1.
Aristophanes
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Aristophanes, son of Philippus, of the deme Kydathenaion, was a comic playwright of ancient Athens. Eleven of his forty plays survive virtually complete and these, together with fragments of some of his other plays, provide the only real examples of a genre of comic drama known as Old Comedy, and are used to define it. Also known as the Father of Comedy and the Prince of Ancient Comedy and his second play, The Babylonians, was denounced by the demagogue Cleon as a slander against the Athenian polis. In my opinion, he says through the Chorus in that play, less is known about Aristophanes than about his plays. In fact, his plays are the source of information about him. It was conventional in Old Comedy for the Chorus to speak on behalf of the author during a called the parabasis. However, these facts relate almost entirely to his career as a dramatist, Aristophanes claimed to be writing for a clever and discerning audience, yet he also declared that other times would judge the audience according to its reception of his plays. He sometimes boasts of his originality as a dramatist yet his plays consistently espouse opposition to new influences in Athenian society. He caricatured leading figures in the arts, in politics, such caricatures seem to imply that Aristophanes was an old-fashioned conservative, yet that view of him leads to contradictions. It has been argued that Aristophanes produced plays mainly to entertain the audience, an elaborate series of lotteries, designed to prevent prejudice and corruption, reduced the voting judges at the City Dionysia to just five in number. These judges probably reflected the mood of the audiences yet there is uncertainty about the composition of those audiences. The theatres were certainly huge, with seating for at least 10000 at the Theatre of Dionysus, the conservative views expressed in the plays might therefore reflect the attitudes of the dominant group in an unrepresentative audience. The production process might also have influenced the views expressed in the plays, throughout most of Aristophanes career, the Chorus was essential to a plays success and it was recruited and funded by a choregus, a wealthy citizen appointed to the task by one of the archons. Thus the political conservatism of the plays may reflect the views of the wealthiest section of Athenian society, when Aristophanes first play The Banqueters was produced, Athens was an ambitious, imperial power and the Peloponnesian War was only in its fourth year. His plays often express pride in the achievement of the older generation yet they are not jingoistic, the plays are particularly scathing in criticism of war profiteers, among whom populists such as Cleon figure prominently. However it is whether he led or merely responded to changes in audience expectations. Aristophanes won second prize at the City Dionysia in 427 BC with his first play The Banqueters and he won first prize there with his next play, The Babylonians. Some influential citizens, notably Cleon, reviled the play as slander against the polis, Cleon also seems to have had no real power to limit or control Aristophanes, the caricatures of him continued up to and even beyond his death
2.
Plato
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Plato was a philosopher in Classical Greece and the founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. He is widely considered the most pivotal figure in the development of philosophy, unlike nearly all of his philosophical contemporaries, Platos entire work is believed to have survived intact for over 2,400 years. Along with his teacher, Socrates, and his most famous student, Aristotle, Plato laid the foundations of Western philosophy. Alfred North Whitehead once noted, the safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato. In addition to being a figure for Western science, philosophy. Friedrich Nietzsche, amongst other scholars, called Christianity, Platonism for the people, Plato was the innovator of the written dialogue and dialectic forms in philosophy, which originate with him. He was not the first thinker or writer to whom the word “philosopher” should be applied, few other authors in the history of Western philosophy approximate him in depth and range, perhaps only Aristotle, Aquinas and Kant would be generally agreed to be of the same rank. Due to a lack of surviving accounts, little is known about Platos early life, the philosopher came from one of the wealthiest and most politically active families in Athens. Ancient sources describe him as a bright though modest boy who excelled in his studies, the exact time and place of Platos birth are unknown, but it is certain that he belonged to an aristocratic and influential family. Based on ancient sources, most modern scholars believe that he was born in Athens or Aegina between 429 and 423 BCE. According to a tradition, reported by Diogenes Laertius, Ariston traced his descent from the king of Athens, Codrus. Platos mother was Perictione, whose family boasted of a relationship with the famous Athenian lawmaker, besides Plato himself, Ariston and Perictione had three other children, these were two sons, Adeimantus and Glaucon, and a daughter Potone, the mother of Speusippus. The brothers Adeimantus and Glaucon are mentioned in the Republic as sons of Ariston, and presumably brothers of Plato, but in a scenario in the Memorabilia, Xenophon confused the issue by presenting a Glaucon much younger than Plato. Then, at twenty-eight, Hermodorus says, went to Euclides in Megara, as Debra Nails argues, The text itself gives no reason to infer that Plato left immediately for Megara and implies the very opposite. Thus, Nails dates Platos birth to 424/423, another legend related that, when Plato was an infant, bees settled on his lips while he was sleeping, an augury of the sweetness of style in which he would discourse about philosophy. Ariston appears to have died in Platos childhood, although the dating of his death is difficult. Perictione then married Pyrilampes, her mothers brother, who had served many times as an ambassador to the Persian court and was a friend of Pericles, Pyrilampes had a son from a previous marriage, Demus, who was famous for his beauty. Perictione gave birth to Pyrilampes second son, Antiphon, the half-brother of Plato and these and other references suggest a considerable amount of family pride and enable us to reconstruct Platos family tree
3.
Thomas More
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Sir Thomas More, venerated by Roman Catholics as Saint Thomas More, was an English lawyer, social philosopher, author, statesman and noted Renaissance humanist. He was also a councillor to Henry VIII, and Lord High Chancellor of England from October 1529 to 16 May 1532 and he also wrote Utopia, published in 1516, about the political system of an imaginary ideal island nation. More opposed the Protestant Reformation, in particular the theology of Martin Luther, More also opposed the Kings separation from the Catholic Church, refusing to acknowledge Henry as Supreme Head of the Church of England and the annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. After refusing to take the Oath of Supremacy, he was convicted of treason, of his execution, he was reported to have said, I die the Kings good servant, but Gods first. Pope Pius XI canonised More in 1935 as a martyr, Pope John Paul II in 2000 declared him the heavenly Patron of Statesmen and Politicians. Since 1980, the Church of England has remembered More liturgically as a Reformation martyr, the Soviet Union honoured him for the Communist attitude toward property rights expressed in Utopia. From 1490 to 1492, More served John Morton, the Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Chancellor of England, Morton enthusiastically supported the New Learning, and thought highly of the young More. Believing that More had great potential, Morton nominated him for a place at the University of Oxford, More began his studies at Oxford in 1492, and received a classical education. Studying under Thomas Linacre and William Grocyn, he became proficient in both Latin and Greek, More left Oxford after only two years—at his fathers insistence—to begin legal training in London at New Inn, one of the Inns of Chancery. In 1496, More became a student at Lincolns Inn, one of the Inns of Court, where he remained until 1502, according to his friend, theologian Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam, More once seriously contemplated abandoning his legal career to become a monk. Between 1503 and 1504 More lived near the Carthusian monastery outside the walls of London, although he deeply admired their piety, More ultimately decided to remain a layman, standing for election to Parliament in 1504 and marrying the following year. In spite of his choice to pursue a career, More continued ascetic practices for the rest of his life, such as wearing a hair shirt next to his skin. A tradition of the Third Order of Saint Francis honours More as a member of that Order on their calendar of saints, More married Jane Colt in 1505. She was five years younger than her husband, quiet and good-natured, Erasmus reported that More wanted to give his young wife a better education than she had previously received at home, and tutored her in music and literature. The couple had four children before Jane died in 1511, Margaret, Elizabeth, Cicely, going against friends advice and common custom, within thirty days More had married one of the many eligible women among his wide circle of friends. He certainly expected a mother to care of his little children and, as the view of his time considered marriage as an economic union, he chose a rich widow. More was not viewed as being in haste to remarry for the gratification of sexual pleasure, as Alice was older than he, and their marriage was possibly not consummated. The speed of the marriage was so unusual that More had to get a dispensation of the banns, Alice More lacked Janes docility, Mores friend Andrew Ammonius derided Alice as a hook-nosed harpy
4.
Jan Kochanowski
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Jan Kochanowski was a Polish Renaissance poet who established poetic patterns that would become integral to the Polish literary language. He is commonly regarded as the greatest Polish poet before Adam Mickiewicz, Kochanowski was born at Sycyna, near Radom, Poland. He was the brother of Andrzej Kochanowski who would also become a poet. Little is known of his early education, at fourteen, fluent in Latin, he was sent to the Kraków Academy. After graduating in 1547 at age seventeen, he attended the University of Königsberg, in Ducal Prussia, at Padua, Kochanowski came in contact with the great humanist scholar Francesco Robortello. Kochanowski closed his fifteen-year period of studies and travels with a visit to France. In 1559 Kochanowski returned to Poland for good, where he remained active as a humanist and he spent the next fifteen years close to the court of King Sigismund II Augustus, serving for a time as royal secretary. In 1574, following the decampment of Polands recently elected King Henry of Valois, in 1575 he married Dorota Podlodowska, with whom he had seven children. Kochanowski is sometimes referred to in Polish as Jan z Czarnolasu and it was there that he wrote his most memorable works, including The Dismissal of the Greek Envoys and the Laments. Kochanowski died, probably of an attack, in Lublin on 22 August 1584. Kochanowski never ceased to write in Latin, however, his achievement was the creation of Polish-language verse forms that made him a classic for his contemporaries. His first major masterpiece was Odprawa posłów greckich and this was a blank-verse tragedy that recounted an incident leading up to the Trojan War. It was the first tragedy written in Polish, and its theme of the responsibilities of statesmanship continues to resonate to this day, the play was performed at the wedding of Jan Zamoyski and Krystyna Radziwiłł at Ujazdów Castle in Warsaw on 12 January 1578. It is a series of nineteen elegies upon the death of his beloved two-and-a-half-year-old daughter Urszula and it has been translated into English in 1920 by Dorothea Prall, and in 1995 by Stanisław Barańczak and Seamus Heaney. Other well-known poems by Kochanowski are Proporzec albo hołd pruski, the satiric poem Zgoda published in 1564, and his translation of the Psalms is highly regarded. He also wrote in Latin, examples being Lyricorum libellus, Elegiarum libri quatuor and he greatly enriched Polish poetry by naturalizing foreign poetic forms, which he knew how to imbue with a national spirit. His writings were published collectively for the first time at Cracow in 1584–90, but the so-called jubilee publication, many of his poems were translated into German by H. Nitschmann. Jan Kochanowski, Laments, translated by Stanisław Barańczak and Seamus Heaney, New York, Farrar, Straus, david J. Welsh, Jan Kochanowski, New York, Twayne Publishers,1974, ISBN 0-8057-2490-7
5.
Miguel de Cervantes
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Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, was a Spanish writer who is highly regarded as perhaps the greatest writer in the Spanish language and one of the worlds pre-eminent novelists. His major work, Don Quixote, considered to be the first modern novel, is a classic of Western literature and his influence on the Spanish language has been so great that the language is often called la lengua de Cervantes. He has also been dubbed El príncipe de los ingenios, in 1569, in forced exile from Castile, Cervantes moved to Rome, where he worked as chamber assistant of a cardinal. He then enlisted as a soldier in a Spanish Navy infantry regiment and continued his life until 1575. In 1585, Cervantes published a novel named La Galatea. He worked as a agent for the Spanish Armada. In 1597, discrepancies in his accounts for three years previous landed him in the Crown Jail of Seville, in 1605, Cervantes was in Valladolid when the immediate success of the first part of his Don Quixote, published in Madrid, signaled his return to the literary world. In 1607, he settled in Madrid, where he lived and worked until his death and his last work, Los trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda, was published posthumously in 1617. It is assumed that Cervantes was born in Alcalá de Henares, the probable date of his birth was determined from records in the church register, given the tradition of naming a child after the feast day of his birth. He was baptized in Alcalá de Henares on 9 October 1547 at the church of Santa María la Mayor. Witnesses, Baltasar Vázquez, Sexton, and I, who baptised him, Miguel at birth was not surnamed Cervantes Saavedra. He adopted the Saavedra name as an adult, by Spanish naming conventions his second surname was that of his mother, Cortinas. His paternal grandfather, Juan de Cervantes, was a lawyer who held several administrative positions. His uncle was mayor of Cabra for many years and his mother, Leonor de Cortinas, was a native of Arganda del Rey and the third daughter of a nobleman, who lost his fortune and had to sell his daughter into matrimony in 1543. This led to an awkward marriage and several affairs by Rodrigo. Leonor died on 19 October 1593, little is known of Cervantes early years. It seems he spent much of his moving from town to town with his family, eventually enrolling in The Imperial School. During this time, he met a young barmaid named Josefina Catalina de Parez, the couple fell madly in love and plotted to run away together
6.
