The Death of Absalom by Gustave Dore

According to the Bible, Absalom or Avshalom (Hebrew: אַבְשָלוֹם, Modern Avshalom Tiberian ʼAḇšālôm ; "Father/Leader of/is peace") was the third son of David, King of Israel with Maachah, daughter of Talmai, King of Geshur. (1 Chronicles 3:2, 2 Samuel 3:3)

2 Samuel 14:25 describes him as the most handsome man in the kingdom. Absalom eventually rebelled against his father and was killed during the Battle of Ephraim Wood.^[1]

Murder of Amnon[link]

The Banquet of Absalom attributed to Niccolò de Simone around 1650

After his full sister Tamar was raped by Amnon, their half-brother and David's eldest son, Absalom waited two years and avenged her by sending his servants to murder Amnon at a feast to which he had invited all the king's sons. (2 Samuel 13)

After this deed he fled to Talmai, the king of Geshur (2 Samuel 13:37) (see also Joshua 12:5 or 13:2), his maternal grandfather, and it was not until three years later that he was fully reinstated in his father's favour and finally returned to Jerusalem. (2 Samuel 13-14) (see Joab)

The Revolt at Hebron[link]

While at Jerusalem, Absalom built support for himself among the populace by promising justice for all "if only I were appointed judge in the land", and by showing humility by kissing those who approached him rather than accepting supplication.^[2]

Valley of Jehoshaphat and Hinnom Jerusalem. Stairway in Absalom's Pillar; Another view inside Absalom's Pillar

After four years he decided to declare himself king, sleeping with his father's concubines, then raised a revolt at Hebron, the former capital. All Israel and Judah flocked to his side, and David, attended only by the Cherethites and Pelethites and his former body guard that had followed him from Gath, found it expedient to flee. The priests Zadok and Abiathar remained behind in Jerusalem, and their sons Jonathan and Ahimaaz served as David's spies. Absalom reached the capital and took counsel with the renowned Ahithophel (sometimes spelled Achitophel).

David took refuge from Absalom's forces beyond the Jordan River. However, he took the precaution of instructing a servant, Hushai, to infiltrate Absalom's court and subvert it. Hushai convinced Absalom to ignore Ahithophel's advice to attack his father while he was on the run, and instead prepare his forces for a major attack. This gave David critical time to prepare his own troops for the coming battle.

The Battle of Ephraim Wood[link]

A fateful battle was fought in the Wood of Ephraim (the name suggests a locality west of the Jordan) and Absalom's army was completely routed.^[3] Absalom himself was caught by his head in the boughs of an oak-tree as the mule he was riding ran beneath it - an irony given that he was previously renowned for his abundant hair and handsome head. He was discovered hanging there still alive by one of David's men, who reported the matter to Joab, the king's commander. Joab avenged David by fatally striking and killing Absalom, by the use of three spears, followed by a group of swordsmen, an act that caused David great sorrow.

Memorial to Absalom[link]

Another monument near Jerusalem (not the modern "Absalom Tomb" - "Yad Avshalom" which is of later origin) was erected by Absalom in his lifetime to perpetuate his name (2 Samuel 18:18):

"Now Absalom in his lifetime had taken and reared up for himself a monument, which is in the king's dale: for he said, I have no son to keep my name in remembrance: and he called the pillar after his own name: and it is called unto this day, Absalom's monument."

Absalom in art[link]

Fiction[link]

• Georg Christian Lehms, Des israelitischen Printzens Absolons und seiner Prinzcessin Schwester Thamar Staats- Lebens- und Helden-Geschichte ('The Heroic Life and History of the Israelite Prince Absolom and his Princess Sister Tamar'), novel in German published in Nuremberg, 1710
• Absalom, Absalom! is the title of a novel by William Faulkner, and refers to the return of Thomas Sutpen's son.
• Oh Absalom! was the original title of Howard Spring's novel My Son, My Son!, later adapted for the film of the latter name.
• Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton. Absalom was the name of Stephen Kumalo's son in the novel. Like the historical Absalom, Absalom Kumalo was at odds with his father, the two fighting a moral and ethical battle of sorts over the course of some of the novel's most important events. Absalom kills and murders a man, and also meets an untimely death.
• Ender's Shadow references the story of Absalom and King David's lament. Bean, as he sends his soldiers on a suicide mission to destroy the Buggers, says to them, "O my son Absalom. My son, my son Absalom. Would God I could die for thee, O Absalom, my son. My sons!"
• Absalom is the name of a short science fiction story by Henry Kuttner about the conflict between a father and son over the son's education.
• Absalom is the name of a character in Eiichiro Oda's manga One Piece during the Thriller Bark arc.
• The character of Absalom appears in Susannah Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell
• Throughout Robertson Davies's The Manticore a comparison is repeatedly made between the protagonist's problematic relations with his father and those of between the Biblical Absalom and King David. (Paradoxically, in the modern version it is the rebellious son who has the first name "David".) The book also introduces the term "Absalonism", as a generic term for a son's rebellion against his father.
• Absalom is the name of a comedic character in "The Miller's Tale" in the Canterbury Tales.
• The character of Absalom appears in Michael Cook's The Head Guts and Sound Bone Dance
• Absalom is the name of a character in Michael Crummey's Newfoundland-set Galore.
• Absalom is also the oldest and most powerful alliance in the first textbased game on internet called Utopia - World of Legends and holds Kingdoms as Equilibrium, Mercy, Sanctuary and Rage of Absalom.
• Absalom is the name given to the caterpillar by screenwriter Linda Woolverton in Disney's "Alice in Wonderland," directed by Tim Burton.
• Absalom's attempted coup against his father David is explored in the novel "Zoheleth" by J Francis Hudson (Lion Publishing 1994) .

