GUY FAWKES & THE FAILED GUNPOWDER PLOT OF 1605

The Gun-Powder Plot, 1606

Today, The Grandma has been watching on TV the latest news about Brexit. British people have decided their future in a referendum and The Grandma does not believe a better way to do something as important as this.

British history is full of referents for the rest of European cultures and this goodbye is only a political decision, something that does not affect to the thousands and thousand of ties that we have with this great Kingdom and its nations. Some of them like Scotland and North Ireland are going to decide their future in a closer time and in Wales the local feeling is strong enough to wait new changes very soon.

Europe is changing and the European Union must pay attention to its citizens, their feelings and aspirations if the Union wants to be a reality and not only a plan written in a paper. The Europe of the Nations is the future and, curiously, Brexit could be the first step to achieve this ancient objective.

The Grandma wants to talk about an important event in the English history, the Gunpowder Plot and its influence in popular culture, a failed assassination attempt against King James VI of Scotland and I of England by a group of provincial English Catholics led by Robert Catesby and Guy Fawkes. They were prisioned, sentenced to death and executed on a day like today in 1606.

More information: BBC

Guy Fawkes was a member of a group of provincial English Catholics who planned the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605. He was born and educated in York.

Fawkes converted to Catholicism and left for mainland Europe, where he fought for Catholic Spain in the Eighty Years' War against Protestant Dutch reformers in the Low Countries. He travelled to Spain to seek support for a Catholic rebellion in England without success. He later met Thomas Wintour, with whom he returned to England. Wintour introduced him to Robert Catesby, who planned to assassinate King James I and restore a Catholic monarch to the throne.

The plotters leased an undercroft beneath the House of Lords; Fawkes was placed in charge of the gunpowder which they stockpiled there. The authorities were prompted by an anonymous letter to search Westminster Palace during the early hours of 5 November, and they found Fawkes guarding the explosives. He was questioned and tortured over the next few days and confessed to wanting to blow up the House of Lords.

 

Guy Fawkes

Immediately before his execution on 31 January, Fawkes fell from the scaffold where he was to be hanged and broke his neck, thus avoiding the agony of being hanged, drawn and quartered. He became synonymous with the Gunpowder Plot, the failure of which has been commemorated in the UK as Guy Fawkes Night since 5 November 1605, when his effigy is traditionally burned on a bonfire, commonly accompanied by fireworks.

Since the release of the 2006 film V for Vendetta, set in a dystopian United Kingdom, the use of the Guy Fawkes mask that appears in the film has become widespread internationally among anti-establishment protest groups, a kind of groups that fight for a better world where the 1% has not got more than the 99%.

The Gunpowder Plot was a failed assassination attempt against King James VI of Scotland and I of England by a group of provincial English Catholics led by Robert Catesby.

The conspirators' aim was to blow up the House of Lords at the State Opening of Parliament on 5 November 1605, while the king and many other important members of the aristocracy and nobility were inside. The conspirator who became most closely associated with the plot in the popular imagination was Guy Fawkes, who had been assigned the task of lighting the fuse to the explosives.

More information: History

The young John Milton, in 1626 at the age of 17, wrote what one commentator has called a critically vexing poem, In Quintum Novembris. The work reflects partisan public sentiment on an English-Protestant national holiday, 5 November. In the published editions of 1645 and 1673, the poem is preceded by five epigrams on the subject of the Gunpowder Plot, apparently written by Milton in preparation for the larger work. Milton's imagination continued to be haunted by the Gunpowder Plot throughout his life, and critics have argued that it strongly influenced his later and more well-known poem, Paradise Lost.

William Harrison Ainsworth's 1841 historical romance Guy Fawkes; or, The Gunpowder Treason, portrays Fawkes in a generally sympathetic light, although it also embellishes the known facts for dramatic effect. Ainsworth's novel transformed Fawkes into an acceptable fictional character, and Fawkes subsequently appeared in children's books and penny dreadfuls. One example of the latter is The Boyhood Days of Guy Fawkes, published in about 1905, which portrayed Fawkes as essentially an action hero.

With the phrase A penny for the Old Guy, Anglo-American poet T. S. Eliot acknowledges Fawkes and the straw-man effigy burned every year on 5 November in an epigraph to his 1925 poem The Hollow Men.

The Gun-Powder Plot, 1606

The main character in the comic book series V for Vendetta, which started in 1982, and its 2006 film adaptation, wore a Guy Fawkes mask. In the comic and in the film, V succeeds in blowing up the Houses of Parliament on 5 November (1997 in the comic, 2021 in the film). 

Its film adaptation opening shows a dramatised depiction of Fawkes's arrest and execution, with Evey narrating the first lines of the poem of Guy Fawkes Night.

In the Doctor Who Virgin Missing Adventures novel The Plotters, the First Doctor and his companions Ian Chesterton, Barbara Wright and Vicki become involved with the Gunpowder Plot when the Doctor visits to investigate, learning that the plot was aided by a member of the king's court -who intended to expose the plot and thus impose more stringent anti-Catholic measures- and a brotherhood of self-styled warlocks who hoped that they would gain power in the ensuing chaos if the plot succeeded.

In the Harry Potter series, Dumbledore, the school's headmaster, has a phoenix called Fawkes, named after Guy Fawkes. According to tradition, a phoenix burns when it reaches the end of its life.

