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Gil Blas
''Gil Blas'' (french: L'Histoire de Gil Blas de Santillane ) is a picaresque novel by Alain-René Lesage published between 1715 and 1735. It was highly popular, and was translated several times into English, most notably as The Adventures of Gil Blas of Santillane, by Tobias Smollett in 1748. Plot summary Gil Blas is born in misery to a stablehand and a chambermaid of Santillana in Cantabria, and is educated by his uncle. He leaves Oviedo at the age of seventeen to attend the University of Salamanca. His bright future is suddenly interrupted when he is forced to help robbers along the route and is faced with jail. He becomes a valet and, over the course of several years, is able to observe many different classes of society, both lay and clerical. Because of his occupation, he meets many disreputable people and is able to adjust to many situations, thanks to his adaptability and quick wit. He finally finds himself at the royal court as a favorite of the king and secretary to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alain-René Lesage
Alain-René Lesage (; 6 May 166817 November 1747; older spelling Le Sage) was a French novelist and playwright. Lesage is best known for his comic novel '' The Devil upon Two Sticks'' (1707, ''Le Diable boiteux''), his comedy ''Turcaret'' (1709), and his picaresque novel ''Gil Blas'' (1715–1735). Life Youth and education Claude Lesage, the father of the novelist, held the united positions of advocate, notary and registrar of the royal court in Rhuys. His mother's name was Jeanne Brenugat. Both Lesage's father and mother died when Lesage was very young, and he was left in the care of his uncle who wasted his education and fortune. Père Bochard, of the Order of the Jesuits, Principal of the College in Vannes, became interested in the boy on account of his natural talents. Bochard cultivated Lesage's taste for literature. At age 25, Lesage went to Paris in 1693 "to pursue his philosophical studies". In August 1694, he married the daughter of a joiner, Marie Elizabeth Huyard. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Juan Antonio Llorente
Juan Antonio Llorente, ORE (March 30, 1756 in Rincón de Soto (La Rioja), Spain – February 5, 1823 in Madrid) was a Spanish historian. Biography Llorente was raised by an uncle after his parents died. He studied at the University of Zaragoza, and, having been ordained priest, became vicar-general to the bishop of Calahorra in 1782. In 1785, he became commissary of the Holy Office (Inquisition) at Logroño and, in 1789, its general secretary at Madrid. In the crisis of 1808, Llorente identified himself with the Bonaparte regime and was engaged for a few years in superintending the execution of the decree for the suppression of the monastic orders, in examining the archives of the Spanish Inquisition and in arguing for the submission of the Spanish church to the Bonaparte monarch. His 1810 project for a division of Spain in prefectures and subprefectures ( under the French revolutionary inspiration) was never brought into practice because of the war. On the return of K ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Facino Cane (short Story)
"Facino Cane" is an 1836 short story by French author Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850) and included in the ''Scènes de la vie parisienne'' section of his novel sequence ''La Comédie humaine''. It first appeared in the ''Chronique de Paris'' on March 17, 1836Honoré de Balzac, ''The Works of Balzac: Modeste Mignon. Honorine. Facino Cane.'' Volume 18 of The Works of Balzac: Tr. Into English (Gebbie, 1900), xii. and in 1837 was classified by Balzac as a ''Philosophical Study'' (''Étude philosophique''). In 1843, it appeared with Balzac's novel ''Albert Savarus''. In 1844, it became part of Balzac's ''La Comédie humaine''. Plot ''Facino Cane'' is told in the first person by an unnamed narrator. It concerns a blind old man named Marco-Facino Cane, called "Father Canet", who claims to be a descendant of the 14th century condottiere of the same name.Anatole Cerfberr, Jules François Christophe, Paul Bourget (editors), ''Compendium. H. de Balzac's Comédie humaine.'' Translated b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Honoré De Balzac
