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Baron Munchausen
Baron Munchausen (; ) is a fictional German nobleman created by the German writer Rudolf Erich Raspe in his 1785 book '' Baron Munchausen's Narrative of His Marvellous Travels and Campaigns in Russia''. The character is loosely based on baron Hieronymus Karl Friedrich Freiherr von Münchhausen. Born in Bodenwerder, Hanover, the real-life Münchhausen fought for the Russian Empire during the Russo-Turkish War of 1735–1739. After retiring in 1760, he became a minor celebrity within German aristocratic circles for telling outrageous tall tales based on his military career. After hearing some of Münchhausen's stories, Raspe adapted them anonymously into literary form, first in German as ephemeral magazine pieces and then in English as the 1785 book, which was first published in Oxford by a bookseller named Smith. The book was soon translated into other European languages, including a German version expanded by the poet Gottfried August Bürger. The real-life Münchhausen wa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gustave Doré
Paul Gustave Louis Christophe Doré ( , , ; 6January 1832 – 23January 1883) was a French printmaker, illustrator, painter, comics artist, caricaturist, and sculptor. He is best known for his prolific output of wood-engravings illustrating classic literature, especially those for the Vulgate Bible and Dante's ''Divine Comedy''. These achieved great international success, and he became renowned for printmaking, although his role was normally as the designer only; at the height of his career some 40 block-cutters were employed to cut his drawings onto the wooden printing blocks, usually also signing the image. He created over 10,000 illustrations, the most important of which were copied using an electrotype process using cylinder presses, allowing very large print runs to be published simultaneously in many countries. Although Doré's work was popular with the general public during his life, it was met with mixed reviews from contemporary art critics. His work has bee ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Electorate Of Hanover
The Electorate of Hanover ( or simply ''Kurhannover'') was an Prince-elector, electorate of the Holy Roman Empire located in northwestern Germany that arose from the Principality of Calenberg. Although formally known as the Electorate of Brunswick-Lüneburg (), it made Hanover its capital city. For most of its existence, the electorate was ruled in personal union with Kingdom of Great Britain, Great Britain and Kingdom of Ireland, Ireland following the Hanoverian Succession. The Duchy of Brunswick-Lüneburg had been split in 1269 between different branches of the House of Welf. The Principality of Calenberg, ruled by a cadet branch of the family, emerged as the largest and most powerful of the Brunswick-Lüneburg states. In 1692, the Holy Roman Emperor elevated the Prince of Calenberg to the Prince-elector, College of Electors, creating the new Electorate of Brunswick-Lüneburg. The fortunes of the electorate were tied to those of Great Britain by the Act of Settlement 1701 an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bruckner - Münchhausen
Joseph Anton Bruckner (; ; 4 September 182411 October 1896) was an Austrian composer and organist best known for his symphonies and sacred music, which includes Masses, Te Deum and motets. The symphonies are considered emblematic of the final stage of Austro-German Romanticism because of their rich harmonic language, strongly polyphonic character, and considerable length. Bruckner's compositions helped to define contemporary musical radicalism, owing to their dissonances, unprepared modulations, and roving harmonies. Unlike other musical radicals such as Richard Wagner and Hugo Wolf, Bruckner showed respect, even humility, before other famous musicians, Wagner in particular. This apparent dichotomy between Bruckner the man and Bruckner the composer hampers efforts to describe his life in a way that gives a straightforward context for his music. The German conductor Hans von Bülow described him as "half genius, half simpleton". Bruckner was critical of his own work and often ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Satire
Satire is a genre of the visual, literary, and performing arts, usually in the form of fiction and less frequently non-fiction, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, often with the intent of exposing or shaming the perceived flaws of individuals, corporations, government, or society itself into improvement. Although satire is usually meant to be humorous, its greater purpose is often constructive social criticism, using wit to draw attention to both particular and wider issues in society. Satire may also poke fun at popular themes in art and film. A prominent feature of satire is strong irony or sarcasm—"in satire, irony is militant", according to literary critic Northrop Frye— but parody, burlesque, exaggeration, juxtaposition, comparison, analogy, and double entendre are all frequently used in satirical speech and writing. This "militant" irony or sarcasm often professes to approve of (or at least accept as natural) th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Moon In Science Fiction
The Moon has appeared in fiction as a setting since at least classical antiquity. Throughout most of literary history, a significant portion of works depicting lunar voyages has been satirical in nature. From the late 1800s onwards, science fiction has successively focused largely on the themes of life on the Moon, first Moon landings, and lunar colonization. Early depictions The Moon has been a setting in fiction since at least the works of the ancient Greek writers Antonius Diogenes and Lucian of Samosata; the former's ''Of the Wonderful Things Beyond Thule'' has been lost and the latter's ''True History'' from the second century CE is a satire of fanciful travellers' tales. It was not until Johannes Kepler's novel '' Somnium'' was posthumously released in 1634 that the subject of travelling to the Moon was given a serious treatment in fiction. Building on Kepler's thoughts, and similar speculations by Francis Bacon on flying to the Moon in his 1627 work '' Sylva sylva ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Crocodile
