200 résultats pour "centuri"

• Renaissance I INTRODUCTION Renaissance, series of literary and cultural movements in the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries.

  the great writings of ancient Greece and Rome. Intellectuals continued to build on the ideas of the Renaissance during the 18th century Age of Enlightenment, a time when scientific advancements led to a newemphasis on the power of human reason. One of the early Enlightenment thinkers was French philosopher and writer Voltaire. He claimed that the Renaissance was acrucial stage in liberating the mind from the superstition and error that he believed characterized Christian society during the Middl...

• LES CENTURIONS

• Définition: CENTURIE, substantif féminin.

• Renaissance Art and Architecture I INTRODUCTION Renaissance Composition During the Renaissance (15th and 16th centuries) artists discovered new ways to help them create more realistic and compelling images.

  with reliefs, had been familiar for centuries. A Early Renaissance Sculpture Ghiberti’s Gates of ParadiseThe Gates of Paradise are bronze doors created by Italian Renaissance sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti between 1425 and 1452for the east entrance to the baptistery of the Florence Cathedral in Italy. This detail, showing Isaac and Esau, is from oneof the doors' ten panels, each of which illustrates a story from the Bible. Ghiberti endowed the scenes with volume, depth,and movement, and helped initi...

• BHARTRIHARI ÇATAKA [Les centuries de Bhartrihari]. (résumé & analyse)

• indigetes (dii indigites) Roman Apparently, lesser gods of the many people who inhabited Central Italy in the seventh and early sixth centuries b.

  used the term dii indigites to distinguish the many personal gods from the dii novensiles , or newcomer gods, particularly those brought to the Italian peninsula by Greek colonists. Some argue more specifically that the indigetes were the group of gods named in one of the oldest recovered calendars of Roman festivals, inscribed in a stucco wall sometime in the sixth century b.c. and discovered by archaeologists in the early 20th century.

• Expressionism I INTRODUCTION Auguste Rodin Regarded as the foremost sculptor of the 19th and 20th centuries, French artist Auguste Rodin captured both dynamic movement and inner psychological states.

  Improvisation 28 (second version)Improvisation 28 (second version) was painted by Russian artist Wassily Kandinsky in 1912. Kandinsky used energeticcolor and form to express the spiritual content of his work. He was also a musician and saw a connection between thevisual arts and music, which he attempted to convey in paintings such as this one.© 2008 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris./Bridgeman Art Library, London/New York A new phase of German expressionism called Die Neue...

• Islamic Art and Architecture I INTRODUCTION Córdoba Mosque Courtyard This mosque and courtyard with its repeated horseshoe arches was built between the 8th and 10th centuries in Córdoba, Spain.

  Süleymaniye MosqueThe Süleymaniye Mosque in İstanbul was built in 1550. The architect, Sinan, based his design on Byzantine churches, inparticular the Hagia Sophia. The large central dome above a square opens to smaller spaces vaulted by buttressing half-domes. The four tapering minarets with balconies are characteristic of the architectural style of later Islamic mosques.Gian Berto Vanni/Art Resource, NY The few and relatively simple rituals of the Islamic faith gave rise to a unique religious...

• Histoire NOSTRADAMUS

  Nostradamus lors de son voyage en Italie, de 1547 à 1549, Nostradamus rencontre de jeunes moines à Ancô­ ne. Spontanément, il s'agenouille devant l'un d'entre eux et baise sa robe. Lorsqu'on lui demande la raison de son geste, il répond: «Je dois me soumettre et ployer le genou devant Sa Sainteté.>> Le jeune moine en question, Felice Per­ etti, devient cardinal de Montalte, puis pape en 1585 sous le nom de Sixte Quint. Entre 1547 et 1557, Anne Ponsa...

