title: Susan Sontag

text: At 17, Sontag married writer Philip Rieff, who was a sociology instructor at the University of Chicago, after a 10-day courtship; their marriage lasted eight years. While studying at Chicago, Sontag attended a summer school taught by the sociologist who became a friend and subsequently influenced her study of German thinkers. Upon completing her Chicago degree, Sontag taught freshman English at the University of Connecticut for the 1952–53 academic year. She attended Harvard University for graduate school, initially studying literature with Perry Miller and Harry Levin before moving into philosophy and theology under Paul Tillich, Jacob Taubes, Raphael Demos, and Morton White. After completing her Master of Arts in philosophy, she began doctoral research into metaphysics, ethics, Greek philosophy and Continental philosophy and theology at Harvard. The philosopher Herbert Marcuse lived with Sontag and Rieff for a year while working on his 1955 book "Eros and Civilization". Sontag researched for Rieff's 1959 study "" before their divorce in 1958, and contributed to the book to such an extent that she has been considered an unofficial co-author. The couple had a son, David Rieff, who went on to be his mother's editor at Farrar, Straus and Giroux, as well as a writer in his own right.


title: Susan Sontag

text: Sontag was awarded an American Association of University Women's fellowship for the 1957–1958 academic year to St Anne's College, Oxford, where she traveled without her husband and son. There, she had classes with Iris Murdoch, Stuart Hampshire, A. J. Ayer, and H. L. A. Hart while also attending the B. Phil seminars of J. L. Austin and the lectures of Isaiah Berlin. Oxford did not appeal to her, however, and she transferred after Michaelmas term of 1957 to the University of Paris (the Sorbonne). In Paris, Sontag socialized with expatriate artists and academics including Allan Bloom, Jean Wahl, Alfred Chester, Harriet Sohmers, and María Irene Fornés. Sontag remarked that her time in Paris was, perhaps, the most important period of her life. It certainly provided the basis of her long intellectual and artistic association with the culture of France. She moved to New York in 1959 to live with Fornés for the next seven years, regaining custody of her son and teaching at universities while her literary reputation grew.


title: Susan Sontag

text: While working on her stories, Sontag taught philosophy at Sarah Lawrence College and City University of New York and the Philosophy of Religion with Jacob Taubes, Susan Taubes, Theodor Gaster, and Hans Jonas, in the Religion Department at Columbia University from 1960 to 1964. She held a writing fellowship at Rutgers University for 1964 to 1965 before ending her relationship with academia in favor of full-time freelance writing.


title: Susan Sontag

text: At age 30, she published an experimental novel called "The Benefactor" (1963), following it four years later with "Death Kit" (1967). Despite a relatively small output, Sontag thought of herself principally as a novelist and writer of fiction. Her short story "The Way We Live Now" was published to great acclaim on November 24, 1986 in "The New Yorker". Written in an experimental narrative style, it remains a significant text on the AIDS epidemic. She achieved late popular success as a best-selling novelist with "The Volcano Lover" (1992). At age 67, Sontag published her final novel "In America" (2000). The last two novels were set in the past, which Sontag said gave her greater freedom to write in the polyphonic voice:


title: Susan Sontag

text: She wrote and directed four films and also wrote several plays, the most successful of which were "Alice in Bed" and "Lady from the Sea".


title: Susan Sontag

text: It was through her essays that Sontag gained early fame and notoriety. Sontag wrote frequently about the intersection of high and low art and expanded the dichotomy concept of form and art in every medium. She elevated camp to the status of recognition with her widely read 1964 essay "Notes on 'Camp,'" which accepted art as including common, absurd and burlesque themes.


title: Susan Sontag

text: In 1977, Sontag published the series of essays "On Photography". These essays are an exploration of photographs as a collection of the world, mainly by travelers or tourists, and the way we experience it. In the essays, she outlined her theory of taking pictures as you travel:


title: Susan Sontag

text: The method especially appeals to people handicapped by a ruthless work ethic—Germans, Japanese and Americans. Using a camera appeases the anxiety which the work driven feel about not working when they are on vacation and supposed to be having fun. They have something to do that is like a friendly imitation of work: they can take pictures. (p. 10)


title: Susan Sontag

text: Sontag writes that the convenience of modern photography has created an overabundance of visual material, and "just about everything has been photographed." This has altered our expectations of what we have the right to view, want to view or should view. "In teaching us a new visual code, photographs alter and enlarge our notion of what is worth looking at and what we have the right to observe" and has changed our "viewing ethics." Photographs have increased our access to knowledge and experiences of history and faraway places, but the images may replace direct experience and limit reality. She also states that photography desensitizes its audience to horrific human experiences, and children are exposed to experiences before they are ready for them.


title: Susan Sontag

text: Sontag continued to theorize about the role of photography in real life in her essay "Looking at War: Photography's View of Devastation and Death," which appeared in the December 9, 2002 issue of "The New Yorker". There she concludes that the problem of our reliance on images and especially photographic images is not that "people remember through photographs but that they remember only the photographs ... that the photographic image eclipses other forms of understanding—and remembering. ... To remember is, more and more, not to recall a story but to be able to call up a picture" (p. 94).


title: Susan Sontag

text: Sontag became politically active in the 1960s, opposing the Vietnam War. In January 1968, she signed the "Writers and Editors War Tax Protest" pledge, vowing to refuse to pay a proposed 10% Vietnam War surtax. In May 1968, she visited Hanoi; afterwards, she wrote positively about North Vietnamese society in her essay "Trip to Hanoi".


title: Susan Sontag

text: During 1989 Sontag was the President of PEN American Center, the main U.S. branch of the International PEN writers' organization. After Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini issued a "fatwa" death sentence against writer Salman Rushdie for blasphemy after the publication of his novel "The Satanic Verses" that year, Sontag's uncompromising support of Rushdie was crucial in rallying American writers to his cause.


title: Susan Sontag

text: A few years later, during the Siege of Sarajevo, Sontag gained attention for directing a production of Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot" in a candlelit theater in the Bosnian capital, cut off from its electricity supply for three and a half years. Sarajevo's besieged residents reaction was noted as:To the people of Sarajevo, Ms. Sontag has become a symbol, interviewed frequently by the local newspapers and television, invited to speak at gatherings everywhere, asked for autographs on the street. After the opening performance of the play, the city's Mayor, Muhamed Kreševljaković, came onstage to declare her an honorary citizen, the only foreigner other than the recently departed United Nations commander, Lieut. Gen. Phillippe Morillon, to be so named.


title: Susan Sontag

text: Sontag died in New York City on December 28, 2004, aged 71, from complications of myelodysplastic syndrome which had evolved into acute myelogenous leukemia. She is buried in Paris at Cimetière du Montparnasse. Her final illness has been chronicled by her son, David Rieff.


title: Susan Sontag

text: Sontag became aware of her bisexuality during her early teens. At 15, she wrote in her diary, "I feel I have lesbian tendencies (how reluctantly I write this)." At 16, she had a sexual encounter with a woman: "Perhaps I was drunk, after all, because it was so beautiful when H began making love to me... It had been 4:00 before we had gotten to bed... I became fully conscious that I desired her, she knew it, too."


title: Susan Sontag

text: Sontag lived with 'H,' the writer and model Harriet Sohmers Zwerling, whom she first met at U. C. Berkeley from 1958 to 1959. Afterwards, Sontag was the partner of María Irene Fornés, a Cuban-American avant garde playwright and director. Upon splitting with Fornés, she was involved with an Italian aristocrat, Carlotta Del Pezzo, and the German academic Eva Kollisch. Sontag was romantically involved with the American artists Jasper Johns and Paul Thek. During the early 1970s, Sontag lived with Nicole Stéphane, a Rothschild banking heiress turned movie actress, and, later, the choreographer Lucinda Childs. She also had a relationship with the writer Joseph Brodsky. With Annie Leibovitz, Sontag maintained a relationship stretching from the later 1980s until her final years.


title: Susan Sontag

text: Sontag had a close romantic relationship with photographer Annie Leibovitz. They met in 1989, when both had already established notability in their careers. Leibovitz has suggested that Sontag mentored her and constructively criticized her work. During Sontag's lifetime, neither woman publicly disclosed whether the relationship was a friendship or romantic in nature. "Newsweek" in 2006 made reference to Leibovitz's decade-plus relationship with Sontag, stating, "The two first met in the late '80s, when Leibovitz photographed her for a book jacket. They never lived together, though they each had an apartment within view of the other's." Leibovitz, when interviewed for her 2006 book "A Photographer's Life: 1990–2005", said the book told a number of stories, and that "with Susan, it was a love story." While "The New York Times" in 2009 referred to Sontag as Leibovitz's "companion," Leibovitz wrote in "A Photographer's Life" that, "Words like 'companion' and 'partner' were not in our vocabulary. We were two people who helped each other through our lives. The closest word is still 'friend.'" That same year, Leibovitz said the descriptor "lover" was accurate. She later reiterated, "Call us 'lovers.' I like 'lovers.' You know, 'lovers' sounds romantic. I mean, I want to be perfectly clear. I love Susan."


title: Susan Sontag

text: Many of Sontag's obituaries failed to mention her significant same-sex relationships, most notably that with Annie Leibovitz. Daniel Okrent, public editor of "The New York Times" defended the newspaper's obituary, stating that at the time of Sontag's death, a reporter could make no independent verification of her romantic relationship with Leibovitz (despite attempts to do so). After Sontag's death, "Newsweek" published an article about Annie Leibovitz that made clear references to her decade-plus relationship with Sontag.


title: Susan Sontag

text: Sontag was quoted by Editor-in-Chief Brendan Lemon of "Out" magazine as saying "I grew up in a time when the modus operandi was the 'open secret.' I'm used to that, and quite OK with it. Intellectually, I know why I haven't spoken more about my sexuality, but I do wonder if I haven't repressed something there to my detriment. Maybe I could have given comfort to some people if I had dealt with the subject of my private sexuality more, but it's never been my prime mission to give comfort, unless somebody's in drastic need. I'd rather give pleasure, or shake things up."


title: Susan Sontag

text: Following Sontag's death, Steve Wasserman of the "Los Angeles Times" called her "one of America’s most influential intellectuals, internationally renowned for the passionate engagement and breadth of her critical intelligence and her ardent activism in the cause of human rights." Eric Homberger of "The Guardian" called Sontag "the 'Dark Lady' of American cultural life for over four decades." He observed that "despite a brimming and tartly phrased political sensibility, she was fundamentally an aesthete [who] offered a reorientation of American cultural horizons."


title: Susan Sontag

text: Writing about "Against Interpretation" (1966), Brandon Robshaw of "The Independent" later observed that "Sontag was remarkably prescient; her project of analysing popular culture as well as high culture, the Doors as well as Dostoevsky, is now common practice throughout the educated world." In "Critique and Postcritique" (2017), Rita Felski and Elizabeth S. Anker argue that the title essay from the aforementioned collection played an important role in the field of postcritique, a movement within literary criticism and cultural studies that attempts to find new forms of reading and interpretation that go beyond the methods of critique, critical theory, and ideological criticism.


