129 résultats pour "writing"

• Alphabet I INTRODUCTION Bengali Script India developed a number of different writing systems over the course of its history.

  A Pictographic and Ideographic Systems Early systems of writing used pictures to represent things and then to represent the sounds of those things. Pictographic writing, in which a simplified picture of the sunstood for the word sun, was probably the first step toward a written language. Chinese began as a pictographic language. To represent abstract ideas, the Chinese writing system combined pictographs. For example, the pictographs for sun and tree were combined to represent the concept of...

• Chinese Literature I INTRODUCTION Chinese Literature, writings of the Chinese people, with a continuous history of more than 3,000 years.

  (Huang) River basin region in the north. The verses are in lines of four characters (or syllables) and use rhyme and alliteration (repetition of the initial letter). Confuciusquoted them in his works. Because he described them as “without depraved thoughts,” all the verses in the Shi jing have been treated as moral allegories. (4) The Li ji (Book of Ritual ) contains detailed discussions of the principles of conduct at court and in private ceremonies. Although the Han dynasty and later ruler...

• Chinese Literature I INTRODUCTION Chinese Literature, writings of the Chinese people, with a continuous history of more than 3,000 years.

  (Huang) River basin region in the north. The verses are in lines of four characters (or syllables) and use rhyme and alliteration (repetition of the initial letter). Confuciusquoted them in his works. Because he described them as “without depraved thoughts,” all the verses in the Shi jing have been treated as moral allegories. (4) The Li ji (Book of Ritual ) contains detailed discussions of the principles of conduct at court and in private ceremonies. Although the Han dynasty and later ruler...

• Maya Angelou Maya Angelou, born in 1928, American author, poet, performer, and civil rights activist, best known for portrayals of strong African American women in her writings.

• english writings

  Now,nobody can deny the importance roles that have been played by women .They work honestly for instance their participation in political life.Women try to issue more laws to be egalitarian in terms of sexual equality,they realize that responsibility must be shared at home,ine the family,in the educational sphere and finally in the workplaces.Moreover they involve in political parties to describe the problems of today's society in an intersting way and provide innovative solutions.Even...

• African Literature I INTRODUCTION African Literature, oral and written literature produced on the African continent.

  that few scholars of African culture know any African languages, and few Africans know an African language other than their own. The best-known literatures in Africanlanguages include those in Yoruba and Hausa in West Africa; Sotho, Xhosa, and Zulu in southern Africa; and Amharic, Somali, and Swahili in East Africa. In West Africa, Yoruba writing emerged after Bishop Ajayi Crowther, a former slave, developed a script for the language and in 1900 published the first Yorubatranslation of the Bible...

• Anglais: Writing time

• Calligraphy I INTRODUCTION Japanese Calligraphy This hanging scroll is an example of Japanese calligraphy.

  Section of the Egyptian Book of the DeadThe Egyptian Book of the Dead was a text containing prayers, spells, and hymns, the knowledge of which was to be usedby the dead to guide and protect the soul on the hazardous journey through the afterlife. This section of one such book,dating from the early 19th Dynasty, shows the final judgment of the deceased (in this case Hu-Nefer, the royal scribe)before Osiris, the god of the dead. Hieroglyphs as well as illustrations portray the ritual of weighing t...

• Native American Literature I INTRODUCTION Leslie Marmon Silko Native American writer Leslie Marmon Silko is perhaps best known for her first novel, Ceremony (1977), a coming-of-age story about a young man of mixed Native American and white ancestry.

  SequoyahNative Americans did not use a complex written language before the immigration of Europeans to the Americas. In theearly 1820s the Cherokee leader Sequoyah developed an alphabet and written language for his native tongue. ManyCherokee learned the new written language readily, and in 1828 they published the first Native American newspaper,written in both Cherokee and English.THE BETTMANN ARCHIVE Before Native Americans came into contact with Europeans, many tribes supplemented the spoken...

• Shang Dynasty - History.

