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court (sports)
The association croquet court is rectangular, 35 yards (31.95 m) long by 28 yards (25.56 m) wide, and is defined by a boundary line. A yard line runs around the court one yard inside of the boundary line. Portions of the yard line, 13 yards (11.9 m) long, are the balk lines, from either of which each player starts his first turn. An ordinary turn consists of one stroke; but if that stroke is a......
court (law)
a person or body of persons having judicial authority to hear and resolve disputes in civil, criminal, ecclesiastical, or military cases. The word court, which originally meant simply an enclosed place, also denotes the chamber, hall, building, or other place where judicial proceedings are held. (See also military law; arbit...
court (architecture)
in architecture, an open area surrounded by buildings or walls. There have been such courts from the earliest recorded times and in all civilizations. In medieval Europe the court was a characteristic adjunct of all major domestic buildings, as the cloister of a monastery, the ward of a castle, and the quadrangle of a college or hospital....
court (biology)
in animal behaviour, communal area in which two or more males of a species perform courtship displays. Lek behaviour, also called arena behaviour, is found in a number of insects, birds, and mammals. Varying degrees of interaction occur between the males, from virtually none to closely cooperative dancing. Females visit the ...
court (royal entourage)
Il cortegiano (written 1513–18 and published in Venice in 1528) is a discussion of the qualities of the ideal courtier, put into the mouths of such friends as Pietro Bembo, Ludovico da Canossa, Bernardo da Bibbiena, and Gasparo Pallavicino. The dialogue claims to represent conversations at the court of Urbino on four successive evenings in 1507, with the duchess Elisabetta Gonzaga......
court action (law)
Human rights organizations complained about the increasing number of lawsuits being brought against the political opposition. One notable case involved a speech made by Hun Sen in April in which he allegedly attacked parliamentarian Mu Sochua, using phrases with sexual innuendo. Mu Sochua, a former minister of women’s affairs, sued Hun Sen for defamation for a nominal amount, 500 riels ($0....
Court and Parliament of Beasts, The (work by Casti)
...librettos, chiefly remembered for the verse satires Poema tartaro (1787; “Tartar Poem”) and Gli animali parlanti (1802, “The Talking Animals”; Eng. trans. The Court and Parliament of Beasts, 1819)....
Court, Antoine (French minister)
minister and itinerant preacher in the Reformed church who restored Protestantism to France after a period of persecution begun by King Louis XIV’s revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, which had guaranteed the religious and civil liberties...
court ballet (dance)
The Ballet comique launched the species known as ballet de cour, in which the monarchs themselves participated. The idealized dances represented the supreme order that France itself, suffering from internal wars, lacked so badly. The steps were those of the social dances of the times, but scholars became aware of how these native materials might be used to propagate the Greek......
court baron (medieval court)
(“baron’s court”), medieval English manorial court, or halimoot, that any lord could hold for and among his tenants. By the 13th century the steward of the manor, a lawyer, usually presided; originally, the suitors of the court (i.e., the doomsmen), who were bound to att...
court bond (insurance)
Court bonds include several different types of surety bonds. Fiduciary bonds are required for court-appointed officials entrusted with managing the property of others; executors of estates and receivers in bankruptcy are frequently required to post fiduciary bonds....
court card (playing card)
Ranks are indicated by numerals from 1 to 10 on “spot cards.” In addition, three court cards designated jack (formerly knave), queen, and king are notionally equivalent to 11, 12, and 13, respectively, though actually marked J, Q, and K....
court cupboard (furniture)
sideboard with three tiers, used mainly for displaying plate and therefore a focal point of the interior. It was a variant of the buffet and was fashionable throughout the 16th century and during the first three-quarters of the 17th, more commonly in northern than in southern Europe. Some examples were fitted in the upper stage with a cupboard, the front corners of which were se...
court dance (dance)
...The rustic choral round had strong pantomimic leanings and unpolished expressions of joy and passion. And while the choral rounds almost always were executed to the singing of the participants, the court dances of the knights generally were accompanied by instrumental playing, especially of fiddles, and when there was singing, it emerged from the spectators rather than the performers....