• Ancient Rome .

  attributed to Numa, including the selection of virgins to be priestesses of the goddess Vesta. He also established a calendar to differentiate between normal workingdays and those festival days sacred to the gods on which no state business was allowed. His peaceful reign lasted from 715 to 673 BC. Under Tullus Hostilius (672–641 BC) the Romans waged an aggressive foreign policy and began to expand their lands by the conquest of nearby cities like Alba Longa. When the warlike King Hostilius co...

• Ancient Rome - USA History.

  attributed to Numa, including the selection of virgins to be priestesses of the goddess Vesta. He also established a calendar to differentiate between normal workingdays and those festival days sacred to the gods on which no state business was allowed. His peaceful reign lasted from 715 to 673 BC. Under Tullus Hostilius (672–641 BC) the Romans waged an aggressive foreign policy and began to expand their lands by the conquest of nearby cities like Alba Longa. When the warlike King Hostilius co...

• Slavery in Africa.

  The spread of Islam from Arabia into Africa after the religion’s founding in the 7th century AD affected the practice of slavery and slave trading in West, Central, and East Africa. Arabs had practiced slave raiding and trading in Arabia for centuries prior to the founding of Islam, and slavery became a component of Islamic traditions.Both the Qur'an (Koran) (the sacred scripture of Islam) and Islamic religious law served to codify and justify the existence of slavery. As Muslim Arabs conquered...

• Cambodia - country.

  The population of Cambodia is 14,241,640 (2008 estimate). Population growth per year is estimated at 1.8 percent, one of the highest rates in Asia. The rate of infantmortality is also high. The population density is 81 persons per sq km (209 per sq mi), with the densest concentrations on the heavily cultivated central plain. Themountainous regions of the country, where malaria is widespread, are thinly populated, as are the poorly watered northern provinces. During the late 1970s, under thebruta...

• Vikings .

  Wessex (England) and Charles II the Bald and Louis III in France could command their resources to move to fortify their towns, station fleets and naval patrols alongthe coasts, and organize localized and mobile military forces. Some Christian leaders paid ransom to the larger Viking armies of the 10th and early 11th centuries.Taxing their people to pay the “danegeld,” the tribute to the Vikings, became a regular defensive strategy. But in return for the cash, the Vikings often negotiatedpeaceful...

• Toys. I INTRODUCTION Toys, objects that serve as playthings for children. Although the

  clay. These readily available elements were also used to make more elaborate toys as human society advanced. Archaeologists have found primitive, handmade toys such as wooden or cloth dolls, clay marbles, and terracotta figures that date back thousands of years. In ancientEgypt, Greece, and Rome, people placed dolls or clay figures in the graves or tombs of children for them to play with in the afterlife. The yo-yo may seem like a 20th-century fad, but it actually dates back at least 2,500 years...

• Middle East - Geography.

  though overall they have improved considerably since the 1970s. This variation reflects the different levels of wealth and development in countries of the Middle East. Inthe highly developed country of Israel the infant mortality rate was 8 deaths per 1000 live births in 1997. By comparison, the rate per 1000 live births was 71 in less-developed Egypt and 75 in Yemen. A Ethnic Groups and Languages Arabs make up the majority of the people of the Middle East, accounting for almost the entire popu...

• Ireland - country.

  F Plants and Animals Ireland’s animal life does not differ markedly from that of England or France. Over many centuries of human settlement almost all of Ireland’s natural woodlands werecleared, and indigenous animals such as bear, wolf, wildcat, beaver, wild cattle, and the giant Irish deer (a type of fallow deer) gradually disappeared. However, thehardy and versatile Connemara pony, Ireland’s only native pony breed, has been used by Irish farmers since prehistoric times. The great auk, or gar...

• Uzbekistan - country.

  E Environmental Issues The evaporation of the Aral Sea is one of the worst ecological disasters in the world. The Aral has shrunk so much that it now holds only about one-fifth the volume ofwater it held in 1960. The shrinkage is due to irrigation withdrawals from the Amu Darya and Syr Darya, a practice that began on a massive scale in the early 1960s aspart of the Soviet Union’s ill-conceived drive to increase cotton yields in Central Asia. Growing cotton in the naturally arid and saline soil...

