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Hofmannsthal, Hugo von

(Encyclopedia)Hofmannsthal, Hugo von ho͞oˈgō fən hōfˈmänstäl [key], 1874–1929, Austrian dramatist and poet. His first verses were published when he was 16 years old, and his play The Death of Titian (1892...

Wace

(Encyclopedia)Wace wās [key], c.1100–1174, Norman-French poet of Jersey. King Henry II made him canon of Bayeux. His Roman de Brut (1155) is a long, rhymed chronicle of British history based on the Historia of G...

Gothic language

(Encyclopedia)Gothic language, dead language belonging to the now extinct East Germanic group of the Germanic subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages (see Germanic languages). Gothic has special value fo...

Golden Legend, The

(Encyclopedia)Golden Legend, The, collection of saints' lives written in the 13th cent. by Jacobus da Varagine. Originally entitled Legenda sanctorum [readings in the lives of the saints], it soon came to be called...

Forty-seven Ronin

(Encyclopedia)Forty-seven Ronin, Jap. Chushingura, group of Japanese samurai who avenged the disgrace and seppuku (suicide) of their master, Lord Asano, in 1703 by assassinating Lord Kira, the official responsible ...

chant

(Encyclopedia)chant, general name for one-voiced, unaccompanied, liturgical music. Usually it refers to the liturgical melodies of the Byzantine, Russian Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Anglican churches and is analo...

Partch, Harry

(Encyclopedia)Partch, Harry, 1901–74, American composer, b. Oakland, Calif. Highly individualistic and largely self-taught, Partch rejected many of the traditions of Western music. He developed a theory of “cor...

Travers, P. L.

(Encyclopedia)Travers, P. L. (Pamela Lyndon Travers), 1899–1996, British author best known for her Mary Poppins children's books, b. Australia as Helen Lyndon Goff. She worked as an actress and journalist and mov...

Steward, Julian Haynes

(Encyclopedia)Steward, Julian Haynes, 1902–72, American anthropologist, b. Washington, D.C., grad. Cornell, 1925, Ph.D. Univ. of California, 1929. He taught at the Univ. of Michigan (1928–30), Columbia (1946–...

ratite

(Encyclopedia)ratite rătˈīt [key], common and general term for a variety of flightless birds characterized by a flat, raftlike sternum rather than the keeled sternum, designed to support flight muscles, typical ...