title: History of economic thought

text: The Paul Samuelson's (1915–2009) "Foundations of Economic Analysis" published in 1947 was an attempt to show that mathematical methods could represent a core of testable economic theory. Samuelson started with two assumptions. First, people and firms will act to maximize their self-interested goals. Second, markets tend towards an equilibrium of prices, where demand matches supply. He extended the mathematics to describe equilibrating behavior of economic systems, including that of the then new macroeconomic theory of John Maynard Keynes. Whilst Richard Cantillon had imitated Isaac Newton's mechanical physics of inertia and gravity in competition and the market, the physiocrats had copied the body's blood system into circular flow of income models, William Jevons had found growth cycles to match the periodicity of sunspots, Samuelson adapted thermodynamics formulae to economic theory. Reasserting economics as a hard science was being done in the United Kingdom also, and one celebrated "discovery", of A. W. Phillips, was of a correlative relationship between inflation and unemployment. The workable policy conclusion was that securing full employment could be traded-off against higher inflation. Samuelson incorporated the idea of the Phillips curve into his work. His introductory textbook "Economics" was influential and widely adopted. It became the most successful economics text ever. Paul Samuelson was awarded the new Nobel Prize in Economics in 1970 for his merging of mathematics and political economy.


title: History of economic thought

text: American economist Kenneth Arrow's (1921–2017) published "Social Choice and Individual Values" in 1951. It consider connections between economics and political theory. It gave rise to social choice theory with the introduction of his "Possibility Theorem". This sparked widespread discussion over how to interpret the different conditions of the theorem and what implications it had for democracy and voting. Most controversial of his four (1963) or five (1950/1951) conditions is the independence of irrelevant alternatives.


title: History of economic thought

text: In the 1950s Kenneth Arrow and Gérard Debreu (1921–2004) developed the Arrow–Debreu model of general equilibria. In 1963 Arrow published a paper which founded Health Economics.


title: History of economic thought

text: In 1971 Arrow and Frank Hahn published "General Competitive Analysis" (1971), which reasserted a theory of general equilibrium of prices through the economy. In 1971, US President Richard Nixon's had declared that "We are all Keynesians now", announcing wage and price controls. He lifted this from a comment by Milton Friedman in 1965 which formed a "Time".


title: History of economic thought

text: In 1951 English economist James E. Meade (1907–1995) published "The Balance of Payments", volume 1 of "The Theory of International Economic Policy", which proposed the theory of domestic divergence (internal and external balance), and promoted policy tools for governments. In 1955 he published volume 2 "Trade and Welfare", which proposed the theory of the "second-best", and promoted protectionism. He shared the 1977 Nobel Economic Prize with Bertil Ohlin.


title: History of economic thought

text: In 1979 American economist Paul Krugman (1953–) published a paper founding New trade theory, which attempts to explain the role of increasing returns to scale and network effects in international trade. In 1991 he published a paper founding New economic geography. His textbook "International Economics" (2007) appears on many undergraduate reading lists. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2008.


title: History of economic thought

text: In 1954 Saint Lucian economist Sir Arthur Lewis (1915–1991) proposed the Dual Sector Model of Development Economics, which claims that capitalism expands by making use of an unlimited supply of labor from the backward non-capitalist "subsistence sector" until it reaches the Lewisian breaking point where wages begin to rise, receiving the 1979 Nobel Economics Prize.


title: History of economic thought

text: In 1955 Russian-born American economist Simon Kuznets (1901–1985), who introduced the concept of Gross domestic product (GDP) in 1934 published an article revealing an inverted U-shaped relation between income inequality and economic growth, meaning that economic growth increases income disparity between rich and poor in poor countries, but decreases it in wealthy countries. In 1971 he received the Nobel Economics Prize.


title: History of economic thought

text: Indian economist Amartya Sen (1933–) expressed considerable skepticism about the validity of neoclassical assumptions, and was highly critical of rational expectations theory, devoting his work to Development Economics and human rights.


title: History of economic thought

text: In 1981, Sen published "Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation" (1981), a book in which he argued that famine occurs not only from a lack of food, but from inequalities built into mechanisms for distributing food. Sen also argued that the Bengal famine was caused by an urban economic boom that raised food prices, thereby causing millions of rural workers to starve to death when their wages did not keep up.


title: History of economic thought

text: In addition to his important work on the causes of famines, Sen's work in the field of development economics has had considerable influence in the formulation of the "Human Development Report", published by the United Nations Development Programme. This annual publication that ranks countries on a variety of economic and social indicators owes much to the contributions by Sen among other social choice theorists in the area of economic measurement of poverty and inequality. Sen was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1998.


title: History of economic thought

text: In 1958 American economists Alfred H. Conrad (1924–1970) and John R. Meyer (1927–2009) founded New Economic History, which in 1960 was called Cliometrics by American economist Stanley Reiter (1925–2014) after Clio, the muse of history. It uses neoclassical economic theory to reinterpret historical data, spreading throughout academia, causing economic historians untrained in economics to disappear from history departments. American cliometric economists Douglass Cecil North (1920–2015) and Robert William Fogel (1926–2013) were awarded the 1993 Nobel Economics Prize.


title: History of economic thought

text: In 1962 American economists James M. Buchanan (1919–2013) and Gordon Tullock (1922–2014) published "The Calculus of Consent", which revived Public Choice Theory by differentiating politics (the rules of the game) from public policy (the strategies to adopt within the rules), founding Constitutional Economics, the economic analysis of constitutional law. Buchanan was awarded the 1986 Nobel Economics Prize.


title: History of economic thought

text: In 1962–1963 Scottish economist Marcus Fleming (1911–1976) and Canadian economist Robert Mundell (1932–) published the Mundell–Fleming Model of the Economy, an extension of the IS–LM Model to an open economy, proposing the Impossible Trinity of fixed exchange rate, free capital movement, and an independent monetary policy, only two of which can be maintained simultaneously. Mundell received the 1999 Nobel Economics Prize.


title: History of economic thought

text: In 1965 American economist Henry G. Manne (1928–2015) published "Mergers and the Market for Corporate Control" in "Journal of Political Economy", which claims that changes in the price of a share of stock in the stock market will occur more rapidly when insider trading is prohibited than when it is permitted, founding the theory of market for corporate control.


title: History of economic thought

text: In 1970 George Akerlof (1940–) published the paper "The Market for Lemons", founding the theory of Information Economics, receiving the 2001 Nobel Economics Prize.


title: History of economic thought

text: Joseph E. Stiglitz (1943–) also received the Nobel Economics Prize in 2001 for his work in Information Economics. He has served as chairman of President Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers, and as chief economist for the World Bank. Stiglitz has taught at many universities, including Columbia, Stanford, Oxford, Manchester, Yale, and MIT. In recent years he has become an outspoken critic of global economic institutions. In "Making Globalization Work" (2007) he offers an account of his perspectives on issues of international economics:


title: History of economic thought

text: In 1973 Russian-American mathematician-economist Leonid Hurwicz (1917–2008) founded Market (Mechanism) Design Theory, a.k.a. Reverse Game Theory, which allows people to distinguish situations in which markets work well from those in which they do not, aiding the identification of efficient trading mechanisms, regulation schemes, and voting procedures; he developed the theory with Eric Maskin (1950–) and Roger Myerson (1951–), sharing the 2007 Nobel Economics Prize with them.


title: History of economic thought

text: In 1974 American economist Arthur Laffer formulated the Laffer curve, which postulates that no tax revenue will be raised at the extreme tax rates of 0% and 100%, and that there must be at least one rate where tax revenue would be a non-zero maximum. This concept was adopted by U.S. President Ronald Reagan in the early 1980s, becoming the cornerstone of Reaganomics, which was co-founded by American economist Paul Craig Roberts.


title: History of economic thought

text: In 1986 French economist Jean Tirole (1953–) published "Dynamic Models of Oligopoly", followed by "The Theory of Industrial Organization" (1988), launching his quest to understand market power and regulation, resulting in the 2014 Nobel Economics Prize.


title: History of economic thought

text: In 2008, there was a financial crisis which led to a global recession. This prompted some economists to question the current orthodoxy.


title: History of economic thought

text: One response was the Keynesian resurgence. This emerged as a consensus among some policy makers and economists for Keynesian solutions. Figures in this school included Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Olivier Blanchard, Gordon Brown, Paul Krugman, and Martin Wolf.


title: History of economic thought

text: Austerity was another response, the policy of reducing government budget deficits. Austerity policies may include spending cuts, tax increases, or a mixture of both. Two influential academic papers support this position. The first was "Large Changes in Fiscal Policy: Taxes Versus Spending", published in October 2009 by Alberto Alesina and Silvia Ardagna. It asserted that fiscal austerity measures did not hurt economies, and actually helped their recovery. The second "Growth in a Time of Debt", published in 2010 by Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff. It analyzed public debt and GDP growth among 20 advanced economies and claimed that high debt countries grew at −0.1% since WWII.


title: History of economic thought

text: In April 2013 the IMF and the Roosevelt Institute exposed basic calculation flaws in the Reinhart-Rogoff paper, claiming that when the flaws were corrected, the growth of the "high debt" countries was +2.2%, much higher than the original paper predicted. Following this, on June 6, 2013 Paul Krugman published "How the Case for Austerity Has Crumbled" in "The New York Review of Books", arguing that the case for austerity was fundamentally flawed, and calling for an end to austerity measures.


title: First Geneva Convention

text: The First Geneva Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded in Armies in the Field, held on 22 August 1864, is the first of four treaties of the Geneva Conventions. It defines "the basis on which rest the rules of international law for the protection of the victims of armed conflicts." After the first treaty was adopted in 1864, it was significantly revised and replaced in 1906, 1929, and finally 1949. It is inextricably linked to the International Committee of the Red Cross, which is both the instigator for the inception and enforcer of the articles in these conventions.


