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La Curée
''La Curée'' (1871–72; English: ''The Kill'') is the 2nd novel in Émile Zola's 20-volume series Les Rougon-Macquart. It deals with property speculation and the lives of the extremely wealthy Nouveau riche of the Second French Empire, against the backdrop of Baron Haussmann's reconstruction of Paris in the 1850s and 1860s. Vastly different from its predecessor and prequel ''La Fortune des Rougon'', ''La Curée'' - the portion of the game thrown to the dogs after a hunt, and thus usually translated as ''The Kill'' - is a character study of three personalities: Aristide Rougon (renamed " Saccard")--the youngest son of the ruthless and calculating peasant Pierre Rougon and the bourgeois Félicité (by whom he is much spoiled), both of them Bonapartistes and consumed by a desire for wealth, Aristide's young second wife Renée (his first dying not long after their move from provincial Plassans to Paris) and Maxime, Aristide's foppish son from his first marriage. Plot summary ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Émile Zola
Émile Édouard Charles Antoine Zola (, also , ; 2 April 184029 September 1902) was a French novelist, journalist, playwright, the best-known practitioner of the literary school of naturalism, and an important contributor to the development of theatrical naturalism. He was a major figure in the political liberalization of France and in the exoneration of the falsely accused and convicted army officer Alfred Dreyfus, which is encapsulated in his renowned newspaper opinion headlined ''J'Accuse…!'' Zola was nominated for the first and second Nobel Prize in Literature in 1901 and 1902. Early life Zola was born in Paris in 1840 to François Zola (originally Francesco Zolla) and Émilie Aubert. His father was an Italian engineer with some Greek ancestry, who was born in Venice in 1795, and engineered the Zola Dam in Aix-en-Provence; his mother was French. The family moved to Aix-en-Provence in the southeast when Émile was three years old. Four years later, in 1847, his father die ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bois De Boulogne
The Bois de Boulogne (, "Boulogne woodland") is a large public park located along the western edge of the 16th arrondissement of Paris, near the suburb of Boulogne-Billancourt and Neuilly-sur-Seine. The land was ceded to the city of Paris by the Emperor Louis Napoleon, Napoleon III to be turned into a public park in 1852. It is the second-largest park in Paris, slightly smaller than the Bois de Vincennes on the eastern side of the city. It covers an area of 845 hectares (2088 acres), which is about two and a half times the area of Central Park in New York City, New York, slightly larger than Phoenix Park in Dublin, and slightly smaller than Richmond Park in London. Within the boundaries of the Bois de Boulogne are an English landscape garden with several lakes and a cascade; two smaller botanical and landscape gardens, the Château de Bagatelle and the Pré-Catelan; a zoo and amusement park in the Jardin d'Acclimatation; GoodPlanet Foundation's Domaine de Longchamp dedicated ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Greenhouse
A greenhouse (also called a glasshouse, or, if with sufficient heating, a hothouse) is a structure with walls and roof made chiefly of Transparent ceramics, transparent material, such as glass, in which plants requiring regulated climatic conditions are grown.These structures range in size from small sheds to industrial-sized buildings. A miniature greenhouse is known as a cold frame. The interior of a greenhouse exposed to sunlight becomes significantly warmer than the external temperature, protecting its contents in cold weather. Many commercial glass greenhouses or hothouses are high tech production facilities for vegetables, flowers or fruits. The glass greenhouses are filled with equipment including screening installations, heating, cooling, and lighting, and may be controlled by a computer to optimize conditions for plant growth. Different techniques are then used to manage growing conditions, including air temperature, relative humidity and vapour-pressure deficit, in ord ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Garden
A garden is a planned space, usually outdoors, set aside for the cultivation, display, and enjoyment of plants and other forms of nature. The single feature identifying even the wildest wild garden is ''control''. The garden can incorporate both natural and artificial materials. Gardens often have design features including statuary, follies, pergolas, trellises, stumperies, dry creek beds, and water features such as fountains, ponds (with or without fish), waterfalls or creeks. Some gardens are for ornamental purposes only, while others also produce food crops, sometimes in separate areas, or sometimes intermixed with the ornamental plants. Food-producing gardens are distinguished from farms by their smaller scale, more labor-intensive methods, and their purpose (enjoyment of a hobby or self-sustenance rather than producing for sale, as in a market garden). Flower gardens combine plants of different heights, colors, textures, and fragrances to create interest and delight the s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Architecture
Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and constructing buildings or other structures. The term comes ; ; . Architectural works, in the material form of buildings, are often perceived as cultural symbols and as works of art. Historical civilizations are often identified with their surviving architectural achievements. The practice, which began in the prehistoric era, has been used as a way of expressing culture for civilizations on all seven continents. For this reason, architecture is considered to be a form of art. Texts on architecture have been written since ancient times. The earliest surviving text on architectural theories is the 1st century AD treatise '' De architectura'' by the Roman architect Vitruvius, according to whom a good building embodies , and (durability, utility, and beauty). ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stately Home
An English country house is a large house or mansion in the English countryside. Such houses were often owned by individuals who also owned a town house. This allowed them to spend time in the country and in the city—hence, for these people, the term distinguished between town and country. However, the term also encompasses houses that were, and often still are, the full-time residence for the landed gentry who ruled rural Britain until the Reform Act 1832. Frequently, the formal business of the counties was transacted in these country houses, having functional antecedents in manor houses. With large numbers of indoor and outdoor staff, country houses were important as places of employment for many rural communities. In turn, until the agricultural depressions of the 1870s, the estates, of which country houses were the hub, provided their owners with incomes. However, the late 19th and early 20th centuries were the swansong of the traditional English country house lifesty ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Immorality
