63 résultats pour "characters"

• Puppets I INTRODUCTION Punch and Judy Punch and Judy are characters in an English hand puppet show that first appeared in 1662.

  Rod puppets are controlled by rods attached to their limbs, heads, and bodies. Although the traditional rod puppets of Belgium and Sicily are worked from above, likemarionettes, most contemporary rod figures are operated from below. In theaters, rod puppeteers are frequently concealed from view by drapery or stage flats (fabric stretched across frames). On television and in films, rod and hand puppeteers usually hold their figures either above their heads or in front of their faces. In the lat...

• Steven Spielberg I INTRODUCTION Steven Spielberg The imaginative films of Steven Spielberg are known for their technical creativity and memorable characters.

  Courtesy of Everett Collection Spielberg teamed up with writer-producer George Lucas in the 1980s to make the action-adventure Indiana Jones film series: Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989). Other directorial projects during this period included the science-fiction fantasy E.T.—The Extra-Terrestrial , at the time the highest-grossing film ever made; The Color Purple (1985), a drama based on the novel...

• Charles Dickens I INTRODUCTION Charles Dickens English author Charles Dickens ranks as one of the most popular writers in the history of world literature.

  Papers of the Pickwick Club (1836-1837; 1837); The Adventures of Oliver Twist (1837-1839; 1838); The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (1838-1839; 1839); The Old Curiosity Shop (1840-1841; 1841); Barnaby Rudge (1841); The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit (1843-1844; 1844); Dombey and Son (1846-1848; 1848); The Personal History of David Copperfield (1849-1850; 1850); Bleak House (1852-1853; 1853); Hard Times (1854); Little Dorrit (1855-1857; 1857); A Tale of Tw...

• Charles Dickens.

  The Old Curiosity Shop broke hearts across Britain and North America when it first appeared. Later readers, however, have found it excessively sentimental, especially the pathos surrounding the death of its child-heroine Little Nell. Dickens’s next two works proved less popular with the public. Barnaby Rudge, Dickens’s first historical novel, revolves around anti-Catholic riots that broke out in London in 1780. The events in Martin Chuzzlewit become a vehicle for the novel’s theme: selfishne...

• 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...

• Asian Theater I INTRODUCTION Asian Theater, live performance, featuring actors or puppets, native to Asia, a continent with more than 2 billion people of many nations and cultures.

  III THEATER IN EAST ASIA Theater in East Asia includes the traditions of China, Japan, and Korea. Most Chinese theater is urban, secular (nonreligious) entertainment, influenced by the ethics of Confucianism. However, a belief in spirits influences rituals performed by ethnic minorities in China, and Buddhism dominates traditional Tibetan performance. Japanesedramatic forms combine native shamanistic performance, secular entertainment, and cultural or religious influences from China and Kore...

• American Literature: Drama I INTRODUCTION American Literature: Drama, literature intended for performance, written by Americans in the English language.

  American plays, while still a minority, began to appear in the theater repertory in the 19th century. Although American plays were still styled after British models, theirsubject matter came to be based on specifically American incidents or themes. In the United States as in Britain, many plays reflected the influence of romanticism , a European literary and artistic movement. Melodrama, with its outpourings of emotion, was the most prevalent dramatic form in the 19th century. Gothic melodramas...

• Herman Melville.

  information in Omoo , but various religious groups condemned both books for their unfavorable comments on the work and insensitivity of missionaries in the South Seas. Mardi is a philosophical allegory framed by another adventure at sea. The book’s hero, accompanied by characters representing the intellect, poetry, history, and philosophy, searches the world for universal truth. The book is filled with descriptions—intended as allegories—of human customs, religions, governments, and historical...

• Comedy

  Socrates suffered in the comedy of Aristophanes. Throughout history, opposition to comedy and laughter has been strongest in societies which emphasize physical restraint, decorum and conformity. Many medieval monastic orders had statutes forbidding laughter. The Puritan and Victorian eras saw many condemnations of comedy and laughter. The more authoritarian the regime, the greater its suppression of comedy. Hitler even set up ‘joke courts' to punish those who made fun of his regime - one Berl...

• Comedy I INTRODUCTION Laurel and Hardy Stan Laurel, in overalls, and Oliver Hardy, left, formed one of the most popular comedy teams in motion-picture history.

  The elements and techniques of comedy are diverse and differ from culture to culture. More than tragedy or serious drama, comic entertainment is controlled by socialconventions that define the boundaries of acceptable humor and topics that are taboo or off-limits for humor. What is considered funny in one place and time may beforbidden culturally or viewed as infantile or in poor taste in another. Virtually every component of human behavior is subject to comic treatment. This includes bodilyfunc...