  The dynastic ancestors belonged to an elaborate religious pantheon that also included various nature powers and the Shang high god, Di. The higher powers were lessconcerned with the well-being of Shang society than the ancestors were. Di, whose wishes were often hard to determine, could even cause the Shang harm. The naturepowers could occasionally influence the wind, rain, and harvests, but only Di could actually order the weather. For an agricultural society such as the Shang, this wasperhaps...

• Archaeology.

  Prehistoric archaeology is practiced by archaeologists known as prehistorians and deals with ancient cultures that did not have writing of any kind. Prehistory, a term coined by 19th-century French scholars, covers past human life from its origins up to the advent of written records. History—that is, the human past documented insome form of writing—began 5000 years ago in parts of southwestern Asia and as recently as the late 19th century AD in central Africa and parts of the Americas. Becaus...

• Japanese Literature I INTRODUCTION Japanese Literature, literature of Japan, in written form from at least the 8th century AD to the present.

  The Man’yō’sh ū contains about 4,500 poems, most of them composed in the Nara period (710-784). Some of the poems are far older, however, and some of the verses date to earlier collections that have not survived. The work demonstrates a gradual change from basic verses on simple subjects to more sophisticated expressions with a broad range of subject matter. This text also shows the development of poetic forms such as the tanka (short poem), a form structured around alternating lines of 5 an...

• Literary Criticism I INTRODUCTION Literary Criticism, discussion of literature, including description, analysis, interpretation, and evaluation of literary works.

  IV THE 17TH AND 18TH CENTURIES The climate of criticism changed with the arrival on the literary scene of such giants as Miguel de Cervantes, Lope de Vega, and Pedro Calderòn in Spain; WilliamShakespeare, Ben Jonson, and John Milton in England; and Pierre Corneille, Jean Baptiste Racine, and Molière in France. Most of these writers specialized or excelled indrama, and consequently the so-called battle of the ancients and moderns—the critical comparison of Greek and Roman authors with more rece...

• Anthropology.

  humans, such as tools, pottery, and buildings) and human fossils (preserved bones). They also examine past environments to understand how natural forces, such as climate and available food, shaped the development of human culture. Some archaeologists study cultures that existed before the development of writing, a time knownas prehistory . The archaeological study of periods of human evolution up to the first development of agriculture, about 10,000 years ago, is also called paleoanthropology....

• Native American Literature.

  Many Native American writers of the 19th century wrote histories of their tribes. One tribal historian was David Cusick (Tuscarora), whose Sketches of Ancient History of the Six Nations (1827) was the first published tribal history. Tribal histories explained the deep ties that tribes had to their ancestral homelands. Beginning in the 18th century, these ties took on special meaning because the United States government began removing Native Americans from their traditional lands. These removal...

• Canadian Literature I INTRODUCTION Canadian Literature, literature of the peoples of Canada.

  William Henry DrummondPoet William Henry Drummond described the lives of French Canadian farmers, loggers, and rural workers in verse thatreflected their mix of French and English speech. He gained recognition in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.Library of Congress In the early 19th century, most Canadian poetry imitated earlier British poetry. Poets Oliver Goldsmith (grandnephew of the Anglo-Irish writer of the same name),Charles Sangster, Charles Mair, and Levi Adams exemplified literary...

• Renaissance I INTRODUCTION Renaissance, series of literary and cultural movements in the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries.

  the great writings of ancient Greece and Rome. Intellectuals continued to build on the ideas of the Renaissance during the 18th century Age of Enlightenment, a time when scientific advancements led to a newemphasis on the power of human reason. One of the early Enlightenment thinkers was French philosopher and writer Voltaire. He claimed that the Renaissance was acrucial stage in liberating the mind from the superstition and error that he believed characterized Christian society during the Middl...

• Renaissance .

  the great writings of ancient Greece and Rome. Intellectuals continued to build on the ideas of the Renaissance during the 18th century Age of Enlightenment, a time when scientific advancements led to a newemphasis on the power of human reason. One of the early Enlightenment thinkers was French philosopher and writer Voltaire. He claimed that the Renaissance was acrucial stage in liberating the mind from the superstition and error that he believed characterized Christian society during the Middl...

