1.
Baron Munchausen
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Baron Munchausen is a fictional German nobleman created by the German writer Rudolf Erich Raspe in his 1785 book Baron Munchausens Narrative of his Marvellous Travels and Campaigns in Russia. The character is based on a real baron, Hieronymus Karl Friedrich. Born in Bodenwerder, Electorate of Brunswick-Lüneburg, the real-life Münchhausen fought for the Russian Empire in the Russo-Turkish War of 1735–1739, upon retiring in 1760, he became a minor celebrity within German aristocratic circles for telling outrageous tall tales based on his military career. The book was translated into other European languages, including a German version expanded by the poet Gottfried August Bürger. The real-life Münchhausen was deeply upset at the development of a character bearing his name. Perhaps fearing a libel suit, Raspe never acknowledged his authorship of the work, intentionally comedic, the stories play on the absurdity and inconsistency of Munchausens claims, and contain an undercurrent of social satire. Raspes book was an international success, becoming the core text for numerous English, continental European. The book in its various revised forms remained widely read throughout the 19th century, versions of the fictional Baron have appeared on stage, screen, radio, and television, as well as in other literary works. Though the Baron Munchausen stories are no longer well-known in English-speaking countries, Hieronymus Karl Friedrich von Münchhausen was born on 11 May 1720 in Bodenwerder, Electorate of Brunswick-Lüneburg. He was a son of the Black Line of Rinteln-Bodenwerder. His cousin, Gerlach Adolph von Münchhausen, was the founder of the University of Göttingen, Münchhausen started as a page to Anthony Ulrich II of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, and followed his employer to the Russian Empire during the Russo-Austro–Turkish War. In 1739, he was appointed a cornet in the Russian cavalry regiment, on 27 November 1740, he was promoted to lieutenant. He was stationed in Riga, but participated in two campaigns against the Turks in 1740 and 1741, in 1744 he married Jacobine von Dunten, and in 1750 he was promoted to Rittmeister. In 1760 Münchhausen retired to live as a Freiherr at his estates in Bodenwerder, over the ensuing thirty years, his storytelling abilities gained such renown that he frequently received visits from travelling nobles wanting to hear his tales. Rather than being considered a liar, Münchhausen was seen as an honest man, as another contemporary put it, Münchhausens unbelievable narratives were designed not to deceive, but to ridicule the disposition for the marvellous which he observed in some of his acquaintances. Münchhausens wife Jacobine von Dunten died in 1790, in January 1794, Münchhausen married Bernardine von Brunn, fifty-seven years his junior. Von Brunn reportedly took ill soon after the marriage and spent the summer of 1794 in the spa town of Bad Pyrmont, von Brunn gave birth to a daughter, Maria Wilhemina, on 16 February 1795, nine months after her summer trip. Münchhausen filed a complaint that the child was not his
2.
Tall tale
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A tall tale is a story with unbelievable elements, related as if it were true and factual. Some stories such as these are exaggerations of actual events, for example fish stories such as, That fish was so big, why I tell ya, it nearly sank the boat when I pulled it in. Things are often told in a way makes the narrator seem to have been a part of the story. The tall tale is an element of American folk literature. The tall tales origins are seen in the contests that often occurred when the rough men of the American frontier gathered. The tales of legendary figures of the Old West, some listed below, the semi-annual speech contests held by Toastmasters International public speaking clubs may include a Tall Tales contest. Each and every participating speaker is given three to five minutes to give a speech of a tall tale nature, and is then judged according to several factors. The winner proceeds to the level of competition. The contest does not proceed beyond any participating district in the organization to the International level and he is known for the Bowie knife which he used to disembowel his opponent. Daniel Boone – Blazed a trail across Cumberland Gap to found the first English-speaking colonies west of the Appalachian Mountains Aylett C, strap Buckner – An Indian fighter of colonial Texas Davy Crockett – A pioneer and U. S. Congressman from Tennessee who later died at the Battle of the Alamo Mike Fink – The toughest boatman on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, for instance, The Australian frontier similarly inspired the types of tall tales that are found in American folklore. The Australian versions typically concern a mythical station called The Speewah, juho Nätti, known as Nätti-Jussi, was a Finnish lumberjack known for telling tall tales, his stories have also circulated as folk tales and been collected in books. The Life of Gargantua and of Pantagruel by the French writer Rabelais told the tale of two giants, father and son, the many farfetched adventures of the fictional German nobleman Baron Munchausen, some of which may have had a folklore basis. The Cumbrian Liars, a United Kingdom association who follow in the footsteps of Will Ritson. Arlo Guthries Motorcycle Song is often accompanied by a tale about the origin of the song. Early 20th century postcards became a vehicle for tall tale telling in the US, creators of these cards, such as the prolific Alfred Stanley Johnson, Jr. and William H. The common theme was gigantism, fishing for leviathans, hunting for or riding oversized animals, an homage to the genre can be found on the cover of the Eat a Peach album by The Allman Brothers Band. The Tall Tale in American Folklore and Literature, knoxville, Tennessee, University of Tennessee Press
3.
Frame story
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The frame story leads readers from a first story into another, smaller one within it. The frame story may also be used to allow readers to understand a part of the story and this is not however, to be mixed up with a narrative structure or character personality change. The earliest known frame stories are preserved on the ancient Egyptian Papyrus Westcar. This form gradually spread west through the centuries and became popular, giving rise to such classic frame tale collections as the One Thousand and One Nights, The Decameron, and Canterbury Tales. This format had flexibility in that various narrators could retain the stories they liked or understood, while dropping ones they didnt and this occurred particularly with One Thousand and One Nights, where different versions over the centuries have included different stories. A typical example of a story is One Thousand and One Nights. Many of Scheherazades tales are also frame stories, such as Tale of Sindbad the Seaman and Sindbad the Landsman, extensive use of this device is found in Ovids Metamorphoses, where the stories nest several deep, to allow the inclusion of many different tales in one work. Emily Brontës Wuthering Heights uses this device to tell the story of Heathcliff and Catherine. Her sister Anne also uses this device in her epistolary novel The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, the main heroines diary is framed by the narrators story and letters. Mary Shelleys novel Frankenstein is another example of a book with multiple framed narratives. Frame stories have appeared in other media, such as comic books. Neil Gaimans comic book series The Sandman featured a story arc called Worlds End which consisted of frame stories, frame stories are often organized as a gathering of people in one place for the exchange of stories. Each character tells his or her tale, and the tale progresses in that manner. Sometimes only one exists, and in this case there might be different levels of distance between the reader and author. In this mode, the tale can become more fuzzy. Here the frame includes the world of the imagined Crayon, his stories, essentially, it is a frame story without a story to be framed. When there is a story, the frame story is used for other purposes – chiefly to position the readers attitude toward the tale. One common one is to draw attention to the narrators unreliability, by explicitly making the narrator a character within the frame story, the writer distances himself from the narrator, he may also characterize the narrator to cast doubt on his truthfulness
4.
Plautus
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Titus Maccius Plautus, commonly known as Plautus, was a Roman playwright of the Old Latin period. His comedies are the earliest Latin literary works to have survived in their entirety and he wrote Palliata comoedia, the genre devised by the innovator of Latin literature, Livius Andronicus. The word Plautine /ˈplɔːtaɪn/ refers to both Plautuss own works and works similar to or influenced by his, not much is known about Titus Maccius Plautus early life. It is believed that he was born in Sarsina, a town in Emilia Romagna in northern Italy. According to Morris Marples, Plautus worked as a stage-carpenter or scene-shifter in his early years and it is from this work, perhaps, that his love of the theater originated. His acting talent was discovered, and he adopted the names Maccius and Plautus. Tradition holds that he made enough money to go into the nautical business and he is then said to have worked as a manual laborer and to have studied Greek drama—particularly the New Comedy of Menander—in his leisure. His studies allowed him to produce his plays, which were released between c.205 and 184 BC, Plautus attained such a popularity that his name alone became a hallmark of theatrical success. Plautuss comedies are mostly adapted from Greek models for a Roman audience and he reworked the Greek texts to give them a flavour that would appeal to the local Roman audiences. They are the earliest surviving works in Latin literature. Plautuss epitaph read, postquam est mortem aptus Plautus, Comoedia luget, scaena est deserta, since Plautus is dead, Comedy mourns, Deserted is the stage, then Laughter, Jest and Wit, And Melodys countless numbers all together wept. Plautus wrote around 130 plays, of which 20 have survived intact, only short fragments, mostly quotations by later writers of antiquity, survive from 31 other plays. Despite this, the tradition of Plautus is poorer than that of any other ancient dramatist. The chief manuscript of Plautus is a palimpsest, in which Plautus plays had been scrubbed out to make way for Augustines Commentary on the Psalms, the monk who performed this was more successful in some places than others. Only the titles and various fragments of plays have survived. The historical context within which Plautus wrote can be seen, to some extent, in his comments on contemporary events, Plautus was a popular comedic playwright while Roman theatre was still in its infancy and still largely undeveloped. At the same time, the Roman Republic was expanding in power, Plautus was sometimes accused of teaching the public indifference and mockery of the gods. Any character in his plays could be compared to a god, whether to honour a character or to mock him, these references were demeaning to the gods
5.
