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...the Victorian novel. While writing anonymous reviews for the Times Literary Supplement and other journals, she experimented with such a novel, which she called Melymbrosia. In November 1910, Roger Fry, a new friend of the Bells, launched the exhibit “Manet and the Post-Impressionists,” which introduced radical European art to the London....

...to be a transitional regime, since it lacked the necessary combined support of the moderates and landowners. In Paris Napoleon’s most trusted adviser on Italian affairs was the Milanese patrician Francesco Melzi d’Eril, who during the triennium had hoped to see northern Italy united in a constitutional monarchy under a Habsburg or Bourbon prince. Melzi was the most clear-sighted e...

...around him. Of his older disciples, Bernardino de’ Conti and Salai were again in his studio; new students came, among them Cesare da Sesto, Giampetrino, Bernardino Luini, and the young nobleman Francesco Melzi, Leonardo’s most faithful friend and companion until the artist’s death....

...certain types of infinite sets of real numbers. A set, wrote Cantor, is a collection of definite, distinguishable objects of perception or thought conceived as a whole. The objects are called elements or members of the set....

During the 1940s McCullers met American playwright Tennessee Williams, and they became friends. Williams encouraged her to make a play of her novel The Member of the Wedding (1946), a sensitive portrayal of a lonely adolescent whose attachment to her brother precipitates a crisis at his wedding. The novel proved to be her most popular work, and it was equally successful as a play,......

The absence of formal rules by which to distinguish between members and outsiders, to identify leaders, to establish the aims of the collectivity, to set acceptable limits of behaviour for members, and to specify how collective decisions are to be made accounts for the volatility of collective behaviour. The leader of a mob can become the object of the mob’s hatred in a matter of minutes; a...

...x ∊ A and x ∉ A is true and the other is false. The definite relation that may or may not exist between an object and a set is called the membership relation....

any of approximately 3,200 species of insects (order Homoptera) that are easily recognized by their vertical face and grotesquely enlarged thorax, which may extend anteriorly over the head to form one or more spines and expands posteriorly over the body to form a hoodlike covering. They are sometimes called insect brownies because of their elflike appearance. They range in colour from green and bl...

in biology, the thin layer that forms the outer boundary of a living cell or of an internal cell compartment. The outer boundary is the plasma membrane, and the compartments enclosed by internal membranes are called organelles. Biological membranes have three primary functions: (1) they keep toxic substances out of the cell; (2) they contain receptors and chan...

Embedded in the lipid bilayer are large proteins, many of which transport ions and water-soluble molecules across the membrane. Some proteins in the plasma membrane form open pores, called membrane channels, which allow the free diffusion of ions into and out of the cell. Others bind to specific molecules on one side of a membrane and transport the molecules to the other side. Sometimes one......

...through semipermeable barriers. Besides differing in charge, proteins also differ in size, and this latter property can be used as the basis of separation. If a vessel is divided in half by a porous membrane, and a solution of different proteins is placed in one section and pure water in the other, some of the proteins will be able to diffuse freely through the membrane, while others will......

...and electroneutrality on each side—create an equilibrium electrical potential at which the inside of the membrane is more negative than the outside. In most neurons this potential, called the membrane potential, is between −60 and −75 millivolts (mV; or thousandths of a volt; the minus sign indicates that the inner surface is negative). When the inside of the plasma membran...

...through semipermeable barriers. Besides differing in charge, proteins also differ in size, and this latter property can be used as the basis of separation. If a vessel is divided in half by a porous membrane, and a solution of different proteins is placed in one section and pure water in the other, some of the proteins will be able to diffuse freely through the membrane, while others will......

...cell mouth (cytostome) through which food enters the cell. (Some flagellates also have cytostomes.) In some ciliates, the cilia around the cytostome have become specially modified into sheets called membranelles, which create a feeding current and act as a sieve to trap food particles. Other important ciliate characteristics include the possession of two types of nuclei (a large nucleus, or......