Jonathan Swift
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Jonathan Swift was an Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer, poet and cleric who became Dean of St Patricks Cathedral, Dublin. Swift is remembered for such as A Tale of a Tub, An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity, Gullivers Travels. He is regarded by the Encyclopædia Britannica as the foremost prose satirist in the English language and he originally published all of his works under pseudonyms – such as Lemuel Gulliver, Isaac Bickerstaff, Drapiers Letters as MB Drapier – or anonymously. He is also known for being a master of two styles of satire, the Horatian and Juvenalian styles and his deadpan, ironic writing style, particularly in A Modest Proposal, has led to such satire being subsequently termed Swiftian. Jonathan Swift was born on 30 November 1667 in Dublin, Ireland and he was the second child and only son of Jonathan Swift and his wife Abigail Erick of Frisby on the Wreake. Swifts father died in Dublin about seven months before he was born, Swifts family had several interesting literary connections. His grandmother Elizabeth Swift was the niece of Sir Erasmus Dryden, the same grandmothers aunt Katherine Dryden was a first cousin of Elizabeth, wife of Sir Walter Raleigh. His great-great grandmother Margaret Swift was the sister of Francis Godwin and his uncle Thomas Swift married a daughter of poet and playwright Sir William Davenant, a godson of William Shakespeare. Swifts benefactor and uncle Godwin Swift took primary responsibility for the young man and he attended Dublin University in 1682, financed by Godwins son Willoughby, from which he received his B. A. in 1686 and developed his friendship with William Congreve. Temple was an English diplomat who arranged the Triple Alliance of 1668 and he had retired from public service to his country estate to tend his gardens and write his memoirs. Gaining his employers confidence, Swift was often trusted with matters of great importance, within three years of their acquaintance, Temple had introduced his secretary to William III and sent him to London to urge the King to consent to a bill for triennial Parliaments. Swift took up his residence at Moor Park where he met Esther Johnson, then eight years old, Swift was her tutor and mentor, giving her the nickname Stella, and the two maintained a close but ambiguous relationship for the rest of Esthers life. In 1690, Swift left Temple for Ireland because of his health, the illness consisted of fits of vertigo or giddiness, now known to be Ménières disease, and it continued to plague him throughout his life. During this second stay with Temple, Swift received his M. A. from Hart Hall, then he left Moor Park, apparently despairing of gaining a better position through Temples patronage, to become an ordained priest in the Established Church of Ireland. He was appointed to the prebend of Kilroot in the Diocese of Connor in 1694, with his parish located at Kilroot, Swift appears to have been miserable in his new position, being isolated in a small, remote community far from the centres of power and influence. While at Kilroot, however, he may well have become involved with Jane Waring, whom he called Varina. A letter from him survives, offering to remain if she would marry him and promising to leave and she presumably refused, because Swift left his post and returned to England and Temples service at Moor Park in 1696, and he remained there until Temples death. There he was employed in helping to prepare Temples memoirs and correspondence for publication, during this time, Swift wrote The Battle of the Books, a satire responding to critics of Temples Essay upon Ancient and Modern Learning, though Battle was not published until 1704
7.
Voltaire
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Voltaire was a versatile writer, producing works in almost every literary form, including plays, poems, novels, essays, and historical and scientific works. He wrote more than 21,000 letters and over two books and pamphlets. He was an advocate of civil liberties, despite the risk this placed him in under the strict censorship laws of the time. As a satirical polemicist, he made use of his works to criticize intolerance, religious dogma. Some speculation surrounds Voltaires date of birth, because he claimed he was born on 20 February 1694 as the son of a nobleman. Two of his older brothers—Armand-François and Robert—died in infancy and his brother, Armand. Nicknamed Zozo by his family, Voltaire was baptized on 22 November 1694, with François de Castagnère, abbé de Châteauneuf, and Marie Daumard, the wife of his mothers cousin, standing as godparents. He was educated by the Jesuits at the Collège Louis-le-Grand, where he was taught Latin, theology, and rhetoric, later in life he became fluent in Italian, Spanish, and English. By the time he left school, Voltaire had decided he wanted to be a writer, against the wishes of his father, Voltaire, pretending to work in Paris as an assistant to a notary, spent much of his time writing poetry. When his father out, he sent Voltaire to study law. Nevertheless, he continued to write, producing essays and historical studies, Voltaires wit made him popular among some of the aristocratic families with whom he mixed. In 1713, his father obtained a job for him as a secretary to the new French ambassador in the Netherlands, the marquis de Châteauneuf, at The Hague, Voltaire fell in love with a French Protestant refugee named Catherine Olympe Dunoyer. Their scandalous affair was discovered by de Châteauneuf and Voltaire was forced to return to France by the end of the year, Most of Voltaires early life revolved around Paris. From early on, Voltaire had trouble with the authorities for critiques of the government and these activities were to result in two imprisonments and a temporary exile to England. One satirical verse, in which Voltaire accused the Régent of incest with his own daughter, the Comédie-Française had agreed in January 1717 to stage his debut play, Œdipe, and it opened in mid-November 1718, seven months after his release. Its immediate critical and financial success established his reputation, both the Régent and King George I of Great Britain presented Voltaire with medals as a mark of their appreciation. He mainly argued for tolerance and freedom of thought. He campaigned to eradicate priestly and aristo-monarchical authority, and supported a constitutional monarchy that protects peoples rights, the author adopted the name Voltaire in 1718, following his incarceration at the Bastille
8.
Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz
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Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz was a Polish poet, playwright and statesman. He was an advocate for the Constitution of 3 May 1791. Niemcewicz, scion of a moderately well-to-do Polish noble family, graduated from the Warsaw Corps of Cadets and he subsequently served as aide to Adam Kazimierz Czartoryski and visited France, England and Italy. Niemcewicz served as a deputy to the Great Sejm of 1788–92 and was an member of the Patriotic Party that pushed through adoption of the historic Constitution of 3 May 1791. He was subsequently a founder of the Friends of the Constitution, after the victory of the Targowica Confederation in 1792 and the consequent overthrow of the May 3 Constitution, Niemcewicz, along with other Patriotic Party members, emigrated to Germany. During the Kościuszko Uprising, Niemcewicz served as aide to Tadeusz Kościuszko, both were captured by the Russians at the Battle of Maciejowice and imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress at St. Petersburg along with Niemcewiczs aide-de-camp named Kuźniewski. Niemcewicz was upset when Kościuszko decamped for Europe without giving him any notice, after Napoleons 1807 invasion of Poland, Niemcewicz returned to Warsaw and was made secretary of the senate. After the Congress of Vienna, he was secretary of state, on 11 May 1830 he unveiled a new landmark before the Staszic Palace, the seat of the Society of Friends of Science in Warsaw — a monument to Nicolaus Copernicus sculpted by Bertel Thorvaldsen. During the failed November Uprising of 1830–31, Niemcewicz was a member of the insurrectionary Polish government. In the final months of the Uprising the poet went on a mission to London and he remained in exile, first in Britain, then in France. He died in 1841 in Paris, France, aged 83, as a writer, Niemcewicz tried many styles of composition. His political comedy, The Return of the Deputy, enjoyed great acclaim and his novel, John of Tenczyn, written in the style of Sir Walter Scott, gives a vigorous picture of old Poland. He also wrote a History of the Reign of Sigismund III, Niemcewiczs 1817 pamphlet Rok 3333 czyli sen niesłychany, first published posthumously in 1858, describes a Poland transformed into a sinister Judeo-Polonia. The pamphlet has been described as the first Polish work to develop on a scale the concept of an organized Jewish conspiracy directly threatening the existing social structure. His collected works were published in 47 volumes at Leipzig in 1838-40, attribution This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain, Chisholm, Hugh, ed. Niemcewicz, Julian Ursin. Marek Żukow-Karczewski, Niemcewicz mniej znany, Życie Literackie, No
9.
Harriet Beecher Stowe
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Harriet Elisabeth Beecher Stowe was an American abolitionist and author. She came from the Beecher family, a religious family. It depicts the life for African Americans under slavery. It reached millions as a novel and play, and became influential in the United States and it energized anti-slavery forces in the American North, while provoking widespread anger in the South. She wrote 30 books, including novels, three memoirs, and collections of articles and letters. She was influential for both her writings and her public stands on issues of the day. Harriet Elisabeth Beecher was born in Litchfield, Connecticut, on June 14,1811 and she was the seventh of 13 children born to outspoken Calvinist preacher Lyman Beecher and Roxana, a deeply religious woman who died when Stowe was only five years old. Roxanas maternal grandfather was General Andrew Ward of the Revolutionary War, among her classmates was Sarah P. Willis, who later wrote under the pseudonym Fanny Fern. In 1832, at the age of 21, Harriet Beecher moved to Cincinnati, Ohio to join her father, who had become the president of Lane Theological Seminary. There, she joined the Semi-Colon Club, a literary salon and social club whose members included the Beecher sisters, Caroline Lee Hentz, Salmon P. Chase, Emily Blackwell. Areas of the city had been wrecked in the Cincinnati riots of 1829, Beecher met a number of African Americans who had suffered in those attacks, and their experience contributed to her later writing about slavery. Riots took place again in 1836 and 1841, driven also by native-born anti-abolitionists and it was in the literary club that she met Calvin Ellis Stowe, a widower who was a professor at the seminary. The two married on January 6,1836 and he was an ardent critic of slavery, and the Stowes supported the Underground Railroad, temporarily housing several fugitive slaves in their home. Most slaves continued north to freedom in Canada. The Stowes had seven children together, including twin daughters, in 1850, Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Law, prohibiting assistance to fugitives and strengthening sanctions even in free states. At the time, Stowe had moved with her family to Brunswick, Maine and their home near the campus is protected as a national historic resource in her honor. Stowe claimed to have a vision of a slave during a communion service at the college chapel. However, what more likely allowed her to empathize with slaves was the loss of her eighteen-month-old son and she even stated the following, Having experienced losing someone so close to me, I can sympathize with all the poor, powerless slaves at the unjust auctions
10.
Charles Dickens
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Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the worlds best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era and his works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime, and by the twentieth century critics and scholars had recognised him as a literary genius. His novels and short stories enjoy lasting popularity, born in Portsmouth, Dickens left school to work in a factory when his father was incarcerated in a debtors prison. Dickenss literary success began with the 1836 serial publication of The Pickwick Papers, within a few years he had become an international literary celebrity, famous for his humour, satire, and keen observation of character and society. His novels, most published in monthly or weekly instalments, pioneered the publication of narrative fiction. The instalment format allowed Dickens to evaluate his audiences reaction, and he modified his plot. For example, when his wifes chiropodist expressed distress at the way Miss Mowcher in David Copperfield seemed to reflect her disabilities and his plots were carefully constructed, and he often wove elements from topical events into his narratives. Masses of the poor chipped in hapennies to have each new monthly episode read to them, opening up. Dickens was regarded as the literary colossus of his age and his 1843 novella, A Christmas Carol, remains popular and continues to inspire adaptations in every artistic genre. Oliver Twist and Great Expectations are also adapted, and, like many of his novels. His 1859 novel, A Tale of Two Cities, set in London, Dickens has been praised by fellow writers—from Leo Tolstoy to George Orwell and G. K. Chesterton—for his realism, comedy, prose style, unique characterisations, and social criticism. On the other hand, Oscar Wilde, Henry James, and Virginia Woolf complained of a lack of depth, loose writing. The term Dickensian is used to something that is reminiscent of Dickens and his writings. Charles John Huffam Dickens was born on 7 February 1812, at 1 Mile End Terrace, Landport in Portsea Island and his father was a clerk in the Navy Pay Office and was temporarily stationed in the district. He asked Christopher Huffam, rigger to His Majestys Navy, gentleman, Huffam is thought to be the inspiration for Paul Dombey, the owner of a shipping company in Dickenss eponymous Dombey and Son. In January 1815 John Dickens was called back to London, when Charles was four, they relocated to Sheerness, and thence to Chatham, Kent, where he spent his formative years until the age of 11. His early life seems to have been idyllic, though he himself a very small. Charles spent time outdoors but also read voraciously, including the novels of Tobias Smollett and Henry Fielding, as well as Robinson Crusoe
11.
