title: Veracruz (city)

text: Fort San Juan de Ulúa is located on an island, now connected to land of the same name. The island is part of the La Gallega coral reef and has about 2,500 meters of beach. The full reef covers about 100 hectares and varies in depth between sixty and ninety centimeters, forming a natural break. In the pre-Hispanic era, this island was a sanctuary dedicated to the god Tezcatlipoca. The site where the Spanish first landed has been developed over the centuries and today serves as the container ship terminal of the port. Most of the island is occupied by the fort. This fort was built where the Spanish first landed to conquer Mexico City. They used it for their last defense during and just after the Mexican War of Independence. Between these periods, the fort helped defend the city against piracy and later was used for prisoners and interrogations of the Mexican Inquisition. The fort was begun here in 1582 to protect the city from pirates and was enlarged in 1635 during the period of frequent pirate raids. It was finished in 1707.


title: Veracruz (city)

text: After the War of Independence ended in 1821, the Spanish kept control of the island and fort, and occasionally bombarded Mexican forces on land. They finally transferred this area to Mexico in 1825. The fort was used in 1838 during the Pastry War with the French. In 1847, it was used for an unsuccessful defense of the port when United States (U.S.) forces invaded during the Mexican–American War.


title: Veracruz (city)

text: In the 19th century, the fort was converted into a military prison. The fort's narrow stone passageways lead to a series of dungeons with walls 24-feet thick in some places. Those cells which were darker and hotter were reserved for those charged with more serious crimes. A few of the most dreaded dungeons were nicknamed "Heaven", "Purgatory" and "Hell". Some of prison's more famous prisoners include Fray Servando Teresa de Mier and Benito Juárez, both political prisoners. But the most famous is Jesús Arriaga, better known as "Chucho el Roto". Most people visit San Juan de Ulúa out of attraction to the legend of this 19th-century bandit.


title: Veracruz (city)

text: Jesús Arriaga, better known as "Chucho el Roto", was held at Fort San Juan de Ulúa where he died. It is not known whether he died of natural causes, as a result of a fight with other prisoners or by other means. Chucho was a Robin Hood figure who lived during the 19th century. He stole from the rich and gave to the poor, inspiring songs and poetry such as the verses penned by Rafeal de Zayas Enriquez. Chucho was arrested in Querétaro after a jewelry store heist. He was sent to the Belen Prison in Mexico City, then to Veracruz. He was also renowned as a seducer of women, especially those who were rich and lonely. Most of his targets were jewelry shops, pawnshops and the homes of the wealthy.


title: Veracruz (city)

text: Along with Fort San Juan de Ulúa, the city used to be walled in for protection against pirates and invasions. All that is left of these city walls is the "Baluarte", a small fortress. The 1635 structure has thick, sturdy walls with cannons directed to cover sea approaches. Inside is a small museum featuring a collection of high-quality pre-Hispanic jewelry discovered in the 1970s by a fisherman.


title: Veracruz (city)

text: The Veracruz Aquarium was built in 1992 and is the largest and most important in Latin America. The Freshwater Gallery consists of thirteen exhibitions containing 562,177 liters of water. These exhibitions contain aquatic species from Asia, Africa, South America as well as Mexico. The Reef Tank is best known for its sharks. The Salt Water Gallery contains fourteen tanks with tanks dedicated to the species of Veracruz, the Red Sea and the Pacific Ocean. Another exhibit is devoted to sharks, containing 25 species that swim around visitors as they walk through a glass tunnel built through the tank. There is also an exhibit dedicated entirely to manatees.


title: Veracruz (city)

text: The Heroica Escuela Naval (Heroic Naval School) was founded here in 1897 by José María de Vega, then Secretary of the Navy. The school was founded because at the time, Mexico was dependent on the hiring of foreign sailors and foreign training of its officers to staff its Navy; prior attempts to establish an academy had failed. Porfirio Díaz approved the institute to train both Navy and Merchant Marine officers, to be based on similar schools in Western Europe.


title: Veracruz (city)

text: The City Museum (Museo de la Ciudad) is located at the intersections of Zaragoza and Esteban Morales streets in the historic center. It is housed in a two-story building which is of neoclassic design built between the mid and latter 19th century. The main façade on Zaragoza Street has an enormous main door with posts, framed by Ionic pilasters, which reach to the upper floor, and topped by a pediment and a cornice. The building was originally constructed as an asylum. When the French invaded Veracruz in 1861, the building was commandeered for other purposes until 1870.


title: Veracruz (city)

text: The asylum took it back and operated here for almost 100 years. New facilities were constructed for it south of the city, and the building was renovated for adaptive reuse as a museum. The City Museum was inaugurated in 1970 and contains exhibits relating to the history of Veracruz.


title: Veracruz (city)

text: The Agustín Lara House Museum exhibits works, photographs and personal effects of the poet Agustín Lara, located in what was his house in Boca del Río just outside Veracruz city. News clips, caricatures and a replica of the radio studio where he hosted "La Hora Azul" ("The Blue Hour") are among the items on display. Lara was one of the city's most famous sons as a popular songwriter and singer in Mexico. He began his career playing the piano in brothels and later became a bullfighter. Lara had seven wives, one of whom was Mexican screen diva María "La Doña" Félix, for whom he wrote the song, ""María Bonita"". To be a gentleman, when he and Félix were about to break up, he married her to "make an honest woman of her" even though they had lived together for years.


title: Veracruz (city)

text: Veracruz is primarily a commercial port, but it has some beaches and other sea attractions. Controversy has accompanied the clean-up of the island called Isla de Sacrificios, which lies just off the coast of the city and measures 450 meters long and 198 meters wide. The island is part of a system of twenty-three coral reefs called the Veracruz Reef System, which is protected as a national park. Visitors can kayak to the Isla de Sacrificios to observe seagulls, pelicans and the fish that inhabit the coral reef. In 1983, a study and initial cleanup project was undertaken at the island, which collected fifty tons of trash. Shortly thereafter, the island was closed to the public and since then, there has been a struggle among authorities, tour operators and fisherman as to the fate and uses of the island. There are those who would like to build hotels, restaurants and other facilities for ecotourism. However, access to the island has been restricted to research, teaching and the occasional sporting event.


title: Veracruz (city)

text: Other small islands and shoals off the coast include: Isla de Enmedio, Isla Verde, Anegada de Adentro, Santiaguillo and Anegada de Afuera, the last two next to Anton Lizardo beach. All of them are included within the Sistema Arrecifal Veracruzano national park and make fine sites for SCUBA diving. Several operators in Veracruz and in Boca del Rio offer scuba equipment and tours. The best season for scuba diving is May to August.


title: Veracruz (city)

text: For 400 years, the island has suffered ecologically from pollution related to development, as well as the pillaging of its coral reefs and archeological pieces. Current pollution problems are mostly due to untreated wastewater that flows into the ocean from the city and the polluted Jamapa River. Its coastline has been modified and more than 200 hectares of reefs in its littoral zone have been pillaged. Coral and other marine species have been taken for commercial and craft purposes, as well as by fishermen. Some of these coral reefs have already died due to pollution. Since the island was closed, there has been some revival of marine life.


title: Veracruz (city)

text: Ruins here have not been extensively studied but cover more than 700 years of history. In the pre-Hispanic era, the island was considered sacred and a sanctuary on which to perform religious rites. Human sacrifice was frequently performed and the remains buried here. A small altar is referred to in historic sources but it had not been found. The Spanish built a hospital here, but all that remains is part of one wall. Later, a storage faculty to store gunpowder was built, as well as an obelisk during the French Intervention, but these have crumbled as well. The only surviving structure is a small lighthouse. About 800 archeological artifacts have been partially excavated on the island but cannot be exhibited because the humidity and weather would damage them.


title: Veracruz (city)

text: Reopening the island is difficult because the ecosystem here is delicate, and any construction could damage archeological sites and valuable pieces. Any plans to reopen the island to visitors will require the collaboration of the Veracruz Reef System Park, to which it belongs, as well as Secretariat of the Navy, INAH, the Veracruz Aquarium and other government agencies negotiating with the local associations of hotels, tour operators and fishermen. So far, government agencies have blocked efforts to develop anything on the island. An ecotourism project consisting of guided tours is considered the most viable, such as that proposed by the Veracruzana University and the Aquarium, but there is concern on the part of INAH and the Secretariat of the Navy.


title: Veracruz (city)

text: The mainland has several beaches. Playa Martí is located between the city of Veracruz and Boca del Río, five km from the historic center. This beach also has goals and nets for football and volleyball games. The Playa de Hornos is located next to the Veracruz Aquarium. It is safe to swim here. Amenities include tables, chairs and umbrellas to rent, as well as food stands. During the high seasons lifeguards are on duty. Banana boats may be rented. There are also boats that take tourist to the Isla Canuncito. Villa del Mar is just south of Playa de Hornos and is more popular.


title: Veracruz (city)

text: Because of its importance as Mexico's principal Caribbean and Atlantic sea port, Veracruz has always been a locus for the mixture of different cultures, particularly Spanish, Native Mexican, and African. During the colonial period, African slaves were imported to work in the fields and shipyards. Since Mexico's independence from Spain in 1821, immigrants from Italy and Cuba have settled in the city.


title: Veracruz (city)

text: Sugar and rum production have been mainstays as commodities; during colonial times they were produced by slave labor and later, immigrants often entered labor and industrial jobs. Together these ethnic groups have created rich cultures. The Naval Academy of Mexico attracts both Mexican and international sailors and officers, adding to the cosmopolitan mix of the city. The city has a reputation for being lively, with many people out in the squares listening to music late into the night. In the morning, they frequent sidewalk cafes for their morning coffee.


title: Veracruz (city)

text: Veracruz recipes use corn, beans and squash as staples, a practice dating to the indigenous peoples. Local diets also include indigenous tropical foods such as chili peppers, tomatoes, avocados, pineapples, papaya, mamey, sweet potatoes, peanuts and sapote fruit, all of which have been cultivated since pre-Columbian times. The Spanish introduced the use of herbs such as parsley, thyme, marjoram, bay laurel and cilantro, as well as saffron, wheat, rice, almonds, olives/olive oil, garlic and capers. Because of the lengthy colonial period and international port, these ingredients are used more widely here than in other parts of the country.