title: Susan Sontag

text: Reviewing Sontag's "On Photography" (1977) in 1998, Michael Starenko wrote that the work "has become so deeply absorbed into this discourse that Sontag's claims about photography, as well as her mode of argument, have become part of the rhetorical 'tool kit' that photography theorists and critics carry around in their heads."


title: Susan Sontag

text: According to journalist Mark M. Goldblatt, Sontag later made a "sarcastic retraction, saying the line slanders cancer patients." According to Eliot Weinberger, "She came to regret that last phrase, and wrote a whole book against the use of illness as metaphor." However, he writes, this didn't lead to any "public curiosity about those who are not cancerously white." "She may well have been the last unashamed Eurocentrist."


title: Susan Sontag

text: Ellen Lee accused Sontag of plagiarism when Lee discovered at least twelve passages in "In America" (1999) that were similar to, or copied from, passages in four other books about Helena Modjeska without attribution. Sontag said about using the passages, "All of us who deal with real characters in history transcribe and adopt original sources in the original domain. I've used these sources and I've completely transformed them. There's a larger argument to be made that all of literature is a series of references and allusions."


title: Susan Sontag

text: In a 2007 letter to the editor of the "Times Literary Supplement", John Lavagnino identified an unattributed citation from Roland Barthes' 1970 essay "S/Z" in Sontag's 2004 speech "At the Same Time: The Novelist and Moral Reasoning," delivered as the Nadine Gordimer Lecture in March 2004. Further research led Lavagnino to identify several passages which appeared to have been taken without attribution from an essay on hypertext fiction by Laura Miller, originally published in the "New York Times Book Review" six years earlier"." Writing for the "Observer", Michael Calderone interviewed Sontag's publisher about the allegations, who argued, “This was a speech, not a formal essay,” and that “Susan herself never prepared it for publication.”


title: Susan Sontag

text: At a New York pro-Solidarity rally in 1982, Sontag stated that "people on the left," like herself, "have willingly or unwillingly told a lot of lies." She added that they:


title: Susan Sontag

text: Sontag's speech reportedly "drew boos and shouts from the audience." "The Nation" published her speech, excluding the passage contrasting the magazine with "Reader's Digest". Responses to her statement were varied. Some said that Sontag's current sentiments had been, in fact, held by many on the left for years, while others accused her of betraying "radical ideas."


title: Susan Sontag

text: Sontag received angry criticism for her remarks in "The New Yorker" (September 24, 2001) about the immediate aftermath of 9/11. In her commentary, she referred to the attacks as a "monstrous dose of reality" and criticized U.S. public officials and media commentators for trying to convince the American public that "everything is O.K." Specifically, she opposed the idea that the perpetrators were "cowards," a comment George W. Bush made among other remarks on September 11. Rather, she argued the country should see the terrorists' actions not as "a 'cowardly' attack on 'civilization' or 'liberty' or 'humanity' or 'the free world' but an attack on the world's self-proclaimed superpower, undertaken as a consequence of specific American alliances and actions."


title: Susan Sontag

text: Tom Wolfe dismissed Sontag as "just another scribbler who spent her life signing up for protest meetings and lumbering to the podium encumbered by her prose style, which had a handicapped parking sticker valid at "Partisan Review"."


title: Susan Sontag

text: In "Sontag, Bloody Sontag", an essay in her 1994 book "Vamps & Tramps", critic Camille Paglia describes her initial admiration and subsequent disillusionment. She mentions several criticisms of Sontag, including Harold Bloom's comment of "Mere Sontagisme!" on Paglia's doctoral dissertation, and states that Sontag "had become synonymous with a shallow kind of hip posturing." Paglia also tells of a visit by Sontag to Bennington College, in which she arrived hours late and ignored the agreed-upon topic of the event.


title: Susan Sontag

text: Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his book "Skin in the Game" criticizes Sontag and other people with extravagant lifestyles who nevertheless declare themselves "against the market system". Taleb assesses Sontag's shared New York mansion at $28 million, and states that "it is immoral to be in opposition to the market system and not live (somewhere in Vermont or Northwestern Afghanistan) in a hut or cave isolated from it." Taleb also argues that it is even more immoral to "claim virtue without fully living with its direct consequences."


title: Susan Sontag

text: Sontag also published nonfiction essays in "The New Yorker", "The New York Review of Books", "Times Literary Supplement", "The Nation", "Granta", "Partisan Review" and the "London Review of Books".


title: Susan Sontag

text: A digital archive of 17,198 of Sontag's emails is kept by the UCLA Department of Special Collections at the Charles E. Young Research Library. Her archive—and the efforts to make it publicly available while protecting it from bit rot—are the subject of the book "On Excess: Susan Sontag's Born-Digital Archive", by Jeremy Schmidt and Jacquelyn Ardam.


title: Susan Sontag

text: A documentary about Sontag directed by Nancy Kates, titled "Regarding Susan Sontag", was released in 2014. It received the Special Jury Mention for Best Documentary Feature at the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival.


title: Teal Swan

text: Teal Swan (born Mary Teal Bosworth; June 16, 1984) is an American spiritual influencer and author. A number of publications, including Eonline, The Guardian and the BBC noted that some of Swan’s teaching methods on how to manage mental health issues had been found controversial by her critics, which Swan and her supporters deny. Swan and her teachings are the subject of documentaries and podcasts.


title: Teal Swan

text: Swan was born in Santa Fe, New Mexico on June 16, 1984 and was raised in Logan, Utah. Swan has described interactions with the mental health profession in childhood. In her early childhood, Swan received therapy from Barbara Snow.


title: Teal Swan

text: In 2011 she released the book "The Sculptor in the Sky" and started her YouTube channel. In Summer 2011, she held her first event, a "synchronization workship", at a Salt Lake City recital hall, speaking to about twenty people.


title: Teal Swan

text: Her teaching methods sometimes guide participants to envision their own deaths, occasionally by suicide. In 2019, Lebo Diseko from BBC cited Swan's viewpoint on suicide:


title: Teal Swan

text: "In the video Swan urges those who are feeling suicidal to seek medical help, but goes on to say that in her experience, for some people, this may not help long-term. She instead suggests that suicide be seen as "our safety net or our re-set button that's always available to us". She argues that viewing it in this way enables people to set the idea aside, and instead concentrate on what they can do to make themselves feel better in the present."


title: Teal Swan

text: In 2018, a Gizmodo podcast, The Gateway, ran a six-part series on Teal Swan and her self-help spiritual teachings on depression and how her techniques "process past trauma in order to overcome it." The host, Jennings Brown, stated that Swan was not like a regular spiritual leader in terms both of her appearance and how she markets herself. , her YouTube videos had been viewed 55 million times.


title: Teal Swan

text: In May 2022, Freeform released a four-part docu-series on Swan called "The Deep End." The producers of the documentary followed Swan for three years, detailing the rules placed on her inner circle, and insinuating controlling and manipulative behavior. Swan disputes her characterization in the documentary, citing deceptive practices by the filmmakers.


title: Shoeless Joe Jackson

text: Joseph Jefferson Jackson (July 16, 1887 – December 5, 1951), nicknamed "Shoeless Joe", was an American outfielder who played Major League Baseball (MLB) in the early 1900s. Although his .356 career batting average is the fourth highest in the history of Major League Baseball (MLB), he is often remembered for his association with the Black Sox Scandal, in which members of the 1919 Chicago White Sox participated in a conspiracy to fix the World Series. As a result, Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis banned Jackson from baseball after the 1920 season. During the World Series in question, Jackson had led both teams in several statistical categories and set a World Series record with 12 base hits. Jackson's role in the scandal, his banishment from the game, and his exclusion from the Baseball Hall of Fame have been fiercely debated.


title: Shoeless Joe Jackson

text: Jackson played for three MLB teams during his 12-year career, playing primarily in left field. He spent 1908–1909 as a member of the Philadelphia Athletics and 1910 with the minor league New Orleans Pelicans before joining the Cleveland Naps at the end of the 1910 season. He was still considered a rookie in 1911, when he hit for a .408 average, a single-season record for a rookie that still stands. He remained in Cleveland until early in the 1915 season; he then played for the White Sox through 1920. Later, Jackson played baseball under assumed names throughout the south.


title: Shoeless Joe Jackson

text: Jackson holds the Cleveland and Chicago White Sox franchise records for triples in a season and career batting average. In 1999, he ranked number 35 on "The Sporting News" list of the 100 Greatest Baseball Players, and was a finalist for the Major League Baseball All-Century Team. The fans voted him as the 12th-best outfielder of all time. He also ranks 33rd on the all-time list for non-pitchers according to the win shares formula developed by sabrermetrician Bill James. Baseball legend Babe Ruth said that he modeled his hitting technique after Jackson's.


title: Shoeless Joe Jackson

text: Jackson was born in Pickens County, South Carolina, the oldest son of George Jackson, a sharecropper. While Jackson was still a baby, his father moved the family to Pelzer, South Carolina. A few years later, the family moved to a company town called Brandon Mill on the outskirts of Greenville, South Carolina. An attack of measles almost killed him when he was 10. He was in bed for two months, paralyzed, while he was nursed back to health by his mother.


title: Shoeless Joe Jackson

text: Starting at the age of 6 or 7, Jackson worked in one of the town's textile mills as a "linthead", a derogatory name for a mill hand. Family finances required Joe to take 12-hour shifts in the mill, and since education at the time was a luxury the Jackson family couldn't afford, Jackson was uneducated. His lack of education ultimately became an issue throughout Jackson's life. It even affected the value of his memorabilia in the collectibles market; because Jackson was illiterate, he often had his wife sign his signature. Consequently, anything actually autographed by Jackson himself brings a premium when sold, including one autograph which was sold for $23,500 in 1990 (). In restaurants, rather than ask someone to read the menu to him, he would wait until his teammates ordered and then order one of the items that he heard.


title: Shoeless Joe Jackson

text: In 1900, when he was 13 years old, his mother was approached by one of the owners of the Brandon Mill and he started to play for the mill's baseball team. He was the youngest player on the team. He was paid $2.50 to play on Saturdays (). He was originally a pitcher, but one day he accidentally broke another player's arm with a fastball. No one wanted to bat against him so the manager of the team placed him in the outfield. His hitting ability made him a celebrity around town. Around that time he was given a baseball bat that he named Black Betsy. He was compared to Champ Osteen, another player from the mills who made it to the Majors. He moved from mill team to mill team in search of better pay, playing semi-professional baseball by 1905.