Miles Gloriosus (play)
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Miles Gloriosus is a comedic play written by Titus Maccius Plautus. The title can be translated as The Swaggering Soldier or Vainglorious Soldier and his source for Miles Gloriosus was a Greek play, now lost, called Alazon or The Braggart. Although the characters in Miles Gloriosus speak Latin, they are Greeks, with Greek names, clothing, and customs. The action takes place in Ephesus, a Greek city on the coast of Asia Minor, famous for its Temple of Artemis, the play commences with the entrance of Pyrgopolynices, looking heroic and posing in a pompous manner. Behind him is his “parasite”, Artotrogus, who earns his meals by flattering the soldier excessively, at these opening moments we get a sense for Pyrgopolynices true nature. He constantly boasts about his accomplishments and portrays himself as a military hero. In reality, his accomplishments are far smaller—hence the plays title, after he leaves the stage we meet one of the main characters of the play, Palaestrio, who formerly served a young Athenian, Pleusicles. His former master had a girlfriend named Philocomasium who was kidnapped from Athens, when Palaestrio tried to reach his master with this bad news, the slave was seized by pirates and given, by chance, to the same soldier. Both he and the girl have been living in the house in Ephesus. Now Pleusicles has come to Ephesus and is staying with Periplectomenus, who lives next door to the soldier, and the wise Palaestrio has cut a hole in the wall so the two lovers can see one another. Periplectomenus, an old man of Ephesus, then enters, worried because he has caught Sceledrus, one of Pyrgopolynices slaves and this slave claims he was chasing a monkey, but Periplectomenus is sure that Philocomasium has been seen kissing her gentleman friend. Palaestrio comes up with a plan to tell Pyrgopolynices that Philocomasium has a sister, Honoria. Should Sceledrus make accusations, then Palaestrio will just refute the claim, Periplectomenus goes back inside to tell Philocomasium what has happened and to tell her the plan. Meanwhile, Philocomasium goes through the hole in the back into Pyrgopolynices house, emerging from it shortly afterwards with Palaestrio. Philocomasium tells Sceledrus that she had a dream that her sister had arrived from Athens. Sceledrus has his doubts, so Philocomasium goes back into Pyrgopolynices house, then through the hole in the wall, meanwhile, Sceledrus stands guard outside Pyrgopolynices house. Philocomasium comes out of Periplectomenus front door, giving orders to slaves inside and she challenges Sceledrus when he addresses her as Philocomasium, and her manner is that of a free woman. She says her name is Honoria and that she has arrived the night from Athens
6.
Moll Flanders
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The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders is a novel by Daniel Defoe, first published in 1722. It purports to be the account of the life of the eponymous Moll. By 1721, Defoe had become a recognised novelist, with the success of Robinson Crusoe in 1719 and it is usually assumed that the novel was written by Daniel Defoe, and his name is commonly given as the author in modern printings of the novel. However, the original printing did not have an author, as it was an apparent autobiography, the attribution of Moll Flanders to Defoe was made by bookseller Francis Noble in 1770, after Defoes death in 1731. The novel is based partially on the life of Moll King, molls mother is a convict in Newgate Prison in London who is given a reprieve by pleading her belly, a reference to the custom of staying the executions of pregnant criminals. Her mother is transported to America, and Moll Flanders is raised until adolescence by a goodly foster mother. Thereafter she gets attached to a household as a servant where she is loved by both sons, the elder of whom convinces her to act like they were married in bed, unwilling to marry her, he persuades her to marry his younger brother. The first time she does this, her gentleman-tradesman spendthrift husband goes bankrupt and flees to the Continent, the second time, she makes a match that leads her to Virginia with a kindly man who introduces her to his mother. After three children, Moll learns that her mother-in-law is actually her mother, which makes her husband her half-brother. She dissolves their marriage and after continuing to live with her brother for three years, travels back to England, leaving her two children behind, and goes to live in Bath to seek a new husband. Again she returns to her con skills and develops a relationship with a man in Bath whose wife is elsewhere confined due to insanity and their relationship is at first platonic, but eventually develops into Moll becoming something of a kept woman in Hammersmith, London. They have three children, but after an illness he repents, breaks off the arrangement. Moll, now 42, resorts to another beau, a banker Callum Murray, while waiting for Callum to divorce, Moll pretends to have a great fortune to attract another wealthy husband Samuel. She becomes involved with some Roman Catholics in Lancashire that try to convert her, and she marries one of them and he is in fact a ruined gentleman and discharges her from the marriage, telling her nevertheless that she should inherit any money he might ever get. Although now pregnant again, Moll lets the banker believe she is available and she gives birth and the midwife gives a tripartite scale of the costs of bearing a child, with one value level per social class. Molls son is born when the wife commits suicide following their divorce. Moll marries the banker now, but realises what an abominable creature I am. and they live in happiness for five years before he becomes bankrupt and dies of despair, the fate of their two children left unstated. She assumes the name Moll Flanders and is known thereby and she is helped throughout her career as a thief by her Governess, who also acts as receiver
7.
Simplicius Simplicissimus
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Simplicius Simplicissimus is a picaresque novel of the lower Baroque style, written in 1668 by Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen and probably published the same year. Raised by a peasant family, he is separated from his home by foraging dragoons and is adopted by a living in the forest. The hermit also gives Simplicius his name because he was so simple that he did not know what his own name was, after the death of the hermit, Simplicius must fend for himself. The novel ends with Simplicius turning to a life of hermitage himself, the novel is considered by some to contain autobiographic elements, inspired by Grimmelshausens experience in the war. The adventures of Simplicissimus became so popular that they were reproduced by authors in other European countries, Simplicissimus was recreated in French, English, and Turkish. The Hungarian Simplicissimus was released in 1683, the author remained anonymous but is now generally considered to be Breslau-born Daniel Speer. It opens, In A. D.1618,12 million lived in Germany, in A. D.1648 only 4 million still lived in Germany. It was first performed in 1948, Hartmann scored it for orchestra in 1956. The chamber version was revived by the Stuttgart State Opera in 2004, a historically dramatised TV series based on the book was produced in the late 1970s by German Television. English translations include, The Adventurous Simplicissimus, trans, alfred Thomas Scrope Goodrick, London, William Heinemann,1912. See also Project Gutenberg copy and later edition with new intro, the Simplicissimus Project, the 1912 trans. by A. T. S. Goodrick with material added by students at The College of William, shortlisted for the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize. ISBN 978-1903517420 Simplicissimus, The German Adventurer, trans, ISBN 978-3-941170-68-1 The German text is publicly available through Project Gutenberg, Simplicius Simplicissimus
8.
Confessions of Felix Krull
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Confessions of Felix Krull is an unfinished 1954 novel by the German author Thomas Mann. It is a parody of Goethes autobiography Poetry and Truth, particularly in its pompous tone, the original title is Bekenntnisse des Hochstaplers Felix Krull. Der Memoiren, erster Teil, translated a year later in English as Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man, Mann planned the novel since 1905, being inspired by the Romanian con artist Georges Manolescus autobiographies Fürst der Diebe and Gescheitert. Originally the character of Felix Krull appeared in a story written in 1911. A spoken word adaptation of chapters 1,2,3 and 5 from the first book of Felix Krull performed by O. E. Hasse, was included as a disk to the 1965 Teldec release of Schwere Stunde. The book was adapted into a film in 1957, with a screenplay by Erika Mann and Robert Thoeren, directed by Kurt Hoffmann, told by a myth, Thomas Mann’s Felix Krull
9.
