded as the models by many generations of prose stylists in ancient China. The books that constitute the Hebrew Bible developed over roughly a millennium, the oldest texts seem to come from the eleventh or tenth centuries BCE, whilst most of the other texts are somewhat later. They are edited works, being collections of various sources intricately and carefully woven together, the Old Testament was compiled and edited by various men over a period of centuries, with many scholars concluding that the Hebrew canon was solidified by about the 3rd century BC. The works have been subject to various literary evaluations, friedrich Nietzsche wrote, “In the Jewish Old Testament, there are men, things and speeches in so grand a style that Greek and Indian literature have nothing to compare to it. One stands with awe and reverence before these tremendous remnants of what man once was, the taste for the Old Testament is a touchstone of greatness and smallness. ”Ancient Greek society placed considerable emphasis upon literature. Notable among later Greek poets was Sappho, who defined, in many ways, a playwright named Aeschylus changed Western literature forever when he introduced the ideas of dialogue and interacting characters to playwriting
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Sociology of literature
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The sociology of literature is a subfield of the sociology of culture. It studies the production of literature and its social implications. A notable example is Pierre Bourdieus 1992 Les Règles de LArt, Genèse et Structure du Champ Littéraire, translated by Susan Emanuel as Rules of Art, Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field. None of the fathers of sociology produced a detailed study of literature. Karl Marxs theory of ideology has been directed at literature by Pierre Macherey, Terry Eagleton, emile Durkheims view of sociology as the study of externally defined social facts was redirected towards literature by Robert Escarpit. In 1920 it was republished in book form and this strongly influenced the Frankfurt School. A second edition, published in 1962, was influential on French structuralism. The novel form is therefore organised around the hero in pursuit of problematic values within a problematic world. Here, Lukács argued that the early 19th century historical novels central achievement was to represent realistically the differences between pre-capitalist past and capitalist present. He went on to argue that the success of the 1848 revolutions led to the decline of the novel into decorative monumentalization. The key figures in the novel were thus those of the early 19th century. Founded in 1923, the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt developed a kind of critical sociology indebted to Marx, Weber. Leading Frankfurt School critics who worked on literature included Adorno, Walter Benjamin, adornos Notes to Literature, Benjamins The Origin of German Tragic Drama and Löwentahls Literature and the Image of Man were each influential studies in the sociology of literature. Löwenthal continued this work at the University of California, Berkeley, adornos Notes to Literature is a collection of essays, the most influential of which is probably On Lyric Poetry and Society. It argued that thought is a reaction against the commodification and reification of modern life, citing Goethe. Habermas succeeded Adorno to the Chair of Sociology and Philosophy at Frankfurt, habermass first major work, Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit was published in German in 1962, and in English translation as The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere in 1989. It attempted to explain the emergence of middle-class public opinion in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. These institutions sustained the early novel, newspaper and periodical press, Peter Bürger was Professor of French and Comparative Literature at the University of Bremen
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Renaissance
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The Renaissance was a period in European history, from the 14th to the 17th century, regarded as the cultural bridge between the Middle Ages and modern history. It started as a movement in Italy in the Late Medieval period and later spread to the rest of Europe. This new thinking became manifest in art, architecture, politics, science, Early examples were the development of perspective in oil painting and the recycled knowledge of how to make concrete. Although the invention of movable type sped the dissemination of ideas from the later 15th century. In politics, the Renaissance contributed to the development of the customs and conventions of diplomacy, the Renaissance began in Florence, in the 14th century. Other major centres were northern Italian city-states such as Venice, Genoa, Milan, Bologna, the word Renaissance, literally meaning Rebirth in French, first appeared in English in the 1830s. The word also occurs in Jules Michelets 1855 work, Histoire de France, the word Renaissance has also been extended to other historical and cultural movements, such as the Carolingian Renaissance and the Renaissance of the 12th century. The Renaissance was a movement that profoundly affected European intellectual life in the early modern period. Renaissance scholars employed the humanist method in study, and searched for realism, however, a subtle shift took place in the way that intellectuals approached religion that was reflected in many other areas of cultural life. In addition, many Greek Christian works, including the Greek New Testament, were back from Byzantium to Western Europe. Political philosophers, most famously Niccolò Machiavelli, sought to describe life as it really was. Others see more competition between artists and polymaths such as Brunelleschi, Ghiberti, Donatello, and Masaccio for artistic commissions as sparking the creativity of the Renaissance. Yet it remains much debated why the Renaissance began in Italy, accordingly, several theories have been put forward to explain its origins. During the Renaissance, money and art went hand in hand, Artists depended entirely on patrons while the patrons needed money to foster artistic talent. Wealth was brought to Italy in the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries by expanding trade into Asia, silver mining in Tyrol increased the flow of money. Luxuries from the Eastern world, brought home during the Crusades, increased the prosperity of Genoa, unlike with Latin texts, which had been preserved and studied in Western Europe since late antiquity, the study of ancient Greek texts was very limited in medieval Western Europe. One of the greatest achievements of Renaissance scholars was to bring this entire class of Greek cultural works back into Western Europe for the first time since late antiquity, Arab logicians had inherited Greek ideas after they had invaded and conquered Egypt and the Levant. Their translations and commentaries on these ideas worked their way through the Arab West into Spain and Sicily and this work of translation from Islamic culture, though largely unplanned and disorganized, constituted one of the greatest transmissions of ideas in history
20.