title: Veracruz (city)

text: A signature dish of the area, "Huachinango a la Veracruzana" (red snapper Veracruz-style), uses local fruits and vegetables (tomatoes, chili peppers) and Spanish ingredients (olive oil, garlic and capers). Other popular dishes include , a rice dish baked with a variety of seafood and , a seafood soup reputed to cure hangovers.


title: Veracruz (city)

text: Coffeehouses are a center of social life in the city, and the "Gran Café del Portal" and the "Café de la Parroquia" are the two best-known establishments. To request a refill, customers clink the sides of their glasses (not cups) with their spoons. This clinking can be heard from the early morning to late at night. The story behind this custom is that a trolley driver used to ring his bell when he was a block away from the Gran Café del Portal to let the waiters know he was coming. When the driver died, his casket was borne on the trolley and when it passed the establishment, the customers and waiters tapped their glasses in his honor.


title: Veracruz (city)

text: The song "La Bamba," made famous by Ritchie Valens, has its roots in the Veracruz "son" style of music, which originated in southern Veracruz state. It has African and Caribbean influence and is popular throughout Mexico, Latin America and the United States. Traditional Veracruzian music is called "Son Jarocho". Although there are many types of son music found in Mexico, the Son Jarocho is typically associated with the city of Veracruz. Other types of son include "Son Comercial". This style is faster and flashier than the traditional Son Jarocho and can be heard in Mexican folkdance exhibitions, when Veracruz women with long white dresses and fans dance with partners also dressed in white. The Son Comercial developed in the 1940s from the Son Jarocho; in the 21st century it is so pervasive that many mistakenly believe it to be the first version. The Casa de Cultura has a workshops for traditional music and son singers can be heard just about anytime on the main plaza (Zocalo)


title: Veracruz (city)

text: The Veracruz Carnaval has been celebrated every year since 1866, during the empire of Maximilian I of Mexico. At that time, a request was made to sponsor "Festival of Masks," which would consist of dances at the principal social gathering sites of the city such as the main theater. While the events were officially held at these locations, many residents took advantage of the celebration on the streets near these sites. Eventually, the event became based in the historic center of the city and focused on the Carnaval Parade of Veracruz. Today, the event begins with the "Burning of Bad Humor" and ends with the "Burial of Juan Carnaval". Carnaval here is the largest celebration in the country.


title: Veracruz (city)

text: Veracruz has become a popular location for filming. The government has supported the development of filmmaking in the municipality.


title: Veracruz (city)

text: Laguna Verde Nuclear Power Plant (LVNPP) in nearby Alto Lucero, Veracruz, produces about 4.5% of Mexico's electrical energy.


title: Veracruz (city)

text: General Heriberto Jara International Airport serves the city with daily service to Mexico City as well as international service to Houston only. The commercial passenger airlines to currently serve VER airport are Aeromexico, Interjet, United Airlines, Aeromar Vivaaerobus and Mayair.


title: Veracruz (city)

text: Non-passenger rail transport (Kansas City Southern de México, formerly Transportación Ferroviaria Mexicana) connects Veracruz with Mexico City and state capital of Xalapa.


title: Veracruz (city)

text: Veracruz is linked to Mexico City by a four-lane toll highway which also passes through Cordoba and Puebla. Halfway between Veracruz and Cordoba, it is connected to the La Tinaja-Cosoleacaque toll highway which goes as far as Villahermosa, Tabasco. Another toll highway goes to Xalapa.


title: Veracruz (city)

text: Urban transport formerly was provided by the Veracruz tram system, from 1908 – 1981. Now the city has buses, including trolley-replica tour buses that looks like former trams and highlighted at evening.


title: Veracruz (city)

text: The Universidad Veracruzana was established in 1944. It was created by joining a number of professional and higher education establishments together. It is now the main center of higher education in the state of Veracruz, with five campuses and twenty-two satellite locations in the state. The student population is approximately 70,000, offering degrees in sixty different fields.


title: Veracruz (city)

text: The Veracruz Institute of Technology was founded in 1946 by Ismael Lagunes Lastra. It started out as the School of Arts and Letters, with a mission to train students for the jobs associated with the developing port and industrial base of the city. It started teaching students at the secondary and high school level, later adding bachelor's degree programs. In 1952, the school received a grant of lands by the federal and state governments to expand. Technical programs were added in the 1960s and have become the main part of the school's work, Veracruz Institute of Technology is famous due to its bachelor of engineering in biochemical engineering, masters and PhD about food science and biochemical engineering.


title: Veracruz (city)

text: Private universities include Cristóbal Colón University, mainly dedicated to architecture and administration . UNIMEX was founded in 1991 and focuses on marketing, graphic design and law.


title: Veracruz (city)

text: The Port of Veracruz is the oldest and largest port in Mexico, deeply important to its history. During the colonial period, it was the most important port in New Spain, the connection to ports and the Atlantic trade creating a large wealthy merchant class, which was more prosperous than that of Mexico City. From the port of Veracruz were exported turkeys, corn, beans, avocados, and cotton to Spain. From Spain came fava beans, wheat, rice, cattle, pigs, fabric, wine and other goods. In the mid 16th century, so much gold and silver was found in Veracruz that these precious metals were the chief export to Spain on what were called treasure ships. The bounty attracted pirates, mostly from Britain and Holland, such as Francis Drake and John Hawkins, who preyed on such ships. Veracruz was invaded during conflicts with France and the United States.


title: Veracruz (city)

text: In the latter half of the 19th century, Veracruz's importance waned as trade to Europe diminished. The port was refurbished at the beginning of the 20th century, but petroleum production was the primary income for the state rather than the port. This began to change in the latter half of the 20th century, and the port has surged back to the state's economic forefront.


title: Veracruz (city)

text: In 1991, the federal government took over the port of Veracruz to correct the handling of merchandise. Later that same year, the first private shipping companies began operations. In 1993, the Law of Ports was passed regularizing the operations of ports in the country. This law created the Administración Portuaria de Veracruz (Port Authority of Veracruz).


title: Veracruz (city)

text: In the 2000s, the port continues to handle all kinds of cargo, moving 16.1 million tons of products in 2004. This figure is expected to rise once modernization efforts have finished, especially a truck bypass that leads directly from the highway to the port. Veracruz is the gateway for Mexico's automobile industry, which is concentrated in the center of the country, in the states around Mexico City. This port has several advantages. It is the first to be equipped specifically for shipping automobiles. Located on the south-central coast, Veracruz is closer to car manufacturers and has better access to both import and export markets in the U.S., Europe, Central and South America than other Mexican ports. In 2004, the port handled 70% of the automobiles exported. With traffic expected to rise, the port authorities unveiled a program to enlarge the port's infrastructure and expand operations by 2010. However conversion of port area for tourism challenges operations. The port handles 7–800,000 vehicles per year; the largest amount on the continent.


title: Veracruz (city)

text: As the municipal seat, the city of Veracruz is the governing authority for 128 other named localities during the 2010 census, forming a municipality with a territory of . The population of the municipality is 552,156 inhabitants, of whom 428,323 or approximately 77.6% live in municipality's portion of the city proper. The municipality is bordered by the municipalities of La Antigua, Boca del Río, Manlio Fabio Altamirano, Medellín, and Paso de Ovejas, with the Gulf of Mexico to the northeast, and has an average altitude of ten meters above sea level. The area is flat with little in the way of elevations and is crossed by the Medio, Grande and Tonayán Rivers. There are also beaches here such as the Sacrificios and Verde. Its climate is tropical with an average temperature of . Vegetation is mostly of the rainforest type, with many trees losing leaves during the winter dry season. Fauna mostly consists of birds, small mammals and insects.


title: Veracruz (city)

text: Much of the land in the municipality outside of the city is used for agriculture and livestock. Principal crops include corn, beans, watermelon, oranges, sorghum, mango, pineapple and sugar cane. Livestock raised includes cattle, pigs, sheep, fowl and horses. There is also some forestry. The municipality contains deposits of marble, lime, cement, sand and clay. In and around the city there are a number of industrial sites producing paints and solvents, food products, plastics, petrochemicals and metals.


title: Veracruz (city)

text: Like the majority of the coastal part of Veracruz State and southern parts of Tamaulipas, the city of Veracruz has a tropical savanna climate (Koppen: "Aw"). The wet season typically lasts from June to October, when a vast majority of the yearly precipitation falls. Large tropical thunderstorms occur nearly daily in the late afternoon, originating in the moist atmosphere above the Gulf of Mexico. The wet season has slightly hotter temperatures and is more humid than other seasons; the dewpoint can easily exceed . It has fewer foggy days than the dry season (averaging around 4-7 foggy days). The dry season of the year spans from November to May, with slightly cooler temperatures and less humid days; making it the much more desirable part of the year for visiting tourists as opposed to the stormy, humid wet season. Despite the dryness, winters are foggy and cloudy, averaging 10-17 overcast days and 11-17 foggy days per month during the dry season. Many tourists visit Veracruz during Christmas and March break, in the midst of the winter's comfortably warm dry season.


title: Veracruz (city)

text: Veracruz receives an average of of precipitation annually. The wettest month of the year is July with an average monthly total of of rainfall, while the driest month of the year is March with an only of rainfall. Temperature-wise, the hottest months of the year are June and August, both sharing mean temperatures of , while the coolest month of the year is January with a mean temperature of .


title: Mode of production

text: In the Marxist theory of historical materialism, a mode of production (German: "Produktionsweise", "the way of producing") is a specific combination of the:


title: Mode of production

text: Marx said that a person's productive ability and participation in social relations are two essential characteristics of social reproduction, and that the particular modality of those social relations in the capitalist mode of production is inherently in conflict with the progressive development of the productive capabilities of human beings. A precursor concept was Adam Smith's mode of subsistence, which delineated a progression of types of society based upon how the citizens of a society provided for their material needs.


