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mystery

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
or mystery story, literary genre in which the cause (or causes) of a mysterious happening, often a crime, is gradually revealed by the hero or heroine; this is accomplished through a mixture of intelligence, ingenuity, the logical interpretation of evidence, and sometimes sheer luck. Although some critics trace the origins of the genre to such disparate works as Aesop's fables, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales , and the Apocrypha, most agree that the Western mystery, complete with all its conventions, emerged in 1841 with the publication of Edgar Allan Poe 's “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” This and all of Poe's “tales of ratiocination” feature the chevalier C. Auguste Dupin, a brilliant amateur detective, who, by a keen analysis of motives and clues, solves crimes that are baffling to the police. The first full-length mystery novels were probably Wilkie Collins 's The Woman in White (1860) and The Moonstone (1868), which continued Poe's concept of the brilliant detective—although Collins's…
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Full text Article mysteries

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
in Greek and Roman religion, some important secret cults. The conventional religions of both Greeks and Romans were alike in consisting principally of propitiation and prayers for the good of the city-state, the tribe, or the family, and only secondarily of the person. Individuals sought a more…
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Full text Article mystery

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
or mystery story, literary genre in which the cause (or causes) of a mysterious happening, often a crime, is gradually revealed by the hero or heroine; this is accomplished through a mixture of intelligence, ingenuity, the logical interpretation of evidence, and sometimes sheer luck. Although some…
| 1,023 words
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Full text Article Mystery

From Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable
In English two distinct words are represented: ‘mystery’, the archaic term for a handicraft, as in ‘the art and mystery of printing’, is the same as the French métier (‘trade’, ‘craft’, ‘profession’), and is Middle English mistere , from Medieval Latin misterium , from Latin ministerium , …
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Full text Article MYSTERY

From Gaither's Dictionary of Scientific Quotations
American author and biochemist The mysteries of the universe and the questions that scientists strive to answer never come to an end. For that we should be grateful. A universe in which there were no mysteries for curious men to ponder would be a very dull universe indeed. The Search for the…
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Full text Article Mysteries

From Film Quotations: 11,000 Lines Spoken on Screen, Arranged by Subject, and Indexed
see also Curiosity , Fiction , Knowledge , Secrets , Unknowns DON ANTONIO DE LA PRADA: “There's a mystery in you.” QUEEN CHRISTINA: “Is there not in every human being?” Spanish ambassador John Gilbert has not yet learned that Greta Garbo , his lover for two glorious days and nights in a room at the…
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Full text Article MYSTERY

From Encyclopedia of Ancient Christianity
Even if the etymological explanations of μυστηριον remain unclear, the fundamental meaning of the Greek concerns a secret that is to be hidden and that is to be shown only to the initiated. In this sense, the word is found primarily in the socalled mystery religions. *Plato, however, further applied…
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Full text Article mysteries

From The Oxford Companion to Classical Civilization
For much of the 20th cent. the term ‘mystery religions’ has been current, denoting a special form of personal religion linking the fate of a god of Frazer's ‘dying-rising’ type with the individual believer. The two scholars whose authority made soteriology the central issue were Fr. Cumont (1906) …
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Full text Article Mystery, The

From Encyclopedia of Emancipation and Abolition in the Transatlantic World
Pittsburgh’s first African American newspaper, The Mystery, was published by antislavery editor and physician Martin Robison Delany from 1843 to 1847. It was one of a handful of African American antislavery weeklies that emerged in the United States during the 1840s. Reflecting its editor’s dual…
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Full text Article mysteries

From Shakespeare's Theatre: A Dictionary of His Stage Context
In the Middle Ages and Renaissance , ‘mystery’ meant one’s craft or trade and its professional secrets, as when the executioner Abhorson claims that hiring the bawd Pompey ‘Will discredit our mystery’ - to which Pompey responds incredulously, ‘do you call, sir, your occupation a mystery?’ ( Measure…
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Full text Article Mystery

From If the Paintings Could Talk
Mystery
DIEGO VELAZQUEZ , CHRIST IN THE HOUSE OF MARTHA AND MARY, PROBABLY 1618 In the background ofVelazquez's kitchen scene, enclosed within a dark framing rectangle, is a picture within a picture of Christ with Martha and Mary. This scene represents the episode in the Gospel of Saint Luke when Christ…
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