Ivan Turgenev
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Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev was a Russian novelist, short story writer, and playwright. Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev was born into a family of Russian land-owners in Oryol, Russia and his father, Sergei Nikolaevich Turgenev, a colonel in the Russian cavalry, was a chronic philanderer. Ivans mother, Varvara Petrovna Lutovinova, was a wealthy heiress, ivans father died when Ivan was sixteen, leaving him and his brother Nicolas to be brought up by their abusive mother. Ivans childhood was a one, in constant fear of his mother who beat him often. From 1838 until 1841 he studied philosophy, particularly Hegel, and he returned to Saint Petersburg to complete his masters examination. Turgenev was impressed with German society and returned believing that Russia could best improve itself by incorporating ideas from the Age of Enlightenment. Like many of his contemporaries, he was particularly opposed to serfdom. In 1841, Turgenev started his career in Russian civil service, when Turgenev was a child, a family serf had read to him verses from the Rossiad of Mikhail Kheraskov, a celebrated poet of the 18th century. Turgenevs early attempts in literature, poems, and sketches gave indications of genius and were spoken of by Vissarion Belinsky. Turgenev never married, but he had affairs with his familys serfs, one of which resulted in the birth of his illegitimate daughter. He was tall and broad-shouldered, but was timid, restrained, when Turgenev was 19, while traveling on a steamboat in Germany, the boat caught fire and Turgenev reacted in a cowardly manner. Rumors circulated in Russia and followed him for his entire career and his closest literary friend was Gustave Flaubert, with whom he shared similar social and aesthetic ideas. Both rejected extremist right and left views, and carried a nonjudgmental, although rather pessimistic. His relations with Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoyevsky were often strained, Turgenev, unlike Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, lacked religious motives in his writings, representing the more social aspect to the reform movement. He was considered to be an agnostic, Tolstoy, more than Dostoyevsky, at first anyway, rather despised Turgenev. While traveling together in Paris, Tolstoy wrote in his diary and his rocky friendship with Tolstoy in 1861 wrought such animosity that Tolstoy challenged Turgenev to a duel, afterwards apologizing. The two did not speak for 17 years, but never broke family ties, Dostoyevsky parodies Turgenev in his novel The Devils through the character of the vain novelist Karmazinov, who is anxious to ingratiate himself with the radical youth. Turgenev occasionally visited England, and in 1879 the honorary degree of Doctor of Civil Law was conferred upon him by the University of Oxford, Turgenev died from spinal tumor at Bougival, near Paris, on September 3,1883
12.
Leo Tolstoy
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Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy, usually referred to in English as Leo Tolstoy, was a Russian writer who is regarded as one of the greatest authors of all time. Born to an aristocratic Russian family in 1828, he is best known for the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, often cited as pinnacles of realist fiction. He first achieved acclaim in his twenties with his semi-autobiographical trilogy, Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth. Tolstoys fiction includes dozens of stories and several novellas such as The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Family Happiness. He also wrote plays and numerous philosophical essays, in the 1870s Tolstoy experienced a profound moral crisis, followed by what he regarded as an equally profound spiritual awakening, as outlined in his non-fiction work A Confession. His literal interpretation of the teachings of Jesus, centering on the Sermon on the Mount, caused him to become a fervent Christian anarchist and pacifist. Tolstoy also became an advocate of Georgism, the economic philosophy of Henry George. Tolstoy was born at Yasnaya Polyana, a family estate 12 kilometres southwest of Tula, the Tolstoys were a well-known family of old Russian nobility, tracing their ancestry to a mythical Lithuanian noble Indris. He was the fourth of five children of Count Nikolai Ilyich Tolstoy, a veteran of the Patriotic War of 1812, Tolstoys parents died when he was young, so he and his siblings were brought up by relatives. In 1844, he began studying law and oriental languages at Kazan University and his teachers described him as both unable and unwilling to learn. Tolstoy left the university in the middle of his studies, returned to Yasnaya Polyana and then spent much of his time in Moscow, in 1851, after running up heavy gambling debts, he went with his older brother to the Caucasus and joined the army. It was about time that he started writing. Others who followed the path were Alexander Herzen, Mikhail Bakunin. During his 1857 visit, Tolstoy witnessed an execution in Paris. Writing in a letter to his friend Vasily Botkin, The truth is that the State is a conspiracy designed not only to exploit, henceforth, I shall never serve any government anywhere. Tolstoys concept of non-violence or Ahimsa was bolstered when he read a German version of the Tirukkural and he later instilled the concept in Mahatma Gandhi through his A Letter to a Hindu when young Gandhi corresponded with him seeking his advice. His European trip in 1860–61 shaped both his political and literary development when he met Victor Hugo, whose literary talents Tolstoy praised after reading Hugos newly finished Les Misérables, the similar evocation of battle scenes in Hugos novel and Tolstoys War and Peace indicates this influence. Tolstoys political philosophy was influenced by a March 1861 visit to French anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
13.
Edward Bellamy
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Edward Bellamy was an American author and socialist, most famous for his utopian novel, Looking Backward, a tale set in the distant future of the year 2000. Edward Bellamy was born in Chicopee, Massachusetts and his father was Rufus King Bellamy, a Baptist minister and a descendant of Joseph Bellamy. His mother, Maria Louisa Putnam Bellamy, was a Calvinist and she was the daughter of a Baptist minister named Benjamin Putnam, a man forced to withdraw from the ministry in Salem, Massachusetts, following objections to his becoming a Freemason. Bellamy attended public school at Chicopee Falls before leaving for Union College of Schenectady, New York, upon leaving school, Bellamy made his way to Europe for a year, spending extensive time in Germany. Bellamy briefly studied law but abandoned that field without ever having practiced as a lawyer, in this capacity Bellamy briefly served on the staff of the New York Post before returning to his native Massachusetts to take a position at the Springfield Union. At the age of 25, Bellamy developed tuberculosis, the disease that would kill him. He suffered with its effects throughout his adult life, in an effort to regain his health, Bellamy spent a year in the Hawaiian Islands. Returning to the United States, Bellamy decided to abandon the daily grind of journalism in favor of literary work, Bellamy married Emma Augusta Sanderson in 1882. Bellamys early novels, including Six to One, Dr. Heidenhoffs Process, a turn to utopian science fiction with Looking Backward, 2000–1887, published in January 1888, captured the public imagination and catapulted Bellamy to literary fame. The publisher of the book could scarcely keep up with demand and he also collected several short stories in 1898 and published The Duke of Stockbridge, a Romance of Shays Rebellion in 1900. By 1891 it was reported that no fewer than 162 Nationalist Clubs were in existence, in an 1888 letter to literary critic William Dean Howells, Bellamy wrote, Every sensible man will admit there is a big deal in a name, especially in making first impressions. In the radicalness of the opinions I have expressed, I may seem to out-socialize the socialists, no such party can or ought to succeed that is not wholly and enthusiastically American and patriotic in spirit and suggestions. This phase of Bellamys life came to an end in 1894, with the key activists of the Nationalist Clubs largely absorbed into the apparatus of the Peoples Party, Bellamy abandoned politics for a return to literature. He set to work on a sequel to Looking Backward titled Equality, the book saw print in 1897 and would prove to be Bellamys final creation. Edward Bellamy died of tuberculosis in Chicopee Falls, Massachusetts and he was 48 years old at the time of his death. His lifelong home in Chicopee Falls, built by his father, was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1971, Bellamy was the cousin of Francis Bellamy, famous for creation of the Pledge of Allegiance. Bellamy Road, a road in Toronto, is named for the author. Miss Ludingtons Sister, A Romance of Immorality, Boston, James R. Osgoode and Co.1885
14.
Joseph Conrad
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Joseph Conrad was a Polish-British writer regarded as one of the greatest novelists to write in the English language. He joined the British merchant marine in 1878, and was granted British nationality in 1886, though he did not speak English fluently until his twenties, he was a master prose stylist who brought a non-English sensibility into English literature. He wrote stories and novels, many with a nautical setting, Conrad is considered an early modernist, though his works still contain elements of 19th-century realism. Many films have adapted from, or inspired by, Conrads works. Joseph Conrad was born on 3 December 1857 in Berdychiv, in what is now Ukraine and at the time of his birth the Russian Empire and he was the only child of Apollo Korzeniowski and his wife Ewa Bobrowska. His father was a writer, translator, political activist, Conrad was christened Józef Teodor Konrad after his maternal grandfather Józef, his paternal grandfather Teodor, and the heroes of two poems by Adam Mickiewicz, Dziady and Konrad Wallenrod. He was subsequently known to his family as Konrad, rather than Józef, Polish literature, particularly patriotic literature, was held in high esteem by the areas Polish population. The Korzeniowski family played a significant role in Polish attempts to regain independence, Conrads paternal grandfather served under Prince Józef Poniatowski during Napoleons Russian campaign and formed his own cavalry squadron during the November 1830 Uprising. Conrads subsequent refusal to follow in Apollos footsteps, and his choice of exile over resistance, were a source of guilt for Conrad. Because of the attempts at farming and his political activism. In May 1861 they moved to Warsaw, where Apollo joined the resistance against the Russian Empire and this led to his imprisonment in Pavilion X of the Warsaw Citadel. Conrad would write, n the courtyard of this Citadel – characteristically for our nation – my childhood memories begin, on 9 May 1862 Apollo and his family were exiled to Vologda,500 kilometres north of Moscow and known for its bad climate. In January 1863 Apollos sentence was commuted, and the family was sent to Chernihiv in northeast Ukraine, however, on 18 April 1865 Ewa died of tuberculosis. Apollo did his best to home-school Conrad, most of all, though, he read Polish Romantic poetry. Half a century later he explained that The Polishness in my works comes from Mickiewicz and my father read Pan Tadeusz aloud to me and made me read it aloud. I used to prefer Konrad Wallenrod Grażyna, in December 1867, Apollo took his son to the Austrian-held part of Poland, which for two years had been enjoying considerable internal freedom and a degree of self-government. After sojourns in Lwów and several localities, on 20 February 1869 they moved to Kraków. A few months later, on 23 May 1869, Apollo Korzeniowski died, like Conrads mother, Apollo had been gravely ill with tuberculosis
15.
