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Bluebird Of Happiness
The symbol of a bluebird as the harbinger of happiness is found in many cultures and may date back thousands of years. Origins of idiom Chinese mythology One of the oldest examples of a blue bird in myth (found on oracle bone inscriptions of the Shang dynasty, 1766–1122 BC) is from pre-modern China, where a Blue–green distinction in language, blue or green bird (''qingniao'') was the messenger bird of Xi Wangmu (the 'Queen Mother of the West'), who began life as a fearsome goddess and xian (immortal), immortal. By the Tang dynasty (618–906 AD), she had evolved into a Daoist fairy queen and the protector/patron of "singing girls, dead women, novices, nuns, adepts and priestesses...women [who] stood outside the roles prescribed for women in the traditional Chinese family". Depictions of Xi Wangmu often include a bird—the birds in the earliest depictions are difficult to identify, and by the Tang dynasty, most of the birds appear in a circle, often with three legs, as a symbo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bluebird
The bluebirds are a North American group of medium-sized, mostly insectivorous or omnivorous passerine birds in the genus ''Sialia'' of the thrush family (Turdidae). Bluebirds are one of the few thrush genera in the Americas. Bluebirds lay an average of 4 to 6 eggs per clutch. They will usually brood two or three times in a year. Bluebirds nest from March all the way through August. Bluebirds have blue, or blue and rose beige, plumage. Female birds are less brightly colored than males, although color patterns are similar and there is no noticeable difference in size. Taxonomy and species The genus ''Sialia'' was introduced by the English naturalist William Swainson in 1827 with the eastern bluebird (''Sialia sialis'') as the type species. A molecular phylogenetic study using mitochondrial sequences published in 2005 found that ''Sialia'', '' Myadestes'' (solitaires) and '' Neocossyphus'' (African ant-thrushes) formed a basal clade in the family Turdidae. Within ''Sialia'' t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Russia
Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders of Russia, land borders with fourteen countries. Russia is the List of European countries by population, most populous country in Europe and the List of countries and dependencies by population, ninth-most populous country in the world. It is a Urbanization by sovereign state, highly urbanised country, with sixteen of its urban areas having more than 1 million inhabitants. Moscow, the List of metropolitan areas in Europe, most populous metropolitan area in Europe, is the capital and List of cities and towns in Russia by population, largest city of Russia, while Saint Petersburg is its second-largest city and Society and culture in Saint Petersburg, cultural centre. Human settlement on the territory of modern Russia dates back to the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Symbolism (arts)
In works of art, literature, and narrative, a symbol is a concrete element like an object, character, image, situation, or action that suggests or hints at abstract, deeper, or non-literal meanings or ideas.Johnson, Greg; Arp, Thomas R. (2018). ''Perrine's Literature: Structure, Sound and Sense, Third Edition''. Cengage Learning. pp. 286-7: "A literary symbol is something that means more than what it suggests on the surface. It may be an object, a person, a situation, an action, or some other element that has a literal meaning in the story but that suggests or represents other meanings as well."Kennedy, X. J.; Gioia, Dana (2007). ''Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing, Tenth Edition''. Pearson Longman. p. 292: " a symbol: in literature, a thing that suggests more than its literal meaning. Symbols generally do not 'stand for' any one meaning, nor for anything absolutely definite; they point, they hint, or, as Henry James put it, they cast long shadows ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Maurice Maeterlinck
Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard Maeterlinck (29 August 1862 – 6 May 1949), also known as Count/Comte Maeterlinck from 1932, was a Belgian playwright, poet, and essayist who was Flemish but wrote in French. He was awarded the 1911 Nobel Prize in Literature, Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911 "in appreciation of his many-sided literary activities, and especially of his dramatic works, which are distinguished by a wealth of imagination and by a poetic fancy, which reveals, sometimes in the guise of a fairy tale, a deep artistic inspiration, inspiration, while in a mysterious way they appeal to the readers' own feelings and stimulate their imaginations". The main themes in his work are death and the meaning of life. He was a leading member of the group La Jeune Belgique, and his plays form an important part of the Symbolism (movement), Symbolist movement. In later life, Maeterlinck faced credible accusations of plagiarism. Biography Early life Maeterlinck was born in Ghent, Belgium ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Fflahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 185430 November 1900) was an Irish author, poet, and playwright. After writing in different literary styles throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular and influential playwrights in London in the early 1890s. Regarded by most commentators as the greatest playwright of the Victorian era, Wilde is best known for his 1890 Gothic fiction, Gothic philosophical fiction ''The Picture of Dorian Gray'', as well as his numerous epigrams and plays, and his criminal conviction for gross indecency for homosexual acts. Wilde's parents were Anglo-Irish intellectuals in Dublin. In his youth, Wilde learned to speak fluent French and German. At university, he read Literae Humaniores#Greats, Greats; he demonstrated himself to be an exceptional classicist, first at Trinity College Dublin, then at Magdalen College, Oxford. He became associated with the emerging philosophy of aestheticism, led by two of his tutors, Walter Pater and Jo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marcel Schwob
Mayer André Marcel Schwob, known as Marcel Schwob (23 August 1867 – 26 February 1905), was a French symbolist writer best known for his short stories and his literary influence on authors such as Jorge Luis Borges, Alfonso Reyes, Roberto Bolaño and Patricio Pron. He has been called a "precursor of Surrealism". In addition to over a hundred short stories, he wrote journalistic articles, essays, biographies, literary reviews and analysis, translations and plays. He was extremely well known and respected during his life and notably befriended a great number of intellectuals and artists of the time. Early life (1867–89) He was born in Chaville, Hauts-de-Seine on 23 August 1867 into a cultivated Jewish family. His father, George Schwob, was a friend of Théodore de Banville and Théophile Gautier. His mother, Mathilde Cahun, came from a family of intellectuals from Alsace. He was the brother of Maurice Schwob and uncle of Claude Cahun (born Lucy Schwob). His family had ju ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Catulle Mendès
