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Charles Laughton
Charles Laughton 1899-1962, Anglo-American actor, b. Scarborough, England. A large, versatile character actor, Laughton was successful both in films and on the stage. In The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933), his lusty portrait of the king, for which he won the Academy Award, was startlingly dire...
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Lohengrin
Lohengrin , in medieval German story, a knight of the Holy Grail , son of Parzival. He is sent to rescue Princess Elsa of Brabant from an unwanted suitor. Led to Antwerp by a swan, Lohengrin saves Elsa and marries her. She is forbidden to ask his identity, but, overcome by curiosity, she asks. As a...
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Maria Jeritza
Maria Jeritza , 1887-1982, Austrian-American soprano. b. Brünn (now Brno). After her debut as Elsa in Lohengrin at Olmütz (now Olomouc) in 1910, she was a member (1912-35) of the Vienna State Opera. She created the title role in the opera Ariadne by Richard Strauss. Jeritza sang (1921-...
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Louis Aragon
Louis Aragon , 1897-1982, French writer. One of the founders of surrealism in literature, Aragon abandoned that philosophy for Marxism after a trip to the USSR in 1931. He was a leader of the Resistance during World War II, and he edited the radical Paris daily Ce Soir and later the Communist we...
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Ottorino Respighi
Ottorino Respighi , 1879-1936, Italian composer, studied with Rimsky-Korsakov and Max Bruch. He was director (1924-25) of the Conservatory of St. Cecilia, Rome, afterward teaching advanced composition there until his death. Among his romantic symphonic poems are The Fountains of Rome (1917), The ...
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Alberto Moravia
Alberto Moravia , 1907-90, Italian novelist born as Alberto Pincherle; husband of Elsa Morante . Moravia is considered one of the foremost 20th-century Italian novelists. He employs taut prose in realist narratives that shed light on such disturbing issues as the relation of the individual to socie...
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fashion
fashion in dress, the prevailing mode affecting modifications in costume. Styles in Asia have been characterized by freedom from change, and ancient Greek and Roman dress preserved the same flowing lines for centuries. Fashion in dress and interior decoration may be said to have originated in Europ...
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French literature
French literature writings in medieval French dialects and standard modern French. Writings in Provençal and Breton are considered separately, as are works in French produced abroad (as at Canadian literature, French ).
Medieval Literature
Until the 12th cent. AD most forms of wri...
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