title: Mode of production

text: Building on the four-stage theory of human development of the Scottish Enlightenment – Hunting/Pastoral/Agricultural/Commercial Societies, each with its own socio-cultural characteristics - Marx articulated the concept of mode of production: “The mode of production in material life determines the general character of the social, political, and spiritual processes of life”.


title: Mode of production

text: Marx considered that the way people relate to the physical world and the way people relate to each other socially are bound up together in specific and necessary ways: “men [who] produce cloth, linen, silk...also produce the ‘social relations’ amid which they prepare cloth and linen”. People must consume to survive, but to consume they must produce and in producing they necessarily enter into relations which exist independently of their will.


title: Mode of production

text: For Marx, the whole secret of why/how a social order exists and the causes of social change must be discovered in the specific mode of production that a society has. He further argued that the mode of production substantively shaped the nature of the mode of distribution, the mode of circulation and the mode of consumption, all of which together constitute the economic sphere. To understand the way wealth was distributed and consumed, it was necessary to understand the conditions under which it was produced.


title: Mode of production

text: A mode of production is historically distinctive for Marx because it constitutes part of an organic totality (or self-reproducing whole) which is capable of constantly re-creating its own initial conditions and thus perpetuate itself in a more or less stable ways for centuries, or even millennia. By performing social surplus labour in a specific system of property relations, the labouring classes constantly reproduce the foundations of the social order. A mode of production normally shapes the mode of distribution, circulation and consumption and is regulated by the state. As Marx wrote to Annenkov, “Assume particular stages of development in production, commerce and consumption and you will have a corresponding social order, a corresponding organization of the family and of the ranks and classes, in a word, a corresponding civil society”.


title: Mode of production

text: However any given mode of production will also contain within it (to a greater or lesser extent) relics of earlier modes, as well as seeds of new ones. The emergence of new productive forces will cause conflict in the current mode of production. When conflict arises, the modes of production can evolve within the current structure or cause a complete breakdown.


title: Mode of production

text: The process by which social and economic systems evolve is based on the premise of improving technology. Specifically, as the level of technology improves, existing forms of social relations become increasingly insufficient for fully exploiting technology. This generates internal inefficiencies within the broader socioeconomic system, most notably in the form of class conflict. The obsolete social arrangements prevent further social progress while generating increasingly severe contradictions between the level of technology (forces of production) and social structure (social relations, conventions and organization of production) which develop to a point where the system can no longer sustain itself and is overthrown through internal social revolution that allows for the emergence of new forms of social relations that are compatible with the current level of technology (productive forces).


title: Mode of production

text: The fundamental driving force behind structural changes in the socioeconomic organization of civilization are underlying material concerns—specifically, the level of technology and extent of human knowledge and the forms of social organization they make possible. This comprises what Marx termed the materialist conception of history (see also materialism) and is in contrast to an idealist analysis, (such as that criticised by Marx in Proudhon), which states that the fundamental driving force behind socioeconomic change are the ideas of enlightened individuals.


title: Mode of production

text: Marx and Engels often referred to the "first" mode of production as primitive communism. In classical Marxism, the two earliest modes of production were those of the tribal band or horde, and of the neolithic kinship group. Tribal bands of hunter gatherers represented for most of human history the only form of possible existence. Technological progress in the Stone Age was very slow; social stratification was very limited (as were personal possessions, hunting grounds being held in common); and myth, ritual and magic are seen as the main cultural forms.


title: Mode of production

text: With the adoption of agriculture at the outset of the Neolithic Revolution, and accompanying technological advances in pottery, brewing, baking, and weaving, there came a modest increase in social stratification, and the birth of class with private property held in hierarchical kinship groups or clans.


title: Mode of production

text: Animism was replaced by a new emphasis on gods of fertility; and (possibly) a move from matriarchy to patriarchy took place at the same time.


title: Mode of production

text: The Asiatic mode of production is a controversial contribution to Marxist theory, first used to explain pre-slave and pre-feudal large earthwork constructions in India, the Euphrates and Nile river valleys (and named on this basis of the primary evidence coming from greater "Asia"). The Asiatic mode of production is said to be the initial form of class society, where a small group extracts social surplus through violence aimed at settled or unsettled band and village communities within a domain. It was made possible by a technological advance in data-processing – writing, cataloguing and archiving - as well as by associated advances in standardisation of weights and measures, mathematics, calendar-making and irrigation.


title: Mode of production

text: Exploited labour is extracted as forced corvee labour during a slack period of the year (allowing for monumental construction such as the pyramids, ziggurats and ancient Indian communal baths). Exploited labour is also extracted in the form of goods directly seized from the exploited communities. The primary property form of this mode is the direct religious possession of communities (villages, bands, and hamlets, and all those within them) by the gods: in a typical example, three-quarters of the property would be allotted to individual families, while the remaining quarter would be worked for the theocracy. The ruling class of this society is generally a semi-theocratic aristocracy which claims to be the incarnation of gods on earth. The forces of production associated with this society include basic agricultural techniques, massive construction, irrigation, and storage of goods for social benefit (granaries). Because of the unproductive use of the creamed-off surplus, such Asiatic empires tended to be doomed to fall into decay.


title: Mode of production

text: Marxist historians such as John Haldon and Chris Wickham have argued that societies interpreted by Marx as examples of the AMP are better understood as Tributary Modes of Production (TMP). The TMP is characterized as having a "state class" as its specific form of ruling class, which has exclusive or almost exclusive rights to extract surplus from peasants over whom, however, it does not exercise tenurial control.


title: Mode of production

text: Sometimes referred to as "slave society", an alternative route out of neolithic self-sufficiency came in the form of the polis or city-state. Technological advances in the form of cheap iron tools, coinage, and the alphabet, and the division of labour between industry, trade and farming, enabled new and larger units to develop in the form of the polis, which called in turn for new forms of social aggregation. A host of urban associations – formal and informal – took over from earlier familial and tribal groupings. Constitutionally agreed law replaced the vendetta - an advance celebrated in such new urban cultural forms as Greek tragedy: thus, as Robert Fagles put it, “The "Oresteia" is our rite of passage from savagery to civilization...from the blood vendetta to the social justice”.


title: Mode of production

text: Classical Greek and Roman societies are the most typical examples of this antique mode of production. The forces of production associated with this mode include advanced (two field) agriculture, the extensive use of animals in agriculture, industry (mining and pottery), and advanced trade networks. It is differentiated from the Asiatic mode in that property forms included the direct possession of individual human beings (slavery): thus for example Plato in his ideal city-state of Magnesia envisaged for the leisured ruling class of citizens that “their farms have been entrusted to slaves, who provide them with sufficient produce of the land to keep them in modest comfort”. The ancient mode of production is also distinguished by the way the ruling class usually avoids the more outlandish claims of being the direct incarnation of a god and prefers to be the descendants of gods, or seeks other justifications for its rule, including varying degrees of popular participation in politics.


title: Mode of production

text: It was not so much democracy, but rather the universalising of its citizenship, that eventually enabled Rome to set up a Mediterranean-wide urbanised empire, knit together by roads, harbours, lighthouses, aqueducts, and bridges, and with engineers, architects, traders and industrialists fostering interprovincial trade between a growing set of urban centres.


title: Mode of production

text: The fall of the Western Roman Empire returned most of Western Europe to subsistence agriculture, dotted with ghost towns and obsolete trade-routes Authority too was localised, in a world of poor roads and difficult farming conditions. The new social form which, by the ninth century, had emerged in place of the ties of family or clan, of sacred theocracy or legal citizenship was a relationship based on the personal tie of vassal to lord, cemented by the link to landholding in the guise of the fief. This was the feudal mode of production, which dominated the systems of the West between the fall of the classical world and the rise of capitalism. (Similar systems existing in most of the world as well.) This period also saw the decentralization of the ancient empires into the earliest nation-states.


title: Mode of production

text: The primary form of property is the possession of land in reciprocal contract relations, military service for knights, labour services to the lord of the manor by peasants or serfs tied to and entailed upon the land. Exploitation occurs through reciprocated contract (though ultimately resting on the threat of forced extractions). The ruling class is usually a nobility or aristocracy, typically legitimated by some concurrent form of theocracy. The primary forces of production include highly complex agriculture (two, three field, lucerne fallowing and manuring) with the addition of non-human and non-animal power devices (clockwork and wind-mills) and the intensification of specialisation in the crafts—craftsmen exclusively producing one specialised class of product.


title: Mode of production

text: The prevailing ideology was of a hierarchical system of society, tempered by the element of reciprocity and contract in the feudal tie. While, as Maitland warned, the feudal system had many variations, extending as it did over more than half a continent, and half a millennium, nevertheless the many forms all had at their core a relationship that (in the words of John Burrow) was “at once legal and social, military and economic...at once a way of organising military force, a social hierarchy, an ethos and what Marx would later call a mode of production”.


title: Mode of production

text: During this period, a merchant class arises and grows in strength, driven by the profit motive but prevented from developing further profits by the nature of feudal society, in which, for instance, the serfs are tied to the land and cannot become industrial workers and wage-earners. This eventually precipitates an epoch of social revolution (i.e.: the English Civil War and the Glorious Revolution of 1688, the French Revolution of 1789, etc.) wherein the social and political organization of feudal society (or the "property relations" of feudalism) are overthrown by a nascent bourgeoisie.


title: Mode of production

text: By the close of the Middle Ages, the feudal system had been increasingly hollowed out by the growth of free towns, the commutation for money of servile labour, the replacement of the feudal host by a paid soldiery, and the divorce of retainership from land tenure - even if feudal privileges, ethics and enclaves would persist in Europe till the end of the millennium in residual forms. Feudalism was succeeded by what Smith called the Age of Commerce, and Marx the capitalist mode of production, which spans the period from mercantilism to imperialism and beyond, and is usually associated with the emergence of modern industrial society and the global market economy. Marx maintained that central to the new capitalist system was the replacement of a system of money serving as the key to commodity exchange (C-M-C, commerce), by a system of money leading (via commodities) to the re-investment of money in further production (M-C-M’, capitalism) - the new and overriding social imperative.