Crocodiles (family (biology), family Crocodylidae) or true crocodiles are large, semiaquatic reptiles that live throughout the tropics in Africa, Asia, the Americas and Australia. The term "crocodile" is sometimes used more loosely to include all extant taxon, extant members of the order (biology), order Crocodilia, which includes the alligators and caimans (both members of the family Alligatoridae), the gharial and false gharial (both members of the family Gavialidae) as well as other extinct Taxon, taxa. Crocodile Measurement, size, Morphology (biology), morphology, behaviour and ecology differ among species. However, they have many similarities in these areas as well. All crocodiles are semiaquatic and tend to congregate in freshwater habitats such as rivers, lakes, wetlands and sometimes in brackish water and Seawater, saltwater. They are carnivorous animals, feeding mostly on vertebrates such as fish, reptiles, birds and mammals, and sometimes on invertebrates such as mol ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cannonball
A round shot (also called solid shot or simply ball) is a solid spherical projectile without explosive charge, launched from a gun. Its diameter is slightly less than the bore of the barrel from which it is shot. A round shot fired from a large-caliber gun is also called a cannonball. The cast iron cannonball was introduced by French artillery engineers after 1450; it had the capacity to reduce traditional English castle wall fortifications to rubble. French armories would cast a tubular cannon body in a single piece, and cannonballs took the shape of a sphere initially made from stone material. Advances in gunpowder manufacturing soon led the replacement of stone cannonballs with cast iron ones. Round shot was made in early times from dressed stone, referred to as gunstone (Middle English: ''gunneston''), but by the 17th century, from iron. It was used as the most accurate projectile that could be fired by a smoothbore cannon, used to batter the wooden hulls of oppos ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
First-person Narrative
A first-person narrative (also known as a first-person perspective, voice, point of view, etc.) is a mode of storytelling in which a storyteller recounts events from that storyteller's own personal point of view, using first-person grammar such as "I", "me", "my", and "myself" (also, in plural form, "we", "us", etc.). It must be narrated by a first-person character, such as a protagonist (or other focal character), re-teller, witness, or peripheral character. Alternatively, in a visual storytelling medium (such as video, television, or film), the first-person perspective is a graphical perspective rendered through a character's visual field, so the camera is "seeing" out of a character's eyes. A classic example of a first-person protagonist narrator is Charlotte Brontë's '' Jane Eyre'' (1847), in which the title character is telling the story in which she herself is also the protagonist: "I could not unlove him now, merely because I found that he had ceased to notice me" ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Defamation
Defamation is a communication that injures a third party's reputation and causes a legally redressable injury. The precise legal definition of defamation varies from country to country. It is not necessarily restricted to making assertions that are falsifiable, and can extend to concepts that are more abstract than reputationlike dignity and honour. In the English-speaking world, the law of defamation traditionally distinguishes between libel (written, printed, posted online, published in mass media) and slander (oral speech). It is treated as a civil wrong (tort, delict), as a criminal offence, or both. Defamation and related laws can encompass a variety of acts (from general defamation and insultas applicable to every citizen – to specialized provisions covering specific entities and social structures): * Defamation against a legal person in general * Insult against a legal person in general * Acts against public officials * Acts against state instituti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gottfried August Bürger
Gottfried August Bürger (31 December 1747 – 8 June 1794) was a German poet. His ballads were very popular in Germany. His most noted ballad, ''Lenore (ballad), Lenore'', found an audience beyond readers of the German language in an English language, English and Russian language, Russian adaptation and a French language, French translation. Biography Bürger was born in Molmerswende (now a part of Mansfeld), Principality of Halberstadt, where his father was the Lutheran pastor. He showed an early predilection for solitary and gloomy places and the making of verses, for which he had no other model than hymnals. At the age of twelve, he was practically adopted by his maternal grandfather, Bauer, at Aschersleben, who sent him to the Pädagogium at Halle, Saxony-Anhalt, Halle. He learned Latin with difficulty. In 1764, he gained admission into the University of Halle as a student of theology, which, however, he soon abandoned for the study of jurisprudence. There he fell under the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oxford
Oxford () is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city and non-metropolitan district in Oxfordshire, England, of which it is the county town. The city is home to the University of Oxford, the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, oldest university in the English-speaking world; it has buildings in every style of Architecture of England, English architecture since late History of Anglo-Saxon England, Anglo-Saxon. Oxford's industries include motor manufacturing, education, publishing, science, and information technologies. Founded in the 8th century, it was granted city status in 1542. The city is located at the confluence of the rivers Thames (locally known as the Isis) and River Cherwell, Cherwell. It had a population of in . It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. History The history of Oxford in England dates back to its original settlement in the History of Anglo-Saxon England, Saxon period. The name ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anonymous Work
Anonymous works are works, such as art or literature, that have an anonymous, undisclosed, or unknown creator or author. In the case of very old works, the author's name may simply be lost over the course of history and time. There are a number of reasons anonymous works arise. Legal definitions United States In the United States, anonymous work is legally defined as "a work on the copies or phonorecords of which no natural person is identified as author In legal discourse, an author is the creator of an original work that has been published, whether that work exists in written, graphic, visual, or recorded form. The act of creating such a work is referred to as authorship. Therefore, a sculpt ...." Historical Backgrounds Throughout much of human history, individual authorship was not emphasized as it is today. In ancient and medieval societies, creative works were often seen as communal or sacred contributions rather than personal expressions. For example, epic po ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
