Guido Crepax
Guido Crepas (15 July 1933, in Milan – 31 July 2003, in Milan), better known by his pen name Guido Crepax, was an Italian comics artist. He is most famous for his character '' Valentina'', created in 1965 and very representative of the spirit of the 1960s. The ''Valentina'' series of books and strips became noted for Crepax's sophisticated drawing, and for the psychedelic, dreamlike storylines, generally involving a strong dose of erotism. His work was often politically motivated too, inspired by his Communist convictions. A film based on his work called ''Baba Yaga'', featuring the character Valentina, was made in 1973. Works Valentina stories * '' The Lesmo Curve'' (1965) * ''The Subterraneans'' (1965) * ''The Descent'' (1966) * ''Un Poco Loco'' (1966) * ''Ciao, Valentina'' (1966) * ''The Force of Gravity'' (1967) * ''Funny Valentine'' (1967) * ''Valentina in Sovietland'' (1968) * ''Valentina in Boots'' (1968) * ''Marianna in the Country'' (1968) * ''Fearless Paper Doll Valen ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Milan
Milan ( , , Lombard: ; it, Milano ) is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the second-most populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of about 1.4 million, while its metropolitan city has 3.26 million inhabitants. Its continuously built-up urban area (whose outer suburbs extend well beyond the boundaries of the administrative metropolitan city and even stretch into the nearby country of Switzerland) is the fourth largest in the EU with 5.27 million inhabitants. According to national sources, the population within the wider Milan metropolitan area (also known as Greater Milan), is estimated between 8.2 million and 12.5 million making it by far the largest metropolitan area in Italy and one of the largest in the EU.* * * * Milan is considered a leading alpha global city, with strengths in the fields of art, chemicals, commerce, design, education, entertainment, fashion, finance, healthcar ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Gulliver's Travels
''Gulliver's Travels'', or ''Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships'' is a 1726 prose satire by the Anglo-Irish writer and clergyman Jonathan Swift, satirising both human nature and the "travellers' tales" literary subgenre. It is Swift's best known full-length work, and a classic of English literature. Swift claimed that he wrote ''Gulliver's Travels'' "to vex the world rather than divert it". The book was an immediate success. The English dramatist John Gay remarked: "It is universally read, from the cabinet council to the nursery." In 2015, Robert McCrum released his selection list of 100 best novels of all time in which ''Gulliver's Travels'' is listed in third place as "a satirical masterpiece". Plot Part I: A Voyage to Lilliput The travel begins with a short preamble in which Lemuel Gulliver gives a brief outline of his life and history before his voyages. ;4 May ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Fernando Carcupino
Fernando Carcupino (23 July 1922 – 22 March 2003) was an Italian painter, illustrator and comics artist. He was most widely known for his female nudes, but he also painted landscapes, still lifes, historical subjects, and portraits of mothers and their children. In his early career he worked as a comics artist for '' Asso di Picche''. Life and career Carcupino was born in Naples to a Milanese family who were temporarily working there. He grew up in Milan and studied art under Achille Funi at the city's Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera. During World War II, he worked in the animation department for the film ''La Rosa di Bagdad'' before serving as a sub-lieutenant in the Granatieri Brigade of the Italian Liberation Corps.Galleria d'arte GelmiCarcupino, Francesco Retrieved 8 September 2016 . Fondazione Franco Fossati (2004)Fernando Carcupino Retrieved 8 September 2016 . In 1946, after producing the episode "Scacco matto a Coe" for the comics series ''Il Solitario'', he joined h ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Wargaming
A wargame is a strategy game in which two or more players command opposing armed forces in a realistic simulation of an armed conflict. Wargaming may be played for recreation, to train military officers in the art of strategic thinking, or to study the nature of potential conflicts. Many wargames recreate specific historic battles, and can cover either whole wars, or any campaigns, battles, or lower-level engagements within them. Many simulate land combat, but there are wargames for naval and air combat as well. Generally, activities where the participants actually perform mock combat actions (e.g. friendly warships firing dummy rounds at each other) are not considered wargames. Some writers may refer to a military's field training exercises as "live wargames", but certain institutions such as the US Navy do not accept this.''War Gamer's Handbook'' (US Naval War College), p. 4: "The .S. Naval War College's War Gaming Departmentuses the Perla (1990) definition, which describes w ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Mary Shelley
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (; ; 30 August 1797 – 1 February 1851) was an English novelist who wrote the Gothic fiction, Gothic novel ''Frankenstein, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus'' (1818), which is considered an History of science fiction#Shelley and Europe in the early 19th century, early example of science fiction. She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley. Her father was the political philosopher William Godwin and her mother was the philosopher and women's rights advocate Mary Wollstonecraft. Mary's mother died less than a fortnight after giving birth to her. She was raised by her father, who provided her with a rich if informal education, encouraging her to adhere to his own anarchist political theories. When she was four, her father married a neighbour, Mary Jane Clairmont, with whom Mary came to have a troubled relationship. In 1814, Mary began a romance with one of her father's politica ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Anne Desclos