...are typical bryozoan habitats. Open coastlines support fewer species, but noncalcareous species occur abundantly on intertidal algae in temperate waters. A familiar genus is the lacy gymnolaemate Membranipora, which is found throughout the world and is well adapted to living on kelp weeds at, and just below, the low-water mark. Although the zooid walls of Membranipora colonies are...

any of a class of musical instruments in which a stretched membrane vibrates to produce sound. Besides drums, the basic types include the mirliton, or kazoo, and the friction drum (sounded by friction produced by drawing a stick back and forth through a hole in the membrane)....

There are actually two labyrinths of the inner ear, one inside the other—the membranous labyrinth contained within the bony labyrinth (Figure 3). The bony labyrinth consists of a central chamber called the vestibule, the three semicircular canals, and the spirally coiled cochlea. Within each structure, and filling only a fraction of the available space, is a corresponding portion of the......

The Memecylaceae family, which was formerly included in the Melastomataceae, has perhaps 430 species in 6 genera. Its main centre of development is in tropical Asia, with a second centre in the Amazon basin. Most of its members are trees of lowland rain forests....

...the novella Teneke (“The Tin Pan”) and his first full-length novel, Ince Memed (“Thin Memed”; Eng. trans. Memed, My Hawk), both of which brought him immediate recognition in Turkey. The latter, like many of his other novels and short stories, is set in the rural eastern Anatolia of his youth a...

city and port, Lithuania. It lies on the narrow channel by which the Curonian Lagoon and the Neman River connect with the Baltic Sea. Beside a small earlier settlement, the local population constructed a fortress in the early 13th century. In 1252 this fort was seized and destroyed by the Teutonic Knights, who built a new ...

post-World War I dispute regarding sovereignty over the former German Prussian territory of Memelland. Its seizure by Lithuania was eventually approved by the great powers....

river in Belarus and Lithuania. The Neman River is 582 miles (937 km) long and drains about 38,000 square miles (98,000 square km). It rises near Minsk in the Minsk Upland and flows west through a broad, swampy basin; it then turns north into Lithuania, cutting through terminal moraines in a narrow, sinuous valley. Near Kaunas, where there is a hydroelectric plant, it turns west and crosses anothe...

...only after the matter was referred to the League of Nations did Lithuania reach an accord with Great Britain, France, Italy, and Japan (the member states of the Ambassadors’ Conference) and sign the Memel Statute, which officially made Memelland an autonomous region within Lithuania, outlined the governmental structure of the territory, and also established an administrative body for the...

post-World War I dispute regarding sovereignty over the former German Prussian territory of Memelland. Its seizure by Lithuania was eventually approved by the great powers....

...her talent as a novelist—an ability to create disturbing, compelling characters and a disquieting sense of moral ambiguity—was immediately evident. Her third novel, Memento Mori (1959), was adapted for the stage in 1964 and for television in 1992. Her best-known novel is probably The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961), which centres....

...concerned. In the later Middle Ages, however, there was a remarkable innovation in this funerary art, which was designed to emphasize the horror and degradation of death. In what are known as memento mori tombs, below the effigies of the deceased as they were in life, there were placed effigies of their naked decaying corpses or skeletons. Such tomb sculpture reflected a contemporary......

...in turn drew upon an idea suggested by Vannevar Bush in his 1945 Atlantic Monthly article As We May Think. There Bush envisioned the memex, a machine that would allow readers to annotate and create links between articles and books recorded on microfilm. HyperCard’s “stacks” implemented a version of Bush’s vis...

leading Flemish painter of the Bruges school during the period of the city’s political and commercial decline. The number of his imitators and followers testified to his popularity throughout Flanders. His last commission, which has been widely copied, is a Crucifixion panel from the “Passion Triptych” (1491)....

leading Flemish painter of the Bruges school during the period of the city’s political and commercial decline. The number of his imitators and followers testified to his popularity throughout Flanders. His last commission, which has been widely copied, is a Crucifixion panel from the “Passion Triptych” (1491)....

French-language Tunisian novelist and author of numerous sociological studies treating the subject of human oppression....

city, Bavaria Land (state), southern Germany. It lies on the Ach River (a small tributary of the Iller), south of Ulm. First mentioned in 1128, it was founded as a town by Duke Welf VI in 1160; it later belonged to the Hohenstaufens. It was a free imperial city from 1286 until it was ...