title: Mode of production

text: The primary form of property is that of private property in commodity form – land, materials, tools of production, and human labour, all being potentially commodified and open to exchange in a cash nexus by way of (state guaranteed) contract: as Marx put it, “man himself is brought into the sphere of private property”. The primary form of exploitation is by way of (formally free) wage labour (see "Das Kapital"), with debt peonage, wage slavery, and other forms of exploitation also possible. The ruling class for Marx is the bourgeoisie, or the owners of capital who possess the means of production, who exploit the proletariat for surplus value, as the proletarians possess only their own labour power which they must sell in order to survive. Yuval Harari reconceptualised the dichotomy for the 21st Century in terms of the rich who invest to re-invest, and the remainder who go into debt in order to consume for the benefit of the owners of the means of production.


title: Mode of production

text: Under Capitalism the key forces of production include the overall system of modern production with its supporting structures of bureaucracy, bourgeois democracy, and above all finance capital. The system’s ideological underpinnings took place over the course of time, Frederic Jameson for example considering that “the Western Enlightenment may be grasped as part of a properly bourgeois cultural revolution, in which the values and the discourse, the habits and the daily space, of the ancien régime were systematically dismantled so that in their place could be set the new conceptualities, habits and life forms, and value systems of a capitalist market society” - utilitarianism, rationalised production (Weber), training and discipline (Foucault) and a new capitalist time-structure.


title: Mode of production

text: Socialism is the mode of production which Marx considered will succeed capitalism, and which will itself ultimately be succeeded by communism - the words socialism and communism both predate Marx and have many definitions other than those he used, however - once the forces of production outgrew the capitalist framework.


title: Mode of production

text: In his 1917 work "The State and Revolution", Lenin divided communism, the period following the overthrow of capitalism, into three stages: First is the workers state, and then later, once the last vestiges of the old capitalist ways have withered away, Higher and Lower phase Communism which would actually have a socialist mode of production; These are known to most as Socialism and Communism. Marx typically used the terms the "first phase" of communism and the "higher phase" of communism, but Lenin points to later remarks by Engels which suggest that Marx's "first phase" of communism typically equates with what people commonly think of as socialism.


title: Mode of production

text: The Marxist definition of socialism is a mode of production where the sole criterion for production is use-value and therefore the law of value no longer directs economic activity. Marxist production for use is coordinated through conscious economic planning, while distribution of economic output is based on the principle of to each according to his contribution. The social relations of socialism are characterized by the working class effectively owning the means of production and the means of their livelihood, through one or a combination of cooperative enterprises, common ownership, or worker's self-management.


title: Mode of production

text: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels deliberately wrote very little on socialism, neglecting to provide any details on how it might be organized on the grounds that, until the new mode of production had itself emerged, all such theories would be merely Utopian: as Georges Sorel put it, “to attempt to erect an ideological superstructure in advance of the conditions of production on which it must be built...would be un-Marxist”. However, later in life, Marx pointed to the Paris Commune as the first example of a proletarian uprising and the model for a future socialist society organized into communes, observing:


title: Mode of production

text: Communism is the final mode of production, anticipated to arise inevitably from socialism due to historical forces. Marx did not speak in detail about the nature of a communist society, which he would describe interchangeably with the words socialism and communism. However, he did refer briefly in the "Critique of the Gotha Programme" to the full release of productive forces in "the highest phase of communist society [...] [when] society will be able to inscribe on its banner: 'From each according to his capacities, to each according to his needs'".


title: Mode of production

text: Different communities in specific society or country, different modes of production might come up and exist alongside each other, linked together economically through trade and mutual obligations. To these different modes correspond different in social classes and strata in the population. For instance urban capitalist industry might co-exist with rural peasant production for subsistence and simple exchange and tribal hunting and gathering. Old and new modes of production might combine to form a hybrid economy.


title: Mode of production

text: However, Marx's view was that the expansion of capitalist markets tended to dissolve and displace older ways of producing over time. A capitalist society was a society in which the capitalist mode of production had become the dominant one. The culture, laws and customs of that society might preserve many traditions of the preceding modes of production, thus although two countries might both be capitalist, being economically based mainly on private enterprise for profit and wage labour, these capitalisms might be very different in social character and functioning, reflecting very different cultures, religions, social rules and histories.


title: Mode of production

text: Elaborating on this idea, Leon Trotsky famously described the economic development of the world as a process of uneven and combined development of different co-existing societies and modes of production which all influence each other. This means that historical changes which took centuries to occur in one country might be truncated, abbreviated or telescoped in another. Thus, for example, Trotsky observes in the opening chapter of his history of the Russian Revolution of 1917 that "[s]avages throw away their bows and arrows for rifles all at once, without travelling the road which lay between these two weapons in the past. The European colonists in America did not begin history all over again from the beginning". Thus, old and new techniques and cultures might combine in novel and unique admixtures, which cannot be understood other than by tracing out the history of their emergence.


title: Mauser 1918 T-Gewehr

text: The Mauser 13 mm anti-tank rifle (, usually abbreviated T-Gewehr) is the world's first anti-tank rifle—the first rifle designed for the sole purpose of destroying armored targets—and the only anti-tank rifle to see service in World War I. Approximately 16,900 were produced.


title: Mauser 1918 T-Gewehr

text: During the First World War the onset of static, trench warfare saw the rise in the use of armour plate for personal defense, and the development and use of armour-piercing ammunition to counter this. Both Britain and Germany used high-powered rifles, such as elephant guns from their African colonies, for this purpose.


title: Mauser 1918 T-Gewehr

text: The first use of armoured fighting vehicles (tanks) was by the British at the Battle of Flers–Courcelette in September 1916 and were followed by the French.


title: Mauser 1918 T-Gewehr

text: By June 1917, the German Army faced the Mark IV tank, and found that the standard armour-piercing 7.92 mm K bullet was no longer effective. This prompted the development by the Germans of a heavy-calibre and high-velocity rifle as an anti-tank weapon. The makers of the gun were inspired by weapons used to hunt African big game, like the elephant gun. The Mauser Company responded with the 13mm "T-gewehr" and began mass production at Oberndorf am Neckar in May 1918. The first of these off the production lines were issued to specially raised anti-tank detachments.


title: Mauser 1918 T-Gewehr

text: 14,700 T-Gewehrs were produced before the Armistice, and production ceased in April 1919. Approximately 1,490 were produced after the cessation of hostilities.


title: Mauser 1918 T-Gewehr

text: The rifle was a single-shot bolt-action rifle using a modified Mauser action, with rounds manually loaded into the chamber. The weapon had a pistol grip and bipod, but no method of reducing recoil, such as a soft buttpad or muzzle brake. This could cause problems for the shooter with repeated firing. The iron sights were composed of a front blade and tangent rear, graduated in 100-meter increments from 100 to 500 meters. The rifle was operated by a two-man crew of a gunner and ammunition bearer, who were both trained to fire the weapon. Due to the tremendous blunt force of the recoil, it was designed to be shot in a static position, either prone or from inside a trench.


title: Mauser 1918 T-Gewehr

text: The United States Army tested the T-Gewehr after the war, as did the other Allied Powers. Poland obtained a few T-Gewehrs during border skirmishes at the German border in 1920.


title: Mauser 1918 T-Gewehr

text: The Reichswehr kept some M1918s in service into the 1930s (805 were in the secret arsenals of the Reichswehr in 1925). Sweden bought a number from Germany, and used them under the designation "Pansarvärnsgevär m/21". During the Rif War, the Rifian rebels obtained some smuggled Mauser 1918s to counter the Spanish Renault and Schneider tanks.


title: Mauser 1918 T-Gewehr

text: In 1939, a Soviet team led by V.N. Shokolov retro-engineered the T-Gewehr, modified to fire the Soviet 12.7×108mm B-32 bullets. Small numbers were hand-produced by the Bauman Institute in the emergency of July 1941. After the Winter War, Finland bought 100 T-Gewehr from Great Britain but they were never used and Finland scrapped them in 1944.


title: Mauser 1918 T-Gewehr

text: The armour-piercing hardened steel cored 13.2×92mm (.525-inch) semi-rimmed cartridge, often simply called "13 mm", was originally planned for a new, heavy Maxim MG.18 water-cooled machine gun, the "Tank und Flieger" ("TuF") meaning for use against "tank and aircraft", which was under development and to be fielded in 1919. The rounds weighed 51.5 g (795 gn) with an initial velocity of .


title: Karel Čapek

text: Karel Čapek (; 9 January 1890 – 25 December 1938) was a Czech writer, playwright and critic. He has become best known for his science fiction, including his novel "War with the Newts" (1936) and play "R.U.R." ("Rossum's Universal Robots", 1920), which introduced the word "robot". He also wrote many politically charged works dealing with the social turmoil of his time. Influenced by American pragmatic liberalism, he campaigned in favor of free expression and strongly opposed the rise of both fascism and communism in Europe.


title: Karel Čapek

text: Though nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature seven times, Čapek never received it. However, several awards commemorate his name, such as the Karel Čapek Prize, awarded every other year by the Czech PEN Club for literary work that contributes to reinforcing or maintaining democratic and humanist values in society. He also played a key role in establishing the Czechoslovak PEN Club as a part of International PEN.


title: Karel Čapek

text: Karel Čapek was born in 1890 in the village of Malé Svatoňovice in the Bohemian mountains. However, six months after his birth, the Čapek family moved to their own house in Úpice. Karel Čapek's father, Antonín Čapek, worked as a doctor at the local textile factory. Antonín was a very active person; apart from his work as a doctor, he also co-funded the local museum and was a member of the town council.


title: Karel Čapek

text: Despite opposing his father's materialist and positivist views, Karel Čapek loved and admired his father, later calling him “a good example... of the generation of national awakeners”. Karel's mother, Božena Čapková, was a homemaker. Unlike her husband, she did not like life in the country, and she suffered from long-term depression. Despite that, she assiduously collected and recorded local folklore, such as legends, songs and stories. Karel was the youngest of three siblings. He would maintain an especially close relationship with his brother Josef, a highly successful painter, living and working with him throughout his adult life. His sister, Helena, was a talented pianist who later become a writer and published several memoirs about Karel and Josef.


