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Nightmare Abbey
''Nightmare Abbey'' is an 1818 novella by Thomas Love Peacock which makes good-natured fun of contemporary literary trends. The novel ''Nightmare Abbey'' was Peacock's third long work of fiction to be published. It was written in late March and June 1818, and published in London in November of the same year. The novella was lightly revised by the author in 1837 for republication in Volume 57 of ''Bentley's Standard Novels''. The book is Peacock's most well-liked and frequently-read work. The novel was a topical work of Gothic fiction in which the author satirised tendencies in contemporary English literature, in particular Romanticism's obsession with morbid subjects, misanthropy and transcendental philosophical systems. Most of its characters are based on historical figures whom Peacock wished to pillory. It has been observed that "the plots of Peacock's novels are mostly devices for bringing the persons together and the persons are merely the embodiment of whims and theories, ...
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Thomas Love Peacock
Thomas Love Peacock (18 October 1785 – 23 January 1866) was an English novelist, poet, and official of the East India Company. He was a close friend of Percy Bysshe Shelley and they influenced each other's work. Peacock wrote satirical novels, each with the same basic setting: characters at a table discussing and criticising the philosophical opinions of the day. Background and education Peacock was born in Weymouth, Dorset, the son of Samuel Peacock and his wife Sarah Love, daughter of Thomas Love, a retired master of a man-of-war in the Royal Navy. His father was a glass merchant in London, partner of a Mr Pellatt, presumed to be Apsley Pellatt (1763–1826).Richard Garnett Introduction for the edition of Thomas Love Peacock's novels published by J. M. Dent & Co. in 1891 Peacock went with his mother to live with her family at Chertsey in 1791 and in 1792 went to a school run by Joseph Harris Wicks at Englefield Green where he stayed for six and a half years. Peacock's fat ...
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Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German poet, playwright, novelist, scientist, statesman, theatre director, and critic. His works include plays, poetry, literature, and aesthetic criticism, as well as treatises on botany, anatomy, and colour. He is widely regarded as the greatest and most influential writer in the German language, his work having a profound and wide-ranging influence on Western literary, political, and philosophical thought from the late 18th century to the present day.. Goethe took up residence in Weimar in November 1775 following the success of his first novel, ''The Sorrows of Young Werther'' (1774). He was ennobled by the Duke of Saxe-Weimar, Karl August, in 1782. Goethe was an early participant in the ''Sturm und Drang'' literary movement. During his first ten years in Weimar, Goethe became a member of the Duke's privy council (1776–1785), sat on the war and highway commissions, oversaw the reopening of silver min ...
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Starfish
Starfish or sea stars are star-shaped echinoderms belonging to the class Asteroidea (). Common usage frequently finds these names being also applied to ophiuroids, which are correctly referred to as brittle stars or basket stars. Starfish are also known as asteroids due to being in the class Asteroidea. About 1,900 species of starfish live on the seabed in all the world's oceans, from warm, tropical zones to frigid, polar regions. They are found from the intertidal zone down to abyssal depths, at below the surface. Starfish are marine invertebrates. They typically have a central disc and usually five arms, though some species have a larger number of arms. The aboral or upper surface may be smooth, granular or spiny, and is covered with overlapping plates. Many species are brightly coloured in various shades of red or orange, while others are blue, grey or brown. Starfish have tube feet operated by a hydraulic system and a mouth at the centre of the oral or lower surface. ...
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Ichthyologist
Ichthyology is the branch of zoology devoted to the study of fish, including bony fish ( Osteichthyes), cartilaginous fish (Chondrichthyes), and jawless fish (Agnatha). According to FishBase, 33,400 species of fish had been described as of October 2016, with approximately 250 new species described each year. Etymology The word is derived from the Greek words ἰχθύς, ''ikhthus'', meaning "fish"; and λογία, ''logia'', meaning "to study". History The study of fish dates from the Upper Paleolithic Revolution (with the advent of "high culture"). The science of ichthyology was developed in several interconnecting epochs, each with various significant advancements. The study of fish receives its origins from humans' desire to feed, clothe, and equip themselves with useful implements. According to Michael Barton, a prominent ichthyologist and professor at Centre College, "the earliest ichthyologists were ''hunters and gatherers'' who had learned how to obtain the most usef ...
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Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
''Childe Harold's Pilgrimage'' is a long narrative poem in four parts written by Lord Byron. The poem was published between 1812 and 1818. Dedicated to " Ianthe", it describes the travels and reflections of a world-weary young man, who is disillusioned with a life of pleasure and revelry and looks for distraction in foreign lands. In a wider sense, it is an expression of the melancholy and disillusionment felt by a generation weary of the wars of the post-Revolutionary and Napoleonic eras. The title comes from the term ''childe'', a medieval title for a young man who was a candidate for knighthood. The poem was widely imitated and contributed to the cult of the wandering Byronic hero who falls into melancholic reverie as he contemplates scenes of natural beauty. Its autobiographical subjectivity was widely influential, not only in literature but in the arts of music and painting as well, and was a powerful ingredient in European Romanticism. Origins The poem contains elemen ...