• Vienna - geography.

  V HISTORY Throughout its existence Vienna has been a frontier post. Originally a Celtic settlement (Vindobona), it was taken over by the Romans in the 1st century BC and fortified by Emperor Augustus as part of the defenses against the Germanic tribes that lived north of the Danube. In the 5th century AD, however, the Romans evacuated thearea. In the 9th century Austria became part of the renewed Roman Empire of Charlemagne, and in 976 Emperor Otto II granted it to the Babenberg family. By the...

• CÔTE D'AZUR - CORSE Centuri-Port.

• Book Publishing I INTRODUCTION Book Publishing, manufacture, publication, and distribution of books.

  they use advanced printers and binding techniques to run off as many books as required. Printing only as many books as needed allows companies to save money, andbeing able to store books digitally means that books can be printed whenever necessary, keeping them in print indefinitely. B Marketing and Distribution Once the book has been made, it is ready for distribution. Traditionally, trade books have been sold primarily by salespeople calling on bookstores across the countryand taking orders f...

• Iceland - country.

  III PEOPLE Icelanders are one of the most homogenous peoples in the world. They are predominantly of Nordic origin, descendants of the hardy people who emigrated fromNorway to Iceland in the Middle Ages. There are also some Celtic influences from Irish and Scottish immigrants who arrived from the British Isles ( see Celts). The population of Iceland (2008 estimate) is 304,367. Numerous times in its history, Iceland has suffered major population losses due to epidemics, volcanic eruptions, and...

• Armenia (country) - country.

  because of ethnic tension brought on by a secessionist conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh, a region inhabited predominantly by Armenians in western Azerbaijan. In thereverse direction, many Armenian refugees entered Armenia from Azerbaijan during the conflict. Armenia’s official state language is Armenian, an Indo-European language with no surviving close relatives. It has a unique 38-letter alphabet that dates from the early5th century. Of its many spoken dialects, the most important are Eastern or Y...

• Yemen - country.

  port. Al Ḩudaydah (155,110), in the Tih āmah, is the second largest port. Ta‘izz, (178,043), in the highlands above Aden, is an important commercial and light industrialcenter. Among Yemen’s larger towns are Şa‘dah, far to the north; Dham ār, Yarim, and Ibb, in the middle region; Al Mukall ā, on the southern coast; and in Hadhramaut,the towns of Shib ām, Say‘ ūn, and Tar īm. C Language Nearly all Yemenis speak Arabic. However, the country’s extremely rugged terrain, widely separated population...

• San Francisco - geography.

  recognized symbol of the city, opened in 1937. It connects San Francisco to Marin County to the north, one of the wealthiest suburban areas in the nation. With the construction of the Bay and Golden Gate bridges and other links from the city to its suburbs, the San Francisco Bay area has become one large metropolitanregion. San Francisco itself is only 122 sq km (47 sq mi) of land area, but the city’s Primary Metropolitan Statistical Area (defined by the Census Bureau as SanFrancisco, San Mateo,...

• Army. I INTRODUCTION Army, military land forces of a nation, assembled, drilled, disciplined,

  disappearance for several centuries of large standing armies in Europe. A Middle Ages Feudalism was based on a concept of local defense, each baron or landowner governing land that had been given him by the king, and each lord having his ownpersonal protective forces recruited from among men who worked for him. In return, each lord and his men were pledged to annual service to the monarch and couldbe called on in special instances, as in the defense of Christendom during the Crusades. National...

• Christianity.

  history of architecture. See Basilica; Church; Early Christian Art and Architecture;Prayer. C Christian Life The instruction and exhortation of Christian preaching and teaching concern all the themes of doctrine and morals: the love of God and the love of neighbor, the twochief commandments in the ethical message of Jesus (see Matthew 22: 34-40). Application of these commandments to the concrete situations of human life, bothpersonal and social, does not produce a uniformity of moral or polit...