title: Karel Čapek

text: After finishing elementary school in Úpice, Karel moved with his grandmother to Hradec Králové, where he started attending high school. Two years later the school expelled him for taking part in an illegal students' club. Čapek later described the club as a "very non-murderous anarchist society".


title: Karel Čapek

text: After this incident he moved to Brno with his sister and attempted to finish high school there, but two years later he moved again, to Prague, where he finished high school at the Academic Grammar School in 1909. During his teenage years Čapek became enamored with the visual arts, especially Cubism, which influenced his later writing.


title: Karel Čapek

text: After graduating from high school, he studied philosophy and aesthetics in Prague at Charles University, but he also spent some time at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin and at the Sorbonne University in Paris. While still a university student he wrote some works on contemporary art and literature. He graduated with a doctorate of philosophy in 1915.


title: Karel Čapek

text: Exempted from military service due to the spinal problems that would haunt him his whole life, Čapek observed World War I from Prague. His political views were strongly affected by the war, and as a budding journalist he began to write on topics like nationalism, totalitarianism and consumerism. Through social circles, the young author developed close relationships with many of the political leaders of the nascent Czechoslovak state, including Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, Czechoslovak patriot and the first President of Czechoslovakia, and his son Jan Masaryk, who would later become minister of foreign affairs. T. G. Masaryk was a regular guest at Čapek's "Friday Men" garden parties for leading Czech intellectuals. Čapek was also a member of Masaryk's "Hrad" political network. Their frequent conversations on various topics later served as the basis for Čapek's book "Talks with T. G. Masaryk".


title: Karel Čapek

text: Čapek began his writing career as a journalist. With his brother Josef, he worked as an editor for the Czech paper "Národní listy" "(The National Newspaper)" from October 1917 to April 1921. Upon leaving, he and Josef joined the staff of "Lidové noviny" "(The People's Paper)" in April 1921.


title: Karel Čapek

text: Čapek's early attempts at fiction were short stories and plays for the most part written with his brother Josef. His first international success was "R.U.R.", a dystopian work about a bad day at a factory populated with sentient androids. The play was translated into English in 1922, and was being performed in the UK and America by 1923. Throughout the 1920s, Čapek worked in many writing genres, producing both fiction and non-fiction, but worked primarily as a journalist.


title: Karel Čapek

text: In the 1930s, Čapek's work focused on the threat of brutal national socialist and fascist dictatorships; by the mid-1930s, Čapek had become "an outspoken anti-fascist". He also became a member of International PEN Club. Established, and was the first president of the Czechoslovak PEN Club.


title: Karel Čapek

text: In 1935, he married actress Olga Scheinpflugová, after a long acquaintance. In 1938 it became clear that the Western allies, namely France and the United Kingdom, would fail to fulfil the pre-war treaty agreements, and they refused to defend Czechoslovakia against Nazi Germany. Although offered the chance to go to exile in England, Čapek refused to leave his country – even though the Nazi Gestapo had named him "public enemy number two". While repairing flood damage to his family's summer house in Stará Huť, he contracted a common cold. As he had suffered all his life from spondyloarthritis and was also a heavy smoker, Karel Čapek died of pneumonia, on 25 December 1938.


title: Karel Čapek

text: Surprisingly, the Gestapo was not aware of his death. Several months later, just after the German invasion of Czechoslovakia, Nazi agents came to the Čapek family house in Prague to arrest him. Upon discovering that he had already been dead for some time, they arrested and interrogated his wife Olga. His brother Josef was arrested in September and eventually died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in April 1945. Karel Čapek and his wife are buried at the Vyšehrad cemetery in Prague. The inscription on the tombstone reads: "Here would have been buried Josef Čapek, painter and poet. Grave far away."


title: Karel Čapek

text: Karel Čapek wrote on a wide variety of subjects. His works are known for their precise description of reality. Čapek is renowned for his work with the Czech language.


title: Karel Čapek

text: He is known as a science fiction author, who wrote before science fiction became widely recognized as a separate genre. Many of his works also discuss ethical aspects of industrial inventions and processes already anticipated in the first half of the 20th century. These include mass production, nuclear weapons and intelligent artificial beings such as robots or androids. His most productive years were during The First Republic of Czechoslovakia (1918–1938).


title: Karel Čapek

text: Čapek also expressed fear of social disasters, dictatorship, violence, human stupidity, the unlimited power of corporations, and greed. Čapek tried to find hope, and the way out.


title: Karel Čapek

text: From the 1930s onward, his work became increasingly anti-fascist, anti-militarist, and critical of what he saw as "irrationalism".


title: Karel Čapek

text: Ivan Klíma, in his biography of Čapek, notes his influence on modern Czech literature, as well as on the development of Czech as a written language. Čapek, along with contemporaries like Jaroslav Hašek, spawned part of the early 20th-century revival in written Czech thanks to their decision to use the vernacular. Klíma writes, "It is thanks to Čapek that the written Czech language grew closer to the language people actually spoke". Čapek was also a translator, and his translations of French poetry into the language inspired a new generation of Czech poets.


title: Karel Čapek

text: His other books and plays include detective stories, novels, fairy tales and theatre plays, and even a book on gardening.


title: Karel Čapek

text: His most important works attempt to resolve problems of epistemology, to answer the question: "What is knowledge?" Examples include "Tales from Two Pockets", and the first book of the trilogy of novels "Hordubal," "Meteor," and "An Ordinary Life." He also co-wrote (with his brother Josef) the libretto for Zdeněk Folprecht's opera "Lásky hra osudná" in 1922.


title: Karel Čapek

text: After World War II, Čapek's work was only reluctantly accepted by the communist government of Czechoslovakia, because during his life he had refused to accept communism as a viable alternative. He was the first in a series of influential non-Marxist intellectuals who wrote a newspaper essay in a series called "Why I am not a Communist".


title: Karel Čapek

text: In 2009 (70 years after his death), a book was published containing extensive correspondence by Karel Čapek, in which the writer discusses the subjects of pacifism and his conscientious objection to military service with lawyer Jindřich Groag from Brno. Until then, only a portion of these letters were known.


title: Karel Čapek

text: Arthur Miller wrote in 1990: I read Karel Čapek for the first time when I was a college student long ago in the Thirties. There was no writer like him ... prophetic assurance mixed with surrealistic humour and hard-edged social satire: a unique combination...he is a joy to read.


title: Karel Čapek

text: Karel Čapek introduced and made popular the frequently used international word "robot", which first appeared in his play "R.U.R." in 1920. While it is frequently thought that he was the originator of the word, he wrote a short letter in reference to an article in the "Oxford English Dictionary" etymology in which he named his brother, painter and writer Josef Čapek, as its actual inventor.


title: Karel Čapek

text: In an article in the Czech journal "Lidové noviny" in 1933, he also explained that he had originally wanted to call the creatures "laboři" (from Latin "labor", work). However, he did not like the word, seeing it as too artificial, and sought advice from his brother Josef, who suggested "roboti" ("robots" in English).


title: Karel Čapek

text: The word "robot" comes from the word "robota". The word robota means literally "corvée", "serf labor", and figuratively "drudgery" or "hard work" in Czech. It also means "work", "labor" in Slovak, archaic Czech, and many other Slavic languages (e.g., Bulgarian, Russian, Serbian, Polish, Macedonian, Ukrainian, etc.). It derives from the reconstructed Proto-Slavic word *orbota, meaning "work, hard work, obligatory work for the king, or a short form used for plowing".


title: Mike Yarwood

text: Michael Edward Yarwood, (born 14 June 1941) is an English impressionist, comedian and actor. He was one of Britain's top-rated entertainers, regularly appearing on television from the 1960s to the 1980s.


title: Mike Yarwood

text: Michael Edward Yarwood was born on Saturday, 14 June 1941 in Bredbury, Cheshire. After leaving Secondary Modern School, he worked as a messenger and then salesman at a garment warehouse. He played football as a child, but did not pursue a professional career. Later he was a director of the Stockport County football club.


title: Mike Yarwood

text: Yarwood appeared on British television shows in the 1960s and 1970s. Before his various eponymous BBC Television series, he worked for the ITV franchise holder ATV, and for Thames Television after he left the BBC. Yarwood owed his initial success to the "Sunday Night at the London Palladium" variety "spectacular", on which he first appeared in 1964. His appearance coincided with the senior political career of Labour Party leader and the Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, of whom Yarwood impersonated.


title: Mike Yarwood

text: At their height, Yarwood's BBC TV shows regularly attracted 18 million viewers. The shows included a variety mix of comic sketches, guest musicians and a closing song sung by Yarwood (introduced by the line, "and this is me", which became the title of his first autobiography).


title: Mike Yarwood

text: Using colour-separation overlay and video editing, Yarwood frequently staged set-pieces in which he appeared as several characters at the same time using pre-recorded segments.


title: Mike Yarwood

text: Yarwood's performance as Harold Wilson became his trademark. He briefly caused some controversy by including Prince Charles as one of his regular impressions.


title: Mike Yarwood

text: The "Mike Yarwood Christmas Show" in 1977 was watched by 21.4 million people, was the highest-rated British television programme of that year, and remains one of the most-watched television programmes (excluding news and sport) in British history.


title: Mike Yarwood

text: Yarwood was the subject of a "This Is Your Life" special, presented by Eamonn Andrews on 31 May 1978. A behind-the-scenes documentary called "Mike Yarwood: This is His Life" was made six years later, also featuring Andrews, alongside contributions from Bruce Forsyth, David Frost and Harold Wilson.


title: Mike Yarwood

text: Yarwood's characterisations also created catchphrases which came to be identified with famous figures, even if they never actually used them. However, the two most famous were spoken by the people he caricatured. "Silly Billy", spoken by his caricature of Chancellor of the Exchequer Denis Healey, was used by Healey to describe strikers. It was rumoured that "I mean that most sincerely, folks", spoken by Yarwood's caricature of "Opportunity Knocks" presenter Hughie Green, was made up by Yarwood, however it was first spoken by Green.