title: First Geneva Convention

text: The 1864 Geneva Convention was instituted at a critical period in European political and military history. Elsewhere, the American Civil War had been raging since 1861, and would ultimately claim between 750,000 and 900,000 lives. Between the fall of Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 and the rise of his nephew in the Italian campaign of 1859, the powers had maintained peace in western Europe. Yet, with the 1853–1856 conflict in the Crimea, war had returned to Europe, and while those troubles were "in a distant and inaccessible region" northern Italy was "so accessible from all parts of western Europe that it instantly filled with curious observers;" while the bloodshed was not excessive the sight of it was unfamiliar and shocking. Despite its intent of ameliorating the ravages of war, the inception of the 1864 Geneva Convention inaugurated "a renewal of military activity on a large scale, to which the people of western Europe…had not been accustomed since the first Napoleon had been eliminated."


title: First Geneva Convention

text: The movement for an international set of laws governing the treatment and care for the wounded and prisoners of war began when relief activist Henry Dunant witnessed the Battle of Solferino in 1859, fought between French-Piedmontese and Austrian armies in Northern Italy. The subsequent suffering of 40,000 wounded soldiers left on the field due to lack of facilities, personnel, and truces to give them medical aid moved Dunant into action. Upon return to Geneva, Dunant published his account "Un Souvenir de Solferino". He urged the calling together of an international conference and soon co-founded with the Swiss lawyer Gustave Moynier, the International Committee of the Red Cross in 1863.


title: First Geneva Convention

text: The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), while recognising that it is "primarily the duty and responsibility of a nation to safeguard the health and physical well-being of its own people", knew there would always, especially in times of war, be a "need for voluntary agencies to supplement…the official agencies charged with these responsibilities in every country." To ensure that its mission was widely accepted, it required a body of rules to govern its own activities and those of the involved belligerent parties.


title: First Geneva Convention

text: Only one year later, the Swiss government invited the governments of all European countries, as well as the United States, Brazil, and Mexico, to attend an official diplomatic conference. Sixteen countries sent a total of twenty-six delegates to Geneva. The meeting was presided over by General Guillaume Henri Dufour. The conference took place in the Alabama room at Geneva's Hotel de Ville (city hall) on 22 August 1864. The conference adopted the first Geneva Convention "for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded in Armies in the Field". Representatives of 12 states signed the convention:


title: First Geneva Convention

text: The United Kingdom of Norway and Sweden signed in December. The United Kingdom signed a year later in 1865. The Grand Duchy of Hesse, the Kingdom of Bavaria and Austria signed in 1866 following the conclusion of the Austro-Prussian War. The United States of America signed in 1882.


title: First Geneva Convention

text: The original document is preserved in the Swiss Federal Archives in Bern. In the past it has been loaned to the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum in Geneva.


title: First Geneva Convention

text: The convention "derived its obligatory force from the implied consent of the states which accepted and applied them in the conduct of their military operations." Despite its basic mandates, listed below, it was successful in effecting significant and rapid reforms. This first effort provided only for:


title: First Geneva Convention

text: The original ten articles of the 1864 treaty have been expanded to the current 64 articles. This lengthy treaty protects soldiers that are hors de combat (out of the battle due to sickness or injury), as well as medical and religious personnel, and civilians in the zone of battle. Among its principal provisions:


title: First Geneva Convention

text: Due to significant ambiguities in the articles with certain terms and concepts and even more so to the rapidly developing nature of war and military technology, the original articles had to be revised and expanded, largely at the Second Geneva Conference in 1906 and Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 which extended the articles to maritime warfare. The 1906 version was updated and replaced by the 1929 version when minor modifications were made to it. It was again updated and replaced by the 1949 version, better known as the Final Act of Geneva Conference, 1949. However, as Jean S. Pictet, Director of the International Committee of the Red Cross, noted in 1951, "the law, however, always lags behind charity; it is tardy in conforming with life's realities and the needs of humankind", as such it is the duty of the Red Cross "to assist in the widening the scope of law, on the assumption that…law will retain its value", principally through the revision and expansion of these basic principles of the original Geneva Convention.


title: First Geneva Convention

text: For a detailed discussion of each article of the treaty, see the original text and the commentary. There are currently 196 countries party to the 1949 Geneva Conventions, including this first treaty but also including the other three.


title: Donald D. Hoffman

text: Donald David Hoffman (born December 29, 1955) is an American cognitive psychologist and popular science author. He is a professor in the Department of Cognitive Sciences at the University of California, Irvine, with joint appointments in the Department of Philosophy, the Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science, and the School of Computer Science.


title: Donald D. Hoffman

text: Hoffman studies consciousness, visual perception and evolutionary psychology using mathematical models and psychophysical experiments. His research subjects include facial attractiveness, the recognition of shape, the perception of motion and color, the evolution of perception, and the mind–body problem. He has co-authored two technical books; "Observer Mechanics: A Formal Theory of Perception" (1989) offers a theory of consciousness and its relationship to physics; "Automotive Lighting and Human Vision" (2005) applies vision science to vehicle lighting. His book "Visual Intelligence: How We Create What We See" (1998) presents the modern science of visual perception to a broad audience. His 2015 TED Talk, "Do we see reality as it is?" argues that our perceptions have evolved to hide reality from us.


title: Donald D. Hoffman

text: Hoffman received a Bachelor of Arts degree in quantitative psychology from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) in 1978, and earned his Doctorate of Philosophy in computational psychology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1983 under David Marr and Whitman Richards. He was briefly a Research Scientist at the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory of MIT, and then became an assistant professor at the University of California at Irvine (UCI) in 1983. He has remained on the faculty of UCI since then, with a sabbatical during the 1995-1996 academic year at the Zentrum für Interdisziplinäre Forschung of Bielefeld University.


title: Donald D. Hoffman

text: Hoffman notes that the commonly held view that brain activity causes conscious experience has, so far, proved to be intractable in terms of scientific explanation. Hoffman proposes a solution to the hard problem of consciousness by adopting the converse view that consciousness causes brain activity and, in fact, creates all objects and properties of the physical world. To this end, Hoffman has developed and combined two theories: the "multimodal user interface" (MUI) theory of perception and "conscious realism".


title: Donald D. Hoffman

text: MUI theory states that "perceptual experiences do not match or approximate properties of the objective world, but instead provide a simplified, species-specific, user interface to that world." Hoffman argues that conscious beings have not evolved to perceive the world as it actually is but have evolved to perceive the world in a way that maximizes "fitness payoffs". Hoffman uses the metaphor of a computer desktop and icons - the icons of a computer desktop provide a functional interface so that the user does not have to deal with the underlying programming and electronics in order to use the computer efficiently. Similarly, objects that we perceive in time and space are metaphorical icons that act as our interface to the world and enable us to function as efficiently as possible without having to deal with the overwhelming amount of data underlying reality.


title: Donald D. Hoffman

text: This theory implies epiphysicalism, i.e., physical objects, such as quarks and brains and stars are constructed by conscious agents but such physical objects have no causal power.


title: Donald D. Hoffman

text: While panpsychism claims that rocks, mountains, the moon, etc. are conscious, "Conscious Realism" in this theory (Multimodal user interface theory) does not. Instead, what it claims is all such objects are icons within the user interface of a conscious agent, but that does not entail the


title: Donald D. Hoffman

text: The interface theory of perception is the idea that our perceptual experiences don't necessarily map onto what exists in the reality of itself. This is in contrast to the popular view of critical realism which argues that some of our perceptual experiences map onto the reality of the natural world. In the critical realist's view, primary qualities like height and weight represent actual qualities of reality, whereas secondary qualities don't. Within the interface theory of perception, neither primary nor secondary qualities necessarily map onto reality.


title: Donald D. Hoffman

text: Conscious Realism is described as a non-physicalist monism which holds that consciousness is the primary reality and the physical world emerges from that. The objective world consists of conscious agents and their experiences. "What exists in the objective world, independent of my perceptions, is a world of conscious agents, not a world of unconscious particles and fields. Those particles and fields are icons in the MUIs of conscious agents but are not themselves fundamental denizens of the objective world. Consciousness is fundamental."


title: Donald D. Hoffman

text: Together, MUI theory and Conscious Realism form the foundation for an overall theory that the physical world is not objective but is an epiphenomenon (secondary phenomenon) caused by consciousness. Hoffman has said that some form of reality may exist, but may be completely different from the reality our brains model and perceive. Reality may not be made of space-time and physical objects. Through supposing that consciousness is fundamental, Hoffman provides a possible solution to the hard problem of consciousness, which wrestles with the notion of why we seem to have conscious immediate experiences, and how sentient beings could arise from seemingly non-sentient matter. Hoffman argues that consciousness is more fundamental than the objects and patterns perceived by consciousness. We have conscious experiences because consciousness is posited as a fundamental aspect of reality. The problem of how sentient beings arise from seemingly non-sentient matter is also addressed because it alters the notion of non-sentient matter. Perceptions of non-sentient matter are mere byproducts of consciousness and don't necessarily reflect reality. This means the causal notion of non-sentient matter developing into sentient beings is open to question.


title: Donald D. Hoffman

text: Hoffman argues that natural selection is necessarily directed toward fitness payoffs and that organisms develop internal models of reality that increase these fitness payoffs. This means that organisms develop a perception of the world that is directed towards fitness, and not of reality. This led him to argue that evolution has developed sensory systems in organisms that have high fitness but don't offer a correct perception of reality.


title: Renaissance fair

text: A Renaissance fair, Renaissance faire or Renaissance festival is an outdoor gathering open to the public and typically commercial in nature, which purportedly recreates a historical setting for the amusement of its guests. Some are permanent theme parks, while others are short-term events in a fairground, winery, or other large public or private spaces. Renaissance fairs generally include an abundance of costumed entertainers or fair-goers, musical and theatrical acts, art and handicrafts for sale, and festival food. Some offer campgrounds for those who wish to stay more than one day.


title: Renaissance fair

text: Many Renaissance fairs are set during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I of England. Some are set earlier, during the reign of Henry VIII, or in other countries, such as France, and some are set outside the era of the Renaissance; these may include earlier medieval periods (including Vikings), or later periods, such as 17th- or 18th-century pirates. Some engage in deliberate "time travel" by encouraging participants to wear costumes representing several eras in a broad time period. Renaissance fairs encourage visitors to enter into the spirit of things with costumes and audience participation. Many welcome fantasy elements such as wizards and elves.


title: Renaissance fair

text: Most Renaissance fairs are arranged to represent an imagined village in England during the reign of Elizabeth I, as this period has been generally considered to correspond to the flowering of the English Renaissance.