Court de Gébelin, Antoine (French scholar and writer)
French scholar, philologist, and prose writer, who is remembered for an unfinished study of ancient language and mythology and for championing the causes of Protestantism and of American independence from Great Britain....
court dodge (English game)
Dodgeball is similar to an ancient Greek game played with seashells, called ostrakinda. Court dodge was a similar game played in 16th-century England....
Court for Divorce and Matrimonial Causes (British law)
Family courts were first established in the United States in 1910, when they were called domestic relations courts. The idea itself is much older. In the 19th century, the Court for Divorce and Matrimonial Causes was established in England to relieve the ecclesiastical courts of the burden of such cases....
Court, Hazel (British actress)
Feb. 10, 1926Sutton Coldfield, Warwickshire [now part of Birmingham], Eng.April 15, 2008near Lake Tahoe, Calif.British actress who shrieked her way to an enduring fan base and the sobriquet “queen of scream” for her work in such Hammer studio cult horror films as The Curse ...
court jester (comic entertainer)
a comic entertainer whose madness or imbecility, real or pretended, made him a source of amusement and gave him license to abuse and poke fun at even the most exalted of his patrons. Professional fools flourished from the days of the Egyptian pharaohs until well into the 18th century, finding a place in societies as diverse as that of the Aztecs of Mexico and the courts of medieval Europe. Often d...
court leet (English law)
an English criminal court for the punishment of small offenses. The use of the word leet, denoting a territorial and a jurisdictional area, spread throughout England in the 14th century, and the term court leet came to mean a court in which a private lord assumed, for his own profit, jurisdiction that had previously been exe...
court leets (English law)
an English criminal court for the punishment of small offenses. The use of the word leet, denoting a territorial and a jurisdictional area, spread throughout England in the 14th century, and the term court leet came to mean a court in which a private lord assumed, for his own profit, jurisdiction that had previously been exe...
Court, Margaret (Australian athlete)
Australian tennis player who dominated women’s competition in the 1960s. She won 66 Grand Slam championships, more than any other woman, and in 1970 became the second woman (after Maureen Connolly in 1953) to win the Grand Slam of tennis singles: Wimbledon, the U.S. Open, the Australian Open, and ...
court masked dance (Japanese dance)
repertoire of dances of the Japanese Imperial court, derived from traditional dance forms imported from China, Korea, India, and Southeast Asia. The dances comprise two basic forms: sahō no mai (“dances of the left”), accompanied by tōgaku (music derived mainly from Chinese forms); ...
court music
The only music that can be discussed in a survey of a repertoire so large is the more official courtly music. Ritual presentations are generally divided into two types: so-called standing music, performed without strings and apparently in the courtyard; and sitting music, for a full ensemble played inside a palace. There are lists of the names of some pieces in these categories with their......
Court of Chivalry (British history)
In 1954 the ancient Court of Chivalry was revived. This was once the court of the Lord High Constable and the Earl Marshal, and it dealt with matters relating to nobility, knighthood, and gentility. Although it was concerned also with matters of military discipline, it was not the forerunner of the modern court-martial in the armed forces. The court gradually declined in the 17th and 18th......
Court of Final Appeal (Hong Kong legal body)
Civil and criminal law is derived generally from that of the United Kingdom, and the Basic Law states that this system is to be maintained. The highest court in the judiciary is the Court of Final Appeal, headed by a chief justice. This is followed by the High Court (headed by a chief judge) and by district, magistrate, and special courts. The chief executive appoints all judges, although......
Court of Great Sessions (Welsh law)
In 1543 the Courts of Great Sessions were also created, modeled on the practice already used in the three counties that, since 1284, had formed the principality of North Wales (Anglesey, Caernarvonshire, and Merioneth), but with 12 counties now grouped into four judicial circuits and the 13th, Monmouthshire, linked with the Oxford circuit. The Great Sessions remained the higher courts of Wales......
Court of Justice of the European Communities
the judicial branch of the European Union (EU). Its headquarters are in Luxembourg. The ECJ originated in the individual courts of justice established in the 1950s for the European Coal and Steel Community, the European Economic Community, and the European Atomic Energy Communit...
Court of Poor Men’s Causes (English law)
in England, one of the prerogative courts that grew out of the king’s council (Curia Regis) in the late 15th century. The court’s primary function was to deal with civil petitions from poor people and the king’s servants....
Court of Quarter Sessions (law)
formerly, in England and Wales, sessions of a court held four times a year by a justice of the peace to hear criminal charges as well as civil and criminal appeals. The term also applied to a court held before a recorder, or judge, in a borough having a quarter sessions separate from that of the county in which the borough ...
Court of Session (Scottish law)
...divided among the sheriffdoms. The most serious offenses triable by jury are reserved for the High Court of Justiciary, the supreme court for criminal cases. The judges are the same as those of the Court of Session, the supreme court for civil cases. An appeal may be directed to the House of Lords from the Court of Session but not from the High Court of Justiciary. The Court of Session,......
Court of the State Security (French law)
...these courts are subject to the control of the Court of Cassation, as are the specialized professional courts, such as courts for industrial conciliation, courts-martial, and, from 1963 to 1981, the Court of State Security, which tried felonies and misdemeanours against national security. Very exceptionally, in cases of high treason, a High Court of Justice (Cour de Justice de la......
court order (law)
in civil proceedings, order of a court requiring a party to do or not to do a specified act or acts....
court reporting
...letters or groups of letters phonetically represent syllables, words, phrases, and punctuation marks. The machine—mainly the commercial Stenotype, or Stenograph—which is commonly used in court reporting, is virtually noiseless and can be operated at speeds of more than 250 words per minute. It consists of letter keys, a space key, a correction key, and a numeral bar that operates....
Court, Richard (Australian politician)
...inherited the negative fallout of the WA Inc enterprise and its associated scandals, however, and, in consequence, she and Labor lost the 1993 election. A Liberal-National Party alliance headed by Richard Court, the son of the former premier, governed Western Australia into the early 21st century. In tandem with political dynamics at the national level, the policies of the Court government......
Court school (Carolingian art)
...members of both of which worked for the Emperor and his court, were to determine the overall development of painting in northern Europe for the next three centuries. One group, the so-called Court school, produced a series of splendidly rich Gospel books. Their decoration is extremely inventive, even witty, and the figures, with carefully modeled limbs issuing from dense carapaces of......
court school (education)
Schools conducted in royal palaces taught not only the curriculum of the maktabs but also social and cultural studies designed to prepare the pupil for higher education, for service in the government of the caliphs, or for polite society. The instructors were called muʾaddibs, or instructors in good manners. The exact content of the curriculum was specified by the ruler,......
Court, Sir Charles (Australian politician)
The mineral boom came in the 1960s, favouring the fortunes of a series of Liberal-Country party ministries (1959–71; 1974–83), within which Sir Charles Court (minister for industrial development and the northwest 1959–71; premier 1974–82) was the most dynamic figure. In 1960 the federal government lifted an embargo on the export of iron ore (imposed in 1938 out of......
court sword (weapon)
...brocaded coats, which replaced that of the doublet and hose, top boots, and cloaks. As the long, trailing rapier was unsuited to the new form of dress, fashion decreed the wearing of a light, short court sword. The French style set in throughout Europe as the Italian style had done earlier....
court tennis (sport)
racket sport that is descended from and almost identical to the medieval tennis game jeu de paume (“game of the palm”). Real tennis has been played since the Middle Ages, but the game has become almost completely obscured by its own descendant, lawn te...
Court Theatre (theatre, London, United Kingdom)
...and in 1900 he joined the experimental Stage Society. His first major play, The Marrying of Ann Leete (1900), was produced by the society. In 1904 he became manager of the Court Theatre with J.E. Vedrenne and introduced the public to the plays of Henrik Ibsen, Maurice Maeterlinck, John Galsworthy, John Masefield, and Gilbert Murray’s translations from Greek. His....
court theatre
...of the Renaissance court masque (an allegorical dramatic performance featuring music and especially dancing), which was also presented only once. Although each production belonged to a tradition of courtly entertainment, masques of the 16th and 17th centuries became increasingly lavish and novel. A court official was responsible for the overall piece, much in the manner of the later theatre......
court tomb (megalithic tomb)
...Ireland began about 3000 bc. As in Britain, the most widespread evidence of early farming communities is long-barrow burial. The main Irish long-barrow series consists of megalithic tombs called court tombs because an oval or semicircular open space, or court, inset into the end of the long barrow precedes the burial chamber. There are more than 300 of these court tombs. They occu...
Court Wit (English literary history)
Among the subjects for gossip in London, the group known as the court wits held a special place. Their conduct of their lives provoked censure from many, but among them were poets of some distinction who drew upon the example of gentlemen-authors of the preceding generation (especially Sir John Suckling, Abraham Cowley, and Edmund Waller, the last two of whom themselves survived into the......
court-martial (military law)
military court for hearing charges brought against members of the armed forces or others within its jurisdiction; also, the legal proceeding of such a military court. In ancient times, soldiers generally forfeited any rights that they might have had as civilians and were completely subject to the will of their military comma...
court-martials (military law)
military court for hearing charges brought against members of the armed forces or others within its jurisdiction; also, the legal proceeding of such a military court. In ancient times, soldiers generally forfeited any rights that they might have had as civilians and were completely subject to the will of their military comma...
Court-Packing Plan (United States history)
...federal government authority to regulate industry or to undertake social and economic reform. Roosevelt, confident of the legality of all the measures, proposed early in 1937 a reorganization of the court. This proposal met with vehement opposition and ultimate defeat, but the court meanwhile ruled in favour of the remaining contested legislation. Despite resistance from business and other......
Courtauld Institute Galleries (museum, London, United Kingdom)
museum administered by the University of London and by the Samuel Courtauld Trust to promote the study and research of art history. The galleries are located in Somerset House, the Strand, in the London borough of Westminster....
Courtauld Institute of Art Galleries (museum, London, United Kingdom)
museum administered by the University of London and by the Samuel Courtauld Trust to promote the study and research of art history. The galleries are located in Somerset House, the Strand, in the London borough of Westminster....
Courtaulds Ltd. (British company)
In 1950 the British firm Courtaulds Ltd. began to develop triacetate fibres, which were subsequently produced on a commercial scale after methylene chloride solvent became available. Courtaulds and British Celanese marketed a triacetate fibre under the trademark Tricel. In the United States triacetate was introduced under the trademarked name Arnel. Triacetate fabrics became known for their......
courtaut (musical instrument)
Renaissance-era musical instrument and predecessor of the bassoon, with a double-back bore cut from a single piece of wood and built in sizes from treble to double bass (sometimes called the double curtal...
Courteen, Sir William (English merchant)
English merchant and shipowner noted especially for his enterprises in the West Indies and the East Indies....
Courteline, Georges (French author)
French writer and dramatist whose humorous work is a brilliant social anatomy of the late 19th-century middle and lower-middle classes....
Courten, Sir William (English merchant)
English merchant and shipowner noted especially for his enterprises in the West Indies and the East Indies....
Courtenay (British Columbia, Canada)
city, on the east coast of Vancouver Island, adjacent to the town of Comox, at the head of Comox Harbour, southwestern British Columbia, Canada. Named for Captain George William Courtenay of the Royal Navy, who sur...
Courtenay, house of (French royal house)
...dukes of Burgundy (1032–1361 and 1363–1477); the Capetian house of Dreux, a line of dukes of Brittany (1213–1488); three Capetian emperors of Constantinople (1216–61), of the house of Courtenay; various counts of Artois (from 1237), with controversial succession; the first Capetian house of Anjou, with kings and queens of Naples (1266–1435) and kings of Hungar...
Courtenay, Sir Tom (British actor)
British film drama, released in 1962, that was directed by Tony Richardson and featured the impressive screen debut of Tom Courtenay....
Courtenay, William (archbishop of Canterbury)
archbishop of Canterbury, leader of the English church and moderating influence in the political disputes of King Richard II of England....
courtesy literature (literature)
literature comprising courtesy books and similar pieces. Though it was essentially a book of etiquette, the typical courtesy book was in fact much more than a guide to manners. It concerned the establishment of a philosophy of life, a code of principles and ethical behaviour by which to live....
Courthope, William John (British literary critic)
literary critic who believed that poetry expresses a nation’s history. His History of English Poetry (6 vol., 1895–1910) traces the development of English poetry in relation to the age in which it was written. He also continued Whitwell Elwin’s edition of Alexander Pope’s poetical works and wrote ...
Courthouse Towers (geological formation, Utah, United States)
...4,000 and 5,600 feet (1,200 and 1,700 metres). The area’s red sandstone has eroded into a variety of unusual shapes, including pinnacles, windows, and arches. Notable features are Balanced Rock, Courthouse Towers (with spires that resemble skyscrapers), The Windows Section, Delicate Arch, Fiery Furnace (so named because it glows in the setting sun), and Devils Garden. Landscape Arch,......
Courtier, The (work by Castiglione)
...first published with his Rime in 1558, and first translated into English by Robert Peterson in 1576, Galateo differs from an earlier etiquette manual, Baldassare Castiglione’s Il cortegiano (“The Courtier”), in being more concerned with the details of correct behaviour in polite society than with courtly etiquette. Like Il cortegiano, Della Casa...
Courtiers’ Trifles (work by Map)
It was as a writer rather than an ecclesiastic, however, that Map came to be remembered. Between 1181 and 1192 he composed De nugis curialium (Courtiers’ Trifles). A miscellany written in Latin, it contains legends, folklore, and tales as well as gossip, observations, and reflections, and it reveals the author to have been knowledgeable and shrewd and a...
Courtin, Jacques (French business executive)
Aug. 6, 1921 Paris, FranceMarch 23, 2007ParisFrench business executive who founded (1954) the Clarins Institute of Beauty, a Paris skin-care salon that grew into the luxury cosmetics and perfume firm Clarins Group, with sales of more than €900 million (about $1 billion) and subsidiar...
Courtin-Clarins, Jacques (French business executive)
Aug. 6, 1921 Paris, FranceMarch 23, 2007ParisFrench business executive who founded (1954) the Clarins Institute of Beauty, a Paris skin-care salon that grew into the luxury cosmetics and perfume firm Clarins Group, with sales of more than €900 million (about $1 billion) and subsidiar...
courting chair (furniture)
wide chair capable of, if not necessarily designed for, accommodating two people, whose intentions are implied in the name. The makers of early examples, in the late 17th and the 18th centuries, were not motivated by the amorous considerations with which later generations have credited them; their concern was allowing more space for the ample dresses of the period....
Courting Danger (work by Marble and Leatherman)
...Tennis Hall of Fame. She was the winner of 12 U.S. Open and 5 Wimbledon titles. She wrote the autobiographies The Road to Wimbledon (1946) and Courting Danger (1991; cowritten with Dale Leatherman), the latter of which detailed her time spent as a spy for the U.S. government during World War II....
courtly education (education history)
...of political and military power. France’s leadership was also demonstrated in the cultural field, including education. Some of the most important developments in France included the promotion of courtly education and the involvement of religious orders and congregations in the education of the poor....
courtly love (literature)
in the later Middle Ages, a highly conventionalized code that prescribed the behaviour of ladies and their lovers. Amour courtois also provided the theme of an extensive courtly medieval literature that began with the troubadour poetry of Aquitaine and Provence in southern France toward the end of the 11th century. It constituted a revolution in thought and feeling, the effects of which are...
courtly music
The only music that can be discussed in a survey of a repertoire so large is the more official courtly music. Ritual presentations are generally divided into two types: so-called standing music, performed without strings and apparently in the courtyard; and sitting music, for a full ensemble played inside a palace. There are lists of the names of some pieces in these categories with their......
courtly romance (literature)
Courtly romance, a new narrative form in the 12th century, was the major vehicle for Middle High German Classicism. The earliest courtly narratives were “romances of antiquity.” They show Achilles, Hector, Ulysses, and Aeneas behaving like 12th-century chivalric knights, fighting boldly but with noble restraint on horseback with lances, wondering in long inner monologues whether......
Courtneidge, Dame Cicely (British actress)
British actress who played musical comedy and revue, both in a celebrated partnership with her husband, Jack Hulbert, and as a highly talented comedienne in her own right....
Courtney of Penwith, Leonard Henry Courtney, Baron (British politician)
radical British politician who gained fame as an advocate of proportional representation in Parliament and as an opponent of imperialism and militarism....
Courtois, Bernard (French chemist)
French chemist who discovered the element iodine....
Courtrai (Belgium)
municipality, Flanders Region, western Belgium. It lies along the Leie (Lys) River and the Leie-Scheldt Canal. The Roman settlement of Cortracum was established there, and in the 7th century St. Eloi erected a chapel on the site of the present St. Martin’s Church. Chartered in 1190, Kortrijk reached its peak in the Middle Ages as a ce...
Courtrai, Battle of (European history)
(July 11, 1302), military engagement on the outskirts of Kortrijk in Flanders (now in Belgium) in which an untrained Flemish infantry militia, consisting mainly of members of the craft guilds (notably that of the weavers) defeated a professional force of French and patrician Flemish cavalry, thus checking the growth of French control over the ...
Courts Act (United Kingdom [1971])
...appeals. The term also applied to a court held before a recorder, or judge, in a borough having a quarter sessions separate from that of the county in which the borough was situated. Under the Courts Act of 1971, all of the quarter-sessions courts were abolished, and their work was assumed by a system of courts called the Crown Court....
courts leet (English law)
an English criminal court for the punishment of small offenses. The use of the word leet, denoting a territorial and a jurisdictional area, spread throughout England in the 14th century, and the term court leet came to mean a court in which a private lord assumed, for his own profit, jurisdiction that had previously been exe...
courts-martial (military law)
military court for hearing charges brought against members of the armed forces or others within its jurisdiction; also, the legal proceeding of such a military court. In ancient times, soldiers generally forfeited any rights that they might have had as civilians and were completely subject to the will of their military comma...
courtship (behaviour)
in animals, behaviour that results in mating and eventual reproduction. Courtship may be rather simple, involving a small number of chemical, visual, or auditory stimuli; or it may be a highly complex series of acts by two or more individuals, using several modes of communication....
courtship coloration (biology)
Courtship colorations function to attract and arouse a mate and to aid in the reproductive isolation of species. Although by no means universal, it is common, at least among vertebrates, to find that the male of the species has the brightest courtship colours. Bright colours are usually accompanied by movements and display postures that further enhance the display coloration. In some species a......
Courtship Customs in Postwar Spain (essay by Martín Gaite)
...consequences of social conditions in Franco society on individuals. She also documented these conditions in essays such as Usos amorosos de la postguerra española (1987; Courtship Customs in Postwar Spain), which describes the ideological indoctrination to which the Falange subjected girls and young women. Although he published his first novel in 1943, Gonzalo.....
courtship dance (behaviour)
Dance occasions for formalized flirtation between the sexes before marriage are common, as in the Sikya dance of the Akan of Ghana. The Bororo of western Cameroon celebrate the coming of the dry season with a dance for young men and women, and couples pair off at the climax of the performance. Among the Nupe of Nigeria ribald songs and joking insults between the sexes have replaced performances......
Courtship of Miles Standish, The (poem by Longfellow)
...Aldens. One claimed he was the first Pilgrim to set foot on Plymouth Rock. The other, which arose from a legend transmitted orally in the family, was dramatized in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem “The Courtship of Miles Standish” (1858). In that legend, Alden presumably won the hand of Priscilla after first wooing her for his friend Standish. Because of the story, Priscil...
Courtyard Crisis (Swedish history)
During the Courtyard Crisis in February 1914, Gustav declared his support for demands that Sweden strengthen its defenses. He was accused of overstepping his authority, but, with wide popular support for his actions, he was able to force the resignation of the Liberal government that had decreased military expenditure. He appointed a Conservative government under the leadership of Hjalmar......
Courtyard Speech (Swedish history)
During the Courtyard Crisis in February 1914, Gustav declared his support for demands that Sweden strengthen its defenses. He was accused of overstepping his authority, but, with wide popular support for his actions, he was able to force the resignation of the Liberal government that had decreased military expenditure. He appointed a Conservative government under the leadership of Hjalmar......
courtyard theatre (theatrical structure)
any temporary or permanent theatre structure established in an inn’s courtyard in England or a residential courtyard in Spain. Under Elizabeth I, many plays were performed in the courtyards of London inns, with the first-recorded innyard performance in 1557. By 1576 there were five courtyard theatres in London, but th...
Courtyer of Count Baldesser Castilio, The (translation by Hoby)
...continent. Given court employments in England under King Edward VI, he went into exile during the reign of Mary I. While in exile he translated Castiglione’s work, which he published as The Courtyer of Count Baldesser Castilio in 1561. The influence of Hoby’s translation in England was enormous, not only on the social pattern of life at court but on such writers as......
“Courtyer, The” (work by Castiglione)
...first published with his Rime in 1558, and first translated into English by Robert Peterson in 1576, Galateo differs from an earlier etiquette manual, Baldassare Castiglione’s Il cortegiano (“The Courtier”), in being more concerned with the details of correct behaviour in polite society than with courtly etiquette. Like Il cortegiano, Della Casa...
Courveille, Jean-Claude (Roman Catholic priest)
a Roman Catholic religious congregation founded in 1816 in the diocese of Belley, Fr., by Jean-Claude Courveille and Jean-Claude-Marie Colin to undertake all ministerial works—parishes, schools, hospital chaplaincies, and the foreign missions—while stressing the virtues of the Virgin Mary. Its foreign missions, the acceptance of which was the chief reason for its approval by Rome in....
courvet (horsemanship)
...the impulse being upward; the passage, high-stepping trot in which the impulse is more upward than forward; the levade, in which the horse stands balanced on its hindlegs, its forelegs drawn in; the courvet, which is a jump forward in the levade position; and the croupade, ballotade, and capriole, a variety of spectacular airs in which the horse jumps and lands again in the same spot....
couscous (food)
North African dish of semolina and accompanying foods. The semolina grains (the endosperm of Durum wheat) are prepared in a couscousière, a large covered pot with a lower compartment in which a stew or broth cooks and an upper portion with a pierced bottom in which the couscous steams. The grains must be sprinkled with liquid, stirred to separate the clumps, and s...
couscousière (cooking vessel)
North African dish of semolina and accompanying foods. The semolina grains (the endosperm of Durum wheat) are prepared in a couscousière, a large covered pot with a lower compartment in which a stew or broth cooks and an upper portion with a pierced bottom in which the couscous steams. The grains must be sprinkled with liquid, stirred to separate the clumps, and steamed several......
“Couseuse, La” (painting by Léger)
...Cubist style entailed fracturing forms into multiple intersecting planes; Léger adapted their techniques to break down forms into tubular shapes. In 1909 he produced The Seamstress, in which he reduced his colours to a combination of blue-gray and buff and rendered the human body as a mass of slabs and cylinders that resembled a robot. His style was aptly......
cousin (anthropology)
...with a niece or nephew about half the chance of common inheritance of a pair of siblings; thus, aunts and uncles may be termed consanguineous kin of the second degree. Following this logic, first cousins who have one-eighth of their genes in common are referred to as consanguineous kin of the third degree....
Cousin Angelica (film by Saura)
...three monsters of Spain: perversion of religiosity, repressed sexuality, and the authoritarian spirit.” His La prima Angélica (1973; Cousin Angelica) was the first Spanish film to present the Spanish Civil War from the viewpoint of the losing Republican cause. It was shown uncensored but provoked bomb attacks in Spanish......
Cousin Bette (work by Balzac)
novel by Honoré de Balzac, published in 1846 as La Cousine Bette. The novel, part of Balzac’s epic series La Comèdie humaine (The Human Comedy), is considered one of his two final masterpieces. Thematically a testament to female vindictiveness, Cousin Bette recounts the story of Lisbeth Fischer, an embittered, u...
Cousin, Jean, the Elder (French artist)
French painter and engraver whose rich artistic contribution also included tapestry, stained-glass design, sculpture, and book illustration....
Cousin, Jean, the Younger (French artist)
artist and craftsman noted for his painting, engraving, stained glass, sculpture, and book illustration, who, like his father, achieved fame for his versatility and independent style....
Cousin Pons (novel by Balzac)
novel by Honoré de Balzac, published in 1847 as Le Cousin Pons. One of the novels that makes up Balzac’s series La Comédie humaine (The Human Comedy), Cousin Pons is often paired with La Cousine Bette under the title Les Parents pauvres (“The Poor Relations”). One of the last and grea...