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Pierian Mythology
In Greek mythology, the Pierian Spring of Kingdom of Macedonia, Macedonia was sacred to the Pierides (mythology), Pierides and the Muses. As the metaphorical source of knowledge of art and science, it was popularized by a couplet in Alexander Pope's 1711 poem ''An Essay on Criticism'': "A little learning is a dang'rous thing; / Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring." The Pierian spring is sometimes confused with the Castalian Spring, as it was by Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield, Lord Chesterfield who misquotes Alexander Pope in ''Letters to His Son''. Classical sources The sacred spring was said to be near ancient Leivithra in Pieria (regional unit), Pieria, a region of ancient Macedonia, also the location of Mount Olympus, and believed to be the home and the seat of worship of Orpheus. The Muses "were said to have frolicked about the Pierian springs soon after their birth". The spring is believed to be a fountain of knowledge that inspires whoever drinks from it. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Greek Mythology
Greek mythology is the body of myths originally told by the Ancient Greece, ancient Greeks, and a genre of ancient Greek folklore, today absorbed alongside Roman mythology into the broader designation of classical mythology. These stories concern the ancient Greek religion's view of the Cosmogony, origin and Cosmology#Metaphysical cosmology, nature of the world; the lives and activities of List of Greek deities, deities, Greek hero cult, heroes, and List of Greek mythological creatures, mythological creatures; and the origins and significance of the ancient Greeks' cult (religious practice), cult and ritual practices. Modern scholars study the myths to shed light on the religious and political institutions of ancient Greece, and to better understand the nature of mythmaking itself. The Greek myths were initially propagated in an oral tradition, oral-poetic tradition most likely by Minoan civilization, Minoan and Mycenaean Greece, Mycenaean singers starting in the 18th century&n ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mount Helicon
Mount Helicon (; ) is a mountain in the region of Thespiai in Boeotia, Greece, celebrated in Greek mythology. With an altitude of , it is located approximately from the north coast of the Gulf of Corinth. Some researchers maintain that Helicon was also the Greek name of mount Rocca Salvatesta in Sicily as a river started from it was called also Helikon. Greek mythology In Greek mythology, two springs sacred to the Muses were located here: the Aganippe and the Hippocrene, both of which bear "horse" (ἵππος ''híppos'') in their names. In a related myth, the Hippocrene spring was created when the winged horse Pegasus aimed his hoof at a rock, striking it with such force that the spring burst from the spot. On Mount Helicon too was the spring where Narcissus was inspired by his own beauty. Mount Helicon and the Hippocrene spring were considered to be a source of poetic inspiration. In the late eighth or early seventh century BCE, the poet Hesiod placed a reference to the M ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
David Cronenberg
David Paul Cronenberg (born March 15, 1943) is a Canadian film director, screenwriter, producer and actor. He is a principal originator of the body horror genre, with his films exploring visceral bodily transformation, infectious diseases, and the intertwining of the psychological, physical, and technological. Cronenberg is best known for exploring these themes through sci-fi horror films such as '' Shivers'' (1975), '' Scanners'' (1981), '' Videodrome'' (1983) and '' The Fly'' (1986), though he has also directed dramas, psychological thrillers and gangster films. Cronenberg's films have polarized critics and audiences alike; he has earned critical acclaim and has sparked controversy for his depictions of gore and violence. ''The Village Voice'' called him "the most audacious and challenging narrative director in the English-speaking world". His films have won numerous awards, including the Special Jury Prize for '' Crash'' at the 1996 Cannes Film Festival, a unique award ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dorothy Parker
Dorothy Parker (née Rothschild; August 22, 1893 – June 7, 1967) was an American poet and writer of fiction, plays and screenplays based in New York; she was known for her caustic wisecracks, and eye for 20th-century urban foibles. Parker rose to acclaim, both for her literary works published in magazines, such as ''The New Yorker'', and as a founding member of the Algonquin Round Table. In the early 1930s, Parker traveled to Hollywood to pursue screenwriting. Her successes there, including two Academy Awards, Academy Award nominations, were curtailed when her involvement in left-wing politics resulted in her being placed on the Hollywood blacklist. Dismissive of her own talents, she deplored her reputation as a "wisecracker". Nevertheless, both her literary output and reputation for sharp wit have endured. Some of her works have been set to music. Early life and education Also known as Dot or Dottie, Parker was born Dorothy Rothschild in 1893 to Jacob Henry Rothschild and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Henry Miller
Henry Valentine Miller (December 26, 1891 – June 7, 1980) was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist. He broke with existing literary forms and developed a new type of semi-autobiographical novel that blended character study, social criticism, philosophical reflection, stream of consciousness, explicit language, sex, surrealist free association, and mysticism. His most characteristic works of this kind are ''Tropic of Cancer'', '' Black Spring'', ''Tropic of Capricorn'', and the trilogy '' The Rosy Crucifixion'', which are based on his experiences in New York City and Paris (all of which were banned in the United States until 1961). He also wrote travel memoirs and literary criticism, and painted watercolors. Early life Miller was born at his family's home, 450 East 85th Street, in the Yorkville section of Manhattan, New York City. He was the son of Lutheran German parents, Louise Marie (Neiting) and tailor Heinrich Miller. As a child, he lived for nine years a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Caïssa
