Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

Ihara Saikaku

(Encyclopedia)Ihara Saikaku ēˈhäˈrä sīˈkäˈko͞o [key], 1642–93, Japanese writer. Saikaku began his literary career as a haikai [comic linked verse] poet, astonishing contemporaries with his skill at comp...

Hariri

(Encyclopedia)Hariri (Abu Muhammad al-Kasim al-Hariri) härēˈrē [key], 1054–1122, Arab writer of Basra. His principal work is one of the most popular of Arabic books. It is called Makamat [literary assemblies]...

Fields, James Thomas

(Encyclopedia)Fields, James Thomas, 1817–81, American author and publisher, b. Portsmouth, N.H. He was the junior partner of Ticknor and Fields, noted Boston publishing house in the mid-19th cent. He edited (1861...

apology

(Encyclopedia)apology [Gr.,=defense], literary work that defends, justifies, or clarifies an author's ideas or point of view. Unlike the ordinary use of the word, the literary use neither implies that wrong has bee...

Bourget, Paul

(Encyclopedia)Bourget, Paul pôl bo͞orzhāˈ [key], 1852–1935, French novelist. His early novels were naturalistic, but Le Disciple (1889, tr. 1901), a tale of the destruction of a pupil who applies his master's...

Hunt, Leigh

(Encyclopedia)Hunt, Leigh (James Henry Leigh Hunt) lē [key], 1784–1859, English poet, critic, and journalist. He was a friend of the eminent literary men of his time, and his home was the gathering place for suc...

Todorov, Tzvetan

(Encyclopedia)Todorov, Tzvetan, 1939–2017, Bulgarian-French literary theorist, historian of ideas, and sociologist, b. Sofia, Bulgaria, Ph.D. Univ. of Paris, 1966. He joined (1968) the National Center for Scienti...

French Academy

(Encyclopedia)French Academy (L'Académie française), learned society of France. It is one of the five societies of the Institut de France. The work of the French Academy has chiefly consisted of the preparation...

Albee, Edward

(Encyclopedia)Albee, Edward ălˈbē [key], 1928–2016, American playwright, one of the leading dramatists of his generation, b. Washington, D.C., as Edward Harvey. His most characteristic work constitutes an absu...

Landon, Letitia Elizabeth

(Encyclopedia)Landon, Letitia Elizabeth, pseud. L.E.L., 1802–38, English poet and novelist. Although no longer highly regarded, she was one of the best-known and popular literary figures of her day. Dubbed the �...