“How many syllables are in a haiku? This highly stylized form of poetry consists of three unrhymed lines of five, seven, and five syllables respectively—a total of seventeen syllables.”
Excerpted from: Corey, Melinda, and George Ochoa. Literature: The New York Public Library Book of Answers. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged asian-pacific history, poetry
“Mount Meru, the mythical Buddhist center of the universe, was considered to be 84,000 Yojan units high (which makes it about 672,000 miles in elevation). This respect for 84,000 is repeated by the Jain, who measure their cycle of time in units of 84,000 years and also by belief that the Lord Buddha left behind 84,000 teachings. And so this was the number of memorial stupas that the great Buddhist Emperor of India, Ashoka, is believed to have created to hold the Lord Buddha’s ashes, which he scattered across the landscape of South Asia.”
Excerpted from: Rogerson, Barnaby. Rogerson’s Book of Numbers: The Culture of Numbers–from 1,001 Nights to the Seven Wonders of the World. New York: Picador, 2013.
“Yalong River or Ya-lung River: River, Sichuan province, S China. It rises in mountains at an elevation of nearly 16,500 ft (5,000 m) in Qinqhai province and flows into the Chang River on the Yunnan border. It is 822 mi (1,323 km) long. It is torrential for most of its course and is unnavigable.”
Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.
Posted in Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
“Kyoka (Izumi Kyoka, 1873-1939) Japanese fiction writer and playwright, known for his many tales of the bizarre, grotesque, and supernatural. One of the most distinctive Japanese stylists, Kyoka rejected the modernist trends of Meiji literary movements such as shizenshugi, which promoted a tedious confessionalism, and sought inspiration in traditional motifs and sources. His work thus recalls the nativism of Ueda Akinari and foreshadows the neotraditionalist writing of Tanizaki Jun’ichiro. The unorthodox quality of Kyoka’s writing has also been seen as symptomatic of a well-documented psychopathology, including mother fixation and assorted obsessive-compulsive disorders.
One of Japan’s greatest authors, Kyoka has been little translated—in part owing to his notoriously difficult, labyrinthine prose style. Translations include the short stories Koya hijiri (1900; tr The Saint of Mount Koya, 1956) and Sannin mekura no hanashi (1912; tr A Tale of Three Who Were Blind, 1956). Kyoka was also a playwright, and many of his works were performed for the popular Shimpa stage.”
Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.
“Word Salad: One of the most common symptoms of schizophrenia is a disturbance in the use of language. Rather than select words which make communication possible, schizophrenics may combine words in idiosyncratic ways, or use associations that are out of context. This tendency may generate a minor language disturbance; or, in extreme cases, a word salad in which the combination of words is unintelligible to the listener and so makes communication impossible.”
Excerpted from: Marshall, Gordon, ed. Oxford Dictionary of Sociology. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.
“A hundred years from now it is very likely that ‘The Jumping Frog’ alone will be remembered.”
Harry Thurston Peck, The Bookman 1901
Excerpted from: Barnard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged fiction/literature, humor, literary oddities
“Collective: Indicating a group or aggregate of persons or things, e.g. the nouns ‘herd’ and ‘grove.’”
Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
“Social Realism: A trend in 20th-century art before 1950. Often political in nature, social realism is distinctive in its realistic depictions of the ills of society. The influence of Mexican muralists Diego Rivera, Jose Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros was felt by North American social realist and WPA artists. Some North Americans emerged from the Ashcan School, while others, like Ben Shahn, evolved separately.”
Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.
“Mesopotamia: An ancient region of southwest Asia in present-day Iraq, lying between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates. Its alluvial plains were the site of the ancient civilizations of Akkad, Sumer, Babylonia, and Assyria, now lying within Iraq.”
Excerpted from: Wright, Edmund, Ed. The Oxford Desk Encyclopedia of World History. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.
Posted in Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
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