Periodic Sentence
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Periodic Sentence
A periodic sentence is a sentence with a stylistic device featuring syntactical subordination to a single main idea, which usually is not complete until the very end of the sentence. The periodic sentence emphasizes its main idea by placing it at the end, following all the subordinate clauses and other modifiers that support the principal idea. According to Merriam-Webster, the linguistic sense of the ''periodic sentence'' term was coined circa 1928, but there is evidence of its usage in a separate sense dating from 1766. Characteristics A periodic sentence unfolds gradually, so that the thought contained in the subject/verb group only emerges at the sentence's conclusion. It is used mostly in what in oratory is called the grand style. It is the opposite of the loose sentence, also continuous or running style, where the subject and verb are introduced at the beginning of the sentence. Periodic sentences often rely on hypotaxis, whereas running sentences are typified by parata ...
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Sentence (linguistics)
In linguistics and grammar, a sentence is a linguistic expression, such as the English example "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." In traditional grammar, it is typically defined as a string of words that expresses a complete thought, or as a unit consisting of a subject and predicate. In non-functional linguistics it is typically defined as a maximal unit of syntactic structure such as a constituent. In functional linguistics, it is defined as a unit of written texts delimited by graphological features such as upper-case letters and markers such as periods, question marks, and exclamation marks. This notion contrasts with a curve, which is delimited by phonologic features such as pitch and loudness and markers such as pauses; and with a clause, which is a sequence of words that represents some process going on throughout time. A sentence can include words grouped meaningfully to express a statement, question, exclamation, request, command, or suggestion. Typica ...
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William Harmon
William Harmon (born 1938) is James Gordon Hanes Professor Emeritus in the Humanities at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, author of five books of poetry and editor of ''A Handbook to Literature''. His most recent poetry has appeared in ''Blink'' and ''Light''. Life William Harmon was born in Concord, North Carolina, a small cotton-mill town northeast of Charlotte. In 1954, at the age of sixteen, he entered the University of Chicago. He graduated in 1958. He was an officer on active duty with the United States Navy between 1960 and 1967, the last year of which was in Vietnam. As an adviser to the South Vietnamese Navy, he wrote its ''Standard Ship's Organization Manual''. He continued as a Reserve officer until 1980, reaching the rank of lieutenant commander. After returning to the United States, he pursued post-graduate work (focused predominantly on trans-Atlantic modernist poetry) at the University of Chicago, where he earned his master's degree in 1968; ...
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Euphuism
Euphuism is a peculiar mannered style of English prose. It takes its name from a prose romance by John Lyly. It consists of a preciously ornate and sophisticated style, employing a deliberate excess of literary devices such as antitheses, alliterations, repetitions and rhetorical questions. Classical learning and remote knowledge of all kinds are displayed. Euphuism was fashionable in the 1580s, especially in the Elizabethan court. ''Euphues'' (1580) "Euphues" is the Greek for "graceful, witty". John Lyly published the works '' Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit'' (1578) and ''Euphues and his England'' (1580). Both works illustrated the intellectual fashions and favourite themes of Renaissance society—in a highly artificial and mannered style. The plots are unimportant, existing merely as structural elements on which to display conversations, discourses and letters mostly concerning the subject of love. Its essential features had already appeared in such works as George Pettie's ' ...
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Canadian-American Slavic Studies
Canadian Americans is a term that can be applied to American citizens whose ancestry is wholly or partly Canadian, or citizens of either country that hold dual citizenship. The term ''Canadian'' can mean a nationality or an ethnicity. Canadians are considered North Americans due their residing in the North American continent. English-speaking Canadian immigrants easily integrate and assimilate into northern and western U.S. states as a result of many cultural similarities, and in the similar accent in spoken English. French-speaking Canadians, because of language and culture, tend to take longer to assimilate. However, by the 3rd generation, they are often fully culturally assimilated, and the Canadian identity is more or less folklore. This took place, even though half of the population of the province of Quebec emigrated to the US between 1840 and 1930. Many New England cities formed ' Little Canadas', but many of these have gradually disappeared. This cultural "invisibilit ...
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The Overcoat
"The Overcoat" (russian: Шине́ль, translit. Shinyél’; sometimes translated as "The Cloak") is a short story by Russian author Nikolai Gogol, published in 1842. The story has had a great influence on Russian literature. Eugène-Melchior de Vogüé, discussing Russian realist writers, said: "We all came out from under Gogol's Overcoat" (a quote often misattributed to Dostoevsky). Writing in 1941, Vladimir Nabokov described "The Overcoat" as "The greatest Russian short story ever written". Plot The story narrates the life and death of titular councillor Akaky Akakievich Bashmachkin (Russian: Акакий Акакиевич Башмачкин), an impoverished government clerk and copyist in the Russian capital of St. Petersburg. Although Akaky is dedicated to his job, he is little recognized in his department for his hard work. Instead, the younger clerks tease him and attempt to distract him whenever they can. His threadbare overcoat is often the butt of their j ...