John Steinbeck
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John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr. was an American author of 27 books, including 16 novels, six non-fiction books, and five collections of short stories. He is widely known for the comic novels Tortilla Flat and Cannery Row, the multi-generation epic East of Eden, the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Grapes of Wrath is considered Steinbecks masterpiece and part of the American literary canon. In the first 75 years after it was published, it sold 14 million copies, the winner of the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature, he has been called a giant of American letters. His works are widely read abroad and many of his works are considered classics of Western literature, most of Steinbecks work is set in southern and central California, particularly in the Salinas Valley and the California Coast Ranges region. His works frequently explored the themes of fate and injustice, especially as applied to downtrodden or everyman protagonists, Steinbeck was born on February 27,1902, in Salinas, California. He was of German, English, and Irish descent, johann Adolf Großsteinbeck, Steinbecks paternal grandfather, shortened the family name to Steinbeck when he immigrated to the United States. The family farm in Heiligenhaus, Mettmann, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, is still named Großsteinbeck and his father, John Ernst Steinbeck, served as Monterey County treasurer. Johns mother, Olive Hamilton, a school teacher, shared Steinbecks passion for reading and writing. The Steinbecks were members of the Episcopal Church, although Steinbeck later became agnostic, Steinbeck lived in a small rural town, no more than a frontier settlement, set in some of the worlds most fertile land. He spent his summers working on ranches and later with migrant workers on Spreckels sugar beet farms. There he learned of the aspects of the migrant life and the darker side of human nature. He explored his surroundings, walking across local forests, fields, while working at Spreckels Sugar Company, he sometimes worked in their laboratory, which gave him time to write. He had considerable mechanical aptitude and fondness for repairing things he owned, Steinbeck graduated from Salinas High School in 1919 and went on to study English Literature at Stanford University near Palo Alto, leaving, without a degree, in 1925. He travelled to New York City where he took odd jobs while trying to write, when he failed to publish his work, he returned to California and worked in 1928 as a tour guide and caretaker at Lake Tahoe, where he met Carol Henning, his first wife. They married in January 1930 in Los Angeles, where, with friends, the elder Steinbecks gave John free housing, paper for his manuscripts, and from 1928, loans that allowed him to write without looking for work. When those sources failed, Steinbeck and his wife accepted welfare, whatever food they had, they shared with their friends. Carol became the model for Mary Talbot in Steinbecks novel Cannery Row, in 1930, Steinbeck met the marine biologist Ed Ricketts, who became a close friend and mentor to Steinbeck during the following decade, teaching him a great deal about philosophy and biology. Ricketts, usually quiet, yet likable, with an inner self-sufficiency
16.
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
17.
Political criticism
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Political criticism is criticism that is specific of or relevant to politics, including policies, politicians, political parties, and types of government. There has been controversy over the relevance and importance of political criticism in civilizations, advocates argue that political discussion creates and promotes the variety of opinions necessary for a true democracy. The American constitution is often pointed to as support for the belief, critics of this philosophy argue that the general public lacks the resources and capability to conceive opinions that are educated enough to be taken seriously. There are many methods used throughout history of promoting political opinions, some of the most common include the following, Throughout history one of the most influential methods of promoting political opinions has been literary. It is from this correlation between books and politics that the phrase, the pen is mightier than the sword, derives, since their development in this past century, both television and films have often had far-reaching political effects throughout the world. Influential films and television events include Countdown with Keith Olbermann, Citizen Kane, the works of Walt Disney, like literature, a movie or television event has the capacity to have emotional impact on its viewers, making it an invaluable tool for politics. Political cartoons are infamous for their ability to promote political views through satirical means, any bias in these mediums alters peoples impressions of current events into different understandings and opinions than those that may have been chosen with more accurate information. With the recent invention of the Internet, political criticism has been extended to anyone with a connection to the World Wide Web. The many means of exchanging ideas, including blogs and internet forums, has extended the political debate to anyone that cares to contribute and this ability and speed that which ideas can flow has literally changed the way that political parties stay connected to constituents
18.
Politics
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Politics is the process of making decisions applying to all members of each group. More narrowly, it refers to achieving and exercising positions of governance — organized control over a human community, furthermore, politics is the study or practice of the distribution of power and resources within a given community as well as the interrelationship between communities. It is very often said that politics is about power, a political system is a framework which defines acceptable political methods within a given society. History of political thought can be traced back to antiquity, with seminal works such as Platos Republic, Aristotles Politics. Formal Politics refers to the operation of a system of government and publicly defined institutions. Political parties, public policy or discussions about war and foreign affairs would fall under the category of Formal Politics, many people view formal politics as something outside of themselves, but that can still affect their daily lives. Semi-formal Politics is Politics in government associations such as neighborhood associations, informal Politics is understood as forming alliances, exercising power and protecting and advancing particular ideas or goals. Generally, this includes anything affecting ones daily life, such as the way an office or household is managed, informal Politics is typically understood as everyday politics, hence the idea that politics is everywhere. The word comes from the same Greek word from which the title of Aristotles book Politics also derives, the book title was rendered in Early Modern English in the mid-15th century as Polettiques, it became politics in Modern English. The history of politics is reflected in the origin, development, the origin of the state is to be found in the development of the art of warfare. Historically speaking, all communities of the modern type owe their existence to successful warfare. Kings, emperors and other types of monarchs in many countries including China, of the institutions that ruled states, that of kingship stood at the forefront until the French Revolution put an end to the divine right of kings. Nevertheless, the monarchy is among the political institutions, dating as early as 2100 BC in Sumeria to the 21st century AD British Monarchy. Kingship becomes an institution through the institution of Hereditary monarchy, the king often, even in absolute monarchies, ruled his kingdom with the aid of an elite group of advisors, a council without which he could not maintain power. As these advisors and others outside the monarchy negotiated for power, constitutional monarchies emerged, long before the council became a bulwark of democracy, it rendered invaluable aid to the institution of kingship by, Preserving the institution of kingship through heredity. Preserving the traditions of the social order, being able to withstand criticism as an impersonal authority. Being able to manage a greater deal of knowledge and action than an individual such as the king. The greatest of the subordinates, the earls and dukes in England and Scotland
19.
Fiction
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Fiction is the classification for any story or similar work derived from imagination—in other words, not based strictly on history or fact. Fiction does not refer to a mode or genre, unless used in its narrowest sense to mean a literary narrative. Instead, the context of fiction is generally open to interpretation, characters and events within a fictional work may even be openly set in their own context entirely separate from the known universe, a fictional universe. Science fiction, for example, predicts or supposes technologies that are not realities at the time of the works creation, for example, Jules Vernes novel From the Earth to the Moon was published in 1865 and only in 1969 did astronaut Neil Armstrong first land on the moon. Historical fiction places imaginary characters into real historical events, in the early historical novel Waverley, Sir Walter Scotts fictional character Edward Waverley meets a figure from history, Bonnie Prince Charlie, and takes part in the Battle of Prestonpans. Some works of fiction are slightly or greatly re-imagined based on some originally true story, often, even when the author claims the fictional story is basically true, there may be artificial additions and subtractions from the true story to make it more interesting. One such example would be Tim OBriens The Things They Carried, creators of fantasy sometimes introduce entire imaginary creatures or beings such as dragons and fairies. In terms of the separation between fiction and non-fiction, the lines are now commonly understood as blurred, showing more overlap than mutual exclusion. Even fiction usually has elements of, or grounding in, truth, also, infinite fictional possibilities themselves signal the impossibility of fully knowing reality, provocatively demonstrating that there is no criterion to measure constructs of reality. The Internet has had a impact on the creation and distribution of fiction. Also, digital libraries such as Project Gutenberg make public domain texts more readily available, the combination of inexpensive home computers, the Internet and the creativity of its users has also led to new forms of fiction, such as interactive computer games or computer-generated comics. Countless forums for fan fiction can be online, where loyal followers of specific fictional realms create and distribute derivative stories. Types of literary fiction in prose, Short story, A work of at least 2,000 words, the boundary between a long short story and a novella is vague. Novella, A work of at least 17,500 words, joseph Conrads Heart of Darkness is an example of a novella. Novel, A work of 50,000 words or more, cartoonist Character Fiction writing Legend Mythology Non-fiction Pseudohistory Eco, Umberto 2009. On the ontology of fictional characters, A semiotic approach
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Social novel
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It is also referred to as the sociological novel. While early examples are found in 18th century England, social novels have been written throughout Europe, however, whereas Inchbald laid responsibility for social problems with the depravity and corruption of individuals, Godwin, in Caleb Williams, saw societys corruption as insurmountable. In England during the 1830s and 1840s the social novel arose out of the social and political upheavals which followed the Reform Act of 1832 and these works were directed at the middle class to help create sympathy and promote change. It is also referred to as the condition of England novel, the Chartist movement was a working-class political reformist movement that sought universal male suffrage and other parliamentary reforms. Chartism failed as a movement, however, five of the Six Points of Chartism would become a reality within a century of the groups formation. A significant early example of genre is Sybil, or The Two Nations. Published in the year,1845, as Friedrich Engelss The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844. Disraeli was interested in dealing with the conditions in which the majority of Englands working classes lived. The book is a roman à thèse, a novel with a thesis, disraelis interest in this subject stemmed from his interest in Chartist movement. It also gives an insight into the Chartist campaign with which Kingsley was involved in the 1840s, shirley Charlotte Brontës second published novel after Jane Eyre is also a social novel. Dickens was a critic of the poverty and social stratification of Victorian society. In a New York address, he expressed his belief that, Virtue shows quite as well in rags and patches as she does in purple, Charles Dickenss Hard Times is set in a small Midlands industrial town. It particularly criticizes the effect of Utilitarianism on the lives of the classes in cities. John Ruskin declared Hard Times to be his favourite Dickens work due to its exploration of important social questions, walter Allen characterised Hard Times as being an unsurpassed critique of industrial society, though later superseded by works of D. H. Lawrence. Karl Marx asserted that Dickens issued to the more political and social truths than have been uttered by all the professional politicians. For in reality his target is not so much society as human nature, arguably, Victor Hugos 1862 work Les Misérables was the most significant social protest novel of the 19th Century in Europe. His work touches upon most of the political and social issues, both Hugo and Zola were politically engaged, and suffered exile due to their political positions. Russian author Leo Tolstoy championed reform for his own country, particularly in education, Tolstoy did not consider his most famous work, War and Peace to be a novel
21.
Proletarian literature
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Proletarian literature refers here to the literature created by working-class writers mainly for the class-conscious proletariat. This different emphasis may reflect a difference between Russian, American and other traditions of writing, with that of Britain. The British tradition was not especially inspired by the Communist Party, but had its roots in the Chartist movement, the proletariat are citizens of the working class. The proletarian novel is a subgenre of the novel, written by workers mainly for other workers and it overlaps and sometimes is synonymous with the working-class novel, socialist novel, social problem novel, propaganda or thesis novel, and socialist realism novel. The proletarian novel may comment on events, systems and theories. Proletarian literature is created especially by communist, socialist and anarchist authors and it is about the lives of poor, and the period 1930 to 1945 in particular produced many such novels. However, there were works before and after these dates, in Britain the term working class literature, novel etc. is more generally used. The intention of the writers of literature is to lift the workers from the slums. As such it is a form of political fiction, the most important American working-class writers gathered in the First American Writers Congress of 1935. The League of American Writers was backed by the Communist Party USA, in the United States, Mike Gold, author of Jews Without Money, was the first to promote proletarian literature in Max Eastmans magazine The Liberator and later in The New Masses. The Communist party newspaper, The Daily Worker also published literature, as did numerous other magazines, including The Anvil, edited by Jack Conroy, Blast. Other examples of American proletarian writing include B, Writers like John Steinbeck, Theodore Dreiser, and John Dos Passos, who wrote about the working class, but who came from more well-to-do backgrounds, are not included here. An important movement In the first years of the Russian Revolution and this was something quite different from the later, traditional and realist proletarian novel of the Stalin years. In the 1930s Socialist realism became the predominant trend in Russia and its leading figure was Maxim Gorky, who had laid the foundations of this style with his works The Mother and his play The Enemies. Gorky described the lives of people in the lowest strata and on the margins of society, revealing their hardships, humiliations, and brutalization. However, he did not come from a family and neither did another prominent writer in the early years after the Russian Revolution of 1917. However, Nikolay Ostrovsky is an important writer, of the early Soviet era and his novel How the Steel Was Tempered has been among the most successful works of Russian literature, with tens of millions of copies printed in many languages around the world. The book is an autobiography of Ostrovskys life, who had a difficult working-class childhood and became a Komsomol member in July 1919
22.