Defence mechanisms
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A defence mechanism is an unconscious psychological mechanism that reduces anxiety arising from unacceptable or potentially harmful stimuli. Sigmund Freud was one of the first proponents of this construct, defence mechanisms may result in healthy or unhealthy consequences depending on the circumstances and frequency with which the mechanism is used. In psychoanalytic theory, repression is considered as the basis for defence mechanisms. Healthy persons normally use different defences throughout life, an ego defence mechanism becomes pathological only when its persistent use leads to maladaptive behaviour such that the physical or mental health of the individual is adversely affected. Among the purposes of ego defence mechanisms is to protect the mind/self/ego from anxiety and/or social sanctions and/or to provide a refuge from a situation with which one cannot currently cope, one resource used to evaluate these mechanisms is the Defense Style Questionnaire. The concept of id impulses comes from Sigmund Freud’s structural model, according to this theory, id impulses are based on the pleasure principle, instant gratification of ones own desires and needs. Sigmund Freud believed that the id represents biological instinctual impulses in humans, such as aggression, for example, when the id impulses conflict with the superego, unsatisfied feelings of anxiousness or feelings of anxiety come to the surface. To reduce these unpleasant feelings, the ego might use defence mechanisms, Freud believed that conflicts between these two structures resulted in conflicts associated with psychosexual stages. Freud proposed three structures of the psyche or personality, Id, The id is the reservoir of the libido. It is a selfish, childish, pleasure-oriented part of the personality with no ability to delay gratification, superego, The superego contains internalised societal and parental standards of good and bad, right and wrong behaviour. They include conscious appreciations of rules and regulations as well as those incorporated unconsciously, ego, The ego acts as a moderator between the pleasure sought by the id and the morals of the superego, seeking compromises to pacify both. It can be viewed as the sense of time and place. In the ego, there are two ongoing processes, there is no logic and no time line. Lust is important for this process, by contrast, there is the conscious secondary process, where strong boundaries are set and thoughts must be organised in a coherent way. The superego forms as the child grows and learns parental and social standards, when anxiety becomes overwhelming, it is the egos place to protect the person by employing defence mechanisms. Guilt, embarrassment and shame often accompany anxiety, the signaling function of anxiety is thus seen as a crucial one and biologically adapted to warn the organism of danger or a threat to its equilibrium. Defence mechanisms work by distorting the id impulses into acceptable forms, the list of defence mechanisms is huge and there is no theoretical consensus on the exact number. Classifying defence mechanisms according to some of their properties has been attempted, different theorists have different categorizations and conceptualizations of defence mechanisms
10.
Franz Kafka
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Franz Kafka was a Prague German-language novelist and short story writer, widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature. His best known works include Die Verwandlung, Der Process, the term Kafkaesque has entered the English language to describe situations like those in his writing. Kafka was born into a middle-class, German-speaking Jewish family in Prague and he trained as a lawyer, and after completing his legal education he was employed with an insurance company, forcing him to relegate writing to his spare time. Over the course of his life, Kafka wrote hundreds of letters to family and close friends, including his father, with whom he had a strained and he became engaged to several women but never married. He died in 1924 at the age of 40 from tuberculosis and his work went on to influence a vast range of writers, critics, artists, and philosophers during the 20th century. Kafka was born near the Old Town Square in Prague, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and his family were middle-class Ashkenazi Jews. His father, Hermann Kafka, was the child of Jakob Kafka, a shochet or ritual slaughterer in Osek. Hermann brought the Kafka family to Prague, after working as a travelling sales representative, he eventually became a fancy goods and clothing retailer who employed up to 15 people and used the image of a jackdaw as his business logo. Kafkas mother, Julie, was the daughter of Jakob Löwy, a retail merchant in Poděbrady. Hermann and Julie had six children, of whom Franz was the eldest, franzs two brothers, Georg and Heinrich, died in infancy before Franz was seven, his three sisters were Gabriele, Valerie and Ottilie. They all died during the Holocaust of World War II, Valli was deported to the Łódź Ghetto in Poland in 1942, but that is the last documentation of her. On business days, both parents were absent from the home, with Julie Kafka working as many as 12 hours each day helping to manage the family business, consequently, Kafkas childhood was somewhat lonely, and the children were reared largely by a series of governesses and servants. The dominating figure of Kafkas father had a significant influence on Kafkas writing, the Kafka family had a servant girl living with them in a cramped apartment. In November 1913 the family moved into an apartment, although Ellie. In early August 1914, just after World War I began, both Ellie and Valli also had children. Franz at age 31 moved into Vallis former apartment, quiet by contrast, from 1889 to 1893, Kafka attended the Deutsche Knabenschule German boys elementary school at the Masný trh/Fleischmarkt, now known as Masná Street. His Jewish education ended with his Bar Mitzvah celebration at the age of 13, Kafka never enjoyed attending the synagogue and went with his father only on four high holidays a year. German was the language of instruction, but Kafka also spoke and he studied the latter at the gymnasium for eight years, achieving good grades
11.
Noir fiction
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Noir fiction is a literary genre closely related to hardboiled genre with a distinction that the protagonist is not a detective, but instead either a victim, a suspect, or a perpetrator. Other common characteristics include the qualities of the protagonist. The term originates as a cinematic one, Film noir refers to cinematic works influenced by novels of the hardboiled tradition, exhibiting postwar disillusionment and realism as influenced by German Expressionism. Noir was popularized as applied to fiction by editor Barry Gifford of the crime fiction publisher Black Lizard in the 1980s, James M. Cain – also regarded as the third major figure of the early hardboiled genre – is regarded as an American pioneer of the noir genre. He debuted as a crime novelist in 1934, other important American writers in the noir genre include Cornell Woolrich, Dorothy B. Hughes, Jim Thompson, David Goodis, Charles Williams, Mediterranean Noir refers to noir fiction in a Mediterranean setting. Sex, crime, and physical violence often figure prominently in Mediterranean Noir narratives, social and historical issues specific to the region – particularly governmental corruption and instability, war, and racial strife – are frequently underlying plot considerations. Prominent authors of the movement include Jean-Claude Izzo, Andrea Camilleri, Massimo Carlotto, Eduardo Mendoza, Batya Gur, Authors and their literary inventions look upon the cities of the Mediterranean and see places that have been broken, battered, and distorted by crime. There is always a kind of dualism that pervades these works, on one hand, there is the Mediterranean lifestyle-- fine wine and fine food, friendship, conviviality, solidarity, blue skies and limpid seas-- an art of living brought almost to perfection. On the other hand, violence, corruption, greed, W. R. Burnett, part of the first wave of hardboiled writers along with Hammett and Cain, wrote in a style that split the difference, often featuring heroic gangsters as his leads. The five novels featuring alcoholic detective Bill Crane written by Jonathan Latimer over the course of the 1930s constitute one of the earliest literary series of hardboiled screwball comedy. Of latter-day hardboiled novelists who regularly feature detective protagonists, the most prominent to write in a mode is James Ellroy. Not Country specific, Urban Noir focuses on the underbelly of life in a variety of cities, from London and Shanghai to Chicago and Boston. Johnny Temple, founder of Akashic Books, cites a common urban noir thread as authors whose life circumstances often place them in environs vulnerable to crime, international crime fiction highlighting the political nature of the genre. Noir fiction serves to deconstruct the security state by exposing its acts, secret and public, of hypocrisy, venality, dirty Snow by Georges Simenon set in Nazi occupied France is an example of Existential Noir. Film noir Nordic noir Tartan Noir Paul Duncan, from Surrealism to Less-Exquisite Cadavers, Léo Malet and the Evolution of the French Roman Noir. The Roman Noir in Post-War French Culture, Dark Fictions, unless the Threat of Death Is Behind Them, Hard-Boiled Fiction and Film Noir. Im not interested in the good guys winning, Black and Blue, An Introduction to the Mediterranean Noir Novel
12.
Hardboiled
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Hardboiled fiction is a literary genre that shares some of its characters and settings with crime fiction. The attitude is conveyed through the inner monologue describing to the audience what he is doing and feeling. Rendered cynical by this cycle of violence, the detectives of hardboiled fiction are classic antiheroes, notable hardboiled detectives include Philip Marlowe, Mike Hammer, Sam Spade, Lew Archer, and The Continental Op. The term comes from a process of hardening ones egg, to be hardboiled is to be comparatively tough, from its earliest days, hardboiled fiction was published in and closely associated with so-called pulp magazines, most famously Black Mask under the editorship of Joseph T. Shaw. In its earliest uses in the late 1920s, hardboiled didnt refer to a type of crime fiction, the hardboiled crime story became a staple of several pulp magazines in the 1930s, in addition to Black Mask, hardboiled crime fiction appeared in Dime Detective and Detective Fiction Weekly. Later, many hardboiled novels were published by houses specializing in paperback originals, consequently, pulp fiction is often used as a synonym for hardboiled crime fiction or gangster fiction, some would distinguish within it the private-eye story from the crime novel itself. Going blood-simple in poisonville, hard-boiled masculinity in Dashiell Hammetts Red Harvest, multicultural Detective Fiction, Murder from the Other Side, Garland Publishing, ISBN 0-8153-3153-3 Haut, Woody. Pulp Culture, Hardboiled Fiction and the Cold War, Serpents Tail, ISBN 1-85242-319-6 Irwin, unless the Threat of Death Is Behind Them, Hard-Boiled Fiction and Film Noir, Johns Hopkins University Press, ISBN 0-8018-8435-7 Kemp, Simon. Defective Inspectors, Crime-fiction Pastiche in Late Twentieth-century, Maney Publishing, ISBN 1-904350-51-8 Mizejewski, Hardboiled and High Heeled, The Woman Detective in Popular Culture, Routledge Chapman Hall, ISBN 0-415-96970-0 OBrien, Geoffrey. Hardboiled America, Lurid Paperbacks and the Masters of Noir, Da Capo, ISBN 0-306-80773-4 Panek, new Hard-Boiled Writers, 1970s-1990s, University of Wisconsin Press, ISBN 0-87972-819-1 Server, Lee. Encyclopedia of Pulp Fiction Writers, Facts On File Inc, ISBN 0-8160-4577-1 Detective Novels, An Overview major history of the genre by Prof
13.