title: Renaissance fair

text: In a modern Renaissance festival, there are stages or performance areas set up for scheduled shows, such as plays in Shakespearean or commedia dell'arte tradition, as well as anachronistic audience participation comedy routines. Other performances include dancers, magicians, musicians, jugglers, and singers. Between the stages, the streets ("lanes") are lined with stores ("shoppes") and stalls where independent vendors sell medieval and Renaissance-themed handcrafts, clothing, books, and artworks. There are food and beverage vendors, as well as game and ride areas.


title: Renaissance fair

text: Renaissance fairs typically feature a wide variety of foods inspired by both Medieval cuisine and typical American fair foods like corn dogs. Some foods, like turkey legs, steak on a stick and bread bowls have become iconic of renaissance festivals. Beer, mead and wine are also sometimes present.


title: Renaissance fair

text: Games include basic skills events, such as archery or axe-throwing, as well as Drench-a-Wench and Soak-a-Bloke, which allow a player with a good aim to hit a target and get a fair employee wet. Rides are typically not machine-powered; various animal rides and human-powered swings are common. Live animal displays and falconry exhibitions are also commonplace. Larger Renaissance fairs will often include a joust as a main attraction. PETA and Born Free USA have protested the use of elephants and camels at the Maryland Renaissance Festival and Arizona Renaissance Festival.


title: Renaissance fair

text: In addition to the staged performances, a major attraction of Renaissance fairs is the crowds of actors—both professional and amateur—who play historical figures and roam the fair, interacting with visitors. Visitors are encouraged to wear costumes, contributing to the illusion of an actual Renaissance environment. Some allow weapons that are suitably peace-bonded, while others only allow fair employees to wear them. Many of the fair vendors sell or rent costumes for all ages and types. The Renaissance fair subculture's word for these costumed guests is "playtrons", a portmanteau of the words "player" and "patron", and they add a second level of enjoyment to their experience by "getting into the act" as Renaissance Lords and Ladies, peasants, pirates, belly dancers, or fantasy characters. However, many Renaissance fairs discourage interaction between the official cast and so-called "playtrons".


title: Renaissance fair

text: Most fairs have an end-of-the-day ritual, a parade, dance or concert where all employees gather and bid farewell to the patrons.


title: Renaissance fair

text: Renaissance fairs are staged around the world at different times of the year. Fair vendors, participants, and crew often work the "fair circuit", going from event to event as one fair ends and another begins.


title: Renaissance fair

text: In post–World War II America, there was a resurgence of interest in medieval and Renaissance culture. In the 1950s, there was a very strong early music revival, and out of that came folk musician and traditionalist John Langstaff. In 1957, Langstaff held "A Christmas Masque of Traditional Revels" in New York City, and the following year another in Washington, D.C. A televised version was broadcast on the "Hallmark Hall of Fame" in 1966 which included Dustin Hoffman playing the part of the dragon slain by Saint George, and, in 1971, Langstaff established a permanent Christmas Revels in Cambridge, Massachusetts.


title: Renaissance fair

text: In 1963, Los Angeles schoolteacher Phyllis Patterson held a very small Renaissance fair as a class activity, in the backyard of her Laurel Canyon home in the Hollywood Hills. On May 11 and 12 of that year, Patterson and her husband, Ron Patterson, presented the first "Renaissance Pleasure Faire" as a one-weekend fundraiser for radio station KPFK which drew some 8,000 people. The fair was designed by the Living History Center to resemble an actual Spring market fair of the period.


title: Renaissance fair

text: Many of the original booths were no-charge reenactments of historical activities, including printing presses and blacksmiths. The first commercial vendors were mostly artisans and food merchants and were required to demonstrate historical accuracy or plausibility for their wares. Groups of volunteers were organized into "guilds" to focus on specific reenactment duties (musicians, military, Celtic clans, peasants, etc.). Both actors and vendors were required to successfully complete workshops in period language and accents, costuming, and culture, and to stay "in character" while working.


title: Renaissance fair

text: The original Renaissance Pleasure Faire of Southern California (RPFS) was held in the Spring 1966 at the Paramount Ranch located in Agoura, California, focusing on the practices of old English springtime markets and "Maying" customs. In 1967, the Pattersons created a Fall Renaissance fair, with a harvest festival theme, first at what is now China Camp State Park in San Rafael, California, and, in 1971, at the Black Point Forest in Novato, California. Both fairs developed into local traditions and began a movement that spread across the country.


title: Renaissance fair

text: Although historical reenactments are by no means exclusive to the United States (for example, the Earl of Eglinton in Scotland sponsored a large tournament in 1839), the Renaissance fair is largely an American variation on the theme. European historical fairs, such as those held at Kentwell Hall in Suffolk, England, operate more on the living history museum model, in which an actual historic site is peopled by re-enactors whose job it is to explain historical life to modern visitors.


title: Renaissance fair

text: In recent years, American-style Renaissance fairs have made inroads in other countries. Germany has seen a very similar phenomenon since the 1980s (see ), and, beginning in the mid-1990s, Renaissance fairs have spread into Canada and Australia.


title: Renaissance fair

text: Spinoffs of Renaissance fairs also include fairs set in other time periods, such as Christmas fairs set in Charles Dickens' London.


title: Renaissance fair

text: Renaissance fairs have several variant names, many of which use old-fashioned spellings such as "faire" or "fayre". These spellings originate from the Middle English "feire" (variant spellings include "feyre", "faire", and "fayre"), which comes from the Anglo-French word "feire". They can also be referred to as "Elizabethan", "Medieval", or "Tudor" fairs or festivals. "Ren Fair" and "Ren Fest" are popular colloquialisms. A German "Mittelaltermarkt" (literally "medieval market") is very similar to a Renaissance fair. Many Catalan towns hold "Mercats Medievals" (literally "medieval markets") as part of their annual festivities.


title: Renaissance fair

text: Within the Renaissance fair community, there is a difference of opinion as to how authentic a fair ought to be. Some believe fairs should be as authentic an experience as possible, with educational aspects like European living history museums. Others believe that entertainment is the primary goal. Phyllis Patterson steered the original California Renaissance Pleasure Faires along a middle path, and had used the phrase "We trick into learning with a laugh" to describe that philosophy of merging history and entertainment. Richard Shapiro, who founded what later became the Bristol Renaissance Faire outside Chicago, said he favored entertainment. He was quoted as having said, "We were so authentic back then it was almost painful."


title: Besarion Jughashvili

text: Besarion Ivanes dze Jughashvili, commonly known as Beso, ( – 25 August 1909) was the father of Joseph Stalin. Born into a peasant family of serfs in Didi Lilo in Georgia, he moved to Tbilisi at a young age to be a shoemaker, working in a factory. He was invited to set up his own shop in Gori, where he met and married Ekaterine Geladze, with whom he had three sons; only the youngest, Ioseb, lived. Once known as a "clever and proud" man, Jughashvili's shop failed and he developed a serious drinking problem, wherefore he left his family and moved back to Tbilisi in 1884, working in a factory again. He had little contact with either his wife or son after that point, and little is known of his life from then on, except that he died in 1909 of cirrhosis.


title: Besarion Jughashvili

text: Little is known of the family of Besarion Jughashvili. His grandfather, Zaza Jughashvili (born ), was involved in the 1804 Mtiuleti rebellion against the Russian Empire, which had only annexed eastern Georgia (Kartli-Kakheti) in 1801. Zaza was possibly of Ossetian background, with historians Simon Sebag Montefiore and Ronald Grigor Suny both suggesting he came from the village of Geri, near modern South Ossetia, though this claim can not be proven. Zaza escaped the uprising and moved to Didi Lilo, a village about away from the capital, Tiflis (now Tbilisi). He worked as a serf for Prince Badur Machabeli, tending to his vineyards. There he had a son, Vano, who in turn had two sons: Giorgi, and Besarion, who was likely born around 1850. Vano died young, likely before he turned 50, while Giorgi worked as an innkeeper until he was killed by bandits.


title: Besarion Jughashvili

text: With no family left Jughashvili moved to Tiflis and worked in the G.G. Adelkhanov shoe factory. Though he had no formal education, Jughashvili was literate, unusual for Georgian workers at the time, and was multilingual: it is likely in Tiflis that he learned Armenian, Azerbaijani, and Russian, in addition to his native Georgian. Around 1870 he was invited to move to Gori, about from Tiflis, and make shoes for the Russian soldiers garrisoned there. Gori was a small town at the time, with roughly 7000 residents; the majority were Armenian, with a large number of Georgians, as well as small numbers of Russians, Abkhaz, and Ossetians. It grew in importance in 1871 when a branch of the Transcaucasus Railway connected the town to Tiflis and Poti, a major port for oil export.


title: Besarion Jughashvili

text: Jughashvili set up a shop in the Russian Quarter of Gori, close to the barracks. In 1872 or 1874 he married Ekaterine (Keke) Geladze, a peasant girl who was probably 16. Keke, "an attractive freckled girl with auburn hair," was from the village of Gambareuli near Gori, and had moved to the town at a young age after her father died. They had three children, all boys, though the first two, Mikheil (born 14 February 1875) and Giorgi (born 24 December 1876), died aged two months and six months, respectively. Their third and final son, Ioseb, was born on 6 December 1878.


title: Besarion Jughashvili

text: Suny writes that after the death of Mikheil, Jughashvili started to drink heavily, which only increased after the death of Giorgi, and that the marriage began to deteriorate. Kotkin has also suggested that rumours of infidelity by Keke took a toll on him, especially after the birth of Ioseb, with several men suggested as his possible father. However, Kotkin concedes that "whether Keke was flirtatious, let alone promiscuous, is unclear," and that "reliable evidence about the possible liaisons of the future Stalin's mother is lacking," and argues that Jughashvili was probably the father.