Giovanni Boccaccio
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Giovanni Boccaccio was an Italian writer, poet, correspondent of Petrarch, and an important Renaissance humanist. Boccaccio wrote a number of works, including The Decameron. The details of Boccaccios birth are uncertain and he was born in Florence or in a village near Certaldo where his family was from. He was the son of Florentine merchant Boccaccino di Chellino and an unknown woman, Boccaccios stepmother was called Margherita de Mardoli. His father worked for the Compagnia dei Bardi and, in the 1320s, married Margherita dei Mardoli, Boccaccio may have been tutored by Giovanni Mazzuoli and received from him an early introduction to the works of Dante. In 1326, his father was appointed head of a bank, Boccaccio was an apprentice at the bank but disliked the banking profession. He persuaded his father to let him study law at the Studium and he also pursued his interest in scientific and literary studies. His father introduced him to the Neapolitan nobility and the French-influenced court of Robert the Wise in the 1330s, at this time, he fell in love with a married daughter of the king, who is portrayed as Fiammetta in many of Boccaccios prose romances, including Il Filocolo. Acciaioli later became counselor to Queen Joanna I of Naples and, eventually and it seems that Boccaccio enjoyed law no more than banking, but his studies allowed him the opportunity to study widely and make good contacts with fellow scholars. His early influences included Paolo da Perugia, humanists Barbato da Sulmona and Giovanni Barrili, in Naples, Boccaccio began what he considered his true vocation of poetry. Works produced in this period include Il Filostrato and Teseida, The Filocolo, the period featured considerable formal innovation, including possibly the introduction of the Sicilian octave, where it influenced Petrarch. Boccaccio returned to Florence in early 1341, avoiding the plague of 1340 in that city and he had left Naples due to tensions between the Angevin king and Florence. His father had returned to Florence in 1338, where he had gone bankrupt, the pastoral piece Ninfale fiesolano probably dates from this time, also. In 1343, Boccaccios father remarried to Bice del Bostichi and his children by his first marriage had all died, but he had another son named Iacopo in 1344. In Florence, the overthrow of Walter of Brienne brought about the government of popolo minuto and it diminished the influence of the nobility and the wealthier merchant classes and assisted in the relative decline of Florence. The city was further in 1348 by the Black Death. From 1347, Boccaccio spent much time in Ravenna, seeking new patronage and, despite his claims and his stepmother died during the epidemic and his father was closely associated with the government efforts as Minister of Supply in the city. His father died in 1349 and Boccaccio was forced into an active role as head of the family
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The Decameron
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The Decameron, subtitled Prince Galehaut, is a collection of novellas by the 14th-century Italian author Giovanni Boccaccio. Boccaccio probably conceived the Decameron after the epidemic of 1348, the various tales of love in The Decameron range from the erotic to the tragic. Tales of wit, practical jokes, and life lessons contribute to the mosaic, in addition to its literary value and widespread influence, it provides a document of life at the time. Written in the vernacular of the Florentine language, it is considered a masterpiece of classical early Italian prose. The books primary title exemplifies Boccaccios fondness for Greek philology, Decameron combines two Greek words, δέκα, déka and ἡμέρα, hēméra, to form a term that means ten-day, ten days is the period in which the characters of the frame story tell their tales. Boccaccios subtitle, Prencipe Galeotto, refers to Galehaut, a king portrayed in the Lancelot-Grail who was sometimes called by the title haut prince. Galehaut was a friend of Lancelot and an enemy of King Arthur. When Galehaut learned that Lancelot loved Arthurs wife, Guinevere, he set aside his own ardor for Arthur in order to arrange a meeting between his friend and Guinevere, at this meeting the Queen first kisses Lancelot, and so begins their love affair. In Canto V of Inferno, Dante compares these fictional lovers with the real-life paramours Francesca da Rimini and Paolo Malatesta, in Infierno, Francesca and Paolo read of Lancelot and Guinevere, and the story impassions them to lovemaking. Dantes description of Galehauts munificence and