Videos

The Theatrical Baroque: European Plays, Painting and Poetry, 1575-1725

The Baroque period was the Age of Theater, a time when Shakespeare, Jonson, Calderon, Lope de Vega, Moliere, Racine and Dryden were at the height of their powers. Playwrights were joined by painters and poets in seeking new responses to a world that w...

Shakespeare Faces Retirement

In the film Shakespeare in Love, the romantic adventures of the young Will Shakespeare provide the fledgling playwright with the inspiration for his plays. But how much can we really decipher about the Bard's personal life from his writings? Universit...

The Scientific Article: From Galileo's New Science to the Human Genome

From its modest beginnings in seventeenth century Paris and London to its central role in today's online world, the scientific article has been essential to the development of modern science. This article traces the rise of scientific journals, the de...

The Rules of Comedy: Moliere and the Art of Depiction

The French dramatist Molire (1622-73) was blasted by some critics for his realistic portrayals of society's vices. The duty of the artist, said his critics, was to 'select and correct' nature, not to merely duplicate the world as it is. Particularly d...

The Rhetoric of Bush and Bin Laden

Copyright 2002 The University of Chicago.

Religion in the Lives of the Ancient Egyptians

The principles behind ancient Egyptian religion, cosmologies and gods were manifested in symbols and metaphors that were drawn largely from the world around them. Inextricably linked with all aspects of daily life, religion explained the cycles of nat...

The Prophetic Art of Prognosis

With medical technology extending life and expanding treatment options, the physician's ability to provide a prognosis for a patient is every bit as important as the diagnosis. The significance of prognosis and whether and how to deliver it are issues...

The Power of Tiananmen: Intellectual Activity and the Student Movement

In the spring of 1989 over 100,000 students in Beijing initiated the largest student revolt in human history. Television screens across the world filled with searing images from Tiananmen Square of protesters thronging the streets, massive hunger stri...

The Persistent Puppet: Pinocchio's Heirs in Contemporary Fiction and Film

Carlo Lorenzini (pen name Collodi) created the puppet who longed to be a boy more than a century ago, yet Pinocchio has lived on, both in popular culture and in literary and filmic versions of the tale. One of the most read books in the world, 'The Ad...