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For The Time Being
''For the Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio'', is a long poem by W. H. Auden, written in 1941 and 1942, and first published in 1944. It was one of two long poems included in Auden's book also titled ''For the Time Being'', published in 1944; the other poem included in the book was " The Sea and the Mirror." The poem is a series of dramatic monologues spoken by the characters in the Christmas story and by choruses and a narrator. The characters all speak in modern diction, and the events of the story are portrayed as if they occurred in the contemporary world. Its mood is sombre regarding the future of the world. For instance: "''Reason will be replaced by Revelation. Instead of Rational Law, objective truths perceptible to any who will undergo the necessary intellectual discipline, Knowledge will degenerate into a riot of subjective visions... Whole cosmogonies will be created out of some forgotten personal resentment, complete epics written in private languages, the daubs o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Random House
Random House is an American book publisher and the largest general-interest paperback publisher in the world. The company has several independently managed subsidiaries around the world. It is part of Penguin Random House, which is owned by German media conglomerate Bertelsmann. History 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 House. In 1934 they published the first authorized edition of James Joyce's novel ''Ulysses'' in the Anglophone world. ''Ulysses'' transformed Random House into a formidable publisher over the next two decades. In 1936, it absorbed the firm of Smith and Haas—Robert Haas became the third partner until retiring and selling his share back to Cerf and Klopfer in 19 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Sea And The Mirror
"The Sea and the Mirror: A Commentary on Shakespeare's ''The Tempest''" is a long poem by W.H. Auden, written 1942–44, and first published in 1944. Auden regarded the work as “my ''Ars Poetica,'' in the same way I believe ''The Tempest'' to have been Shakespeare’s.” The poem is a series of dramatic monologues spoken by the characters in Shakespeare's play after the end of the play itself. These are rendered in a variety of verse forms from villanelles, sonnets, sestinas, and finally Jamesian prose, the forms corresponding to the nature of the characters e.g. Ferdinand addresses Miranda in a sonnet, a form traditionally amenable to expressions of love. The poem begins with a "Preface" ("The Stage Manager to the Critics"), followed by Part I, "Prospero to Ariel"; Part II, "The Supporting Cast, ''Sotto Voce'', spoken by individual characters in the play, each followed by a brief comment on the character of Antonio; and Part III, ''Caliban to the Audience'', spoken by Caliban i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dramatic Monologue
Dramatic monologue is a type of poetry written in the form of a speech of an individual character. M.H. Abrams notes the following three features of the ''dramatic monologue'' as it applies to poetry: Types of dramatic monologue One of the most important influences on the development of the dramatic monologue is romantic poetry. However, the long, personal lyrics typical of the Romantic period are not dramatic monologues, in the sense that they do not, for the most part, imply a concentrated narrative. Poems such as William Wordsworth's ''Tintern Abbey'' and Percy Bysshe Shelley's ''Mont Blanc'', to name two famous examples, offered a model of close psychological observation and philosophical or pseudo-philosophical inquiry described in a specific setting. The conversation poems of Samuel Taylor Coleridge are perhaps a better precedent. The genre was also developed by Felicia Hemans and Letitia Elizabeth Landon, beginning in the latter's case with her long poem ''The Improvis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Christmas
Christmas is an annual festival commemorating Nativity of Jesus, the birth of Jesus, Jesus Christ, observed primarily on December 25 as a religious and cultural celebration among billions of people Observance of Christmas by country, around the world. A Calendar of saints, feast central to the Christian liturgical year, it is preceded by the season of Advent or the Nativity Fast and initiates the season of Christmastide, which historically in the West lasts Twelve Days of Christmas, twelve days and culminates on Twelfth Night (holiday), Twelfth Night. Christmas Day is a public holiday in List of holidays by country, many countries, is celebrated religiously by a majority of Christians, as well as Christian culture, culturally by many non-Christians, and forms an integral part of the Christmas and holiday season, holiday season organized around it. The traditional Christmas narrative recounted in the New Testament, known as the Nativity of Jesus, says that Jesus was born in Bet ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Benjamin Britten
Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten (22 November 1913 – 4 December 1976, aged 63) was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He was a central figure of 20th-century British music, with a range of works including opera, other vocal music, orchestral and chamber pieces. His best-known works include the opera '' Peter Grimes'' (1945), the '' War Requiem'' (1962) and the orchestral showpiece ''The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra'' (1945). Born in Lowestoft, Suffolk, the son of a dentist, Britten showed talent from an early age. He studied at the Royal College of Music in London and privately with the composer Frank Bridge. Britten first came to public attention with the '' a cappella'' choral work '' A Boy was Born'' in 1934. With the premiere of ''Peter Grimes'' in 1945, he leapt to international fame. Over the next 28 years, he wrote 14 more operas, establishing himself as one of the leading 20th-century composers in the genre. In addition to large-sca ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mátyás Seiber