In the novel Martin Chuzzlewit it is said that a member of the Chuzzlewit family was unquestionably involved in the Gunpowder Plot, and that Fawkes himself may indeed have been a scion of the family's remarkable stock.

More information: Historic UK

By the 19th century, Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot had begun to be used as the basis for pantomimes. One early example is Harlequin and Guy Fawkes: or, the 5th of November, which was performed at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, on 16 November 1835. After the Plot is discovered, Fawkes changes into Harlequin and Robert Catesby, the leader of the Plot, into Pantaloon, following which pure pantomime begins.

Fawkes also features in the pantomime Guy Fawkes, or a Match for a King, written by Albert Smith and William Hale and first performed in 1855. The opening scene shows an argument between Catesby and Fawkes over the fate of Lord Monteagle, the man who raised the alarm after receiving an anonymous letter warning him not to attend Parliament on 5 November 1605.

More information: History Extra

Catesby wants to save his friend Monteagle, but Fawkes, who regards him as an enemy, wants him blown up with the rest of the aristocracy. The two fight, at first with doubtful swords and then with bladders, before Fawkes is done. The remainder of the pantomime consists of clowns acting out various comic scenes unrelated to the Gunpowder Plot.

Guy Fawkes

The play Guido Fawkes: or, the Prophetess of Ordsall Cave was based on early episodes of the serialised version of Ainsworth's 1841 novel.

Performed at the Queen's Theatre, Manchester, in June 1840, it portrayed Fawkes as a politically motivated sympathiser with the common people's cause.

Ainsworth's novel was translated to film in the 1923 production of Guy Fawkes, directed by Maurice Elvey and starring Matheson Lang as Fawkes.

Several traditional rhymes have accompanied the Guy Fawkes Night festivities. God Save the King can be replaced by God save the Queen depending on who is on the throne.

Remember, remember the Fifth of November,
The Gunpowder Treason and Plot,
I know of no reason
Why the Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot.
Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes, t'was his intent
To blow up the King and Parli'ment.
Three-score barrels of powder below,
Poor old England to overthrow;
By God's providence he was catch'd (or by God's mercy*)
With a dark lantern and burning match.
Holla boys, Holla boys, let the bells ring.
Holloa boys, holloa boys, God save the King!
And what should we do with him? Burn him!

More information: National Geographic

In more common use the bonfire cry is occasionally altered with the last three lines (after burning match) supplanted by the following;

A traitor to the Crown by his action,
No Parli'ment mercy from any faction,
His just end should'st be grim,
What should we do? Burn him!
Holler boys, holler boys, let the bells ring,
Holler boys, holler boys, God save the King!

Some of the Bonfire Societies in the town of Lewes use a second verse reflecting the struggle between Protestants and Roman Catholics. This was widely used, but due to its anti-Roman Catholic tone has fallen out of favour.

A penny loaf to feed the Pope
A farthing o' cheese to choke him.
A pint of beer to rinse it down.
A fagot of sticks to burn him.
Burn him in a tub of tar.
Burn him like a blazing star.
Burn his body from his head.
Then we'll say ol' Pope is dead.
Hip hip hoorah!
Hip hip hoorah hoorah!

More information: History of York

A variant on the foregoing:

Remember, remember the fifth of November
Gunpowder, treason and plot.
I see no reason, why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot.
Remember, remember, the fifth of November,
Gunpowder, treason and plot!
A stick or a stake for King James' sake
Will you please to give us a fagot
If you can't give us one, we'll take two;
The better for us and the worse for you!

Guy Fawkes's mask, symbol of Anonymous movement

Another piece of popular doggerel:
 

Guy, guy, guy
Poke him in the eye,
Put him on the bonfire,
And there let him die

Or, today used frequently, instead of Put him on the bonfire, Hang him on a lamppost. Another variant, sung by children in Lancashire whilst begging A Penny For The Guy:

Remember, remember the fifth of November
It's Gunpowder Plot, we never forgot
Put your hand in your pocket and pull out your purse
A ha'penny or a penny will do you no harm
Who's that knocking at the window?
Who's that knocking at the door?
It's little Mary Ann with a candle in her hand
And she's going down the cellar for some coal

More information: The Telegraph

The following is a South Lancashire song sung when knocking on doors asking for money to buy fireworks, or combustibles for a bonfire, known as Cob-coaling. There are many variations, this is a shorter one:

We come a Cob-coaling for Bonfire time,
Your coal and your money we hope to enjoy.
Fal-a-dee, fal-a-die, fal-a-diddly-i-do-day.
For down in yon' cellar there's an owd umberella
And up on yon' cornish there's an owd pepperpot.
Pepperpot! Pepperpot! Morning 'till night.
If you give us nowt, we'll steal nowt and bid you good night.
Up a ladder, down a wall, a cob o'coal would save us all.
If you don't have a penny a ha'penny will do.
If you don't have a ha'penny, then God bless you.
We knock at your knocker and ring at your bell
To see what you'll give us for singing so well.

More information: Mental Floss

From Calderdale: The Ryburn Valley Gunpowder Plot Nominy Song Calderdale had a plentiful store of rhymes and nominies, or short pieces of doggerel. Many of them were common to Yorkshire generally, where Gunpowder Plot rhymes were numerous.

Here comes three jolly rovers, all in one row.
We're coming a cob-coiling for t' Bon Fire Plot.
Bon Fire Plot from morning till night!
If you'll give us owt, we'll steal nowt, but bid you goodnight.
Fol-a-dee, fol-a-die, fol-a-diddle-die-do-dum!

