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Eucatastrophe
A eucatastrophe is a sudden turn of events in a story which ensures that the protagonist does not meet some terrible, impending, and plausible and probable doom. The concept was created by the philologist and fantasy author J. R. R. Tolkien in his essay " On Fairy-Stories", based on a 1939 lecture. The term has since been taken up by other authors, and by scholars. Origins The philologist and fantasy author J. R. R. Tolkien coined the word by affixing the Greek prefix ''eu'', meaning ''good'', to '' catastrophe'', the word traditionally used in classically inspired literary criticism to refer to the "unravelling" or conclusion of a drama's plot. For Tolkien, the term appears to have had a thematic meaning that went beyond its literal etymological meaning in terms of form. As he defines it in his essay " On Fairy-Stories", based on a lecture he gave in 1939, eucatastrophe is a fundamental part of his conception of mythopoeia. Though Tolkien's interest is in myth, it is conne ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
On Fairy-Stories
"On Fairy-Stories" is a 1947 essay by J. R. R. Tolkien which discusses the fairy story as a literary form. It was written as a lecture entitled "Fairy Stories" for the Andrew Lang lecture at the University of St Andrews, Scotland, on 8 March 1939. The essay is significant because it contains Tolkien's explanation of his philosophy on fantasy, and his thoughts on mythopoeia and sub-creation or worldbuilding. Alongside his 1936 essay " ''Beowulf'': The Monsters and the Critics", it is his most influential scholarly work. Several scholars have used "On Fairy-Stories" as a route to understanding Tolkien's own fantasy, ''The Lord of the Rings'', complete with its sub-created world of Middle-earth. Clyde Northrup contends that in the essay, Tolkien argues that "fairy-story" must contain four qualities, namely fantasy, recovery, escape, and consolation. Derek Shank argues that while Tolkien objects to structuralism in the essay, Tolkien also proposes that a secondary world must have ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Catastrophe (drama)
In drama, particularly the tragedies of classical antiquity, the ''catastrophe'' is the final resolution in a poem or narrative plot, which unravels the intrigue and brings the piece to a close. In comedies, this may be a marriage between main characters; in tragedies, it may be the death of one or more main characters. It is the final part of a play, following the protasis, epitasis, and catastasis. The catastrophe is either simple or complex, for which also the fable and action are denominated. In a simple catastrophe, there is no change in the state of the main characters, nor any discovery or unravelling; the plot being only a mere passage out of agitation, to quiet and repose. This catastrophe is rather accommodated to the nature of the epic poem, than of the tragedy. In a complex catastrophe, the main character undergoes a change of fortune, sometimes by means of a discovery, and sometimes without. The qualifications of this change are that it be probable and necessary: in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eagle (Middle-earth)
In J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth, the Eagles or Great Eagles, " The Council of Elrond", "Of the Ruin of Doriath" are immense birds that are sapient and can speak. The Great Eagles resemble actual eagles, but are much larger. Thorondor is said to have been the greatest of all birds, with a wingspan of ., "Of the Return of the Noldor" Elsewhere, the Eagles have varied in nature and size both within Tolkien's writings and in later adaptations. Scholars have noticed that the Eagles appear as agents of eucatastrophe or ''deus ex machina'' throughout Tolkien's writings, from ''The Silmarillion'' and the accounts of Númenor to ''The Hobbit'' and ''The Lord of the Rings''. Where Elves are good, and fully sentient, and Orcs bad, Eagles amongst other races are in between; the Hobbit Bilbo Baggins fears he will become their supper, torn up like a rabbit, and is indeed served rabbit for supper. The scholar Marjorie Burns notes, too, that Gandalf's association with Eagles is reminiscent ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
One Ring
The One Ring, also called the Ruling Ring and Isildur's Bane, is a central plot element in J. R. R. Tolkien's ''The Lord of the Rings'' (1954–55). It first appeared in the earlier story '' The Hobbit'' (1937) as a magic ring that grants the wearer invisibility. Tolkien changed it into a malevolent Ring of Power and re-wrote parts of ''The Hobbit'' to fit in with the expanded narrative. ''The Lord of the Rings'' describes the hobbit Frodo Baggins's quest to destroy the Ring and save Middle-earth. Scholars have compared the story with the ring-based plot of Richard Wagner's opera cycle '' Der Ring des Nibelungen''; Tolkien denied any connection, but at the least, both men drew on the same mythology. Another source is Tolkien's analysis of Nodens, an obscure pagan god with a temple at Lydney Park, where he studied the Latin inscriptions, one containing a curse on the thief of a ring. Tolkien rejected the idea that the story was an allegory, saying that applicability to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mount Doom
In J. R. R. Tolkien's fictional world, fictional continent of Middle-earth, Mordor (; from Sindarin ''Black Land'' and Quenya ''Land of Shadow'') is a dark realm. It lay to the east of Gondor and the great river Anduin, and to the south of Mirkwood. #Mount Doom, Mount Doom, a volcano in Mordor, was the goal of the Fellowship of the Ring (characters), Fellowship of the Ring in the quest to destroy the One Ring. Mordor was surrounded by three mountain ranges, to the north, the west, and the south. These both protected the land from invasion and kept those living in Mordor from escaping. Commentators have noted that Mordor was influenced by Tolkien's own experiences in the industrial Black Country of the English Midlands, and by The Great War and Middle-earth, his time fighting in the trenches of the Western Front (World War I), Western Front in the First World War. Tolkien was also familiar with the account of the monster Grendel's unearthly landscapes in the Old English poem ''B ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
HarperCollins
