In "A Room of One's Own," Virginia Woolf asks her readers to imagine that Shakespeare had a sister. Woolf contends that such a woman, regardless of how gifted she might have been, would have had no chance to be Shakespeare's equal; she would have been denied the education afforded her brother and lef

Contemplative, Feminist, Lush, Medieval era, Pioneering, Religious

Seneca lived in an intemperate world, a world corrupt with violent, unruly passions. Rome in the first century A.D. was saturated with viciousness, vengeance, bloodlust, and spite. The desire for political and economic power permeated the public sphere; uncontrollable passions perverted human reason;

Classical roman, Contemplative, Grotesque, Violent, Visceral, Witty

In 1921 a French critic posed a priceless question: "By what witchcraft did [Vermeer], representing the most daily and commonplace sights, manage to give the viewer so mysterious, so grand, so exceptional an emotion?" Vermeer produced only 36 paintings before he died at 43. Yet each piece blissfully

Baroque art, Clean, Contemplative, Domestic, Serene, Tranquil

Although it's tempting to assume that a film devoted to the representation of an objective reality would suffer stylistically, French film critic Andre Bazin would say otherwise. Bazin craved a cinema of truth, one whose success depended on a director's finely tuned, disinterested observation.

Contemplative, Pioneering, Smart, Witty