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Pierian
In Greek mythology, the Pierian Spring of Macedonia was sacred to the Pierides and the Muses. As the metaphorical source of knowledge of art and science, it was popularized by a couplet in Alexander Pope's 1711 poem "An Essay on Criticism": "A little learning is a dang'rous thing; / Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring." The Pierian spring is sometimes confused with the Castalian Spring. Classical sources The sacred spring was said to be near ancient Leivithra in Pieria, a region of ancient Macedonia, also the location of Mount Olympus, and believed to be the home and the seat of worship of Orpheus. The Muses "were said to have frolicked about the Pierian springs soon after their birth". The spring is believed to be a fountain of knowledge that inspires whoever drinks from it. The name of the spring comes from the Pierides, the gaggle of girls (daughters of King Pierus) who sought a contest with the Muses. When they lost, they were turned into magpies. Ovid tells this ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pieria (regional Unit)
Pieria ( el, Πιερία) is one of the regional units of Greece located in the southern part of the Region of Central Macedonia, within the historical province of Macedonia. Its capital is the town of Katerini.The name Pieria originates from the ancient Pieres tribe. In Pieria, there are many sites of archeological interest, such as Dion, Pydna, Leivithra and Platamonas. Pieria contains Mount Pierus, from which Hermes takes flight in order to visit Calypso, and is the home of Orpheus, the Muses, and contains the Pierian Spring. Mount Olympus, the highest mountain in Greece and throne of the ancient Greek gods, is located in the southern part of Pieria. Other ancient cities included Leibethra and Pimpleia. Geography The Pieria regional unit is bordered by Imathia to the north, Kozani to the west, and to the south and west by the region of Thessaly's regional unit Larissa. The Pierian Mountains lie to the west; the Thermaic Gulf lies to the east. It also has a valley by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
An Essay On Criticism
''An Essay on Criticism'' is one of the first major poems written by the English writer Alexander Pope (1688–1744), published in 1711. It is the source of the famous quotations "To err is human; to forgive, divine", "A little learning is a dang'rous thing" (frequently misquoted as "A little knowledge is a dang'rous thing"), and "Fools rush in where angels fear to tread". Composition The first fragmentary drafts of the work were written in Abberley in 1707. It was first published in May 1711. Many of the poem's ideas had existed in prose form since at least 1706. Composed in heroic couplets (pairs of adjacent rhyming lines of iambic pentameter) and written in the Horatian mode of satire, it is a verse essay primarily concerned with how writers and critics behave in the new literary commerce of Pope's contemporary age. The poem covers a range of good criticism and advice, and represents many of the chief literary ideals of Pope's age. Structure and themes The verse "essay" ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Orpheus
Orpheus (; Ancient Greek: Ὀρφεύς, classical pronunciation: ; french: Orphée) is a Thracian bard, legendary musician and prophet in ancient Greek religion. He was also a renowned poet and, according to the legend, travelled with Jason and the Argonauts in search of the Golden Fleece, and even descended into the Underworld of Hades, to recover his lost wife Eurydice. Ancient Greek authors as Strabo and Plutarch note Orpheus's Thracian origins. The major stories about him are centered on his ability to charm all living things and even stones with his music (the usual scene in Orpheus mosaics), his attempt to retrieve his wife Eurydice from the underworld, and his death at the hands of the maenads of Dionysus, who tired of his mourning for his late wife Eurydice. As an archetype of the inspired singer, Orpheus is one of the most significant figures in the reception of classical mythology in Western culture, portrayed or alluded to in countless forms of art and popular ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mount Olympus
Mount Olympus (; el, Όλυμπος, Ólympos, also , ) is the highest mountain in Greece. It is part of the Olympus massif near the Thermaic Gulf of the Aegean Sea, located in the Olympus Range on the border between Thessaly and Macedonia, between the regional units of Larissa and Pieria, about southwest from Thessaloniki. Mount Olympus has 52 peaks and deep gorges. The highest peak, Mytikas (Μύτικας ''Mýtikas''), meaning "nose", rises to . It is one of the highest peaks in Europe in terms of topographic prominence. In Greek mythology, Olympus is the home of the Greek gods, on Mytikas peak. The mountain has exceptional biodiversity and rich flora. It has been a National Park, the first in Greece, since 1938. It is also a World Biosphere Reserve. Every year, thousands of visitors admire its fauna and flora, tour its slopes, and climb its peaks. Organized mountain refuges and various mountaineering and climbing routes are available. The usual starting point for cli ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Leivithra
Leibethra or Libethra, in the modern pronunciation Leivithra ( gr, Λείβηθρα or Λίβηθρα) was an ancient Macedonian city at the foot of Mount Olympus, near the present settlement of Skotina. Archaeologists have discovered tombs there from the late Bronze Age (13th-12th century BC) containing rich burial objects. Leivithra played a remarkable role in the history of Pieria. According to Greek mythology, depending on the source consulted, Orpheus is said to have been born in Leibethra, and to have been buried there by the Muses, or to have lived in the city only temporarily. His tomb was later destroyed by a flood of the river Sys. It was a place where the Leibethrian Nymphs were worshiped. Remains of Leibethra have been found and there exists an archeological site close to Olympus. The location of Leibethra was held to be a favourite place of the Muses, hence their epithet ''Libethrides'' (Ancient Greek: Λιβεθρίδες). The 2nd-century geographer Pausanias wr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Guy Montag