Immorality is the violation of moral laws, norms or standards. It refers to an agent doing or thinking something they know or believe to be wrong. Immorality is normally applied to people or actions, or in a broader sense, it can be applied to groups or corporate bodies, and works of art. Aristotle Aristotle saw many vices as excesses or deficits in relation to some virtue, as cowardice and rashness relate to courage. Some attitudes and actionssuch as envy, murder, and thefthe saw as wrong in themselves, with no question of a deficit/excess in relation to the mean. Religion In Islam, Judaism and Christianity, sin is a central concept in understanding immorality. Immorality is often closely linked with both religion and sexuality. Max Weber saw rational articulated religions as engaged in a long-term struggle with more physical forms of religious experience linked to dance, intoxication and sexual activity. Durkheim pointed out how many primitive rites culminated in abandonin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hypocrisy
Hypocrisy is the practice of engaging in the same behavior or activity for which one criticizes another or the practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one's own behavior does not conform. In moral psychology, it is the failure to follow one's own expressed moral rules and principles. According to British political philosopher David Runciman, "Other kinds of hypocritical deception include claims to knowledge that one lacks, claims to a consistency that one cannot sustain, claims to a loyalty that one does not possess, claims to an identity that one does not hold". American political journalist Michael Gerson says that political hypocrisy is "the conscious use of a mask to fool the public and gain political benefit". Hypocrisy has been a subject of folk wisdom and wisdom literature from the beginnings of human history. Increasingly, since the 1980s, it has also become central to studies in behavioral economics, cognitive science, cultural psychology, de ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Incest
Incest ( ) is human sexual activity between family members or close relatives. This typically includes sexual activity between people in consanguinity (blood relations), and sometimes those related by affinity (marriage or stepfamily), adoption, or lineage. It is strictly forbidden and considered immoral in most societies, and can lead to an increased risk of genetic disorders in children. The incest taboo is one of the most widespread of all cultural taboos, both in present and in past societies. Most modern societies have laws regarding incest or social restrictions on closely consanguineous marriages. In societies where it is illegal, consensual adult incest is seen by some as a victimless crime. Some cultures extend the incest taboo to relatives with no consanguinity such as milk-siblings, step-siblings, and adoptive siblings, albeit sometimes with less intensity. Third-degree relatives (such as half-aunt, half-nephew, first cousin) on average have 12.5% common genetic heri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Boarding School
A boarding school is a school where pupils live within premises while being given formal instruction. The word "boarding" is used in the sense of "room and board", i.e. lodging and meals. As they have existed for many centuries, and now extend across many countries, their functioning, codes of conduct and ethos vary greatly. Children in boarding schools study and live during the school year with their fellow students and possibly teachers or administrators. Some boarding schools also have day students who attend the institution by day and return off-campus to their families in the evenings. Boarding school pupils are typically referred to as "boarders". Children may be sent for one year to twelve years or more in boarding school, until the age of eighteen. There are several types of boarders depending on the intervals at which they visit their family. Full-term boarders visit their homes at the end of an academic year, semester boarders visit their homes at the end of an acade ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
La Conquête De Plassans
''La Conquête de Plassans'' (1874) is the fourth novel in Émile Zola's twenty-volume series Les Rougon-Macquart. In many ways a sequel to the first novel in the cycle, '' La Fortune des Rougon'' (1871), this novel is again centred on the fictional Provençal town of Plassans and its plot revolves around a sinister cleric's attempt at political intrigue with disastrous consequences for some of the townsfolk. At the start of the novel, the home life of Francois Mouret and his wife and cousin Marthe (née Rougon) is portrayed as a generally pleasant and relaxed existence. Francois is slightly compulsive in his behaviour and Marthe clearly suffers from some sort of mental illness, which Zola intended to portray as a genetic consequence of the Rougon-Macquart family's tangled ancestry. Their three children include the eldest son Octave, an intelligent but feckless ladies' man (featured as the principal character of two later novels in the cycle, '' Pot-Bouille'' (1882) and ''Au ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Boulevard
A boulevard is a type of broad avenue planted with rows of trees, or in parts of North America, any urban highway. Boulevards were originally circumferential roads following the line of former city walls. In American usage, boulevards may be wide, multi-lane arterial thoroughfares, often divided with a central median, and perhaps with side-streets along each side designed as slow travel and parking lanes and for bicycle and pedestrian usage, often with an above-average quality of landscaping and scenery. Etymology The word ''boulevard'' is borrowed from French. In French, it originally meant the flat surface of a rampart, and later a promenade taking the place of a demolished fortification. It is a borrowing from the Dutch word ' 'bulwark'. Usage world-wide Asia Cambodia Phnom Penh has numerous boulevards scattered throughout the city. Norodom Boulevard, Monivong Boulevard, Sihanouk Boulevard, and Kampuchea Krom Boulevard are the most famous. India * Bengaluru's Maha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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