(Repeated after each verse.)

The next house we come to is a sailor you see.
He sails over the ocean and over the sea,
Sailing from England to France and to Spain,
And now he's returning to England again.
The next house we come to is an old tinker's shop,
And up in one rook there's an old pepper-box-
An old pepper-box from morning till night-
If you'll give us owt, we'll steal nowt, but bid you good-night.

Since the release of the 2006 film V for Vendetta, set in a dystopian United Kingdom, the use of the Guy Fawkes mask that appears in the film has become widespread internationally among anti-establishment protest groups. 

The illustrator of the comic books on which the film was based, David Lloyd, has stated that the character V decided to adopt the persona and mission of Guy Fawkes -our great historical revolutionary.

More information: The Mary Sue

The Guy Fawkes mask has now become

a common brand and a convenient placard

to use in protest against tyranny

and I'm happy with people using it;

it seems quite unique,

an icon of popular culture being used this way.

David Lloyd

GENE A. HACKMAN, ELEGANCE AND METHOD IN CINEMA

Gene Hackman in French Connection, 1971

Today, The Grandma is resting at home. She has received the visit of one of her closest friends, Claire Fontaine. Together, they have been watching some movies played by Gene Hackman, the American actor, who is one of the most popular and recognized stars of international cinema.

Claire and The Grandma admire Hackman who celebrates his 90th anniversary today and they want to commemorate this event talking about him and his incredible and unforgettable career.

Eugene Allen Hackman (born January 30, 1930) is a retired American actor and novelist. In a career that spanned more than six decades, Hackman won two Academy Awards, four Golden Globes, one Screen Actors Guild Award, and two BAFTAs.

Nominated for five Academy Awards, Hackman won Best Actor for his role as Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle in the critically acclaimed thriller The French Connection (1971), and Best Supporting Actor as "Little" Bill Daggett in the Clint Eastwood Western Unforgiven (1992). His other nominations for Best Supporting Actor came with the films Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and I Never Sang for My Father (1970), with a second Best Actor nomination for Mississippi Burning (1988).

Hackman's other major film roles included The Poseidon Adventure (1972), The Conversation (1974), French Connection II (1975), Superman: The Movie (1978) -as arch-villain Lex Luthor- Hoosiers (1986), The Firm (1993), Crimson Tide (1995), Enemy of the State (1998), Antz (1998), The Replacements (2000), Behind Enemy Lines (2001), The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), and Welcome to Mooseport (2004).

More information: Gold Derby

Hackman was born in San Bernardino, California, the son of Eugene Ezra Hackman and Anna Lyda Elizabeth (née Gray). He has one brother, Richard. He has Pennsylvania Dutch (German), English, and Scottish ancestry; his mother was born in Lambton, Ontario. His family moved frequently, finally settling in Danville, Illinois, where they lived in the house of his English-born maternal grandmother, Beatrice. Hackman's father operated the printing press for the Commercial-News, a local paper. His parents divorced in 1943 and his father subsequently left the family. Hackman decided that he wanted to become an actor when he was ten years old.

Hackman lived briefly in Storm Lake, Iowa and spent his sophomore year at Storm Lake High School. He left home at age 16 and lied about his age to enlist in the United States Marine Corps. He served four and a half years as a field radio operator. He was stationed in China (Qingdao and later in Shanghai). 

With Warren Betty in Bonnie and Clyde, 1967

When the Communist Revolution conquered the mainland in 1949, Hackman was assigned to Hawaii and Japan. Following his discharge in 1951, he moved to New York and had several jobs. His mother died in 1962 as a result of a fire she accidentally started while smoking.

In 1956 he began pursuing an acting career; he joined the Pasadena Playhouse in California. It was there that he forged a friendship with another aspiring actor, Dustin Hoffman. Already seen as outsiders by their classmates, they were later voted The Least Likely To Succeed. Furthermore, Hackman got the all time lowest score at the Pasadena Playhouse at the time. Determined to prove them wrong, Hackman moved to New York City.

A 2004 article in Vanity Fair described how Hackman, Hoffman and Robert Duvall were all struggling California born actors and close friends, sharing apartments in various two-person combinations while living in New York City in the 1960s.

To support himself between acting jobs, he was working as a uniformed doorman at a Howard Johnson restaurant in New York when, as bad luck would have it, he ran into a despised Pasadena Playhouse instructor who once told him he was not good enough to be an actor.

More information: Grantland

Reinforcing The Least Likely To Succeed vote, the man said to him, See, Hackman, I told you you wouldn't amount to anything. From then on, Hackman was determined to become the finest actor he possibly could. The three former roommates have since earned 19 Academy Award nominations for acting, with five wins.

Hackman got various bit roles, for example on the TV series Route 66 in 1963, and began performing in several Off-Broadway plays.

In 1964 he had an offer to co-star in the play Any Wednesday with actress Sandy Dennis. This opened the door to film work. His first role was in Lilith, with Warren Beatty in the leading role. 

With O'Neal, Caine, Fox & Bogarde in A Bridge Too Far, 1977

In 1967 he appeared in an episode of the television series The Invaders entitled The Spores.

Another supporting role, Buck Barrow in 1967's Bonnie and Clyde, earned him an Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting Actor.