Confederate secretary of the treasury, generally held responsible for the collapse of his government’s credit during the American Civil War....

Confederate secretary of the treasury, generally held responsible for the collapse of his government’s credit during the American Civil War....

Catullus’ poetry reports one event, externally datable to c. 57–56 bc, a journey to Bithynia in Asia Minor in the retinue of Gaius Memmius, the Roman governor of the province, from which he returned to Sirmio. It also records two emotional crises, the death of a brother whose grave he visited in the Troad, also in Asia Minor, and an intense and unhappy love affai...

...lively and disillusioned temper: he wrote his first contes (stories). Micromégas (1752) measures the littleness of man in the cosmic scale; Vision de Babouc (1748) and Memnon (1749) dispute the philosophic optimism of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Alexander Pope. Zadig (1747) is a kind of allegorical autobiography: like Voltaire, the Babylonian sage......

in Greek mythology, son of Tithonus (son of Laomedon, legendary king of Troy) and Eos (Dawn) and king of the Ethiopians. He was a post-Homeric hero, who, after the death of the Trojan warrior Hector, went to assist his uncle Priam, the last king of Troy, against the Greeks. He performed prodigies of valour but was slain by the Greek hero Achilles. According to tradition, Zeus, t...

history or record composed from personal observation and experience. Closely related to, and often confused with, autobiography, a memoir usually differs chiefly in the degree of emphasis placed on external events; whereas writers of autobiography are concerned primarily with themselves as subject matter, writers of memoir are usually persons who have played roles in, or have b...

...writing of the first rank, though the actor and playwright Colley Cibber’s flamboyant Apology for the Life of Mr. Colley Cibber (1740) and Cowper’s sombre Memoir (written about 1766, first published in 1816) are two notable exceptions. But the drama of Boswell’s self-observations has a richer texture than either of these. In...

...of Comparative Anatomy Contained in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons in London (1833), which enabled him to acquire a considerable knowledge of comparative anatomy. His Memoir on the Pearly Nautilus (1832) was a classic, and he became a highly respected anatomist. By 1859, the year of the publication of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species,......

...and had underground cavities explored. He concluded, however, that little more could be learned without excavation. His findings, published in a Viennese journal in 1812, were reprinted in Memoir on the Ruins of Babylon (1815) and expanded in Second Memoir on Babylon (1818)....

...1804 Brianchon entered the École Polytechnique in Paris, where he became a student of the noted French mathematician Gaspard Monge. While still a student, he published his first paper, “Mémoire sur les surfaces courbes du second degré” (1806; “Memoir on Curved Surfaces of Second Degree”), in which he recognized the projective nature of a theorem ...

...the Polish Succession (1733–38) and the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–48), Mirabeau left the army to devote himself to the study of political economy. In his first major work, Mémoire concernant l’utilité des états provinciaux . . . (1750; “Memorandum Concerning the Usefulness of the Provincial Estates . . .”), he criticized ...

...reader and could indulge his tastes the more fully since his schooling was most irregular. He attended a day school in Putney and, in 1746, Kingston grammar school, where he was to note in his Memoirs “at the expense of many tears and some blood, [he] purchased a knowledge of Latin syntax.” In 1749 he was admitted to Westminster School. He was taken in 1750 to Bath and......

...and hereditary claims proved of considerable value to Frederick II the Great’s politics. A regular attendant at the secret cabinet meetings from 1754, Hertzberg was the author of the famous Mémoire raisonné (“Reasoned Memorandum”) that justified Prussia’s attack on Saxony at the beginning of the Seven Years’ War (1756). Elevated to underse...

...his works shows that much government policy was indeed his own policy. His Traicté de la réformation de la justice (“Treatise on the Reform of Justice”) and his Mémoire sur la nécessité de mettre un terme à la guerre civile (c. 1570; “Memoir on the Necessity of Putting an End to the Civil War”) are the mo...

While still a student, Saussure established his reputation with a brilliant contribution to comparative linguistics, Mémoire sur le système primitif des voyelles dans les langues indo-européennes (1879; “Memoir on the Original System of Vowels in the Indo-European Languages”). In it he explained how the knottiest of vowel alternations in Indo-European,......