title: Mike Yarwood

text: Yarwood's career peaked during the 1970s when he was one of a stable of stars under the BBC Light Entertainment impresario Bill Cotton, alongside Bruce Forsyth, Dick Emery, Morecambe and Wise, Val Doonican and the Two Ronnies, all these performers having started their careers on ITV during the preceding decade. By the late 1970s some of them left the BBC and returned to independent television.


title: Mike Yarwood

text: Both Yarwood and Morecambe and Wise signed up with Thames TV, Morecambe and Wise went to Thames in 1978 with Yarwood signed by Thames in 1982, with mixed results; Morecambe and Wise fared better than Yarwood and their ratings remained relatively high. Forsyth signed to LWT and suffered a terrible start when his "Big Night" series was cancelled. However, unlike Yarwood, Forsyth bounced back and enjoyed success with "Play Your Cards Right".


title: Mike Yarwood

text: Yarwood's Thames TV show was cancelled at the end of 1987, and he concentrated on stage work. Subsequent attempts to resurrect his television career failed, although he did make an appearance on the satirical show "Have I Got News for You" in November 1995.


title: Mike Yarwood

text: In the mid-1990s, Yarwood had the chance to return to the stage as prime minister John Major, but failed to re-establish himself before Major's premiership ended. He claimed that one of the difficulties in impersonating John Major and Tony Blair was that they were "nice guys".


title: Mike Yarwood

text: In 2003, Yarwood made a public appearance at the Albany Comedy Club in London, at the invitation of Bob Monkhouse. It was Monkhouse's last show.


title: Mike Yarwood

text: In 2021, Yarwood's Christmas shows were licensed from Fremantle/Thames by That's TV who wanted to broadcast the shows as part of its festive offering, alongside other programmes such as The Kenny Everett Show, Benny Hill and Beadle's About, all of which have not been seen in full on a British television channel in more than 20 years.


title: Mike Yarwood

text: In October 1999, Yarwood underwent treatment for depression at the Priory Clinic in Roehampton, London.


title: Mike Yarwood

text: In 2021 it was reported that he was a resident of Brinsworth House, the residential and nursing retirement home in Twickenham, west London, for theatre and entertainment professionals.


title: Zoia Ceaușescu

text: Zoia Ceaușescu (; 28 February 1949 – 20 November 2006) was a Romanian mathematician, the daughter of Communist leader Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife, Elena. She was also known as Tovarășa Zoia (comrade Zoia).


title: Zoia Ceaușescu

text: Zoia Ceaușescu studied at High School nr. 24 (now Jean Monnet High School) in Bucharest and graduated in 1966. She then continued her studies at the Faculty of Mathematics, University of Bucharest. She received her Ph.D. in 1977 with thesis "On Intertwining Dilations" written under the direction of Ciprian Foias. Ceaușescu then worked as a researcher at the Institute of Mathematics of the Romanian Academy in Bucharest. Her field of specialization was functional analysis. Allegedly, her parents were unhappy with their daughter's choice of doing research in mathematics, so the Institute was disbanded in 1975. She moved on to work for Institutul pentru Creație Științifică și Tehnică (INCREST, Institute for Scientific and Technical Creativity), where she eventually started and headed a new department of mathematics. In 1976, Ceaușescu received the Simion Stoilow Prize for her outstanding contributions to the mathematical sciences.


title: Zoia Ceaușescu

text: She was married in 1980 to Mircea Oprean, an engineer and professor at the Polytechnic University of Bucharest.


title: Zoia Ceaușescu

text: During the Romanian Revolution, on 24 December 1989, she was arrested for "undermining the Romanian economy" and was released only eight months later, on 18 August 1990. After she was freed, she tried unsuccessfully to return to her former job at INCREST, then gave up and retired. After the revolution, some newspapers reported that she had lived a wild life, having plenty of lovers and often being drunk.


title: Zoia Ceaușescu

text: After her parents were executed, the new government confiscated the house where she and her husband lived (the house was used as proof of allegedly stolen wealth), so she had to live with friends.


title: Zoia Ceaușescu

text: After the revolution that ousted her parents, Zoia reported that during her parents' time in power her mother had asked the Securitate to keep an eye on the Ceaușescu children, perhaps she felt, out of a "sense of love". The Securitate "could not touch" the children she said, but the information they provided created a lot of problems for the children. She also remarked that power had a "destructive effect" on her father and that he "lost his sense of judgement".


title: Zoia Ceaușescu

text: Zoia Ceaușescu believed that her parents were not buried in Ghencea Cemetery; she attempted to have their remains exhumed, but a military court refused her request.


title: Colony-forming unit

text: In microbiology, colony-forming unit (CFU, cfu or Cfu) is a unit which estimates the number of microbial cells (bacteria, fungi, viruses etc.) in a sample that are viable, able to multiply via binary fission under the controlled conditions. Counting with colony-forming units requires culturing the microbes and counts only viable cells, in contrast with microscopic examination which counts all cells, living or dead. The visual appearance of a colony in a cell culture requires significant growth, and when counting colonies, it is uncertain if the colony arose from one cell or a group of cells. Expressing results as colony-forming units reflects this uncertainty.


title: Colony-forming unit

text: The purpose of plate counting is to estimate the number of cells present based on their ability to give rise to colonies under specific conditions of nutrient medium, temperature and time. Theoretically, one viable cell can give rise to a colony through replication. However, solitary cells are the exception in nature, and most likely the progenitor of the colony was a mass of cells deposited together. In addition, many bacteria grow in chains (e.g. "Streptococcus") or clumps (e.g., "Staphylococcus"). Estimation of microbial numbers by CFU will, in most cases, undercount the number of living cells present in a sample for these reasons. This is because the counting of CFU assumes that every colony is separate and founded by a single viable microbial cell.


title: Colony-forming unit

text: The plate count is linear for "E. coli" over the range of 30 to 300 CFU on a standard sized Petri dish. Therefore, to ensure that a sample will yield CFU in this range requires dilution of the sample and plating of several dilutions. Typically, ten-fold dilutions are used, and the dilution series is plated in replicates of 2 or 3 over the chosen range of dilutions. Often 100µl are plated but also larger amounts up to 1ml are used. Higher plating volumes increase drying times but often don't result in higher accuracy, since additional dilution steps may be needed. The CFU/plate is read from a plate in the linear range, and then the CFU/g (or CFU/mL) of the original is deduced mathematically, factoring in the amount plated and its dilution factor (e.g. CLSI VET01S).


title: Colony-forming unit

text: An advantage to this method is that different microbial species may give rise to colonies that are clearly different from each other, both microscopically and macroscopically. The colony morphology can be of great use in the identification of the microorganism present.


title: Colony-forming unit

text: A prior understanding of the microscopic anatomy of the organism can give a better understanding of how the observed CFU/mL relates to the number of viable cells per milliliter. Alternatively it is possible to decrease the average number of cells per CFU in some cases by vortexing the sample before conducting the dilution. However many microorganisms are delicate and would suffer a decrease in the proportion of cells that are viable when placed in a vortex.


title: Colony-forming unit

text: Concentrations of colony-forming units can be expressed using logarithmic notation, where the value shown is the base 10 logarithm of the concentration. This allows the log reduction of a decontamination process to be computed as a simple subtraction.


title: Colony-forming unit

text: Colony-forming units are used to quantify results in many microbiological plating and counting methods, including:


title: Colony-forming unit

text: However, with the techniques that require the use of an agar plate, no fluid solution can be used because the purity of the specimen cannot be unidentified and it is not possible to count the cells one by one in the liquid.


title: Colony-forming unit

text: Counting colonies is traditionally performed manually using a pen and a click-counter. This is generally a straightforward task, but can become very laborious and time-consuming when many plates have to be enumerated. Alternatively semi-automatic (software) and automatic (hardware + software) solutions can be used.


title: Colony-forming unit

text: Colonies can be enumerated from pictures of plates using software tools. The experimenters would generally take a picture of each plate they need to count and then analyse all the pictures (this can be done with a simple digital camera or even a webcam). Since it takes less than 10 seconds to take a single picture, as opposed to several minutes to count CFU manually, this approach generally saves a lot of time. In addition, it is more objective and allows extraction of other variables such as the size and colour of the colonies.


title: Colony-forming unit

text: In addition to software based on traditional desktop computers, apps for both Android and iOS devices are available for semi-automated and automated colony counting. The integrated camera is used to take pictures of the agar plate and either an internal or an external algorithm is used to process the picture data and to estimate the number of colonies.


title: Colony-forming unit

text: Many of the automated systems are used to counteract human error as many of the research techniques done by humans counting individual cells have a high chance of error involved. Due to the fact that researchers regularly manually count the cells with the assistance of a transmitted light, this error prone technique can have a significant effect on the calculated concentration in the main liquid medium when the cells are in low numbers.


title: Colony-forming unit

text: Completely automated systems are also available from some biotechnology manufacturers. They are generally expensive and not as flexible as standalone software since the hardware and software are designed to work together for a specific set-up.


title: Colony-forming unit

text: Some of the automated systems such as the systems from MATLAB allow the cells to be counted without having to stain them. This lets the colonies to be reused for other experiments without the risk of killing the microorganisms with stains. However, a disadvantage to these automated systems is that it is extremely difficult to differentiate between the microorganisms with dust or scratches on blood agar plates because both the dust and scratches can create a highly diverse combination of shapes and appearances.


title: Colony-forming unit

text: Instead of colony-forming units, the parameters Most Probable Number (MPN) and Modified Fishman Units (MFU) can be used. The Most Probable Number method counts viable cells and is useful when enumerating low concentrations of cells or enumerating microbes in products where particulates make plate counting impractical. Modified Fishman Units take into account bacteria which are viable, but non-culturable.


title: Nissan 200SX

text: The Nissan 200SX (originally Datsun 200SX until the early 1980s) is an automobile nameplate that has been used on various export specification Nissan automobiles between 1975 and 2002.