Notes on a Scandal
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Notes on a Scandal is a 2003 novel by Zoë Heller. It is about a teacher at a London comprehensive school who begins an affair with an underage pupil. The novel was shortlisted for the 2003 Man Booker Prize, a film version was released in 2006, starring Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett. The film received four Academy Award nominations, including nominations for Dench, Barbara, a veteran history teacher at a comprehensive school in London, is a lonely, unmarried woman in her early sixties, and she is eager to find a close friend. However, she reveals that she has been unable to make a previous friendship last as she was considered by friends to be domineering and demanding. Her former friend, teacher Jennifer Dodd, even threatened her with an injunction if she tried contacting her again, when Bathsheba Sheba Hart is hired as an art teacher, Barbara immediately feels that they might become close friends. When Sheba invites Barbara for Sunday lunch with her family, she is ecstatic, initially unknown to Barbara, Sheba falls in love with a 15-year-old pupil, Steven Connolly, who is from a deprived background and has literacy problems. Although they frequently have sex in risky places, including at school and in the open on Hampstead Heath, Barbara offers her some advice on how to cool the boys ardour, and considers the matter closed. Sheba confesses to Barbara that despite her apparently charmed life, she feels unfulfilled, Sheba has a difficult relationship with her rebellious seventeen-year-old daughter, Polly, whose youth and beauty only intensify her mothers own feelings of aging and waste. Shebas husband, Richard, is older than she is. Shebas complaints trouble Barbara, who had considered Sheba to have the family life. Barbara eventually finds out about the affair on Guy Fawkes Night, when Barbaras cat Portia is diagnosed with colon cancer and needs to be euthanised, she seeks out Sheba for support, only for her to get a call from Connolly during their meeting. Sheba abandons a distraught Barbara in favour of Connolly, compounding Barbaras sense of betrayal from her, the power dynamics in the relationship between Connolly and Sheba are changing, with Connollys interest in the affair waning as Shebas grows. Sheba becomes needier and starts to love letters to the boy. Sheba secretly visits Connolly in his parents house, and Connolly callously insults her when she tries to make conversation with him. Sheba still does not break off the affair, having become quite enslaved to the now barely invested Connolly, brian Bangs, a mathematics teacher, asks Barbara to have Saturday lunch with him one day just before Christmas. He confesses his infatuation with Sheba, leading Barbara to realise that he asked her out to use her as a means to discover information about Shebas private life. Overcome by jealousy, Barbara alludes to Shebas secret, afterwards, Barbara is wracked with guilt, but cannot summon up the courage to tell Sheba what she has done
14.
Pale Fire
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Pale Fire is a 1962 novel by Vladimir Nabokov. Together these elements form a narrative in both fictional authors are central characters. Pale Fire has spawned a variety of interpretations and a large body of written criticism. The Nabokov authority Brian Boyd has called it Nabokovs most perfect novel, and it was ranked 53rd on the list of the Modern Library 100 Best Novels and 1st on the American literary critic Larry McCafferys 20th Century’s Greatest Hits,100 English-Language Books of Fiction. Kinbotes Commentary takes the form of notes to various numbered lines of the poem, here and in the rest of his critical apparatus, Kinbote explicates the poem surprisingly little. Focusing instead on his own concerns, he divulges what proves to be the piece by piece. Espen Aarseth noted that Pale Fire can be read either unicursally, straight through, or multicursally, thus although the narration is non-linear and multidimensional, the reader can still choose to read the novel in a linear manner without risking misinterpretation. The novels unusual structure has attracted attention, and it is often cited as an important example of metafiction. A2009 paper also compares Pale Fire to hypertext, the interaction between Kinbote and Shade takes place in the fictitious small college town of New Wye, Appalachia, where they live across a lane from each other, from February to July 1959. Kinbote writes his commentary from then to October 1959 in a tourist cabin in the equally fictitious western town of Cedarn, both authors recount many earlier events, Shade mostly in New Wye and Kinbote in New Wye and in Europe, especially the distant northern land of Zembla. Shades poem digressively describes many aspects of his life, canto 1 includes his early encounters with death and glimpses of what he takes to be the supernatural. Canto 2 is about his family and the apparent suicide of his daughter, canto 3 focuses on Shades search for knowledge about an afterlife, culminating in a faint hope in higher powers playing a game of worlds as indicated by apparent coincidences. Canto 4 offers details on Shades daily life and creative process, as well as thoughts on his poetry, in Kinbotes editorial contributions he tells three stories intermixed with each other. One is his own story, notably including what he thinks of as his friendship with Shade. After Shade was murdered, Kinbote acquired the manuscript, including some variants, Kinbotes second story deals with King Charles II, The Beloved, the deposed king of Zembla. King Charles escaped imprisonment by Soviet-backed revolutionaries, making use of a secret passage, however, no explicit reference to King Charles is to be found in the poem. Kinbotes third story is that of Gradus, an assassin dispatched by the new rulers of Zembla to kill the exiled King Charles, Gradus makes his way from Zembla through Europe and America to New Wye, suffering comic mishaps. In the last note, to the missing line 1000, Kinbote narrates how Gradus killed Shade by mistake, Nabokov said in an interview that Kinbote committed suicide after finishing the book
15.
Patrick Bateman
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Patrick Bateman is a fictional character, the villain protagonist and narrator of the novel American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis, and its film adaptation. He is a wealthy, materialistic Wall Street investment banker who leads a life as a serial killer. Bateman has also appeared in other Ellis novels. In his secret life, however, Bateman is a killer murdering a variety of people. His crimes—including rape, torture, necrophilia, and cannibalism—are described in detail in the novel. Bateman comes from a wealthy family and his parents have a house on Long Island, and he mentions a summer house in Newport. His parents divorced sometime earlier, while his mother became sick and his father, who first appeared in Ellis preceding novel The Rules of Attraction, grew up on an estate in Connecticut, and now owns an apartment in the Carlyle Hotel in Manhattan. He is assumed to be dead as he is mentioned only in past tense during the novel, batemans younger brother Sean attends Camden College. Bateman attended Phillips Exeter Academy for prep school and he graduated from Harvard College in 1984 and Harvard Business School two years later, and moved to New York City. By the end of the novel, he believes he is about to be arrested for murdering a colleague named Paul Allen, and leaves a message on his lawyers answering machine confessing to his crimes. When he runs into his lawyer at a party, however, Bateman realizes that the punishment and notoriety he desires will be forever out of his reach, and that he is trapped inside a pointless existence, This is not an exit. As written by Ellis, Bateman is the stereotype of yuppie greed, rich, shallow, and addicted to sex, drugs. All of his friends look alike to him, to the point that he often confuses one for another and he is engaged to an equally rich, shallow woman named Evelyn Richards. He has a mistress on the side and has regular liaisons with prostitutes and women he encounters at clubs, the one woman in his life he has anything approaching feelings for is his secretary, Jean. She is the person in his life who is not completely shallow, so he cannot bring himself to seduce, rape. He casually acknowledges her as Jean, my secretary who is in love with me, despite his affluence and high social status, Bateman is wracked by feelings of insecurity and self-hatred. He kills many of his victims because they make him feel inadequate and he is deeply disliked by others as well—his friends mock him as the boy next door, his own lawyer refers to him as a bloody ass-kisser. A brown-nosing goody-goody, and he is dismissed as yuppie trash by people outside his social circle
16.
American Psycho
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American Psycho is a novel by Bret Easton Ellis, published in 1991. The story is told in the first person by Patrick Bateman, a film adaptation starring Christian Bale as Bateman was released in 2000 to generally favorable reviews. In 2008, it was confirmed that producers David Johnson and Jesse Singer were developing an adaptation of the novel to appear on Broadway. The musical premiered at the Almeida Theatre, London in December 2013, Ellis researched murders at the New York Public Library. His first draft of American Psycho left all the scenes until last. Bateman, in his mid-20s when the story begins, narrates his everyday activities, Batemans stream of consciousness is occasionally broken up by chapters in which he directly addresses the reader in order to critique the work of 1980s pop music artists. The novel maintains a level of ambiguity through mistaken identity. Characters are consistently introduced as other than themselves, and people argue over the identities of others they can see in restaurants or at parties. After killing Paul Owen, one of his colleagues, Bateman appropriates his apartment as a place to host, Batemans control over his violent urges deteriorates. Bateman begins to experience bizarre hallucinations such as seeing a Cheerio interviewed on a show, being stalked by an anthropomorphic park bench. These incidents culminate in a spree during which he kills several random people in the street. Bateman flees on foot and hides in his office, where he phones his attorney, Harold Carnes, later, Bateman revisits Paul Owens apartment, where he had earlier killed and mutilated two prostitutes, carrying a surgical mask in anticipation of the decomposing bodies he expects to encounter. He enters the perfectly clean, refurbished apartment, however, filled with strong-smelling flowers meant, perhaps, the real estate agent, who sees his surgical mask, fools him into stating he was attending the apartment viewing because he saw an ad in the Times. She tells him to leave and never return, at the end of the story, Bateman confronts Carnes about the message he left on his machine, only to find the attorney amused at what he considers a hilarious joke. Mistaking Bateman for another colleague, Carnes claims that the Patrick Bateman he knows is too much of a coward to have committed such acts, the book ends as it began, with Bateman and his colleagues at a new club on a Friday night, engaging in banal conversation. The sign seen at the end of the book simply reads This is not an exit, according to literary critic Jeffrey W. Hunter, American Psycho is largely a critique of the shallow and vicious aspects of capitalism. The characters are concerned with material gain and superficial appearances. This leads Patrick Bateman to act as if everything is a commodity, including people, Patrick Batemans consumption of what he views as nothing more than a piece of meat is an almost parodically literal interpretation of a monster created by consumer culture
17.