title: Besarion Jughashvili

text: Jughashvili's shop was initially quite successful, employing up to ten people as well as apprentices, and the family initially enjoyed a rather high standard of living; a former apprentice would later note that he frequently saw butter in their home, which was an expensive delicacy for most Georgians (however Kotkin writes that the family lived more modestly, eating more traditional foods like lobio, lavash, and badrijani nigvzit). However Jughashvili's drinking, exacerbated by a Georgian custom that business paid in part with wine rather than money, had adverse effects on his business and home life. Isaac Deutscher felt that Jughashvili's inability to lift his status, "to be his own master," likely contributed to his drinking and frustrations. This idea is echoed by Robert Service, who noted that Jughashvili did not adapt to make European-style shoes that were popular at the time, and instead kept producing traditional Georgian styles, and suggests that the rumours about Keke were also a major influence on his drinking. Frequently drunk, Jughashvili became violent and routinely would beat Keke (who often hit back) and Iosef, and frequently fought in public, earning the nickname "Crazy Beso." Jughashvili's business suffered from his drinking, and he was eventually forced to give it up. The family also lost their home, and began staying with others for short periods, with nine different addresses over a ten-year period.


title: Besarion Jughashvili

text: In 1884 Jughashvili left the family and moved to Tiflis. He returned to his old job at the Adelkhanov factory. He sent some money to Keke, as well as offers to reconcile, but all efforts to do so failed.


title: Besarion Jughashvili

text: Jughashvili was upset when he learned that Keke had enrolled Ioseb in school, instead hoping his son would follow his path and become a cobbler. This led to a major incident in January 1890. Ioseb had been struck by a phaeton, severely injuring him. Jughashvili returned to Gori and brought his son to a Tiflis hospital, and after Ioseb healed he was apprenticed to the Adelkhanov factory. Keke was adamantly opposed to the idea and used her connections with the church to bring Ioseb back to Gori, where he would continue his studies to become a priest. This marked the last real contact Jughasvhili had with his wife or son, as he cut off contact and financial support when Ioseb left Tiflis.


title: Besarion Jughashvili

text: Soon after Ioseb left Tiflis, Jughashvili seems to have left the Adelkhanov factory. He briefly made shoes in a stall at the Armenian bazaar in Tiflis, and his actions after that are uncertain. He did keep in contact with Ioseb, occasionally sending him hand-made shoes. Jughashvili also had one final role in Ioseb's life: in January 1900 Ioseb was arrested for the first time, on account of Jughashvili. When Jughashvili left Didi Lilo he was not removed from the village roles, and still owed taxes as a peasant from the region. It is not clear why Ioseb was arrested instead of his father, who still lived in Tiflis, but Kotkin suggests it was a police tactic to send a message to Ioseb, who had begun his revolutionary activities.


title: Besarion Jughashvili

text: In August 1909 Jughashvili went to the Mikhailovsky Hospital in Tiflis, suffering from tuberculosis, colitis and chronic pneumonia. He died on 12 August 1909, with the cause of death listed as cirrhosis of the liver. Only one person, a fellow cobbler, attended his funeral, and he was buried in an unmarked grave in Telavi. The location of his grave was unknown until 1972, when Kandid Charkviani, the former First Secretary of the Georgian Communist Party, led efforts to find it and mark it, though it was not confirmed if Jughashvili's remains were still there. Charkviani had previously looked for photos of Jughashvili, at one point bringing several to Stalin to confirm their authenticity; after looking at them Stalin was unable to confirm if any were his father. There is only one photo purportedly of Jughasvhili, though its authenticity has never been confirmed.


title: Harley Morenstein

text: Harley Morenstein (born July 20, 1985) is a Canadian actor, Internet personality, and vlogger. He co-created, produces, and hosts the YouTube show Epic Meal Time and its FYI television spin-off series Epic Meal Empire. He also runs a vlog channel. He is one of the two remaining original members of the show along with Ameer Atari.


title: Harley Morenstein

text: Morenstein was born to English-speaking Jewish-Canadian parents in Montreal, Quebec. He attended Dawson College. He was a substitute teacher for a number of years at Lakeside Academy in Lachine, teaching history. Morenstein currently resides in Montreal.


title: Harley Morenstein

text: In 2010 he co-created "Epic Meal Time" with Sterling Toth. The channel has over 6 million subscribers, and over 300 installments, 2 spin-offs, and has had guest stars such as Seth Rogen, Smosh, Tony Hawk, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Kevin Smith, who directed the movie "Tusk", in which Morenstein had a cameo appearance. He produces the show with his brother, Darren Morenstein, under company name Nexttime Productions. He starred in the TV adaptation of the show called "Epic Meal Empire" on FYI, which ran for two seasons.


title: Harley Morenstein

text: Morenstein became famous on Vine in 2013 with his Vine on beard shaving. Since then he has been prevalent on Vine, and in 2015 after sporadically Vlogging on YouTube since 2014, he began Vlogging full-time, with videos featuring his girlfriend (though they have since broken up amicably as of 2019), dog, and the other members of EpicMealTime. He has amassed nearly 300,000 subscribers on his vlog channel.


title: Harley Morenstein

text: Morenstein featured in one of Destorm's songs called "Epic wRap", which was uploaded on YouTube December 18, 2011. He has also been featured in fellow YouTube celebrity Freddie Wong's video web series "Video Game High School", and appeared with Shane Dawson in a commercial for "Just Dance 4".


title: Harley Morenstein

text: After Kevin Smith appeared on an episode of the show, and an episode of the TV show, he offered Morenstein a cameo role in his "Tusk", which was followed by a cameo in his "Yoga Hosers". He also starred in Smith's portion of the anthology movie "Holidays". He was in one of the lead roles in Smith's denouement to the Canadian horror trilogy, "Moose Jaws". Morenstein was cast in the 2015 zombie film "". He had a guest role on an episode of Nickelodeon's Game Shakers, in his first television role. Morenstein also made a cameo at the end of Rhett and Link's "Rub Some Bacon On It" music video in 2012, as well as in the duo's 2015 sketch "The Overly Complicated Coffee Order".


title: Harley Morenstein

text: In October 2017, he appeared as the host of the Food Network special series "Halloween Wars: Hayride of Horror".


title: Chagatai Khan

text: Chagatai Khan ( Mongolian: "; Čaɣatay"; ; , "Čaġatāy"; , "Chaghatay-Xan"; , "Chágětái"; , "Joghatây"; 22 December 1183 – 1 July 1242) was the second son of Genghis Khan and Börte. He inherited most of what are now five Central Asian states after the death of his father. He was also appointed by Genghis Khan to oversee the execution of the Yassa, the written code of law created by Genghis Khan.


title: Chagatai Khan

text: Very little is known about Chagatai's earlier life. He was the second son of Genghis Khan and Börte. Chagatai was considered hot-headed and somewhat temperamental by his relatives, because of his attitude of non-acceptance of Jochi as a full-brother. He was the most vocal about this issue among his relations. He was assigned 4 mingghans (led by Qarachar of Barlas, Kököchü of Baarin, Müge of Jalairs and Idiqudai Noyan) and an appanage around Altai Mountains in 1206 by his father.


title: Chagatai Khan

text: He joined the invasion of Jin Empire in 1211 with Jochi and Ögedei, capturing several cities and invading Shaanxi and Henan in 1213, also plundering Yanggu. Later Chagatai appeared at campaign against Khwarazmian Empire with his father and brothers, capturing Otrar in 1218, Samarkand in 1220, Urgench in March-April 1221. The Urgench campaign was noticeably harder because Chagatai and Jochi failed to co-operate. After this incident Ögedei was appointed commander of the besieging forces and Chagatai was given task of maintaining communication between Mongol forces with building bridges and restoring roads. He returned to his father's side during his siege of Talaqan. Chagatai was greatly affected when his son Mutukan was killed during the siege of Bamiyan in 1221.


title: Chagatai Khan

text: He was present at the battle where Jalal ad-Din Mingburnu was defeated near the Indus River. He later commanded the rear guard during conquest of Western Xia.


title: Chagatai Khan

text: Chagatai succeeded Genghis Khan in his domains in what came to be known as Chagatai Khanate in 1227 with its capital in Almaliq city, in the valley of the Upper Ili, near the site of the present Kulja, and consequently in the extreme east of his dominion. According to Edward Ross, "his reason for fixing it in that remote position, instead of at Bukhara or Samarkand, was probably one of necessity. His Mongol tribesmen and followers—the mainstay of his power—were passionately fond of the life of the steppes." As the eldest surviving son and head of the house, he was present at the enthronement ceremony of Ögedei on 13 September 1229 and supported his reign. Ögedei in his turn sent Güyük as Chagatai's ward. Although Rashidaddin claimed that Chagatai died shortly before Ögedei, Juvayni told of further activities of Chagatai, such as strong support to regency of Töregene. However, he soon died.


title: Chagatai Khan

text: His known viziers include Vajir, Baha al-Din Marghinani and Habash Amid. Vajir was described as Turkish, Uyghur and Khitan by different authors. He was employed by Qushuq Noyan from Jalayir tribe to court of Chagatai. Having written a book about history of Mongol Empire, he was regarded highly by Chagatai. He even let him to execute one of his daughters-in-law in charges of adultery. After Chagatai's death, Vajir was executed for treason alongside Chagatai's physician Majd al-Din, since his widow Yesülün charged them with poisoning of Chagatai. Habash Amid was a Muslim Khwarazmian from Otrar and a secretary originally. He was assigned to Chagatai in 1218 and survived the purge thanks to his support for Qara Hülegü. Baha al-Din Marghinani also survived Chagatai, being a friend of his son Yesü Möngke although he was purged later.


title: Chagatai Khan

text: According to Rashidaddin, he was a just and competent ruler. Minhaj-i-Siraj Juzjani also considered him to be dignified and open hearted. Muslims viewed Chagatai Khan with negativity and hostility because Chagatai Khan strictly enforced Mongol Yasa law against Islamic Shariah law banning Halal animal slaughter and Islamic prayer ritual ablution as well as the Islamic legal system. The Chagatai language takes its name from him, as well as people surnamed Chughtai, city of Joghatai in Iran and Ciğatay village in Azerbaijan.


title: The Great Train Robbery (1903 film)

text: The Great Train Robbery is a 1903 American silent film made by Edwin S. Porter for the Edison Manufacturing Company. It follows a gang of outlaws who hold up and rob a steam locomotive at a station in the American West, flee across mountainous terrain, and are finally defeated by a posse of locals. The short film draws on many sources, including a robust existing tradition of Western films, recent European innovations in film technique, the play of the same name by Scott Marble, the popularity of train-themed films, and possibly real-life incidents involving outlaws such as Butch Cassidy.