title: Shoeless Joe Jackson

text: In an interview published in the October 1949 edition of Sport magazine, Jackson recalled he got his nickname during a mill game played in Greenville, South Carolina. Jackson had blisters on his foot from a new pair of cleats, which hurt so much that he took his shoes off before he was at bat. As play continued, a heckling fan noticed Jackson running to third base in his socks, and shouted "You shoeless son of a gun, you!" and the resulting nickname "Shoeless Joe" stuck with him throughout the remainder of his life.


title: Shoeless Joe Jackson

text: In 1908, Jackson began his professional baseball career with the Greenville Spinners of the Carolina Association, married 15-year-old Katie Wynn, and eventually signed with Connie Mack to play for the Philadelphia Athletics.


title: Shoeless Joe Jackson

text: Playing for his hometown minor league team for $75 a month, Jackson hit .346 to lead the 1908 Carolina Association, while also leading the league in hits and RBI. In August, 1908, his contract was purchased by Connie Mack of the Philadelphia Athletics for $900. Jackson immediately reported to the Athletics and made his major league debut.


title: Shoeless Joe Jackson

text: For the first two years of his career Jackson had some trouble adjusting to life with the Athletics; reports conflict as to whether he just did not like the big city or if he was bothered by hazing from teammates. Consequently, he spent a great portion of that time in the minor leagues. Between 1908 and 1909, Jackson appeared in just 10 MLB games. During the 1909 season, Jackson played 118 games for the South Atlantic League's Savannah Indians. He batted .358 for the year.


title: Shoeless Joe Jackson

text: The Athletics gave up on Jackson in 1910 and traded him to the . He spent most of 1910 with the New Orleans Pelicans of the Southern Association, where he won the batting title and led the team to the pennant. Late in the season, he was called up to play on the big league team. He appeared in 20 games and hit .387.


title: Shoeless Joe Jackson

text: In 1911, Jackson's first full MLB season, he set a number of rookie records. His .408 batting average that season is a record that still stands and was good for second overall in the league behind Ty Cobb's .419 - one of the few times in baseball history that a +.400 average did not win a batting title. His .468 on-base percentage led the league. The following season, Jackson batted .395 and led the American League in hits, triples, and total bases. On April 20, 1912, Jackson scored the first run in Tiger Stadium. The next year, he led the league with 197 hits and a .551 slugging percentage.


title: Shoeless Joe Jackson

text: In August 1915, Jackson was traded to the Chicago White Sox in an extremely lopsided trade favoring the Indians. Two years later, Jackson and the White Sox won the American League pennant and also the World Series. During the series, Jackson hit .307 as the White Sox defeated the New York Giants.


title: Shoeless Joe Jackson

text: Jackson missed most of the 1918 season while working in a shipyard because of World War I. In 1919, he came back strongly to post a .351 average during the regular season and .375 with perfect fielding in the World Series. However, the heavily favored White Sox lost the series to the Cincinnati Reds. The next season, the 32 year-old Jackson batted .382 and was having one of his best overall seasons, leading the American League in triples and setting by large margins career marks for home runs, RBIs, and fewest strikeouts per plate appearance, when he was suspended, along with seven other members of the White Sox, after allegations surfaced that the team had thrown the previous World Series.


title: Shoeless Joe Jackson

text: After the White Sox lost the 1919 World Series to the Cincinnati Reds, Jackson and seven other White Sox players were accused of accepting $5,000 each () to throw the Series. In September 1920, a grand jury was convened to investigate the allegations.


title: Shoeless Joe Jackson

text: Jackson's 12 base hits set a Series record that was not broken until 1964, and he led both teams with a .375 batting average. He committed no errors, and threw out a runner at the plate. However, the Reds hit an unusually high number of triples to Jackson's position in left field.


title: Shoeless Joe Jackson

text: During grand jury testimony on September 28, 1920, Jackson admitted to participating in the fix; some news accounts quoted this as:


title: Shoeless Joe Jackson

text: In 1921, a Chicago jury acquitted Jackson and his seven teammates of wrongdoing. Nevertheless, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, the newly appointed Commissioner of Baseball, imposed a lifetime ban on all eight players. "Regardless of the verdict of juries," Landis declared, "no player that throws a ballgame; no player that undertakes or promises to throw a ballgame; no player that sits in a conference with a bunch of crooked players and gamblers where the ways and means of throwing games are planned and discussed and does not promptly tell his club about it, will ever play professional baseball."


title: Shoeless Joe Jackson

text: After the grand jury returned its indictments, Charley Owens of the "Chicago Daily News" wrote a regretful tribute headlined, "Say it ain't so, Joe." The phrase became legendary when another reporter later erroneously attributed it to a child outside the courthouse:


title: Shoeless Joe Jackson

text: When Jackson left the criminal court building in the custody of a sheriff after telling his story to the grand jury, he found several hundred youngsters, aged from 6 to 16, waiting for a glimpse of their idol. One child stepped up to the outfielder, and, grabbing his coat sleeve, said:


title: Shoeless Joe Jackson

text: "Yes, kid, I'm afraid it is," Jackson replied. The boys opened a path for the ball player and stood in silence until he passed out of sight.


title: Shoeless Joe Jackson

text: In an interview in "Sport" nearly three decades later, Jackson confirmed that the legendary exchange never occurred.


title: Shoeless Joe Jackson

text: Jackson's involvement in the scandal remains controversial to this day. He reportedly refused the $5,000 bribe on two occasions—despite the fact that it would effectively double his salary—only to have teammate Lefty Williams toss the cash on the floor of his hotel room. Jackson then tried to tell White Sox owner Charles Comiskey about the fix, but Comiskey refused to meet with him. Unable to afford legal counsel, Jackson was represented by team attorney Alfred Austrian—a clear conflict of interest. Before Jackson's grand jury testimony, Austrian allegedly elicited Jackson's admission of his supposed role in the fix by plying him with whiskey. Austrian was also able to persuade the nearly illiterate Jackson to sign a waiver of immunity from prosecution.


title: Shoeless Joe Jackson

text: Years later, the other seven players implicated in the scandal confirmed that Jackson was never at any of the meetings. Williams said that they only mentioned Jackson's name to give their plot more credibility, although he did not say why Jackson would have been paid $5,000 had that been the case. Jackson's performance during the series itself lends further credence to his assertions, although the game records show that he hit far better during the "clean" games than those which were thrown. A 1993 article in "The American Statistician" reported the results of a statistical analysis of Jackson's contribution during the 1919 World Series, and concluded that there was "substantial support to Jackson's subsequent claims of innocence".


title: Shoeless Joe Jackson

text: An article in the September 2009 issue of "Chicago Lawyer" magazine argued that Eliot Asinof's 1963 book "Eight Men Out", purporting to confirm Jackson's guilt, was based on inaccurate information; for example, Jackson never confessed to throwing the Series as Asinof claimed. Further, Asinof omitted key facts from publicly available documents such as the 1920 grand jury records and proceedings of Jackson's successful 1924 lawsuit against Comiskey to recover back pay for the 1920 and 1921 seasons. Asinof's use of fictional characters within a supposedly non-fiction account added further questions about the historical accuracy of the book.


title: Shoeless Joe Jackson

text: Jackson remains on MLB's ineligible list, which automatically precludes his election to the National Baseball Hall of Fame. In 1989, MLB Commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti declined to reinstate Jackson because the case was "now best given to historical analysis and debate as opposed to a present-day review with an eye to reinstatement."


title: Shoeless Joe Jackson

text: In November 1999, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution lauding Jackson's sporting achievements and encouraging MLB to rescind his ineligibility. The resolution was symbolic, since the U.S. government has no jurisdiction in the matter. Commissioner Bud Selig stated at the time that Jackson's case was under review, but no decision was issued during Selig's tenure.


title: Shoeless Joe Jackson

text: In 2015, the Shoeless Joe Jackson Museum formally petitioned Commissioner Rob Manfred for reinstatement, on grounds that Jackson had "more than served his sentence" in the 95 years since his banishment by Landis. Manfred denied the request after an official review, writing: "The results of this work demonstrate to me that it is not possible now, over 95 years since those events took place and were considered by Commissioner Landis, to be certain enough of the truth to overrule Commissioner Landis' determinations".


title: Shoeless Joe Jackson

text: In 2020, ESPN reported that MLB had shifted its policy and that the league "has no hold on banned players after they die because the ineligible list bars players from privileges that include a job with a major league club." It is unclear how this will affect Jackson's Hall of Fame prospects.


title: Shoeless Joe Jackson

text: During the remaining 20 years of his baseball career, Jackson played with (under different assumed names) and managed a number of semi-professional teams, most located in Georgia and South Carolina. In 1922, Jackson moved to Savannah, Georgia, and opened a dry cleaning business with his wife.


title: Shoeless Joe Jackson

text: In 1933, the Jacksons moved back to Greenville, South Carolina. After first opening a barbecue restaurant, Jackson and his wife opened "Joe Jackson's Liquor Store", which they operated until his death. One of the better known stories of Jackson's post-major league life took place at his liquor store. Ty Cobb and sportswriter Grantland Rice entered the store, with Jackson showing no sign of recognition towards Cobb. After making his purchase, Cobb finally asked Jackson, "Don't you know me, Joe?" Jackson replied, "Sure, I know you, Ty, but I wasn't sure you wanted to know me. A lot of them don't."


title: Shoeless Joe Jackson

text: As he aged, Jackson began to suffer from heart trouble. In 1951, at the age of 64, he died of a heart attack. Jackson was the first of the eight banned players to die, and is buried at Woodlawn Memorial Park in Greenville. He had no children but he and his wife raised two of his nephews.


title: Shoeless Joe Jackson

text: Though Jackson was banned from Major League Baseball, statues and parks have been constructed in his honor. One of the landmarks built for him was a memorial park in Greenville, Shoeless Joe Jackson Memorial Park. A life-size statue of Jackson, created by South Carolina sculptor Doug Young, also stands in Greenville's West End.


title: Shoeless Joe Jackson

text: In 2006, Jackson's original home was moved to a location adjacent to Fluor Field in downtown Greenville. The home was restored and opened in 2008 as the Shoeless Joe Jackson Museum. The address is 356 Field Street, in honor of his lifetime batting average. The restoration and move was chronicled on TLC's reality show "The Real Deal" episode "A Home Run for Trademark" which aired March 31, 2007. Richard C. Davis, the owner of Trademark Properties, hired Josh Hamilton as the construction foreman.


title: Shoeless Joe Jackson

text: In 1951, Jackson was inducted into the Cleveland Indians Hall of Fame as part of the inaugural class. The selection was controversial at the time because although he was not yet barred from consideration for the National Baseball Hall of Fame, he had also not been enshrined therein. Additionally, his tenure with the Naps/Indians was relatively short. However, an outpouring of support from Indians fans convinced the sports editors voting on the selections to elect him unanimously.


