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Fors Clavigera
''Fors Clavigera'' was the name given by John Ruskin to a series of letters addressed to British workmen during the 1870s. They were published in the form of pamphlets. The letters formed part of Ruskin's interest in moral intervention in the social issues of the day on the model of his mentor Thomas Carlyle. Title The phrase "Fors Clavigera" was intended to designate three great powers which form human destiny. These were: ''Force'', symbolised by the club (''clava'') of Hercules; ''For''titude, symbolised by the key (''clavis'') of Ulysses; and ''For''tune, symbolised by the nail (''clavus'') of Lycurgus. These three powers (the "fors") together represent the human talent and ability to choose the right moment and then to strike with energy. The concept is derived from Shakespeare's phrase "There is a tide in the affairs of men / Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune". Ruskin believed that the letters were inspired by the Third Fors: that he was striking out at the rig ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Ruskin
John Ruskin (8 February 1819 20 January 1900) was an English writer, philosopher, art critic and polymath of the Victorian era. He wrote on subjects as varied as geology, architecture, myth, ornithology, literature, education, botany and political economy. Ruskin's writing styles and literary forms were equally varied. He wrote essays and treatises, poetry and lectures, travel guides and manuals, letters and even a fairy tale. He also made detailed sketches and paintings of rocks, plants, birds, landscapes, architectural structures and ornamentation. The elaborate style that characterised his earliest writing on art gave way in time to plainer language designed to communicate his ideas more effectively. In all of his writing, he emphasised the connections between nature, art and society. Ruskin was hugely influential in the latter half of the 19th century and up to the First World War. After a period of relative decline, his reputation has steadily improved since the 1960s wi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle (4 December 17955 February 1881) was a Scottish essayist, historian and philosopher. A leading writer of the Victorian era, he exerted a profound influence on 19th-century art, literature and philosophy. Born in Ecclefechan, Dumfriesshire, Carlyle attended the University of Edinburgh where he excelled in mathematics, inventing the Carlyle circle. After finishing the arts course, he prepared to become a minister in the Burgher Church while working as a schoolmaster. He quit these and several other endeavours before settling on literature, writing for the ''Edinburgh Encyclopædia'' and working as a translator. He found initial success as a disseminator of German literature, then little-known to English readers, through his translations, his ''Life of'' ''Friedrich Schiller'' (1825), and his review essays for various journals. His first major work was a novel entitled ''Sartor Resartus'' (1833–34). After relocating to London, he became famous with his ''French Rev ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hercules
Hercules (, ) is the Roman equivalent of the Greek divine hero Heracles, son of Jupiter and the mortal Alcmena. In classical mythology, Hercules is famous for his strength and for his numerous far-ranging adventures. The Romans adapted the Greek hero's iconography and myths for their literature and art under the name ''Hercules''. In later Western art and literature and in popular culture, ''Hercules'' is more commonly used than ''Heracles'' as the name of the hero. Hercules is a multifaceted figure with contradictory characteristics, which enabled later artists and writers to pick and choose how to represent him. This article provides an introduction to representations of Hercules in the later tradition. Mythology Birth and early life In Roman mythology, although Hercules was seen as the champion of the weak and a great protector, his personal problems started at birth. Juno sent two witches to prevent the birth, but they were tricked by one of Alcmene's servants and sent ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Odysseus
Odysseus ( ; grc-gre, Ὀδυσσεύς, Ὀδυσεύς, OdysseúsOdyseús, ), also known by the Latin variant Ulysses ( , ; lat, UlyssesUlixes), is a legendary Greek king of Ithaca and the hero of Homer's epic poem the ''Odyssey''. Odysseus also plays a key role in Homer's ''Iliad'' and other works in that same epic cycle. Son of Laërtes and Anticlea, husband of Penelope, and father of Telemachus and Acusilaus, Odysseus is renowned for his intellectual brilliance, guile, and versatility (''polytropos''), and is thus known by the epithet Odysseus the Cunning ( grc-gre, μῆτις, mêtis, cunning intelligence). He is most famous for his ''nostos'', or "homecoming", which took him ten eventful years after the decade-long Trojan War. Name, etymology, and epithets The form ''Odys(s)eus'' is used starting in the epic period and through the classical period, but various other forms are also found. In vase inscriptions, we find the variants ''Oliseus'' (), ''Olyseus'' (), ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lycomedes
In Greek mythology, Lycomedes ( grc, Λυκομήδης), also known as Lycurgus, was the most prominent king of the Dolopians in the island of Scyros near Euboea during the Trojan War. Family Lycomedes was the father of seven daughters including Deidameia, and grandfather of Pyrrhus or Neoptolemus. Mythology Death of Theseus Plutarch says that Lycomedes killed Theseus, who had fled to his island in exile by pushing him off a cliff for he feared that Theseus would dethrone him, as people of the island treated the guest with marked honor. Some related that the cause of this violence was that Lycomedes would not give up the estates which Theseus had in Scyros, or the circumstance that Lycomedes wanted to gain the favour of Menestheus. Achilles At the request of Thetis, Lycomedes concealed Achilles in female disguise among his own daughters. At Lycomedes' court Achilles had an affair with Deidamia, which resulted in the birth of Neoptolemus (Pyrrhus). As Odysseus drew Achille ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shakespeare
William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the " Bard of Avon" (or simply "the Bard"). His extant works, including collaborations, consist of some 39 plays, 154 sonnets, three long narrative poems, and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. He remains arguably the most influential writer in the English language, and his works continue to be studied and reinterpreted. Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children: Susanna Hall, Susanna, and twins Hamnet Shakespeare, Hamnet and Judith Quiney, Judith. Sometime between 1585 and 1592, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Unto This Last