In 1968 he appeared in an episode of I Spy, in the role of Hunter, in the episode Happy Birthday... Everybody. That same year he starred in the CBS Playhouse episode My Father and My Mother and the dystopian television film Shadow on the Land.

In 1969 he played a ski coach in Downhill Racer and an astronaut in Marooned. Also that year, he played a member of a barnstorming skydiving team that entertained mostly at county fairs, a movie which also inspired many to pursue skydiving and has a cult-like status amongst skydivers as a result: The Gypsy Moths. He nearly accepted the role of Mike Brady for the TV series, The Brady Bunch, but was advised by his agent to decline in exchange for a more promising role, which he did.

Hackman was nominated for a second Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for his role in I Never Sang for My Father (1970). He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance as New York City Detective Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle in The French Connection (1971), marking his graduation to leading man status.

More information: The Hotcorn

 
He followed this with leading roles in the disaster film The Poseidon Adventure (1972) and Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation (1974), which was nominated for several Oscars. That same year, Hackman appeared in what became one of his most famous comedic roles as The Blindman in Young Frankenstein.

He appeared as one of Teddy Roosevelt's former Rough Riders in the Western horse-race saga Bite the Bullet (1975). He reprised his Oscar winning role as Doyle in the sequel French Connection II (1975), and was part of an all-star cast in the war film A Bridge Too Far (1977), playing Polish General Stanisław Sosabowski.

With Willem Dafoe in Mississippi Burning, 1988

Hackman showed a talent for both comedy and the slow burn as criminal mastermind Lex Luthor in Superman: The Movie (1978), a role he would reprise in its 1980 and 1987 sequels.

Hackman alternated between leading and supporting roles during the 1980s, with prominent roles in Reds (1981) -directed by and starring Warren Beatty- Under Fire (1983), Hoosiers (1986), which an American Film Institute poll in 2008 voted the fourth-greatest film of all time in the sports genre, No Way Out (1987) and Mississippi Burning (1988), where he was nominated for a second Best Actor Oscar.

Hackman appeared with Anne Archer in Narrow Margin (1990), a remake of the 1952 film The Narrow Margin.

In 1992, he played the sadistic sheriff "Little" Bill Daggett in the Western Unforgiven directed by Clint Eastwood and written by David Webb Peoples.

Hackman had pledged to avoid violent roles, but Eastwood convinced him to take the part, which earned him a second Oscar, this time for Best Supporting Actor. The film also won Best Picture.

In 1993 he appeared in Geronimo: An American Legend as Brigadier General George Crook, and co-starred with Tom Cruise as a corrupt lawyer in The Firm, a legal thriller based on the John Grisham novel of the same name. Hackman would appear in a second film based on a John Grisham novel, playing a convict on death row in The Chamber (1996).

More information: Mental Floss

Other notable films Hackman appeared in during the 1990s include Wyatt Earp (1994), as Nicholas Porter Earp, Wyatt Earp's father, The Quick and the Dead (1995) opposite Sharon Stone, Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe, and as submarine Captain Frank Ramsey alongside Denzel Washington in Crimson Tide (1995).  

In 1996, he took a comedic turn as conservative Senator Kevin Keeley in The Birdcage with Robin Williams and Nathan Lane.

He reunited with Clint Eastwood in Absolute Power (1997), and co-starred with Will Smith in Enemy of the State (1998), his character reminiscent of the one he had portrayed in The Conversation.

With Dennis Hooper in Hoosiers, 1986

Hackman co-starred with Owen Wilson in Behind Enemy Lines (2001), and appeared in the David Mamet crime thriller Heist (2001), as an aging professional thief of considerable skill who is forced into one final job.

He also gained much critical acclaim playing against type as an the head of an eccentric family in Wes Anderson's comedy film The Royal Tenenbaums (2001). He received a Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Actor in a Motion Picture Musical or Comedy.

In 2003, he also starred in another John Grisham legal drama, Runaway Jury at long last getting to make a picture with his long-time friend Dustin Hoffman.

In 2004, Hackman appeared alongside Ray Romano in the comedy Welcome to Mooseport, his final film acting role to date.

Hackman was honored with the Cecil B. DeMille Award from the Golden Globe Awards for his outstanding contribution to the entertainment field in 2003.

On July 7, 2004, Hackman gave a rare interview to Larry King, where he announced that he had no future film projects lined up and believed his acting career was over.

More information: Empire

In 2008, while promoting his third novel, he confirmed that he had retired from acting. When asked during a GQ interview in 2011 if he would ever come out of retirement to do one more film, he said he might consider it if I could do it in my own house, maybe, without them disturbing anything and just one or two people.

In 2016 he narrated the Smithsonian Channel documentary The Unknown Flag Raiser of Iwo Jima.

Together with undersea archaeologist Daniel Lenihan, Hackman has written three historical fiction novels: Wake of the Perdido Star (1999), a sea adventure of the 19th century; Justice for None (2004), a Depression-era tale of murder; and Escape from Andersonville (2008) about a prison escape during the American Civil War.

His first solo effort, a story of love and revenge set in the Old West titled Payback at Morning Peak, was released in 2011. A police thriller, Pursuit, followed in 2013.

In 2011 he appeared on the Fox Sports Radio show The Loose Cannons, where he discussed his career and novels with Pat O'Brien, Steve Hartman, and Vic The Brick Jacobs.

More information: AARP

If you look at yourself as a star,

you've already lost something in the portrayal

of any human being.