HarperCollins Publishers LLC is a British–American publishing company that is considered to be one of the "Big Five (publishers), Big Five" English-language publishers, along with Penguin Random House, Hachette Book Group USA, Hachette, Macmillan Publishers, Macmillan, and Simon & Schuster. HarperCollins is headquartered in New York City and London and is a subsidiary of News Corp. The company's name is derived from a combination of the firm's predecessors. Harper & Brothers, founded in 1817 in New York, merged with Row, Peterson & Company in 1962 to form Harper & Row, which was acquired by News Corp in 1987. The Scotland, Scottish publishing company William Collins, Sons, founded in 1819 in Glasgow, was acquired by News Corp in 1987 and merged with Harper & Row to form HarperCollins. The logo for the firm combines the fire from Harper's torch and the water from Collins' fountain. HarperCollins operates publishing groups in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Austr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Monsters And The Critics, And Other Essays
''The'' is a grammatical article in English, denoting nouns that are already or about to be mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the most frequently used word in the English language; studies and analyses of texts have found it to account for seven percent of all printed English-language words. It is derived from gendered articles in Old English which combined in Middle English and now has a single form used with nouns of any gender. The word can be used with both singular and plural nouns, and with a noun that starts with any letter. This is different from many other languages, which have different forms of the definite article for different genders or numbers. Pronunciation In most dialects, "the" is pronounced as (with the voiced dental fricative followed by a schwa) when followed by a consonant sound, and as (homophone of the archaic pronoun '' the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peripeteia
Peripeteia (, peripety, alternative Latin form: Peripetīa, ultimately from ) is a reversal of circumstances, or turning point, within a work of literature. Aristotle's view Aristotle, in his '' Poetics'', defines peripeteia as "a change by which the action veers round to its opposite, subject always to our rule of probability or necessity." According to Aristotle, peripeteia, along with discovery, is the most effective when it comes to drama, particularly in a tragedy. He wrote that "The finest form of Discovery is one attended by Peripeteia, like that which goes with the Discovery in Oedipus...". Aristotle says that peripeteia is the most powerful part of a plot in a tragedy along with discovery ( anagnorisis). A peripety is the change of the kind described from one state of things within the play to its opposite, and that too in the way we are saying, in the probable or necessary sequence of events. There is often no element like Peripeteia; it can bring forth or result in t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Happy Ending
A happy ending is an ending of the plot of a work of fiction in which there is a positive outcome for the protagonist or protagonists, and in which this is to be considered a favourable outcome. In storylines where the protagonists are in physical danger, a happy ending mainly consists of their survival and successful completion of the quest or mission; where there is no physical danger, a happy ending may be lovers consummating their love despite various factors which might have thwarted it. A considerable number of storylines combine both situations. In Steven Spielberg's version of '' War of the Worlds'', the happy ending consists of three distinct elements: The protagonists all survive the countless perils of their journey; humanity as a whole survives the alien invasion; ''and'' the protagonist father regains the respect of his estranged children. The plot is so constructed that all three are needed for the audience's feeling of satisfaction in the end. A happy ending ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Human Extinction
Human extinction or omnicide is the hypothetical end of the human species, either by population decline due to extraneous natural causes, such as an asteroid impact or large-scale volcanism, or via anthropogenic destruction (self-extinction). Some of the many possible contributors to anthropogenic hazard are climate change, global nuclear annihilation, biological warfare, weapons of mass destruction, and ecological collapse. Other scenarios center on emerging technologies, such as advanced artificial intelligence, biotechnology, or self-replicating nanobots. The scientific consensus is that there is a relatively low risk of near-term human extinction due to natural causes. The likelihood of human extinction through humankind's own activities, however, is a current area of research and debate. History of thought Early history Before the 18th and 19th centuries, the possibility that humans or other organisms could become extinct was viewed with scepticism. It contra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Toby Ord
Toby David Godfrey Ord (born July 1979) is an Australian philosopher. In 2009 he founded Giving What We Can, an international society whose members pledge to donate at least 10% of their income to effective charities, and is a key figure in the effective altruism movement, which promotes using reason and evidence to help the lives of others as much as possible. He was a senior research fellow at Oxford University's Future of Humanity Institute, where his work focused on existential risk. His book on the subject, '' The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity'', was published in March 2020. Early life and education Ord was born in Melbourne, Australia, in 1979. He later attended the University of Melbourne, where he initially studied computer science. On completing his first degree, he switched to studying philosophy to pursue his interest in ethics, later stating: "At this stage I knew that I wanted to make a large positive difference in the world and it see ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Longtermism
Longtermism is the ethical view that positively influencing the long-term future is a key moral priority of our time. It is an important concept in effective altruism and a primary motivation for efforts that aim to reduce existential risks to humanity. The key argument for longtermism has been summarized as follows: " future people matter morally just as much as people alive today;... there may well be more people alive in the future than there are in the present or have been in the past; and... we can positively affect future peoples' lives." These three ideas taken together suggest, to those advocating longtermism, that it is the responsibility of those living now to ensure that future generations get to survive and flourish. Definition Philosopher William MacAskill defines ''longtermism'' as "the view that positively influencing the longterm future is a key moral priority of our time". He distinguishes it from ''strong longtermism'', "the view that positively influencing ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