Mátyás György Seiber (; 4 May 190524 September 1960) was a Hungarian-born British composer who lived and worked in the United Kingdom from 1935 onwards. His work linked many diverse musical influences, from the Hungarian tradition of Bartók and Kodály, to Schoenberg and serial music, to jazz, folk song, and lighter music. Early life Seiber was born in Budapest. His mother, Berta Patay was a reputed pianist and teacher, so the young Seiber gained considerable skill with that instrument first. At the age of ten, he began to learn to play the cello. After attending grammar school, where he was regarded as "outstanding" in mathematics and Latin according to the almanacs of the Franz Liszt Academy of Music, he studied the cello and composition from 1918 to 1925, and composition with Zoltán Kodály from 1921 to 1925. For his degree, he wrote his String Quartet No. 1 (in A minor). Pieces composed at this time, such as the ''Serenade for Six Wind Instruments'' of 1925, show him ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Fuller (poet)
John Fuller FRSL (born 1 January 1937) is an English poet and author, and Fellow Emeritus at Magdalen College, Oxford. Biography Fuller was born at Ashford, Kent, United Kingdom, the son of poet and Oxford Professor Roy Fuller, and educated at St Paul's School and New College, Oxford. He began teaching in 1962 at the State University of New York, then continued at the University of Manchester. From 1966 to 2002 he was a Fellow and tutor of Magdalen College, Oxford; he is now Fellow Emeritus. Fuller has published 15 collections of poetry, including ''Stones and Fires'' (1996), ''Now and for a Time'' (2002), ''Song and Dance'' (2008) and the recent ''The Dice Cup'' (2014). Chatto and Windus published a Collected Poems in 1996. His novel ''Flying to Nowhere'' (1983), a historical fantasy, won the Whitbread First Novel Award, and was nominated for the Booker Prize. In 1996 he won the Forward Prize for ''Stones and Fires'' and in 2006 the Michael Braude Award for Light Verse. He ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edward Mendelson
__NOTOC__ Edward Mendelson (born March 15, 1946) is a professor of English and Comparative Literature and the Lionel Trilling Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University. He is the literary executor of the Estate of W. H. Auden and the author or editor of several books about Auden's work, including ''Early Auden'' (1981) and ''Later Auden'' (1999). He is also the author of ''The Things That Matter: What Seven Classic Novels Have to Say About the Stages of Life'' (2006), about nineteenth- and twentieth-century novels, and ''Moral Agents: Eight Twentieth-Century American Writers'' (2015). He has edited standard editions of works by W. H. Auden, including ''Collected Poems'' (1976; 2nd edn. 1990; 3rd edn., 2007), ''The English Auden'' (1977), ''Selected Poems'' (1979, 2nd edn., 2007), ''As I Walked Out One Evening'' (selected light verse, 1995), and the continuing ''Complete Works of W. H. Auden'' (1986– ). His work on Thomas Pynchon includes ''Pynchon: A Collection of Criti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1944 Poems
Events Below, the events of World War II have the "WWII" prefix. January * January 2 – WWII: ** Free France, Free French General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny is appointed to command First Army (France), French Army B, part of the Sixth United States Army Group in North Africa. ** Landing at Saidor: 13,000 US and Australian troops land on Papua New Guinea, in an attempt to cut off a Japanese retreat. * January 8 – WWII: Philippine Commonwealth troops enter the province of Ilocos Sur in northern Luzon and attack Japanese forces. * January 11 ** President of the United States Franklin D. Roosevelt proposes a Second Bill of Rights for social and economic security, in his State of the Union address. ** The Nazi German administration expands Kraków-Płaszów concentration camp into the larger standalone ''Konzentrationslager Plaszow bei Krakau'' in occupied Poland. * January 12 – WWII: Winston Churchill and Charles de Gaulle begin a 2-day conference in Marrakech ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1944 Poetry Books
Events Below, the events of World War II have the "WWII" prefix. January * January 2 – WWII: ** Free France, Free French General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny is appointed to command First Army (France), French Army B, part of the Sixth United States Army Group in North Africa. ** Landing at Saidor: 13,000 US and Australian troops land on Papua New Guinea, in an attempt to cut off a Japanese retreat. * January 8 – WWII: Philippine Commonwealth troops enter the province of Ilocos Sur in northern Luzon and attack Japanese forces. * January 11 ** President of the United States Franklin D. Roosevelt proposes a Second Bill of Rights for social and economic security, in his State of the Union address. ** The Nazi German administration expands Kraków-Płaszów concentration camp into the larger standalone ''Konzentrationslager Plaszow bei Krakau'' in occupied Poland. * January 12 – WWII: Winston Churchill and Charles de Gaulle begin a 2-day conference in Marrakech ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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