Republic (Plato)
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The Republic is a Socratic dialogue, written by Plato around 380 BCE, concerning justice, the order and character of the just city-state and the just man. It is Platos best-known work, and has proven to be one of the worlds most influential works of philosophy and political theory, both intellectually and historically. In the books dialogue, Socrates discusses the meaning of justice and whether or not the just man is happier than the unjust man with various Athenians and they consider the natures of existing regimes and then propose a series of different, hypothetical cities in comparison. This culminates in the discussion of Kallipolis, a hypothetical city-state ruled by a philosopher king and they also discuss the theory of forms, the immortality of the soul, and the role of the philosopher and that of poetry in society. The dialogues may have taken place during the Peloponnesian War, while visiting the Piraeus with Glaucon, Polemarchus asks Socrates to join him for a celebration. Cephalus, Polemarchus, and Thrasymachus are then asked their definitions of justice by Socrates. Cephalus defines justice as giving what is owed, Polemarchus says justice is the art which gives good to friends and evil to enemies. Thrasymachus proclaims justice is nothing else than the interest of the stronger, Socrates overturns their definitions and says that it is your advantage to be just and disadvantage to be unjust. The first book ends in aporia concerning its essence, Socrates believes he has answered Thrasymachus and is done with the discussion of justice. Socratess young companions, Glaucon and Adeimantus, continue the argument of Thrasymachus for the sake of furthering the discussion. Glaucon would like Socrates to prove that justice is not only desirable, but that it belongs to the highest class of desirable things, Socrates suggests that they look for justice in a city rather than in an individual man. After attributing the origin of society to the not being self-sufficient and having many needs which he cannot supply himself. Socrates first describes the state but Glaucon asks him to describe a city of pigs. He then goes on to describe the city, which he calls a fevered state. This requires a class to defend and attack on its account. This begins a discussion concerning the type of education that ought to be given to these guardians in their early years and they conclude that stories that ascribe evil to the gods are untrue and should not be taught. Socrates and his companions Adeimantus and Glaucon conclude their discussion concerning education, Socrates breaks the educational system into two. They suggest that guardians should be educated in these four virtues, wisdom, courage and they also suggest that the second part of the guardians education should be in gymnastics
23.
Philosophy
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Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. The term was coined by Pythagoras. Philosophical methods include questioning, critical discussion, rational argument and systematic presentation, classic philosophical questions include, Is it possible to know anything and to prove it. However, philosophers might also pose more practical and concrete questions such as, is it better to be just or unjust. Historically, philosophy encompassed any body of knowledge, from the time of Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle to the 19th century, natural philosophy encompassed astronomy, medicine and physics. For example, Newtons 1687 Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy later became classified as a book of physics, in the 19th century, the growth of modern research universities led academic philosophy and other disciplines to professionalize and specialize. In the modern era, some investigations that were part of philosophy became separate academic disciplines, including psychology, sociology. Other investigations closely related to art, science, politics, or other pursuits remained part of philosophy, for example, is beauty objective or subjective. Are there many scientific methods or just one, is political utopia a hopeful dream or hopeless fantasy. Major sub-fields of academic philosophy include metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, aesthetics, political philosophy, logic, philosophy of science, since the 20th century, professional philosophers contribute to society primarily as professors, researchers and writers. Traditionally, the term referred to any body of knowledge. In this sense, philosophy is related to religion, mathematics, natural science, education. This division is not obsolete but has changed, Natural philosophy has split into the various natural sciences, especially astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology and cosmology. Moral philosophy has birthed the social sciences, but still includes value theory, metaphysical philosophy has birthed formal sciences such as logic, mathematics and philosophy of science, but still includes epistemology, cosmology and others. Many philosophical debates that began in ancient times are still debated today, colin McGinn and others claim that no philosophical progress has occurred during that interval. Chalmers and others, by contrast, see progress in philosophy similar to that in science, in one general sense, philosophy is associated with wisdom, intellectual culture and a search for knowledge. In that sense, all cultures and literate societies ask philosophical questions such as how are we to live, a broad and impartial conception of philosophy then, finds a reasoned inquiry into such matters as reality, morality and life in all world civilizations. Socrates was an influential philosopher, who insisted that he possessed no wisdom but was a pursuer of wisdom
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Political philosophy
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In a vernacular sense, the term political philosophy often refers to a general view, or specific ethic, political belief or attitude, about politics, synonymous to the term political ideology. Chinese political philosophy dates back to the Spring and Autumn period, Chinese political philosophy was developed as a response to the social and political breakdown of the country characteristic of the Spring and Autumn period and the Warring States period. The major philosophies during the period, Confucianism, Legalism, Mohism, Agrarianism and Taoism, philosophers such as Confucius, Mencius, and Mozi, focused on political unity and political stability as the basis of their political philosophies. Confucianism advocated a hierarchical, meritocratic government based on empathy, loyalty, Legalism advocated a highly authoritarian government based on draconian punishments and laws. Mohism advocated a communal, decentralized government centered on frugality and ascetism, the Agrarians advocated a peasant utopian communalism and egalitarianism. Legalism was the dominant political philosophy of the Qin Dynasty, but was replaced by State Confucianism in the Han Dynasty, prior to Chinas adoption of communism, State Confucianism remained the dominant political philosophy of China up to the 20th century. Western political philosophy originates in the philosophy of ancient Greece, where political philosophy dates back to at least Plato, ancient Greece was dominated by city-states, which experimented with various forms of political organization, grouped by Plato into four categories, timocracy, tyranny, democracy and oligarchy. One of the first, extremely important classical works of philosophy is Platos Republic. Roman political philosophy was influenced by the Stoics and the Roman statesman Cicero, Indian political philosophy evolved in ancient times and demarcated a clear distinction between nation and state religion and state. The constitutions of Hindu states evolved over time and were based on political and legal treatises, the institutions of state were broadly divided into governance, administration, defense, law and order. Mantranga, the governing body of these states, consisted of the King, Prime Minister, Commander in chief of army. The Prime Minister headed the committee of ministers along with head of executive, chanakya, 4th century BC Indian political philosopher. Another influential extant Indian treatise on philosophy is the Sukra Neeti. An example of a code of law in ancient India is the Manusmṛti or Laws of Manu, the early Christian philosophy of Augustine of Hippo was heavily influenced by Plato. Augustine also preached that one was not a member of his or her city, augustines City of God is an influential work of this period that attacked the thesis, held by many Christian Romans, that the Christian view could be realized on Earth. Thomas Aquinas meticulously dealt with the varieties of law, according to Aquinas, there are four kinds of law, Eternal law Divine positive law Natural law Human law Aquinas never discusses the nature or categorization of canon law. There is scholarly debate surrounding the place of law within the Thomistic jurisprudential framework. Aquinas was an influential thinker in the Natural Law tradition
25.
Justice
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Justice is the legal or philosophical theory by which fairness is administered. The concept of justice differs in every culture, an early theory of justice was set out by the Ancient Greek philosopher Plato in his work The Republic. Advocates of divine command theory argue that justice issues from God, in the 17th century, theorists like John Locke argued for the theory of natural law. Thinkers in the social contract tradition argued that justice is derived from the agreement of everyone concerned. In the 19th century, utilitarian thinkers including John Stuart Mill argued that justice is what has the best consequences, Theories of distributive justice concern what is distributed, between whom they are to be distributed, and what is the proper distribution. Egalitarians argued that justice can only exist within the coordinates of equality, John Rawls used a social contract argument to show that justice, and especially distributive justice, is a form of fairness. Property rights theorists take a view of distributive justice and argue that property rights-based justice maximizes the overall wealth of an economic system. Theories of retributive justice are concerned with punishment for wrongdoing, restorative justice is an approach to justice that focuses on restoring what is good, and necessarily focuses on the needs of victims and offenders. Understandings of justice differ in culture, as cultures are usually dependent upon a shared history. Each cultures ethics create values which influence the notion of justice, although there can be found some justice principles that are one and the same in all or most of the cultures, these are insufficient to create a unitary justice apprehension. In his dialogue Republic, Plato uses Socrates to argue for justice that covers both the just person and the just City State, Justice is a proper, harmonious relationship between the warring parts of the person or city. Hence, Platos definition of justice is that justice is the having and doing of what is ones own, a just man is a man in just the right place, doing his best and giving the precise equivalent of what he has received. This applies both at the level and at the universal level. A persons soul has three parts – reason, spirit and desire, similarly, a city has three parts – Socrates uses the parable of the chariot to illustrate his point, a chariot works as a whole because the two horses power is directed by the charioteer. Lovers of wisdom – philosophers, in one sense of the term – should rule because only they understand what is good, if one is ill, one goes to a medic rather than a farmer, because the medic is expert in the subject of health. Similarly, one should trust ones city to an expert in the subject of the good, not to a politician who tries to gain power by giving people what they want. For Socrates, the way the ship will reach its destination – the good – is if the navigator takes charge. Advocates of divine command theory argue that justice, and indeed the whole of morality, is the command of God
26.
City-state
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A city-state is a sovereign state that consists of a city and its dependent territories. A great deal of consensus exists that the term applies to Singapore, Monaco. A number of small states share similar characteristics, and therefore are sometimes also cited as modern city-states. Occasionally, other states with high population densities, such as San Marino, are also cited. Several non-sovereign cities enjoy a degree of autonomy, and are sometimes considered city-states. Hong Kong and Macau, along with independent members of the United Arab Emirates, most notably Dubai, scholars have classed the Viking colonial cities in medieval Ireland, most importantly Dublin, as city-states. In Cyprus, the Phoenician settlement of Kition was a city-state that existed from around 800 BC until the end of the 4th century BC. The success of regional units coexisting as autonomous actors in loose geographical and cultural unity, as in Italy and Greece. However, such small political entities often survived only for short periods because they lacked the resources to defend themselves against incursions by larger states, thus they inevitably gave way to larger organisations of society, including the empire and the nation-state. In the history of Mainland Southeast Asia, aristocratic groups, Buddhist leaders, the system existed until the 19th century when colonization by European powers, and Thailands resulted in the adoption of the modern concept of statehood. In the Holy Roman Empire the Free Imperial Cities enjoyed a considerable autonomy, some, like the three Hanseatic cities of Bremen, Hamburg and Lübeck, pooled their economic relations with foreign powers and were able to wield considerable diplomatic clout. Under Habsburg rule the city of Fiume had the status of a Corpus separatum, a later city-state, though lacking sovereignty, was West Berlin, being a state legally not belonging to any other state, but ruled by the Western Allies. They allowed – notwithstanding their overlordship as occupant powers – its internal organisation as one state simultaneously being a city, though West Berlin maintained close ties to the West German Federal Republic of Germany, it was legally never part of it. But the idea of leaving the United States proved too radical even in the turmoil of 1861 and was poorly received, the war, and especially conscription, was nevertheless often unpopular in the city, sparking the deadly New York Draft Riots. The neighboring City of Brooklyn, in contrast, was staunchly Unionist, the Free City of Danzig was a semi-autonomous city-state that existed between 1920 and 1939, consisting of the Baltic Sea port of Danzig and nearly 200 towns in the surrounding areas. It was created on 15 November 1920 under the terms of Article 100 of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles after the end of World War I. Its territory of 28 km2 comprised the city of Fiume and rural areas to its north, with a corridor to its west connecting it to Italy, the Shanghai International Settlement was an international zone with its own legal system, postal service, and currency. The Klaipėda Region or Memel Territory was defined by the Treaty of Versailles in 1920 when it was put under the administration of the Council of Ambassadors
27.