The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas
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The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas, often subtitled as the Epitaph of a Small Winner, is a novel by the Brazilian writer Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis. Published in 1881, the novel has a style of short, erratic chapters shifting in tone. Instead of the clear and logical construction of a normal nineteenth-century realist novel and it is considered the first romance of the realist movement in Brazil. The novel is narrated by the dead protagonist Brás Cubas, who tells his own story from beyond the grave, noting his mistakes. The fact of being already deceased allows Brás Cubas to sharply criticize the Brazilian society and reflect on his own disillusionment, with no sign of remorse or fear of retaliation. Brás Cubas dedicates his book to the first worm that gnawed his cold body, To the worm who first gnawed on the flesh of my corpse. Cubas decides to tell his story starting from the end, then taking the greatest leap in this story, proceeding to tell the story of his life since his childhood. The novel is connected to another Machado de Assis work, Quincas Borba, which features a character from the Memoirs. It is a novel recalled as an influence by many post-modern writers, such as John Barth or Donald Barthelme. Bras Cubas pessimism is shown most obviously in the sub-title of the novel, for this reason he considers his life a success. Schopenhauer is often referred to as the King of pessimists, or the Philosopher of despair, yet his exceptional prose and the intelligence of his philosophical outlook has made him a major influence on many preeminent novelists and artists of the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Woody Allen listed a work for The Guardian as one of his favorite works and he said in an interview with the newspaper, I just got this in the mail one day. Some stranger in Brazil sent it and wrote, Youll like this, because its a thin book, I read it. If it had been a book, I would have discarded it. I was shocked by how charming and amusing it was, I couldnt believe he lived as long ago as he did. You wouldve thought he wrote it yesterday and its so modern and so amusing. Its a very, very original piece of work and it rang a bell in me, in the same way that The Catcher in the Rye did. It was about subject matter that I liked and it was treated with great wit, great originality, memórias Póstumas de Bras Cubas Schwarz, Roberto, The Machadian turning point, São Paulo, CEBRAP magazine
18.
Huckleberry Finn
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He is 12 or 13 years old during the former and a year older at the time of the latter. Huck also narrates Tom Sawyer Abroad and Tom Sawyer, Detective, the book has been deemed to some Controversial due to the use of the n- word. Despite the controversy, the book has remained an icon, Huckleberry Huck Finn is the son of the towns vagrant drunkard, Pap Finn. Sleeping on doorsteps when the weather is fair, in empty hogsheads during storms, Huck is an archetypal innocent, able to discover the right thing to do despite the prevailing theology and prejudiced mentality of the South of that era. The best example of this is his decision to help Jim escape slavery and his appearance is described in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. He wears the clothes of full-grown men which he received as charity. He has a torn broken hat and his trousers are supported only one suspender. Toms Aunt Polly calls Huck a poor motherless thing, Huck confesses to Tom in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer that he remembers his mother and his parents relentless fighting that only abated with her death. Huck has a life free from societal norms or rules, stealing watermelons and chickens and borrowing boats. Due to his childhood, Huck has received almost no education. At the end of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Huck is adopted by the Widow Douglas, in the course of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn he learns enough to be literate and even reads books for entertainment when there isnt anything else to do. His knowledge of history as related to Jim is wildly inaccurate, in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, the Widow attempts to sivilize the newly wealthy Huck. Jim is running away because he overheard Miss Watson planning to sell him South for eight hundred dollars, Jim wants to escape to Ohio, where he can find work to eventually buy his familys freedom. Huck and Jim take a raft down the Mississippi River in hopes of finding freedom from slavery for Jim and their adventures together, along with Hucks solo adventures, comprise the core of the book. In the end, however, Jim gains his freedom through Miss Watsons death, Pap, it is revealed, has died in Hucks absence, and although he could safely return to St. Petersburg, Huck plans to flee west to Indian Territory. In Tom Sawyer Abroad and Tom Sawyer, Detective, the sequels to Huck Finn, however, in Abroad, Huck joins Tom and Jim for a wild, fanciful balloon ride that takes them overseas. In Detective, which occurs about a year after the events of Huck Finn, Huck is Tom Sawyers closest friend. Their friendship is partially rooted in Sawyers emulation of Hucks freedom and ability to do what he wants, nonetheless, Tom remains a devoted friend to Huck in all of the novels they appear in
19.
Forrest Gump (character)
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Forrest Gump is a fictional character who first appears in the 1986 novel by Winston Groom. Forrest Gump also appeared on screen in the 1994 film of the same name directed by Robert Zemeckis, Forrest was portrayed as a child by Michael Humphreys and portrayed as an adult by Tom Hanks, who won an Academy Award for the role. The portrayal of Forrest in the novel is different from the portrayal in the film. He later reappears in the 1995 sequel novel Gump and Co, in 2008, Forrest Gump was named the 20th greatest movie character of all time by Empire magazine. In the film, Forrest is portrayed essentially as a character who faces a variety of setbacks and misfortunes yet maintains a compassionate. He tries to help every person whom he meets, despite his strong naivety, Forrest was born near the small town of Greenbow, Alabama, on June 6,1945. His father was absent during his life, and his said he was on vacation. She intended his name to be a reminder that sometimes we all do things that, well, Forrest was born with strong legs but a crooked spine. He was forced to wear leg braces which made walking difficult and he also had a relatively low I. Q. of 75, which nearly prevented him from being accepted into public school. Despite his physical and mental challenges, Forrests mother told him not to let anyone tell him he was different, Forrest and his mother lived in a large house just outside the town of Greenbow. They made money by renting out rooms to travelers, one of their guests was a young Elvis Presley. Forrest liked dancing to Elvis music and his leg gave him a unique dancing style that would inspire Elviss hip dancing. On the bus ride on Forrests first day of school, Forrest met Jenny Curran and was taken by her. I had never seen anything so beautiful in my life, he would say of her. The two became friends, often playing around a large nearby tree. Forrest described their relationship saying, Jenny and me was like peas, Jenny was one of the few people besides his mother to accept Forrest as he was, helping him learn to read and stand up to bullies who harassed him. One day, a group of bullies was throwing rocks at Forrest, Jenny told Forrest to just run away, which he did, only to prompt the bullies to chase him on their bikes. As Forrest struggled to run, his leg braces broke apart, once he was free of them, Forrest was able to run incredibly fast
20.
Ford Madox Ford
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Ford is now remembered for his novels The Good Soldier, the Parades End tetralogy and The Fifth Queen trilogy. Ford was born in Wimbledon to Catherine Madox Brown and Francis Hueffer, Fords father, who became music critic for The Times, was German and his mother English. His paternal grandfather Johann Hermann Hüffer was first to publish Westphalian poet, Ford used the name of Ford Madox Hueffer, but in 1919 he changed it to Ford Madox Ford in honour of his grandfather, the Pre-Raphaelite painter Ford Madox Brown, whose biography he had written. In 1889, after the death of his father, Ford, Ford graduated from the University College School in London, but never attended university. In 1894, Ford eloped with his school girlfriend Elsie Martindale, the couple were married in Gloucester and moved to Bonnington. In 1901, the moved to Winchelsea. The couple had two daughters, Christina and Katharine, Fords neighbors in Winchelsea included the authors Henry James and H. G. Wells. In 1904, Ford suffered a breakdown due to financial and marital problems. He went to Germany to spend time with family there and undergo cure treatments, between 1918 and 1927 he lived with Stella Bowen, an Australian artist twenty years his junior. In 1920, Ford and Bowen had a daughter, Julia Madox Ford, in the summer of 1927, The New York Times reported that Ford had converted a mill building in Avignon, France into a home and workshop that he called Le Vieux Moulin. The article implied that Ford was reunited with his wife at this point, Ford spent the last years of his life teaching at Olivet College in Olivet, Michigan. Ford died in Deauville, France, at the age of 65, one of Fords most famous works is the novel The Good Soldier. Set just before World War I, The Good Soldier chronicles the tragic lives of two perfect couples, one British and one American, using intricate flashbacks. In the Dedicatory Letter to Stella Ford” that prefaces the novel, Ford reports that a friend pronounced The Good Soldier “the finest French novel in the English language. ”Ford pronounced himself a Tory mad about historic continuity and believed the novelists function was to serve as the historian of his own time. Ford was involved in British war propaganda after the beginning of World War I. He worked for the War Propaganda Bureau, managed by C. F. G. Masterman, along with Arnold Bennett, G. K. Chesterton, John Galsworthy, Hilaire Belloc and Gilbert Murray. After writing the two books, Ford enlisted at 41 years of age into the Welch Regiment of the British Army on 30 July 1915. Fords combat experiences and his previous propaganda activities inspired his tetralogy Parades End, set in England and on the Western Front before, during, Ford wrote dozens of novels as well as essays, poetry, memoirs and literary criticism
21.
