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Grotesque Body
The grotesque body is a concept, or literary trope, put forward by Russian literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin in his study of François Rabelais' work. The essential principle of grotesque realism is degradation, the lowering of all that is abstract, spiritual, noble, and ideal to the material level. Through the use of the grotesque body in his novels, Rabelais related political conflicts to human anatomy. In this way, Rabelais used the concept as "a figure of unruly biological and social exchange". It is by means of this information that Bakhtin pinpoints two important subtexts: the first is ''carnival'' (carnivalesque), and the second is ''grotesque realism'' (grotesque body). Thus, in ''Rabelais and His World'' Bakhtin studies the interaction between the social and the literary, as well as the meaning of the body. Carnival The Carnival, or feast of fools, is a religious celebration where people consume copious amounts of food and wine and have a large party to celebrate. The gro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Literary Trope
A literary trope is an artistic effect realized with figurative language – word, phrase, image – such as a figure of speech, rhetorical figure. In editorial practice, a ''trope'' is "a substitution of a word or phrase by a less literal word or phrase". Semantic change has expanded the definition of the literary term ''trope'' to also describe a writer's usage of commonly recurring or overused literary techniques and rhetorical devices (characters and situations), motif (narrative), motifs, and clichés in a work of creative literature. Origins The term ''trope'' derives from the Koine Greek, Greek (), 'a turn, a change', related to the root of the verb (), 'to turn, to direct, to alter, to change'; this means that the term is used metaphorically to denote, among other things, metaphorical language. Tropes and their classification were an important field in Rhetoric, classical rhetoric. The study of tropes has been taken up again in modern criticism, especially in deconstruc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Clergy
Clergy are formal leaders within established religions. Their roles and functions vary in different religious traditions, but usually involve presiding over specific rituals and teaching their religion's doctrines and practices. Some of the terms used for individual clergy are clergyman, clergywoman, clergyperson, churchman, cleric, ecclesiastic, and vicegerent while clerk in holy orders has a long history but is rarely used. In Christianity, the specific names and roles of the clergy vary by denomination and there is a wide range of formal and informal clergy positions, including deacons, elders, priests, bishops, cardinals, preachers, pastors, presbyters, ministers, and the pope. In Islam, a religious leader is often known formally or informally as an imam, caliph, qadi, mufti, sheikh, mullah, muezzin, and ulema. In the Jewish tradition, a religious leader is often a rabbi (teacher) or hazzan (cantor). Etymology The word ''cleric'' comes from the ecclesia ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Amphitruo
''Amphitryon'' or ''Amphitruo'' is a Latin play for the early Roman theatre by playwright Titus Maccius Plautus. It is Plautus’s only play on a mythological subject. The play is mostly extant, but has a large missing section in its latter portion. The plot of the play involves Amphitryon’s jealous and confused reaction to Alcmena’s seduction by Jupiter, and ends with the birth of Hercules. There is a subplot in which Jupiter's son Mercury, keeping watch outside the house while his father is inside, has fun teasing first Amphitryon's servant Sosia, and then Amphitryon himself. The play is thought to be relatively late in Plautus's works, probably from the period 190–185 BC. One indication of this is the large amount of sung verse. Another is the description of Alcumena in line 703 as a bacchant, which may be connected with the Senate decree on Bacchanalia of 186 BC. The mention of another play in lines 91–2 may be a reference to Ennius's play ''Ambracia'' of 188. The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Plautus
Titus Maccius Plautus ( ; 254 – 184 BC) was a Roman playwright of the Old Latin period. His comedies are the earliest Latin literary works to have survived in their entirety. He wrote Palliata comoedia, the genre devised by Livius Andronicus, the innovator of Latin literature. The word Plautine () refers to both Plautus's own works and works similar to or influenced by his. Biography Not much is known about Titus Maccius Plautus's early life. It is believed that he was born in Sarsina, a small town in Emilia Romagna in northern Italy, around 254 BC.''The Concise Oxford Companion to Classical Literature'' (1996) Ed. M.C. Howatson and Ian Chilvers, Oxford University Press, Oxford Reference Online According to Morris Marples, Plautus worked as a stage-carpenter or scene-shifter in his early years. It is from this work, perhaps, that his love of the theater originated. His acting talent was eventually discovered; and he adopted the nomen "Maccius" (from Maccus, a clownis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Materialism
Materialism is a form of monism, philosophical monism according to which matter is the fundamental Substance theory, substance in nature, and all things, including mind, mental states and consciousness, are results of material interactions. According to philosophical materialism, mind and consciousness are caused by physical processes, such as the neurochemistry of the human brain and nervous system, without which they cannot exist. Materialism directly contrasts with monistic idealism, according to which consciousness is the fundamental substance of nature. Materialism is closely related to physicalism—the view that all that exists is ultimately physical. Philosophical physicalism has evolved from materialism with the theories of the physical sciences to incorporate forms of physicality in addition to ordinary matter (e.g. spacetime, energy, physical energies and forces, and exotic matter). Thus, some prefer the term ''physicalism'' to ''materialism'', while others use them as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Heteroglossia