title: The Great Train Robbery (1903 film)

text: Porter supervised and photographed the film in New York and New Jersey in November 1903; the Edison studio began selling it to vaudeville houses and other venues in the following month. The cast included Justus D. Barnes and G. M. Anderson, who may have also helped with planning and staging. Porter's storytelling approach, though not particularly innovative or unusual for 1903, allowed him to include many popular techniques of the time, including scenes staged in wide shots, a matte effect, and an attempt to indicate simultaneous action across multiple scenes. Camera pans, location shooting, and moments of violent action helped give "The Great Train Robbery" a sense of rough-edged immediacy. A special close-up shot, which was unconnected to the story and could either begin or end the film depending on the projectionist's whim, showed Barnes, as the outlaw leader, emptying his gun directly into the camera.


title: The Great Train Robbery (1903 film)

text: Due in part to its popular and accessible subject matter, as well as to its dynamic action and violence, "The Great Train Robbery" was an unprecedented commercial success. Though it did not significantly influence or advance the Western film genre, it was widely distributed and copied, including in a parody by Porter himself. During the twentieth century, inaccurate legends about "The Great Train Robbery" developed, claiming it was the first Western or even the first film to tell a story. Film scholars have repeatedly disproved these claims, demonstrating that "The Great Train Robbery" was a stylistic dead-end for its maker and genre, its commercial success and mythic place in American film lore remain undisputed. The film, especially the close-up of Barnes, has become iconic in American culture, appearing in numerous film and television references and homages. In 1990, "The Great Train Robbery" was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".


title: The Great Train Robbery (1903 film)

text: Two bandits break into a railroad telegraph office, where they force the operator at gunpoint to stop a train and order its engineer to fill the locomotive's tender at the station's water tank. They then knock the operator out and tie him up. As the train stops it is boarded by the banditsnow four. Two bandits enter an express car, kill a messenger, and open a box of valuables with dynamite. In a fight on the engine car, the others kill the fireman and force the engineer to halt the train and disconnect its locomotive. The bandits then force the passengers off the train and rifle them for their belongings. One passenger tries to escape but is instantly shot down. Carrying their loot, the bandits escape in the locomotive, disembarking in a valley where they left their horses.


title: The Great Train Robbery (1903 film)

text: Meanwhile, back in the telegraph office, the bound operator awakens but collapses again. His daughter arrives, bringing him his meal, and cutting him free when she discovers him bound; she restores him to consciousness by dousing him with water. There is some comic relief at a dance hall, where an Eastern stranger (a "tenderfoot") is forced to dance while the locals fire at his feet. The door suddenly opens and the telegraph operator rushes in to tell them of the robbery. The men quickly form a posse and chase the bandits through the mountains. The posse finally overtakes the bandits, and in a final shootout kills them all and recovers the stolen mail.


title: The Great Train Robbery (1903 film)

text: A standalone final scene, separate from the narrative, presents a medium close-up of the leader of the outlaws, who empties his pistol point-blank directly into the camera.


title: The Great Train Robbery (1903 film)

text: In the years leading up to "The Great Train Robbery", the film industry was marked by much innovation and variety. Some studios, such as the Edison Manufacturing Company and the Lumière company, were best known for short sketches and actuality films presented in a straightforward style, often only a single shot long. However, other filmmakers aimed for more elaborate productions; Georges Méliès's films, such as the 1902 international success "A Trip to the Moon", became acclaimed for their visual storytelling, often encompassing multiple scenes and involving careful editing and complicated special effects. Meanwhile, British filmmakers working in and around Brighton, a group later nicknamed the "Brighton School", made many innovations in narrative film grammar, developing framing and cutting conventions that would become industry standards.


title: The Great Train Robbery (1903 film)

text: Edwin S. Porter had won acclaim making cameras, film printers, and projectors; however, after his workshop was destroyed by a fire, he accepted a special commission for the Edison Manufacturing Company in 1901. His task to improve Edison's existing projecting equipment was a marked success, and Porter was given a regular job as the cameraman for Edison's New York film studio; at the time being a cameraman meant operating the camera as well as exercising creative control in a way that would later be called film directing.) His early films were sketches and actualities in the simple style used by other Edison employees. However, his job also gave him the chance to view the many foreign films the Edison company were distributing and pirating, and around 1901 or 1902 he discovered the more complex works being made by Méliès and the Brighton School. Porter began attempts to bring Edison films to a similar level of achievement, later recalling, "From laboratory examination of some of the popular films of the French pioneer director, George Méliès—trick films like "A Trip to the Moon"—I came to the conclusion that a picture telling a story might draw the customers back to the theatres, and set to work in this direction."


title: The Great Train Robbery (1903 film)

text: The Edison studio, facing growing competition from other American companies, welcomed Porter's ambitious plans. His first major attempts at elaborate storytelling films included a 1902 adaptation of "Jack and the Beanstalk" in imitation of Méliès, and a 1903 "Life of an American Fireman" in the style of a notable Brighton School film, "Fire!". His films did well and were influential, bolstered by his status as the leading filmmaker at the most important American studio. In October 1903 Porter joined forces with a new Edison hire, Max Aronson, who was a young stage actor billed as G. M. Anderson. Anderson's initial jobs for the studio were inventing sight gags and playing occasional roles, but he was soon working with Porter on creative collaborations. Porter's next major film was "The Great Train Robbery"; Porter was in charge of production and photography, while Anderson may have assisted on staging.


title: The Great Train Robbery (1903 film)

text: Porter (and possibly Anderson) drew on various sources when planning the scenario for "The Great Train Robbery". Western themes were already popular in films and other entertainment, reflecting the wide public interest in stories about the past and present of the American West. Many American films before 1900 can be classified as Westerns, such as actuality views of cowboy life, staged Western anecdotes like "A Bluff from a Tenderfoot" and "Cripple Creek Bar-Room Scene" (both 1899), and shots of Annie Oakley and of Oglala and Brulé dancers from Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show (both 1894). Studios abroad also began telling Western stories early on, with Mitchell and Kenyon's 1899 British film "Kidnapping by Indians" the first known example. Edison's 1901 film "Stage Coach Hold-up", based on Buffalo Bill's "Hold-up of the Deadwood Stage" act, probably influenced Porter directly. Porter may have also been inspired by recent real events related to the American West: in August 1900, Butch Cassidy and his gang had robbed a Union Pacific Railroad train and escaped capture, and in September 1903, Bill Miner's gang made an unsuccessful holdup of an Oregon Railroad and Navigation Company train.


title: The Great Train Robbery (1903 film)

text: For the film's title and basic concept, Porter looked to Scott Marble's "The Great Train Robbery", a popular stage melodrama that had premiered in Chicago in 1896 and had been revived in New York in 1902. The play covers the adventures of a Texas criminal gang who attempt to steal a $50,000 gold shipment from a Wells Fargo office in Missouri. Their initial scheme is for a mole planted in the company to make off with the gold before it leaves Missouri by train; this plan goes awry, and only leads to an innocent man's arrest. However, using information received at a Texas mountain saloon, the gang are still able to stop the train, blast open the car containing the gold, and bring it back to their secret hideout in a Red River canyon. The United States Marshals Service tracks down the gang and finally defeats them in a climactic fight, with cowboys and Native Americans drawn into the fray.


title: The Great Train Robbery (1903 film)

text: For the narrative style, Porter likely drew freely on various recent popular films, made by filmmakers experimenting with elaborate storytelling. "A Daring Daylight Burglary", a British chase drama from the Sheffield Photo Company, has frequently been cited as particularly influential; it and another British film, "Desperate Poaching Affray", were successfully imported to America and started a decade-long vogue for films centered on chases. "A Daring Daylight Burglary"s story and editing appear to have supplied the overall narrative structure for "The Great Train Robbery", though in the latter film the chase is only made explicit in one shot, the twelfth. Porter's plot also profited from the booming popularity of railroad-related film attractions, such as phantom rides and standalone comic scenes set on trains. "The Great Train Robbery" would treat the rail theme more elaborately than was common, showing its train from various angles and involving it in a dramatic adventure.


title: The Great Train Robbery (1903 film)

text: Porter filmed "The Great Train Robbery" in November 1903. Some scenes were photographed at the Edison studio in New York, and others were done in New Jersey, in Essex County Park and along the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad. The stream-crossing scene was filmed at Thistle Mill Ford in the South Mountain Reservation of Essex County Park. The cast included Justus D. Barnes as the leader of the outlaws, Walter Cameron as the sheriff and G. M. Anderson in three small roles (the murdered passenger, the dancing tenderfoot, and one of the robbers). Many Edison workers were among the extras. Edison filmmaker J. Blair Smith was one of the camera operators.


title: The Great Train Robbery (1903 film)

text: According to rumors in a contemporary "New York Times" piece on the film, the Edison Company initially attempted to get the railroad company to lend their tracks and cars for free, arguing that it would be good publicity for the line; the railroad directors disagreed, but eventually allowed their resources to be used if Edison also made a more straightforward advertising film for them. The article adds that a real fireman and engineer play those respective parts in the film, and that the filming caused some disturbance when the dummy thrown off the locomotive was mistaken by passersby for a real accident victim.


title: The Great Train Robbery (1903 film)

text: Porter's visual style for "The Great Train Robbery" was not cutting edge for 1903; it is comparable to numerous other films released around the same time, such as "The Escaped Lunatic", a popular Biograph Studios comedy about wardens chasing an escapee from a mental institution, and "Runaway Match", a British Gaumont film featuring an extended car chase sequence. "Mary Jane's Mishap", a landmark dark comedy made by Brighton pioneers G. A. Smith and Laura Bayley and released months before "The Great Train Robbery", is far more sophisticated in its editing and framing. Porter's style heavily prioritized action over character, with most figures remaining indistinguishable in wide shots; the staging inconsistently mixes stylized theatrical blocking with more naturalistic action. The film also leaves many narrative points ambiguous, requiring explanations to be filled in by a live narrator or by audience imaginations.


