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Rao, Raja

(Encyclopedia)Rao, Raja rou [key], 1909–2006, Indian novelist, b. Hassan, Mysore (now Karnataka), as Raja. Rao took his surname as an adult, and was educated in India and France and for many years divided his ti...

Robinson, Edwin Arlington

(Encyclopedia)Robinson, Edwin Arlington, 1869–1935, American poet, b. Head Tide, Maine, attended Harvard (1891–93). At his death, many critics considered Robinson the greatest poet in the United States. He is n...

art nouveau

(Encyclopedia)art nouveau ärˌ no͞ovōˈ [key], decorative-art movement centered in Western Europe. It began in the 1880s as a reaction against the historical emphasis of mid-19th-century art, but did not survive...

Ashanti

(Encyclopedia)Ashanti äsänˈtē [key], historic and modern administrative region, central Ghana, W Africa. The region is the source of much of Ghana's cocoa. It is inhabited by the Ashanti, a matrilineal Akan peo...

Mallarmé, Stéphane

(Encyclopedia)Mallarmé, Stéphane stāfänˈ mälärmāˈ [key], 1842–98, French poet. Mallarmé's great importance is as the chief forebear of the symbolists; the influence of his poetry was particularly felt b...

lingua franca

(Encyclopedia)lingua franca lĭngˈgwə frăngˈkə [key], an auxiliary language, generally of a hybrid and partially developed nature, that is employed over an extensive area by people speaking different and mutua...

Marshall, Thurgood

(Encyclopedia)Marshall, Thurgood, 1908–93, U.S. lawyer and associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (1967–91), b. Baltimore. He received his law degree from Howard Univ. in 1933. In 1936 he joined the legal ...

Grooms, Red

(Encyclopedia)Grooms, Red (Charles Grooms), 1937–, American artist, b. Nashville, Tenn; studied Art Inst. of Chicago, Peabody College, New School for Social Research, Hans Hofmann School of Fine Arts. He moved to...

Kafka, Franz

(Encyclopedia)Kafka, Franz fränts käfˈkä [key], 1883–1924, German-language novelist, b. Prague. Along with Joyce, Kafka is perhaps the most influential of 20th-century writers. From a middle-class Jewish fami...