Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

Chapman, George

(Encyclopedia)Chapman, George, 1559?–1634, English dramatist, translator, and poet. He is as famous for his plays as for his poetic translations of Homer's Iliad (1612) and Odyssey (1614–15). Chapman was a clas...

epic

(Encyclopedia)epic, long, exalted narrative poem, usually on a serious subject, centered on a heroic figure. The earliest epics, known as primary, or original, epics, were shaped from the legends of an age when a n...

Walcott, Derek Alton

(Encyclopedia)Walcott, Derek Alton, 1930–2017, West Indian dramatist and poet, b. Castries, St. Lucia, grad. Univ. of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica, 1953. His grandfathers were both white, one of English, the ot...

Iliad

(Encyclopedia)Iliad: see Homer.

Homeric Hymns

(Encyclopedia)Homeric Hymns hōmĕrˈĭk [key], name applied to a body of 34 hexameter poems falsely attributed to Homer by the ancients. Composed probably between 800 and 300 b.c., they are complimentary verses ad...

Old Orchard Beach

(Encyclopedia)Old Orchard Beach, town (1990 pop. 7,789), York co., SW Maine, on the Atlantic coast; settled c.1631, inc. 1883. For many years a popular summer resort, it has a beach and amusement facilities. A trad...

Kérkira

(Encyclopedia)Kérkira kôrˈfo͞o [key], Lat. Corcyra, island (1991 pop. 104,781), 229 sq mi (593 sq km), NW Greece, in the Ionian Sea, the second largest of the Ionian Islands, separated by a narrow channel from ...

Zoilus

(Encyclopedia)Zoilus zōˈĭləs [key], c.400–c.320 b.c., Greek rhetorician and philosopher of Amphipolis. He is called Homeromastix [scourge of Homer], because of his denunciations of Homer as a purveyor of fabl...

Eustathius

(Encyclopedia)Eustathius, d. c.1194, Byzantine scholar, archbishop of Salonica (from 1175). He became renowned as master of the orators at Hagia Sophia, Constantinople, then a center of learning. He lectured on Hom...

Fenton, Elijah

(Encyclopedia)Fenton, Elijah, 1683–1730, English poet. A graduate of Cambridge, he was a schoolmaster for a time and later was a tutor in several noble families. He is chiefly remembered for his share in Pope's t...