Catulle Mendès (; 22 May 1841 – 8 February 1909) was a French poet and man of letters. Early life and career Of Portuguese Jewish extraction, Mendès was born in Bordeaux. After childhood and adolescence in Toulouse, he arrived in Paris in 1859 and quickly became one of the protégés of the poet Théophile Gautier. He promptly attained notoriety with the publication in the '' La Revue fantaisiste'' (1861) of his ''Roman d'une nuit'', for which he was condemned to a month's imprisonment and a fine of 500 francs. He was allied with Parnassianism from the beginning of the movement and displayed extraordinary metrical skill in his first volume of poems, ''Philoméla'' (1863). His critics have noted that the elegant verse of his later volumes is distinguished rather by dexterous imitation of different writers than by any marked originality. The versatility and fecundity of Mendès' talent is shown in his critical and dramatic writings, including several libretti, and in his novel ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lorraine
Lorraine, also , ; ; Lorrain: ''Louréne''; Lorraine Franconian: ''Lottringe''; ; ; is a cultural and historical region in Eastern France, now located in the administrative region of Grand Est. Its name stems from the medieval kingdom of Lotharingia (855–959 AD), which in turn was named after either Emperor Lothair I or King Lothair II. Lorraine, originally the southern or "upper" part of this kingdom, came to be ruled by the Holy Roman Empire as the Duchy of Lorraine before the Kingdom of France annexed it in 1766. From 1982 until January 2016, Lorraine was an administrative region of France. In 2016, under a reorganisation, it became part of the new region Grand Est. As a region in modern France, Lorraine consisted of the four departments Meurthe-et-Moselle, Meuse, Moselle and Vosges (from a historical point of view the Haute-Marne department is also located in the region), containing 2,337 communes. Metz is the regional prefecture. The largest metropolitan area ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Prince Charming
Prince Charming is a fairy tale stock character archetype who comes to the rescue of a damsel in distress and must engage in a quest to liberate her from an evil spell. This classification suits most heroes of a number of traditional folk tales, including "Snow White", "Sleeping Beauty", "Rapunzel" and "Cinderella", even if in the original story they were given another name, or no name at all. Elements of the Prince Charming character date at least back to Charles Perrault's ''Sleeping Beauty'', published in 1697. Often handsome and romantic, these characters are essentially interchangeable, serving as a foil to the heroine; in many variants, they can be viewed as a metaphor for a reward the heroine achieves for the decisions she makes. The prominence of the character type makes him an obvious and frequent target for revisionist fairy tales, usually portraying him as narcissistic, dimwitted, and solely focused on romance, and often as a foil to either the heroine or their true ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Madame D'Aulnoy
Marie-Catherine Le Jumel de Barneville, Baroness d'Aulnoy (September 1652 – 14 January 1705), also known as Countess d'Aulnoy, was a French author known for her literary fairy tales. Her 1697 collection ''Les Contes des Fées'' (Fairy Tales) coined the literary genre's name and included the first story to feature "Prince Charmant" or Prince Charming. She is considered to have been a member of '' les conteuses'' group of French female authors. Biography D'Aulnoy was born in Barneville-la-Bertran, in Normandy, as a member of the noble family of Le Jumel de Barneville. She was the niece of Marie Bruneau des Loges, the friend of François de Malherbe and of Jean-Louis Guez de Balzac. In 1666, she was given at the age of fifteen (by her father) in an arranged marriage to a Parisian thirty years older— François de la Motte, Baron d'Aulnoy, of the household of the Duke of Vendôme. The baron was a freethinker and a known gambler. In 1669, the Baron d'Aulnoy was accused of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Blue Bird (fairy Tale)
"The Blue Bird" () is a French literary fairy tale by Madame d'Aulnoy, published in 1697. An English translation was included in ''The Green Fairy Book'', 1892, collected by Andrew Lang. The tale is Aarne–Thompson type 432, The Prince as Bird. Others of this type include "The Feather of Finist the Falcon", " The Green Knight", and " The Greenish Bird". Plot summary After a wealthy king loses his dear wife, he meets and falls in love with a woman, who is also recently widowed and they marry. The king has a daughter named Florine and the new queen also has a daughter named Truitonne. While Florine is beautiful and kind-hearted, Truitonne is spoiled, selfish and ugly and it is not too long before she and her mother become jealous of Florine's beauty. One day, the king decides the time has come to arrange his daughters' marriages and soon, Prince Charming visits the kingdom. The queen is determined for him to marry Truitonne, so she dresses her daughter in all her finery f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Russian Civil War
The Russian Civil War () was a multi-party civil war in the former Russian Empire sparked by the 1917 overthrowing of the Russian Provisional Government in the October Revolution, as many factions vied to determine Russia's political future. It resulted in the formation of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic and later the Soviet Union in most of its territory. Its finale marked the end of the Russian Revolution, which was one of the key events of the 20th century. The List of Russian monarchs, Russian monarchy ended with the abdication of Nicholas II, Tsar Nicholas II during the February Revolution, and Russia was in a state of political flux. A tense summer culminated in the October Revolution, where the Bolsheviks overthrew the Russian Provisional Government, provisional government of the new Russian Republic. Bolshevik seizure of power was not universally accepted, and the country descended into a conflict which beca ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