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Lord Byron
George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron (22 January 1788 – 19 April 1824), known simply as Lord Byron, was an English romantic poet and Peerage of the United Kingdom, peer. He was one of the leading figures of the Romantic movement, and has been regarded as among the greatest of English poets. Among his best-known works are the lengthy Narrative poem, narratives ''Don Juan (poem), Don Juan'' and ''Childe Harold's Pilgrimage''; many of his shorter lyrics in ''Hebrew Melodies'' also became popular. Byron was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, later traveling extensively across Europe to places such as Italy, where he lived for seven years in Venice, Ravenna, and Pisa after he was forced to flee England due to lynching threats. During his stay in Italy, he frequently visited his friend and fellow poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Later in life Byron joined the Greek War of Independence fighting the Ottoman Empire and died leading a campaign during that war, for which Greeks rev ...
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Beau Brummel
George Bryan "Beau" Brummell (7 June 1778 – 30 March 1840) was an important figure in Regency England and, for many years, the arbiter of men's fashion. At one time, he was a close friend of the Prince Regent, the future King George IV, but after the two quarrelled and Brummell got into debt, he had to take refuge in France. Eventually, he died shabby and insane in Caen. Brummell was remembered afterwards as the preeminent example of the dandy, and a whole literature was founded upon his manner and witty sayings, which have persisted until today. His name is still associated with style and good looks and has been given to a variety of modern products to suggest their high quality. Life Brummell was born in London, the younger son of Jane (née Richardson, daughter of the Keeper of the Lottery Office) and William Brummell (d. 1794), Private Secretary to the Prime Minister, Lord North. On his retirement from politics, William had bought Donnington Grove in Berkshire and serve ...
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Lumley Skeffington
Sir Lumley St George Skeffington, 2nd Baronet (23 March 1771 – 10 November 1850) was a British nobleman, fop and playwright. He attended Newcome's School in Hackney, where he acquired a taste for drama; in May 1802 he presented a five-act comedy at Covent Garden entitled ''The Word of Honour'', followed the next season by another at Drury Lane entitled ''The High Road to Marriage''; both were moderately successful, with his first major achievement being a "grand legendary melodrama", ''The Sleeping Beauty'', presented at Drury Lane in May 1805. Later plays included ''Maids and Bachelors'' (1806), ''The Mysterious Bride'' (1808), ''Bombastes Furioso'' (?), ''Ethelinde'' (an opera, circa 1810 at Drury Lane), and ''Lose No Time'', a comedy. None are believed to have been printed, bar some portions of ''Sleeping Beauty''. He succeeded to the baronetcy on 26 January 1815, as the only surviving son of his father, William Charles Farrell-Skeffington, 1st Baronet of Skeffington Ha ...
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Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant (, , ; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics have made him one of the most influential figures in modern Western philosophy. In his doctrine of transcendental idealism, Kant argued that space and time are mere "forms of intuition" which structure all experience, and therefore that, while " things-in-themselves" exist and contribute to experience, they are nonetheless distinct from the objects of experience. From this it follows that the objects of experience are mere "appearances", and that the nature of things as they are in themselves is unknowable to us. In an attempt to counter the skepticism he found in the writings of philosopher David Hume, he wrote the '' Critique of Pure Reason'' (1781/1787), one of his most well-known works. In it, he developed his theory of ...
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Transcendental Idealism
Transcendental idealism is a philosophical system founded by German philosopher Immanuel Kant in the 18th century. Kant's epistemological program is found throughout his '' Critique of Pure Reason'' (1781). By ''transcendental'' (a term that deserves special clarification) Kant means that his philosophical approach to knowledge transcends mere consideration of sensory evidence and requires an understanding of the mind's innate modes of processing that sensory evidence. In the "Transcendental Aesthetic" section of the ''Critique of Pure Reason,'' Kant outlines how space and time are pure forms of human intuition contributed by our own faculty of sensibility. Space and time do not have an existence "outside" of us, but are the "subjective" forms of our sensibility and hence the necessary ''a priori'' conditions under which the objects we encounter in our experience can appear to us at all. Kant describes time and space as "empirically real" but ''transcendentally ideal.'' Kant a ...
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Kubla Khan
''Kubla Khan'' () is a poem written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, completed in 1797 and published in 1816. It is sometimes given the subtitles "A Vision in a Dream" and "A Fragment." According to Coleridge's preface to ''Kubla Khan'', the poem was composed one night after he experienced an opium-influenced dream after reading a work describing Shangdu, the summer capital of the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty of China founded by Kublai Khan (Emperor Shizu of Yuan). Upon waking, he set about writing lines of poetry that came to him from the dream until he was interrupted by " a person from Porlock". The poem could not be completed according to its original 200–300 line plan as the interruption caused him to forget the lines. He left it unpublished and kept it for private readings for his friends until 1816 when, at the prompting of Lord Byron, it was published. The poem is vastly different in style from other poems written by Coleridge. The first stanza of the poem describes Khan's pl ...
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Biographia Literaria
The ''Biographia Literaria'' is a critical autobiography by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, published in 1817 in two volumes. Its working title was 'Autobiographia Literaria'. The formative influences on the work were Wordsworth's theory of poetry, the Kantian view of imagination as a shaping power (for which Coleridge later coined the neologism "esemplastic"), various post-Kantian writers including F.W.J. von Schelling, and the earlier influences of the empiricist school, including David Hartley and the Associationist psychology. Structure and tone The work is long and seemingly loosely structured, and although there are autobiographical elements, it is not a straightforward or linear autobiography. Its subtitle, 'Biographical Sketches of My Literary Life and Opinions', alludes to ''The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman'' by Laurence Sterne, suggesting that the formal qualities of the ''Biographia'' are intentional. The form is also meditative. As Kathleen Wheeler sho ...
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