• Western Philosophy.

  the popular belief in personal deities, but he failed to explain the way in which the familiar objects of experience could develop out of elements that are totally differentfrom them. Anaxagoras therefore suggested that all things are composed of very small particles, or “seeds,” which exist in infinite variety. To explain the way in whichthese particles combine to form the objects that constitute the familiar world, Anaxagoras developed a theory of cosmic evolution. He maintained that the activ...

• William Shakespeare I INTRODUCTION William Shakespeare (1564-1616), English playwright and poet, recognized in much of the world as the greatest of all dramatists.

  Shakespeare’s reputation today is, however, based primarily on the 38 plays that he wrote, modified, or collaborated on. Records of Shakespeare’s plays begin toappear in 1594, when the theaters reopened with the passing of the plague that had closed them for 21 months. In December of 1594 his play The Comedy of Errors was performed in London during the Christmas revels at Gray’s Inn, one of the London law schools. In March of the following year he received payment for two playsthat had been per...

• William Shakespeare.

  Shakespeare’s reputation today is, however, based primarily on the 38 plays that he wrote, modified, or collaborated on. Records of Shakespeare’s plays begin toappear in 1594, when the theaters reopened with the passing of the plague that had closed them for 21 months. In December of 1594 his play The Comedy of Errors was performed in London during the Christmas revels at Gray’s Inn, one of the London law schools. In March of the following year he received payment for two playsthat had been per...

• Theater I INTRODUCTION The Art of Theater BBC Worldwide Americas, Inc.

  Theater at EpidaurusAncient Greek dramas were performed in open-air theaters like this one in Epidaurus, Greece, which was designed byPolyclitus the Younger in 350 bc. A festival of ancient Greek drama is still held in the summer in this 14,000-seat theater.Roger Wood/Corbis Fundamental to the theater experience is the act of seeing and being seen; in fact, the word theater comes from the Greek word theatron , meaning 'seeing place.' Throughout the history of world cultures, actors have used...

• Maya Civilization.

  destruction was directed mostly at temples in the ceremonial precincts; it had little or no impact on the economy or population of a city as a whole. Some city-states didoccasionally conquer others, but this was not a common occurrence until very late in the Classic period when lowland civilization had begun to disintegrate. Until thattime, the most common pattern of Maya warfare seems to have consisted of raids employing rapid attacks and retreats by relatively small numbers of warriors, most o...

• Maya Civilization - History.

  destruction was directed mostly at temples in the ceremonial precincts; it had little or no impact on the economy or population of a city as a whole. Some city-states didoccasionally conquer others, but this was not a common occurrence until very late in the Classic period when lowland civilization had begun to disintegrate. Until thattime, the most common pattern of Maya warfare seems to have consisted of raids employing rapid attacks and retreats by relatively small numbers of warriors, most o...

• Ancient Greece.

  The first culture of Aegean civilization on the Greek mainland is named Mycenaean for the palace at Mycenae on the Pelopónnisos. Scholars call the Mycenaeans the“earliest Greeks” because they are the first people known to have spoken Greek. Mycenaean culture developed later than Minoan. The ancestors of the Mycenaean people wandered onto the mainland from the north and the east from about 4000 to2000 BC, mixing with the people already there, and by about 1400 BC the Mycenaeans had become very...

• Ancient Greece .

  The first culture of Aegean civilization on the Greek mainland is named Mycenaean for the palace at Mycenae on the Pelopónnisos. Scholars call the Mycenaeans the“earliest Greeks” because they are the first people known to have spoken Greek. Mycenaean culture developed later than Minoan. The ancestors of the Mycenaean people wandered onto the mainland from the north and the east from about 4000 to2000 BC, mixing with the people already there, and by about 1400 BC the Mycenaeans had become very...

• Ancient Greece - USA History.

