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The Hedgehog And The Snake
The hedgehog and the snake, alternatively titled The snakes and the porcupine, was a fable originated by Laurentius Abstemius in 1490. From the following century it was accepted as one of Aesop's Fables in several European collections. The ungrateful guest The Venetian librarian Laurentius Abstemius created a Latin fable concerning a hedgehog and a viper in his ''Hecatomythium'' of 1490. In this the hedgehog begs shelter for the winter in the snake's hole. When the host suffers from its guest's prickles and asks it to leave, the hedgehog refuses, suggesting that it is for the one who is discontented with the lodging to leave it. In the following century variations of the fable appeared in several European collections and became sufficiently well known for Sir Philip Sydney to allude to it in his ''An Apology for Poetry''. By the 17th century it was being used as an example of ingratitude in moralistic works such as Christoph Murer's emblem book ''XL Emblemata'' and the oil painti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Snakes And Porcupine
Snakes are elongated, Limbless vertebrate, limbless, carnivore, carnivorous reptiles of the suborder Serpentes . Like all other Squamata, squamates, snakes are ectothermic, amniote vertebrates covered in overlapping Scale (zoology), scales. Many species of snakes have skulls with several more joints than their lizard ancestors, enabling them to swallow prey much larger than their heads (cranial kinesis). To accommodate their narrow bodies, snakes' paired organs (such as kidneys) appear one in front of the other instead of side by side, and most have only one functional lung. Some species retain a pelvic girdle with a pair of vestigial claws on either side of the cloaca. Lizards have evolved elongate bodies without limbs or with greatly reduced limbs about twenty-five times independently via convergent evolution, leading to many lineages of legless lizards. These resemble snakes, but several common groups of legless lizards have eyelids and external ears, which snakes lack, altho ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Laurentius Abstemius
Laurentius Abstemius (c. 1440–1508) was an Italian writer and professor of philology, born at Macerata in Ancona. His learned name plays on his family name of Bevilaqua (Drinkwater), and he was also known by the Italian name Lorenzo Astemio. A Neo-Latin writer of considerable talents at the time of the Humanist revival of letters, his first published works appeared in the 1470s and were distinguished by minute scholarship. During that decade he moved to Urbino and became ducal librarian, although he was to move between there and other parts of Italy thereafter as a teacher. The work for which he is principally remembered now is ''Hecatomythium'' (1495), a collection of a hundred fables written in Latin and largely of his own invention. However, the inclusion together with this work of the thirty-three Aesopic fables translated from the Greek by Lorenzo Valla gave the impression that his own work was of the same kind. Several of the fables of Abstemius, it is true, relate to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aesop's Fables
Aesop's Fables, or the Aesopica, is a collection of fables credited to Aesop, a slave and storyteller believed to have lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 564 BCE. Of diverse origins, the stories associated with his name have descended to modern times through a number of sources and continue to be reinterpreted in different verbal registers and in popular as well as artistic media. The fables originally belonged to oral tradition and were not collected for some three centuries after Aesop's death. By that time, a variety of other stories, jokes and proverbs were being ascribed to him, although some of that material was from sources earlier than him or came from beyond the Greek cultural sphere. The process of inclusion has continued until the present, with some of the fables unrecorded before the Late Middle Ages and others arriving from outside Europe. The process is continuous and new stories are still being added to the Aesop corpus, even when they are demonstrably mor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sir Philip Sydney
''Sir'' is a formal honorific address in English for men, derived from Sire in the High Middle Ages. Both are derived from the old French "Sieur" (Lord), brought to England by the French-speaking Normans, and which now exist in French only as part of "Monsieur", with the equivalent "My Lord" in English. Traditionally, as governed by law and custom, Sir is used for men titled as knights, often as members of orders of chivalry, as well as later applied to baronets and other offices. As the female equivalent for knighthood is damehood, the female equivalent term is typically Dame. The wife of a knight or baronet tends to be addressed as Lady, although a few exceptions and interchanges of these uses exist. Additionally, since the late modern period, Sir has been used as a respectful way to address a man of superior social status or military rank. Equivalent terms of address for women are Madam (shortened to Ma'am), in addition to social honorifics such as Mrs, Ms or Miss. Etymolo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
An Apology For Poetry
''An Apology for Poetry'' (or ''The Defence of Poesy'') is a work of literary criticism by Elizabethan poet Philip Sidney. It was written in approximately 1580 and first published in 1595, after his death. It is generally believed that he was at least partly motivated by Stephen Gosson, a former playwright who dedicated his attack on the English stage, ''The School of Abuse'', to Sidney in 1579, but Sidney primarily addresses more general objections to poetry, such as those of Plato. In his essay, Sidney integrates a number of classical and Italian precepts on fiction. The essence of his defense is that poetry, by combining the liveliness of history with the ethical focus of philosophy, is more effective than either history or philosophy in rousing its readers to virtue. The work also offers important comments on Edmund Spenser and the Elizabethan stage. Sidney states that there "have been three general kinds" of poetry: (i) "the ''chief''" being religious which "imitate the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Emblem Book