• Georgia (country) - country.

  1917. During the subsequent Soviet period, religious practice was strongly discouraged because the Soviet state was officially atheistic; however, the GeorgianOrthodox Church was allowed to function openly. Orthodox Christianity is the religion of about 58 percent of the Georgian population. Muslims represent about 19 percent of the country’s population, with ethnicAzerbaijanis, Kurds, and Ajars comprising the principal Muslim groups. Ajars are ethnic Georgians who converted to Islam in the 17th...

• Italy - country.

  C Natural Resources Italy is poor in natural resources. Much of the land is unsuitable for agriculture because of mountainous terrain or unfavorable climate. Italy, moreover, lacks substantialdeposits of basic natural resources such as coal, iron, and petroleum. Natural gas is the country’s most important mineral resource. Other deposits include feldspar andpumice. Many of Italy’s mineral deposits on the islands of Sicily and Sardinia had been heavily depleted by the early 1990s. Italy is rich...

• Roman Art and Architecture - History.

  Racecourses or circuses were also built in many cities for holding chariot races and horse races. Rome’s circus-shaped Piazza Navona occupies the site of one that wasbuilt during the reign ( AD 81-96) of the emperor Domitian. The largest circus in Rome, the Circus Maximus, held about 200,000 spectators. E Public Baths Large cities and small towns alike also had public baths ( thermae ); under the Republic they were generally made up of a suite of dressing rooms and bathing chambers with hot- ,...

• Mythology.

  Across cultures, mythologies tend to describe similar characters. A common character is the trickster. The trickster is recklessly bold and even immoral, but through hisinventiveness he often helps human beings. In Greek mythology, Hermes (best known as the messenger of the gods) was a famous trickster. In one version of acharacteristic tale, Hermes, while still an infant, stole the cattle of his half-brother Apollo. To avoid leaving a trail that could be followed, Hermes made shoes from thebark...

• Afghanistan - country.

  D Climate Most of Afghanistan has a subarctic mountain climate with dry and cold winters, except for the lowlands, which have arid and semiarid climates. In the mountains and afew of the valleys bordering Pakistan, a fringe effect of the Indian monsoon, coming usually from the southeast, brings moist maritime tropical air in summer.Afghanistan has clearly defined seasons: Summers are hot and winters can be bitterly cold. Summer temperatures as high as 49°C (120°F) have been recorded in thenorth...

• Calligraphy I INTRODUCTION Japanese Calligraphy This hanging scroll is an example of Japanese calligraphy.

  Section of the Egyptian Book of the DeadThe Egyptian Book of the Dead was a text containing prayers, spells, and hymns, the knowledge of which was to be usedby the dead to guide and protect the soul on the hazardous journey through the afterlife. This section of one such book,dating from the early 19th Dynasty, shows the final judgment of the deceased (in this case Hu-Nefer, the royal scribe)before Osiris, the god of the dead. Hieroglyphs as well as illustrations portray the ritual of weighing t...

• Bolivia - country.

  E Plants and Animals Because of the wide variations in elevation, plant and animal species of nearly every climatic zone are found in Bolivia. A coarse grass, called ichu, grows on the largelybarren high plateau in the west. Para rubber trees, more than 2,000 species of hardwood trees, and vanilla, sarsaparilla, and saffron plants are common in the tropicalforests of the east. The llama, found chiefly on the Altiplano, is an efficient beast of burden. Alpacas and vicuñas also inhabit the platea...

• Geographic Exploration.

  The commercial reason for exploration has been a consistent driving force. In 1492 the great navigator Christopher Columbus sailed west across the Atlantic Oceanseeking a new, shorter, and cheaper route to reach the riches of East Asia, and Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama circumnavigated Africa for much the same reason.Yet similar investigations of the profitable eastern trade had already been made by Arab sailors. Arab trading ships were sailing from the Arabian Sea to southeasternAsia probab...

