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Tamar (poem)
''Tamar'' is an epic poem by the American writer Robinson Jeffers, first published in 1924. A tale of incest and violence, it follows Tamar Cauldwell, the daughter of a Californian ranch family, as she experiences transgression, hatred, and destruction. ''Tamar'' was the first unrhymed narrative poem Jeffers wrote. The story makes references to the biblical Books of Samuel and deals with themes of nature and corruption. Background Robinson Jeffers had written rhymed narrative poems in the 1910s without any significant success. He switched to writing unrhymed poetry in 1920; after writing a number of lyrical poems, where a gradual change in his approach to nature can be observed, he returned to epic verse with ''Tamar''. He may have been ambivalent about the narrative form, as the earliest note related to ''Tamar'' includes the comment "My last story!" From Jeffers' notes, it appears as if he began to write ''Tamar'' in March or April 1922, and he was definitely working on it in Jun ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Epic Poetry
In poetry, an epic is a lengthy narrative poem typically about the extraordinary deeds of extraordinary characters who, in dealings with gods or other superhuman forces, gave shape to the mortal universe for their descendants. With regard to oral tradition, epic poems consist of formal speech and are usually learnt word for word, and are contrasted with narratives that consist of everyday speech where the performer has the license to recontextualize the story to a particular audience, often to a younger generation. Influential epics that have shaped Western literature and culture include Homer's ''Iliad'' and '' Odyssey''; Virgil's '' Aeneid''; and the anonymous '' Beowulf'' and '' Epic of Gilgamesh''. The genre has inspired the adjective '' epic'' as well as derivative works in other mediums (such as epic films) that evoke or emulate the characteristics of epics. Etymology The English word ''epic'' comes from Latin , which itself comes from the Ancient Greek adject ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Western Culture
Western culture, also known as Western civilization, European civilization, Occidental culture, Western society, or simply the West, refers to the Cultural heritage, internally diverse culture of the Western world. The term "Western" encompasses the social norms, ethical values, Tradition, traditional customs, belief systems, political systems, Cultural artifact, artifacts and technology, technologies primarily rooted in History of Europe, European and History of the Mediterranean region, Mediterranean histories. A broad concept, "Western culture" does not relate to a region with fixed members or geographical confines. It generally refers to the classical era cultures of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome that expanded across the Mediterranean basin and Europe, and later circulated around the world predominantly through colonization and globalization. Historically, scholars have closely associated the idea of Western culture with the classical era of Greco-Roman antiquity. Howeve ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
English Renaissance Theatre
The English Renaissance theatre or Elizabethan theatre was the theatre of England from 1558 to 1642. Its most prominent playwrights were William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson. Background The term ''English Renaissance theatre'' encompasses the period between 1562—following a performance of ''Gorboduc'', the first English play using blank verse, at the Inner Temple during the Christmas season of 1561—and the ban on theatrical plays enacted by the English Parliament in 1642. In a strict sense "Elizabethan" only refers to the period of Queen Elizabeth's reign (1558–1603). ''English Renaissance theatre'' may be said to encompass ''Elizabethan theatre'' from 1562 to 1603, '' Jacobean theatre'' from 1603 to 1625, and '' Caroline theatre'' from 1625 to 1642. Along with the economics of the profession, the character of the drama changed towards the end of the period. Under Elizabeth, the drama was a unified expression as far as social class was concerned: th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stanford University Press
Stanford University Press (SUP) is the publishing house of Stanford University. It is one of the oldest academic presses in the United States and the first university press to be established on the West Coast. It is currently a member of the Association of University Presses. The press publishes 130 books per year across the humanities, social sciences, and business, and has more than 3,500 titles in print. History David Starr Jordan, the first president of Stanford University, posited four propositions to Leland and Jane Stanford when accepting the post, the last of which stipulated, "That provision be made for the publication of the results of any important research on the part of professors, or advanced students. Such papers may be issued from time to time as 'Memoirs of the Leland Stanford Junior University.'" In 1892, the first work of scholarship to be published under the Stanford name, ''The Tariff Controversy in the United States, 1789-1833'', by Orrin Leslie Elliott, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Random House
Random House is an imprint and publishing group of Penguin Random House. Founded in 1927 by businessmen Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer as an imprint of Modern Library, it quickly overtook Modern Library as the parent imprint. Over the following decades, a series of acquisitions made it into one of the largest publishers in the United States. In 2013, it was merged with Penguin Group to form Penguin Random House, which is owned by the Germany-based media conglomerate Bertelsmann. Penguin Random House uses its brand for Random House Publishing Group and Random House Children's Books, as well as several imprints. Company history 20th century Random House was founded in 1927 by Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer, two years after they acquired the Modern Library imprint from publisher Horace Liveright, which reprints classic works of literature. Cerf is quoted as saying, "We just said we were going to publish a few books on the side at random", which suggested the name Random ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Boni & Liveright
