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closet drama

(Encyclopedia)closet drama, a play that is meant to be read rather than performed. Precursors of the form existed in classical times. Plato's Apology is often regarded as tragic drama rather than philosophic dialog...

Castro, Rosalía de

(Encyclopedia)Castro, Rosalía de käsˈtrō [key], 1837–85, Spanish poet and novelist. Castro's book of verse Cantares gallegos (1863) was the first important poetry in Galician since the 13th cent.; it reflect...

Strand, Mark

(Encyclopedia)Strand, Mark, 1934–2014, American poet, b. Prince Edward Island, Canada, grad. Antioch College (B.A., 1957), Yale (B.F.A., 1959), Iowa Writers' Workshop (M.A., 1962). Meditative and death-haunted, h...

Rao, Raja

(Encyclopedia)Rao, Raja rou [key], 1909–2006, Indian novelist, b. Hassan, Mysore (now Karnataka), as Raja. Rao took his surname as an adult, and was educated in India and France and for many years divided his ti...

Omar Khayyam

(Encyclopedia)Omar Khayyam kīämˈ [key], fl. 11th cent., Persian poet and mathematician, b. Nishapur. He was called Khayyam [tentmaker] probably because of his father's occupation. The details of his life are mos...

Ward, William George

(Encyclopedia)Ward, William George, 1812–82, English Roman Catholic apologist, educated at Oxford. He became (1834) a fellow at Balliol College, Oxford, and was ordained in the Church of England. At first a Broad...

Romanian literature

(Encyclopedia)Romanian literature, the literature of Romania. Until the 16th cent. most writing by Romanians was in Slavonic. In 1541 a catechism in Romanian was issued at Sibiu, and from 1560 liturgical works were...

Japanese literature

(Encyclopedia)Japanese literature, literary works produced in the language of the islands of Japan. See also Asian drama. The immense public demand for fiction in postwar Japan has been fed by the prolific o...

Lovelace, Richard

(Encyclopedia)Lovelace, Richard, 1618–1657?, one of the English Cavalier poets. He was the son of a Kentish knight and was educated at Oxford. In 1642 he was briefly imprisoned for having presented to Parliament ...

Fuji, Mount

(Encyclopedia)Fuji, Mount fo͞oˈjē-sän [key], volcanic peak, 12,389 ft (3,776 m) high, central Honshu, Japan, in Fuji-Hakone-Izu National Park (472 sq mi/1,222 sq km; est. 1936). The highest mountain in Japan, i...