title: The Great Train Robbery (1903 film)

text: However, "The Great Train Robbery" successfully collected many popular themes and prevalent techniques of the time into a single accessible narrative. Porter cut his shots together to suggest action happening simultaneously in different locations, as he had done (albeit less efficiently) in "Life of an American Fireman". The use of real outdoor locations and violent action helped keep the film dynamic, as did technical strategies such as a matte combining a studio scene with outdoor footage, and three shots in which the camera moves. These three shots add an edge of realism and immediacy, with the frame following the action if recording real life in a documentary style; one of these shots, showing the robbers making off with their loot, even requires the mounted camera to attempt a tricky diagonal pan, creating a jagged effect.


title: The Great Train Robbery (1903 film)

text: The final shot, in which Barnes fires at the camera in a framing reminiscent of a wanted poster, is the film's only close-up, and does not function as part of the plot. Porter rarely used close-ups, especially in his later years, preferring to save them for special standalone effects like this one. Edison's promotional leaflet about the film describes this scene as follows, "Scene 14—REALISM. A life size picture of Barnes, leader of the outlaw band, taking aim and firing point blank at each individual in the audience. (This effect is gained by foreshortening in making the picture.) The resulting excitement is great. This section of the scene can be used either to begin the subject or to end it, as the operator may choose." The catalogue's informal approach to where the scene should be placed was not unique to "The Great Train Robbery"; Porter's film "Uncle Tom's Cabin", released earlier in 1903, had included a boat race scene that was variously advertised as Scene 5 (where it would make some narrative sense) or as Scene 10 (where it would not). Such shots, designed primarily for spectacle rather than for narrative coherency, characterize a popular early-film style later dubbed the "cinema of attractions".


title: The Great Train Robbery (1903 film)

text: In 1903, the most common American film venue was vaudeville houses, where films were exhibited as part of a varied bill of entertainment; other informal venues also sometimes showed films. The Edison Manufacturing Company announced "The Great Train Robbery" to exhibitors in early November 1903, calling it a "highly sensationalized Headliner". To secure copyright, they submitted a rough cut of the film (about fifteen feet longer than the final cut) to the Library of Congress, where it survives as a paper print. The final release print was made available in early December 1903. Edison sold it to exhibitors for , as a 740-foot reel. The first known showing of "The Great Train Robbery" was at a New York City dime museum, Huber's Museum. By the following week it was appearing at eleven venues in the city area, including the Eden Musée, a major amusement center. Edison advertisements touted the film as "absolutely the superior of any moving picture ever made" and a "faithful imitation of the genuine 'Hold Ups' made famous by various outlaw bands in the far West". Several prints of "The Great Train Robbery" survive; a few of these were heavily edited and altered by their owners, but most are in their release state, and at least one is hand-colored.


title: The Great Train Robbery (1903 film)

text: "The Great Train Robbery" was a major commercial success for the Edison company. It played as the headlining attraction in many vaudeville houses, and showed up frequently at two other entertainment venues that proliferated across the country in the following years: immersive venues where the spectator took simulated railroad journeys, such as Hale's Tours of the World, and a new kind of film venue, the nickelodeon, where "The Great Train Robbery" was often the first attraction shown. Overall, it may have had the biggest success of any film made before 1905. Its popularity was helped by its timely subject matter (as train robberies were still a familiar news item), as well as its striking depictions of action and violence. Unusually for the time, the film was even described in detail in the "New York Times"; the anonymous reviewer criticized most of the players, but praised the horse riding and stunts, concluding: "All this is the result of poor acting, but the results are certainly astounding."


title: The Great Train Robbery (1903 film)

text: The film was also widely imitated and copied; the Lubin Manufacturing Company made a shot-for-shot remake in August 1904, changing only small details. (Film copyright was legally murky until 1912, so despite the film's Library of Congress registration, unauthorized remakes and adaptations could be made with impunity.) Porter himself directed a 1905 parody of the film, "The Little Train Robbery", with children robbing candy and dolls from a miniature railroad car. But despite its wide success and imitators, "The Great Train Robbery" did not lead to a significant increase in Western films; instead, the genre continued essentially as it had before, in a scattered mix of short actualities and longer stories. The Western genre would not proliferate in earnest until 1908; one of the leading contributors to this boom was G. M. Anderson, now billed as Broncho Billy Anderson. Porter continued to make films for more than a decade after, usually in a similar editing style to "The Great Train Robbery", with few additional technical innovations. One historian commented that later efforts like "The Count of Monte Cristo" (1913) were "if anything a retrogression from "The Great Train Robbery" and had less innate cinema sense." However, some of Porter's post-"Robbery" works continued to be imaginative in content, including "The Kleptomaniac", a notable 1905 social justice film.


title: The Great Train Robbery (1903 film)

text: In the decades after "The Great Train Robbery", various inaccurate legends developed, exaggerating its historical significance. By mid-century, mistaken claims that it was the "first Western" or even the "first story film" were common. Critiquing these inaccurate legends and citing the film's actual lack of impact on the Western genre, historian Scott Simmon comments that in fact the film's "main surprise in retrospect is how it led nowhere, either for its creator or the genre, beyond serving loosely as a narrative model for gun-wielding crime and horse-chase retribution." Claims about historical priority continued to be repeated by general-audience writers into the early twenty-first century.


title: The Great Train Robbery (1903 film)

text: Later film critics, abandoning the exaggerated claims, have tended to explain the film's significance mostly in terms of its wide popularity and Porter's influential action-driven storytelling. William Everson and George Fenin dubbed it "the first dramatically creative American film", while Robert Sklar praised the film's capacity "to unite motion picture spectacle with myth and stories about America that were shared by people throughout the world." Historians have cited "The Great Train Robbery" as Porter's most important film, and noted it as a popular early film that collects numerous important Western tropes, such as "elements of fisticuffs, horseback pursuit and gunplay". Film historian Pamela Hutchinson highlights especially the iconic close-up scene, "a jolt of terror as disconcerting as a hand bursting from a grave":


title: The Great Train Robbery (1903 film)

text: "The Great Train Robbery" was added to the United States National Film Registry in 1990. In popular culture, numerous films and television shows have referenced the film and the iconic Barnes close-up:


title: Katherine

text: Katherine, also spelled Catherine, and other variations are feminine names. They are popular in Christian countries because of their derivation from the name of one of the first Christian saints, Catherine of Alexandria.


title: Katherine

text: In the early Christian era it came to be associated with the Greek adjective (), meaning "pure", leading to the alternative spellings "Katharine" and "Katherine". The former spelling, with a middle "a", was more common in the past and is currently more popular in the United States than in Britain. "Katherine", with a middle "e", was first recorded in England in 1196 after being brought back from the Crusades.


title: Katherine

text: In Britain and the U.S., "Catherine" and its variants have been among the 100 most popular names since 1880. The most common variants are "Katherine," "Kathryn," and "Katharine". The spelling "Catherine" is common in both English and French. Less-common variants in English include "Katheryn", "Katharyn", "Kathryne", "Katheryne", "Katherin", "Kathrine", "Catharine" and "Cathryn".


title: Katherine

text: "Kathleen" or "Cathleen", an Anglicized form of the Irish form "Caitlín", has become established in the US among people with no Irish background, but is less popular in England and Wales.


title: Katherine

text: Diminutives include "Katie", "Katy", "Kate", "Kathy", "Kathe", "Kath", "Kay", "Kat", "Katja"/"Katya", "Kota", "Katyusha", "Katrya", "Kitty", "Kit", "Kasia", and others.


title: Deadliest Warrior

text: Deadliest Warrior is an American television program in which information on historical or modern warriors and their weapons are used to determine which of them is the "deadliest" based upon tests performed during each episode. The show was characterized by its use of data compiled in creating a dramatization of the warriors' battle to the death. The show ran for three seasons.


title: Deadliest Warrior

text: The show was originally developed by Morningstar Entertainment, and later moved to production company 44 Blue. The showrunner (supervising producer) in the first season was Tim Prokop. Tim Warren became the showrunner during the second season and continued with the show during its move to 44 Blue and the third season. The historical adviser in the first and second season and associate producer in the second season was Barry C. Jacobsen; who represented the Spartan Team in Season 1. He also worked with associate producer Ryo Okada on content preparation and warrior selection for the first two seasons.


title: Deadliest Warrior

text: Episodes begin with the introduction of either two types of historical or contemporary warriors or two historical individuals. The history, culture, and general fighting philosophies of each are explained. The explanations are accompanied by segments showing actors performing dramatized scenes that are meant to depict the daily lives of the actual fighters. Two teams of experts (of either the history or martial abilities of the warriors) are brought onto the show to test weapons spotlighted as being used by each of the warriors. Typically, the different weapons are organized into four categories (and as of season 3, three categories): short range, mid range, long range, and special weapons (usually absent in season 3). However, some episodes (for instance, "Green Berets vs. Spetsnaz") have had as many as six categories. Matt Anderson and Sonny Puzikas, the experts for the "Green Beret vs. Spetsnaz" episode, have suggested that the teams are assigned weapons by the producers and that they have little influence in the production of the acted simulations.


title: Deadliest Warrior

text: The teams test the assigned weapons on various targets including human silhouette targets, mannequins, pig and cattle carcasses, and ballistics gel torsos, heads, limbs, etc. Additionally, pressure mats, accelerometers, chronometers, and other measuring tools are used to test such figures as the striking force and speed of each weapon. Sometimes, the targets are covered with armor that is representative of what would be worn by the warrior's opponent. While the damage inflicted on the armor by the weapon is factored into the weapon's effectiveness, the defensive ability of armor isn't included as a separate category on the show in the first two seasons (with the exception of Pirate vs. Knight). All of the weapon tests are recorded with high speed photography, and the results are fed into a computer that measures the damage each weapon is capable of inflicting. The producers and hosts then compare the results for each of the weapon categories and determine which weapon they feel will give its warrior an edge in that category during the simulation. However, the hosts of the show have admitted that their choice of which weapon gets the edge has no effect on the final results.


title: Deadliest Warrior

text: The data collected from the weapons tests is fed into a computer simulation based on an unreleased commercial game engine to determine the average winner of one thousand battles, and starting with season 3, a new system created by Pipeworks Software determines the winner based on five thousand battles. These results are then used to create a fictional battle reenactment (between two characters or two small groups) performed by actors. After the battle dramatization has ended, the number of killing blows (or effectiveness percentages in season 3) attained by each weapon during the computer simulations is revealed. Episodes conclude with the hosts and guests commenting on why they agree or disagree with the outcome of the match.