Gene Hackman

EDGAR ALLAN POE'S 'THE RAVEN' IS PUBLISHED IN 1845

The Raven First Edition by Edgar Allan Poe

Today, The Grandma has received the visit of Jordi Santanyí, one of her closest friends. Jordi and The Grandma love Literature and they have been talking about Edgar Allan Poe, one of their favourite writers, and his famous poem The Raven that was first published on a day like today in 1845.

The Raven is a narrative poem by American writer Edgar Allan Poe. 

First published in January 1845, the poem is often noted for its musicality, stylized language, and supernatural atmosphere. It tells of a talking raven's mysterious visit to a distraught lover, tracing the man's slow fall into madness. The lover, often identified as a student, is lamenting the loss of his love, Lenore. Sitting on a bust of Pallas, the raven seems to further distress the protagonist with its constant repetition of the word Nevermore. The poem makes use of folk, mythological, religious, and classical references.

Poe claimed to have written the poem logically and methodically, with the intention to create a poem that would appeal to both critical and popular tastes, as he explained in his 1846 follow-up essay, The Philosophy of Composition. The poem was inspired in part by a talking raven in the novel Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of Eighty by Charles Dickens. Poe borrows the complex rhythm and meter of Elizabeth Barrett's poem Lady Geraldine's Courtship, and makes use of internal rhyme as well as alliteration throughout.

More information: Edgar Allan Poe, Romanticism in Terror Stories

The Raven was first attributed to Poe in print in the New York Evening Mirror on January 29, 1845. Its publication made Poe popular in his lifetime, although it did not bring him much financial success. The poem was soon reprinted, parodied, and illustrated. Critical opinion is divided as to the poem's literary status, but it nevertheless remains one of the most famous poems ever written.

Poe wrote the poem as a narrative, without intentional allegory or didacticism. The main theme of the poem is one of undying devotion. The narrator experiences a perverse conflict between desire to forget and desire to remember. He seems to get some pleasure from focusing on loss.

Edgar Allan Poe & The Raven

The narrator assumes that the word Nevermore is the raven's only stock and store, and, yet, he continues to ask it questions, knowing what the answer will be. His questions, then, are purposely self-deprecating and further incite his feelings of loss.

Poe leaves it unclear if the raven actually knows what it is saying or if it really intends to cause a reaction in the poem's narrator. The narrator begins as weak and weary, becomes regretful and grief-stricken, before passing into a frenzy and, finally, madness. Christopher F. S. Maligec suggests the poem is a type of elegiac paraclausithyron, an ancient Greek and Roman poetic form consisting of the lament of an excluded, locked-out lover at the sealed door of his beloved.

Poe says that the narrator is a young scholar. Though this is not explicitly stated in the poem, it is mentioned in The Philosophy of Composition. It is also suggested by the narrator reading books of lore as well as by the bust of Pallas Athena, Greek goddess of wisdom.

He is reading in the late night hours from many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore. Similar to the studies suggested in Poe's short story Ligeia, this lore may be about the occult or black magic. This is also emphasized in the author's choice to set the poem in December, a month which is traditionally associated with the forces of darkness.

More information: The Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore

The use of the raven -the devil bird- also suggests this. This devil image is emphasized by the narrator's belief that the raven is from the Night's Plutonian shore, or a messenger from the afterlife, referring to Pluto, the Roman god of the underworld, also known as Dis Pater in Roman mythology. A direct allusion to Satan also appears: Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore...

Poe chose a raven as the central symbol in the story because he wanted a non-reasoning creature capable of speech. He decided on a raven, which he considered equally capable of speech as a parrot, because it matched the intended tone of the poem.

The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe

Poe said the raven is meant to symbolize Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance.

He was also inspired by Grip, the raven in Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of Eighty by Charles Dickens. One scene in particular bears a resemblance to The Raven: at the end of the fifth chapter of Dickens's novel, Grip makes a noise and someone says, What was that – him tapping at the door? The response is, 'Tis someone knocking softly at the shutter. Dickens's raven could speak many words and had many comic turns, including the popping of a champagne cork, but Poe emphasized the bird's more dramatic qualities.

Poe had written a review of Barnaby Rudge for Graham's Magazine saying, among other things, that the raven should have served a more symbolic, prophetic purpose. The similarity did not go unnoticed: James Russell Lowell in his A Fable for Critics wrote the verse, Here comes Poe with his raven, like Barnaby Rudge / Three-fifths of him genius and two-fifths sheer fudge.

The Free Library of Philadelphia has on display a taxidermied raven that is reputed to be the very one that Dickens owned and that helped inspire Poe's poem.

More information: Smithsonian

Poe may also have been drawing upon various references to ravens in mythology and folklore. In Norse mythology, Odin possessed two ravens named Huginn and Muninn, representing thought and memory.

According to Hebrew folklore, Noah sends a white raven to check conditions while on the ark. It learns that the floodwaters are beginning to dissipate, but it does not immediately return with the news. It is punished by being turned black and being forced to feed on carrion forever. In Ovid's Metamorphoses, a raven also begins as white before Apollo punishes it by turning it black for delivering a message of a lover's unfaithfulness. The raven's role as a messenger in Poe's poem may draw from those stories.

Nepenthe, a drug mentioned in Homer's Odyssey, erases memories; the narrator wonders aloud whether he could receive respite this way: Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!