Utopia (book)
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Utopia is a work of fiction and political philosophy by Thomas More published in 1516 in Latin. The book is a frame narrative primarily depicting an island society and its religious. Many aspects of Mores description of Utopia are reminiscent of life in monasteries, the title De optimo rei publicae deque nova insula Utopia literally translates, Of a republics best state and of the new island Utopia. It is variously rendered as any of the following, The original name was even longer, Libellus vere aureus, nec minus salutaris quam festivus, de optimo rei publicae statu deque nova insula Utopia. This translates, A truly golden little book, no less beneficial than entertaining, of a republics best state and of the new island Utopia. Utopia is derived from the Greek prefix ou-, meaning not, in early modern English, Utopia was spelled Utopie, which is today rendered Utopy in some editions. A common misunderstanding has that Utopia is derived from eu-, good, in English, Utopia is pronounced exactly as Eutopia. This is something that More himself addresses in an addendum to his book Wherfore not Utopie, but rather rightely my name is Eutopie, More chose these letters, which are communications between actual people, to further the plausibility of his fictional land. In the same spirit, these also include a specimen of the Utopian alphabet. The letters also explain the lack of travel to Utopia, during the first mention of the land. The first book tells of the traveller Raphael Hythlodaeus, to whom More is introduced in Antwerp, and it explores the subject of how best to counsel a prince. The first discussions with Raphael allow him to some of the modern ills affecting Europe such as the tendency of kings to start wars. He also criticises the use of execution to punish theft, saying thieves might as well murder whom they rob, to remove witnesses, if the punishment is going to be the same. More tries to convince Raphael that he could find a job in a royal court, advising monarchs. Raphael sees himself in the tradition of Plato, he knows that for good governance, Utopia is placed in the New World and More links Raphaels travels in with Amerigo Vespuccis real life voyages of discovery. He suggests that Raphael is one of the 24 men Vespucci, in his Four Voyages of 1507, says he left for six months at Cabo Frio, Raphael then travels further and finds the island of Utopia, where he spends five years observing the customs of the natives. According to More, the island of Utopia is The island was originally a peninsula, each city is divided into four equal parts. The capital city, Amaurot, is located directly in the middle of the crescent island, each city has 6000 households, consisting of between 10 and 16 adults
28.
Gulliver's Travels
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Gullivers Travels, whose full title is Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. It is Swifts best known work, and a classic of English literature. He himself claimed that he wrote Gullivers Travels to vex the world rather than divert it, the book became popular as soon as it was published. John Gay wrote in a 1726 letter to Swift that It is universally read,4 May 1699 The travel begins with a short preamble in which Lemuel Gulliver gives a brief outline of his life and history before his voyages. After giving assurances of his behavior, he is given a residence in Lilliput. He is also given permission by the King of Lilliput to go around the city on condition that he must not harm their subjects, at first, the Lilliputians are hospitable to Gulliver, but they are also wary of the threat that his size poses to them. The Lilliputians reveal themselves to be a people who put emphasis on trivial matters. For example, which end of an egg a person becomes the basis of a deep political rift within that nation. They are a people who revel in displays of authority and performances of power, Gulliver assists the Lilliputians to subdue their neighbors the Blefuscudians by stealing their fleet. However, he refuses to reduce the nation of Blefuscu to a province of Lilliput, displeasing the King. Gulliver is charged with treason for, among other crimes, making water in the capital though he was putting out a fire and he is convicted and sentenced to be blinded. With the assistance of a friend, a considerable person at court. Here, he spots and retrieves an abandoned boat and sails out to be rescued by a passing ship,20 June 1702 –3 June 1706 He soon sets out again. The grass of that land is as tall as a tree and he is then found by a farmer who was about 72 ft. tall, judging from Gulliver estimating a mans step being 10 yards. He brings Gulliver home and the farmers daughter Glumdalclitch cares for Gulliver, the giant-sized farmer treats him as a curiosity and exhibits him for money. After a while the constant shows make Gulliver sick, and the farmer sells him to the queen of the realm, Glumdalclitch is taken into the Queen of Brobdingnags service to take care of the tiny man. Between small adventures such as fighting giant wasps and being carried to the roof by a monkey, the King is not happy with Gullivers accounts of Europe, especially upon learning of the use of guns and cannons. On a trip to the seaside, his traveling box is seized by a giant eagle which drops Gulliver,5 August 1706 –16 April 1710 Setting out again, Gullivers ship is attacked by pirates and he is marooned close to a desolate rocky island near India
29.
Candide
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Candide, ou lOptimisme is a French satire first published in 1759 by Voltaire, a philosopher of the Age of Enlightenment. The novella has been translated, with English versions titled Candide, or, All for the Best, Candide, or, The Optimist. It begins with a man, Candide, who is living a sheltered life in an Edenic paradise. The work describes the abrupt cessation of this lifestyle, followed by Candides slow, Candide is characterised by its sarcastic tone as well as by its erratic, fantastical and fast-moving plot. Still, the events discussed are often based on historical happenings, such as the Seven Years War, as philosophers of Voltaires day contended with the problem of evil, so too does Candide in this short novel, albeit more directly and humorously. Voltaire ridicules religion, theologians, governments, armies, philosophies, as expected by Voltaire, Candide has enjoyed both great success and great scandal. Immediately after its publication, the book was widely banned because it contained religious blasphemy, political sedition. However, with its wit and insightful portrayal of the human condition. Today, Candide is recognized as Voltaires magnum opus and is listed as part of the Western canon. The British poet and literary critic Martin Seymour-Smith listed Candide as one of the 100 most influential books ever written, both of the latter catastrophes are frequently referred to in Candide and are cited by scholars as reasons for its composition. The 1755 Lisbon earthquake, tsunami, and resulting fires of All Saints Day, had a influence on theologians of the day and on Voltaire. The earthquake had a large effect on the contemporary doctrine of optimism. Optimism is founded on the theodicy of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz that says all is for the best because God is a benevolent deity and this concept is often put into the form, all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds. Philosophers had trouble fitting the horrors of this earthquake into the optimist world view, Voltaire actively rejected Leibnizian optimism after the natural disaster, convinced that if this were the best possible world, it should surely be better than it is. In both Candide and Poème sur le désastre de Lisbonne, Voltaire attacks this optimist belief, immediately after the earthquake, unreliable rumours circulated around Europe, sometimes overestimating the severity of the event. Ira Wade, an expert on Voltaire and Candide, has analysed which sources Voltaire might have referenced in learning of the event. Wade speculates that Voltaires primary source for information on the Lisbon earthquake was the 1755 work Relation historique du Tremblement de Terre survenu à Lisbonne by Ange Goudar. The protagonist of this novel, who was supposed to embody stereotypically German characteristics, is similar to the protagonist of Candide
30.
Uncle Tom's Cabin
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Uncle Toms Cabin, or, Life Among the Lowly, is an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in 1852, the novel helped lay the groundwork for the Civil War, the sentimental novel depicts the reality of slavery while also asserting that Christian love can overcome something as destructive as enslavement of fellow human beings. Uncle Toms Cabin was the novel of the 19th century. It is credited with helping fuel the abolitionist cause in the 1850s, in the first year after it was published,300,000 copies of the book were sold in the United States, one million copies in Great Britain. In 1855, three years after it was published, it was called the most popular novel of our day, to affirm the role of literature as an agent of social change. The book and the plays it inspired helped popularize a number of stereotypes about black people and these include the affectionate, dark-skinned mammy, the pickaninny stereotype of black children, and the Uncle Tom, or dutiful, long-suffering servant faithful to his white master or mistress. In recent years, the associations with Uncle Toms Cabin have, to an extent. Stowe, a Connecticut-born teacher at the Hartford Female Seminary and an active abolitionist, wrote the novel as a response to the passage, in 1850, of the second Fugitive Slave Act. Much of the book was composed in Brunswick, Maine, where her husband, Calvin Ellis Stowe, taught at his alma mater, Bowdoin College. Stowe was partly inspired to create Uncle Toms Cabin by the slave narrative The Life of Josiah Henson, Formerly a Slave, Now an Inhabitant of Canada, as Narrated by Himself. Henson, an enslaved black man, had lived and worked on a 3,700 acres tobacco plantation in North Bethesda, Maryland. Henson escaped slavery in 1830 by fleeing to the Province of Upper Canada, where he helped other fugitive slaves settle and become self-sufficient, Stowe acknowledged in 1853 that Hensons writings inspired Uncle Toms Cabin. When Stowes work became a best-seller, Henson republished his memoirs as The Memoirs of Uncle Tom and traveled on lecture tours extensively in the United States and Europe. Stowes novel lent its name to Hensons home—Uncle Toms Cabin Historic Site, near Dresden and it is now a part of the National Park Service National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom program, and plans are underway to build a museum and interpretive center on the site. American Slavery As It Is, Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses, a volume co-authored by Theodore Dwight Weld and the Grimké sisters, is also a source of some of the novels content. Stowe said she based the novel on a number of interviews with people who escaped slavery during the time when she was living in Cincinnati, Ohio, across the Ohio River from Kentucky, a slave state. In Cincinnati the Underground Railroad had local abolitionist sympathizers and was active in efforts to help runaway slaves on their route from the South. Stowe mentioned a number of the inspirations and sources for her novel in A Key to Uncle Toms Cabin and this non-fiction book was intended to verify Stowes claims about slavery
31.
Totalitarianism
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Totalitarianism is a political system in which the state recognizes no limits to its authority and strives to regulate every aspect of public and private life wherever feasible. A distinctive feature of totalitarian governments is an ideology, a set of ideas that gives meaning. The concept of totalitarianism was first developed in the 1920s by the Weimar German jurist, and later Nazi academic, Carl Schmitt, Schmitt used the term, Totalstaat, in his influential work on the legal basis of an all-powerful state, The Concept of the Political. The concept became prominent in Western political discourse as a concept that highlights similarities between Fascist states and the Soviet Union, the term was later assigned a positive meaning in the writings of Giovanni Gentile, Italy’s most prominent philosopher and leading theorist of fascism. He used the term “totalitario” to refer to the structure and goals of the new state, according to Benito Mussolini, this system politicizes everything spiritual and human, Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state. Churchill was then a backbencher MP representing the Epping constituency, in a radio address two weeks later Churchill again employed the term, this time applying the concept to a Communist or a Nazi tyranny. And went on to say Democracy is not an end but a means to the conquest of the new state, when the time comes, either parliament submits or we will eliminate it. G. Wells, Henry Miller or twopenny color postcards, every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it. During a 1945 lecture series entitled The Soviet Impact on the Western World, only the blind and incurable could ignore the trend towards totalitarianism, said Carr. Isabel Paterson, in The God of the Machine, used the term in connection with the Soviet Union, in The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt argued that Nazi and State communist regimes were new forms of government, and not merely updated versions of the old tyrannies. According to Arendt, the source of the appeal of totalitarian regimes is their ideology, which provides a comforting, single answer to the mysteries of the past, present. For Nazism, all history is the history of race struggle, once that premise is accepted, all actions of the state can be justified by appeal to Nature or the Law of History, justifying their establishment of authoritarian state apparatus. In addition to Arendt, many scholars from a variety of academic backgrounds, each one of these describes totalitarianism in slightly different ways. Is only concerned with power and as long as that is not contested it gives society a certain degree of liberty. Authoritarianism does not attempt to change the world and human nature, in contrast, a totalitarian regime attempts to control virtually all aspects of the social life, including the economy, education, art, science, private life, and morals of citizens. The officially proclaimed ideology penetrates into the deepest reaches of societal structure and it also mobilizes the whole population in pursuit of its goals. Friedrich and Brzezinski argue that a system has the following six, mutually supportive, defining characteristics. Single mass party, typically led by a dictator, system of terror, using such instruments as violence and secret police
32.