• Comics I INTRODUCTION Comics, series of drawings arranged to tell a story.

  is still used to refer to sensationalistic techniques that publishers use to draw more readers to their newspapers. Outcault finally won the right to continue his strip andgradually adopted the panel style and balloon narration that mark “The Yellow Kid” as the first true comic strip. Other early comics included “Little Bears” by JamesSwinnerton, which first appeared in the San Francisco Examiner in 1892, and “The Katzenjammer Kids” by Rudolph Dirks, which first appeared in The American Humo...

• William Faulkner I INTRODUCTION William Faulkner Twentieth-century American novelist William Faulkner wrote novels that explored the tensions between the old and the new in the American South.

  Faulkner’s “powerful and artistically unique contribution to the modern American novel.” He also wrote numerous short stories, many of the best of which werepublished in book form in Go Down, Moses (1942) and The Collected Stories (1950; Pulitzer Prize, 1951). In-between his fiction works, which until late in his career did not always pay well, Faulkner wrote screenplays for Hollywood; two of his more prominent scripts were for the motion pictures To Have and Have Not (1944) and The Big S...

• 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...

• Collectibles and Collecting.

  common blond and thus commands a higher price. If there are different variations to a collectible, the least common one is usually worth more. Often there areinteresting stories behind rarities, such as the highly sought-after 1909 Honus Wagner baseball card. At that time tobacco companies manufactured and distributedbaseball cards, and when the antitobacco Wagner complained, his card was pulled from production. Very few copies in good condition have ever been found. C Age Age is often an indic...

• Folktales I INTRODUCTION "Little Red Riding Hood" The popular children's story "Little Red Riding

  seemed important to them. Thus, the Grimms postulated a common Indo-European origin for folktales, and the German philologist Theodor Benfey as well as theScottish writer William Clouston believed that stories diffused by way of travelers migrating east and west from India. Such theories, however, have proven incompleteand inadequate. Nevertheless, the research of these and other scholars greatly stimulated interest in folklore and folktales. The German scholar Max Muller held thatmyths originat...

• Herman Melville I INTRODUCTION Herman Melville These lines (recited by an actor) begin the novel Moby Dick (1851), by Herman Melville.

  short novel Billy Budd in manuscript form. Melville’s death in New York City on September 28, 1891, went virtually unnoticed. None of his books was still in print. VI MELVILLE’S EARLY WORKS With the exception of Mardi , all of Melville’s early books are narratives of maritime adventure based upon his own experiences and on his wide reading. Although London publisher John Murray accepted Typee for his Home and Colonial Library as a strictly factual account of South Seas travel, he was lar...

• The Scarlett letter

  The Scarlet Letter is an american romantic novel of fiction, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, published in the mid-nineteenth century. It is considered to be his best work. Nathaniel Hawthorne was an American novelist and short story writer from the nineteen century. He is a dark romantic (anti-transcendentalist) which means that he explores the psychological effects of guilt and sin, madness, derangement in the human psyche. The Scarlett letter is marked by this exploration. The st...

• Musical I INTRODUCTION George Gershwin American pianist, songwriter, and composer George Gershwin was one of the most important figures in popular song in the 1920s and 1930s.

  C Extravaganzas Another predecessor of musical comedy, the extravaganza, evolved soon after the American Civil War (1861-1865) from traditional English pantomime. Extravaganzaswere typically based on fairy tales and Mother Goose. They introduced some of the elements—songs, dances, and comedy combined with spectacular stage sets andeffects—that American musical comedy later became known for. The first and most famous extravaganza show was The Black Crook (1866), often described as America’s fi...

• Vietnam - country.

  E Natural Resources Vietnam’s most valuable natural resource is its land, particularly the fertile, alluvial soils in the Red and Mekong deltas. Some 29 percent of the land is currently beingcultivated. Vietnam has some valuable mineral resources, including gold, iron, tin, zinc, phosphate, chromite, apatite, and anthracite coal. Most deposits are located in the northernpart of the country. Few attempts were made to extract these minerals until the French takeover of Vietnam at the end of the 1...

• Henry Fonda Henry Fonda (1905-1982), American actor, best known for his convincing portrayals of characters of integrity.

• Scylla and Charybdis Greek Two mythical characters who inhabited the Straits of Messina, between mainland Italy and the island of Sicily.

• Woody Allen Woody Allen, born in 1935, American motion-picture director, actor, and writer, many of whose films are humorous depictions of neurotic characters preoccupied with love and death.