Poe also mentions the Balm of Gilead, a reference to the Book of Jeremiah (8:22) in the Bible: Is there no balm in Gilead; is there no physician there? why then is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered?

The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe

In that context, the Balm of Gilead is a resin used for medicinal purposes suggesting, perhaps, that the narrator needs to be healed after the loss of Lenore. In 1 Kings 17:1 - 5 Elijah is said be from Gilead, and to have been fed by ravens during a period of drought. Poe also refers to Aidenn, another word for the Garden of Eden, though Poe uses it to ask if Lenore has been accepted into Heaven.

The poem is made up of 18 stanzas of six lines each. Generally, the meter is trochaic octameter -eight trochaic feet per line, each foot having one stressed syllable followed by one unstressed syllable.

Poe, however, claimed the poem was a combination of octameter acatalectic, heptameter catalectic, and tetrameter catalectic. The rhyme scheme is ABCBBB, or AA,B,CC,CB,B,B when accounting for internal rhyme. In every stanza, the B lines rhyme with the word nevermore and are catalectic, placing extra emphasis on the final syllable.

The poem also makes heavy use of alliteration Doubting, dreaming dreams... 20th-century American poet Daniel Hoffman suggested that the poem's structure and meter is so formulaic that it is artificial, though its mesmeric quality overrides that.

More information: Poetry Foundation

Poe based the structure of The Raven on the complicated rhyme and rhythm of Elizabeth Barrett's poem Lady Geraldine's Courtship. Poe had reviewed Barrett's work in the January 1845 issue of the Broadway Journal and said that her poetic inspiration is the highest -we can conceive of nothing more august. Her sense of Art is pure in itself.

As is typical with Poe, his review also criticizes her lack of originality and what he considers the repetitive nature of some of her poetry. About Lady Geraldine's Courtship, he said I have never read a poem combining so much of the fiercest passion with so much of the most delicate imagination.

Poe first brought The Rave to his friend and former employer George Rex Graham of Graham's Magazine in Philadelphia. Graham declined the poem, which may not have been in its final version, though he gave Poe $15 as charity.

The Raven by E.A. Poe, Evening Mirror, Jan. 29, 1845

Poe then sold the poem to The American Review, which paid him $9 for it, and printed The Raven in its February 1845 issue under the pseudonym Quarles, a reference to the English poet Francis Quarles.

The poem's first publication with Poe's name was in the Evening Mirror on January 29, 1845, as an advance copy. Nathaniel Parker Willis, editor of the Mirror, introduced it as unsurpassed in English poetry for subtle conception, masterly ingenuity of versification, and consistent, sustaining of imaginative lift... It will stick to the memory of everybody who reads it.

Following this publication the poem appeared in periodicals across the United States, including the New York Tribune (February 4, 1845), Broadway Journal (vol. 1, February 8, 1845), Southern Literary Messenger (vol. 11, March 1845), Literary Emporium (vol. 2, December 1845), Saturday Courier, 16 (July 25, 1846), and the Richmond Examiner (September 25, 1849). It has also appeared in numerous anthologies, starting with Poets and Poetry of America edited by Rufus Wilmot Griswold in 1847.

The immediate success of The Raven prompted Wiley and Putnam to publish a collection of Poe's prose called Tales in June 1845; it was his first book in five years. They also published a collection of his poetry called The Raven and Other Poems on November 19 by Wiley and Putnam which included a dedication to Barrett as the Noblest of her Sex. The small volume, his first book of poetry in 14 years, was 100 pages and sold for 31 cents.

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In addition to the title poem, it included The Valley of Unrest, Bridal Ballad, The City in the Sea, Eulalie, The Conqueror Worm, The Haunted Palace and eleven others. In the preface, Poe referred to them as trifles which had been altered without his permission as they made the rounds of the press.

Later publications of The Raven included artwork by well-known illustrators. Notably, in 1858 The Raven appeared in a British Poe anthology with illustrations by John Tenniel, the Alice in Wonderland illustrator. The Raven was published independently with lavish woodcuts by Gustave Doré in 1884 (New York: Harper & Brothers). Doré died before its publication.

In 1875, a French edition with English and French text, Le Corbeau, was published with lithographs by Édouard Manet and translation by the Symbolist Stéphane Mallarmé. Many 20th-century artists and contemporary illustrators created artworks and illustrations based on The Raven, including Edmund Dulac, István Orosz, and Ryan Price.

Edgar Allan Poe on The Simpsons

Poe capitalized on the success of The Raven by following it up with his essay The Philosophy of Composition (1846), in which he detailed the poem's creation. His description of its writing is probably exaggerated, though the essay serves as an important overview of Poe's literary theory.

He explains that every component of the poem is based on logic: the raven enters the chamber to avoid a storm, the midnight dreary in the bleak December, and its perch on a pallid white bust was to create visual contrast against the dark black bird. No aspect of the poem was an accident, he claims, but is based on total control by the author.

Even the term Nevermore, he says, is used because of the effect created by the long vowel sounds, though Poe may have been inspired to use the word by the works of Lord Byron or Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Poe had experimented with the long o sound throughout many other poems: no more in Silence, evermore in The Conqueror Worm.

More information: Representative Poetry Online-University of Toronto

The topic itself, Poe says, was chosen because the death...of a beautiful woman is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world. Told from the lips...of a bereaved lover is best suited to achieve the desired effect. Beyond the poetics of it, the lost Lenore may have been inspired by events in Poe's own life as well, either to the early loss of his mother, Eliza Poe, or the long illness endured by his wife, Virginia.