savoir-faire amidst this intrigue impressed Boccaccio and he contrasts this life with that of the menfolk, who enjoy respite in sport, such as hunting, fishing, riding, and falconry. In Italy during the time of the Black Death, a group of seven young women, thus, by the end of the fortnight they have told 100 stories. Each of the ten characters is charged as King or Queen of the company for one of the ten days in turn. Only Dioneo, who tells the tenth tale each day, has the right to tell a tale on any topic he wishes. Many authors have argued that Dioneo expresses the views of Boccaccio himself, each day also includes a short introduction and conclusion to continue the frame of the tales by describing other daily activities besides story-telling. These frame tale interludes frequently include transcriptions of Italian folk songs, the interactions among tales in a day, or across days, as Boccaccio spins variations and reversals of previous material, forms a whole and not just a collection of stories. Throughout Decameron the mercantile ethic prevails and predominates, the commercial and urban values of quick wit, sophistication, and intelligence are treasured, while the vices of stupidity and dullness are cured, or punished. Beyond the unity provided by the narrative, Decameron provides a unity in philosophical outlook. Throughout runs the common theme of Lady Fortune, and how quickly one can rise
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Florence
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Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the Metropolitan City of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants, Florence was a centre of medieval European trade and finance and one of the wealthiest cities of the time. It is considered the birthplace of the Renaissance, and has called the Athens of the Middle Ages. A turbulent political history includes periods of rule by the powerful Medici family, from 1865 to 1871 the city was the capital of the recently established Kingdom of Italy. The Historic Centre of Florence attracts 13 million tourists each year and it was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1982. The city is noted for its culture, Renaissance art and architecture, the city also contains numerous museums and art galleries, such as the Uffizi Gallery and the Palazzo Pitti, and still exerts an influence in the fields of art, culture and politics. Due to Florences artistic and architectural heritage, it has been ranked by Forbes as one of the most beautiful cities in the world, in 2008, the city had the 17th highest average income in Italy. Florence originated as a Roman city, and later, after a period as a flourishing trading and banking medieval commune. According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, it was politically, economically, and culturally one of the most important cities in Europe, the language spoken in the city during the 14th century was, and still is, accepted as the Italian language. Starting from the late Middle Ages, Florentine money—in the form of the gold florin—financed the development of all over Europe, from Britain to Bruges, to Lyon. Florentine bankers financed the English kings during the Hundred Years War and they similarly financed the papacy, including the construction of their provisional capital of Avignon and, after their return to Rome, the reconstruction and Renaissance embellishment of Rome. Florence was home to the Medici, one of European historys most important noble families, Lorenzo de Medici was considered a political and cultural mastermind of Italy in the late 15th century. Two members of the family were popes in the early 16th century, Leo X, catherine de Medici married king Henry II of France and, after his death in 1559, reigned as regent in France. Marie de Medici married Henry IV of France and gave birth to the future king Louis XIII, the Medici reigned as Grand Dukes of Tuscany, starting with Cosimo I de Medici in 1569 and ending with the death of Gian Gastone de Medici in 1737. The Etruscans initially formed in 200 BC the small settlement of Fiesole and it was built in the style of an army camp with the main streets, the cardo and the decumanus, intersecting at the present Piazza della Repubblica. Situated along the Via Cassia, the route between Rome and the north, and within the fertile valley of the Arno, the settlement quickly became an important commercial centre. Peace returned under Lombard rule in the 6th century, Florence was conquered by Charlemagne in 774 and became part of the Duchy of Tuscany, with Lucca as capital. The population began to again and commerce prospered
23.