• Analyse Twelfth Night de William Shakespeare (en anglais)

  woman : Viola, herself in love with Orsino; and as if it was not enough, Malvolio and Sir Andrew are as well in love with Olivia and  both believe they have a chance. Illyria seems to be in a total fever. Shakespeare shows that these passions only create confusion, that one has to deal with them with a lot of measure, self-control and reason. Therefore he truly celebrates order.     In addition to love, identity is as well a very big source of disorder and confusion in Twelfth Night. Shakespeare...

• 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...

• 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...

• 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...

• 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...

• German Literature I INTRODUCTION German Literature, literature written in the German language from the 8th century to the present, and including the works of German, Austrian, and Swiss authors.

  Till EulenspiegelThe medieval peasant Till Eulenspiegel appears in many German folktales as a trickster who outwits people in positions ofauthority. In this image his first name is spelled Tyll.Keystone Pressedienst GmbH The rise of the middle class in the 14th and 15th centuries and the struggles of the peasants against the nobility culminated in the great 16th-century religiousrevolution known as the Reformation. This movement was reflected in literature, especially by Martin Luther, whose tra...

• Jane Austen.

  years later.) Mansfield Park is Jane Austen’s most ambitious novel—in length, in variety of characterization, and in the scope of its theme. It centers on the effects of upbringing on personal morality in three families—the middle-class Bertrams, the fashionable Crawfords, and the impoverished Prices. Austen has been praised for her presentation ofthe complex relations between the members of the families, but as in Sense and Sensibility, she frustrates the expectations of her readers that 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...

• Arthur Conan Doyle and his character of Sherlock Holmes

  Theme : Heroes and characters Issue raised : Why would Arthur C.D embody himself as his fictional character Sherlock Holmes ?

• Children's Literature I INTRODUCTION Kate Greenaway's May Day The delicate skill and graceful simplicity of English artist Kate Greenaway's illustrations delighted children and impressed thinkers, including art critic John Ruskin.

  With the development of vernacular literature, particularly after the invention of printing, more children's books appeared. The publications of the first English printer,William Caxton, included the Book of Curtesye (1477), a collection of rhymes that sets forth rules of conduct for a “goodly chylde.” Eight years later Caxton printed Le Morte d'Arthur (1469-1470; The Death of Arthur ) by English translator and compiler Sir Thomas Malory, which became the basis for later treatments of the A...

• Acting I INTRODUCTION Lee Strasberg American acting teacher Lee Strasberg was best known for his association with the Actors Studio, of which he became the artistic director in 1951.

  truthfully felt those emotions at the moment they expressed them. Finding the true feeling in the proper place and time on stage, however, was a problem that Aristotleaddressed less well. He concluded that acting was an occupation for the gifted or insane. How to cross the artistic boundary beyond feigned emotions and flat imitation obsessed many Greek actors. In 315 BC the tragedian Polus carried the real ashes of his recently deceased son in an urn to stimulate a sense of genuine grief when h...

• Mythology.

  Across cultures, mythologies tend to describe similar characters. A common character is the trickster. The trickster is recklessly bold and even immoral, but through hisinventiveness he often helps human beings. In Greek mythology, Hermes (best known as the messenger of the gods) was a famous trickster. In one version of acharacteristic tale, Hermes, while still an infant, stole the cattle of his half-brother Apollo. To avoid leaving a trail that could be followed, Hermes made shoes from thebark...

• Nathaniel Hawthorne The Scarlet Letter Essay

  and her husband is supposed to meet her there. She finds comfort in the person of Minister Arthur Dimmesdale, and let herself be tempted by an act of passion, and love that gave birth to a « sinful » child. Then Hester has to carry the burden of her shame embodied in the Scarlet Letter, and in Pearl. Hester follows what we can call natural laws : Roger Prynne (aka Chillingworth) is described as old, deformed, and a man of science confine in his books, whereas Hester is young...

• Chinese Music I INTRODUCTION Classical Peking Opera Of the many major forms of regional theater in China, Peking opera is by far the most famous.

  World Music TourClick on the instruments to hear music from around the world.© Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved. However, the Confucian beliefs about music were constantly eroded throughout Chinese history by a long tradition of popular entertainment music, favored both at thecourt and by the common folk. Although excluded from official ritual performances for several thousand years, Chinese women musicians and entertainers had a centraland formative role in this entertainment music as...

• Tragedy I INTRODUCTION Euripides Unlike other 5th-century BC Greek playwrights, tragic poet Euripides addressed the plight of the common people, rather than that of mythic heroes.