Ultimately, Poe considered The Raven an experiment to suit at once the popular and critical taste, accessible to both the mainstream and high literary worlds. It is unknown how long Poe worked on The Raven; speculation ranges from a single day to ten years. Poe recited a poem believed to be an early version with an alternate ending of The Raven in 1843 in Saratoga, New York. An early draft may have featured an owl.

The Raven has influenced many modern works, including Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita in 1955, Bernard Malamud's The Jewbird in 1963 and Ray Bradbury's The Parrot Who Knew Papa in 1976.

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The process by which Poe composed The Raven influenced a number of French authors and composers, such as Charles Baudelaire and Maurice Ravel, and it has been suggested that Ravel's Boléro may have been deeply influenced by The Philosophy of Composition. The poem is additionally referenced throughout popular culture in films, television, music, and video games.

The painter Paul Gauguin painted a nude portrait of his teenage wife in Tahiti in 1897 entitled Nevermore, featuring a raven perched within the room. At the time the couple were mourning the loss of their first child together and Gauguin the loss of his favourite daughter back in Europe.

The name of the Baltimore Ravens, a professional American football team, was inspired by the poem. The Simpsons dedicated an episode to The Raven. Chosen in a fan contest that drew 33,288 voters, the allusion honors Poe, who spent the early part of his career in Baltimore and is buried there.

More information: The Raven by The Simpsons

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there,

wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams

no mortal ever dared to dream before.

Edgar Allan Poe

LEGO COMPANY PATENTS THE DESIGN OF ITS LEGO BRICKS

Lego

Today, The Grandma is relaxing at home. She has decided to practise one of her favourite hobbies: building a Lego construction. Last Christmas, she received a lot of Lego set games and she has started to build them to celebrate that on a day like today in 1958, the Lego company patented the design of its Lego bricks, still compatible with bricks produced nowadays.

Lego is a line of plastic construction toys that are manufactured by The Lego Group, a privately held company based in Billund, Denmark. The company's flagship product, Lego, consists of colourful interlocking plastic bricks accompanying an array of gears, figurines called minifigures, and various other parts.

Lego pieces can be assembled and connected in many ways to construct objects, including vehicles, buildings, and working robots. Anything constructed can be taken apart again, and the pieces reused to make new things.

The Lego Group began manufacturing the interlocking toy bricks in 1949. Movies, games, competitions, and six Legoland amusement parks have been developed under the brand. As of July 2015, 600 billion Lego parts had been produced.

In February 2015, Lego replaced Ferrari as Brand Finance's world's most powerful brand.

More information: LEGO

The Lego Group began in the workshop of Ole Kirk Christiansen (1891–1958), a carpenter from Billund, Denmark, who began making wooden toys in 1932. In 1934, his company came to be called Lego, derived from the Danish phrase leg godt, which means play well.

In 1947, Lego expanded to begin producing plastic toys. In 1949 Lego began producing, among other new products, an early version of the now familiar interlocking bricks, calling them Automatic Binding Bricks. These bricks were based on the Kiddicraft Self-Locking Bricks, which had been patented in the United Kingdom in 1939 and released in 1947.

Lego Figure & Block

Lego had received a sample of the Kiddicraft bricks from the supplier of an injection-molding machine that it purchased. The bricks, originally manufactured from cellulose acetate, were a development of the traditional stackable wooden blocks of the time.

The Lego Group's motto is det bedste er ikke for godt which means the best is not too good. This motto, which is still used today, was created by Christiansen to encourage his employees never to skimp on quality, a value he believed in strongly.

By 1951 plastic toys accounted for half of the Lego company's output, even though the Danish trade magazine Legetøjs-Tidende, visiting the Lego factory in Billund in the early 1950s, felt that plastic would never be able to replace traditional wooden toys. Although a common sentiment, Lego toys seem to have become a significant exception to the dislike of plastic in children's toys, due in part to the high standards set by Ole Kirk.

By 1954, Christiansen's son, Godtfred, had become the junior managing director of the Lego Group. It was his conversation with an overseas buyer that led to the idea of a toy system. Godtfred saw the immense potential in Lego bricks to become a system for creative play, but the bricks still had some problems from a technical standpoint: their locking ability was limited and they were not versatile.

In 1958, the modern brick design was developed; it took five years to find the right material for it, ABS (acrylonitrile butadiene styrene) polymer.

The modern Lego brick design was patented on 28 January 1958.

More information: History

The Lego Group's Duplo product line was introduced in 1969 and is a range of simple blocks whose lengths measure twice the width, height, and depth of standard Lego blocks and are aimed towards younger children.

In 1978, Lego produced the first minifigures, which have since become a staple in most sets.

In May 2011, Space Shuttle Endeavour mission STS-134 brought 13 Lego kits to the International Space Station, where astronauts built models to see how they would react in microgravity, as a part of the Lego Bricks in Space program.

In May 2013, the largest model ever created was displayed in New York City and was made of over 5 million bricks; a 1:1 scale model of an X-wing fighter. Other records include a 34 m tower and a 4 km railway.

Lego & The X Files (Fox Mulder & Dana Scully)

Lego pieces of all varieties constitute a universal system. Despite variation in the design and the purposes of individual pieces over the years, each piece remains compatible in some way with existing pieces.