...a propagandist, especially in a postrevolutionary society. Khatibi argued for the need to create on the cultural level of the educated masses, avoiding popular demagoguery. His first novel, La Mémoire tatouée (1971; “The Tattooed Memory”), deals semiautobiographically with the typically Maghribian themes of acculturation and decolonization....

...under his domineering leadership, and in January 1611 the queen accepted his resignation. He spent the rest of his life in retirement, writing his Mémoires, otherwise known as the Économies royales (1638). These memoirs are remarkable for their often-reprinted account of the “Great Design,” which Sully attributes to Henry IV and which was a European......

...commands against the Protestants at the sieges of Montauban (1621) and of La Rochelle (1627) and in Lorraine (1635). Cardinal Mazarin gave him a command in the north in 1643. Angoulême’s Mémoires, first published in 1667, were reprinted in the Michaud-Poujoulat collection (1836)....

...and a satirical pamphlet on the Venetian patriciate, especially the powerful Grimani family. His most important work, however, is his vivid autobiography, first published after his death as Mémoires de J. Casanova de Seingalt, 12 vol. (1826–38). (A definitive edition, based on the original manuscripts, was published in 1960–62 with the title Histoire de ma......

...wife, Delphine (née Couturier). The story, in fact that of Madame Bovary, is not the only source of that novel. Another was the manuscript Mémoires de Mme Ludovica, discovered by Gabrielle Leleu in the library of Rouen in 1946. This is an account of the adventures and misfortunes of Louise Pradier (née......

...In her most important books she re-creates past eras and personages, meditating thereby on human destiny, morality, and power. Her masterpiece is Mémoires d’Hadrien (1951; Memoirs of Hadrian), a historical novel constituting the fictionalized memoirs of that 2nd-century Roman emperor. Another historical novel is L’Oeuvre au noir (1968;...

...extravagant lifestyle eventually caused him financial difficulties, however, and he found his only pleasure in his liaison with Mme Récamier, who illumined the rest of his life. He began Mémoires d’outre-tombe (1849–50), his memoir from “beyond the tomb,” written for posthumous publication and perhaps his most lasting monument. This memoir, which...

...Institute of the University of Montreal uses some of the garden’s facilities, and, together, the two institutions form an important botanical research centre. The garden publishes the serial Mémoires du Jardin Botanique de Montréal....

Some of the works of Flaubert’s maturity dealt with subjects on which he had tried to write earlier. At age 16, for instance, he completed the manuscript of Mémoires d’un fou (“Memoirs of a Mad Man”), which recounted his devastating passion for Elisa Schlésinger, 11 years his senior and the wife of a music publisher, whom he had me...

...to the national guard to disperse a riotous crowd led to the massacre of the Champ de Mars on July 17, 1791. Bailly retired on Nov. 16, 1791, and went to Nantes in July 1792, where he composed Mémoires d’un témoin de la Révolution (“Memoirs of a Witness of the Revolution”), an incomplete narrative of the extraordinary events of his public life. L...

...scandale on its first appearance, was to be a more influential achievement. The publication in 1958 of her Mémoires d’une jeune fille rangée (Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter) marked the beginning of a sequence of autobiographical works that tracked the different phases of her own life and the exchanges within it between public...

Mornay also wrote a history of the papacy (1611). His Mémoires et correspondance (collected ed., 12 vol., 1824–25) contains many documents of French Protestant policy....

...by the supremacy of French culture in Europe, he began in that language a history of the liberty of the Swiss, but was dissuaded from continuing it. He and Deyverdun published two volumes of Mémoires littéraires de la Grande Bretagne (1768–69). In 1770 he sought to attract some attention by publishing Critical Observations on the Sixth Book of the Aeneid....

Tillemont’s writings began to appear during his lifetime; the Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire ecclésiastique des six premiers siècles, 16 vol. (1693–1712; “Memoirs Useful for the Ecclesiastical History of the First Six Centuries”), and Histoire des empereurs, 6 vol. (1690–1738; “History of the Emperors...

In 1725 Delisle went to St. Petersburg to establish an astronomical institute. Intending to be there only 4 years, he stayed for 22 and trained the first generation of Russian astronomers. His Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire et au progrès de l’astronomie (1738; “Memoirs Recounting the History and Progress of Astronomy”) gave the first metho...

...Hutchinson, the parliamentarian commander of Nottingham during the Civil Wars. Edmund Ludlow, like Hutchinson one of the regicides, fled to Switzerland in 1660, where he compiled his own Memoirs. These were published only in 1698–99, after Ludlow’s death, and the discovery in 1970 of part of Ludlow’s own manuscript revealed that they had been edited and rewritt...

Bülow’s posthumously published memoirs, Denkwürdigkeiten (ed. by Franz von Stockhammern, 4 vol., 1930–31; Eng. trans. Memoirs, 4 vol., 1931–32), represented an attempt by Bülow to exonerate himself from any blame for the war and for Germany’s collapse; in fact, they reflect his blindness to his own limitations as a statesma...

...Night in Madrid (1848). Between 1852 and 1854 he was again abroad, mostly in Paris, until the outbreak of the Crimean War drove him home again. He then wrote his highly entertaining Zapiski (Memoirs; first published in St. Petersburg, 1887), which give a remarkable self-portrait of his indolent, amiable, hypochondriacal character. His last notable composit...

...reader and could indulge his tastes the more fully since his schooling was most irregular. He attended a day school in Putney and, in 1746, Kingston grammar school, where he was to note in his Memoirs “at the expense of many tears and some blood, [he] purchased a knowledge of Latin syntax.” In 1749 he was admitted to Westminster School. He was taken in 1750 to Bath and......

In his Memoirs Nenadović gives a fascinating account of the course of the first insurrection and of early attempts to establish a native government in Serbia....

...a true spirit of the rebellious young generation. In his novel What Is to Be Done? (1863) Chernyshevsky endeavoured to detect positive aspects in the nihilist philosophy. Similarly, in his Memoirs, Prince Peter Kropotkin, the leading Russian anarchist, defined nihilism as the symbol of struggle against all forms of tyranny, hypocrisy, and artificiality, and for individual freedom....

...scandale on its first appearance, was to be a more influential achievement. The publication in 1958 of her Mémoires d’une jeune fille rangée (Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter) marked the beginning of a sequence of autobiographical works that tracked the different phases of her own life and the exchanges within it between public...

...and Bobby Moresco; story by Paul Haggis for Crash Adapted Screenplay: Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana for Brokeback MountainCinematography: Dion Beebe for Memoirs of a GeishaArt Direction: John Myhre (art direction) and Gretchen Rau (set decoration) for Memoirs of a GeishaOriginal Score: Gustavo Santaolalla for Brokebac...

...and Bobby Moresco; story by Paul Haggis for Crash Adapted Screenplay: Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana for Brokeback MountainCinematography: Dion Beebe for Memoirs of a GeishaArt Direction: John Myhre (art direction) and Gretchen Rau (set decoration) for Memoirs of a GeishaOriginal Score: Gustavo Santaolalla for Brokebac...

...considered to have been the first great novel in Brazilian literature, Memórias de um sargento de milícias (anonymously in parts, 1852–53; as a novel, 1854–55; Memoirs of a Militia Sergeant), his only fictional work. Its realism was not only far in advance of the Romanticism of his Brazilian contemporaries but several years in advance of the Naturalist....

The title of Sanders’s autobiography, Memoirs of a Professional Cad (1960), sums up one of the character types Sanders perfected. His Addison De Witt, a powerful theater critic who knows all about Eve (hence the film’s title), is no exception. The wickedly acerbic De Witt (his surname tells it all) was one of the best of the urbane, slightly sinister characters Sanders portray...

...aux stigmates (1931; “The Child With Stigmata”) recalls the fatalistic mood of Maurice Maeterlinck. Plisnier won the Prix Goncourt for Faux passeports (1937; Memoirs of a Secret Revolutionary) and was the first non-French writer to do so. This set of five novellas about disillusioned militants uses one of his favourite techniques: a first-per...