Guy Montag is a fictional character and the protagonist in Ray Bradbury's dystopian novel ''Fahrenheit 451'' (1953). He is depicted living in a futuristic town where he works as a "fireman" whose job is to burn books and the buildings they are found in. Role in plot At the opening of the novel, he is happy in his work destroying books and never wonders about his role as a tool of thought suppression. Several events cause him to question his own existence: * First, he meets Clarisse McClellan, a 16-year-old, while walking home from work. His talks with her are thought-provoking and assuage Montag's loneliness. Her death spurs him into becoming a radical. * Second, he discovers that his wife, who prefers watching ''The Family'' her favorite program on television or the parlor walls, and radio on "seashell earbuds" to human interaction, has overdosed on sleeping pills. The callous behavior of the paramedics makes him feel very alienated, while his wife's emptiness disturbs and ang ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ezra Pound
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an expatriate American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a Fascism, fascist collaborator in Italy during World War II. His works include ''Ripostes'' (1912), ''Hugh Selwyn Mauberley'' (1920), and his 800-page Epic poetry, epic poem, ''The Cantos'' (c. 1917–1962). Pound's contribution to poetry began in the early 20th century with his role in developing Imagism, a movement stressing precision and economy of language. Working in London as foreign editor of several American literary magazines, he helped discover and shape the work of contemporaries such as T. S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, and James Joyce. He was responsible for the 1914 serialization of Joyce's ''A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man'', the 1915 publication of Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", and the serialization from 1918 of Joyce's ''Ulysses (novel), Ulysses''. Hemingway wrote ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sir William Jones
Sir William Jones (28 September 1746 – 27 April 1794) was a British philologist, a puisne judge on the Supreme Court of Judicature at Fort William in Bengal, and a scholar of ancient India. He is particularly known for his proposition of the existence of a relationship among European and Indo-Aryan languages, which later came to be known as the Indo-European languages. Jones is also credited for establishing the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1784. Early life William Jones was born in London; his father William Jones (1675–1749) was a mathematician from Anglesey in Wales, noted for introducing the use of the symbol π. The young William Jones was a linguistic prodigy, who in addition to his native languages English and Welsh, learned Greek, Latin, Persian, Arabic, Hebrew and the basics of Chinese writing at an early age. By the end of his life he knew eight languages with critical thoroughness, was fluent in a further eight, with a dictionary at hand, and had a fair c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Caïssa
Caïssa ( a:isa is a fictional (anachronistic) Thracian dryad portrayed as the goddess of chess. She was first mentioned during the Renaissance by Italian poet Hieronymus Vida. Vida's poem Caïssa originated in a 658-line poem called ''Scacchia Ludus'' published in 1527 by Hieronymus Vida (Marco Girolamo Vida), which describes in Latin Virgilian hexameters a chess game between Apollo and Mercury in the presence of the other gods. In it, to avoid unclassical words such as ''rochus'' (chess rook) or ''alfinus'' (chess bishop), the rooks are described as towers (armored howdahs) on elephants' backs, and the bishops as archers: A leaked unauthorized 742-line draft version was published in 1525. Its text is very different, and in it Caïssa is called Scacchia, the chess rook is a cyclops, and the chess bishop is a centaur archer. The description of towers led to the modern name "castle" for the chess rook, and thus the term "castling", and the modern shape of the European rook ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Greek Mythology
A major branch of classical mythology, Greek mythology is the body of myths originally told by the Ancient Greece, ancient Greeks, and a genre of Ancient Greek folklore. These stories concern the Cosmogony, origin and Cosmology#Metaphysical cosmology, nature of the world, the lives and activities of List of Greek mythological figures, deities, Greek hero cult, heroes, and List of Greek mythological creatures, mythological creatures, and the origins and significance of the ancient Greeks' own cult (religious practice), cult and ritual practices. Modern scholars study the myths to shed light on the religious and political institutions of ancient Greece, and to better understand the nature of myth-making itself. The Greek myths were initially propagated in an oral tradition, oral-poetic tradition most likely by Minoan civilization, Minoan and Mycenaean Greece, Mycenaean singers starting in the 18th century BC; eventually the myths of the heroes of the Trojan War and its after ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Henry Miller
Henry Valentine Miller (December 26, 1891 – June 7, 1980) was an American novelist. He broke with existing literary forms and developed a new type of semi-autobiographical novel that blended character study, social criticism, philosophical reflection, stream of consciousness, explicit language, sex, Surrealism, surrealist free association (psychology), free association, and mysticism. His most characteristic works of this kind are ''Tropic of Cancer (novel), Tropic of Cancer'', ''Black Spring (novel), Black Spring'', ''Tropic of Capricorn (novel), Tropic of Capricorn'', and the trilogy ''The Rosy Crucifixion'', which are based on his experiences in New York City, New York and Paris (all of which were banned in the United States until 1961). He also wrote travel memoirs and literary criticism, and painted watercolors. Early life Miller was born at his family's home, 450 East 85th Street, in the Yorkville, Manhattan, Yorkville section of Manhattan, New York City. He was the son o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ray Bradbury
Ray Douglas Bradbury (; August 22, 1920June 5, 2012) was an American author and screenwriter. One of the most celebrated 20th-century American writers, he worked in a variety of modes, including fantasy, science fiction, horror, mystery, and realistic fiction. Bradbury wrote many works and is widely known by the general public for his novel ''Fahrenheit 451'' (1953) and his short-story collections ''The Martian Chronicles'' (1950) and ''The Illustrated Man'' (1951). Most of his best known work is speculative fiction, but he also worked in other genres, such as the coming of age novel ''Dandelion Wine'' (1957) and the fictionalized memoir ''Green Shadows, White Whale'' (1992). He also wrote and consulted on screenplays and television scripts, including ''Moby Dick'' and ''It Came from Outer Space''. Many of his works were adapted into television and film productions as well as comic books. ''The New York Times'' called Bradbury "the writer most responsible for bringing modern ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
