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Faulkner, William

(Encyclopedia)Faulkner, William, 1897–1962, American novelist, b. New Albany, Miss., one of the great American writers of the 20th cent. Born into an old Southern family named Falkner, he changed the spelling of ...

icon

(Encyclopedia)icon [Gr. eikon=image], single image created as a focal point of religious veneration, especially a painted or carved portable object of the Orthodox Eastern faith. Icons commonly represent Christ Pan...

wrestling

(Encyclopedia)wrestling, sport in which two unarmed opponents grapple with one another. The object is to secure a fall, i.e., cause the opponent to lose balance and fall to the floor, and ultimately to pin the supi...

cult

(Encyclopedia)cult, ritual observances involved in worship of, or communication with, the supernatural or its symbolic representations. A cult includes the totality of ideas, activities, and practices associated wi...

alchemy

(Encyclopedia)alchemy ălˈkəmē [key], ancient art of obscure origin that sought to transform base metals (e.g., lead) into silver and gold; forerunner of the science of chemistry. Some scholars hold that it was ...

Liberty, Statue of

(Encyclopedia)Liberty, Statue of, statue on Liberty Island in Upper New York Bay, commanding the entrance to New York City. Liberty Island, c.10 acres (4 hectares), formerly Bedloe's Island (renamed in 1956), was t...

Benedictines

(Encyclopedia)Benedictines, religious order of the Roman Catholic Church, following the rule of St. Benedict [Lat. abbr.,=O.S.B.]. The first Benedictine monastery was at Monte Cassino, Italy, which came to be regar...

postmodernism

(Encyclopedia)postmodernism, term used to designate a multitude of trends—in the arts, philosophy, religion, technology, and many other areas—that come after and deviate from the many 20th-cent. movements that ...

Chomsky, Noam

(Encyclopedia)Chomsky, Noam nōm chŏmˈskē [key], 1928–, educator and linguist, b. Philadelphia. Chomsky, who has taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology since 1955, developed a theory of transforma...

Ibsen, Henrik

(Encyclopedia)Ibsen, Henrik hĕnˈrĭk ĭbˈsən [key], 1828–1906, Norwegian dramatist and poet. His early years were lonely and miserable. Distressed by the consequences of his family's financial ruin and on his...