...The Golden Notebook (1962), in which a woman writer attempts to come to terms with the life of her times through her art, is one of the most complex and the most widely read of her novels. The Memoirs of a Survivor (1975) is a prophetic fantasy that explores psychological and social breakdown. A master of the short story, Lessing has published several collections, including The...

Stendhal’s autobiographical writings, Souvenirs d’égotisme (1892; Memoirs of an Egotist) and Vie de Henri Brulard (1890; The Life of Henri Brulard), are among his most original achievements. Behind their vivacity and charming digressions, they reveal the uneasiness of a tender-hearted and fundamentally insecure human being wearing various masks. ...

...Samuel Titmarsh and the Great Hoggarty Diamond (1841), which was an earlier version of the young married life described in Philip; and The Luck of Barry Lyndon (1844; revised as The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon, 1856), which is a historical novel and his first full-length work. Barry Lyndon is an excellent, speedy, satirical narrative until the final sadistic scene...

Gozzi also wrote a vivid, if immodest, autobiography, Memorie inutili (1797; The Memoirs of Carlo Gozzi)....

...extravagant lifestyle eventually caused him financial difficulties, however, and he found his only pleasure in his liaison with Mme Récamier, who illumined the rest of his life. He began Mémoires d’outre-tombe (1849–50), his memoir from “beyond the tomb,” written for posthumous publication and perhaps his most lasting monument. This memoir, which...

Stendhal’s autobiographical writings, Souvenirs d’égotisme (1892; Memoirs of an Egotist) and Vie de Henri Brulard (1890; The Life of Henri Brulard), are among his most original achievements. Behind their vivacity and charming digressions, they reveal the uneasiness of a tender-hearted and fundamentally insecure human being wearing various masks. ...

German Jewish diarist whose seven books of memoirs (Zikhroynes), written in Yiddish with passages in Hebrew, reveal much about the history, culture, and everyday life of contemporary Jews in central Europe. Written not for publication but as a family chronicle and legacy for her children and their descendants, the diaries were begun in 1691. Glikl completed the first five sections......

...In her most important books she re-creates past eras and personages, meditating thereby on human destiny, morality, and power. Her masterpiece is Mémoires d’Hadrien (1951; Memoirs of Hadrian), a historical novel constituting the fictionalized memoirs of that 2nd-century Roman emperor. Another historical novel is L’Oeuvre au noir (1968;...

...in New York, where he devoted himself to teaching Italian language and literature at Columbia College and promoting Italian cultural activities. His four-volume Memorie (1823–27; Memoirs of Lorenzo Da Ponte), although mainly concerned with portraying the author as a victim of fate and enemies, is valuable for its portrait of early 19th-century America....

The other satire in which Arbuthnot had an important share was the Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus, a mocking exposure of pedantry, first published in the 1741 edition of Pope’s works but largely written as early as 1713–14 by the members of the Scriblerus Club. The other members of the club acknowledged Arbuthnot as the chief contributor and guiding spirit of the work. Arbuthn...

...Brief Lives. After 1688, secret histories of the reigns of Charles II and James II were popular, of which the outstanding instance, gossipy but often reliable, is the Memoirs of the Count Grammont, compiled in French by Anthony Hamilton and first translated into English in 1714. A soberer but still free-speaking two-volume History of My......

Constable achieved a reasonable reputation during his lifetime as a respected and significant landscape painter. After Constable’s death, Charles Robert Leslie’s Memoirs of the Life of John Constable (1843), based on Constable’s edited correspondence, extended his reputation, laying out the fictional life of a sincere and dedicated artist struggling ag...

Kennedy’s major work of nonfiction is Memoirs of the Life of William Wirt (1849), about the man who was an attorney for the prosecution in the trial of Aaron Burr for treason. He also coedited the satirical magazine Red Book (1818–19) and wrote political articles for the National Intelligencer. His novels were his main achievement, however; although their style w...

Discovered in the 19th century, Pasek’s Pamiętniki (1836; Memoirs of the Polish Baroque: The Writings of Jan Chryzostom Pasek) is a lively, humorous work that gives a vivid description of the life of an independent, resourceful man of action. In it he relates tales of the 17th-century Swedish and Muscovite wars, the catastrophic last years of the reign of Ki...