Jack London
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John Griffith Jack London was an American novelist, journalist, and social activist. Some of his most famous works include The Call of the Wild and White Fang, both set in the Klondike Gold Rush, as well as the short stories To Build a Fire, An Odyssey of the North, and Love of Life. He also wrote about the South Pacific in stories such as The Pearls of Parlay and The Heathen, London was part of the radical literary group The Crowd in San Francisco and a passionate advocate of unionization, socialism, and the rights of workers. He wrote several works dealing with these topics, such as his dystopian novel The Iron Heel, his non-fiction exposé The People of the Abyss. Jack Londons mother, Flora Wellman, was the fifth and youngest child of Pennsylvania Canal builder Marshall Wellman and his first wife, Marshall Wellman was descended from Thomas Wellman, an early Puritan settler in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Flora left Ohio and moved to the Pacific coast when her father remarried after her mother died, in San Francisco, Flora worked as a music teacher and spiritualist, claiming to channel the spirit of a Sauk chief, Black Hawk. Biographer Clarice Stasz and others believe Londons father was astrologer William Chaney, Flora Wellman was living with Chaney in San Francisco when she became pregnant. Whether Wellman and Chaney were legally married is unknown, most San Francisco civil records were destroyed by the extensive fires that followed the 1906 earthquake, nobody knows what name appeared on her sons birth certificate. Stasz notes that in his memoirs, Chaney refers to Londons mother Flora Wellman as having been his wife, according to Flora Wellmans account, as recorded in the San Francisco Chronicle of June 4,1875, Chaney demanded that she have an abortion. When she refused, he disclaimed responsibility for the child and she was not seriously wounded, but she was temporarily deranged. After giving birth, Flora turned the baby over for care to Virginia Prentiss and she was a major maternal figure throughout Londons life. Late in 1876, Flora Wellman married John London, a partially disabled Civil War veteran, the family moved around the San Francisco Bay Area before settling in Oakland, where London completed public grade school. He wrote to William Chaney, then living in Chicago, Chaney concluded by saying that he was more to be pitied than London. London was devastated by his fathers letter, in the following, he quit school at Berkeley. London was born near Third and Brannan Streets in San Francisco, the house burned down in the fire after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, the California Historical Society placed a plaque at the site in 1953. Although the family was working class, it was not as impoverished as Londons later accounts claimed, in 1885, London found and read Ouidas long Victorian novel Signa. He credited this as the seed of his literary success, in 1886, he went to the Oakland Public Library and found a sympathetic librarian, Ina Coolbrith, who encouraged his learning. In 1889, London began working 12 to 18 hours a day at Hickmotts Cannery, seeking a way out, he borrowed money from his foster mother Virginia Prentiss, bought the sloop Razzle-Dazzle from an oyster pirate named French Frank, and became an oyster pirate
33.
The Iron Heel
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The Iron Heel is a dystopian novel by American writer Jack London, first published in 1908. Generally considered to be the earliest of the modern Dystopian, it chronicles the rise of a tyranny in the United States. It is arguably the novel in which Jack Londons socialist views are most explicitly on display, a forerunner of soft science fiction novels and stories of the 1960s and 70s, the book stresses future changes in society and politics while paying much less attention to technological changes. The book is unusual among Londons writings in being a narrative of a woman protagonist written by a man. Much of the narrative is set in the San Francisco Bay Area, including events in San Francisco, the novel is based on the Everhard Manuscript written by Avis Everhard which she hid and which was subsequently found centuries later. In addition, this novel has an introduction and series of footnotes written from the perspective of scholar Anthony Meredith, Meredith writes from around 2600 AD or 419 B. O. M. Merediths introduction also acts as a deliberate spoiler and this gives all that follows the air of a foreordained tragedy. The Manuscript itself covers the years 1912 through 1932 in which the Oligarchy arose in the United States, in Asia, Japan conquered East Asia and created its own empire, India gained independence, and Europe became socialist. Canada, Mexico, and Cuba formed their own Oligarchies and were aligned with the U. S, in North America, the Oligarchy maintains power for three centuries until the Revolution succeeds and ushers in the Brotherhood of Man. During the years of the novel, the First Revolt is described, the Oligarchy are the largest monopoly trusts who manage to squeeze out the middle class by bankrupting most small to mid-sized business as well as reducing all farmers to effective serfdom. This Oligarchy maintains power through a labor caste and the Mercenaries, Labor in essential industries like steel and rail are elevated and given decent wages, housing, and education. Indeed, the turn in the novel is the treachery of these favored unions which break with the other unions. Further, a second, military caste is formed, the Mercenaries, the Mercenaries are officially the army of the US but are in fact in the employ of the Oligarchs. Asgard is the name of a fictional wonder-city, a city constructed by the Oligarchy to be admired and appreciated as well as lived in. Thousands of proletarians live in poverty there, and are used whenever a public work needs to be completed, by telling the story of Avis Everhard, the novel is essentially an adventurous tale heavily strewn with social commentary of an alternate future. However, the perspective of the scholar Meredith deepens the tragic plight of Everhard. Jack London ambitiously predicted a breakdown of the US republic starting a few years past 1908, the whole book is based on Marxs view that capitalism was inherently unsustainable. This would precipitate a brutal counter-reaction, with capitalists preserving their power by discarding democracy and this prompted later publishers of Londons book to use a cover illustration depicting a poster of Allende being ground beneath the heel of a boot
34.
Sinclair Lewis
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Harry Sinclair Lewis was an American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright. His works are known for their insightful and critical views of American capitalism and materialism between the wars and he is also respected for his strong characterizations of modern working women. H. L. Mencken wrote of him, there was ever a novelist among us with a call to the trade. It is this red-haired tornado from the Minnesota wilds and he has been honored by the U. S. Postal Service with a postage stamp in the Great Americans series. Born February 7,1885, in the village of Sauk Centre, Minnesota, Sinclair Lewis began reading books at a young age and he had two siblings, Fred and Claude. His father, Edwin J. Lewis, was a physician, Lewiss mother, Emma Kermott Lewis, died in 1891. The following year, Edwin Lewis married Isabel Warner, whose company young Lewis apparently enjoyed, throughout his lonely boyhood, the ungainly Lewis—tall, extremely thin, stricken with acne and somewhat pop-eyed—had trouble gaining friends and pined after various local girls. At the age of 13 he unsuccessfully ran away from home, Lewis was also nonreligious and an atheist. In late 1902 Lewis left home for a year at Oberlin Academy to qualify for acceptance by Yale University, while at Oberlin, he developed a religious enthusiasm that waxed and waned for much of his remaining teenage years. Lewiss unprepossessing looks, fresh country manners and seemingly self-important loquacity made it difficult for him to win and keep friends at Oberlin and he did initiate a few relatively long-lived friendships among students and professors, some of whom recognized his promise as a writer. Lewiss earliest published creative work—romantic poetry and short sketches—appeared in the Yale Courant, after graduation Lewis moved from job to job and from place to place in an effort to make ends meet, write fiction for publication and to chase away boredom. While working for newspapers and publishing houses, he developed a facility for turning out shallow and he also earned money by selling plots to Jack London, including one for the latters unfinished novel The Assassination Bureau, Ltd. Lewiss first published book was Hike and the Aeroplane, a Tom Swift-style potboiler that appeared in 1912 under the pseudonym Tom Graham. Sinclair Lewiss first serious novel, Our Mr. Wrenn, The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man, appeared in 1914, followed by The Trail of the Hawk, A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life and The Job. That same year saw the publication of another potboiler, The Innocents, A Story for Lovers. Free Air, another refurbished serial story, was published in 1919, in 1914 Lewis married Grace Livingston Hegger, an editor at Vogue magazine. They had one son, Wells Lewis, named after British author H. G. Wells, Wells Lewis was killed in action while serving in the U. S. Army in World War II during the rescue of the Lost Battalion in the Forêt de Champ in France. On May 14,1928, he married Dorothy Thompson, a newspaper columnist
35.
It Can't Happen Here
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It Cant Happen Here is a semi-satirical 1935 political novel by American author Sinclair Lewis, and a 1936 play adapted from the novel by Lewis and John C. The novels plot centers on journalist Doremus Jessups opposition to the new regime, portraying himself as a champion of traditional American values, Windrip easily defeats his opponents, Senator Walt Trowbridge and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. One of his first acts as president is to eliminate the influence of the United States Congress, the Minute Men respond to protests against Windrips decisions harshly, attacking demonstrators with bayonets. The government of these sectors is managed by Corpo authorities, usually prominent businessmen or Minute Men officers and those accused of crimes against the government appear before kangaroo courts presided over by military judges. Despite these dictatorial measures, a majority of Americans approve of them, seeing them as necessary, others, those less enthusiastic about the prospect of corporatism, reassure themselves that fascism cannot happen here, hence the novels title. One recruit to the New Underground is Doremus Jessup, the novels protagonist, a traditional liberal, Jessups participation in the organization results in the publication of a periodical called The Vermont Vigilance, in which he writes editorials decrying Windrips abuses of power. Shad Ledue, the district commissioner and Jessups former hired man, resents his old employer. Ledue subsequently terrorizes Jessups family and particularly his daughter Sissy, whom he attempts to seduce. Tasbrough has Ledue imprisoned in the camp as Jessup, where inmates he had sent there organize his murder. Jessup escapes, after a brief incarceration, when his friends bribe one of the camp guards. He flees to Canada, where he rejoins the New Underground and he later serves the organization as a spy in the Northeastern United States, passing along information and urging locals to resist Windrip. He also angers his Secretary of State, Lee Sarason, who had served earlier as his political operative. Sarason and Windrips other lieutenants, including General Dewey Haik, seize power, Sarason succeeds Windrip, but his extravagant and relatively weak rule creates a power vacuum in which Haik and others vie for power. In a bloody putsch, Haik leads a party of supporters into the White House, kills Sarason and his associates. The two coups cause a slow erosion of Corpo power, and Haiks government desperately tries to arouse patriotism by launching an invasion of Mexico. Riots and rebellions break out across the country, with many realizing that the Corpos have misled them, General Emmanuel Coon, among Haiks senior officers, defects to the opposition with a large portion of his army, giving strength to the resistance movement. Though Haik remains in control of much of the country, civil war breaks out as the resistance tries to consolidate its grasp on the Midwest. The novel ends after the beginning of the conflict, with Jessup working as an agent for the New Underground in Corpo-occupied portions of southern Minnesota
36.
Nineteen Eighty-Four
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Nineteen Eighty-Four, often published as 1984, is a dystopian novel published in 1949 by English author George Orwell. The novel is set in Airstrip One, a province of the superstate Oceania in a world of war, omnipresent government surveillance. The superstate and its residents are dictated to by a political regime euphemistically named English Socialism, shortened to Ingsoc in Newspeak, the tyranny is ostensibly overseen by Big Brother, the Party leader who enjoys an intense cult of personality, but who may not even exist. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake and it is not interested in the good of others, it is interested solely in power. The protagonist of the novel, Winston Smith, is a member of the Outer Party, who works for the Ministry of Truth and his job is to rewrite past newspaper articles, so that the historical record always supports the party line. The instructions that the workers receive portray the corrections as fixing misquotations and never as what they really are, forgeries and falsifications. A large part of the Ministry also actively destroys all documents that have not been edited and do not contain the revisions, in this way, Smith is a diligent and skillful worker but secretly hates the Party and dreams of rebellion against Big Brother. The heroine of the novel, Julia, is based on Orwells second wife, as literary political fiction and dystopian science-fiction, Nineteen Eighty-Four is a classic novel in content, plot and style. Many of its terms and concepts, such as Big Brother, doublethink, thoughtcrime, Newspeak, Room 101, telescreen,2 +2 =5, and memory hole, have entered into common use since its publication in 1949. Nineteen Eighty-Four popularised the adjective Orwellian, which describes official deception, secret surveillance, in 2005, the novel was chosen by Time magazine as one of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005. It was awarded a place on lists of Modern Library 100 Best Novels, reaching number 13 on the editors list. In 2003, the novel was listed at number 8 on the BBCs survey The Big Read, on 4 December 1948, he sent the final manuscript to the publisher Secker and Warburg and Nineteen Eighty-Four was published on 8 June 1949. By 1989, it had translated into sixty-five languages, more than any other novel in English at the time. Warburg suggested changing the title to a more commercial one. In the novel 1985, Anthony Burgess suggests that Orwell, disillusioned by the onset of the Cold War, intended to call the book 1948. The introduction to the Penguin Books Modern Classics edition of Nineteen Eighty-Four reports that Orwell originally set the novel in 1980, the final title is also a permutation of 1948, the year of composition. The novel is in the domain in Canada, South Africa, Argentina, Australia. It will be in the domain in the United Kingdom and Brazil in 2021
37.