Marguerite de Navarre
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Marguerite de Navarre, also known as Marguerite of Angoulême and Margaret of Navarre, was the princess of France, Queen of Navarre, and Duchess of Alençon and Berry. She was married to Henry II of Navarre and her brother became King of France, as Francis I, and the two siblings were responsible for the celebrated intellectual and cultural court and salons of their day in France. Marguerite is the ancestress of the Bourbon kings of France, being the mother of Jeanne dAlbret, whose son, Henry of Navarre, succeeded as Henry IV of France, the first Bourbon king. As an author and a patron of humanists and reformers, she was a figure of the French Renaissance. Samuel Putnam called her The First Modern Woman, Marguerite was born in Angoulême on 11 April 1492, the eldest child of Louise of Savoy and Charles, Count of Angoulême. On 16 February 1488, her father, Charles, married eleven-year-old Louise, the daughter of Philip II of Savoy and Margaret of Bourbon, Louise was considered one of the most brilliant feminine minds in France and she named their first-born, Marguerite, after her own mother. Two years after Marguerites birth, the family moved from Angoulême to Cognac, where the Italian influence reigned supreme, Marguerites brother, Francis, later to be King Francis I of France, was born there on 12 September 1494. She had several half-siblings, from illegitimate relationships of her father, another half-sister, Souveraine, was born to Jeanne le Conte, also one of her fathers mistresses. Her father died when she was four, her one-year-old brother became heir presumptive to the throne of France. Thanks to her mother, who was nineteen when widowed, Marguerite was carefully tutored from her earliest childhood. The young princess was to be called Maecenas to the ones of her brothers kingdom. Never, she wrote, shall a man attain to the love of God who has not loved to perfection some creature in this world. When Marguerite was ten, Louise tried to marry her to the Prince of Wales, who would later become Henry VIII of England, perhaps the one real love in her life was Gaston de Foix, Duc de Nemours, nephew of King Louis XII. Gaston went to Italy, however, and died a hero at Ravenna, at the age of seventeen Marguerite was married to Charles IV of Alençon, aged twenty, by the decree of King Louis XII. With this decree, Marguerite was forced to marry a generally kind, had become the bride of a laggard and a dolt. She had been bartered to save the royal pride of Louis, there were no offspring from this marriage. After the death of Queen Claude, she took in her two nieces Madeleine and Marguerite, for whom she would continue to care during her second marriage, after the death of her first husband in 1525, Marguerite married Henry II of Navarre. Ferdinand II of Aragon had invaded the Kingdom of Navarre in 1512, and Henry ruled only Lower Navarre, the independent principality of Béarn, a Venetian ambassador of that time praised Marguerite as knowing all the secrets of diplomatic art, hence to be treated with deference and circumspection
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Realism (arts)
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Realism in the arts is the attempt to represent subject matter truthfully, without artificiality and avoiding artistic conventions, implausible, exotic and supernatural elements. Realism has been prevalent in the arts at many periods, and is in part a matter of technique and training. In the visual arts, illusionistic realism is the depiction of lifeforms, perspective. Realist works of art may emphasize the mundane, ugly or sordid, such as works of realism, regionalism. There have been various movements in the arts, such as the opera style of verismo, literary realism, theatrical realism. The realism art movement in painting began in France in the 1850s, the realist painters rejected Romanticism, which had come to dominate French literature and art, with roots in the late 18th century. Realism is the precise, detailed and accurate representation in art of the appearance of scenes. Realism in this sense is also called naturalism, mimesis or illusionism, realistic art was created in many periods, and it is in large part a matter of technique and training, and the avoidance of stylization. It becomes especially marked in European painting in the Early Netherlandish painting of Jan van Eyck, however such realism is often used to depict, for example, angels with wings, which were not things the artists had ever seen in real life. It is the choice and treatment of matter that defines Realism as a movement in painting. The development of increasingly accurate representation of the appearances of things has a long history in art. It includes elements such as the depiction of the anatomy of humans and animals, of perspective and effects of distance. Ancient Greek art is recognised as having made great progress in the representation of anatomy. Pliny the Elders famous story of birds pecking at grapes painted by Zeuxis in the 5th century BC may well be a legend, roman portraiture, when not under too much Greek influence, shows a greater commitment to a truthful depiction of its subjects. The art of Late Antiquity famously rejected illusionism for expressive force, scientific methods of representing perspective were developed in Italy and gradually spread across Europe, and accuracy in anatomy rediscovered under the influence of classical art. As in classical times, idealism remained the norm, intriguingly, having led the development of illusionic painting, still life was to be equally significant in its abandonment in Cubism. The depiction of ordinary, everyday subjects in art also has a history, though it was often squeezed into the edges of compositions. However these objects are at least largely there because they carry layers of complex significance, pieter Bruegel the Elder pioneered large panoramic scenes of peasant life
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Conflict (narrative)