title: Shoeless Joe Jackson

text: Jackson's first relative to play professional baseball since his banishment was catcher Joseph Ray Jackson. The great-great-grandnephew of Shoeless Joe batted .386 for The Citadel in 2013 and was then drafted by the Texas Rangers. Later that year, he made his professional debut with the Northwest League's Spokane Indians.


title: Shoeless Joe Jackson

text: In October 2021, a signed photograph of Jackson sold for $1.47 million making it the most expensive sports photograph.


title: Shoeless Joe Jackson

text: Shoeless Joe was depicted in several films in the late 20th century. "Eight Men Out", a film directed by John Sayles, based on the Eliot Asinof book of the same name, details the Black Sox Scandal in general and has D. B. Sweeney portraying Jackson.


title: Shoeless Joe Jackson

text: The Phil Alden Robinson film "Field of Dreams", based on "Shoeless Joe" by W. P. Kinsella, stars Ray Liotta as Jackson. Kevin Costner plays an Iowa farmer who hears a mysterious voice instructing him to build a baseball field on his farm so Shoeless Joe—among others—can play baseball again.


title: Jason David Frank

text: Jason David Frank (September 4, 1973 – November 19, 2022) was an American actor and martial artist. He was known for his role as Tommy Oliver in "Mighty Morphin Power Rangers" and other "Power Rangers" series.


title: Jason David Frank

text: Frank was cast in the role of Tommy Oliver, the Green Ranger. The role was set for 14 episodes, but due to the popularity of the character he was brought back as the White Ranger and the new leader of the team.


title: Jason David Frank

text: Frank was supposed to be the lead character Adam Steele in "VR Troopers" (originally called "Cybertron") and shot a pilot episode before being called back to "Power Rangers". According to both Frank and Brad Hawkins, Hawkins' character was to replace Tommy Oliver originally as the White Ranger on "Power Rangers". However, due to Tommy Oliver's popularity with "Power Rangers" fans, Frank was brought back, with Tommy Oliver becoming the White Ranger. Hawkins would take over on "VR Troopers". The character Adam Steele was renamed Ryan Steele.


title: Jason David Frank

text: After three seasons, "Mighty Morphin Power Rangers" transitioned into "Power Rangers Zeo". The transition is part of the annual Ranger suit change to match the annual change of the "Super Sentai" series. Frank's character became the Red Zeo Ranger (also called Zeo Ranger V).


title: Jason David Frank

text: The following year in "Power Rangers Turbo", his character became the first Red Turbo Ranger. During mid-season, Frank and fellow cast members Johnny Yong Bosch, Nakia Burrise and Catherine Sutherland agreed to leave and were replaced.


title: Jason David Frank

text: After he left the series in 1997, Frank came back to "Power Rangers" as the Red Zeo Ranger in 2002 for the special 10th-anniversary episode, entitled "Forever Red", in "Power Rangers Wild Force", which brought back ten former Red Rangers, and reunited him with Austin St. John.


title: Jason David Frank

text: He then reprised his role in 2004 in "Power Rangers Dino Thunder", as the Black Dino Ranger. During this time, Frank was always shown in long-sleeved shirts to cover the tattoos on his arms.


title: Jason David Frank

text: This was also the case during "Forever Red" of "Wild Force". Being the Black Dino Ranger was a favor to Douglas Sloan. He joked that Saban and Disney are "both the same, they're cheap" but that he was impressed with the production crew for "Dino Thunder".


title: Jason David Frank

text: Frank reprised his role as Tommy Oliver (who in turn was the Green Ranger for the episode) in the season finale of "Power Rangers Super Megaforce". Frank expressed interest in developing a Green Ranger solo series or feature film after an encounter with Stan Lee at a comic book convention.


title: Jason David Frank

text: Frank had a cameo role in the 2017 film "Power Rangers", as a citizen of Angel Grove, alongside fellow "Power Rangers" actress Amy Jo Johnson. In 2018, he reprised his role as Tommy in episode 10 of "Power Rangers Super Ninja Steel" for the 25th anniversary of "Power Rangers". In August 2022, Frank revealed that he had retired from the franchise.


title: Jason David Frank

text: On November 7, 2013, Frank appeared on "Super Power Beatdown" as the White Ranger taking on Scorpion from "Mortal Kombat". He appeared again on May 5, 2015, as the Green Ranger and fought Ryu from "Street Fighter". After success with the "Super Power Beatdown" series, Bat in the Sun began developing a web reality series of Frank titled "My Morphing Life". In 2015, the show began airing season 2.


title: Jason David Frank

text: The film "Legend of the White Dragon" launched on Kickstarter in 2020. Initially it was going to be a mini-series or fan film. With the popularity and excitement, it grew into a full-feature film. The film includes past "Power Rangers" performers such as Frank, Jason Faunt, and Ciara Hanna. Other cast members include Mark Dacascos, Michael Madsen, Andrew Byron Bachelor, and Jenna Frank. The movie wrapped in 2021. It is currently in post-production and set to release in 2023; in view of Frank's death (see below) in 2022, there has been talk of dedicating the film to his memory.


title: Jason David Frank

text: With his knowledge of many different styles of martial arts that include Shōtōkan, Wadō-ryū, Taekwondo, Judo, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, Muay Thai, Wing Chun, Jeet Kune Do, and Aikido, Frank collected the most practical applications, modified them with his own philosophies and created his own blend of American Karate, "Toso Kune Do" (translation: "Way of the Fist-Fighter"). On June 28, 2003, he was inducted into the World Karate Union Hall of Fame. Frank appeared at the Arnold Classic on February 29, 2008, in Columbus, Ohio.


title: Jason David Frank

text: Frank was temporarily a Guinness World Record holder in January 2013, as he successfully broke the existing record for the most 1 inch pine boards broken during freefall. The previous record was only two boards broken, but Frank attempted to break eight and successfully broke seven in his record breaking attempt. His record was eclipsed only a few months later in May 2013 by current Guinness World Record holder Ernie Torres, who broke twelve boards during his attempt.


title: Jason David Frank

text: On August 21, 2009, Frank officially announced his signing with SuckerPunch Entertainment, a sports marketing and management company specializing in MMA. He began training with UFC lightweight Melvin Guillard.


title: Jason David Frank

text: Frank made his much anticipated MMA debut for the United States Amateur Combat Association at the company's first event "Lonestar Beatdown: Houston" on January 30, 2010, at the Houston Arena Theatre. He defeated Jonathon "the Mack Truck" Mack in the first round by omoplata submission. Frank fought in his second fight at Lonestar Beatdown: Dallas on February 19 in Arlington, Texas. His opponent was Chris Rose who made his ring entrance wearing a "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" robe. Frank defeated Rose in round 1 by TKO (strikes).


title: Jason David Frank

text: On May 8, 2010, he fought for the Texas Rage in the Cage Amateur Association "Cage Rage 7" in State Farm Arena in Hidalgo, Texas. His opponent was James Willis. Frank defeated Willis via KO in 23 seconds of the first round with a rising knee.


title: Jason David Frank

text: Frank was scheduled to make his debut with Ultimate Warrior Challenge at their upcoming event on May 22 against James "Ray" Handy Jr. in a light heavyweight bout.


title: Jason David Frank

text: On May 21, Frank had announced on his official Facebook fan page that James Handy was injured and Carlos Horn would replace him, changing the fight to a heavyweight bout. Frank defeated Horn in the first round by an armbar submission.


title: Jason David Frank

text: Since turning pro, Frank expressed interest in signing a deal with Strikeforce and potentially fighting Herschel Walker.


title: Jason David Frank

text: Frank announced on his Facebook fan page that he would be scheduled to make his professional debut on August 4, 2010, in Houston at "Puro Combate #1." He fought at heavyweight, with his opponent being Jose Roberto Vasquez. Frank won his pro MMA debut quickly at the time of 0:46 in the first round by a Rear Naked Choke Submission.


title: Jason David Frank

text: Frank was scheduled for a Light heavyweight bout on December 9, 2010, at Puro Combate 3. The fight was canceled on December 8 due to his opponent not being medically cleared. He was then scheduled to face Shawn Machado on July 22, 2011, at Legacy FC 7. However, due to a possible biceps tear the fight was cancelled.


title: Jason David Frank

text: Frank was Christian, and said he began attending church after the death of his brother. He married his first wife, Shawna, in 1994 and the couple had two sons and a daughter. They divorced in 2001. In 2003, he married his second wife, Tammie, and the couple had one daughter. In 2022, Tammie filed for divorce. At the time of his death, they had begun to reconcile.


title: Jason David Frank

text: In 2017, he was targeted by a man named Matthew Sterling while attending Phoenix Comicon. Police were able to arrest Sterling before he got near Frank, after being tipped off due to social media threats made by Sterling. Sterling was later committed to 25 and a half years at the Arizona State Hospital.


title: Jason David Frank

text: Frank died in Houston, Texas on November 19, 2022, at the age of 49. The cause of death was suicide. Frank was laid to rest in Forest Lawn – Covina Hills in his hometown of Covina, California alongside his brother and mother.


title: Comedy film

text: A comedy film is a category of film which emphasizes humor. These films are designed to make the audience laugh through amusement. Films in this style traditionally have a happy ending (black comedy being an exception). Comedy is one of the oldest genres in film and it is derived from the classical comedy in theatre. Some of the earliest silent films were comedies, as slapstick comedy often relies on visual depictions, without requiring sound. When sound films became more prevalent during the 1930s, comedy films took another swing, as laughter could result from burlesque situations but also dialogue.


title: Comedy film

text: Comedy, compared with other film genres, puts much more focus on individual stars, with many former stand-up comics transitioning to the film industry due to their popularity.


title: Comedy film

text: In "The Screenwriters Taxonomy" (2017), Eric R. Williams contends that film genres are fundamentally based upon a film's atmosphere, character, and story. Therefore the labels "drama" and "comedy" are too broad to be considered a genre. Instead, his comedy taxonomy argues that comedy is a type of film that contains at least a dozen different sub-types.


title: Comedy film

text: The first comedy film was "L'Arroseur Arrosé" (1895), directed and produced by film pioneer Louis Lumière. Less than 60 seconds long, it shows a boy playing a prank on a gardener. The most noted comedy actors of the silent film era (1895-1927) were Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, and Buster Keaton.


title: Comedy film

text: The silent film era also implemented animated comedy films such as "Humorous Phases of Funny Faces," which is considered the first animated movie by film historians (1906). This style led to several iconic animated characters such as Felix the Cat, Mickey Mouse, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, and Betty Boop.


title: Comedy film

text: Sound was introduced into film towards the end of the 1920s and became much more prevalent through the 1930s and forward. This advancement in technology allowed for comedy acts such as W.C. Fields, the Marx Brothers, and Laurel and Hardy to flourish via verbal humor and auditory sounds instead of complete silence.


