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The Courts Of Chaos
''The Courts of Chaos'' is fantasy novel by American writer Roger Zelazny, the fifth book in the ''Chronicles of Amber'' series. It was first published in serial format in ''Galaxy Science Fiction''. This book ends the original series narrated by Corwin. The next series begins with ''Trumps of Doom'' following his son, Merlin, as the protagonist. Corwin must ride the entire length of the multiverse, from Amber to the Courts of Chaos, while Oberon attempts to repair the Pattern. All the while, Brand pursues him, trying to steal the Jewel of Judgement. Plot summary Corwin sulks in Castle Amber's library while Oberon gives the family orders. Random persuades Corwin to leave, but they are held back by an invisible force. They watch as Corwin's sword appears and chops off Benedict's new arm. Dara and Martin are with Benedict. Corwin learns from Martin's trumps that the crossbowman who spared him is Merlin. Dara tells how Brand bargained with the Courts of Chaos. They wished ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Roger Zelazny
Roger Joseph Zelazny (May 13, 1937 – June 14, 1995) was an American poet and writer of fantasy and science fiction short stories and novels, best known for ''The Chronicles of Amber''. He won the Nebula Award three times (out of 14 nominations) and the Hugo Award six times (also out of 14 nominations), including two Hugos for novels: the serialized novel ''...And Call Me Conrad'' (1965), subsequently published under the title ''This Immortal'' (1966) and then the novel ''Lord of Light'' (1967). Biography Zelazny was born in Euclid, Ohio, the only child of Polish immigrant Joseph Frank Żelazny and Irish-American Josephine Flora Sweet. In high school, he became the editor of the school newspaper and joined the Creative Writing Club. In the fall of 1955, he began attending Case Western Reserve University, Western Reserve University and graduated with a B.A. in English in 1959. He was accepted to Columbia University in New York and specialized in Elizabethan and Jacobean ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Raven
A raven is any of several larger-bodied bird species of the genus ''Corvus''. These species do not form a single taxonomic group within the genus. There is no consistent distinction between "crows" and "ravens", common names which are assigned to different species chiefly on the basis of their size. The largest raven species are the common raven and the thick-billed raven. Etymology The term "raven" originally referred to the common raven (''Corvus corax''), the type species of the genus ''Corvus'', which has a larger distribution than any other species of ''Corvus'', ranging over much of the Northern Hemisphere. The modern English word ''raven'' has cognates in all other Germanic languages, including Old Norse (and subsequently modern Icelandic) and Old High German , all of which descend from Proto-Germanic . Collective nouns for a group of ravens (or at least the common raven) include "rave", "treachery", "unkindness" and "conspiracy". In practice, most people use the more ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Carmen
''Carmen'' () is an opera in four acts by the French composer Georges Bizet. The libretto was written by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, based on the Carmen (novella), novella of the same title by Prosper Mérimée. The opera was first performed by the Opéra-Comique in Paris on 3 March 1875, where its breaking of conventions shocked and scandalised its first audiences. Bizet died suddenly after the 33rd performance, unaware that the work would achieve international acclaim within the following ten years. ''Carmen'' has since become one of the most popular and frequently performed operas in the classical Western canon, canon; the "Habanera (aria), Habanera" from act 1 and the "Toreador Song" from act 2 are among the best known of all operatic arias. The opera is written in the genre of ''opéra comique'' with musical numbers separated by dialogue. It is set in southern Spain and tells the story of the downfall of Don José, a naïve soldier who is seduced by the wiles of th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Georges Bizet
Georges Bizet (; 25 October 18383 June 1875) was a French composer of the Romantic music, Romantic era. Best known for his operas in a career cut short by his early death, Bizet achieved few successes before his final work, ''Carmen'', which has become one of the most popular and frequently performed works in the entire opera repertoire. During a brilliant student career at the Conservatoire de Paris, Bizet won many prizes, including the prestigious Prix de Rome in 1857. He was recognised as an outstanding pianist, though he chose not to capitalise on this skill and rarely performed in public. Returning to Paris after almost three years in Italy, he found that the main Parisian opera theatres preferred the established classical repertoire to the works of newcomers. His keyboard and orchestral compositions were likewise largely ignored; as a result, his career stalled, and he earned his living mainly by arranging and transcribing the music of others. Restless for success, he ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lolita
''Lolita'' is a 1955 novel written by Russian-American novelist Vladimir Nabokov. The novel is notable for its controversial subject: the protagonist and unreliable narrator, a middle-aged literature professor under the pseudonym Humbert Humbert, is obsessed with a 12-year-old girl, Dolores Haze, whom he kidnaps and sexually abuses after becoming her stepfather. "Lolita", the Spanish nickname for Dolores, is what he calls her privately. The novel was originally written in English and first published in Paris in 1955 by Olympia Press. The novel has been twice adapted into film: first by Stanley Kubrick in 1962, and later by Adrian Lyne in 1997. It has also been adapted several times for the stage and has been the subject of two operas, two ballets, and an acclaimed, but commercially unsuccessful, Broadway musical. It has been included in many lists of best books, such as '' Time'' List of the 100 Best Novels, '' Le Monde'' 100 Books of the Century, Bokklubben World Library, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Inferno (Dante)