Boni & Liveright (pronounced "BONE-eye" and "LIV-right") is an American trade book publisher established in 1917 in New York City by Albert Boni and Horace Liveright. Over the next sixteen years the firm, which changed its name to Horace Liveright, Inc., in 1928 and then Liveright, Inc., in 1931, published over a thousand books. Before its bankruptcy in 1933 and subsequent reorganization as Liveright Publishing Corporation, Inc., it had achieved considerable notoriety for editorial acumen, brash marketing, and challenge to contemporary obscenity and censorship laws. Their logo is of a cowled monk. It was the first American publisher of William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Sigmund Freud, E. E. Cummings, Jean Toomer, Hart Crane, Lewis Mumford, Anita Loos, and the Modern Library series. In addition to being the house of Theodore Dreiser and Sherwood Anderson throughout the 1920s, it notably published T. S. Eliot's ''The Waste Land'', Isadora Duncan's ''My Life'', Nath ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Roman Funerary Practices
Roman funerary practices include the Ancient Romans' religious rituals concerning funerals, cremations, and burials. They were part of time-hallowed tradition (), the unwritten code from which Romans derived their social norms. Elite funeral rites, especially processions and public eulogies, gave the family an opportunity to publicly celebrate the life and deeds of the deceased, their ancestors, and the family's standing in the community. Sometimes the political elite gave costly public feasts, games and popular entertainments after family funerals, to honour the departed and to maintain their own public profile and reputation for generosity. The Roman gladiator games began as funeral gifts for the deceased in high-status families. Funeral displays and expenses were supposedly constrained by sumptuary laws, designed to reduce class envy and consequent social conflict. The less well-off, and those who lacked the support of an extended family could subscribe to guilds or '' co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Justine (de Sade Novel)
''Justine, or The Misfortunes of Virtue'' (French: ''Justine, ou Les Malheurs de la Vertu'') is a 1791 novel by Donatien Alphonse François de Sade, better known as the Marquis de Sade. ''Justine'' is set just before the French Revolution in France and tells the story of a young girl who goes under the name of Thérèse. Her story is recounted to Madame de Lorsange while defending herself for her crimes, en route to punishment and death. She explains the series of misfortunes that led to her present situation. History of the work ''Justine'' (original French title: ''Les infortunes de la vertu'') was an early work by the Marquis de Sade, written in two weeks in 1787 while he was imprisoned in the Bastille. It is a novella (187 pages) with relatively little of the obscenity that characterised his later writing, as it was written in the classical style (which was fashionable at the time), with much verbose and metaphorical description. A much extended and more graphic version, en ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marquis De Sade
Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade ( ; ; 2 June 1740 – 2 December 1814) was a French writer, libertine, political activist and nobleman best known for his libertine novels and imprisonment for sex crimes, blasphemy and pornography. His works include novels, short stories, plays, dialogues, and political tracts. Some of these were published under his own name during his lifetime, but most appeared anonymously or posthumously. Born into a noble family dating from the 13th century, Sade served as an officer in the Seven Years' War before a series of sex scandals led to his detention in various prisons and insane asylums for most of his adult life. During his first extended imprisonment from 1777 to 1790, he wrote a series of novels and other works, some of which his wife smuggled out of prison. On his release during the French Revolution, he pursued a literary career and became politically active, first as a constitutional monarchist then as a radical republican. Duri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Antinatalism
Antinatalism or anti-natalism is the philosophical value judgment that procreation is unethical or unjustifiable. Antinatalists thus argue that humans should abstain from making children. Some antinatalists consider coming into existence to always be a serious harm. Their views are not necessarily limited only to humans but may encompass all sentient creatures, arguing that coming into existence is a serious harm for sentient beings in general. There are various reasons why antinatalists believe reproduction is problematic. The most common arguments for antinatalism include that life entails inevitable suffering, death is inevitable, and humans are born without their consent (that is to say, they cannot choose whether or not they come into existence). Additionally, although some people may turn out to be happy, this is not guaranteed, so to procreate is to gamble with another person's suffering. There is also an axiological asymmetry between good and bad things in life, such t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sophocles
Sophocles ( 497/496 – winter 406/405 BC)Sommerstein (2002), p. 41. was an ancient Greek tragedian known as one of three from whom at least two plays have survived in full. His first plays were written later than, or contemporary with, those of Aeschylus and earlier than, or contemporary with, those of Euripides. Sophocles wrote more than 120 plays, but only seven have survived in a complete form: '' Ajax'', '' Antigone'', '' Women of Trachis'', '' Oedipus Rex'', '' Electra'', '' Philoctetes'', and '' Oedipus at Colonus''. For almost fifty years, Sophocles was the most celebrated playwright in the dramatic competitions of the city-state of Athens, which took place during the religious festivals of the Lenaea and the Dionysia. He competed in thirty competitions, won twenty-four, and was never judged lower than second place. Aeschylus won thirteen competitions and was sometimes defeated by Sophocles; Euripides won four.. The most famous tragedies of Sophocles feature Oedip ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher. He began his career as a classical philology, classical philologist, turning to philosophy early in his academic career. In 1869, aged 24, Nietzsche became the youngest professor to hold the Chair of Classical Philology at the University of Basel. Plagued by health problems for most of his life, he resigned from the university in 1879, and in the following decade he completed much of his core writing. In 1889, aged 44, he suffered a collapse and thereafter a complete loss of his mental faculties, with paralysis and vascular dementia. He lived his remaining years under the care of his family until his death. Friedrich Nietzsche bibliography, His works and Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, his philosophy have fostered not only extensive scholarship but also much popular interest. Nietzsche's work encompasses philosophical polemics, poetry, cultural criticism and fiction, while displaying ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