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In works of narrative, conflict is the opposition main characters must face to achieve their goals. Traditionally, conflict is a literary element that creates tension. A narrative is not limited to a single conflict, while conflicts may not always resolve in narrative, the resolution of a conflict creates closure, which may or may not occur at a storys end. Conflict in literature refers to the different drives of the characters or forces involved, conflict may be internal or external—that is, it may occur within a characters mind or between a character and exterior forces. Conflict is most visible two or more characters, usually a protagonist and an antagonist/enemy/villain, but can occur in many different forms. A character may as easily find himself or herself in conflict with a force, such as an animal or a weather event. The literary purpose of conflict is to create tension in the story, there may be multiple points of conflict in a single story, as characters may have more than one desire or may struggle against more than one opposing force. When a conflict is resolved and the reader discovers which force or character succeeds, conflicts may resolve at any point in a story, particularly where more than one conflict exists, but stories do not always resolve every conflict. If a story ends without resolving the main or major conflict, open endings, which can serve to ask the reader to consider the conflict more personally, may not satisfy them, but obvious conflict resolution may also leave readers disappointed in the story. The basic types of conflict in fiction have been codified as man against man, man against nature. Although frequently cited, these three types of conflict are not universally accepted, ayn Rand, for instance, argued that man against nature is not a conflict because nature has no free will and thus can make no choices. Man against man conflict involves stories where characters are against each other. The conflict may be direct opposition, as in a gunfight or a robbery and this type of conflict is very common in traditional literature, fairy tales and myths. One example of the man against man conflict is the struggles between the protagonist and the antagonist stepfather in This Boys Life. Other examples include Dorothys struggles with the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Man against nature conflict is an external struggle positioning the hero against an animal or a force of nature, such as a storm or tornado or snow. The man against nature conflict is central to Ernest Hemingways The Old Man and the Sea and it is also common in adventure stories, including Robinson Crusoe. Wild not only takes its name from this conflict, but it is also an example, featuring Bear Grylls. With man against self conflict, the struggle is internal and this is a conflict that is usually associated with an internal conflict
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Animal Farm
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Animal Farm is an allegorical novella by George Orwell, first published in England on 17 August 1945. According to Orwell, the book reflects events leading up to the Russian Revolution of 1917, Orwell, a democratic socialist, was a critic of Joseph Stalin and hostile to Moscow-directed Stalinism, an attitude that was critically shaped by his experiences during the Spanish Civil War. The Soviet Union, he believed, had become a dictatorship, built upon a cult of personality. The original title was Animal Farm, A Fairy Story, U. S. publishers dropped the subtitle when it was published in 1946, other titular variations include subtitles like A Satire and A Contemporary Satire. Orwell suggested the title Union des républiques socialistes animales for the French translation, which abbreviates to URSA, the Latin word for bear and it also played on the French name of the Soviet Union, Union des républiques socialistes soviétiques. The manuscript was rejected by a number of British and American publishers, including one of Orwells own, Victor Gollancz. It became a commercial success when it did appear partly because international relations were transformed as the wartime alliance gave way to the Cold War. Time magazine chose the book as one of the 100 best English-language novels and it won a Retrospective Hugo Award in 1996, and is included in the Great Books of the Western World selection. When Major dies, two pigs, Snowball and Napoleon, assume command and consider it a duty to prepare for the Rebellion. The animals revolt and drive the drunken and irresponsible farmer Mr. Jones from the farm and they adopt the Seven Commandments of Animalism, the most important of which is, All animals are equal. Snowball teaches the animals to read and write, while Napoleon educates young puppies on the principles of Animalism, food is plentiful, and the farm runs smoothly. The pigs elevate themselves to positions of leadership and set aside special food items, some time later, several men attack Animal Farm. Jones and his men are making an attempt to recapture the farm, Snowball and the animals, who are hiding in ambush, defeat the men by launching a surprise attack as soon as they enter the farmyard. Snowballs popularity soars, and this event is proclaimed The Battle of the Cowshed and it is celebrated annually with the firing of a gun, on the anniversary of the Revolution. Napoleon and Snowball vie for pre-eminence, when Snowball announces his plans to modernize the farm by building a windmill, Napoleon has his dogs chase Snowball away and declares himself leader. Napoleon enacts changes to the structure of the farm, replacing meetings with a committee of pigs who will run the farm. Through a young pig named Squealer, Napoleon claims credit for the windmill idea, the animals work harder with the promise of easier lives with the windmill. When the animals find the windmill collapsed after a violent storm, Napoleon, once Snowball becomes a scapegoat, Napoleon begins to purge the farm with his dogs, killing animals he accuses of consorting with his old rival
27.