Caïssa is a fictional (anachronistic) Thracian dryad portrayed as the goddess of chess. She was first mentioned during the Renaissance by Italian poet Hieronymus Vida. Vida's poem The concept of Caïssa originated in a 658-line poem called ''Scacchia Ludus'' published in 1527 by Hieronymus Vida (Marco Girolamo Vida), which describes in Latin Virgilian hexameters a chess game between Apollo and Mercury in the presence of the other gods, and among them a dryad of chess named Schacchia. In it, to avoid unclassical words such as ''rochus'' (chess rook) or ''alfinus'' (chess bishop), the rooks are described as towers (armored howdahs) on elephants' backs, and the bishops as archers: A leaked unauthorized 742-line draft version was published in 1525. Its text is very different, and in it the chess rook is a cyclops, and the chess bishop is a centaur archer. The description of towers led to the modern name "castle" for the chess rook, and thus the term "castling", and the mod ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sir William Jones
Sir William Jones (28 September 1746 – 27 April 1794) was a British philologist, orientalist, Indologist and judge. Born in Westminster, London to Welsh mathematician William Jones, he moved to the Bengal Presidency where Jones served as a puisne judge on the Supreme Court of Judicature at Fort William and also became a scholar of ancient Indian history. As part of his research, he was the first to assert the kinship of the Indo-European languages. Jones also founded the Asiatic Society in Calcutta in 1784. Early life William Jones was born in London; his father William Jones (1675–1749) was a mathematician from Anglesey in Wales, noted for introducing the use of the symbol π. The young William Jones was a linguistic prodigy, who in addition to his native languages English and Welsh, learned Greek, Latin, Persian, Arabic, Hebrew and the basics of Chinese writing at an early age. By the end of his life, he knew eight languages with critical thoroughness. Jones's ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ezra Pound
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an List of poets from the United States, American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, collaborator in Fascist Italy (1922–1943), Fascist Italy and the Italian Social Republic, Salò Republic during World War II. His works include ''Ripostes'' (1912), ''Hugh Selwyn Mauberley'' (1920), and ''The Cantos'' (–1962). Pound's contribution to poetry began in the early-20th century with his role in developing Imagism, a movement stressing precision and economy of language. Working in London as foreign editor of several American literary magazines, he helped to discover and shape the work of contemporaries such as H.D., Robert Frost, T. S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, and James Joyce. He was responsible for the 1914 serialization of Joyce's ''A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man'', the 1915 publication of Eliot's "Th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Guy Montag
Guy Montag is a fictional character and the protagonist in Ray Bradbury's dystopia novel ''Fahrenheit 451'' (1953). He is depicted living in a futuristic town where he works as a "fireman" whose job is to burn books and the buildings they are found in. Role in plot At the opening of the novel, he is happy in his work destroying books and never wonders about his role as a tool of thought suppression. Several events cause him to question his own existence: * First, he meets Clarisse McClellan, a 17-year-old, while walking home from work. His talks with her are thought-provoking and assuage Montag's loneliness. Her death spurs him into becoming a radical. * Second, he discovers that his wife, who prefers watching ''The Family'', her favorite program on television or the parlor walls, and radio on "seashell earbuds" to human interaction, has overdosed on sleeping pills. The callous behavior of the paramedics makes him feel very alienated, while his wife's emptiness disturbs and an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fahrenheit 451
''Fahrenheit 451'' is a 1953 Dystopian fiction, dystopian novel by American writer Ray Bradbury. It presents a future American society where books have been outlawed and "firemen" Book burning, burn any that are found. The novel follows in the viewpoint of Guy Montag, a fireman who becomes disillusioned with his role of censoring literature and destroying knowledge, eventually quitting his job and committing himself to the Preservation (library and archive), preservation of Literature, literary and Culture, cultural writings. ''Fahrenheit 451'' was written by Bradbury during the Second Red Scare and the McCarthy era, inspired by the book burnings in Nazi Germany and by ideological repression in the Soviet Union. Bradbury's claimed motivation for writing the novel has changed multiple times. In a 1956 radio interview, Bradbury said that he wrote the book because of his concerns about the threat of Censorship in the United States, burning books in the United States. In later year ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ray Bradbury
Ray Douglas Bradbury ( ; August 22, 1920June 5, 2012) was an American author and screenwriter. One of the most celebrated 20th-century American writers, he worked in a variety of genres, including fantasy, science fiction, Horror fiction, horror, mystery fiction, mystery, and Literary fiction, realistic fiction. Bradbury is best known for his novel ''Fahrenheit 451'' (1953) and his short-story collections ''The Martian Chronicles'' (1950), ''The Illustrated Man'' (1951), and ''The October Country'' (1955). Other notable works include the coming of age novel ''Dandelion Wine'' (1957), the dark fantasy ''Something Wicked This Way Comes (novel), Something Wicked This Way Comes'' (1962) and the fictionalized memoir ''Green Shadows, White Whale'' (1992). He also wrote and consulted on screenplays and television scripts, including ''Moby Dick (1956 film), Moby Dick'' and ''It Came from Outer Space''. Many of his works were adapted into television and film productions as well as comic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