title: Comedy film

text: When television sets became popular in the 1950s, the film industry was forced to make some innovations to compete with at-home entertainment. Some of these innovations include the use of color in film, widescreen formats (Cinerama, CinemaScope, VistaVision), 3D, and surround sound. While these innovations impacted the film industry as a whole, many comedies utilized these technological advancements that were not available on television sets at the time. "3 Ring Circus" and "Funny Face" are two of many comedy films that implemented some of these new technologies.


title: Comedy film

text: From the 1960s until present, comedy film has adopted numerous different styles, sub-types, and sub-genres. The 1960s welcomed a more mature, darker humor known as black comedy such as Stanley Kubrick's "Dr. Strangelove". Comedy moved towards more parody and satirical humor in the 70s and 80s with directors like Woody Allen, Mel Brooks, and the Monty Python comedy troupe thriving. Teen comedies like "The Breakfast Club", "Sixteen Candles", and "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" also became popular in the 80s. In the 1990s over-the-top, wacky characters succeeded in the comedy scene. Notable actors that played these types of characters include Jim Carrey, Adam Sandler, and Mike Myers. From the 2000s until recent, comedies have leaned towards the trend of incorporating more vulgar or raunchy humor with films like the "American Pie" series, "The 40-Year-Old Virgin", and "Superbad." Overall, comedy film has moved away from traditional joke-telling, and now leans more towards eccentric characters finding themselves in unexpected situations.


title: Comedy film

text: The anarchic comedy film, as its name suggests, is a random or stream-of-consciousness type of humour which often lampoons a form of authority. The genre dates from the silent era. Notable examples of this type of film are those produced by Monty Python. Other examples include "Duck Soup" (1933) and "Caddyshack" (1980).


title: Comedy film

text: Gross out films are a relatively recent development and rely heavily on vulgar, sexual, or "toilet" humor. They often contain a healthy dose of profanity. Examples include "Animal House" (1978) and "Freddy Got Fingered" (2001).


title: Comedy film

text: This sub-type uses comedy to explore serious ideas such as religion, sex, or politics. Often, the characters represent particular divergent world views and are forced to interact for comedic effect and social commentary. Some examples include both "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" (1986) and "Swing Vote" (2008).


title: Comedy film

text: A comedy of manners satirizes the manners and affectations of a social class. The plot of a comedy of manners is often concerned with an illicit love affair or some other scandal. However, the plot is generally less important for its comedic effect than its witty dialogue. This form of comedy has a long ancestry which dates back at least as far as "Much Ado about Nothing" created by William Shakespeare, published in 1623. Examples for comedy of manners films include "Breakfast at Tiffany's" (1961) and "Under the Tuscan Sun" (2003).


title: Comedy film

text: The black comedy film deals with taboo subjectsincluding death, murder, crime, suicide, and warin a satirical manner. Examples include "Dr. Strangelove" (1964) and "Shallow Grave" (1994).


title: Comedy film

text: Farcical films exaggerate situations beyond the realm of possibilitythereby making them entertaining. Film examples include "Sleeper" (1973).


title: Comedy film

text: Mockumentary comedies are fictional, but use a documentary style that includes interviews and "documentary" footage along regular scenes. Examples include "This Is Spinal Tap" (1984) and "Reboot Camp" (2020).


title: Comedy film

text: Musical comedy as a film genre has its roots in the 1920s, with Disney's "Steamboat Willie" (1928) being the most recognized of these early films. The sub-genre resurged with popularity in the 1970s, with movies such as "Bugsy Malone" (1976) and "Grease" (1978) gaining status as cult classics.


title: Comedy film

text: These films find humor in the common practices of everyday life. Some film examples of observational humor include "Knocked Up" (2007) and "The Intern" (2015).


title: Comedy film

text: A parody or spoof film satirizes other film genres or classic films. Such films employ sarcasm, stereotyping, mockery of scenes from other films, and the obviousness of meaning in a character's actions. Examples of this form include "Blazing Saddles" (1974) and "Spaceballs" (1987).


title: Comedy film

text: The humor in sex comedy is primarily derived from sexual situations and desire, as in "Bachelor Party" (1984) and "The Inbetweeners Movie" (2011).


title: Comedy film

text: Humor that comes from knowing a stock group of characters (or character types) and then exposing them to different situations to create humorous and ironic juxtaposition; case in point: "Planes, Trains and Automobiles" (1987) and "The Hangover" (2009).


title: Comedy film

text: This broad sub-type applies to films that do not attempt a specific approach to comedy but, rather, use comedy for comedic sake. "Chasing Amy" (1997) and "The Shaggy Dog" (2006) are examples of straight comedy films.


title: Comedy film

text: Slapstick films involve exaggerated, boisterous physical action to create impossible and humorous situations. Because it relies predominantly on visual depictions of events, it does not require sound. Accordingly, the sub-genre was ideal for silent movies and was prevalent during that era. Popular stars of the slapstick genre include Harold Lloyd, Roscoe Arbuckle, Charlie Chaplin, Peter Sellers and Norman Wisdom. Some of these stars, as well as acts such as Laurel and Hardy and the Three Stooges, also found success incorporating slapstick comedy into sound films. Modern examples of slapstick comedy include "Mr. Bean's Holiday" (2007) and "Get Smart" (2008).


title: Comedy film

text: Although not specifically linked to the history of surrealism, these comedies includes behavior and storytelling techniques that are illogicalincluding bizarre juxtapositions, absurd situations and unpredictable reactions to normal situations. Some examples are "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" (1963) and "Space Jam" (1996).


title: Comedy film

text: According to Williams' taxonomy, all film descriptions should contain their type (comedy or drama) combined with one (or more) subgenres. This combination does not create a separate genre, but rather, provides a better understanding of the film.


title: Comedy film

text: Films in this type blend comic antics and action where the stars combine one-liners with a thrilling plot and daring stunts. The genre became a specific draw in North America in the eighties when comedians such as Eddie Murphy started taking more action-oriented roles, such as in "48 Hrs." (1982) and "Beverly Hills Cop" (1984).


title: Comedy film

text: Slapstick martial arts films became a mainstay of Hong Kong action cinema through the work of Jackie Chan among others, such as "Who Am I?" (1998). "Kung Fu Panda" is an action comedy that focuses on the martial art of kung fu.


title: Comedy film

text: Some action films focus on superheroes; for example, "The Incredibles", "Hancock", "Kick-Ass", and "Mystery Men".


title: Comedy film

text: Films starring mismatched partners for comedic effect, such as in "Midnight Run", "Rush Hour", "21 Jump Street", "Bad Boys", "Starsky and Hutch", "Booksmart", "The Odd Couple", and "Ted".


title: Comedy film

text: Comedy thriller is a type that combines elements of humor and suspense. Films such as "Silver Streak", "Charade", "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang", "In Bruges", "Mr. and Mrs. Smith", "Grosse Point Blank", "The Thin Man", "The Big Fix", and "The Lady Vanishes".


title: Comedy film

text: Comedy mystery is a film genre combining elements of comedy and mystery fiction. Though the genre arguably peaked in the 1930s and 1940s, comedy-mystery films have been continually produced since. Examples include the "Pink Panther" series,"Scooby-Doo" films, "Clue" (1985) and "Knives Out" (2019).


title: Comedy film

text: A hybrid mix of crime and comedy films, examples include "Inspector Palmu's Mistake" (1960), "Oh Brother Where Art Thou?" (2000), "Take the Money and Run" (1969) and "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" (1988).


title: Comedy film

text: Fantasy comedy films use magic, supernatural or mythological figures for comedic purposes. Some fantasy comedy includes elements of parody, or satire, such as the hero becoming a cowardly fool or the princess being a klutz. Examples of these films include "Big", "Being John Malkovich", "Ernest Saves Christmas", "Ernest Scared Stupid", "Night at the Museum", "Groundhog Day", "Click", and "Shrek".


title: Comedy film

text: Comedy horror is a genre/type in which the usual dark themes and "scare tactics" attributed to horror films are treated with a humorous approach. These films either use goofy horror cliches, such as in "Scream", "Young Frankenstein", "The Rocky Horror Picture Show", "Little Shop of Horrors", "The Haunted Mansion", and "Scary Movie" where campy styles are favored. Some are much more subtle and don't parody horror, such as "An American Werewolf in London". Another style of comedy horror can also rely on over-the-top violence and gore such as in "The Evil Dead" (1981), "The Return of the Living Dead" (1985), "Braindead" (1992), and "Club Dread" (2004) – such films are sometimes known as "splatstick", a portmanteau of the words "splatter" and "slapstick". It would be reasonable to put "Ghostbusters" in this category.


title: Comedy film

text: Day-in-the-life films takes small events in a person's life and raises their level of importance. The "small things in life" feel as important to the protagonist (and the audience) as the climactic battle in an action film, or the final shootout in a western.  Often, the protagonists deal with multiple, overlapping issues in the course of the film.  The day-in-the-life comedy often finds humor in commenting upon the absurdity or irony of daily life; for example "The Terminal" (2004) or "Waitress" (2007). Character humor is also used extensively in day-in-the-life comedies, as can be seen in "American Splendor" (2003).


title: Comedy film

text: Romantic comedies are humorous films with central themes that reinforce societal beliefs about love (e.g., themes such as "love at first sight", "love conquers all", or "there is someone out there for everyone"); the story typically revolves around characters falling into (and out of, and back into) love. "Amélie" (2001), "Annie Hall" (1977), "Charade" (1963), "City Lights" (1931), "Four Weddings and a Funeral" (1994), "It" (1927), "The Lobster" (2015), "My Wife, the Director General" (1966), "My Favorite Wife" (1940), "Pretty Woman" (1990), "Some Like It Hot" (1959), "There's Something About Mary" (1998) and "When Harry Met Sally..." (1989) are examples of romantic comedies.


title: Comedy film

text: A subgenre of the romantic comedy, screwball comedies appear to focus on the story of a central male character until a strong female character takes center stage; at this point, the man's story becomes secondary to a new issue typically introduced by the woman; this story grows in significance and, as it does, the man's masculinity is challenged by the sharp-witted woman, who is often his love interest. Typically it can include a romantic element, an interplay between people of different economic strata, quick and witty repartee, some form of role reversal, and a happy ending. Some examples of "screwball" comedy during its heyday include "It Happened One Night" (1934), "Bringing Up Baby" (1938), "The Philadelphia Story" (1940), "His Girl Friday" (1940), "Mr. & Mrs. Smith" (1941); more recent examples include "What's Up, Doc?" (1972), "Rat Race" (2001), and "Our Idiot Brother" (2011).


title: Comedy film

text: Science fiction comedy films often exaggerate the elements of traditional science fiction films to comic effect. Examples include "Spaceballs", "Ghostbusters", "Galaxy Quest", "Mars Attacks!", "Men in Black", and many more.


