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surrealism

(Encyclopedia)surrealism sərēˈəlĭzəm [key], literary and art movement influenced by Freudianism and dedicated to the expression of imagination as revealed in dreams, free of the conscious control of reason an...

Villon, François

(Encyclopedia)Villon, François fräNswäˈ vēyôNˈ [key], 1431–1463?, French poet, b. Paris, whose original name was François de Montcorbier or François Des Loges. One of the earliest great poets of France, ...

motet

(Encyclopedia)motet mōtĕtˈ [key], name for the outstanding type of musical composition of the 13th cent. and for a different type that originated in the Renaissance. The 13th-century motet, a creation (c.1200) o...

Rabelais, François

(Encyclopedia)Rabelais, François răbˈəlā, Fr. fräNswäˈ räblāˈ [key], c.1490–1553, French writer and physician, one of the great comic geniuses in world literature. His father, a lawyer, owned several e...

muscular dystrophy

(Encyclopedia)muscular dystrophy dĭsˈtrōfē [key], any of several inherited diseases characterized by progressive wasting of the skeletal muscles. There are five main forms of the disease. They are classified ac...

Picasso, Pablo

(Encyclopedia)Picasso, Pablo (Pablo Ruiz y Picasso) päˈblō pēkäˈsō; ro͞oēthˈ ē [key], 1881–1973, Spanish painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and ceramist, who worked in France. He is generally considere...

Francis I, king of France

(Encyclopedia)Francis I, 1494–1547, king of France (1515–47), known as Francis of Angoulême before he succeeded his cousin and father-in-law, King Louis XII. The king also had some notable political achievem...

Calvin, John

(Encyclopedia)Calvin, John, 1509–64, French Protestant theologian of the Reformation, b. Noyon, Picardy. The extension of Calvinism to all spheres of human activity was extremely important to a world emerging f...

Chaucer, Geoffrey

(Encyclopedia)Chaucer, Geoffrey jĕfˈrē chôˈsər [key], c.1340–1400, English poet, one of the most important figures in English literature. To Chaucer's final period, in which he achieved his fullest artist...

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