George Orwell
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Eric Arthur Blair, better known by the pen name George Orwell, was an English novelist, essayist, journalist, and critic. His work is marked by lucid prose, awareness of injustice, opposition to totalitarianism. Orwell wrote literary criticism, poetry, fiction, and polemical journalism and he is best known for the allegorical novella Animal Farm and the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. In 2008, The Times ranked him second on a list of The 50 greatest British writers since 1945, Eric Arthur Blair was born on 25 June 1903, in Motihari, Bengal Presidency, in British India. His grandfather, Thomas Richard Arthur Blair, was a clergyman, although the gentility passed down the generations, the prosperity did not, Eric Blair described his family as lower-upper-middle class. His father, Richard Walmesley Blair, worked in the Opium Department of the Indian Civil Service and his mother, Ida Mabel Blair, grew up in Moulmein, Burma, where her French father was involved in speculative ventures. Eric had two sisters, Marjorie, five years older, and Avril, five years younger, when Eric was one year old, his mother took him and his sister to England. His birthplace and ancestral house in Motihari has been declared a monument of historical importance. In 1904, Ida Blair settled with her children at Henley-on-Thames in Oxfordshire, Eric was brought up in the company of his mother and sisters, and apart from a brief visit in mid-1907, they did not see the husband and father Richard Blair until 1912. His mothers diary from 1905 describes a lively round of social activity, before the First World War, the family moved to Shiplake, Oxfordshire where Eric became friendly with the Buddicom family, especially their daughter Jacintha. When they first met, he was standing on his head in a field, on being asked why, he said, You are noticed more if you stand on your head than if you are right way up. Jacintha and Eric read and wrote poetry, and dreamed of becoming famous writers and he said that he might write a book in the style of H. G. Wellss A Modern Utopia. During this period, he enjoyed shooting, fishing and birdwatching with Jacinthas brother and sister. At the age of five, Eric was sent as a day-boy to a convent school in Henley-on-Thames and it was a Roman Catholic convent run by French Ursuline nuns, who had been exiled from France after religious education was banned in 1903. His mother wanted him to have a school education, but his family could not afford the fees. Ida Blairs brother Charles Limouzin recommended St Cyprians School, Eastbourne, Limouzin, who was a proficient golfer, knew of the school and its headmaster through the Royal Eastbourne Golf Club, where he won several competitions in 1903 and 1904. The headmaster undertook to help Blair to win a scholarship, in September 1911 Eric arrived at St Cyprians. He boarded at the school for the five years, returning home only for school holidays
28.