The Good Soldier
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The Good Soldier, A Tale of Passion is a 1915 novel by English novelist Ford Madox Ford. It is set just before World War I and chronicles the tragedy of Edward Ashburnham, the soldier to whom the title refers, and his own seemingly perfect marriage and that of two American friends. The novel is told using a series of flashbacks in non-chronological order, the novel was loosely based on two incidents of adultery and on Fords messy personal life. The novels original title was The Saddest Story, but after the onset of World War I, Ford suggested The Good Soldier, and the name stuck. In 1998, the Modern Library ranked The Good Soldier 30th on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century, in 2015, the BBC ranked The Good Soldier 13th on its list of the 100 greatest British novels. The Good Soldier is narrated by the character John Dowell, half of one of the couples whose dissolving relationships form the subject of the novel. Dowell tells the stories of those dissolutions as well as the deaths of three characters and the madness of a fourth, in a rambling, non-chronological fashion that leaves gaps for the reader to fill. The plot is not then the story, the reader is asked to consider whether they believe Dowell. The novel opens with the line, This is the saddest story I have ever heard. As it turns out, nothing in the relationships or in the characters is as it first seems, florences heart ailment is a fiction she perpetrated on John to force them to stay in Europe so that she could continue her affair with a French artist named Jimmy. Edward and Leonora have a loveless, imbalanced marriage broken by his constant infidelities and Leonoras attempts to control Edwards affairs. Dowell is a fool and is coming to realize how much of a fool he is, as Florence and Edward had an affair under his nose for nine years without John knowing until Florence was dead. Florences affair with Edward leads her to suicide when she realizes that Edward is falling in love with his and Leonoras young ward, Nancy Rufford. Florence sees the two in a conversation and rushes back into the resort, where she sees John talking to a man she knows. Assuming that her relationship with Edward and her marriage to John are over, with that story told, Dowell moves on to tell the story of Edward and Leonoras relationship, which appears normal but which is a power struggle that Leonora wins. Edwards philandering ends up costing them a fortune in bribes, blackmail and gifts for his lovers and she gradually gets him out of debt. Edwards last affair is his most scandalous, as he becomes infatuated with their young ward, Nancy came to live with them after leaving a convent where her parents had sent her, her mother was a violent alcoholic, and her father may have abused her. Edward, tearing himself apart because he not want to spoil Nancys innocence, arranges to have her sent to India to live with her father
22.
Alan Ayckbourn
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Sir Alan Ayckbourn, CBE is a prolific English playwright and director. His plays have won awards, including seven London Evening Standard Awards. They have been translated into over 35 languages and are performed on stage, ten of his plays have been staged on Broadway, attracting two Tony nominations, and one Tony award. chau Ayckbourn was born in Hampstead, London. His mother Irene Worley was a writer of short stories who published under the name Mary James and his father, Horace Ayckbourn, was an orchestral violinist, at one time deputy leader of the London Symphony Orchestra. His parents, who separated shortly after World War II, never married, Ayckbourn wrote his first play at Wisborough Lodge when he was about 10. Whilst at prep school as a boarder, his mother wrote to him she was marrying Cecil Pye. When he went home for the holidays his new family consisted of his mother, his stepfather and Christopher and this relationship too, reportedly ran into difficulties early on. Ayckbourn attended Haileybury and Imperial Service College, in the village of Hertford Heath and it is said that Joseph became both a mentor and father figure for Ayckbourn until his untimely death in 1967, and he has consistently spoken highly of him. Ayckbourns career was interrupted when he was called for National Service. He was swiftly discharged, officially on medical grounds, but it is suggested that a doctor who noticed his reluctance to join the Armed Forces deliberately failed the medical as a favour. Although Ayckbourn continued to move where his career took him, he settled in Scarborough, eventually buying Longwestgate House, the house formerly owned by Stephen Joseph. In 1957, Ayckbourn married Christine Roland, another member of the Library Theatre company and they had two sons, Steven and Philip. However, the marriage had difficulties which led to their separation in 1971. Alan Ayckbourn said that his relationship with Christine became easy once they agreed their marriage was over, around this time, he started to share a home with Heather Stoney, an actress he had first met ten years earlier. Like his mother, neither he nor Christine sought a divorce for the thirty years and it was only in 1997 that they formally divorced. One side-effect of the timing is that, as Alan was awarded a knighthood a few months before the divorce, both his first and second wife are entitled to take the title of Lady Ayckbourn. In February 2006, he suffered a stroke in Scarborough, and stated, I hope to be back on my feet, or should I say my left leg, as soon as possible, in the meantime I am in excellent hands and so is the Stephen Joseph Theatre. He left hospital after eight weeks and returned to directing after six months, Ayckbourn, however, continues to write and direct his own work at the theatre
23.
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
24.
Dionysus
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Dionysus is the god of the grape harvest, winemaking and wine, of ritual madness, fertility, theatre and religious ecstasy in ancient Greek religion and myth. Wine played an important role in Greek culture, and the cult of Dionysus was the religious focus for its unrestrained consumption. He may have been worshipped as early as c, 1500–1100 BC by Mycenean Greeks, traces of Dionysian-type cult have also been found in ancient Minoan Crete. His origins are uncertain, and his cults took many forms, some are described by ancient sources as Thracian, in some cults, he arrives from the east, as an Asiatic foreigner, in others, from Ethiopia in the South. He is a god of epiphany, the god that comes and his festivals were the driving force behind the development of Greek theatre. The earliest cult images of Dionysus show a male, bearded and robed. He holds a staff, tipped with a pine-cone and known as a thyrsus. Later images show him as a beardless, sensuous, naked or half-naked androgynous youth, in its fully developed form, his central cult imagery shows his triumphant, disorderly arrival or return, as if from some place beyond the borders of the known and civilized. His procession is made up of female followers and bearded satyrs with erect penises, some are armed with the thyrsus. The god himself is drawn in a chariot, usually by exotic beasts such as lions or tigers and this procession is presumed to be the cult model for the followers of his Dionysian Mysteries. He is also known as Bacchus, the adopted by the Romans. His thyrsus, sometimes wound with ivy and dripping with honey, is both a beneficent wand and a used to destroy those who oppose his cult and the freedoms he represents. As Eleutherios, his wine, music and ecstatic dance free his followers from self-conscious fear and care and those who partake of his mysteries are possessed and empowered by the god himself. The cult of Dionysus is also a cult of the souls, his maenads feed the dead through blood-offerings and he is sometimes categorised as a dying-and-rising god. Some scholars believe that Dionysus is a syncretism of a local Greek nature deity, Dionysus had a strange birth that evokes the difficulty in fitting him into the Olympian pantheon. His mother was a woman, Semele, the daughter of king Cadmus of Thebes, and his father was Zeus. Zeus wife, Hera, discovered the affair while Semele was pregnant, appearing as an old crone, Hera befriended Semele, who confided in her that Zeus was the actual father of the baby in her womb. Hera pretended not to believe her, and planted seeds of doubt in Semeles mind, curious, Semele demanded of Zeus that he reveal himself in all his glory as proof of his godhood
25.