title: Deadliest Warrior

text: In its first two seasons, the show was hosted by three commentators: Geoff Desmoulin (biomedical scientist and high speed camera operator), Armand Dorian, (medical consultant), and Max Geiger (simulations programmer). All three provided commentary throughout the show, as well as technical details of each weapons test. The show is narrated by actor David Wenham, using the pseudonym "Drew Skye".


title: Deadliest Warrior

text: The pilot episode was Spartan vs Ninja. Shot in February 2008, the pilot was unique in not being staged in the "Fight Club" in Los Angeles; but instead at Bermite Properties in Santa Clarita, California. The reality scenes were directed by Tim Prokop who also wrote all of the outlines, treatments and shooting scripts. They were shot in 3 days, and the concept was one of the first to introduce high speed film techniques, visual effects, and biomechanical testing. The reality shoot - filmed with real weapons - was followed by a 3 day recreation shoot with fake weapons. This was directed by Tripp Reed (first unit) and Tim Prokop (2nd unit and VFX). The recreation script was also written by Tim Prokop. The Thermopylae and other Spartan reenactment scenes were shot near the Hollywood sign, at Bronson Caves in the Hollywood Hills. Since the budget was tight, Prokop enlisted the help of VFX Supervisor Ron Thornton and the students at DAVE School in Orlando Florida for the pilot visual effects. DAVE stands for Digital Animation and Visual Effects. The pilot became a graduate project that launched a school tradition for broadcast graduate projects that continues to this day. When focus tested in June 2008, the episode scored the highest marks in Spike's history; with a number that was only surpassed by the pilot Tim Prokop produced in 2009 - Crash Test. The Deadliest Warrior series was greenlit in October 2008. The pilot episode aired - with very minor changes - as the third episode in season 1.


title: Deadliest Warrior

text: The first season premiered on April 7, 2009 at 10 pm ET. Nine one-hour episodes of the show were produced for season 1. Season 1 was released on DVD and Blu-ray on May 11, 2010.


title: Deadliest Warrior

text: The series was originally slated to air 8 weeks later but another series failed to make deadlines and showrunner Tim Prokop was asked to move it up. Despite being a mammoth production, with multiple filming units, stunts, VFX, real-world testing, computer simulations, recreations and real weapons - the series met the new deadlines. The first season of Deadliest Warrior immediately marked it as the highest rated non-sports series in Spike's history.


title: Deadliest Warrior

text: The second season had 13 episodes which began airing on April 20, 2010, with the last episode airing on July 27, 2010.


title: Deadliest Warrior

text: The third season had 10 episodes, running from July 20, 2011 to September 14, ending with a two-episode finale. Unlike the first two seasons, which consisted primarily of one-on-one battles, every episode of season 3 had squad-on-squad fights. Geiger did not return for season 3. He was replaced by military software developer Robert Daly, who designed the new simulation program. However, it was discovered that he was being misleading about his military service, serving in intelligence and not a combat role. Former Navy SEAL Richard "Mack" Machowicz, who analyzes the history and strategy of the warriors, was added to demonstrate a warrior's perspective among the hosts. Dave Baker, veteran weapons maker since season one, was given his own segment in which he gives background information used to recreate the show's weapons.


title: Deadliest Warrior

text: After three episodes, "Deadliest Warrior" averaged 1.7 million viewers. On July 7, 2009, the program (specifically the "IRA vs. Taliban" episode) was ridiculed during the first episode of "You Have Been Watching", a British television review and panel game hosted by critic Charlie Brooker. The show was featured on "You Have Been Watching", before its premiere in the UK on August 11, 2009, on Bravo. Bravo only aired eight episodes in the UK, with "IRA vs Taliban" omitted.


title: Deadliest Warrior

text: Writing for "Variety", Brian Lowry described it as "90% filler" and that "it makes a Universal Studios stunt show look like "Masterpiece Theatre"."


title: Deadliest Warrior

text: As of January 2012, Geoff Desmoulin announced on his Twitter profile that Spike had canceled the series.


title: Deadliest Warrior

text: Starting with Spartan vs. Ninja, a web series on Spike.com was created. Produced in a roundtable format, and hosted by Kieron Elliot (of the William Wallace team), it serves as a liaison between those watching the show and its producers, hosts, and experts. During "The Aftermath", the producers focus on a specific match-up, and debate the issues pertaining to the episode raised by viewers in internet forums. It was created to answer questions from viewers, address its perceived inconsistencies, and provide a commentary from contributors.


title: Deadliest Warrior

text: For the episode "U.S. Army Rangers vs. North Korean Special Operations Forces", "The Aftermath" was broadcast live on TV from the "Aftermath Studios" in Los Angeles. Hosted by Kieron Elliot, fans got a chance to vote online at dwlive.spike.com for who they thought was going to win the final battle at the end of the episode. Joining Elliot were show regulars Geoff Desmoulin, Armand Dorian, and Richard Machowicz to discuss the outcome of the episode. The segment also invited a special guest to talk about the show: retired Lieutenant Colonel Steve Russell who was a key player in the hunt and capture of Saddam Hussein. The same was done for the season finale of Gurkhas vs. French Foreign Legion/Vampires vs. Zombies, featuring Steve Niles and Matt Mogk in the later portion.


title: Deadliest Warrior

text: Starting with "Genghis Khan vs. Hannibal", another online web series started. The show goes more in-depth regarding one weapon for each warrior in the same category, giving its history, specifications, and answering questions regarding its use. Hosted by Kieron Elliot, the show features Dave Baker: weapons maker giving details on ancient bladed weapons that he recreated as armorer for the show, with Gary Harper (of the Teddy Roosevelt team) using his historian and armorer experiences to impart knowledge on the featured vintage or modern firearms.


title: Deadliest Warrior

text: A tower defense game titled "Deadliest Warrior: Defend and Conquer" was released on March 11, 2010 and was available for download on the iPhone and iPod Touch. It contains three campaigns where the player must defend against groups of attacking enemies by purchasing and positioning warriors from Season 1 (and later Season 2 with the update) who each have varying stats and weapons based on the battle data from the show. On 5/28/2017, it has been confirmed to no longer be located in the Apple app store.


title: Deadliest Warrior

text: Pipeworks Software announced at the Spike Video Game Awards on December 12, 2009 that they would be developing a downloadable game called "" that will come out first for the Xbox 360, and later the PlayStation 3. The Apache, Knight, Ninja, Pirate, Samurai, Spartan, and Viking from season one are playable.


title: Deadliest Warrior

text: The Roman Centurion from season two is also playable, with more characters to be added as the series progressed. On December 11, 2010 it was announced during the Spike TV Video Game Awards that the first three DLC characters would be the Shaolin Monk, the Rajput, and the Zande.


title: Deadliest Warrior

text: On April 7, 2011, Spike Games announced a sequel to their downloadable home console fighting game, "". It was released on July 7, 2011 for Xbox Live Arcade, and on July 26, 2011 for the PlayStation Network. New to this game is the inclusion of a new mode called Generals, a Risk-like game which uses the new combat simulator from season 3 to pit two opposing warriors and their armies against each other using the X-factors that made them legends.


title: Deadliest Warrior

text: The characters that are included are Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan, Hannibal, Hernán Cortés, Shaka Zulu, Sun Tzu, Vlad the Impaler, and William Wallace, with Joan of Arc and host Mack available as downloadable content.


title: Deadliest Warrior

text: On September 26, 2011, Spike confirmed "Deadliest Warrior: Ancient Combat", a compilation of Deadliest Warrior: The Game and Deadliest Warrior: Legends. It will be on one disc as opposed to digital download and will include additional content. It was scheduled to be released for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 on December 6, 2011, but was postponed to January 10, 2012, and later to April 17, 2012.


title: Deadliest Warrior

text: "Chivalry: Deadliest Warrior" is a first-person team combat simulator where one group of players take control of a historical warrior class and try to defeat the opposing team, who is also representing another historical warrior class, with various close-range and long-range weapons. A playable demo of "Chivalry: Deadliest Warrior" was showcased at the PAX Prime 2013 Gaming Expo in Seattle which featured Samurai and Spartan as the first two playable warrior classes.


title: François-René de Chateaubriand

text: François-René, vicomte de Chateaubriand (4 September 1768 – 4 July 1848) was a French writer, politician, diplomat and historian who had a notable influence on French literature of the nineteenth century. Descended from an old aristocratic family from Brittany, Chateaubriand was a royalist by political disposition. In an age when large numbers of intellectuals turned against the Church, he authored the "Génie du christianisme" in defense of the Catholic faith. His works include the autobiography "Mémoires d'Outre-Tombe" (""Memoirs from Beyond the Grave""), published posthumously in 1849–1850.


title: François-René de Chateaubriand

text: Historian Peter Gay says that Chateaubriand saw himself as the greatest lover, the greatest writer, and the greatest philosopher of his age. Gay states that Chateaubriand "dominated the literary scene in France in the first half of the nineteenth century".


title: François-René de Chateaubriand

text: Born in Saint-Malo on 4 September 1768, the last of ten children, Chateaubriand grew up at his family's castle (the château de Combourg) in Combourg, Brittany. His father, René de Chateaubriand (1718–86), was a former sea captain turned ship owner and slave trader. His mother's maiden name was Apolline de Bedée. Chateaubriand's father was a morose, uncommunicative man, and the young Chateaubriand grew up in an atmosphere of gloomy solitude, only broken by long walks in the Breton countryside and an intense friendship with his sister Lucile. His youthful solitude and wild desire produced a suicide attempt with a hunting rifle, although the weapon failed to discharge.


title: François-René de Chateaubriand

text: English agriculturist and pioneering travel writer Arthur Young visited Comburg in 1788 and he described the immediate environs of the "romantic" Chateau de Combourg thusly:


title: François-René de Chateaubriand

text: "SEPTEMBER 1st. To Combourg, the country has a savage aspect; husbandry not much further advanced, at least in skill, than among the Hurons, which appears incredible amidst inclosures; the people almost as wild as their country, and their town of Combourg one of the most brutal filthy places that can be seen; mud houses, no windows, and a pavement so broken, as to impede all passengers, but ease none - yet here is a chateau, and inhabited; who is this Mons. de Chateaubriant, the owner, that has nerves strung for a residence amidst such filth and poverty? Below this hideous heap of wretchedness is a fine lake..."