Honoré de Balzac ( , more commonly , ; born Honoré Balzac;Jean-Louis Dega, La vie prodigieuse de Bernard-François Balssa, père d'Honoré de Balzac : Aux sources historiques de La Comédie humaine, Rodez, Subervie, 1998, 665 p. 20 May 1799 – 18 August 1850) was a French novelist and playwright. The novel sequence ''La Comédie humaine'', which presents a panorama of post-Napoleonic French life, is generally viewed as his '' magnum opus''. Owing to his keen observation of detail and unfiltered representation of society, Balzac is regarded as one of the founders of realism in European literature. He is renowned for his multi-faceted characters; even his lesser characters are complex, morally ambiguous and fully human. Inanimate objects are imbued with character as well; the city of Paris, a backdrop for much of his writing, takes on many human qualities. His writing influenced many famous writers, including the novelists Émile Zola, Charles Dickens, Marcel Proust, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Venus In Furs
''Venus in Furs'' (german: Venus im Pelz, links=no) is a novella by the Austrian author Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, and the best known of his works. The novel was to be part of an epic series that Sacher-Masoch envisioned called '' Legacy of Cain'' (). ''Venus in Furs'' was part of ''Love'' (), the first volume of the series. It was published in 1870. Novel The novel draws themes, like female dominance and sadomasochism, and character inspiration heavily from Sacher-Masoch's own life. Wanda von Dunajew, the novel's central female character, was modelled after Fanny Pistor, who was an emerging literary writer. The two met when Pistor contacted Sacher-Masoch, under the assumed name and fictitious title of Baroness Bogdanoff, for suggestions on improving her writing to make it suitable for publication. Plot summary The framing story concerns a man who dreams of speaking to Venus about love while she wears furs. The unnamed narrator tells his dreams to a friend, Severin, who tells ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch
Leopold Ritter von Sacher-Masoch (; 27 January 1836 – 9 March 1895) was an Austrian nobleman, writer and journalist, who gained renown for his romantic stories of Galician life. The term ''masochism'' is derived from his name, invented by his contemporary, the Austrian psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing. Masoch did not approve of this use of his name. During his lifetime, Sacher-Masoch was well known as a man of letters, in particular a utopian thinker who espoused socialist and humanist ideals in his fiction and non-fiction. Most of his works remain untranslated into English. Biography Early life and education Von Sacher-Masoch was born in the city of Lemberg, the capital of the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, at the time a province of the Austrian Empire, into the Roman Catholic family of an Austrian civil servant, Leopold Johann Nepomuk Ritter von Sacher (1797–1874), and Charlotte Josepha von Masoch (1802–1870), a Ukrainian noblewoman. The father later combi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vasily Narezhny
Vasily Trofimovich Narezhny (russian: Василий Трофимович Нарежный; 1780, Ustivitsa, Mirgorodsky Uyezd, Russian Empire — , St. Petersburg) was a Russian Imperial writer best known for his satirical depiction of provincial mores in the vein of the 18th-century picaresque novel. Narezhny came from a poor Ukrainian szlachta family. He studied at Moscow Imperial University from 1799 to 1801, afterwards serving in the civil service in the Caucasus and in Saint Petersburg. During his time at Moscow Imperial University he wrote several tragedies in the Sturm und Drang style. His work ''Dmitry the Pretender'' (russian: Дмитрий Самозванец) was published in 1804. His collection of stories ''Slavonic Nights'' (1809), set in Kievan Rus, was well received. Perhaps his most famous novel is ''A Russian Gil Blas'' (russian: Российский Жильблаз) (1814), an avowed imitation of Lesage's work. The earthy, humorous realism of this novel e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
David Garrick
David Garrick (19 February 1717 – 20 January 1779) was an English actor, playwright, theatre manager and producer who influenced nearly all aspects of European theatrical practice throughout the 18th century, and was a pupil and friend of Samuel Johnson. He appeared in a number of amateur theatricals, and with his appearance in the title role of Shakespeare's ''Richard III'', audiences and managers began to take notice. Impressed by his portrayals of Richard III and a number of other roles, Charles Fleetwood engaged Garrick for a season at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in the West End. He remained with the Drury Lane company for the next five years and purchased a share of the theatre with James Lacy. This purchase inaugurated 29 years of Garrick's management of the Drury Lane, during which time it rose to prominence as one of the leading theatres in Europe. At his death, three years after his retirement from Drury Lane and the stage, he was given a lavish public funeral a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Theatre Royal, Drury Lane
The Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, commonly known as Drury Lane, is a West End theatre and Grade I listed building in Covent Garden, London, England. The building faces Catherine Street (earlier named Bridges or Brydges Street) and backs onto Drury Lane. The building is the most recent in a line of four theatres which were built at the same location, the earliest of which dated back to 1663, making it the oldest theatre site in London still in use. According to the author Peter Thomson, for its first two centuries, Drury Lane could "reasonably have claimed to be London's leading theatre". For most of that time, it was one of a handful of patent theatres, granted monopoly rights to the production of "legitimate" drama in London (meaning spoken plays, rather than opera, dance, concerts, or plays with music). The first theatre on the site was built at the behest of Thomas Killigrew in the early 1660s, when theatres were allowed to reopen during the English Restoration. Initiall ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edward Moore (dramatist)
Edward Moore (22 March 17121 March 1757), English dramatist and miscellaneous writer, the son of a dissenting minister, was born at Abingdon, Berkshire. He was the author of ''Fables for the Female Sex'' (1744), ''The Trial of Selim the Persian'' (1748), ''The Foundling'' (1748) and ''Gil Blas'' (1751). He wrote the domestic tragedy of ''The Gamester'', originally produced in 1753 with David Garrick in the leading character of Beverley the gambler. It is upon ''The Gamester'' that Moore's literary reputation rests; the play was much-produced in England and the United States in the century after Moore's death. The oft-quoted phrase "rich beyond the dreams of avarice" is spoken by Mrs. Beverley in the play's second act. As a poet he produced clever imitations of John Gay and Thomas Gray, and with the assistance of Lord Lyttelton, Lord Chesterfield Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield, (22 September 169424 March 1773) was a British statesman, diplomat, and m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gil Blas (play)
''Gil Blas'' is a 1751 comedy play by the British writer Edward Moore.Watson p.557 It is based on the novel ''Gil Blas'' by French writer Alain-René Lesage. The original Drury Lane cast included David Garrick as Gil Blas, Henry Woodward as Don Lewis, John Palmer as Don Felix, John Sowdon as Don Gabriel, Richard Yates as Melchior, Hannah Pritchard Hannah Pritchard (née Vaughan, 1711–1768) was an English actress who regularly played opposite David Garrick. She performed many significant Shakespearean roles and created on stage many important female roles by contemporary playwrights. Lif ... as Aurora, Frances Cross as Beatrice and Ann Pitt as Bernarda. References Bibliography * Baines, Paul & Ferarro, Julian & Rogers, Pat. ''The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Eighteenth-Century Writers and Writing, 1660-1789''. Wiley-Blackwell, 2011. * Watson, George. ''The New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature: Volume 2, 1660-1800''. Cambridge University Press, 1971. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jonathan Swift
Jonathan Swift (30 November 1667 – 19 October 1745) was an Anglo-Irish satirist, author, essayist, political pamphleteer (first for the Whigs, then for the Tories), poet, and Anglican cleric who became Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, hence his common sobriquet, "Dean Swift". Swift is remembered for works such as ''A Tale of a Tub'' (1704), ''An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity'' (1712), '' Gulliver's Travels'' (1726), and ''A Modest Proposal'' (1729). He is regarded by the '' Encyclopædia Britannica'' as the foremost prose satirist in the English language, and is less well known for his poetry. He originally published all of his works under pseudonyms—such as Lemuel Gulliver, Isaac Bickerstaff, M. B. Drapier—or anonymously. He was a master of two styles of satire, the Horatian and Juvenalian styles. His deadpan, ironic writing style, particularly in ''A Modest Proposal'', has led to such satire being subsequently termed "Swiftian". Biography E ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