The War of the Worlds
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The War of the Worlds is a science fiction novel by English author H. G. Wells first serialised in 1897 in the UK by Pearsons Magazine and in the US by Cosmopolitan magazine. The novels first appearance in hardcover was in 1898 from publisher William Heinemann of London, written between 1895 and 1897, it is one of the earliest stories that detail a conflict between mankind and an extraterrestrial race. The novel is the narrative of both an unnamed protagonist in Surrey and of his younger brother in London as southern England is invaded by Martians. The novel is one of the most commented-on works in the science fiction canon, the plot has been related to invasion literature of the time. The novel has been interpreted as a commentary on evolutionary theory, British imperialism. At the time of publication, it was classified as a scientific romance and it has even influenced the work of scientists, notably Robert Goddard, who invented both the liquid fuelled rocket and multistage rocket, which resulted in the Apollo 11 moon landing 71 years later. The narrative opens in an observatory at Ottershaw where explosions are seen on the surface of planet Mars. Later a meteor lands on Horsell Common, near the unnamed narrators home in Woking, the narrator finds them at once vital, intense, inhuman, crippled and monstrous. They briefly emerge, have difficulty in coping with the Earths atmosphere, a human deputation approaches the cylinder with a white flag, but the Martians incinerate them and others nearby with a heat-ray before beginning to assemble their machinery. Military forces arrive that night to surround the common, including Maxim guns, the population of Woking and the surrounding villages are reassured by the presence of the military. A tense day begins, with anticipation of military action by the narrator. On the road during the height of the storm, he has his first terrifying sight of a fast-moving Martian fighting-machine, in panic he crashes the horse cart, barely escaping detection. He discovers the Martians have assembled towering three-legged fighting-machines, each armed with a heat-ray and a chemical weapon and these tripods have wiped out the army units positioned around the cylinder and attacked and destroyed most of Woking. The two try to escape via Byfleet just after dawn, but are separated at the Shepperton to Weybridge Ferry during a Martian afternoon attack on Shepperton and this gives the authorities precious hours to form a defence-line covering London. The brother encounters Mrs. Elphinstone and her younger sister-in-law, just in time to help fend off three men who are trying to rob them. Since Mrs. Elphinstones husband is missing, the three continue on together, after a terrifying struggle to cross a streaming mass of refugees on the road at Barnet, they head eastward. Two days later, at Chelmsford, their pony is confiscated for food by the local Committee of Public Supply and they press on to Tillingham and the sea. There they manage to buy passage to the Continent on a paddle steamer
29.
H. G. Wells
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Herbert George H. G. Wells was an English writer. He was prolific in many genres, including the novel, history, politics, social commentary, Wells is now best remembered for his science fiction novels and is called a father of science fiction, along with Jules Verne and Hugo Gernsback. His most notable science fiction works include The Time Machine, The Island of Doctor Moreau, The Invisible Man and he was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature four times. Wellss earliest specialised training was in biology, and his thinking on ethical matters took place in a specifically and fundamentally Darwinian context and he was also from an early date an outspoken socialist, often sympathising with pacifist views. His later works became increasingly political and didactic, and he wrote science fiction. A diabetic, in 1934, Wells co-founded the charity The Diabetic Association, Herbert George Wells was born at Atlas House,46 High Street in Bromley, Kent, on 21 September 1866. Called Bertie in the family, he was the fourth and last child of Joseph Wells and his wife, Sarah Neal. An inheritance had allowed the family to acquire a shop in which they sold china and sporting goods, although it failed to prosper, the stock was old and worn out, and the location was poor. Joseph Wells managed to earn an income, but little of it came from the shop. Payment for skilled bowlers and batsmen came from voluntary donations afterwards, a defining incident of young Wellss life was an accident in 1874 that left him bedridden with a broken leg. To pass the time he started reading books from the local library and he soon became devoted to the other worlds and lives to which books gave him access, they also stimulated his desire to write. Later that year he entered Thomas Morleys Commercial Academy, a school founded in 1849 following the bankruptcy of Morleys earlier school. The teaching was erratic, the curriculum mostly focused, Wells later said, Wells continued at Morleys Academy until 1880. In 1877, his father, Joseph Wells, fractured his thigh, the accident effectively put an end to Josephs career as a cricketer, and his subsequent earnings as a shopkeeper were not enough to compensate for the loss of the primary source of family income. No longer able to support financially, the family instead sought to place their sons as apprentices in various occupations. From 1880 to 1883, Wells had an apprenticeship as a draper at the Southsea Drapery Emporium. Wellss parents had a turbulent marriage, owing primarily to his mother being a Protestant, when his mother returned to work as a ladys maid, one of the conditions of work was that she would not be permitted to have living space for her husband and children. Thereafter, she and Joseph lived separate lives, though they never divorced and remained faithful to each other, as a consequence, Herberts personal troubles increased as he subsequently failed as a draper and also, later, as a chemists assistant
30.