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Nikolai Gogol
Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol; uk, link=no, Мико́ла Васи́льович Го́голь, translit=Mykola Vasyliovych Hohol; (russian: Яновский; uk, Яновський, translit=Yanovskyi) ( – ) was a Russian novelist, short story writer and playwright of Ukrainian origin. Gogol was one of the first to use the technique of the grotesque, in works such as " The Nose", " Viy", " The Overcoat", and " Nevsky Prospekt". These stories, and others such as " Diary of a Madman", have also been noted for their proto-surrealist qualities. According to Viktor Shklovsky, Gogol's strange style of writing resembles the "ostranenie" technique of defamiliarization. His early works, such as '' Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka'', were influenced by his Ukrainian upbringing, Ukrainian culture and folklore. His later writing satirised political corruption in the Russian Empire ('' The Government Inspector'', '' Dead Souls''). The novel '' Taras Bulba'' (1835), the play ...
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Out Of The Cradle Endlessly Rocking
"Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking" by American poet Walt Whitman is one of his most complex and successfully integrated poems. Whitman used several new techniques in the poem. One is the use of images like bird, boy, sea. The influence of music is also seen in opera form. Some critics have taken the poem to be an elegy mourning the death of someone dear to him. The basic theme of the poem is the relationship between suffering and art. It shows how a boy matures into a poet through his experience of love and death. Art is a sublimation of frustrations and death is a release from the stress and strains caused by such frustrations. The language is similar to " There Was a Child Went Forth". Overview The poem features a young boy walking on the beach who finds two mockingbirds nesting and watches them. The female bird fails to appear one day, and the male bird cries out for her. The bird's cries create an awakening in the boy who translates what the male is saying in the rest of t ...
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Walt Whitman
Walter Whitman (; May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse. His work was controversial in his time, particularly his 1855 poetry collection ''Leaves of Grass'', which was described as obscene for its overt sensuality. Born in Huntington on Long Island, Whitman resided in Brooklyn as a child and through much of his career. At the age of 11, he left formal schooling to go to work. Later, Whitman worked as a journalist, a teacher, and a government clerk. Whitman's major poetry collection, ''Leaves of Grass'', was first published in 1855 with his own money and became well known. The work was an attempt at reaching out to the common person with an American epic. He continued expanding and revising it until his ...
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Thanatopsis
"Thanatopsis" is an early poem by the American poet William Cullen Bryant. Meaning 'a consideration of death', the word is derived from the Greek 'thanatos' (death) and 'opsis' (view, sight). Background William Cullen Bryant was born in 1794 in Cummington, Massachusetts. Bryant grew up in a Puritan home with his father, Peter Bryant, a prominent doctor who provided him with much of his early education. In his early life Bryant would spend a great deal of time in the woods surrounding his family's New England home, and read of the extensive personal library his father had. Bryant's first published poem was "The Embargo; or, Sketches of the Times", a satirical work concerning Thomas Jefferson's Embargo Act of 1807. It was released in a Boston newspaper in 1808. In 1810 Bryant was forced to leave Williams College for lack of money. Instead of a formal education, he started studying law, and began learning an eclectic mix of poetry, such as the works of Isaac Watts and Henry Kirke Wh ...
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A Forest Hymn
"A Forest Hymn" is an 1824 poem written by William Cullen Bryant,Symington, p. 83. which has been called one of Bryant's best poems, and "one of the best nature poems of that age". It was first published in Boston in the '' United States Literary Gazette'' along with several other poems written by Bryant. Analysis and reception Said to have been only conceivable by someone familiar with the "thick foliage and tall trunks of heprimeval forests" in Massachusetts, "A Forest Hymn" is said to have been Bryant's way of saying farewell to country life before moving to New York City in 1825, which came about during a period where he wrote a large number of works. It is reflective of Bryant's love of nature and religious belief, has been called a "picturesque poem", and Richard Henry Stoddard has said: At the pace of the wind "playing upon the leaves and the branches of the ancient woods, Eleanor O'Grady has suggested that the poem be read in a smooth and gliding manner, as done in Medi ...
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William Cullen Bryant
William Cullen Bryant (November 3, 1794 – June 12, 1878) was an American romantic poet, journalist, and long-time editor of the ''New York Evening Post''. Born in Massachusetts, he started his career as a lawyer but showed an interest in poetry early in his life. He soon relocated to New York and took up work as an editor at various newspapers. He became one of the most significant poets in early literary America and has been grouped among the fireside poets for his accessible, popular poetry. Biography Youth and education Bryant was born on November 3, 1794, in a log cabin near Cummington, Massachusetts; the home of his birth is today marked with a plaque. He was the second son of Peter Bryant (b. Aug. 12, 1767, d. Mar. 20, 1820), a doctor and later a state legislator, and Sarah Snell (b. Dec. 4, 1768, d. May 6, 1847). The genealogy of his mother traces back to passengers on the ''Mayflower'': John Alden (b. 1599, d. 1687), his wife Priscilla Mullins and her parents William a ...
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Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (February 27, 1807 – March 24, 1882) was an American poet and educator. His original works include " Paul Revere's Ride", '' The Song of Hiawatha'', and ''Evangeline''. He was the first American to completely translate Dante Alighieri's ''Divine Comedy'' and was one of the fireside poets from New England. Longfellow was born in Portland, Maine, which was then still part of Massachusetts. He graduated from Bowdoin College and became a professor there and, later, at Harvard College after studying in Europe. His first major poetry collections were ''Voices of the Night'' (1839) and ''Ballads and Other Poems'' (1841). He retired from teaching in 1854 to focus on his writing, and he lived the remainder of his life in the Revolutionary War headquarters of George Washington in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His first wife, Mary Potter, died in 1835 after a miscarriage. His second wife, Frances Appleton, died in 1861 after sustaining burns when her dress cau ...
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