title: Comedy film

text: Sports comedy combines the genre of comedy with that of the sports film genre. Thematically, the story is often one of "Our Team" versus "Their Team"; their team will always try to win, and our team will show the world that they deserve recognition or redemption; the story does not always have to involve a team. The story could also be about an individual athlete or the story could focus on an individual playing on a team. The comedic aspect of this super-genre often comes from physical humor ("Happy Gilmore -" 1996), character humor ("Caddyshack -" 1980), or the juxtaposition of bad athletes succeeding against the odds ("The Bad News Bears" - 1976).


title: Comedy film

text: War films typically tells the story of a small group of isolated individuals who – one by one – get killed (literally or metaphorically) by an outside force until there is a final fight to the death; the idea of the protagonists facing death is a central expectation in a war film. War comedies infuse this idea of confronting death with a morbid sense of humor. In a war film even though the enemy may out-number, or out-power, the hero, we assume that the enemy "can" be defeated if only the hero can figure out how. Often, this strategic sensibility provides humorous opportunities in a war comedy. Examples include "Good Morning, Vietnam"; "M*A*S*H"; the Francis the Talking Mule series; and others.


title: Comedy film

text: Films in the western super-genre often take place in the American Southwest or in Mexico, with a large number of scenes occurring outside so we can soak in nature's rugged beauty. Visceral expectations for the audience include fistfights, gunplay, and chase scenes. There is also the expectation of spectacular panoramic images of the countryside including sunsets, wide open landscape and endless deserts and sky. Western comedies often find their humor in specific characters ("Three Amigos", 1986), in interpersonal relationships ("Lone Ranger", 2013) or in creating a parody of the western ("Rango", 2011).


title: Plutarch

text: Plutarch (; , "Ploútarchos"; ; – after AD 119) was a Greek Middle Platonist philosopher, historian, biographer, essayist, and priest at the Temple of Apollo in Delphi. He is known primarily for his "Parallel Lives", a series of biographies of illustrious Greeks and Romans, and "Moralia", a collection of essays and speeches. Upon becoming a Roman citizen, he was possibly named Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus ().


title: Plutarch

text: Plutarch was born to a prominent family in the small town of Chaeronea, about east of Delphi, in the Greek region of Boeotia. His family was long established in the town; his father was named Autobulus and his grandfather was named Lamprias.


title: Plutarch

text: His name is derived from Pluto (πλοῦτον), an epithet of Hades, and Archos (ἀρχός) meaning "Master", the whole name meaning something like "Whose master is Pluto".


title: Plutarch

text: His brothers, Timon and Lamprias, are frequently mentioned in his essays and dialogues, which speak of Timon in particular in the most affectionate terms. Rualdus, in his 1624 work "Life of Plutarchus", recovered the name of Plutarch's wife, Timoxena, from internal evidence afforded by his writings. A letter is still extant, addressed by Plutarch to his wife, bidding her not to grieve too much at the death of their two-year-old daughter, who was named Timoxena after her mother. He hinted at a belief in reincarnation in that letter of consolation.


title: Plutarch

text: Plutarch studied mathematics and philosophy in Athens under Ammonius from AD 66 to 67. He attended the games of Delphi where the emperor Nero competed and possibly met prominent Romans, including future emperor Vespasian.


title: Plutarch

text: The exact number of his sons is not certain, although two of them, Autobulus and the second Plutarch, are often mentioned. Plutarch's treatise "De animae procreatione in Timaeo" is dedicated to them, and the marriage of his son Autobulus is the occasion of one of the dinner parties recorded in the "Table Talk". Another person, Soklarus, is spoken of in terms which seem to imply that he was Plutarch's son, but this is nowhere definitely stated. His treatise on marriage questions, addressed to Eurydice and Pollianus, seems to speak of the former as having recently lived in his house, but without any clear evidence on whether she was his daughter or not.


title: Plutarch

text: Plutarch was the uncle or grandfather of Sextus of Chaeronea, who was one of the teachers of Marcus Aurelius, and who may have been the same person as the philosopher Sextus Empiricus.


title: Plutarch

text: Plutarch was a vegetarian, though how long and how strictly he adhered to this diet is unclear. He wrote about the ethics of meat-eating in two discourses in "Moralia".


title: Plutarch

text: At some point, Plutarch received Roman citizenship. His sponsor was Lucius Mestrius Florus, who was an associate of the new emperor Vespasian, as evidenced by his new name, Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus. As a Roman citizen, Plutarch would have been of the equestrian order, he visited Rome some time with Florus, who served also as a historical source for his "Life of Otho".


title: Plutarch

text: He lived most of his life at Chaeronea, and was initiated into the mysteries of the Greek god Apollo. He probably took part in the Eleusinian Mysteries. During his visit to Rome he may have been part of a municipal embassy for Delphi: around the same time, Vespasian granted Delphi various municipal rights and privileges.


title: Plutarch

text: In addition to his duties as a priest of the Delphic temple, Plutarch was also a magistrate at Chaeronea and he represented his home town on various missions to foreign countries during his early adult years. Plutarch held the office of archon in his native municipality, probably only an annual one which he likely served more than once.


title: Plutarch

text: Plutarch was epimeletes (manager) of the Amphictyonic League for at least five terms, from 107 to 127, in which role he was responsible for organising the Pythian Games. He mentions this service in his work, "Whether an Old Man Should Engage in Public Affairs" (17 = "Moralia" 792f).


title: Plutarch

text: The "Suda", a medieval Greek encyclopedia, states that Trajan made Plutarch procurator of Illyria. However, most historians consider this unlikely, since Illyria was not a procuratorial province.


title: Plutarch

text: According to the 8th/9th-century historian George Syncellus, late in Plutarch's life, Emperor Hadrian appointed him nominal procurator of Achaea – which entitled him to wear the vestments and ornaments of a consul.


title: Plutarch

text: Some time , Plutarch was made one of the two sanctuary priests for the temple of Apollo at Delphi; the site had declined considerably since the classical Greek period. Around the same time in the 90s, Delphi experienced a construction boom, financed by Greek patrons and possible imperial support. His priestly duties connected part of his literary work with the Pythian oracle at Delphia: one of his most important works is the "Why Pythia does not give oracles in verse".(). Even more important is the dialogue “On the ‘E’ at Delphi” (), which features Ammonius, a Platonic philosopher and teacher of Plutarch, and Lambrias, Plutarch's brother.


title: Plutarch

text: According to Ammonius, the letter ‘E’ written on the temple of Apollo in Delphi originated from the following fact: The Seven Sages of Greece, whose maxims were also written on the walls of the vestibule of the temple, were not seven but actually five: Chilon, Solon, Thales, Bias, and Pittakos. However, the tyrants Cleobulos and Periandros used their political power to be incorporated in the list. Thus, the ‘E’, which was used to represent the number 5, constituted an acknowledgement that the Delphic maxims actually originated from only five genuine wise men.


title: Plutarch

text: There was a portrait bust dedicated to Plutarch for his efforts in helping to revive the Delphic shrines.


title: Plutarch

text: The portrait of a philosopher exhibited at the exit of the Archaeological Museum of Delphi, dates to the 2nd century; due to its inscription, in the past it had been identified with Plutarch. The man, although bearded, is depicted at a relatively young age: His hair and beard are rendered in coarse volumes and thin incisions. The gaze is deep, due to the heavy eyelids and the incised pupils.


title: Plutarch

text: But a fragmentary hermaic stele "next" to the portrait probably did once bear a portrait of Plutarch, since it is inscribed, "The Delphians, along with the Chaeroneans, dedicated this (image of) Plutarch, following the precepts of the Amphictyony" ( | .


title: Plutarch

text: Plutarch's surviving works were intended for Greek speakers throughout the Roman Empire, not just Greeks.


title: Plutarch

text: Plutarch's first biographical works were the Lives of the Roman Emperors from Augustus to Vitellius. Of these, only the Lives of Galba and Otho survive. The Lives of Tiberius and Nero are extant only as fragments, provided by Damascius (Life of Tiberius, cf. his Life of Isidore) and Plutarch himself (Life of Nero, cf. Galba 2.1), respectively. These early emperors’ biographies were probably published under the Flavian dynasty or during the reign of Nerva (AD 96–98).


title: Plutarch

text: There is reason to believe that the two Lives still extant, those of Galba and Otho, "ought to be considered as a single work." Therefore, they do not form a part of the Plutarchian canon of single biographies – as represented by the Life of Aratus of Sicyon and the Life of Artaxerxes II (the biographies of Hesiod, Pindar, Crates and Daiphantus were lost). Unlike in these biographies, in "Galba-Otho" the individual characters of the persons portrayed are not depicted for their own sake but instead serve as an illustration of an abstract principle; namely the adherence or non-adherence to Plutarch's morally founded ideal of governing as a Princeps (cf. Galba 1.3; Moralia 328D–E).


title: Plutarch

text: Arguing from the perspective of Platonic political philosophy (cf. Republic 375E, 410D-E, 411E-412A, 442B-C), in "Galba-Otho" Plutarch reveals the constitutional principles of the Principate in the time of the civil war after Nero's death. While morally questioning the behavior of the autocrats, he also gives an impression of their tragic destinies, ruthlessly competing for the throne and finally destroying each other. "The Caesars' house in Rome, the Palatium, received in a shorter space of time no less than four Emperors", Plutarch writes, "passing, as it were, across the stage, and one making room for another to enter" (Galba 1).


title: Plutarch

text: "Galba-Otho" was handed down through different channels. It can be found in the appendix to Plutarch's "Parallel Lives" as well as in various Moralia manuscripts, most prominently in Maximus Planudes' edition where Galba and Otho appear as "Opera" XXV and XXVI. Thus it seems reasonable to maintain that "Galba-Otho" was from early on considered as an illustration of a moral-ethical approach, possibly even by Plutarch himself.


title: Plutarch

text: Plutarch's best-known work is the "Parallel Lives", a series of biographies of illustrious Greeks and Romans, arranged in pairs to illuminate their common moral virtues and vices, thus it being more of an insight into human nature than a historical account. The surviving "Lives" contain 23 pairs, each with one Greek life and one Roman life, as well as four unpaired single lives.


title: Plutarch

text: As is explained in the opening paragraph of his "Life of Alexander", Plutarch was not concerned with history so much as the influence of character, good or bad, on the lives and destinies of men. Whereas sometimes he barely touched on epoch-making events, he devoted much space to charming anecdote and incidental triviality, reasoning that this often said far more for his subjects than even their most famous accomplishments. He sought to provide rounded portraits, likening his craft to that of a painter; indeed, he went to tremendous lengths (often leading to tenuous comparisons) to draw parallels between physical appearance and moral character. In many ways, he must be counted amongst the earliest moral philosophers.