• Geographic Exploration - explorer.

  The commercial reason for exploration has been a consistent driving force. In 1492 the great navigator Christopher Columbus sailed west across the Atlantic Oceanseeking a new, shorter, and cheaper route to reach the riches of East Asia, and Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama circumnavigated Africa for much the same reason.Yet similar investigations of the profitable eastern trade had already been made by Arab sailors. Arab trading ships were sailing from the Arabian Sea to southeasternAsia probab...

• Ancient Greece.

  The first culture of Aegean civilization on the Greek mainland is named Mycenaean for the palace at Mycenae on the Pelopónnisos. Scholars call the Mycenaeans the“earliest Greeks” because they are the first people known to have spoken Greek. Mycenaean culture developed later than Minoan. The ancestors of the Mycenaean people wandered onto the mainland from the north and the east from about 4000 to2000 BC, mixing with the people already there, and by about 1400 BC the Mycenaeans had become very...

• Ancient Greece .

  The first culture of Aegean civilization on the Greek mainland is named Mycenaean for the palace at Mycenae on the Pelopónnisos. Scholars call the Mycenaeans the“earliest Greeks” because they are the first people known to have spoken Greek. Mycenaean culture developed later than Minoan. The ancestors of the Mycenaean people wandered onto the mainland from the north and the east from about 4000 to2000 BC, mixing with the people already there, and by about 1400 BC the Mycenaeans had become very...

• Ancient Greece - USA History.

  The first culture of Aegean civilization on the Greek mainland is named Mycenaean for the palace at Mycenae on the Pelopónnisos. Scholars call the Mycenaeans the“earliest Greeks” because they are the first people known to have spoken Greek. Mycenaean culture developed later than Minoan. The ancestors of the Mycenaean people wandered onto the mainland from the north and the east from about 4000 to2000 BC, mixing with the people already there, and by about 1400 BC the Mycenaeans had become very...

• Confucius

  official to several of the highest positions in the land. Nor does the story end there. By the time of the Han dynasty (206 BC-AD 220), Confucius was celebrated as the ‘uncrowned king' of the state of Lu, and by the fourth century AD, any prefecture wanting to define itself as a political entity was required by imperial decree to erect a temple to Confucius. Gods in China are local cultural heroes who are remembered by history as having contributed meaning and value to the tradition, and of...

• Feudalism I INTRODUCTION Feudalism, contractual system of political and military relationships existing among members of the nobility in Western Europe during the High Middle Ages.

  lord”; thus, it was not rebellion for a subvassal to fight against his lord’s lord. In England, however, William the Conqueror and his successors required their vassals’vassals to take oaths of fealty to them. B Duties of a Vassal Military service in the field was basic to feudalism, but it was far from all that the vassal owed to his lord. When the lord had a castle, he might require his vassals togarrison it, a service called castle-guard. The lord also expected his vassals to attend his cour...

• Arabic Literature I INTRODUCTION Arabic Literature, literature written in the Arabic language, from the 6th century to the present.

  The life of the Prophet Muhammad also generated its own literary sources, primary among which is the hadith. The hadiths were a collection of the Prophet's sayings and actions, transmitted through a chain of authorities said to go back to Muhammad himself. The two most famous collections of hadiths are those of al-Bukhari andMuslim in the 9th century. These works provide a wealth of information covering all aspects of a Muslim's life, from prayer to personal, social, and business conduct. The...

• Comedy I INTRODUCTION Laurel and Hardy Stan Laurel, in overalls, and Oliver Hardy, left, formed one of the most popular comedy teams in motion-picture history.