Lego bricks from 1958 still interlock with those made in the current time, and Lego sets for young children are compatible with those made for teenagers. Six bricks of 2 × 4 studs can be combined in 915,103,765 ways.

Each Lego piece must be manufactured to an exacting degree of precision. When two pieces are engaged they must fit firmly, yet be easily disassembled. The machines that manufacture Lego bricks have tolerances as small as 10 micrometres.

Primary concept and development work takes place at the Billund headquarters, where the company employs approximately 120 designers. The company also has smaller design offices in the UK, Spain, Germany, and Japan which are tasked with developing products aimed specifically at these markets.

The average development period for a new product is around twelve months, split into three stages. The first stage is to identify market trends and developments, including contact by the designers directly with the market; some are stationed in toy shops close to holidays, while others interview children.

More information: Smithsonian

The second stage is the design and development of the product based upon the results of the first stage. As of September 2008 the design teams use 3D modelling software to generate CAD drawings from initial design sketches. The designs are then prototyped using an in-house stereolithography machine. 

These prototypes are presented to the entire project team for comment and for testing by parents and children during the validation process. Designs may then be altered in accordance with the results from the focus groups. Virtual models of completed Lego products are built concurrently with the writing of the user instructions. Completed CAD models are also used in the wider organisation, for marketing and packaging.

Lego & Star Wars

Lego Digital Designer is an official piece of Lego software for Mac OS X and Windows which allows users to create their own digital Lego designs. The program once allowed customers to order their custom designs with a service to ship physical models from Digital Designer to consumers; the service ended in 2012.

Since 1963, Lego pieces have been manufactured from a strong, resilient plastic known as acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS). As of September 2008, Lego engineers use the NX CAD/CAM/CAE PLM software suite to model the elements. The software allows the parts to be optimised by way of mould flow and stress analysis. Prototype moulds are sometimes built before the design is committed to mass production.

The ABS plastic is heated to 232 °C until it reaches a dough-like consistency. It is then injected into the moulds at pressures between 25 and 150 tonnes, and takes approximately 15 seconds to cool. The moulds are permitted a tolerance of up to twenty micrometres, to ensure the bricks remain connected. Human inspectors check the output of the moulds, to eliminate significant variations in colour or thickness.

According to the Lego Group, about eighteen bricks out of every million fail to meet the standard required. Lego factories recycle all but about 1 percent of their plastic waste from the manufacturing process. If the plastic cannot be re-used in Lego bricks, it is processed and sold on to industries that can make use of it. Lego has a self-imposed 2030 deadline to find a more eco-friendly alternative to the ABS plastic it currently uses in its bricks.

More information: Mental Floss

Manufacturing of Lego bricks occurs at several locations around the world. Moulding is done in Billund, Denmark; Nyíregyháza, Hungary; Monterrey, Mexico and most recently in Jiaxing, China. Brick decorations and packaging are done at plants in Denmark, Hungary, Mexico and Kladno in the Czech Republic. 

The Lego Group estimates that in five decades it has produced 400 billion Lego blocks. Annual production of Lego bricks averages approximately 36 billion, or about 1140 elements per second. According to an article in BusinessWeek in 2006, Lego could be considered the world's No. 1 tire manufacturer; the factory produces about 306 million small rubber tires a year. The claim was reiterated in 2012.

Lego Bricks

Since the 1950s, the Lego Group has released thousands of sets with a variety of themes, including space, robots, pirates, trains, Vikings, castle, dinosaurs, undersea exploration, and wild west.

Some of the classic themes that continue to the present day include Lego City, a line of sets depicting city life introduced in 1973 and Lego Technic, a line aimed at emulating complex machinery, introduced in 1977.

Over the years, Lego has licensed themes from numerous cartoon and film franchises and even some from video games. These include Batman, Indiana Jones, Pirates of the Caribbean, Harry Potter, Star Wars, The X Files and Minecraft.

Although some of the licensed themes, Lego Star Wars, Lego The X Files and Lego Indiana Jones, had highly successful sales, Lego has expressed a desire to rely more upon their own characters and classic themes, and less upon licensed themes related to movie releases.

For the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, Lego released a special Team GB Minifigures series exclusively in the United Kingdom to mark the opening of the games. For the 2016 Summer Olympics and 2016 Summer Paralympics in Rio de Janeiro, Lego released a kit with the Olympic and Paralympic mascots Vinicius and Tom.

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One of the largest Lego sets commercially produced was a minifig-scaled edition of the Star Wars Millennium Falcon. Designed by Jens Kronvold Fredericksen, it was released in 2007 and contained 5,195 pieces. It was surpassed by a 5,922-piece Taj Mahal. A redesigned Millennium Falcon recently retook the top spot in 2017 with 7,541 pieces.

Lego branched out into the video game market in 1997 by founding Lego Media International Limited, and Lego Island was released that year by Mindscape. After this Lego released titles such as Lego Creator and Lego Racers.

After Lego closed down their publishing subsidiary, they moved on to a partnership with Traveller's Tales, and went on to make games like Lego Star Wars, Lego The X Files, Lego Indiana Jones, Lego Batman, and many more including the very well-received Lego Marvel Super Heroes game, featuring New York City as the overworld and including Marvel characters from the Avengers, the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, and more.

More recently, Lego has created a game based on The Lego Movie, due to its popularity.

More information: Penguin

I am an artist who works with Lego.

Nathan Sawaya