title: Plutarch

text: Some of the "Lives", such as those of Heracles, Philip II of Macedon, Epaminondas, Scipio Africanus, Scipio Aemilianus and possibly Quintus Caecilius Metellus Numidicus no longer exist; many of the remaining "Lives" are truncated, contain obvious lacunae or have been tampered with by later writers. Extant "Lives" include those on Solon, Themistocles, Aristides, Agesilaus II, Pericles, Alcibiades, Nicias, Demosthenes, Pelopidas, Philopoemen, Timoleon, Dion of Syracuse, Eumenes, Alexander the Great, Pyrrhus of Epirus, Romulus, Numa Pompilius, Coriolanus, Theseus, Aemilius Paullus, Tiberius Gracchus, Gaius Gracchus, Gaius Marius, Sulla, Sertorius, Lucullus, Pompey, Julius Caesar, Cicero, Cato the Elder, Mark Antony, and Marcus Junius Brutus.


title: Plutarch

text: Plutarch's "Life of Alexander", written as a parallel to that of Julius Caesar, is one of five extant tertiary sources on the Macedonian conqueror Alexander the Great. It includes anecdotes and descriptions of events that appear in no other source, just as Plutarch's portrait of Numa Pompilius, the putative second king of Rome, holds much that is unique on the early Roman calendar.


title: Plutarch

text: Plutarch devotes a great deal of space to Alexander's drive and desire, and strives to determine how much of it was presaged in his youth. He also draws extensively on the work of Lysippus, Alexander's favourite sculptor, to provide what is probably the fullest and most accurate description of the conqueror's physical appearance. When it comes to his character, Plutarch emphasizes his unusual degree of self-control and scorn for luxury: "He desired not pleasure or wealth, but only excellence and glory." As the narrative progresses, however, the subject incurs less admiration from his biographer and the deeds that it recounts become less savoury. The murder of Cleitus the Black, which Alexander instantly and deeply regretted, is commonly cited to this end.


title: Plutarch

text: Together with Suetonius's "The Twelve Caesars", and Caesar's own works "de Bello Gallico" and "de Bello Civili", the "Life of Caesar" is the main account of Julius Caesar's feats by ancient historians. Plutarch starts by telling of the audacity of Caesar and his refusal to dismiss Cinna's daughter, Cornelia. Other important parts are those containing his military deeds, accounts of battles and Caesar's capacity of inspiring the soldiers.


title: Plutarch

text: However, Plutarch's life shows few differences from Suetonius' work and Caesar's own works (see "De Bello Gallico" and "De Bello Civili"). Sometimes, Plutarch quotes directly from the "De Bello Gallico" and even tells us of the moments when Caesar was dictating his works.


title: Plutarch

text: In the final part of this life, Plutarch recounts details of Caesar's assassination. It ends by telling the destiny of his murderers, just after a detailed account of the scene when a phantom appeared to Brutus at night.


title: Plutarch

text: Plutarch's "Life of Pyrrhus" is a key text because it is the main historical account on Roman history for the period from 293 to 264 BCE, for which both Dionysius’ and Livy’s texts are lost.


title: Plutarch

text: The remainder of Plutarch's surviving work is collected under the title of the "Moralia" (loosely translated as "Customs and Mores"). It is an eclectic collection of seventy-eight essays and transcribed speeches, including "On Fraternal Affection"—a discourse on honour and affection of siblings toward each other, "On the Fortune or the Virtue of Alexander the Great"—an important adjunct to his Life of the great king, "On the Worship of Isis and Osiris" (a crucial source of information on Egyptian religious rites), along with more philosophical treatises, such as "On the Decline of the Oracles", "On the Delays of the Divine Vengeance", "On Peace of Mind" and lighter fare, such as "Odysseus and Gryllus", a humorous dialogue between Homer's Odysseus and one of Circe's enchanted pigs. The "Moralia" was composed first, while writing the Lives occupied much of the last two decades of Plutarch's own life.


title: Plutarch

text: Since Spartans wrote no history prior to the Hellenistic period – their only extant literature is fragments of 7th-century lyrics – Plutarch's five Spartan lives and "Sayings of Spartans" and "Sayings of Spartan Women", rooted in sources that have since disappeared, are some of the richest sources for historians of Lacedaemonia. But while they are important, they are also controversial. Plutarch lived centuries after the Sparta he writes about (and a full millennium separates him from the earliest events he records) and even though he visited Sparta, many of the ancient customs he reports had been long abandoned, so he never actually saw of what he wrote. Plutarch's sources themselves can be problematic. As the historians Sarah Pomeroy, Stanley Burstein, Walter Donlan, and Jennifer Tolbert Roberts have written, "Plutarch was influenced by histories written after the decline of Sparta and marked by nostalgia for a happier past, real or imagined." Turning to Plutarch himself, they write, "the admiration writers like Plutarch and Xenophon felt for Spartan society led them to exaggerate its monolithic nature, minimizing departures from ideals of equality and obscuring patterns of historical change." Thus the Spartan egalitarianism and superhuman immunity to pain that have seized the popular imagination are likely myths, and their main architect is Plutarch. While flawed, Plutarch is nonetheless indispensable as one of the only ancient sources of information on Spartan life. Pomeroy et al. conclude that Plutarch's works on Sparta, while they must be treated with skepticism, remain valuable for their "large quantities of information" and these historians concede that "Plutarch's writings on Sparta, more than those of any other ancient author, have shaped later views of Sparta", despite their potential to misinform. He was also referenced in saying unto Sparta, "The beast will feed again."


title: Plutarch

text: Book IV of the "Moralia" contains the "Roman and Greek Questions" (Αἰτίαι Ῥωμαϊκαί and Αἰτίαι Ἑλλήνων). The customs of Romans and Greeks are illuminated in little essays that pose questions such as "Why were patricians not permitted to live on the Capitoline?" (no. 91) and then suggests answers to them.


title: Plutarch

text: In "On the Malice of Herodotus", Plutarch criticizes the historian Herodotus for all manner of prejudice and misrepresentation. It has been called the "first instance in literature of the slashing review". The 19th century English historian George Grote considered this essay a serious attack upon the works of Herodotus, and speaks of the "honourable frankness which Plutarch calls his malignity".


title: Plutarch

text: Plutarch makes some palpable hits, catching Herodotus out in various errors, but it is also probable that it was merely a rhetorical exercise, in which Plutarch plays devil's advocate to see what could be said against so favourite and well-known a writer. According to Barrow (1967), Herodotus' real failing in Plutarch's eyes was to advance "any criticism at all" of the city-states that saved Greece from Persia. Barrow concluded that ""Plutarch is fanatically biased in favor of the Greek cities; they can do no wrong.""


title: Plutarch

text: The lost works of Plutarch are determined by references in his own texts to them and from other authors' references over time. Parts of the "Lives" and what would be considered parts of the "Moralia" have been lost. The 'Catalogue of Lamprias', an ancient list of works attributed to Plutarch, lists 227 works, of which 78 have come down to us.


title: Plutarch

text: The Romans loved the "Lives". Enough copies were written out over the centuries so that a copy of most of the lives has survived to the present day, but there are traces of twelve more Lives that are now lost. Plutarch's general procedure for the "Lives" was to write the life of a prominent Greek, then cast about for a suitable Roman parallel, and end with a brief comparison of the Greek and Roman lives. Currently, only 19 of the parallel lives end with a comparison, while possibly they all did at one time. Also missing are many of his "Lives" which appear in a list of his writings: those of Hercules, the first pair of "Parallel Lives", Scipio Africanus and Epaminondas, and the companions to the four solo biographies. Even the lives of such important figures as Augustus, Claudius and Nero have not been found and may be lost forever.


title: Plutarch

text: Lost works that would have been part of the "Moralia" include "Whether One Who Suspends Judgment on Everything Is Condemned to Inaction", "On Pyrrho’s Ten Modes", and "On the Difference between the Pyrrhonians and the Academics".


title: Plutarch

text: Plutarch was a Platonist, but was open to the influence of the Peripatetics, and in some details even to Stoicism despite his criticism of their principles. He rejected only Epicureanism absolutely. He attached little importance to theoretical questions and doubted the possibility of ever solving them. He was more interested in moral and religious questions.


title: Plutarch

text: In opposition to Stoic materialism and Epicurean atheism he cherished a pure idea of God that was more in accordance with Plato. He adopted a second principle ("Dyad") in order to explain the phenomenal world. This principle he sought, however, not in any indeterminate matter but in the evil world-soul which has from the beginning been bound up with matter, but in the creation was filled with reason and arranged by it. Thus it was transformed into the divine soul of the world, but continued to operate as the source of all evil. He elevated God above the finite world, and thus daemons became for him agents of God's influence on the world. He strongly defends freedom of the will, and the immortality of the soul.


title: Plutarch

text: Platonic-Peripatetic ethics were upheld by Plutarch against the opposing theories of the Stoics and Epicureans. The most characteristic feature of Plutarch's ethics is, however, its close connection with religion. However pure Plutarch's idea of God is, and however vivid his description of the vice and corruption which superstition causes, his warm religious feelings and his distrust of human powers of knowledge led him to believe that God comes to our aid by direct revelations, which we perceive the more clearly the more completely that we refrain in "enthusiasm" from all action; this made it possible for him to justify popular belief in divination in the way which had long been usual among the Stoics.


title: Plutarch

text: His attitude to popular religion was similar. The gods of different peoples are merely different names for one and the same divine Being and the powers that serve it. The myths contain philosophical truths which can be interpreted allegorically. Thus Plutarch sought to combine the philosophical and religious conception of things and to remain as close as possible to tradition.


title: Plutarch

text: Plutarch's writings had an enormous influence on English and French literature. Shakespeare paraphrased parts of Thomas North's translation of selected "Lives" in his plays, and occasionally quoted from them verbatim.


title: Plutarch

text: Jean-Jacques Rousseau quotes from Plutarch in the 1762 "Emile, or On Education", a treatise on the education of the whole person for citizenship. Rousseau introduces a passage from Plutarch in support of his position against eating meat: You ask me', said Plutarch, 'why Pythagoras abstained from eating the flesh of beasts...


title: Plutarch

text: Ralph Waldo Emerson and the Transcendentalists were greatly influenced by the "Moralia" and in his glowing introduction to the five-volume, 19th-century edition, he called the "Lives" "a bible for heroes". He also opined that it was impossible to "read Plutarch without a tingling of the blood; and I accept the saying of the Chinese Mencius: 'A sage is the instructor of a hundred ages. When the manners of Loo are heard of, the stupid become intelligent, and the wavering, determined.


title: Plutarch

text: Montaigne's "Essays" draw extensively on Plutarch's "Moralia" and are consciously modelled on the Greek's easygoing and discursive inquiries into science, manners, customs and beliefs. "Essays" contains more than 400 references to Plutarch and his works.