  The elements and techniques of comedy are diverse and differ from culture to culture. More than tragedy or serious drama, comic entertainment is controlled by socialconventions that define the boundaries of acceptable humor and topics that are taboo or off-limits for humor. What is considered funny in one place and time may beforbidden culturally or viewed as infantile or in poor taste in another. Virtually every component of human behavior is subject to comic treatment. This includes bodilyfunc...

• Togo - country.

  corn, millet, and sorghum. The leading export crops are coffee, cotton, groundnuts, and cacao. Livestock, chiefly sheep and goats, are raised on the northern plateau.Fish are caught in Togo’s rivers and in the Gulf of Guinea. B Mining and Manufacturing Togo is a leading producer of phosphates, which are by far the country’s most significant mineral product. In 2004, 400,000 metric tons of phosphate rock were mined.Industrial activity is limited but growing. The leading manufactures include ceme...

• Children's Literature I INTRODUCTION Kate Greenaway's May Day The delicate skill and graceful simplicity of English artist Kate Greenaway's illustrations delighted children and impressed thinkers, including art critic John Ruskin.

  With the development of vernacular literature, particularly after the invention of printing, more children's books appeared. The publications of the first English printer,William Caxton, included the Book of Curtesye (1477), a collection of rhymes that sets forth rules of conduct for a “goodly chylde.” Eight years later Caxton printed Le Morte d'Arthur (1469-1470; The Death of Arthur ) by English translator and compiler Sir Thomas Malory, which became the basis for later treatments of the A...

• Heredity - biology.

  allele from the mother and a mutated allele from the father. In both of these cases, the child will be a carrier. The child develops the disease only if he or she receives amutated allele from each parent. When both parents are carriers, there is a 25 percent chance that a child will be disease-free, a 25 percent chance that it will have thedisease, and a 50 percent chance that it will be a carrier. Examples of genetic diseases that follow the dominant-recessive pattern include sickle-cell anemi...

• Literary Criticism I INTRODUCTION Literary Criticism, discussion of literature, including description, analysis, interpretation, and evaluation of literary works.

  IV THE 17TH AND 18TH CENTURIES The climate of criticism changed with the arrival on the literary scene of such giants as Miguel de Cervantes, Lope de Vega, and Pedro Calderòn in Spain; WilliamShakespeare, Ben Jonson, and John Milton in England; and Pierre Corneille, Jean Baptiste Racine, and Molière in France. Most of these writers specialized or excelled indrama, and consequently the so-called battle of the ancients and moderns—the critical comparison of Greek and Roman authors with more rece...

• Slovakia - country.

  The country is divided informally into the three regions of Western Slovakia, Central Slovakia, and Eastern Slovakia, corresponding to administrative divisions that wereabolished in 1989. Most of Slovakia’s 600,000 Hungarians live in the southern parts of Western and Central Slovakia, which served as the cultural center of Hungary forseveral centuries after Hungary proper was invaded by the Ottomans in the 16th century. The Ruthenian and Ukrainian minorities are concentrated in the northernregio...

• Tajikistan - country.

  by more than 100 percent due to a high birth rate and improvements in medical care. During the early 1990s, however, the growth rate began to decline due to civilwar and emigration. A Ethnic Groups and Languages Tajiks constitute the largest ethnic group in Tajikistan, making up about 65 percent of the population. The peoples who live in Gorno-Badakhshan, located in the Pamirs,are classified as Tajiks, although their languages and customs are distinct. The largest minority group in the country...

• Newfoundland and Labrador - Geography.

  Precipitation averages about 1,120 mm (about 44 in) yearly in Newfoundland. In Labrador precipitation varies from about 1,020 mm (about 40 in) in the southeast toabout 510 mm (about 20 in) in the extreme north. Heavy winter snowfalls are common, especially in Newfoundland. D Plant Life About one-third of Newfoundland is forested, and most of the rest of the island is made up of barren areas of reindeer moss and lichens. The forests consist almostentirely of conifers. The most important species...