  The first culture of Aegean civilization on the Greek mainland is named Mycenaean for the palace at Mycenae on the Pelopónnisos. Scholars call the Mycenaeans the“earliest Greeks” because they are the first people known to have spoken Greek. Mycenaean culture developed later than Minoan. The ancestors of the Mycenaean people wandered onto the mainland from the north and the east from about 4000 to2000 BC, mixing with the people already there, and by about 1400 BC the Mycenaeans had become very...

• Aquinas, Thomas

  part in an academic disputation. Having failed in his efforts to shake his best student's arguments on this occasion, Albert declared, 'We call him the dumb ox, but in his teaching he will one day produce such a bellowing that it will be heard throughout the world' . In 1252 Aquinas returned to Paris for the course of study leading to the degree of master in theology, roughly the equivalent of a twentieth-century PhD. During the first academic year he studied and lectured on the Bible; the...

• Jane Austen I INTRODUCTION Jane Austen English author Jane Austen crafted satirical romances set within the confines of upper-middle-class English society.

  up their personal pride and prejudices before they can enter into a happy relationship together. As do Austen’s earlier writings, Pride and Prejudice displays the themes of appearance versus reality, and impulse versus deliberation. Elizabeth, trusting her own impulses, makes a mistake about Darcy and his apparent arrogance that deliberation and further experience eventually cause her to correct. Of Elizabeth, Austenwrote: “I must confess that I think her as delightful a creature as ever appea...

• Mark Twain.

  father, who keeps him prisoner in an isolated cabin. The boy escapes and, together with a runaway slave, Jim, sails down the Mississippi on a raft. During their trip,Huck and Jim encounter many unusual characters, including two families involved in a senseless feud and a pair of scoundrels who swindle innocent townspeople. Theirexperiences bring about a strong friendship between the boy and the slave, but their adventures end when Jim is captured and held at the farm of Tom Sawyer’s AuntSally. W...

• Mark Twain I INTRODUCTION Mark Twain, pseudonym of Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835-1910), American writer and humorist, whose best work is characterized by broad, often irreverent humor or biting social satire.

  father, who keeps him prisoner in an isolated cabin. The boy escapes and, together with a runaway slave, Jim, sails down the Mississippi on a raft. During their trip,Huck and Jim encounter many unusual characters, including two families involved in a senseless feud and a pair of scoundrels who swindle innocent townspeople. Theirexperiences bring about a strong friendship between the boy and the slave, but their adventures end when Jim is captured and held at the farm of Tom Sawyer’s AuntSally. W...

• Mark Twain - USA History.

  father, who keeps him prisoner in an isolated cabin. The boy escapes and, together with a runaway slave, Jim, sails down the Mississippi on a raft. During their trip,Huck and Jim encounter many unusual characters, including two families involved in a senseless feud and a pair of scoundrels who swindle innocent townspeople. Theirexperiences bring about a strong friendship between the boy and the slave, but their adventures end when Jim is captured and held at the farm of Tom Sawyer’s AuntSally. W...

• Galileo I INTRODUCTION Galileo (1564-1642), Italian physicist and astronomer who, with German astronomer Johannes Kepler, initiated the scientific revolution that flowered in the work of English physicist Sir Isaac Newton.

  V WORK IN ASTRONOMY During most of his time in Padua, Galileo showed little interest in astronomy, although in 1595 he declared in a letter that he preferred the Copernican theory that Earthrevolves around the Sun to the assumptions of Aristotle and Ptolemy that planets circle a fixed Earth ( see Astronomy: The Copernican Theory ; Ptolemaic System). A Observations with the Telescope In 1609 Galileo heard that a telescope had been invented in Holland. In August of that year he constructed a t...

• Galileo.

  V WORK IN ASTRONOMY During most of his time in Padua, Galileo showed little interest in astronomy, although in 1595 he declared in a letter that he preferred the Copernican theory that Earthrevolves around the Sun to the assumptions of Aristotle and Ptolemy that planets circle a fixed Earth ( see Astronomy: The Copernican Theory ; Ptolemaic System). A Observations with the Telescope In 1609 Galileo heard that a telescope had been invented in Holland. In August of that year he constructed a t...