Music[link]

• Josquin des Prez composed the motet "Absalon, fili mi" on the occasion of the death of Juan Borgia.
• Leonard Cohen's poem "Prayer for Sunset" compares the setting sun to the raving Absalom, and asks whether another Joab will arrive tomorrow night to kill Absalom again.
• Heinrich Schütz (1585–1672) composed "Fili mi, Absalon" as part of his Sinfoniae Sacrae, op.6
• The single verse, 2 Samuel 19:1, regarding David's grief at the loss of his son ("And the king was much moved, and went up to the chamber over the gate, and wept: and as he went, thus he said, O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!"), is the inspiration for the text of several pieces of choral music, usually entitled When David Heard (such as those by Renaissance composers Thomas Tomkins and Thomas Weelkes, or American composers Eric Whitacre, Joshua Shank, and Norman Dinerstein). This verse is also featured in William Billing's popular Sacred Harp song "David's Lamentation", first published in 1778. Also, "Absalom, Absalom Would I die for you my son, I would have it all undone, The way it all came down" is found on the 1998 album Largo in the song "Gimme A Stone".
• "Absalom, Absalom" is the title of a song on the 1996 Compass CD Making Light of It by singer/songwriter Pierce Pettis, incorporating several elements of the biblical narrative.
• The Australian composer Nigel Butterley set the verse in his 2008 choral work "Beni Avshalom", commissioned by the Sydney Chamber Choir
• During the finale of the song Distant Early Warning by Canadian band Rush, Geddy Lee sings, "Absalom Absalom Absalom." Lyrics written by drummer Neil Peart.
• David Olney's 2000 CD Omar's Blues includes the song "Absalom." The song depicts David grieving over the death of his son.
• The story of Absalom is referred to several places in folk singer Adam Arcuragi's song "Always Almost Crying."
• The San Francisco-based band Om mentions Absalom in their song "Kapila's Theme" from their debut album Variations on a Theme.
• The garage folk band David's Doldrums [1] references Absalom in their song, "my name is Absalom." The song alludes to Absalom's feelings of solemnity and abandonment of love and hope.
• In "Every Kind Word" by Lackthereof, Danny Seim's project parallel to Menomena, Seim sings "...and your hair is long like Absalom."
• "Barach Hamelech" an Israeli song by Amos Etinger and Yosef Hadar.
• The grindcore band Discordance Axis references Absalom at the end of the track entitled Castration Rite.
• The Progressive Metal band from Barranquilla, Colombia, Absalom has his name.^[4]
• 2007 Ryland Angel released "Absalom" on Ryland Angel - Manhattan Records ^[5]
• "Hanging By His Hair" from the 1998 WORMWOOD album by The Residents recounts Absalom's defiance and death. Also performed on Roadworms (The Berlin Sessions) and Wormwood Live.^[6]
• "Absalom" is a song on Brand New Shadows's debut album, White flags. It is a mournful lament from King David's perspective.^[7]
• "Absalom" is an album by the Experimental/Progressive band "Stick Men" featuring Tony Levin, Markus Reuter and Pat Mastelotto.

Videogames[link]

• In Darksiders II, Absalom was the leader of a Old Race known as the Nephilim. When Mankind was given the prize of Eden, Absalom led his armies against Heaven and Hell in an attempt to steal it back.

References[link]

1. ^ 2 Samuel 14:25
2. ^ Bible Gateway
3. ^ 2 Samuel 16-18
4. ^ http://karmametalcolombian.blogspot.com/2008/04/absalom-absalom-colombian-2003.html
5. ^ http://www.rylandangel.com/
6. ^ http://residents.com/historical/page0/page20/page20.html
7. ^ Brand New Shadows

External links[link]

•  "Absalom". Collier's New Encyclopedia. 1921. 

