Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

146 results found

Guise

(Encyclopedia)Guise gēz, gwēz [key], influential ducal family of France. Henri's brother Louis de Lorraine, Cardinal de Guise, 1555–88, was killed at the same time as Henri. After their deaths the leadersh...

Cole, Thomas

(Encyclopedia)Cole, Thomas, 1801–48, American landscape painter, b. England. He arrived in the United States in 1818 and moved to Ohio, where he was impressed by the beauty of the countryside. In 1825 he went to ...

Étaix, Pierre

(Encyclopedia)Étaix, Pierre, 1928–2016, French film actor and director. He excelled at highly physical slapstick comedy, influenced by his background as a circus and cabaret performer, and by Buster Keaton and C...

Duvalier, François

(Encyclopedia)Duvalier, François fräNswäˈ düvälyāˈ [key], 1907–71, dictator of Haiti (1957–71). A physician, he became director-general of the national public health service in 1946 and subsequently ser...

Périer, Casimir Pierre

(Encyclopedia)Périer, Casimir Pierre käzēmērˈ pyĕr pĕryāˈ [key], 1777–1832, French statesman. He was a member of a wealthy bourgeois family. His father, Claude Périer, a manufacturer and financier of Gr...

sensationalism

(Encyclopedia)sensationalism, in philosophy, the theory that there are no innate ideas and that knowledge is derived solely from the sense data of experience. The idea was discussed by Greek philosophers and is sho...

Barroso, José Manuel Durão

(Encyclopedia)Barroso, José Manuel Durão zho͞ozĕˈ mänwĕlˈ do͞orouNˈ bärōˈzo͞o [key], 1956–, Portuguese politician, b. Lisbon. A leftist activist while in law school, he became a Social Democrat in 1...

Jakobson, Roman

(Encyclopedia)Jakobson, Roman rəmänˈ yäkˈôbsən [key], 1896–1982, Russian-American linguist and literary critic, b. Moscow. He coined the term structural linguistics and stressed that the aim of historical ...

Bainbridge, Beryl

(Encyclopedia)Bainbridge, Beryl (Dame Beryl Margaret Bainbridge), 1933–2010, English author, b. Liverpool. Bainbridge is mainly known for her tightly plotted, rueful, and darkly comic fiction in which dull and si...

Draghi, Mario

(Encyclopedia)Draghi, Mario mäˈēō drägˈē [key], 1947–, Italian economist and government and international ...