''Unto This Last'' is an essay critical of economics by John Ruskin, first published between August and December 1860 in the monthly journal ''Cornhill Magazine'' in four articles. Title The title is a quotation from the Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard: The "last" are the eleventh hour labourers, who are paid as if they had worked the entire day. Rather than discuss the contemporary religious interpretation of the parable, whereby the eleventh hour labourers would be death-bed converts, or the peoples of the world who come late to religion, Ruskin looks at the social and economic implications, discussing issues such as who should receive a living wage. This essay is very critical of the economists of the 18th and 19th centuries. In this sense, Ruskin is a precursor of social economy. Because the essay also attacks the destructive effects of industrialism upon the natural world, some historians have seen it as anticipating the Green movement. The essay begins with the foll ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Past And Present (book)
''Past and Present'' is a book by the Scottish essayist, historian and philosopher Thomas Carlyle. It was published in April 1843 in England and the following month in the United States. It combines medieval history with criticism of 19th-century British society. Carlyle wrote it in seven weeks as a respite from the harassing labor of writing ''Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches''. He was inspired by the recently published ''Chronicles of the Abbey of Saint Edmund's Bury'', which had been written by Jocelin of Brakelond at the close of the 12th century. This account of a medieval monastery had taken Carlyle's fancy, and he drew upon it in order to contrast the monks' reverence for work and heroism with the sham leadership of his own day. Composition Carlyle wrote on 27 October 1841 that he had thought of editing a journal, asking James Garth Marshall,Is it not now that we are to sing and act the great new Epic, not "Arms and the Man," but "Tools and the Man";—to preach a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edward Tyas Cook
Sir Edward Tyas Cook (12 May 1857 – 30 September 1919) was an English journalist, biographer, and man of letters. Biography Born in Brighton, Cook was the youngest son of Silas Kemball Cook, secretary of the Royal Naval Hospital, Greenwich, and his wife, Emily, ''née'' Archer. He was educated at Winchester and New College, Oxford, where he was President of the Union and graduated with a double first. His friends assumed he would pursue a career in politics, but Cook's goal was to enter journalism. Moving to London, he worked as secretary for the London Society for Extension of University Teaching and made occasional contributions to several journals. During this time he joined Inner Temple but never sat for his bar finals. Working on the ''Pall Mall Gazette'' In August 1888, Cook was recruited by his friend Alfred Milner for a part-time position with the Liberal newspaper the ''Pall Mall Gazette'', then under the editorship of John Morley. Cook was interviewed by Morley wh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George Allen (publisher)
George Allen (26 March 1832 – 5 September 1907) was an English craftsman and engraver, who became an assistant to John Ruskin and then in consequence a publisher. His name persists in publishing through the Allen & Unwin company. Early life The son of John and Rebecca Allen, he was born on 26 March 1832 at Newark-on-Trent, and was educated at a private grammar school there. His father died in 1849, and in that year he was apprenticed for four years to an uncle (his mother's brother), a builder in Clerkenwell, London. He became a skilled joiner, and was employed for three and a half years in that capacity on the woodwork of the interior of Dorchester House, Park Lane. Allen and another workman worked for 79 days on a single door in the house, and Ruskin later showed a model of this door to his friends as a specimen of English craftsmanship. With John Ruskin On the foundation of the Working Men's College in 1854, Allen joined the drawing class, and became one of Ruskin's pupi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
James McNeill Whistler
James Abbott McNeill Whistler (; July 10, 1834July 17, 1903) was an American painter active during the American Gilded Age and based primarily in the United Kingdom. He eschewed sentimentality and moral allusion in painting and was a leading proponent of the credo "art for art's sake". His signature for his paintings took the shape of a stylized butterfly possessing a long stinger for a tail. The symbol combined both aspects of his personality: his art is marked by a subtle delicacy, while his public persona was combative. He found a parallel between painting and music, and entitled many of his paintings "arrangements", "harmonies", and "nocturnes", emphasizing the primacy of tonal harmony. His most famous painting, ''Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1'' (1871), commonly known as ''Whistler's Mother'', is a revered and often parodied portrait of motherhood. Whistler influenced the art world and the broader culture of his time with his theories and his friendships with other lea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Grosvenor Gallery
The Grosvenor Gallery was an art gallery in London founded in 1877 by Sir Coutts Lindsay and his wife Blanche. Its first directors were J. Comyns Carr and Charles Hallé. The gallery proved crucial to the Aesthetic Movement because it provided a home for those artists whose approaches the more classical and conservative Royal Academy did not welcome, such as Edward Burne-Jones and Walter Crane. History The gallery was founded in Bond Street, London, in 1877 by Sir Coutts Lindsay and his wife Blanche. They engaged J. Comyns Carr and Charles Hallé as co-directors. Lindsay and his wife were well-born and well-connected, and both were amateur artists. Blanche was born a Rothschild, and it was her money which made the whole enterprise possible. The Grosvenor displayed work by artists from outside the British mainstream, including Edward Burne-Jones, Walter Crane and other members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. But it also featured work by others that were widely shown elsew ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