''Heteroglossia'' is the coexistence of distinct linguistic varieties, styles of discourse, or points of view within a single language (in Greek: ''hetero-'' "different" and ''glōssa'' "tongue, language"). The term translates the Russian разноречие 'raznorechie'': literally, "varied-speechedness" which was introduced by the Russian literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin in his 1934 paper ''Слово в романе'' lovo v romane published in English as "Discourse in the Novel." The essay was published in English in the book '' The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M. M. Bakhtin'', translated and edited by Michael Holquist and Caryl Emerson. Heteroglossia is the presence in language of a variety of "points of view on the world, forms for conceptualizing the world in words, specific world views, each characterized by its own objects, meanings and values." For Bakhtin, this diversity of "languages" within a single language brings into question the basic assumptions of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Louis René Deleuze (18 January 1925 – 4 November 1995) was a French philosopher who, from the early 1950s until his death in 1995, wrote on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art. His most popular works were the two volumes of ''Capitalism and Schizophrenia'': ''Anti-Oedipus'' (1972) and ''A Thousand Plateaus'' (1980), both co-written with psychoanalyst Félix Guattari. His Metaphysics, metaphysical treatise ''Difference and Repetition'' (1968) is considered to be his magnum opus, ''magnum opus''. An important part of Deleuze's oeuvre is devoted to the reading of other philosophers: the w:Stoicism, Stoics, Leibniz, David Hume, Hume, Kant, Nietzsche, Spinoza, and Henri Bergson, Bergson. A. W. Moore (philosopher), A. W. Moore, citing Bernard Williams's criteria for a great thinker, ranks Deleuze among the "greatest philosophers".A. W. Moore (philosopher), A. W. Moore ''The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics: Making Sense of Things'' Cambridge University Press, 2012 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Vaudeville
Vaudeville (; ) is a theatrical genre of variety entertainment which began in France in the middle of the 19th century. A ''vaudeville'' was originally a comedy without psychological or moral intentions, based on a comical situation: a dramatic composition or light poetry, interspersed with songs and dances. Vaudeville became popular in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s, while changing over time. In some ways analogous to music hall from Victorian Britain, a typical North American vaudeville performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill. Types of acts have included popular and classical musicians, singers, dancers, comedians, trained animals, magicians, ventriloquists, strongmen, female and male impersonators, acrobats, clowns, illustrated songs, jugglers, one-act plays or scenes from plays, athletes, lecturing celebrities, minstrels, and films. A vaudeville performer ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Burlesque
A burlesque is a literary, dramatic or musical work intended to cause laughter by caricaturing the manner or spirit of serious works, or by ludicrous treatment of their subjects."Burlesque" ''Oxford English Dictionary'', , accessed 16 February 2011 The word is loaned from French and derives from the Italian ', which, in turn, is derived from the Italian ' – a joke, ridicule or mockery. Burlesque overlaps with , and [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Commedia Dell'arte
Commedia dell'arte was an early form of professional theatre, originating from Theatre of Italy, Italian theatre, that was popular throughout Europe between the 16th and 18th centuries. It was formerly called Italian comedy in English and is also known as , , and . Characterized by Theatre mask, masked "types", was responsible for the rise of actresses such as Isabella Andreini and Improvisational theatre, improvised performances based on Sketch comedy, sketches or scenarios. A , such as ''The Tooth Puller'', contains both scripted and improvised portions; key plot points and characters' entrances and exits are scripted, but the actors may otherwise be expected to improvise new gags on stage. A special characteristic of is the , a joke or "something foolish or witty", usually well known to the performers and to some extent a scripted routine. Another characteristic of is Mime artist, pantomime, which is mostly used by the character Harlequin, Arlecchino, now better known as H ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution, sometimes divided into the First Industrial Revolution and Second Industrial Revolution, was a transitional period of the global economy toward more widespread, efficient and stable manufacturing processes, succeeding the Second Agricultural Revolution. Beginning in Kingdom of Great Britain, Great Britain around 1760, the Industrial Revolution had spread to continental Europe and the United States by about 1840. This transition included going from craft production, hand production methods to machines; new Chemical industry, chemical manufacturing and Puddling (metallurgy), iron production processes; the increasing use of Hydropower, water power and Steam engine, steam power; the development of machine tools; and rise of the mechanisation, mechanised factory system. Output greatly increased, and the result was an unprecedented rise in population and population growth. The textile industry was the first to use modern production methods, and textiles b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Social System
In sociology, a social system is the patterned network of relationships constituting a coherent whole that exist between individuals, groups, and institutions. It is the formal Social structure, structure of role and status that can form in a small, stable group. An individual may belong to multiple social System, systems at once; examples of social systems include nuclear family units, community, communities, City, cities, nations, college campuses, religions, corporations, and Industry (economics), industries. The organization and definition of groups within a social system depend on various shared properties such as location, Socioeconomics, socioeconomic status, race, religion, societal function, or other distinguishable features. Notable theorists The study of social systems is integral to the fields of sociology and public policy. Social systems have been studied for as long as sociology has existed. Talcott Parsons Talcott Parsons was the first to formulate a systematic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
