Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Saint Martin săN märtăNˈ [key], Du. Sint Maarten, island, 37 sq mi (96 sq km), West Indies, one of the Leeward Islands. Since its occupation in 1648 by the Dutch and the French, it has been divide...

(Encyclopedia) ransom, price of redemption demanded by the captor of a person, vessel, or city. In ancient times cities frequently paid ransom to prevent their plundering by captors. The custom of ransoming was form...

(Encyclopedia) Garamond, Claude klōd gärämôNˈ [key], 1480–1561, Parisian designer and maker of printing types. According to tradition he learned his art from Geofroy Tory. Types designed by Garamond were used...

(Encyclopedia) Gautier, Théophile gōtyāˈ [key], 1811–72, French poet, novelist, and critic. He was a leading exponent of “art for art's sake”—the belief that formal, aesthetic beauty is the sole purpose...

(Encyclopedia) Gide, André äNdrāˈ zhēd [key], 1869–1951, French writer. He established a reputation as an unconventional novelist with The Immoralist (1902, tr. 1930), a partly autobiographical work in which ...

(Encyclopedia) Gothic romance, type of novel that flourished in the late 18th and early 19th cent. in England. Gothic romances were mysteries, often involving the supernatural and heavily tinged with horror, and the...

(Encyclopedia) Habré, Hissène hēsĕnˈ häbrāˈ [key], 1942–, Chadian political leader, president of Chad (1982–90). He studied political science in Paris during the late 1960s and, returning to Chad (1970),...

(Encyclopedia) Gance, Abel, 1889–1981, pioneering French filmmaker. He acted on the stage in the early 1900s and appeared on the silent screen. From 1911 he wrote and directed several films; his first important fi...

(Encyclopedia) Baudelaire, Charles shärl bōdlârˈ [key], 1821–67, French poet and critic. His poetry, classical in form, introduced symbolism (see symbolists) by establishing symbolic correspondences among sens...

(Encyclopedia)  CE5 Triumphal arch triumphal arch, monumental structure embodying one or more arched passages, frequently built to span a road and designed to honor a king or general or to commemorate a military ...