Xanthias
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Xanthias refers to several characters, notably all slaves, who appear in plays by the Ancient Greek playwright Aristophanes. In The Frogs, Xanthias is the slave of Dionysus and he delivers the opening line of the play, riding on Dionysus donkey and debating with Dionysus about what jokes Xanthias can make. He and Dionysus trade barbs throughout the play, with Xanthias generally coming out on top, when they cross the Acheron, Xanthias is forced to carry the luggage around the lake because he was unable to participate in the Battle of Arginusae, allegedly due to pinkeye. Xanthias also manages to trick Aeacus into whipping both him and Dionysus to avoid having monsters set upon him, once the confusion about master and slave is sorted out, Xanthias flirts with the nice maid, discussing ways they secretly rebel against their masters. Xanthias of The Frogs defies the convention of slaves introduced in earlier works by Aristophanes, in The Knights, The Wasps, and Peace, slaves fulfill two functions - they introduce the situation at the beginning of the play and they provide comedic relief by being threatened or frightened. However, in The Frogs, Xanthias begins by debating with his master about what kind of joke he can tell to initiate the play, Aristophanes uses their banter to blast the low level of humor used by contemporaries, referencing Phrynichus, Lykis, and Ameipsias. Aristophanes represents Xanthias as braver and cleverer than Dionysus, Xanthias pretends to see Empousa, frightening the bumbling, slouching Dionysus. Then Xanthias tricks Aeacus into whipping both of them to differentiate between master and servant, Xanthias is clearly dominant during the latter situation, as Dionysus pleads and whines to let Xanthias change clothes with him. Brow-beating & topping a bumbling living god, Dionysus, during his multiple hallowed citations, may have had something to do with it, too. The Wasps, as Bdelycleons slave The Clouds, as Strepsiades slave The Birds, as a slave The Acharnians, as a slave ordered to hold phallus uprightt
26.
Arabic literature
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Arabic literature is the writing, both prose and poetry, produced by writers in the Arabic language. The Arabic word used for literature is Adab, which is derived from a meaning of etiquette, Arabic literature emerged in the 5th century with only fragments of the written language appearing before then. The Quran, widely regarded by people as the finest piece of literature in the Arabic language, would have the greatest lasting effect on Arabic culture and its literature. Arabic literature flourished during the Islamic Golden Age, but has remained vibrant to the present day, with poets, the Quran had a significant influence on the Arab language. The language used in it is called classical Arabic, and while modern Arabic is very similar and it contains injunctions, narratives, homilies, parables, direct addresses from God, instructions and even comments on itself on how it will be received and understood. It is also, paradoxically, admired for its layers of metaphor as well as its clarity, the word Quran means recitation, and in early times the text was transmitted orally. The first attempt at a written version was during the reign of the third Rightly Guided Caliph. Although it contains elements of both prose and poetry, and therefore is closest to Saj or rhymed prose, the Quran is regarded as entirely apart from these classifications, the text is believed to be divine revelation and is seen by Muslims as being eternal or uncreated. This leads to the doctrine of ijaz or inimitability of the Quran which implies that nobody can copy the works style, say, Bring you then ten chapters like unto it, and call whomsoever you can, other than God, if you speak the truth. This doctrine of ijaz possibly had a limiting effect on Arabic literature. And as to the poets, those who go astray follow them Do you not see that they wander about bewildered in every valley and this may have exerted dominance over the pre-Islamic poets of the 6th century whose popularity may have vied with the Quran amongst the people. There were a lack of significant poets until the 8th century. One notable exception was Hassan ibn Thabit who wrote poems in praise of Muhammad and was known as the prophets poet, just as the Bible has held an important place in the literature of other languages, The Quran is important to Arabic. It is the source of ideas, allusions and quotes. Aside from the Quran the hadith or tradition of what Muhammed is supposed to have said, the entire body of these acts and words are called sunnah or way and the ones regarded as sahih or genuine of them are collected into hadith. Some of the most significant collections of hadith include those by Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj, the research into the life and times of Muhammad, and determining the genuine parts of the sunnah, was an important early reason for scholarship in or about the Arabic language. Muhammad also inspired the first Arabic biographies, known as al-sirah al-nabawiyyah, the earliest was by Wahb ibn Munabbih, whilst covering the life of the prophet they also told of the battles and events of early Islam and have numerous digressions on older biblical traditions. Some of the earliest work studying the Arabic language was started in the name of Islam, tradition has it that the caliph Ali, after reading a copy of Quran with errors in it, asked Abu al-Aswad al-Duali to write a work codifying Arabic grammar
27.
One Thousand and One Nights
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One Thousand and One Nights is a collection of Middle Eastern and South Asian stories and folk tales compiled in Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age. It is often known in English as the Arabian Nights, from the first English-language edition, the work was collected over many centuries by various authors, translators, and scholars across West, Central, and South Asia and North Africa. The tales themselves trace their roots back to ancient and medieval Arabic, Persian, Mesopotamian, Indian, Jewish, the stories proceed from this original tale, some are framed within other tales, while others begin and end of their own accord. Some editions contain only a few hundred nights, while others include 1,001 or more, the bulk of the text is in prose, although verse is occasionally used for songs and riddles and to express heightened emotion. Most of the poems are single couplets or quatrains, although some are longer, the main frame story concerns Shahryār, whom the narrator calls a Sasanian king ruling in India and China. Shahryār begins to marry a succession of only to execute each one the next morning. Eventually the vizier, whose duty it is to provide them, Scheherazade, the viziers daughter, offers herself as the next bride and her father reluctantly agrees. On the night of their marriage, Scheherazade begins to tell the king a tale, the king, curious about how the story ends, is thus forced to postpone her execution in order to hear the conclusion. The next night, as soon as she finishes the tale, she begins a new one, so it goes on for 1,001 nights. The tales vary widely, they include historical tales, love stories, tragedies, comedies, poems, burlesques, numerous stories depict jinns, ghouls, apes, sorcerers, magicians, and legendary places, which are often intermingled with real people and geography, not always rationally. The different versions have different individually detailed endings but they all end with the giving his wife a pardon. The narrators standards for what constitutes a cliffhanger seem broader than in modern literature, the history of the Nights is extremely complex and modern scholars have made many attempts to untangle the story of how the collection as it currently exists came about. Most scholars agreed that the Nights was a work and that the earliest tales in it came from India and Persia. At some time, probably in the early 8th century, these tales were translated into Arabic under the title Alf Layla and this collection then formed the basis of The Thousand and One Nights. The original core of stories was quite small, then, in Iraq in the 9th or 10th century, this original core had Arab stories added to it – among them some tales about the Caliph Harun al-Rashid. Devices found in Sanskrit literature such as stories and animal fables are seen by some scholars as lying at the root of the conception of the Nights. Indian folklore is represented in the Nights by certain animal stories, the influence of the Panchatantra and Baital Pachisi is particularly notable. The Jataka Tales are a collection of 547 Buddhist stories, which are for the most part moral stories with an ethical purpose
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Courtesan
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A courtesan was originally a courtier, which means a person who attends the court of a monarch or other powerful person. In feudal society, the court was the centre of government as well as the residence of the monarch, prior to the Renaissance, courtesans served to convey information to visiting dignitaries, when servants could not be trusted. In Renaissance Europe, courtiers played an important role in upper-class society. In fact, the verb to court originally meant to be or reside at court, the most intimate companion of a ruler was called the favourite. The word was borrowed by English from Italian through the French form courtisane during the 16th century, a male figure comparable to the courtesan was the Italian cicisbeo, the French chevalier servant, the Spanish cortejo or estrecho. It actually seems that the figure of the servant of a married lady was quite common in Europe up to the 18th century. The courtesans of East Asia, particularly those of the Japanese empire, examples of Japanese courtesans included the Oiran class, who were more focused on the aspect of entertainment in comparison with European courtesans. There were two types of courtesan, in one category was a type of courtesan known as the cortigiana onesta, or the honest courtesan, who was cast as an intellectual. In the other was the cortigiana di lume, a class of courtesan. Although the latter was considered better than an average courtesan. It is with type of courtesan that the art of courtisanerie is best associated. The cortigiane oneste were usually well-educated and worldly, and often held simultaneous careers as performers or artists and they were typically chosen on the basis of their breeding—social and conversational skills, intelligence, common-sense, and companionship—as well as their physical attributes. It was usually their wit and personality that set apart from regular women. Sex constituted only a facet of the array of services. For example, they were well-dressed and ready to engage and participate in a variety of topics ranging from art to music to politics, in some cases, courtesans were from well-to-do backgrounds, and were even married—but to husbands lower on the social ladder than their clients. In cases like this, a courtesan was solely dependent on her benefactor or benefactors financially, making her vulnerable, Cora Pearl is a good example. In the event that the courtesan had angered or dissatisfied a benefactor, they would find themselves cast out of wealthy circles. In instances like this, it was often viewed simply as an agreement by both parties involved
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Bible