''Inferno'' (; Italian language, Italian for "Hell") is the first part of Italian writer Dante Alighieri's 14th-century Epic poetry, epic poem ''Divine Comedy''. It is followed by ''Purgatorio'' and ''Paradiso (Dante), Paradiso''. The ''Inferno'' describes Dante's journey through Christian views on Hell, Hell, guided by the Ancient Rome, ancient Roman poet Virgil. In the poem, Hell is depicted as nine concentric circles of torment located within the Earth; it is the "realm ... of those who have rejected spiritual values by yielding to bestial appetites or violence, or by perverting their human intellect to fraud or malice against their fellowmen". As an allegory, the ''Divine Comedy'' represents the journey of the soul toward God, with the ''Inferno'' describing the recognition and rejection of sin. Prelude to Hell Canto I The poem begins on the night of Maundy Thursday on March 24 (or April 7), 1300, shortly before the dawn of Good Friday. The narrator, Dante himself, is t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Keats
John Keats (31 October 1795 – 23 February 1821) was an English poet of the second generation of Romantic poets, with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley. His poems had been in publication for less than four years when he died of tuberculosis at the age of 25. They were indifferently received in his lifetime, but his fame grew rapidly after his death. By the end of the century, he was placed in the canon of English literature, strongly influencing many writers of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood; the ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' of 1888 called one ode "one of the final masterpieces". Jorge Luis Borges named his first encounter with Keats an experience he felt all his life. Keats had a style "heavily loaded with sensualities", notably in the series of odes. Typically of the Romantics, he accentuated extreme emotion through natural imagery. Today his poems and letters remain among the most popular and analysed in English literature – in particular "Ode to a Nightingale", "Od ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
La Belle Dame Sans Merci
"La Belle Dame sans Merci" ("The Beautiful Lady Without Mercy") is a ballad produced by the England, English poet John Keats in 1819. The title was derived from the title of a 15th-century poem by Alain Chartier called ''La Belle Dame sans Mercy''. Considered an English classic, the poem is an example of Keats' poetic preoccupation with love and death. The poem is about a fairy who condemns a knight to an unpleasant fate after she seduces him with her eyes and singing. The fairy inspired several artists to paint images that became early examples of 19th-century ''femme fatale'' iconography. The poem continues to be referenced in many works of literature, music, art, and film. Poem The poem is simple in structure with twelve stanzas of four lines each in an ABCB rhyme scheme. Below are both the original and revised version of the poem: Inspiration In 2019 literary scholars Richard Marggraf Turley and Jennifer Squire proposed that the ballad may have been inspired by the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Silver Bullet
In folklore, a bullet cast from silver is often one of the few weapons that are effective against a werewolf or witch. The term ''silver bullet'' is also a metaphor for a simple, seemingly magical, solution to a difficult problem: for example, penicillin circa 1930 was a "silver bullet" that allowed doctors to treat and successfully cure many bacterial infections. In folklore Some authors asserted that the idea of the werewolf's supposed vulnerability to silver dates back to the Beast of Gévaudan, a man-eating animal killed by the hunter Jean Chastel in the year 1767. However, the allegations of Chastel purportedly using a gun loaded with silver bullets are derived from a distorted detail based primarily on Henri Pourrat's ''Histoire fidèle de la bête en Gévaudan'' (1946). In this novel, the French writer imagines that the beast was shot thanks to fictitious medals of the Virgin Mary, worn by Jean Chastel in his hat and then melted down to make bullets. An account of a Jämt ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paris, France
Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the List of cities proper by population density, 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. Since the 17th century, Paris has been one of the world's major centres of finance, diplomacy, commerce, Fashion capital, fashion, gastronomy, and science. For its leading role in the arts and sciences, as well as its very early system of street lighting, in the 19th century it became known as "the City of Light". Like London, prior to the Second World War, it was also sometimes called Caput Mundi#Paris, the capital of the world. The City of Paris is the centre of the Île-de-France Regions of France, region, or Paris Region, with an estimated population of 12,262,544 in 2019, or about 19% of the population of France, making the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Huginn And Muninn
In Norse mythology, Huginn (Old Norse: "thought"Orchard (1997:92).) and Muninn (Old Norse "memory"Orchard (1997:115). or "mind"Lindow (2001:186).) are a pair of ravens that fly all over the world, Midgard, and bring information to the god Odin. Huginn and Muninn are attested in the ''Poetic Edda'', compiled in the 13th century from earlier traditional sources: the ''Prose Edda'' and ''Heimskringla''; in the ''Third Grammatical Treatise'', compiled in the 13th century by Óláfr Þórðarson; and in the poetry of skalds. The names of the ravens are sometimes modernly anglicized as Hugin and Munin. In the ''Poetic Edda'', a disguised Odin expresses that he fears that they may not return from their daily flights. The ''Prose Edda'' explains that Odin is referred to as '' Hrafnaguð'' (O.N.: ; "raven-god") due to his association with Huginn and Muninn. In the ''Prose Edda'' and the ''Third Grammatical Treatise'', the two ravens are described as perching on Odin's shoulders. ''Heimskri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yggdrasil
Yggdrasil (from Old Norse ), in Norse cosmology, is an immense and central sacred tree. Around it exists all else, including the Nine Worlds. Yggdrasil is attested in the ''Poetic Edda'' compiled in the 13th century from earlier traditional sources, and in the ''Prose Edda'' compiled in the 13th century by Snorri Sturluson. In both sources, Yggdrasil is an immense ash tree that is central to the cosmos and considered very holy. The gods go to Yggdrasil daily to assemble at their traditional governing assemblies, called things. The branches of Yggdrasil extend far into the heavens, and the tree is supported by three roots that extend far away into other locations; one to the well Urðarbrunnr in the heavens, one to the spring Hvergelmir, and another to the well Mímisbrunnr. Creatures live within Yggdrasil, including the dragon Níðhöggr, an unnamed eagle, and the stags Dáinn, Dvalinn, Duneyrr and Duraþrór. Scholars generally consider ''Hoddmímis holt'', ''Mímameiðr'' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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