Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Opéra ôpāräˈ [key] (Académie de musique), former chief opera house of Paris, on the Place de l'Opéra, one of the main crossroads on the right bank of the Seine. Designed by J. L. C. Garnier and...

(Encyclopedia) siege, assault against a city or fortress with the purpose of capturing it. The history of siegecraft parallels the development of fortification and, later, artillery. In early times battering rams an...

(Encyclopedia) Swinburne, Algernon Charles, 1837–1909, English poet and critic. His poetry is noted for its vitality and for the music of its language. After attending Eton (1849–53) and Oxford (1856–60) he se...

(Encyclopedia) Dante Alighieri dănˈtē, Ital. dänˈtā älēgyĕˈrē [key], 1265–1321, Italian poet, b. Florence. Dante was the author of the Divine Comedy, one of the greatest of literary classics. Dante's ...

(Encyclopedia) Homer, principal figure of ancient Greek literature; the first European poet. The Odyssey is written in 24 books and begins nearly ten years after the fall of Troy. In the first part, Telemachus, Od...

(Encyclopedia) Talmud tălˈməd [key] [Aramaic from Heb.,=learning], in Judaism, vast compilation of the Oral Law with rabbinical elucidations, elaborations, and commentaries, in contradistinction to the Scriptures...

(Encyclopedia) Carson, Kit (Christopher Houston Carson), 1809–68, American frontiersman and guide, b. Madison co., Ky. In 1811 he moved with his family to the Missouri frontier. After his father's death, he was ap...

(Encyclopedia) Hazlitt, William, 1778–1830, English essayist. The son of a reform-mindeed Unitarian minister, he abandoned the idea of entering the clergy and took up painting, philosophy, and later journalism. He...

(Encyclopedia) Yen, James Y. C. yĕn [key], Mandarin Yen Yang-chu, 1893–1990, Chinese educator, b. Sichuan prov., China, educated at Yale (B.A., 1918) and Princeton (M.A., 1920) universities. Yen devised a simplif...

(Encyclopedia) Parsons, Lucy, 1851–1942, American anarchist and labor activist. Although she claimed publicly to have been born of Mexican and Native American descent as Lucia Gonzalez, she was likely born in slav...