title: François-René de Chateaubriand

text: Chateaubriand was educated in Dol, Rennes and Dinan. For a time he could not make up his mind whether he wanted to be a naval officer or a priest, but at the age of seventeen, he decided on a military career and gained a commission as a second lieutenant in the French Army based at Navarre. Within two years, he had been promoted to the rank of captain. He visited Paris in 1788 where he made the acquaintance of Jean-François de La Harpe, André Chénier, Louis-Marcelin de Fontanes and other leading writers of the time. When the French Revolution broke out, Chateaubriand was initially sympathetic, but as events in Paris - and throughout the countryside (including, presumably, "wretched" "brutal" and "filthy" Combourg) - became more violent he wisely decided to journey to North America in 1791. He was given the idea to leave Europe by Guillaume-Chrétien de Lamoignon de Malesherbes, who also encouraged him to do some botanical studies.


title: François-René de Chateaubriand

text: In "Voyage en Amérique", published in 1826, Chateaubriand writes that he arrived in Philadelphia on 10 July 1791. He visited New York, Boston and Lexington, before leaving by boat on the Hudson River to reach Albany. He then followed the Mohawk Trail up the Niagara Falls where he broke his arm and spent a month in recovery in the company of a Native American tribe. Chateaubriand then describes Native American tribes' customs, as well as zoological, political and economic consideration. He then says that a raid along the Ohio River, the Mississippi River, Louisiana and Florida took him back to Philadelphia, where he embarked on the "Molly" in November to go back to France.


title: François-René de Chateaubriand

text: This experience provided the setting for his exotic novels "Les Natchez" (written between 1793 and 1799 but published only in 1826), "Atala" (1801) and "René" (1802). His vivid, captivating descriptions of nature in the sparsely settled American Deep South were written in a style that was very innovative for the time and spearheaded what later became the Romantic movement in France. As early as 1916, some scholars have cast doubt on Chateaubriand's claims that he was granted an interview with George Washington and that he actually lived for a time with the Native Americans he wrote about. Critics have questioned the veracity of entire sections of Chateaubriand's claimed travels, notably his passage through the Mississippi Valley, Louisiana and Florida.


title: François-René de Chateaubriand

text: Chateaubriand returned to France in 1792 and subsequently joined the army of Royalist "émigrés" in Koblenz under the leadership of Louis Joseph de Bourbon, Prince of Condé. Under strong pressure from his family, he married a young aristocratic woman, also from Saint-Malo, whom he had never previously met, Céleste Buisson de la Vigne (in later life, Chateaubriand was notoriously unfaithful to her, having a series of love affairs). His military career came to an end when he was wounded at the Siege of Thionville, a major clash between Royalist troops (of which Chateaubriand was a member) and the French Revolutionary Army. Half-dead, he was taken to Jersey and exiled to England, leaving his wife behind.


title: François-René de Chateaubriand

text: Chateaubriand spent most of his exile in extreme poverty in London, scraping a living offering French lessons and doing translation work, but a stay in Suffolk (Bungay) proved to be more idyllic. Here Chateaubriand fell in love with a young English woman, Charlotte Ives, but the romance ended when he was forced to reveal he was already married. During his time in Britain, Chateaubriand also became familiar with English literature. This reading, particularly of John Milton's "Paradise Lost" (which he later translated into French prose), had a deep influence on his own literary work.


title: François-René de Chateaubriand

text: His exile forced Chateaubriand to examine the causes of the French Revolution, which had cost the lives of many of his family and friends; these reflections inspired his first work, "Essai sur les Révolutions" (1797). An attempt in 18th-century style to explain the French Revolution, it predated his subsequent, romantic style of writing and was largely ignored. A major turning point in Chateaubriand's life was his conversion back to the Catholic faith of his childhood around 1798.


title: François-René de Chateaubriand

text: Chateaubriand took advantage of the amnesty issued to "émigrés" to return to France in May 1800 (under the French Consulate); he edited the "Mercure de France". In 1802, he won fame with "Génie du christianisme" ("The Genius of Christianity"), an apologia for the Catholic faith which contributed to the post-revolutionary religious revival in France. It also won him the favour of Napoleon Bonaparte, who was eager to win over the Catholic Church at the time.


title: François-René de Chateaubriand

text: James McMillan argues that a Europe-wide Catholic Revival emerged from the change in the cultural climate from intellectually-oriented classicism to emotionally-based Romanticism. He concludes that Chateaubriand's book:


title: François-René de Chateaubriand

text: Appointed secretary of the legation to the Holy See by Napoleon, he accompanied Cardinal Fesch to Rome. But the two men soon quarrelled, and Chateaubriand was appointed minister to the Republic of Valais in November 1803. He resigned his post in disgust after Napoleon ordered the execution in 1804 of Louis XVI's cousin, Louis-Antoine-Henri de Bourbon-Condé, duc d'Enghien. Chateaubriand was, after his resignation, completely dependent on his literary efforts. However, and quite unexpectedly, he received a large sum of money from the Russian Tsarina Elizabeth Alexeievna. She had seen him as a defender of Christianity and thus worthy of her royal support.


title: François-René de Chateaubriand

text: Chateaubriand used his new-found wealth in 1806 to visit Greece, Asia Minor, The Ottoman Empire, Egypt, Tunisia, and Spain. The notes he made on his travels later formed part of a prose epic, "Les Martyrs", set during the Roman persecution of early Christianity. His notes also furnished a running account of the trip itself, published in 1811 as the "Itinéraire de Paris à Jérusalem" ("Itinerary from Paris to Jerusalem"). The Spanish stage of the journey inspired a third novella, "Les aventures du dernier Abencérage" ("The Adventures of the Last Abencerrage"), which appeared in 1826.


title: François-René de Chateaubriand

text: On his return to France at the end of 1806, he published a severe criticism of Napoleon, comparing him to Nero and predicting the emergence of a new Tacitus. Napoleon famously threatened to have Chateaubriand sabred on the steps of the Tuileries Palace for it, but settled for merely banishing him from the city. Chateaubriand therefore retired, in 1807, to a modest estate he called "Vallée-aux-Loups" (""Wolf Valley""), in Châtenay-Malabry, south of central Paris, where he lived until 1817. Here he finished "Les Martyrs", which appeared in 1809, and began the first drafts of his "Mémoires d’Outre-Tombe". He was elected to the Académie française in 1811, but, given his plan to infuse his acceptance speech with criticism of the Revolution, he could not occupy his seat until after the Bourbon Restoration. His literary friends during this period included Madame de Staël, Joseph Joubert and Pierre-Simon Ballanche.


title: François-René de Chateaubriand

text: Chateaubriand became a major figure in politics as well as literature. At first he was a strong Royalist in the period up to 1824. His liberal phase lasted from 1824 to 1830. After that he was much less active.


title: François-René de Chateaubriand

text: After the fall of Napoleon, Chateaubriand rallied to the Bourbons. On 30 March 1814, he wrote a pamphlet against Napoleon, titled "De Buonaparte et des Bourbons", of which thousands of copies were published. He then followed Louis XVIII into exile to Ghent during the Hundred Days (March–July 1815), and was nominated ambassador to Sweden.


title: François-René de Chateaubriand

text: After Napoleon's final defeat in the Battle of Waterloo (of which he heard the distant cannon rumblings outside Ghent), Chateaubriand became peer of France and state minister (1815). In December 1815 he voted for Marshal Ney's execution. However, his criticism of King Louis XVIII in "La Monarchie selon la Charte", after the "Chambre introuvable" was dissolved, resulted in his disgrace. He lost his function of state minister, and joined the opposition, siding with the Ultra-royalist group supporting the future Charles X, and becoming one of the main writers of its mouthpiece, "Le Conservateur".


title: François-René de Chateaubriand

text: Chateaubriand sided again with the Court after the murder of the Duc de Berry (1820), writing for the occasion the "Mémoires sur la vie et la mort du duc". He then served as ambassador to Prussia (1821) and the United Kingdom (1822), and even rose to the office of Minister of Foreign Affairs (28 December 1822 – 4 August 1824). A plenipotentiary to the Congress of Verona (1822), he decided in favor of the Quintuple Alliance's intervention in Spain during the "Trienio Liberal", despite opposition from the Duke of Wellington. Chateaubriand was soon relieved of his office by Prime Minister Joseph de Villèle on 5 June 1824, over his objections to a law the latter proposed that would have resulted in the widening of the electorate. Chateaubriand was subsequently appointed French ambassador to Genoa.


title: François-René de Chateaubriand

text: Consequently, he moved towards the liberal opposition, both as a Peer and as a contributor to "Journal des Débats" (his articles there gave the signal of the paper's similar switch, which, however, was more moderate than "Le National", directed by Adolphe Thiers and Armand Carrel). Opposing Villèle, he became highly popular as a defender of press freedom and the cause of Greek independence. After Villèle's downfall, Charles X appointed Chateaubriand ambassador to the Holy See in 1828, but he resigned upon the accession of the Prince de Polignac as premier (November 1829).


title: François-René de Chateaubriand

text: In 1830, he donated a monument to the French painter Nicolas Poussin in the church of San Lorenzo in Lucina in Rome.


title: François-René de Chateaubriand

text: In 1830, after the July Revolution, his refusal to swear allegiance to the new House of Orléans king Louis-Philippe put an end to his political career. He withdrew from political life to write his "Mémoires d'Outre-Tombe" ("Memoirs from Beyond the Grave"), published posthumously in two volumes in 1849–1850. It reflects his growing pessimism regarding the future. Although his contemporaries celebrated the present and future as an extension of the past, Chateaubriand and the new Romanticists couldn't share their nostalgic outlook. Instead he foresaw chaos, discontinuity, and disaster. His diaries and letters often focused on the upheavals he could see every day — abuses of power, excesses of daily life, and disasters yet to come. His melancholy tone suggested astonishment, surrender, betrayal, and bitterness.


title: François-René de Chateaubriand

text: His "Études historiques" was an introduction to a projected "History of France". He became a harsh critic of the "bourgeois king" Louis-Philippe and the July Monarchy, and his planned volume on the arrest of Marie-Caroline, duchesse de Berry caused him to be (unsuccessfully) prosecuted.