Another precursor was Louis-Sébastien Mercier’s L’An deux mille quatre cent quarante (c. 1771; “The Year 2440”; Memoirs of the Year Two Thousand Five Hundred), a work of French political speculation set in a 25th-century utopian society that worships science. While many writers had depicted some future utop...

...To what extent Plato’s life of Socrates keeps to strict biographical truth cannot now be ascertained (though the account of Socrates given by Plato’s contemporary the soldier Xenophon, in his Memorabilia, suggests a reasonable faithfulness) and he does not offer a full-scale biography. Yet in his two consummate biographical dialogues—The Apology (recounting th...

...monophysite tenet of a single, divine nature in Christ by maintaining Christ’s dual (human and divine) natures. A late-5th-century chronicle, Historia persecutionis Vandalorum (1535; The Memorable and Tragical History of the Persecution in Africke) by Victor, bishop of Vita, commends Diadochus’ catholic doctrine and indicates that he was abducted by marauding Vandals...

...he made a speech to the then 27 European members of the League in which he proposed a federal union. Seven months later, on May 1, 1930, he laid before them a closely and cogently argued “Memorandum from the French Government on the Organization of a Regime of European Federal Union.” The text was elegantly worded; its actual author was the secretary-general of the French......

...in its absurdist, satirical examination of bureaucratic routines and their dehumanizing effects. In his best-known play, Vyrozumění (1965; The Memorandum), an incomprehensible artificial language is imposed on a large bureaucratic enterprise, causing the breakdown of human relationships and their replacement by unscrupulous......

...(Santiago de Compostela in Spain). No single formal design characterizes this type, but the theme of the domed or central-plan structure (round, square, polygon, Greek cross, etc.) connects the memoria of Asia (the Indian stupa, Chinese pagoda), pagan antiquity (the Pantheon in Rome), and Christianity (the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem). The significance of the form is......

...Living to Tell the Tale), which focuses on his first 30 years. He returned to fiction with Memoria de mis putas tristes (2004; Memories of My Melancholy Whores), a novel about a lonely man who finally discovers the meaning of love when he hires a virginal prostitute to celebrate his 90th birthday....

any device for aiding the memory. Named for Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory in Greek mythology, mnemonics are also called memoria technica. The principle is to create in the mind an artificial structure that incorporates unfamiliar ideas or, especially, a series of dissociated ideas that by themselves are difficult to remember. Ideally, the structure is designed so...

The years went by, bringing bereavements. The death of Foch saddened him, for he had admired him. But the posthumous publication of the Marshal’s Mémorial aroused in him bitterness and indignation. With sadness but with pride, he answered it in his own unfinished memoirs, Grandeurs et misères d’une victoire (1930; Grandeur and Misery of Victory, 193...

The monumental public-works projects of the ancient world demonstrate a remarkable degree of human organization in the absence of power and machinery. The Great Pyramid at Giza, built about 2500 bce, before the Egyptians knew the pulley or had wheeled vehicles, covers 13 acres (5.3 hectares) and contains the staggering total of 2,300,000 colossal blocks of granite and limestone weigh...

Located near the Tomb of the Unknowns is the Memorial Amphitheater, which was built through the efforts of the Grand Army of the Republic (an organization of Civil War veterans from the Union forces) as a gathering place for Memorial Day services. The holiday had originated at Arlington in 1868. The structure was dedicated on May 15, 1920, and since then every U.S. president has visited the......

in the United States, holiday (last Monday in May) honouring those who have died in the nation’s wars. It originated during the American Civil War (1861–64) when citizens placed flowers on the graves of those who had been killed in battle. A number of places claimed to have been the birthplace of the holiday. Among them, Columbus, Mississippi, held a formal observa...

...Forbidden to enter England, he traveled in Germany and Belgium until he was allowed to return to France after the death of Napoleon in 1822. Recovering his manuscript, he published his Mémorial de Sainte-Hélène (1823), which at once became extremely popular. A deputy for Saint-Denis (1831–34; 1835–39), he sat with the extreme left, opposing the......