部落格

● Harry Potter

Harry Potter is a series of seven fantasy novels written by British author J. K. Rowling. The series chronicles the life of a young wizard, Harry Potter and his friends Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley, all of whom are students at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The main story arc concerns Harry's struggle to kill the Dark wizard Lord Voldemort, who aims to become immortal, overthrow the Ministry of Magic, subjugate non-magic people and destroy anyone who stands in his way.

Plot

The novels revolve around Harry Potter, an orphan who discovers at the age of 11 that he is a wizard, though he lives within the ordinary world of non-magical people known as Muggles. The wizarding world has hidden itself from the Muggle world, presumably to avoid persecution of witches and wizards, which had occurred to a great extent several centuries before. His magical ability is inborn, and children with such abilties are invited to attend an exclusive magic school that teaches the necessary skills to succeed in the wizarding world. Harry becomes a student at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and it is here where most of the events in the series take place. As Harry develops through his adolescence, he learns to overcome the problems that face him: magical, social and emotional, including ordinary teenage challenges such as friendships, infatuation, romantic relationships, schoolwork and exams, anxiety, depression, stress, and the greater test of preparing himself for the confrontation in the real world that lies ahead, in wizarding Britain's increasingly-violent second wizarding war.

Each book chronicles one year in Harry's life with the main narrative being set in the years 1991–98. The books also contain many flashbacks, which are frequently experienced by Harry viewing the memories of other characters in a device called a Pensieve.

● Onomatopoeia

An onomatopoeia is a word that phonetically imitates, resembles or suggests the source of the sound that it describes. Onomatopoeia (as an uncountable noun) refers to the property of such words. Common occurrences of onomatopoeias include animal noises such as "oink", "miaow" (or "meow"), "roar" or "chirp". Onomatopoeias are not the same across all languages; they conform to some extent to the broader linguistic system they are part of; hence the sound of a clock may be tick tock in English, dī dā in Mandarin, or katchin katchin in Japanese, or "tik-tik" in Hindi.

Although in the English language the term onomatopoeia means the imitation of a sound, in the Greek language the compound word onomatopoeia means "making or creating names". For words that imitate sounds, the term Ηχομιμητικό (echomimetico or echomimetic) is used. Ηχομιμητικό (echomimetico) derives from Ηχώ, meaning "echo or sound", and μιμητικό, meaning "mimetic or imitation".

In the case of a frog croaking, the spelling may vary because different frog species around the world make different sounds: Ancient Greek brekekekex koax koax (only in Aristophanes' comic play The Frogs) for probably marsh frogs; English ribbit for species of frog found in North America; English verb croak for the common frog.

Some other very common English-language examples include hiccup, zoom, bang, beep, moo, and splash. Machines and their sounds are also often described with onomatopoeia, as in honk or beep-beep for the horn of an automobile, and vroom or brum for the engine. When someone speaks of a mishap involving an audible arcing of electricity, the word "zap" is often used (and has subsequently been expanded and used to describe non-auditory effects generally connoting the same sort of localized but thorough interference or destruction similar to that produced in short-circuit sparking).

●Secularity

Secularity (adjective form secular, from Latin saecularis meaning "worldly" or "temporal") is the state of being separate from religion, or of not being exclusively allied with or against any particular religion.

For instance, one can regard eating and bathing as examples of secular activities, because there may not be anything inherently religious about them. Nevertheless, some religious traditions see both eating and bathing as sacraments, therefore making them religious activities within those world views. Saying a prayer derived from religious text or doctrine, worshipping through the context of a religion, and attending a religious school are examples of religious (non-secular) activities.

A related term, "secularism", involves the principle that government institutions and their representatives should remain separate from religious institutions, their beliefs, and their dignitaries. Most businesses and corporations, and some governments, operate on secular lines.

● Religion

●  Hans Christian Andersen

Hans Christian Andersen was a Danish author. Although a prolific writer of plays, travelogues, novels, and poems, Andersen is best remembered for his fairy tales. Andersen's popularity is not limited to children; his stories, called eventyr in Danish or "fairy-tales" in English, express themes that transcend age and nationality.

Andersen's fairy tales, which have been translated into more than 125 languages, have become culturally embedded in the West's collective consciousness, readily accessible to children, but presenting lessons of virtue and resilience in the face of adversity for mature readers as well. Some of his most famous fairy tales include "The Emperor's New Clothes", "The Little Mermaid", "The Nightingale", "The Snow Queen", "The Ugly Duckling", and many more.

His stories have inspired ballets, both animated and live-action films, and plays.

● Brothers Grimm

The Brothers Grimm, Jacob (1785–1863) and Wilhelm Grimm (1786–1859), were German academics, linguists, cultural researchers, lexicographers and authors who together specialized in collecting and publishing folklore during the 19th century. They were among the best-known storytellers of folk tales, and popularized stories such as "Cinderella" ("Aschenputtel"), "The Frog Prince" ("Der Froschkönig"), "The Goose-Girl" ("Die Gänsemagd"), "Hansel and Gretel" ("Hänsel und Gretel"), "Rapunzel", "Rumpelstiltskin" ("Rumpelstilzchen"),"Sleeping Beauty" ("Dornröschen"), and "Snow White" ("Schneewittchen"). Their first collection of folk tales, Children's and Household Tales (Kinder- und Hausmärchen), was published in 1812.The popularity of the Grimms' collected folk tales has endured well.

The tales are available in more than 100 languages and have been later adapted by filmmakers including Lotte Reiniger and Walt Disney, with films such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Sleeping Beauty. In the mid-20th century, the tales were used as propaganda by the Third Reich; later in the 20th century psychologists such as Bruno Bettelheim reaffirmed the value of the work, in spite of the cruelty and violence in original versions of some of the tales, which the Grimms eventually sanitized.