title: Plutarch

text: James Boswell quoted Plutarch on writing lives, rather than biographies, in the introduction to his own "Life of Samuel Johnson". Other admirers included Ben Jonson, John Dryden, Alexander Hamilton, John Milton, Edmund Burke, Joseph De Maistre, Mark Twain, Louis L'amour, and Francis Bacon, as well as such disparate figures as Cotton Mather and Robert Browning.


title: Plutarch

text: Plutarch's influence declined in the 19th and 20th centuries, but it remains embedded in the popular ideas of Greek and Roman history. One of his most famous quotes was one that he included in one of his earliest works. "The world of man is best captured through the lives of the men who created history."


title: Plutarch

text: There are translations, from the original Greek, in Latin, English, French, German, Italian, Polish and Hebrew.


title: Plutarch

text: British classical scholar H. J. Rose writes "One advantage to a modern reader who is not well acquainted with Greek is, that being but a moderate stylist, Plutarch is almost as good in a translation as in the original."


title: Plutarch

text: Jacques Amyot's translations brought Plutarch's works to Western Europe. He went to Italy and studied the Vatican text of Plutarch, from which he published a French translation of the "Lives" in 1559 and "Moralia" in 1572, which were widely read by educated Europe. Amyot's translations had as deep an impression in England as France, because Thomas North later published his English translation of the "Lives" in 1579 based on Amyot's French translation instead of the original Greek.


title: Plutarch

text: Plutarch's "Lives" were translated into English, from Amyot's version, by Sir Thomas North in 1579. The complete "Moralia" was first translated into English from the original Greek by Philemon Holland in 1603.


title: Plutarch

text: In 1683, John Dryden began a life of Plutarch and oversaw a translation of the "Lives" by several hands and based on the original Greek. This translation has been reworked and revised several times, most recently in the 19th century by the English poet and classicist Arthur Hugh Clough (first published in 1859). One contemporary publisher of this version is Modern Library. Another is Encyclopædia Britannica in association with the University of Chicago, , 1952, .


title: Plutarch

text: In 1770, English brothers John and William Langhorne published "Plutarch's "Lives" from the original Greek, with notes critical and historical, and a new life of Plutarch" in 6 volumes and dedicated to Lord Folkestone. Their translation was re-edited by Archdeacon Wrangham in the year 1819.


title: Plutarch

text: From 1901 to 1912, an American classicist, Bernadotte Perrin, produced a new translation of the "Lives" for the Loeb Classical Library. The "Moralia" is also included in the Loeb series, translated by various authors.


title: Plutarch

text: Penguin Classics began a series of translations by various scholars in 1958 with "The Fall of the Roman Republic", which contained six Lives and was translated by Rex Warner. Penguin continues to revise the volumes.


title: Plutarch

text: There are multiple translations of "Parallel Lives" into Latin, most notably the one titled "Pour le Dauphin" (French for "for the Prince") written by a scribe in the court of Louis XV of France and a 1470 Ulrich Han translation.


title: Plutarch

text: In 1519, Hieronymus Emser translated "De capienda ex inimicis utilitate" ("wie ym eyner seinen veyndt nutz machen kan", Leipzig).


title: Plutarch

text: The biographies were translated by Gottlob Benedict von Schirach (1743–1804) and printed in Vienna by Franz Haas (1776–1780).


title: Plutarch

text: Following some Hebrew translations of selections from Plutarch's "Parallel Lives" published in the 1920s and the 1940s, a complete translation was published in three volumes by the Bialik Institute in 1954, 1971 and 1973. The first volume, "Roman Lives", first published in 1954, presents the translations of Joseph G. Liebes to the biographies of Coriolanus, Fabius Maximus, Tiberius Gracchus and Gaius Gracchus, Cato the Elder and Cato the Younger, Gaius Marius, Sulla, Sertorius, Lucullus, Pompey, Crassus, Cicero, Julius Caesar, Brutus and Mark Anthony.


title: Plutarch

text: The second volume, "Greek Lives", first published in 1971 presents A. A. Halevy's translations of the biographies of Lycurgus, Aristides, Cimon, Pericles, Nicias, Lysander, Agesilaus, Pelopidas, Dion, Timoleon, Demosthenes, Alexander the Great, Eumenes and Phocion. Three more biographies presented in this volume, those of Solon, Themistocles and Alcibiades were translated by M. H. Ben-Shamai.


title: Plutarch

text: The third volume, "Greek and Roman Lives", published in 1973, presented the remaining biographies and parallels as translated by Halevy. Included are the biographies of Demetrius, Pyrrhus, Agis and Cleomenes, Aratus and Artaxerxes, Philopoemen, Camillus, Marcellus, Flamininus, Aemilius Paulus, Galba and Otho, Theseus, Romulus, Numa Pompilius and Poplicola. It completes the translation of the known remaining biographies. In the introduction to the third volume Halevy explains that originally the Bialik Institute intended to publish only a selection of biographies, leaving out mythological figures and biographies that had no parallels. Thus, to match the first volume in scope the second volume followed the same path and the third volume was required.


title: Plutarch

text: Some editions of the "Moralia" include several works now known to have been falsely attributed to Plutarch. Among these are the "Lives of the Ten Orators", a series of biographies of the Attic orators based on Caecilius of Calacte; "On the Opinions of the Philosophers", "On Fate", and "On Music". These works are all attributed to a single, unknown author, referred to as "Pseudo-Plutarch". Pseudo-Plutarch lived sometime between the third and fourth centuries AD. Despite being falsely attributed, the works are still considered to possess historical value.


title: Akhanda

text: Akhanda () is a 2021 Indian Telugu-language action drama film written and directed by Boyapati Srinu. It was produced by Miryala Ravinder Reddy, under "Dwaraka Creations". It stars Nandamuri Balakrishna in a dual role alongside Pragya Jaiswal, Jagapathi Babu, and Srikanth. The soundtrack album and film score is composed by Thaman S.


title: Akhanda

text: Released on 2 December 2021, "Akhanda" opened to mixed reviews from critics and audience. The film gained popularity because of the soundtrack in the movie. The film became a commercial grossing over crore worldwide, emerging as the second highest-grossing Telugu film of the year and the highest-grossing film in Balakrishna’s career. "Akhanda" was featured at the 53rd International Film Festival of India in the Indian Panorama mainstream section.


title: Akhanda

text: The film begins in an impenetrable forest where Indian Army is under severe hunt for a terrible brigand Gajendra Sahu. During that encounter, Gajendra Sahu is gravely injured and is rescued by a chieftain of a religious organization "Maha Rudra Peetam". Upon which, he listens to the chieftain proclaiming the presence of God is in nature which must be protected. Plus, the public bowed their head down before the chieftain because of his chair. Hence, he conquers it by slaying the chieftain and cabals to play with nature. Before dying, he states never to challenge fate, creator, and the universe as he is not able to cope with its reply. At the same time, a couple Ramachandraiah & Dharani at Anantapur are blessed with twins in which one is stillborn. Suddenly, an Aghora arrives when the mother is asleep and reveals that one is nature & stillborn is a cataclysm of evil, like Lord Shiva. So, Ramachandraiah cuts the cords, and handover him to Aghora who is sent to Kaasi. Whereat, he rises alive when placed at the sanctum and is raised under the protection of the Aghoras.


title: Akhanda

text: Years roll by, and the younger one Murali Krishna is an arbiter who is esteemed as a deity. He aims to eradicate factionalism so that the terrain flourishes from four sides. Saranya Bachupally is a newly appointed DC whose acquaintance with Murali Krishna initiates a contretemps that turns into a crush after learning of his ideologies. Parallelly, Antahpuram Varadarajulu a beast legally manages illegal mining of uranium extraction in a reversed forest. Plus, laborers are subjected to inhumane conditions and treated as slaves. Gajendra Sahu paves the path to Varadarajulu as a soul. Since it’s green soil Saranya feels something fishy and assigns Principal Secretary Padmavati to make a secret inquiry. In the interim, Murali Krishna & Saranya are knits and blessed with a baby girl. Suddenly, multiple children in the region had strange maladies, and doctors are unable to detect the cause behind them.


title: Akhanda

text: Hence, flustered Murali Krishna seeks the govt authorities when, Padmavati divulges the savagery activities of Varadarajulu, and predicts it should be hindered swiftly. Otherwise, the region becomes a huge graveyard. Listening to it, Murali Krishna flares up on Varadarajulu when he is impeded by his acolyte Central Minister Bharat Reddy and retrieves him to the hospital. At that point, Varadarajulu moves to Gajendra Sahu who ruses by planting a bomb at the hospital leaving several deaths including Bharat Reddy. Following, Murali Krishna is incriminated and prisoned by NIA headed by Krishnamacharya Perumal. Eventually, Murali Krishna’s kid also becomes a victim and Saranya rushes to the city hospital. On the way, they are attacked by Varadarajulu’s men while absconding she enters an ancient cave temple. Here, lands Akhanda Rudra Sikandar Aghora the elder brother of Murali Krishna, with supernatural powers who is proceeding under the mission of reinstating temples. He assaults blackguards, bounces back the baby to life, and safely drops them.


title: Akhanda

text: Being cognizant of it, Gajendra Sahu is frightened and grasps Akhanda as the answer of God. Besides, DSP Ranjan the sidekick of Varadarajulu apprehends Saranya and the entire family. On the verge to slay them, Akhanda appears to eliminate the wicked officers. Forthwith, he interrupts Gajendra Sahu’s ritual by throwing Ranjan’s dead body and giving him an ultimatum. Meanwhile, Dharani learns the fact when she rebukes them and decides to recoup her son. Then, Akhanda proclaims that his life is dedicated to the lord which perturbs the mother as she lost the two. Anyhow, he develops unknown affection for the baby. Once, Akhanda spots Padmavati at a river and detects it through his yogic powers. She has been molested and suffered to the state by Varadarajulu, considering, her uncovering the scam. Therefore, he onslaughts on Varadarajulu at the mining area, foredo him and frees the laborers.


title: Akhanda

text: Currently, Krishnamacharya Perumal departs to seize Akhanda for the bloodbath. As soon as he responds that the extreme from this world and men who try to disturb the balance of nature need to be eradicated. Simultaneously, Krishnamacharya Perumal is aware Murali Krishna is non-guilty via Padmavati and acquits him. As of now, Gajendra Sahu contacts a Kapalik tantrik, Prachanda to kill Akhanda. Ergo, they spell cursed death over the baby when Akhanda gives a call to Kedari Aghori Baba from Kaasi who foretells to conduct "Maha Mrityunjay Homam". Until the completion of the ritual, Akhanda is captive to Shiva. Timely, Gajendra Sahu & Prachanda devise a trap and wallop on him. However, he bears the pain and finishes the ritual successfully with aid of Murali Krishna. At last, Akhanda manifests him with mighty powers, wreaks havoc, and ceases the baddies. Finally, the movie ends with Akhanda quitting who is obstructed by the baby when he oaths her to arrive at any time of his prerequisite.