title: Nissan 200SX

text: Between 1975 and 2002, Nissan retailed the Silvia as the 200SX in some export markets. Six generations were constructed, with new models released in 1979, 1984, 1989, 1993, and 1999. A number of these cars, in both coupe and hatchback body styles, received different nameplates depending on the importers.


title: Nissan 200SX

text: Between 1995 and 1998, Nissan retailed the Lucino coupe as the 200SX in the United States and Canada.


title: The Rainbow Fish

text: The Rainbow Fish is a children's picture book drawn and written by Swiss author and illustrator, Marcus Pfister, and translated into English by J. Alison James. The book is best known for the distinctive shiny foil scales of the Rainbow Fish. Decode Entertainment turned the story into an animated television series of the same name, which aired on the HBO Family television channel in the United States and Teletoon in Canada from 1999 until 2000.


title: The Rainbow Fish

text: The story is about a small rainbowfish with shiny, multi-coloured scales. He has blue, green, purple, and pink scales. Interspersed with these colorful scales are shiny, holographic scales which are his favorites. The other fish from his shoal also have scales, but only scales matching to their real colors. However, they wish that they had shiny silver scales just like Rainbow Fish. One day, a small blue fish (named Blue in the TV series) who envied the shiny silver scales asks the Rainbow Fish if he could have one of his. The Rainbow Fish refuses in a rude manner. The small blue fish tells all the other fish that The Rainbow Fish was being rude, and as a result, the other fish do not want to play with him any more.


title: The Rainbow Fish

text: His only remaining friend, the starfish, tells him to go visit the wise octopus (named Wanda in the TV series) for advice. When he goes to the cave where she lives, he sees Wanda the octopus. Wanda (in a deep voice) says that she has been waiting for him. Then she explains that the waves have told her his story. Then, she gives The Rainbow Fish her advice: He must share his scales with the other fish. She continues that he might no longer be the most beautiful fish after that, but he will discover how to be happy. The Rainbow Fish tries to say that he cannot share his favorite scales, but Wanda disappears in a cloud of ink.


title: The Rainbow Fish

text: When he encounters the little blue fish for a second time, The Rainbow Fish shares one of his precious silver scales and sees the little fish's joy. With that one shiny scale gone, he immediately feels much better. Very soon, the Rainbow Fish is surrounded by the other fish requesting scales and he shares one of his shiny silver scales with each of them. Soon, everyone in the ocean has one shiny scale, including The Rainbow Fish. The Rainbow Fish is finally happy even though he only had one shiny scale left.


title: The Rainbow Fish

text: "The Rainbow Fish" was originally published in 1992. At that time, Marcus Pfister suggested using holographic foil for the scales, a technique used in graphic design but not yet seen in children's books. Pfister says in an interview, "The expense was a big issue. Because of the foil, each copy of the book cost double the amount of the normal price of producing a book. With the cost, it was quite difficult for Davy [the editor] to decide whether to do the foil. So we decided that I’d get only 50% of my usual royalties for the book, and only that way was it possible to make it work."


title: The Rainbow Fish

text: "The Rainbow Fish" was developed from another book Pfister had previously illustrated, "The Sleepy Owl". In an interview with Publishers Weekly, Pfister said, "Well, I had published some other books after The Sleepy Owl – there were some Christmas books and "Penguin Pete" – but Brigitte Sidjanski, founder of NordSud, had always liked my first book, and suggested I do another book similar to that. So I thought that if a new book was to have something in common with that book, the character should resemble an owl. But I really didn’t want to draw another bird. Then one day, I had a copy of "The Sleepy Owl" by my desk, and I looked closely at that character, and I realized I could create a fish character that would be quite similar to the owl. So the feathers became scales. And then I began thinking about the story, and I came up with the idea of a colorful fish."


title: The Rainbow Fish

text: There is also a Spanish language edition of "The Rainbow Fish", "El Pez Arco Iris," as well as bilingual editions in English paired with Spanish, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, French, German, Italian, Russian, and Vietnamese.


title: The Rainbow Fish

text: Five Rainbow Fish stories, "The Rainbow Fish"; "Rainbow Fish and the Big Blue Whale"; "Rainbow Fish Discovers the Deep Sea"; "You Can’t Win Them All, Rainbow Fish"; and "Good Night, Little Rainbow Fish" are featured in the collection, "The Rainbow Fish and His Friends."


title: The Rainbow Fish

text: "The Rainbow Fish" has sold over 30 million copies internationally, and has been released in 50 languages (currently available in 37).


title: The Rainbow Fish

text: From "Romper": The Rainbow Fish follows a little fish in the ocean, but, as readers learn, this isn’t just an average, everyday fish, it’s “the most beautiful fish in the entire ocean.” Unlike ordinary fish, this one has gorgeous, sparkly scales in various shades of beautiful colors. The fish could keep all of his beauty to himself, but instead, he shares it with his friends and feels immense joy in doing so. This book is full of gorgeous artwork.


title: The Rainbow Fish

text: From "School Library Journal": The delicate watercolors of underwater scenes are a perfect foil to the glittering scales that eventually form a part of each fish's exterior. This is certainly a story written to convey a message, but in its simplicity, it recalls the best of Lionni. Besides, what three-year-old doesn't need reinforcement about sharing?


title: The Rainbow Fish

text: Model Winnie Harlow read "The Rainbow Fish" as part of the #SavewithStories program led by Jennifer Garner.


title: The Rainbow Fish

text: The Rainbow Fish has his own website at www.rainbowfish.us. The website features information about the series as well as educator resources and product links.


title: The Rainbow Fish

text: On March 25, 1997, an animated adaptation of the story book was released on VHS and DVD (known as "The Rainbow Fish and Dazzle the Dinosaur"). The home video releases also contain the film Dazzle the Dinosaur which is based on another book written by Pfister and published in 1994. The animated short film features a song called "Giving Makes You Special". In "Dazzle the Dinosaur", the imaginary dinosaur named Dazzle is an egg (separated from another family and is at first an orphan). Although it is not specified what kind of dinosaur he is, he is possibly an "Ouranosaurus" (relative of Iguanodon; or in other words a dinosaur from the Iguanodontidae family). Then he adopts a young female Maiasaura from a "Maiasaura" family and herd. Her name is Maia the Maiasaura. In this story, they try to get the no-good Dragonsaurus (which terrified the Maiasauruses) to give them back their old home (which had once been in a cave). The duo (Dazzle and Maia) see a "Apatosaurus". Then they tell him the truth about their old home (their cave) which the Dragonsaurus had moved in to. When the "Quetzalcoatlus" takes Dazzle and Maia to the cave (which the Dragonsaurus had moved in). But he warns them he and his flock leave at sunset. Because he is not staying when the Dragonsaurus comes around (saying to them, "I am never again coming back to that cave once the Dragonsaurus is awake!"). The Dragonsaurus does give it back in the end, and Dazzle, Maia, and all the other Maiasauruses are able to return to their old home. The dinosaurs in this story are "Apatosaurus", Stegosaurus, "Quetzalcoatlus", "Deinonychus", "Tyrannosaurus", Ouranosaurus (that being Dazzle), and Dragonsaurus.


title: The Rainbow Fish

text: "The Rainbow Fish" was adapted into a children's animated television series in 1999. However, the television series does not follow the plot of the book; rather it takes the character and the setting and creates a new story with them. Some characters were added and others embellished for the purposes of the show. In the series, the place where the fish live is called Neptune Bay (after Neptune, god of the sea). The fish attend school, which is aptly named "The School of Fish". There is a shipwreck called "Shipwreck Park" in the series that resembles the wreck of the RMS Titanic. It was produced by Decode Entertainment and Yoram Gross-EM.TV. 26 episodes were produced.


title: The Rainbow Fish

text: In an interview with Publishers Weekly, Marcus Pfister said "while I was at the Art School of Bern, I came to know about all the major Swiss children’s book illustrators. The other students and I would talk about how nice it would be to illustrate children’s books. At that point it was a dream, and only a few guys tried to realize this dream."


title: The Rainbow Fish

text: Some critics have asserted that "The Rainbow Fish" "promotes socialism", or collectivist values. From this perspective it has been alleged that, "...the message this book sends to children about envy, entitlement, uniformity and mediocrity [is problematic]. Not to mention the bullying and shaming used by the scaleless fish to get what he wants." Ira Stoll, another critic of "The Rainbow Fish" on anti-socialist grounds, claims that Amazon.com reviews of the book were evenly divided between those in favor of the book (and the values that it promotes), and those reviews that were more critical, including, "For a flavor of the one-star reviews, one is titled, 'Great for the young communist and socialist.


title: The Rainbow Fish

text: In the June 2019 issue of "Reason" magazine, libertarian journalist Matt Welch wrote an article titled "Don't Be Like the Rainbow Fish", in which he described the ways in which the Rainbow Fish in the book acted quite differently from that of the author of the book, Marcus Pfister, in Welch's view. Welch derides the process in which the Rainbow Fish in the book gave away its scales, and become "colorless", as contrasting starkly with the colorful methods and materials Pfister himself would have used in order to produce the actual book, which ultimately went on to sell millions of copies. Welch said, "Whereas Rainbow Fish achieves transcendence through literally becoming colorless, the exact opposite was the case for "The Rainbow Fish". Using an expensive and novel combination of holographic foil stamping and watercolor, the Swiss-born Pfister and his publisher, NorthSouth Books, produced a striking visual package that proved irresistible. 'The effect of the stamping was so nice that all the bookshops here in Switzerland put it in the windows,' Pfister recalled in a 2013 interview with Publishers Weekly. 'We decided that I'd get only 50 percent of my usual royalties for the book, and only that way was it possible to make it work.'"


title: The Rainbow Fish

text: Former conservative radio host Neal Boortz said that "The Rainbow Fish" in his view was, "...one of the biggest pieces of trash children's books ever published" for the similar reasons to that of Welch, as Welch states in the Reason article, "...[the Rainbow Fish] only gets truly ostracized because he won't hand over his body parts on demand, in the name of equality."