• Declaration of Independence.

  communication networks to publicize British actions and encourage demonstrations of defiance. Soon these committees and some colonial legislatures issued a call for anall-colony congress to discuss other appropriate responses to Britain’s actions. The Continental Congress first met in Philadelphia from September to the end of October1774. This body did not plan for war; instead, it debated the extent to which the colonies should carry their resistance to Great Britain. The First Continental Cong...

• Declaration of Independence - U.

  communication networks to publicize British actions and encourage demonstrations of defiance. Soon these committees and some colonial legislatures issued a call for anall-colony congress to discuss other appropriate responses to Britain’s actions. The Continental Congress first met in Philadelphia from September to the end of October1774. This body did not plan for war; instead, it debated the extent to which the colonies should carry their resistance to Great Britain. The First Continental Cong...

• Reformation .

  Saxony, he made war against the Schmalkaldic League, a defensive association of Protestant princes. The Roman Catholic forces were successful at first. Later,however, Duke Maurice went over to the Protestant side, and Charles V was obliged to make peace. The religious civil war ended with the religious Peace of Augsburg in1555. Its terms provided that each of the rulers of the German states, which numbered about 300, choose between Roman Catholicism and Lutheranism and enforcethe chosen faith up...

• Mesoamerica.

  for cooking. In other regions, the earliest ceramics are more sophisticated technically and aesthetically. At around 1800 BC in the Pacific coastal region of Soconusco (in what is now southeastern Chiapas State, Mexico), the earliest pottery was very complex both in forms and decoration. It seems to have had a social function and beenused primarily for ritual feasting. III MAJOR CIVILIZATIONS Over a period of 3000 years, beginning in about 1500 BC, a number of important cultures emerged in M...

• Judaism.

  is learned or memorized”), the earliest document of rabbinic literature, edited in Palestine at the turn of the 3rd century. Subsequent rabbinic study of the Mishnah inPalestine and Babylonia generated two Talmuds (“that which is studied”; also called Gemera, an Aramaic term with the same meaning; see Talmud), wide-ranging commentaries on the Mishnah. The Babylonian Talmud, edited about the 6th century, became the foundation document of rabbinic Judaism. Early rabbinic writings also include exe...

• Arthur Miller I INTRODUCTION Arthur Miller American playwright Arthur Miller began writing plays while a student at the University of Michigan.

  devoted his life to the pursuit of “success.” His misguided philosophy has ruined the lives of his wife and two sons. When Loman is too old to travel, he loses his job. In aseries of scenes, brilliantly dramatized by the playwright, Loman relives his experiences. Eventually his mind begins to fail, and he commits suicide. Although Miller generally wrote in a realistic style ( see Realism), much of Death of a Salesman is conveyed expressionistically ( see Expressionism) through Willy Loman’s mi...

• latter

  When you don’t know if your letter will be read by a man or a woman: Madame , Monsieur , Messieurs, To a lawyer: Maître, This opening appears on the left-hand side. Note the use of the comma, which is obligatory. Note: when writing to a woman and when in doubt about her marital status, it is always better to use Madame rather than Mademoiselle . For official certificates, such as attestations of employment, the opening usually is: À qui de droit (to whom it may concern). In...

• Ernest Hemingway I INTRODUCTION Ernest Hemingway Twentieth-century American author Ernest Hemingway wrote novels and stories that reflected his rich life experiences as a war correspondent, outdoor sportsman, and bullfight enthusiast.

  In his early work Hemingway used themes of helplessness and defeat, but in the late 1930s his writing began to reflect concerns about social problems. His novel To Have and Have Not (1937) and his play The Fifth Column, published in The Fifth Column and the First Forty-nine Stories (1938), strongly condemned economic and political injustice. Two of his best short stories, “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber” and “The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” were part of the story collection. In thecla...

• Indian Literature I INTRODUCTION Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things Indian author Arundhati Roy poses with a copy of her acclaimed first novel, The God of Small Things (1997).