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The Bible is a collection of sacred texts or scriptures that Jews and Christians consider to be a product of divine inspiration and a record of the relationship between God and humans. Many different authors contributed to the Bible, what is regarded as canonical text differs depending on traditions and groups, a number of Bible canons have evolved, with overlapping and diverging contents. The Christian Old Testament overlaps with the Hebrew Bible and the Greek Septuagint, the New Testament is a collection of writings by early Christians, believed to be mostly Jewish disciples of Christ, written in first-century Koine Greek. These early Christian Greek writings consist of narratives, letters, among Christian denominations there is some disagreement about the contents of the canon, primarily the Apocrypha, a list of works that are regarded with varying levels of respect. Attitudes towards the Bible also differ amongst Christian groups and this concept arose during the Protestant Reformation, and many denominations today support the use of the Bible as the only source of Christian teaching. With estimated total sales of over 5 billion copies, the Bible is widely considered to be the book of all time. It has estimated sales of 100 million copies, and has been a major influence on literature and history, especially in the West. The English word Bible is from the Latin biblia, from the word in Medieval Latin and Late Latin. Medieval Latin biblia is short for biblia sacra holy book, while biblia in Greek and it gradually came to be regarded as a feminine singular noun in medieval Latin, and so the word was loaned as a singular into the vernaculars of Western Europe. Latin biblia sacra holy books translates Greek τὰ βιβλία τὰ ἅγια ta biblia ta hagia, the word βιβλίον itself had the literal meaning of paper or scroll and came to be used as the ordinary word for book. It is the diminutive of βύβλος byblos, Egyptian papyrus, possibly so called from the name of the Phoenician sea port Byblos from whence Egyptian papyrus was exported to Greece, the Greek ta biblia was an expression Hellenistic Jews used to describe their sacred books. Christian use of the term can be traced to c.223 CE, bruce notes that Chrysostom appears to be the first writer to use the Greek phrase ta biblia to describe both the Old and New Testaments together. The division of the Hebrew Bible into verses is based on the sof passuk cantillation mark used by the 10th-century Masoretes to record the verse divisions used in oral traditions. The oldest extant copy of a complete Bible is an early 4th-century parchment book preserved in the Vatican Library, the oldest copy of the Tanakh in Hebrew and Aramaic dates from the 10th century CE. The oldest copy of a complete Latin Bible is the Codex Amiatinus and he states that it is not a magical book, nor was it literally written by God and passed to mankind. In Christian Bibles, the New Testament Gospels were derived from traditions in the second half of the first century CE. Riches says that, Scholars have attempted to reconstruct something of the history of the oral traditions behind the Gospels, the period of transmission is short, less than 40 years passed between the death of Jesus and the writing of Marks Gospel. This means that there was time for oral traditions to assume fixed form
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Quran
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The Quran is the central religious text of Islam, which Muslims believe to be a revelation from God. It is widely regarded as the finest work in classical Arabic literature, the Quran is divided into chapters, which are then divided into verses. The word Quran occurs some 70 times in the text of the Quran, although different names, according to the traditional narrative, several companions of Muhammad served as scribes and were responsible for writing down the revelations. Shortly after Muhammads death, the Quran was compiled by his companions who wrote down and these codices had differences that motivated the Caliph Uthman to establish a standard version now known as Uthmans codex, which is generally considered the archetype of the Quran known today. There are, however, variant readings, with minor differences in meaning. The Quran assumes familiarity with major narratives recounted in the Biblical scriptures and it summarizes some, dwells at length on others and, in some cases, presents alternative accounts and interpretations of events. The Quran describes itself as a book of guidance and it sometimes offers detailed accounts of specific historical events, and it often emphasizes the moral significance of an event over its narrative sequence. The Quran is used along with the hadith to interpret sharia law, during prayers, the Quran is recited only in Arabic. Someone who has memorized the entire Quran is called a hafiz, some Muslims read Quranic ayah with elocution, which is often called tajwid. During the month of Ramadan, Muslims typically complete the recitation of the whole Quran during tarawih prayers, in order to extrapolate the meaning of a particular Quranic verse, most Muslims rely on the tafsir. The word qurʼān appears about 70 times in the Quran itself and it is a verbal noun of the Arabic verb qaraʼa, meaning he read or he recited. The Syriac equivalent is qeryānā, which refers to reading or lesson. While some Western scholars consider the word to be derived from the Syriac, regardless, it had become an Arabic term by Muhammads lifetime. An important meaning of the word is the act of reciting, as reflected in an early Quranic passage, It is for Us to collect it, in other verses, the word refers to an individual passage recited. Its liturgical context is seen in a number of passages, for example, So when al-qurʼān is recited, listen to it, the word may also assume the meaning of a codified scripture when mentioned with other scriptures such as the Torah and Gospel. The term also has closely related synonyms that are employed throughout the Quran, each synonym possesses its own distinct meaning, but its use may converge with that of qurʼān in certain contexts. Such terms include kitāb, āyah, and sūrah, the latter two terms also denote units of revelation. In the large majority of contexts, usually with an article, the word is referred to as the revelation
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Joseph (Genesis)
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Joseph is an important figure in the Bibles Book of Genesis and also in the Quran as well as the Book of Mormon. In Rabbinic tradition Joseph is considered the ancestor of another Messiah called Mashiach ben Yosef and he will wage war against the evil forces alongside Mashiach ben David and die in combat with the enemies of God and Israel. Joseph, son of Jacob and Rachel, lived in the land of Canaan with ten half-brothers, one full brother and he was Rachels firstborn and Jacobs eleventh son. Of all the sons, Joseph was preferred by his father, when Joseph was seventeen years old he had two dreams that made his brothers plot his demise. In the first dream, Joseph and his brothers gathered bundles of grain, in the second dream, the sun, the moon, and eleven stars bowed to Joseph himself. These dreams, implying his supremacy, angered his brothers, unaware of this secondary intention, the others obeyed his first. Upon imprisoning Joseph, the brothers saw a caravan carrying spices and perfumes to Egypt. Thereafter the guilty brothers painted goats blood on Josephs coat and showed it to Jacob, ultimately, Joseph was sold to Potiphar, the captain of Pharaohs guard. Later, Joseph became Potiphars personal servant, and subsequently his households superintendent, here, Potiphars wife Zuleika tried to seduce Joseph, which he refused. Angered by his running away from her, she made an accusation of rape. Joseph requested the cup-bearer to mention him to Pharaoh and secure his release from prison, after two more years, the Pharaoh dreamt of seven lean cows which devoured seven fat cows, and of seven withered ears of grain which devoured seven fat ears. When the Pharaohs advisers failed to interpret dreams, the cup-bearer remembered Joseph. He interpreted the dream as seven years of abundance followed by seven years of famine, following the prediction, Joseph became Vizier, under the name of Zaphnath-Paaneah, and was given Asenath, the daughter of Potipherah, priest of On, to be his wife. During the seven years of abundance, Joseph ensured that the storehouses were full, in the sixth year, Asenath bore two children to Joseph, Manasseh and Ephraim. When the famine came, it was so severe that people from surrounding nations came to Egypt to buy bread, the narrative also indicates that they went straight to Joseph or were directed to him, even by the Pharaoh himself. This mandate lasted until the days of Moses, in the second year of famine, Josephs half brothers were sent to Egypt to buy goods. After questioning them, he accused them of being spies, after they mentioned a younger brother at home, the Vizier demanded that he be brought to Egypt as a demonstration of their veracity. This was Josephs full brother, Benjamin, Joseph placed his brothers in prison for three days
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Crime fiction
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Crime fiction is the literary genre that fictionalises crimes, their detection, criminals, and their motives. It is usually distinguished from mainstream fiction and other such as historical fiction or science fiction. Crime fiction has multiple subgenres, including fiction, courtroom drama, hard-boiled fiction. Suspense and mystery are key elements that are ubiquitous to the genre. In Italy people commonly call a story about detectives or crimes giallo, better known are the earlier dark works of Edgar Allan Poe. Wilkie Collins epistolary novel The Woman in White was published in 1860, french author Émile Gaboriaus Monsieur Lecoq laid the groundwork for the methodical, scientifically minded detective. The evolution of locked room mysteries was one of the landmarks in the history of crime fiction, the Sherlock Holmes mysteries of Arthur Conan Doyle are said to have been singularly responsible for the huge popularity in this genre. A precursor was Paul Féval, whose series Les Habits Noirs features Scotland Yard detectives, the best-selling crime novel of the nineteenth century was Fergus Humes The Mystery of a Hansom Cab, set in Melbourne, Australia. The evolution of the print mass media in the United Kingdom, like the works of many other important fiction writers of his day—e. g. Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens—Arthur Conan Doyles Sherlock Holmes stories first appeared in form in the monthly Strand magazine in the United Kingdom. Later a set of stereotypic formulae began to appear to cater to various tastes, Crime fiction can be divided into the following four branches, The cozy mystery, a subgenre of detective fiction in which profanity, sex, and violence are downplayed or treated humorously. The whodunit, the most common form of detective fiction, the historical whodunnit, also a subgenre of historical fiction. The police procedural, the detective is a member of the police, the forensic crime fiction, similar to the police procedural. The detective the reader follows is usually a medical examiner or pathologist—they must use the evidence left on the body. This subgenre was first introduced by Patricia Cornwell, the legal thriller, the major characters are lawyers and their employees, and they become involved in proving their cases. The spy novel, the characters are spies, usually working for an intelligence agency. The caper story and the novel, the stories are told from the point of view of the criminals. The parody or spoof When trying to pigeon-hole fiction, it is difficult to tell where crime fiction starts