Stefan Zweig
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Stefan Zweig was an Austrian novelist, playwright, journalist and biographer. At the height of his career, in the 1920s and 1930s. Zweig was born in Vienna, the son of Moritz Zweig, a wealthy Jewish textile manufacturer, and Ida Brettauer and he was related to the Czech writer Egon Hostovský, who described him as a very distant relative, some sources describe them as cousins. Zweig studied philosophy at the University of Vienna and in 1904 earned a degree with a thesis on The Philosophy of Hippolyte Taine. Religion did not play a role in his education. My mother and father were Jewish only through accident of birth, yet he did not renounce his Jewish faith and wrote repeatedly on Jews and Jewish themes, as in his story Buchmendel. Zweig believed in internationalism and in Europeanism, as The World of Yesterday, his autobiography, according to Amos Elon, Zweig called Herzls book Der Judenstaat an obtuse text, piece of nonsense. At the beginning of World War I, patriotic sentiment was widespread, Zweig served in the Archives of the Ministry of War and adopted a pacifist stand like his friend Romain Rolland, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature 1915. Zweig married Friderike Maria von Winternitz in 1920, they divorced in 1938, as Friderike Zweig she published a book on her former husband after his death. She later also published a book on Zweig. In the late summer of 1939, Zweig married his secretary Elisabet Charlotte Lotte Altmann at Bath, Zweigs secretary in Salzburg from November 1919 to March 1938 was Anna Meingast. In 1934, following Hitlers rise to power in Germany, Zweig left Austria for England, living first in London, then from 1939 in Bath. On August 22,1940, they moved again to Petrópolis, feeling more and more depressed by the growth of intolerance, authoritarianism, and Nazism, and feeling hopeless for the future for humanity, Zweig wrote a note about his feelings of desperation. Then, on February 23,1942, the Zweigs were found dead of an overdose in their house in the city of Petrópolis. He had been despairing at the future of Europe and its culture, I think it better to conclude in good time and in erect bearing a life in which intellectual labour meant the purest joy and personal freedom the highest good on Earth, he wrote. The Zweigs house in Brazil was later turned into a centre and is now known as Casa Stefan Zweig. Zweig was a prominent writer in the 1920s and 1930s, befriending Arthur Schnitzler and he was extremely popular in the United States, South America and Europe, and remains so in continental Europe, however, he was largely ignored by the British public. His fame in America had diminished until the 1990s, when began a effort on the part of several publishers to get Zweig back into print in English
31.
The Royal Game
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The Royal Game is a novella by Austrian author Stefan Zweig first published in 1941, just before the authors death by suicide. In some editions, the title is used for a collection also includes Amok, Burning Secret, Fear. This psychological conflict causes him to suffer a breakdown, after which he eventually awakens in a sanatorium. Being saved by a physician, who attests his insanity to keep him from being imprisoned again by the Nazis. After happening to be on the cruise liner as a group of chess enthusiasts. Mirko Czentovic was a peasant prodigy possessing no obvious redeeming qualities besides his gift for chess, Dr B helps the chess enthusiasts in managing to draw their game in an almost hopeless position. After this effort, they persuade him to play alone against Czentovic, in a stunning demonstration of his imaginative and combinational powers, Dr B sensationally beats the world champion. Czentovic immediately suggests a game to restore his honour. His greatest power turns out to be his greatest weakness, he devolves into rehearsing imagined matches against himself repeatedly and manically, czentovics deliberation and placidness drive Dr B to distraction and ultimately to insanity, culminating in an incorrect statement, after which Dr B awakens from his frenzy. This novella was the inspiration for the 1960 Gerd Oswald film Brainwashed, originally titled Die Schachnovelle, an opera based on the novel premiered at the Kiel Opera House on 18 May 2013. The music was by Cristóbal Halffter, and the libretto by Wolfgang Haendeler, the story was the basis of the production 64 Squares from the Rhum and Clay Theatre Company presented at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in August 2015. In this production the character B is played by three actors, both separately and together, assisted by a percussionist, elke Rehder, Remarks on The Royal Game by Stefan Zweig 1942–1944 An article from 2015 with pictures on the history of Schachnovelle. PushkinPress. com English editions of Stefan Zweigs novellas Legamus. eu Audiobook version of the novella
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