title: Chivalric romance

text: As a literary genre, the chivalric romance is a type of prose and verse narrative that was popular in the noble courts of High Medieval and Early Modern Europe. They were fantastic stories about marvel-filled adventures, often of a chivalric knight-errant portrayed as having heroic qualities, who goes on a quest. It developed further from the epics as time went on; in particular, "the emphasis on love and courtly manners distinguishes it from the "chanson de geste" and other kinds of epic, in which masculine military heroism predominates."


title: Chivalric romance

text: Popular literature also drew on themes of romance, but with ironic, satiric, or burlesque intent. Romances reworked legends, fairy tales, and history to suit the readers' and hearers' tastes, but by c. 1600 they were out of fashion, and Miguel de Cervantes famously burlesqued them in his novel "Don Quixote". Still, the modern image of "medieval" is more influenced by the romance than by any other medieval genre, and the word "medieval" evokes knights, distressed damsels, dragons, and other romantic tropes.


title: Chivalric romance

text: Originally, romance literature was written in Old French, Anglo-Norman, Occitan, and Provençal, and later in Portuguese, Spanish, English, Italian (Sicilian poetry), and German. During the early 13th century, romances were increasingly written as prose. In later romances, particularly those of French origin, there is a marked tendency to emphasize themes of courtly love, such as faithfulness in adversity.


title: Chivalric romance

text: Unlike the later form of the novel and like the chansons de geste, the genre of romance dealt with traditional themes. These were distinguished from earlier epics by heavy use of marvelous events, the elements of love, and the frequent use of a web of interwoven stories, rather than a simple plot unfolding about a main character. The earliest forms were invariably in verse, but the 15th century saw many in prose, often retelling the old, rhymed versions.


title: Chivalric romance

text: The romantic form pursued the wish-fulfillment dream where the heroes and heroines were considered representations of the ideals of the age while the villains embodied the threat to their ascendancy. There is also a persistent archetype, which involved a hero's quest. This quest or journey served as the structure that held the narrative together. With regards to the structure, scholars recognize the similarity of the romance to folk tales. Vladimir Propp identified a basic form for this genre and it involved an order that began with initial situation, then followed by departure, complication, first move, second move, and resolution. This structure is also applicable to romance narratives.


title: Chivalric romance

text: Overwhelmingly, these were linked in some way, perhaps only in an opening frame story, with three thematic cycles of tales: these were assembled in imagination at a late date as the "Matter of Rome" (actually centered on the life and deeds of Alexander the Great conflated with the Trojan War), the "Matter of France" (Charlemagne and Roland, his principal paladin) and the "Matter of Britain" (the lives and deeds of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, within which was incorporated the quest for the Holy Grail); medieval authors explicitly described these as comprising all romances.


title: Chivalric romance

text: In reality, a number of "non-cyclical" romances were written without any such connection; these include such romances as "King Horn", "Robert the Devil", "Ipomadon", "Emaré", "Havelok the Dane","Roswall and Lillian", "Le Bone Florence of Rome", and "Amadas".


title: Chivalric romance

text: Indeed, some tales are found so often that scholars group them together as the "Constance cycle" or the "Crescentia cycle"—referring not to a continuity of character and setting, but to the recognizable plot.


title: Chivalric romance

text: The earliest medieval romances dealt heavily with themes from folklore, which diminished over time, though remaining a presence. Many early tales had the knight, such as Sir Launfal, meet with fairy ladies, and Huon of Bordeaux is aided by King Oberon, but these fairy characters were transformed, more and more often, into wizards and enchantresses. Morgan le Fay never loses her name, but in "Le Morte d'Arthur", she studies magic rather than being inherently magical. Similarly, knights lose magical abilities. Still, fairies never completely vanished from the tradition. "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" is a late tale, but the Green Knight himself is an otherworldly being.


title: Chivalric romance

text: Early persecuted heroines were often driven from their husbands' homes by the persecutions of their mothers-in-law, whose motives are seldom delineated, and whose accusations are of the heroines' having borne monstrous children, committed infanticide, or practiced witchcraft — all of which appear in such fairy tales as "The Girl Without Hands" and many others. As time progressed, a new persecutor appeared: a courtier who was rejected by the woman or whose ambition requires her removal, and who accuses her of adultery or high treason, motifs not duplicated in fairy tales. While he never eliminates the mother-in-law, many romances such as "Valentine and Orson" have later variants that change from the mother-in-law to the courtier, whereas a more recent version never goes back.


title: Chivalric romance

text: In Italy there is the story called "Il Bel Gherardino". It is the most ancient prototype of an Italian singing fairy tale by an anonymous Tuscan author. It tells the story of a young Italian knight, depleted for its "magnanimitas", who wins the love of a fairy. When he loses this love because he does not comply with her conditions, Gherardino reconquers his lady after a series of labours, including the prison where he is rescued by another woman and a tournament that he wins. Other examples of Italian (Tuscan) poetry tales are Antonio Pucci's literature: "Gismirante, Il Brutto di Bretagna" or "Brito di Bretagna" ("The ugly knight of Britain") and "Madonna Lionessa" ("Lioness Lady"). Another work of a second anonymous Italian author that is worth mentioning is "Istoria di Tre Giovani Disperati e di Tre Fate" ("Story of three desperate boys and three fairies").


title: Chivalric romance

text: The Arthurian cycle as a Medieval work has also been noted to contains many magical or supernatural references. Drawing from many different sources, some notable allusions include elements of Christianity (an example being the multiple references to the Holy Grail) as well as elements of Celtic legends.


title: Chivalric romance

text: The Medieval romance developed out of the medieval epic, in particular the Matter of France developing out of such tales as the "Chanson de Geste", with intermediate forms where the feudal bonds of loyalty had giants, or a magical horn, added to the plot. The epics of Charlemagne, unlike such ones as "Beowulf", already had feudalism rather than the tribal loyalties; this was to continue in romances.


title: Chivalric romance

text: The romance form is distinguished from the earlier epics of the Middle Ages by the changes of the 12th century, which introduced courtly and chivalrous themes into the works. This occurred regardless of congruity to the source material; Alexander the Great featured as a fully feudal king. Chivalry was treated as continuous from Roman times. This extended even to such details as clothing; when in the "Seven Sages of Rome", the son of an (unnamed) emperor of Rome wears the clothing of a sober Italian citizen, and when his stepmother attempts to seduce him, her clothing is described in medieval terminology. When Priam sends Paris to Greece in a 14th-century work, Priam is dressed in the mold of Charlemagne, and Paris is dressed demurely, but in Greece, he adopts the flashier style, with multicolored clothing and fashionable shoes, cut in lattice-work—signs of a seducer in the era.


title: Chivalric romance

text: Historical figures reappeared, reworked, in romance. The entire Matter of France derived from known figures, and suffered somewhat because their descendants had an interest in the tales that were told of their ancestors, unlike the Matter of Britain. Richard Coeur de Lion reappeared in romance, endowed with a fairy mother who arrived in a ship with silk sails and departed when forced to behold the sacrament, bare-handed combat with a lion, magical rings, and prophetic dreams. Hereward the Wake's early life appeared in chronicles as the embellished, romantic adventures of an exile, complete with rescuing princesses and wrestling with bears. Fulk Fitzwarin, an outlaw in King John's day, has his historical background a minor thread in the episodic stream of romantic adventures.


title: Chivalric romance

text: Some romances, such as "Apollonius of Tyre", show classical pagan origins. Tales of the Matter of Rome in particular may be derived from such works as the Alexander Romance. Ovid was used as a source for tales of Jason and Medea, which were cast in romance in a more fairy-tale like form, probably closer to the older forms than Ovid's rhetoric. It also drew upon the traditions of magic that were attributed to such figures as Virgil.


title: Chivalric romance

text: The new courtly love was not one of the original elements of the genre, but quickly became very important when introduced.


title: Chivalric romance

text: It was introduced to the romance by Chretien de Troyes, combining it with the Matter of Britain, new to French poets. In "Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart" (unlike his earlier "Erec and Enide"), the behavior of Lancelot conforms to the courtly love ideal; it also, though still full of adventure, devotes an unprecedented amount of time to dealing with the psychological aspects of the love. By the end of the 14th century, counter to the earliest formulations, many French and English romances combined courtly love, with love sickness and devotion on the man's part, with the couple's subsequent marriage; this featured in "Sir Degrevant", "Sir Torrent of Portyngale", "Sir Eglamour", and "William of Palerne". "Ipomadon" even explicitly describes the married couple as lovers, and the plot of "Sir Otuel" was altered, to allow him to marry Belyssant. Similarly, Iberian romances of the 14th century praised monogamy and marriage in such tales as "Tirant lo Blanc" and "Amadís de Gaula".


title: Chivalric romance

text: Many medieval romances recount the marvellous adventures of a chivalrous, heroic knight, often of super-human ability, who, abiding chivalry's strict codes of honor and demeanor, goes on a quest, and fights and defeats monsters and giants, thereby winning favor with a lady. The Matter of France, most popular early, did not lend itself to the subject of courtly love, but rather dealt with heroic adventure: in "The Song of Roland", Roland, though betrothed to Oliver's sister, does not think of her during the course of events. The themes of love were, however, to soon appear, particularly in the Matter of Britain, leading to even the French regarding King Arthur's court as the exemplar of true and noble love, so much so that even the earliest writers about courtly love would claim it had reached its true excellence there, and love was not what it was in King Arthur's day. A perennial theme was the rescue of a lady from the imperiling monster, a theme that would remain throughout the romances of the medieval era.


title: Chivalric romance

text: Originally, this literature was written in Old French, Anglo-Norman and Occitan, later, in Spanish, English and German – amongst the important Spanish texts were Cantar de Mio Cid and Book of the Knight Zifar; notable later English works being King Horn (a translation of the Anglo-Norman (AN) Romance of Horn of Mestre Thomas), and Havelok the Dane (a translation of the anonymous AN Lai d'Haveloc); around the same time Gottfried von Strassburg's version of the Tristan of Thomas of Britain (a different Thomas to the author of 'Horn') and Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival translated classic French romance narrative into the German tongue.