Anne Cécile Desclos (23 September 1907 – 27 April 1998) was a French journalist and novelist who wrote under the pen names Dominique Aury and Pauline Réage. She is best known for her erotic novel ''Story of O'' (1954). Early life Born in Rochefort, Charente-Maritime, France to a bilingual family, Desclos began reading in French and English at an early age. After completing her studies at the Sorbonne, she worked as a journalist until 1946 when she joined Gallimard Publishers as the editorial secretary for one of its imprints where she began using the pen name of Dominique Aury. An avid reader of English literature, Desclos either translated or introduced to readers in France such renowned authors as Algernon Charles Swinburne, Evelyn Waugh, Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and numerous others. She became a critic and was made a member of the jury for several prominent literary awards. Career Desclos' lover and employer Jean Paulhan, a fervent admirer ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a German-speaking Bohemian novelist and short-story writer, widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature. His work fuses elements of realism and the fantastic. It typically features isolated protagonists facing bizarre or surrealistic predicaments and incomprehensible socio-bureaucratic powers. It has been interpreted as exploring themes of alienation, existential anxiety, guilt, and absurdity. His best known works include the short story "The Metamorphosis" and novels ''The Trial'' and '' The Castle''. The term ''Kafkaesque'' has entered English to describe absurd situations, like those depicted in his writing. Kafka was born into a middle-class German-speaking Czech Jewish family in Prague, the capital of the Kingdom of Bohemia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, today the capital of the Czech Republic. He trained as a lawyer and after completing his legal education was employed full-ti ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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The Trial
''The Trial'' (german: Der Process, link=no, previously , and ) is a novel written by Franz Kafka in 1914 and 1915 and published posthumously on 26 April 1925. One of his best known works, it tells the story of Josef K., a man arrested and prosecuted by a remote, inaccessible authority, with the nature of his crime revealed neither to him nor to the reader. Heavily influenced by Dostoevsky's ''Crime and Punishment'' and ''The Brothers Karamazov'', Kafka even went so far as to call Dostoevsky a blood relative. Like Kafka's two other novels, ''The Trial'' was never completed, although it does include a chapter which appears to bring the story to an intentionally abrupt ending. After Kafka's death in 1924 his friend and literary executor Max Brod edited the text for publication by Verlag Die Schmiede. The original manuscript is held at the Museum of Modern Literature, Marbach am Neckar, Germany. The first English-language translation, by Willa and Edwin Muir, was published in 19 ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Henry James
Henry James ( – ) was an American-British author. He is regarded as a key transitional figure between literary realism and literary modernism, and is considered by many to be among the greatest novelists in the English language. He was the son of Henry James Sr. and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James. He is best known for his novels dealing with the social and marital interplay between ''émigré ''Americans, English people, and continental Europeans. Examples of such novels include '' The Portrait of a Lady'', ''The Ambassadors'', and ''The Wings of the Dove''. His later works were increasingly experimental. In describing the internal states of mind and social dynamics of his characters, James often wrote in a style in which ambiguous or contradictory motives and impressions were overlaid or juxtaposed in the discussion of a character's psyche. For their unique ambiguity, as well as for other aspects of their composition, his ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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The Turn Of The Screw
''The Turn of the Screw'' is an 1898 horror novella by Henry James which first appeared in serial format in ''Collier's Weekly'' (January 27 – April 16, 1898). In October 1898, it was collected in ''The Two Magics'', published by Macmillan in New York City and Heinemann in London. The novella follows a governess who, caring for two children at a remote estate, becomes convinced that the grounds are haunted. ''The Turn of the Screw'' is considered a work of both Gothic and horror fiction. In the century following its publication, critical analysis of the novella has undergone several major transformations. Initial reviews regarded it only as a frightening ghost story, but, in the 1930s, some critics suggested that the supernatural elements were figments of the governess' imagination. In the early 1970s, the influence of structuralism resulted in an acknowledgement that the text's ambiguity was its key feature. Later approaches incorporated Marxist and feminist thinking. T ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson (born Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson; 13 November 1850 – 3 December 1894) was a Scottish novelist, essayist, poet and travel writer. He is best known for works such as ''Treasure Island'', ''Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde'', '' Kidnapped'' and ''A Child's Garden of Verses''. Born and educated in Edinburgh, Stevenson suffered from serious bronchial trouble for much of his life, but continued to write prolifically and travel widely in defiance of his poor health. As a young man, he mixed in London literary circles, receiving encouragement from Andrew Lang, Edmund Gosse, Leslie Stephen and W. E. Henley, the last of whom may have provided the model for Long John Silver in ''Treasure Island''. In 1890, he settled in Samoa where, alarmed at increasing European and American influence in the South Sea islands, his writing turned away from romance and adventure fiction toward a darker realism. He died of a stroke in his island home in 1894 at ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Bram Stoker
Abraham Stoker (8 November 1847 – 20 April 1912) was an Irish author who is celebrated for his 1897 Gothic horror novel '' Dracula''. During his lifetime, he was better known as the personal assistant of actor Sir Henry Irving and business manager of the Lyceum Theatre, which Irving owned. In his early years, Stoker worked as a theatre critic for an Irish newspaper, and wrote stories as well as commentaries. He also enjoyed travelling, particularly to Cruden Bay where he set two of his novels. During another visit to the English coastal town of Whitby, Stoker drew inspiration for writing ''Dracula''. He died on 20 April 1912 due to locomotor ataxia and was cremated in north London. Since his death, his magnum opus ''Dracula'' has become one of the most well-known works in English literature, and the novel has been adapted for numerous films, short stories, and plays. Early life Stoker was born on 8 November 1847 at 15 Marino Crescent, Clontarf, on the northside of Dubli ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |