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Anthology Of Black Humor
The ''Anthology of Black Humor'' (French: ''Anthologie de l'humour noir'') is an anthology of 45 writers edited by André Breton. It was first published in 1940 in Paris by Éditions du Sagittaire and its distribution was immediately banned by the Vichy government. It was reprinted in 1947 after Breton's return from exile, with a few additions. In 1966, Breton, "''having resisted the temptation to add more names''", published the book again and called this edition "the definitive". The anthology not only introduced some until then almost unknown or forgotten writers, it also coined the term "black humor" (as Breton said, until then the term had meant nothing, unless someone imagined jokes about black people ). The term became globally used since then. The choice of authors was done entirely by Breton and according to his taste which he explains in the Foreword (called ''The Lightning Rod'', a term suggested by Lichtenberg), a work of great depth (Breton was the main theoretician of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paperback
A paperback (softcover, softback) book is one with a thick paper or paperboard cover, and often held together with adhesive, glue rather than stitch (textile arts), stitches or Staple (fastener), staples. In contrast, hardcover (hardback) books are bound with cardboard covered with cloth, leather, paper, or plastic. Inexpensive books bound in paper have existed since at least the 19th century in such forms as pamphlets, yellow-backs, yellowbacks, dime novels, and airport novels. Modern paperbacks can be differentiated from one another by size. In the United States, there are "mass-market paperbacks" and larger, more durable "trade paperbacks". In the United Kingdom, there are A-format, B-format, and the largest C-format sizes. Paperback editions of books are issued when a publisher decides to release a book in a low-cost format. Lower-quality paper, glued (rather than stapled or sewn) bindings, and the lack of a hard cover may contribute to the lower cost of paperbacks. Paperb ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pierre François Lacenaire
Pierre François Lacenaire (20 December 1803 – 9 January 1836) was a French murderer and poet. Biography Lacenaire was born in Francheville, Rhône, near the city of Lyon in eastern France. His parents were Jean-Baptiste Lacenaire, an honest and successful bourgeois merchant, and Marguerite Gaillard. Upon finishing his education with excellent results, he enlisted in the French Royal Army, eventually deserting in 1829 at the time of the Morea expedition during the Greek War of Independence. He then became a criminal and was in and out of prison, which was, as he called it, his "criminal university." While in prison, Lacenaire wrote a satiricapoem "Petition of a Thief to a King, his Neighbor." He also wrote an article titled "The Prisons and the Penal Regime" for a magazine. To aid him in committing his crimes, Lacenaire recruited two henchmen, Pierre Victor Avril (whom he had met while in prison) and Hippolyte François. On 14 December 1834, Lacenaire and Avril murd ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Joris-Karl Huysmans
Charles-Marie-Georges Huysmans (, ; 5 February 1848 – 12 May 1907) was a French novelist and art critic who published his works as Joris-Karl Huysmans (, variably abbreviated as J. K. or J.-K.). He is most famous for the novel ''À rebours'' (1884, published in English as ''Against the Grain'' and as ''Against Nature''). He supported himself by way of a 30-year career in the French civil service. Huysmans's work is considered remarkable for its idiosyncratic use of the French language, large vocabulary, descriptions, satirical wit and far-ranging erudition. First considered part of Naturalism, he became associated with the decadent movement with his publication of ''À rebours.'' His work expressed his deep pessimism, which had led him to the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer. In later years, his novels reflected his study of Catholicism, religious conversion, and becoming an oblate. He discussed the iconography of Christian architecture at length in '' La cathédral ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Comte De Lautréamont
Comte de Lautréamont () was the ''nom de plume'' of Isidore Lucien Ducasse (4 April 1846 – 24 November 1870), a French poet born in Uruguay. His only works, ''Les Chants de Maldoror'' and ''Poésies'', had a major influence on modern arts and literature, particularly on the Surrealists and the Situationists. Ducasse died at the age of 24. Biography Youth Ducasse was born in Montevideo, Uruguay, to François Ducasse, a French consular officer, and his wife Jacquette-Célestine Davezac. Very little is known about Isidore's childhood, except that he was baptized on 16 November 1847 in the Montevideo Metropolitan Cathedral and that his mother died soon afterwards, possibly due to an epidemic. Jean-Jacques Lefrère suggests she may have committed suicide, although concludes there is no way to know for certain. In 1851, as a five-year-old, he experienced the end of the eight-year Siege of Montevideo in the Argentine-Uruguayan War. He was brought up speaking three languages: F ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (; or ; 15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher, prose poet, cultural critic, philologist, and composer whose work has exerted a profound influence on contemporary philosophy. He began his career as a classical philologist before turning to philosophy. He became the youngest person ever to hold the Chair of Classical Philology at the University of Basel in 1869 at the age of 24. Nietzsche resigned in 1879 due to health problems that plagued him most of his life; he completed much of his core writing in the following decade. In 1889, at age 45, he suffered a collapse and afterward a complete loss of his mental faculties, with paralysis and probably vascular dementia. He lived his remaining years in the care of his mother until her death in 1897 and then with his sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche. Nietzsche died in 1900, after experiencing pneumonia and multiple strokes. Nietzsche's writing spans philosophical polemics ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles Cros
Charles Cros or Émile-Hortensius-Charles Cros (October 1, 1842 – August 9, 1888) was a French poet and inventor. He was born in Fabrezan, Aude. Cros was a well-regarded poet and humorous writer. As an inventor, he was interested in the fields of transmitting graphics by telegraph and making photographs in color, but he is perhaps best known for being the first person to conceive a method for reproducing recorded sound, an invention he named the Paleophone. Charles Cros died in Paris at the age of 45. Early life and education Cros was born to the philosopher Simon Charles Henry Cros (1803–1876) and Josephine Thor. He was the grandson of grammarian Antoine Cros (1769–1844). Cros was the brother of and the painter and sculptor Henry Cros ( :fr: Henry Cros) (1840–1907) and of Antoine-Hippolyte Cros (1833-1903), a surgeon who was also pretender to the throne of the defunct Kingdom of Araucanía and Patagonia from March 6, 1902 until November 1, 1903, and the uncle of L ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Auguste Villiers De L'Isle-Adam