● Rapunzel

"Rapunzel" is a German fairy tale in the collection assembled by the Brothers Grimm, and first published in 1812 as part of Children's and Household Tales. The Grimm Brothers' story is an adaptation of the fairy tale Rapunzel by Friedrich Schulz published in 1790. The Schulz version is based on Persinette by Charlotte-Rose de Caumont de La Force originally published in 1698 which in turn was influenced by an even earlier tale, Petrosinella by Giambattista Basile, published in 1634. Its plot has been used and parodied in various media and its best known line ("Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair") is an idiom of popular culture. In volume I of the 1812 annotations (Anhang), it is listed as coming from Friedrich Schulz Kleine Romane, Book 5, pp. 269–288, published in Leipzig 1790.

● Thistle

Thistle is the common name of a group of flowering plants characterized by leaves with sharp prickles on the margins, mostly in the family Asteraceae. Prickles often occur all over the plant – on surfaces such as those of the stem and flat parts of leaves. These are an adaptation that protects the plant against herbivorous animals, discouraging them from feeding on the plant. Typically, an involucre with a clasping shape of a cup or urn subtends each of a thistle's flowerheads.

The term thistle is sometimes taken to mean exactly those plants in the tribe Cynareae (synonym: Cardueae), especially the genera Carduus, Cirsium, and Onopordum. However, plants outside this tribe are sometimes called thistles, and if this is done thistles would form a polyphyletic group.

Thistle is the floral emblem of Scotland, as well as the emblem of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

● John Denver

● Freytag's Pyramid

The structure of a dramatic work such as a play or film.

According to Freytag, a drama is divided into five parts, or acts, which some refer to as a dramatic arc: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and dénouement.

Exposition

The exposition is the portion of a story that introduces important background information to the audience; for example, information about the setting, events occurring before the main plot, characters' back stories, etc. Exposition can be conveyed through dialogues, flashbacks, character's thoughts, background details, in-universe media or the narrator telling a back-story.

● What Are Little Boys Made Of?

"What Are Little Boys Made Of?" is a popular nursery rhyme dating from the early 19th century. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 821.

http://www.kididdles.com/lyrics/l050.html

Here is a representative modern version of the lyrics:

What are little boys made of?

●  Fiddler

Fiddle is another name for the bowed string musical instrument more often called a violin. It is also a colloquial term for the instrument used by players in all genres, including classical music. Fiddle playing, or fiddling, which could refer to various styles of music.

There are no real distinctions between violins and fiddles, though more primitively constructed and smaller violins are more likely to be considered fiddles. Fiddle is also a common term among musicians who play folk music on the violin. The fiddle is part of many traditional (folk) styles of music which are aural traditions, taught 'by ear' rather than via written music. It is less common for a classically trained violinist to play folk music, but today, many fiddlers have classical training.

●  Content word

In linguistics content words as well as autosemantic are words such as nouns, most verbs, and adjectives that refer to some object, action, or characteristic. Content words contrast with function words, which function primarily to express the grammatical relationships between other words in a sentence. Content words are most often open class words, meaning that new content words can be added to the lexicon easily. In relation to phonology, content words adhere to the minimal word constraint, while function words do not.

●  Miss Potter

 Movie: Miss Potter

● Miss Potter

Miss Potter is a 2006 English-American biographical fiction family drama film directed by Chris Noonan. It is a biographical film of children's author and illustrator Beatrix Potter, and combines stories from her own life with animated sequences featuring characters from her stories, such as Peter Rabbit. Scripted by Richard Maltby, Jr., the director of the Tony-winning Broadway revue, Fosse, the film stars Renée Zellweger in the title role; Ewan McGregor as her publisher and fiancé, Norman Warne; and Lloyd Owen as solicitor William Heelis. Emily Watson stars as Warne's sister, Millie. Lucy Boynton also stars as the young Beatrix Potter. It was filmed in St. Peter's Square Hammersmith, Cecil Court, Osterley Park, Covent Garden, the Isle of Man, Scotland and the Lake District. Miss Potter was released on 29 December 2006 so that the film could compete for the 2007 Academy Awards. The film was intended to be released generally on 12 January 2007, but Variety.com reported that the Weinstein Company had decided to push a wider release date until after the Academy Awards on 25 February 2007. The date seemed to fluctuate a number of times, but the Weinstein Company website ultimately listed its release date as 9 March. The film received generally positive reviews and earned Zellweger her sixth Golden Globe nomination.

Biography in literature

When studying literature, biography and its relationship to literature is often a subject of literary criticism, and is treated in several different forms. Two scholarly approaches use biography or biographical approaches to the past as a tool for interpreting literature including literary biography and biographical criticism. Additionally, two genres of fiction rely very heavily on the incorporation of biographical elements into their content, biographical fiction and autobiographical fiction.

● Fantasy

Fantasy is a genre of fiction that commonly uses magic and other supernatural phenomena as a primary plot element, theme, or setting. Many works within the genre take place in imaginary worlds where magic and magical creatures are common. Fantasy is generally distinguished from the genres of science fiction and horror by the expectation that it steers clear of scientific and macabre themes, respectively, though there is a great deal of overlap between the three, all of which are subgenres of speculative fiction.

● Nursery rhyme

A nursery rhyme is a traditional poem or song for young children in Britain and many other countries, but usage only dates from the late 18th/early 19th century and in North America the term Mother Goose Rhymes, introduced in the mid-18th century, is still often used.

●Onomatopoeia