  SenecaSeneca was a Roman philosopher, dramatist, and statesman. His tragedies later influenced Renaissance dramatists,including William Shakespeare. The bust of Seneca shown here is a Roman copy of a Greek original.Art Resource, NY Aeschylus is one of the best known of the ancient Greek tragic playwrights. The author of some 90 plays, he established many of the conventions of the tragic dramaticform, which he perfected throughout his career. Aeschylus's skillful use of poetic language and brilli...

• anglais corrrigé de new girl

  je puisse deviner un visage, mais juste assez pour que je sente le regard cuisant de la mère de la petite fille. EXPRESSION / 20 Sujet 1 : Dans ce type de sujet, il est essentiel de préserver l’esprit du texte de départ : lieu, personnages, sentiments et réactions… Il est également important de respecter le contexte historique. La scène se déroulant en Alabama dans les années 1970, il conviendra de restituer à travers les personnages l’atmosphère qui régnait à l’époque : discrimination,...

• James Joyce I INTRODUCTION James Joyce The works of Irish writer James Joyce are

  Odysseus’s wife, Penelope. The 18 chapters of Ulysses parallel episodes from the Odyssey, but there are crucial differences between the two books. For instance, most interpretations of the Odyssey credit Penelope with fidelity during her husband’s lengthy absence, while Molly Bloom is unfaithful to her husband. As in Portrait, each chapter in Ulysses has a distinct style that reflects both the exterior and interior lives of the characters and their development as individuals. The fina...

• Baroque Art and ArchitectureIINTRODUCTIONGerman Baroque ArchitectureThe baroque style of architecture flourished in Germany in the 18th century.

  C Early baroque styles Conversion of Saint PaulItalian baroque painter Caravaggio painted scenes of realism and drama, often selecting lofty, religious themes anddepicting them with lower-class characters and settings with dramatic spotlighting. With its unidealized characters andfocus on the horse’s body, his Conversion of Saint Paul seems to record a stable accident, not a miraculous conversion byGod. This work was painted in 1601 and is in the Cerasi Chapel, Santa Maria del Popolo, Rome, It...

• Richard Wagner I INTRODUCTION Richard Wagner (1813-1883), German composer, conductor, and essayist, one of the most influential cultural figures of the 19th century.

  May 1864 he was summoned to Munich by the 18-year-old King Ludwig II of Bavaria, who settled Wagner's debts, paid him a generous allowance, and provided himwith housing. Wagner was soon joined in his new home by Cosima von Bülow, Liszt’s daughter and the wife of German conductor and pianist Hans von Bülow. Wagnerand Cosima began a relationship that produced three children before the dissolution of the Bülows' marriage in 1870. Mounting hostility toward Wagner by members ofLudwig’s court resulted...

• 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...

• The importance of being earnest : the representation of marriage

  DAMAS Chloé TD 2062 The representation of marriage in the Importance of being Earnest be. It is hardly a matter that she could be allowed to arrange for herself . . . “. She has the classical ideas about marriage : “To speak frankly, I am not in favour of long engagements. They give people the opportunity of finding out each other’s character before marriage, which I think is never advisable.”. She does not believe in marriage fo...

• Essay The great Gatsby/bluest eye

  Gatsby's heart easily. Consequently, after this scene and the car accident she was implicated in, she withdrawswith Tom in her materialistic world, forgetting for ever Gatsby without any remorse. However, Gatsby still believesthat she will call him again, he is pathetic and in total delusion, he cannot accept that his dream as faded awayand that he totally overestimated Daisy and her love for him. Finally, in the very end, Gatsby's incorruptible faith in his dream leads him to protect Daisy from...

• Une courte resume sur l'oeuvre Regeneration ecrite par Pat Barker (TPE)

  -Being emotionless -Hallucinations -Homosexuality -Phobias All of those diseases were treated by a treatment named 'shell-shock' Most of the shell-shock in all wars were used in the World War First. The main idea of this treatment is to cure the soldiers easily and make them return to the war. But how Barker know all of this? How she found all of this ideas and facts? But why this novel is consumed so much? What is the nature of this book? First of all is a truly realistic novel, characters are...

• Film Noir I INTRODUCTION Lynch's Blue Velvet The motion picture Blue Velvet (1986) brought wide acclaim to American director David Lynch.

  Double IndemnityBarbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray are featured in Double Indemnity (1944), a story of lust and greed in the film noirtradition, directed by Billy Wilder. The film’s events are related in flashbacks by protagonist Walter Neff (MacMurray), whomakes a dying confession about a plot to kill a man for his insurance money.Bettmann/Corbis Another common aspect of film noir is the femme fatale, a seductive woman who lures the protagonist into actions that ultimately lead to his downfall...

• 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...