Ancient Greek comedy
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Ancient Greek comedy was one of the final three principal dramatic forms in the theatre of classical Greece. Athenian comedy is conventionally divided into three periods, Old Comedy, Middle Comedy, and New Comedy, New Comedy is known primarily from the substantial papyrus fragments of Menander. The philosopher Aristotle wrote in his Poetics that comedy is a representation of laughable people, C. A. Trypanis wrote that comedy is the last of the great species of poetry Greece gave to the world. These divisions appear to be arbitrary, and ancient comedy almost certainly developed constantly over the years. The most important Old Comic dramatist is Aristophanes, born in 446 B. C. his works, with their pungent political satire and abundance of sexual and scatological innuendo, effectively define the genre today. He was one of a number of comic poets working in Athens in the late 5th century, his most important contemporary rivals being Hermippus. The Old Comedy subsequently influenced later European writers such as Rabelais, Cervantes, Swift, in particular, they copied the technique of disguising a political attack as buffoonery. For ancient scholars, the term may have meant little more than later than Aristophanes and his contemporaries, for at least a time, mythological burlesque was popular among the Middle Comic poets. Stock characters of all sorts also emerge, courtesans, parasites, revellers, philosophers, boastful soldiers, because no complete Middle Comic plays have been preserved, it is impossible to offer any real assessment of their literary value or genius. But many Middle Comic plays appear to have revived in Sicily and Magna Graecia in this period, suggesting that they had considerable widespread literary. New Comedy followed the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and lasted throughout the reign of the Macedonian rulers and it is comparable to situation comedy and comedy of manners. The three best-known playwrights belonging to this genre are Menander, Philemon and Diphilus, Menander was the most successful of these three comedians. His comedies not only provided their audience with a respite from reality. This led an ancient critic to ask if life influenced Menander in the writing of his plays or if the case was vice versa and this seems to be what made him more successful than the other Greek comedians who wrote in the same genre. These plays were much less satirical than preceding comedies, the other two comedians are Philemon and Diphilus. Philemon was a comedian whose comedies dwelt on philosophical issues and Diphilus was a comedian whose comedies were noted for their broad comedy, philemons comedies survive only in fragments, but Diphilus comedies were translated and adapted by Plautus. Examples of these comedies are Plautus Asinaria and Rudens, based on the translation and adaptation of Diphilus comedies by Plautus, one can conclude that he was skilled in the construction of his plots. Substantial fragments of New Comedy have survived, but no complete plays, the most substantially preserved text is the Dyskolos by Menander, discovered on a papyrus, and first published in 1958
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The Knights
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The Knights was the fourth play written by Aristophanes, who is considered the master of an ancient form of drama known as Old Comedy. The play is a satire on the social and political life of classical Athens during the Peloponnesian War and it is unique however in the relatively small number of its characters and this was due to its scurrilous preoccupation with one man, the pro-war populist Cleon. The Knights won first prize at the Lenaia festival when it was produced in 424 BC, the Knights is a satire on political and social life in 5th-century BC Athens, the characters are drawn from real life and Cleon is clearly intended to be the villain. The identity Cleon=Paphlagonian is awkward and the ambiguities arent easily resolved and this summary features the real-world names Cleon, Nicias and Demosthenes. See Discussion for an overview of the use of characterization in The Knights. Short summary, A sausage seller, Agoracritus, vies with Cleon for the confidence and approval of Demos, Agoracritus emerges triumphant from a series of contests and he restores Demos to his former glory. They inform the audience that Cleon has wheedled his way into Demoss confidence and they advise us that even the mask-makers are afraid of Cleon and not one of them could be persuaded to make a caricature of him for this play. They assure us however that we are clever enough to him even without a mask. On reading these stolen oracles, they learn that Cleon is one of several peddlers destined to rule the polis, as chance would have it, a sausage seller passes by at that very moment, carrying a portable kitchen. Demosthenes informs him of his destiny, the sausage seller is not convinced at first but Demosthenes points out the myriads of people in the theatre and he assures him that his skills with sausages are all that is needed to govern them. Cleons suspicions meanwhile have been aroused and he rushes from the house in search of trouble and he immediately finds an empty wine bowl and he loudly accuses the others of treason. Demosthenes calls upon the knights of Athens for assistance and a Chorus of them charges into the theatre. They converge on Cleon in military formation under instructions from their leader, Hit him, hit him, hit the villain hateful to the cavalry, I repeat it, I repeat it constantly, With good reason since this thief reiterates his villainy. Cleon is given rough handling and the Chorus leader accuses him of manipulating the political and legal system for personal gain, Cleon bellows to the audience for help and the Chorus urges the sausage-seller to outshout him. The knights proclaim the sausage-seller the winner of the argument and Cleon then rushes off to the Boule to denounce them all on a charge of treason. The sausage seller sets off in pursuit and the action pauses for a parabasis, the Chorus informs us that Aristophanes has been very methodical and cautious in the way he has approached his career as a comic poet and we are invited to applaud him. Indignant at his defeat, Cleon rushes onto the stage and challenges the sausage-seller to submit their differences to Demos, the sausage seller accepts the challenge. They call Demos outdoors and compete each other in flattering him like rivals for the affections of an eromenos
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Menander
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Menander was a Greek dramatist and the best-known representative of Athenian New Comedy. He wrote 108 comedies and took the prize at the Lenaia festival eight times and his record at the City Dionysia is unknown but may well have been similarly spectacular. One of the most popular writers of antiquity, his work was lost during the Middle Ages and is known in modernity in highly fragmentary form, only one play, Dyskolos, has survived almost entirely. He presumably derived his taste for drama from his uncle Alexis. He was the friend, associate, and perhaps pupil of Theophrastus and he also enjoyed the patronage of Ptolemy Soter, the son of Lagus, who invited him to his court. But Menander, preferring the independence of his villa in the Piraeus and the company of his mistress Glycera, refused. According to the note of a scholiast on the Ibis of Ovid, he drowned while bathing, and his countrymen honored him with a tomb on the leading to Athens. Numerous supposed busts of him survive, including a statue in the Vatican. His rival in dramatic art was Philemon, who appears to have more popular. Menander, however, believed himself to be the better dramatist, how long complete copies of his plays survived is unclear, although 23 of them, with commentary by Michael Psellus, were said to still have been available in Constantinople in the 11th century. He is praised by Plutarch and Quintilian, who accepted the tradition that he was the author of the speeches published under the name of the Attic orator Charisius. These maxims were afterwards collected, and, with additions from other sources, were edited as Menanders One-Verse Maxims, a kind of moral textbook for the use of schools. The single surviving speech from his early play Drunkenness is an attack on the politician Callimedon, in the manner of Aristophanes, whose bawdy style was adopted in many of his plays. Eunuchus, Andria, Heauton Timorumenos and Adelphi of Terence were avowedly taken from Menander, the original of Terences Hecyra is generally supposed to be, not by Menander, but Apollodorus of Carystus. Caecilius Statius, Luscius Lanuvinus, Turpilius and Atilius also imitated Menander, most of Menanders work did not survive the Middle Ages, except as short fragments. Michael Psellos might be the last writer who may have more than we do today. Until the end of the 19th century, all that was known of Menander were fragments quoted by authors and collected by Augustus Meineke and Theodor Kock. These consist of some 1650 verses or parts of verses, in addition to a number of words quoted from Menander by ancient lexicographers
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Callimedon
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Callimedon was an orator and politician at Athens during the 4th century BCE who was a member of the pro-Macedonian faction in the city. None of his speeches survive, but details of his involvement in the controversies of his age are preserved by Dinarchus and Plutarch. He is described as brash and antidemocratic, and was surnamed ὁ Κάραβος —The Crayfish, Crab or, more likely, Spiny Lobster—because, according to Athenaeus, he was very fond of the food. Callimedon is best known today for the ridicule he was subjected to on the comic stage, the year of his birth is unknown, but Callimedon was probably born during the first quarter of the 4th century since he is named as a contemporary of Demosthenes by Athenaeus. He has been identified with a man called Callimedon of Collytus, son of Callicrates, nothing further is known of this Callicrates, but Callimedons family appears to have been an influential and aristocratic one from Collytus, an Athenian neighborhood south of the Acropolis. His grandfather Agyrrhius had been a prominent politician in the early fourth-century and was appointed strategos in 389. As a member of a family, Callimedon had access to the upper rungs of the Athenian social ladder. Dinarchus reports that Demosthenes attempted to prosecute Callimedon in 324 for conspiring with Athenian exiles in Megara to replace the democracy with an oligarchy under Macedonian control. Following the death of Alexander in 323, the interests in the Greek cities once again attempted to unite against Macedon. Callimedons grandfather Agyrrhius had been the butt of a joke in 388. After Demosthenes, The Politics of Early Hellenistic Athens, London, hunter, R. L. Eubulus, The Fragments, Cambridge, ISBN 978-0-521-24436-7. Kirchner, J. Prosopographia Attica, vol. i, Berlin, a Glossary of Greek Fishes, London. Studies in Later Greek Comedy, Manchester
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A Modest Proposal
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Swift suggests that the impoverished Irish might ease their economic troubles by selling their children as food for rich gentlemen and ladies. This satirical hyperbole mocked heartless attitudes towards the poor, as well as British policy toward the Irish in general, in English writing, the phrase a modest proposal is now conventionally an allusion to this style of straight-faced satire. Swift goes to lengths to support his argument, including a list of possible preparation styles for the children. He uses methods of argument throughout his essay which lampoon the then-influential William Petty and these lampoons include appealing to the authority of a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London and the famous Psalmanazar, a native of the island Formosa. This essay is widely held to be one of the greatest examples of sustained irony in the history of the English language, Swift was especially insulted by projects that tried to fix population and labour issues with a simple cure-all solution. A memorable example of these sorts of schemes involved the idea of running the poor through a joint-stock company, in response, Swifts Modest Proposal was a burlesque of projects concerning the poor that were in vogue during the early 18th century. A Modest Proposal also targets the calculating way people perceived the poor in designing their projects, the pamphlet targets reformers who regard people as commodities. In the piece, Swift adopts the technique of a political arithmetician to show the utter ridiculousness of trying to prove any proposal with dispassionate statistics, critics differ about Swifts intentions in using this faux-mathematical philosophy. Edmund Wilson argues that statistically the logic of the Modest proposal can be compared with defense of crime in which he argues that crime takes care of the superfluous population, charles K. Smith argues that Swifts rhetorical style persuades the reader to detest the speaker and pity the Irish. Swift has his proposer further degrade the Irish by using language ordinarily reserved for animals, lewis argues that the speaker uses the vocabulary of animal husbandry to describe the Irish. Once the children have been commodified, Swifts rhetoric can turn people into animals, then meat. Swift uses the proposers serious tone to highlight the absurdity of his proposal, in making his argument, the speaker uses the conventional, textbook-approved order of argument from Swifts time. Scholars have speculated about which earlier works Swift may have had in mind when he wrote A Modest Proposal, james Johnson argued that A Modest Proposal was largely influenced and inspired by Tertullians Apology, a satirical attack against early Roman persecution of Christianity. James William Johnson believes that Swift saw major similarities between the two situations, Johnson notes Swifts obvious affinity for Tertullian and the bold stylistic and structural similarities between the works A Modest Proposal and Apology. Stylistically, Swift and Tertullian share the command of sarcasm. In agreement with Johnson, Donald C. Baker points out the similarity between both authors tones and use of irony, bernard Mandevilles Modest Defence of Publick Stews asked to introduce public and state controlled bordellos. The 1726 paper acknowledges womens interests and – while not being a satirical text – has been discussed as well as an inspiration for Jonathan Swifts title. Mandeville had become famous with the Fable of The Bees and deliberations on private vices, john Locke from the First Treatise of Government Be it then as Sir Robert says, that Anciently, it was usual for Men to sell and Castrate their Children
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