Fun Trivia : Varied Liberal Arts

Structure Sub-topic of: Humanities Quizzes Interesting Questions, Facts and Information There are a total of 30 general entries. Special Topics Renaissance Odds and Ends Ancient and Early Pagan Days Fishing for Titles Rhetoric: For Intellectuals The Italian Renaissance Myth and History Drinks and Art Women in Italian Renaissance I Hated that Subject in College Greek Arts and Literature What'd They Say?!: The Rhetorics of Ancient Greece

Interesting Questions, Facts, and Information

Varied Liberal Arts

Which author is considered the father of the 'Ecole Naturaliste' (literature, mainly)?

Basic Miscellanea


Zola. For those who answered Balzac: Zola is considered the author who pushed Balzac's realism to its limits.



What did Max Brod do?

Basic Miscellanea


Disobey Kafka. Who could blame him? (For those who might not know, he was told to burn all of Kafka's unpublished fiction by the author himself)



Where is 'The Lady and The Unicorn' displayed?

Basic Miscellanea


Musee Cluny, Paris. Lovely set of paintings, wonderful wonderful museum.



Which was a group of mainly homosexual Cambridge intellectuals?

Basic Miscellanea


The Apostles. Among others, Keynes and Strachey. For those who thought of the 'circle', it was Viennese, not English.



Where was Samuel Beckett's 'Waiting for Godot' written?

Basic Miscellanea


France. Most of his work was actually written in French.



'We will always have Paris' is quoted by Woody Allen in what film?

Basic Miscellanea


Manhattan. If you didn't know this, you should either see this movie or go and see it again. It's just wonderful.



Who painted them fatter, Rubens or Botero?

Basic Miscellanea


Botero. And probably no one painted them fatter than he did.



How many children did Bach have?

Basic Miscellanea


21. It was a shocking revelation. It really was.



When did the Ottoman Empire fall?

Basic Miscellanea


XX Century.



'Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent' is THE classical quotation of which book?

Basic Miscellanea


Wittgenstein's Tractatus. He wrote most of it while a POW in the Great War.



Who was considered the most important poet of the symbolist movement?

Basic Miscellanea


Mallarme. Proust didn't have the time, really.



According to Stravinsky, who was better at chess than he was at composing?

Basic Miscellanea


Sergei Prokofiev. He must have been REALLY good at chess.



History: Of whom was it said that if her nose had been shorter the history of the world would have been different?

A Nose for the Liberal Arts


Cleopatra VII of Egypt. "Cleopatra's nose, had it been shorter, the whole face of the world would have been changed." Thus wrote the multi-talented Blaise Pascal in his 17th century work, "Pensées" ("Thoughts"). At the time, facial features were thought to reflect character traits: a prominent nose indicated dominance and strength of character, very necessary for a ruler dealing with the might of the Roman Empire. Pascal's comment perhaps meant that, with a smaller nose, the ingenuity and audacity of Cleopatra's interaction with Rome would have been absent, so changing the course of history. Contemporary, or near-contemporary, sculptures of Cleopatra VII suggest a straight, longish, narrow nose; coins of the period also show a prominent nose. Belle Starr (Myra Maybelle Shirley Reed Starr) was a female outlaw of America's Old West. She lived from 1848 to 1889, and contemporary images suggest that her nose was a little above average size and slightly tip-tilted. Portraits of the Austrian-born Marie Antoinette (1755-1793), wife of Louis XVI of France, show a long, thin, prominent nose, but there is no mention that I can find of any variation in its size potentially changing history. Wu Zetian (625-705) was a concubine of two successive Chinese Emperors, Taizong and Gaozong. After the death of Gaozong in 683, she deposed her son Emperor Zhongzhong and placed another son, Ruizong, on the Imperial throne. She finally took the throne from Ruizong in 690 to rule as Empress herself. By all accounts she was a ruthless and very capable ruler; images of Wu Zetian show a largish nose. Hmmm, perhaps Pascal's observation has some general application, after all...



Mathematics: My hearing isn't what it used to be... whose mathematical theorem were my students discussing when I thought I heard the words "This bear on the hippo's nose has sequins from Mum Bear for another two rides"?

A Nose for the Liberal Arts


Pythagoras of Samos. OK, so the connection between Mathematics and noses is tenuous, but the famous theorem of the Ancient Greek philosopher Pythagoras of Samos does describe the properties of a right-angled triangle (which bears a passing resemblance to a nose): the square on the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides. There is some doubt that Pythagoras actually formulated this theorem as an original piece of mathematics: the use of the principle it describes predates him in both the Indian and Babylonian cultures. It is possible that he may have constructed the first recorded formal mathematical proof of the principle. The other answers were also mathematicians. Ancient Greek Euclid was responsible for consolidating the principles of geometry that bewilder the mathematically-challenged among us. One far-fetched theory (mine) is that his work on conic sections was inspired whilst trying to help a local sculptor achieve the best angle on a nose... Italian Fibonacci (c1170-c1250) was instrumental in introducing the Hindu-Arabic number system into Europe (much easier than doing maths with Roman numerals); the Fibonacci sequence of numbers, named for him, is found in many biological systems, and a Fibonacci spiral resembles the curled trunk (or nose) of an elephant. Among many notable achievements, Briton Isaac Newton (1643-1727) was partly responsible for unleashing differential calculus upon generations of hitherto carefree students. Some of his writings on other subjects do contain triangles (which, of course, look like noses).



Painting: I saw a painting the other day - it was that one with the big-nosed face on sticks, by the chap with the moustache. Which artist's name has slipped my mind?

A Nose for the Liberal Arts


Salvador Dali. The Surrealist artist Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech (Salvador Dalí) painted the big-nosed face on sticks, officially titled "El sueño" ("Sleep"), in 1937. In his imagination, he visualised the act of sleeping as a monster supported by the crutches (sticks) of reality. This charismatic Spaniard's artistic endeavours went beyond painting and included furniture design, jewellery, film, set design, fashion, and performance art. Many of Dalí's works have disturbing, controversial or socially taboo subject matter, but are nevertheless objects of great imagination and fascinating wonder. One of Dalí's quotes, often found in articles summarising his works, expresses the view of both the artist and many admirers of his art - "...just because I don't know the meaning of my art, does not mean it has no meaning...". Jackson Pollock (1912-1956) was given the epithet "Jack the Dripper" by "Time" magazine in 1956, from his unique style of "action painting". He preferred to use things such as sticks, trowels, knives, and dripping or throwing to apply paint to the canvas. He may even have employed his nose as a painting tool, although this is an unsubstantiated theory. Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792) was the first President of the Royal Academy of Arts, and painted many portraits, mainly in the Grand Style that idealised the subjects. Noses present in his portraits are all beautifully proportioned and not at all given to action or ambiguous interpretation. Sandro Botticelli (1459-1510) was an artist of the Florentine school, noted for paintings such as "The Birth of Venus". Close examination of the shapes and sizes of his subjects' noses, particularly in portraits, reveals the refreshing tendency to depict reality or near-reality.