  Mathura BuddhaMany of the earliest texts of Indian literature were religious writings of Buddhism. This Buddha figure carved out ofsandstone is from Mathura, a city in northern India that was at the center of Buddhist sculptural activity from the 2ndcentury bc to the 6th century ad.Angelo Hornak/Corbis The sacred Vedas were composed in Old Sanskrit by Aryan poet-seers between about 1500 BC and about 1000 BC. The Vedas are compilations of two major literary forms: hymns of praise to nature deit...

• Biblical Archaeology.

  religion, among them the storm deity Baal (title of Hadad) mentioned frequently in the Old Testament. Moreover, the poetry of Ugarit has strong affinities with that ofthe Bible. They share much in the way of vocabulary, structure, and the use of figures of speech and other literary devices. In 1945, at ancient Naj‘Ḩamm ād ī in Upper Egypt, some 50 Gnostic writings in Coptic were discovered. They could be dated to the 4th century AD, but investigation of their character and content showed that t...

• Homer I INTRODUCTION Homer, the name traditionally assigned to the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, the two major epics that have survived from Greek antiquity.

  Apollo ), and some have argued that portions of the texts, such as the concluding scenes of the Odyssey, were added by another hand. However, they generally believed that Homer was a poet (or at most, a pair of poets) much like the poets they knew from their own experience. They believed that the Iliad and the Odyssey, although based on traditional materials, were independent, original, and largely fictional. In the last 200 years, however, this view has changed radically, following the emer...

• Homer.

  Apollo ), and some have argued that portions of the texts, such as the concluding scenes of the Odyssey, were added by another hand. However, they generally believed that Homer was a poet (or at most, a pair of poets) much like the poets they knew from their own experience. They believed that the Iliad and the Odyssey, although based on traditional materials, were independent, original, and largely fictional. In the last 200 years, however, this view has changed radically, following the emer...

• Richard Wagner.

  which took place in August 1876. Wagner completed his final opera, Parsifal (which he called a 'festival drama of dedication' for the Festspielhaus), in 1882, and it premiered that July. In September Wagner moved to Venice, where in February 1883, after a heated argument with Cosima, he suffered a fatal heart attack. He was buried in Bayreuth. III MUSIC AND THOUGHT In the early 19th century, an opera was structured as a succession of conventional self-contained forms such as aria (a vocal so...

• Arabic Literature I INTRODUCTION Arabic Literature, literature written in the Arabic language, from the 6th century to the present.

  The life of the Prophet Muhammad also generated its own literary sources, primary among which is the hadith. The hadiths were a collection of the Prophet's sayings and actions, transmitted through a chain of authorities said to go back to Muhammad himself. The two most famous collections of hadiths are those of al-Bukhari andMuslim in the 9th century. These works provide a wealth of information covering all aspects of a Muslim's life, from prayer to personal, social, and business conduct. The...

• Winston Churchill I INTRODUCTION Winston Churchill (1874-1965), British politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom (1940-1945, 1951-1955), widely regarded as the greatest British leader of the 20th century.

  sufficient tools to break the stalemate on the western front and he worked on developing armored fighting vehicles (tanks) to break the deadlock and end theslaughter. As the lines hardened on the western front, Churchill focused on a campaign to force open the Dardanelles Strait, controlled by the Ottoman Empire, to give the Allies adirect route to Russia through the Black Sea. Such a move would bring much-needed supplies to the Russian armies and eliminate the Ottomans from the war. Whenthe nav...

• Winston Churchill.

  sufficient tools to break the stalemate on the western front and he worked on developing armored fighting vehicles (tanks) to break the deadlock and end theslaughter. As the lines hardened on the western front, Churchill focused on a campaign to force open the Dardanelles Strait, controlled by the Ottoman Empire, to give the Allies adirect route to Russia through the Black Sea. Such a move would bring much-needed supplies to the Russian armies and eliminate the Ottomans from the war. Whenthe nav...