Jean-Marie-Mathias-Philippe-Auguste, comte de Villiers de l'Isle-Adam (7 November 1838 – 19 August 1889) was a French symbolism (arts), symbolist writer. His family called him Mathias while his friends called him Villiers; he would also use the name Auguste when publishing some of his books. Life Villiers de l'Isle-Adam was born in Saint-Brieuc, Brittany, to a distinguished aristocratic family. His parents, Marquis Joseph-Toussaint and Marie-Francoise (née Le Nepvou de Carfort) were not financially secure and were supported by Marie's aunt, Mademoiselle de Kerinou. In attempt to gain wealth, Villiers de l'Isle-Adam's father began an obsessive search for the lost treasure of the Knights of Malta, formerly known as the Knights Hospitaller, of which Philippe Villiers de L'Isle-Adam, a family ancestor, was the 16th-century Grand Master of the order. The treasure had reputedly been buried near Quintin during the French Revolution. Consequently, Marquis Joseph-Toussaint spent la ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alice's Adventures In Wonderland
''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' (commonly ''Alice in Wonderland'') is an 1865 English novel by Lewis Carroll. It details the story of a young girl named Alice (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland), Alice who falls through a rabbit hole into a fantasy world of anthropomorphism, anthropomorphic creatures. It is seen as an example of the literary nonsense genre. The artist John Tenniel provided 42 wood-engraved illustrations for the book. It received positive reviews upon release and is now one of the best-known works of Victorian literature; its narrative, structure, characters and imagery have had widespread influence on popular culture and literature, especially in the fantasy genre. It is credited as helping end an era of didacticism in children's literature, inaugurating a new era in which writing for children aimed to "delight or entertain". The tale plays with logic, giving the story lasting popularity with adults as well as with children. The titular character Alice shar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lewis Carroll
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (; 27 January 1832 – 14 January 1898), better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll, was an English author, poet and mathematician. His most notable works are ''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' (1865) and its sequel ''Through the Looking-Glass'' (1871). He was noted for his facility with word play, logic, and fantasy. His poems ''Jabberwocky'' (1871) and ''The Hunting of the Snark'' (1876) are classified in the genre of literary nonsense. Carroll came from a family of high-church Anglicanism, Anglicans, and developed a long relationship with Christ Church, Oxford, where he lived for most of his life as a scholar and teacher. Alice Liddell, the daughter of Christ Church's dean Henry Liddell, is widely identified as the original inspiration for ''Alice in Wonderland'', though Carroll always denied this. An avid puzzler, Carroll created the word ladder puzzle (which he then called "Doublets"), which he published in his weekly column for ''Vanity Fair ( ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles Baudelaire
Charles Pierre Baudelaire (, ; ; 9 April 1821 – 31 August 1867) was a French poetry, French poet who also produced notable work as an essayist and art critic. His poems exhibit mastery in the handling of rhyme and rhythm, contain an exoticism inherited from Romantics, but are based on observations of real life. His most famous work, a book of lyric poetry titled ''Les Fleurs du mal'' (''The Flowers of Evil''), expresses the changing nature of beauty in the rapidly industrializing Paris during the mid-19th century. Baudelaire's highly original style of prose-poetry influenced a whole generation of poets including Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud and Stéphane Mallarmé, among many others. He is credited with coining the term modernity (''modernité'') to designate the fleeting, ephemeral experience of life in an urban metropolis, and the responsibility of artistic expression to capture that experience. Marshall Berman has credited Baudelaire as being the first Modernism, Modernis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Xavier Forneret
Xavier Forneret (16 September 1809 in Beaune, Côte-d'Or – 7 August 1884) was a French writer; poet, playwright and journalist. Life Born in 1809 bourgeois family by the name Antoine Charles Ferdinand, he was one of the few members of the Romantic movement who never experienced poverty and could afford to publish his books himself. In his hometown, he became an advocate of the new art. Between 1837 and 1840 he lived in Paris. Spiritually, he was a member of the Bouzingo, a group of poets which advocated a radical bohemian romanticism in life and art; contemporaries and kindred spirits included Gérard de Nerval and Théophile Gautier, yet the '' Cénacle'' in the Rue du Doyenné never accepted him as a member, since the radical romantics saw him as an eccentric bourgeois with little talent. He returned to Beaune after the three years, living his life of a rich eccentric man (he lived in an old gothic tower which had all walls painted black and silver, played violin by open win ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Angel Of The Odd
"The Angel of the Odd" is a satirical short story by Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1844 in ''The Columbian Lady's and Gentleman's Magazine''. Plot summary The story follows an unnamed narrator who reads a story about a man who died after accidentally sucking a needle down his throat. He rages at the gullibility of humanity for believing such a hoax. He vows never to fall for such odd stories. Just then, a strange-looking creature made of a keg and wine bottles appears. The creature announces in a heavy accent that he is the Angel of the Odd — and that he is responsible for causing such strange events. The man, unconvinced, drives the angel away and takes an alcohol-induced nap. Instead of a 20-minute nap, he wakes up two hours later, having missed an appointment to renew his fire insurance. Ironically, his house has caught fire and his only escape is out a window using a ladder the crowd below has provided for him. As he steps down, a hog brushes against the ladder, c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