An emblem book is a book collecting emblems (allegorical illustrations) with accompanying explanatory text, typically morals or poems. This category of books was popular in Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries. Emblem books are collections of sets of three elements: an icon or image, a motto, and text explaining the connection between the image and motto. The text ranged in length from a few lines of verse to pages of prose. Emblem books descended from medieval bestiaries that explained the importance of animals, proverbs, and fables. In fact, writers often drew inspiration from Greek and Roman sources such as Aesop's Fables and Plutarch's Lives. Definition Scholars differ on the key question of whether the actual emblems in question are the visual images, the accompanying texts, or the combination of the two. This is understandable, given that first emblem book, the ''Emblemata'' of Andrea Alciato, was first issued in an unauthorized edition in which the woodcuts w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jan Van Kessel The Elder
Jan van Kessel the Elder or Jan van Kessel (I) (baptized 5 April 1626, Antwerp – 17 April 1679, Antwerp) was a Flemish painter active in Antwerp in the mid 17th century. A versatile artist he practised in many genres including studies of insects, floral still lifes, marines, river landscapes, paradise landscapes, allegorical compositions, scenes with animals and genre scenes.Jan van Kessel (I) at the Netherlands Institute for Art History A scion of the Brueghel family many of his subjects took inspiration of the work of his grandfather as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Labyrinth Of Versailles
The labyrinth of Versailles was a hedge maze in the Gardens of Versailles with groups of fountains and sculptures depicting Aesop's fables André Le Nôtre initially planned a maze of unadorned paths in 1665, but in 1669, Charles Perrault advised Louis XIV to include thirty-nine fountains, each representing one of the fables of AesopThe work was carried out between 1672 and 1677. Water jets spurting from the animals mouths were conceived to give the impression of speech between the creatures. There was a plaque with a caption and a quatrain written by the poet Isaac de Benserade next to each fountain. A detailed description of the labyrinth, its fables and sculptures is given in Perrault's ''Labyrinte de Versailles'', illustrated with engravings by Sébastien Leclerc. In 1778 Louis XVI had the labyrinth removed and replaced by an arboretum of exotic trees planted as an English-styled garden. Creation In 1665, André Le Nôtre planned a hedge maze of unadorned paths in an a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Louis XIV Of France
, house = Bourbon , father = Louis XIII , mother = Anne of Austria , birth_date = , birth_place = Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France , death_date = , death_place = Palace of Versailles, Versailles, France , burial_date = 9 September 1715 , burial_place = Basilica of Saint-Denis , religion = Catholicism ( Gallican Rite) , signature = Louis XIV Signature.svg Louis XIV (Louis Dieudonné; 5 September 16381 September 1715), also known as Louis the Great () or the Sun King (), was King of France from 14 May 1643 until his death in 1715. His reign of 72 years and 110 days is the longest of any sovereign in history whose date is verifiable. Although Louis XIV's France was emblematic of the age of absolutism in Europe, the King surrounded himself with a variety of significant political, military, and cultural figures, such as Bossuet, Colbert, Le Brun, Le Nôtre, Lully, Mazarin, Molière, Racin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles Perrault
Charles Perrault ( , also , ; 12 January 1628 – 16 May 1703) was an iconic French author and member of the Académie Française. He laid the foundations for a new literary genre, the fairy tale, with his works derived from earlier folk tales, published in his 1697 book '' Histoires ou contes du temps passé'' (''Stories or Tales from Past Times''). The best known of his tales include ''Le Petit Chaperon Rouge'' ("Little Red Riding Hood"), ''Cendrillon'' (" Cinderella"), ''Le Maître chat ou le Chat botté'' (" Puss in Boots"), ''La Belle au bois dormant'' (" Sleeping Beauty"), and ''Barbe Bleue'' (" Bluebeard"). Some of Perrault's versions of old stories influenced the German versions published by the Brothers Grimm more than 100 years later. The stories continue to be printed and have been adapted to most entertainment formats. Perrault was an influential figure in the 17th-century French literary scene, and was the leader of the Modern faction during the Quarrel of the An ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Isaac De Benserade
Isaac de Benserade (; baptized 5 November 161310 October 1691) was a French poet. Born in Lyons-la-Forêt, Normandy, his family appears to have been connected with Richelieu, who bestowed on him a pension of 600 ''livres''. He began his literary career with the tragedy of ''Cléopâtre'' (1635), which was followed by four other pieces. On Richelieu's death, Benserade lost his pension but became more and more a favourite at court, especially with Anne of Austria. Benserade provided the words for the court ballets and was in 1674 admitted to the French Academy, where he wielded considerable influence. In 1675, he provided the quatrains to accompany the 39 hydraulic sculpture groups depicting Aesop's fables in the labyrinth of Versailles. In 1676, the failure of his ''Métamorphoses d'Ovide'' in the form of rondeaux gave a blow to his reputation but by no means destroyed his vogue with his contemporaries. Benserade may be best known for his sonnet on ''Job'' (1651). The sonnet, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Samuel Richardson
Samuel Richardson (baptised 19 August 1689 – 4 July 1761) was an English writer and printer known for three epistolary novels: ''Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded'' (1740), '' Clarissa: Or the History of a Young Lady'' (1748) and ''The History of Sir Charles Grandison'' (1753). He printed almost 500 works, including journals and magazines, working periodically with the London bookseller Andrew Millar. Richardson had been apprenticed to a printer, whose daughter he eventually married. He lost her along with their six children, but remarried and had six more children, of which four daughters reached adulthood, leaving no male heirs to continue the print shop. As it ran down, he wrote his first novel at the age of 51 and joined the admired writers of his day. Leading acquaintances included Samuel Johnson and Sarah Fielding, the physician and Behmenist George Cheyne, and the theologian and writer William Law, whose books he printed. At Law's request, Richardson printed some poems by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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