Thomas Tomkins (1572 – 9 June 1656) was a Welsh-born English composer of the late Tudor and early Stuart period. In addition to being one of the prominent members of the English madrigal school, he was a skilled composer of keyboard and consort music, and the last member of the English virginalist school.

Life[link]

Tomkins was born in St David's in Pembrokeshire, Wales, in 1572. His father, also Thomas, who had moved there in 1565 from the family home of Lostwithiel in Cornwall,^[1] was a vicar choral of St David's Cathedral and organist there. Three of Thomas junior's half-brothers, John, Giles and Robert, also became eminent musicians, but none quite attained the fame of Thomas. By 1594, but possibly as early as 1586, Thomas and his family had moved to Gloucester, where his father was employed as a minor canon at the cathedral. Thomas almost certainly studied under William Byrd for a time, for one of his songs^[2] bears the inscription: To my ancient, and much reverenced Master, William Byrd, and it may have been at this period of his career, since Byrd leased property at Longney, near Gloucester. Although documentary proof is lacking, it is also possible that Byrd was instrumental in finding young Thomas a place as chorister in the Chapel Royal.^[3] In any case, all former Chapel Royal choristers were required to be found a place at university, and Tomkins was affiliated to Magdalen College, Oxford in 1607.

Worcester Cathedral

But already in 1596 he had been appointed organist and master of the choristers at Worcester Cathedral. The next year he married Alice Patrick, a widow nine years his senior, whose husband Nathaniel, who died in 1595, had been Tomkins' predecessor at Worcester. Thomas's only son, Nathaniel, was born in Worcester in 1599, where he was to spend the rest of his life and become a respected musician.

Tomkins was doubtless acquainted with Thomas Morley, also a pupil of Byrd's, for his signed copy of Morley's publication Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke (1597) has been preserved, together with Thomas's many annotations;^[4] and in 1601 Morley included one of Tomkins' madrigals in his important collection The Triumphs of Oriana.

In 1612 Tomkins oversaw the construction in Worcester cathedral of a magnificent new organ by Thomas Dallam, the foremost organ-builder of the day. He continued writing verse anthems, and his collection of 28 madrigals, the Songs of 3, 4, 5 and 6 parts was finally published in 1622 with a dedicatory poem by his half-brother John Tomkins (circa 1587-1638), now organist of King's College, Cambridge (later of St Paul's and of the Chapel Royal), with whom Thomas maintained an intimate and loving relationship.

Probably by about 1603 Thomas was appointed a Gentleman Extraordinary of the Chapel Royal. This was an honorary post, but in 1621 he became a Gentleman Ordinary and organist under his friend and senior organist, Orlando Gibbons. The duties connected with this post included regular journeys between Worcester and London, which Tomkins performed until about 1639.^[5][1]

On James I's death in March 1625 Tomkins, with other Gentlemen of the Chapel Royal, was required to attend to both the music for James's funeral and that for the coronation of Charles I. These monumental tasks proved too much for Gibbons, who died of a stroke in Canterbury, where Charles was supposed to meet his future bride, Henrietta Maria of France, placing an even greater strain on Tomkins. Because of plague, the coronation was luckily postponed until February 1626, giving Tomkins time to compose most of the eight anthems sung at the ceremony.^[6]

In 1628 Tomkins was named "Composer of [the King's] Music in ordinary" at an annual salary of £40, succeeding Alfonso Ferrabosco the younger who died in March that year. But this prestigious post, the highest honour available to an English musician, was quickly revoked on the grounds that it had been promised to Ferrabosco's son. This shabby treatment was to be only the first of a series of adversities that overtook the composer for last fourteen years of his life. He continued, however, to perform his dual duties at Worcester and London until 1639.

Tomkins' devoted wife Alice died in 1642, the year civil war broke out. Worcester was one of the first casualties: the cathedral was desecrated, and Tomkins' organ badly damaged by the Parliamentarians. The following year Tomkins' house near the cathedral suffered a direct hit by cannon shot, making it uninhabitable for a long period, and destroying most of his household goods and probably a number of his musical manuscripts. About this time Tomkins married his second wife Martha Browne, widow of a Worcester Cathedral lay clerk.

Further conflict and a siege in 1646 caused untold damage to the city. With the choir disbanded and the cathedral closed, Tomkins turned his genius to the composition of some of his finest keyboard and consort music; in 1647, a belated tombeau or tribute to Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford, and a further one to the memory of William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, both beheaded in 1641, and both admired by Tomkins. Charles I was executed in 1649, and a few days later Tomkins, always a royalist, composed his superb Sad Pavan: for these distracted times. His second wife Martha died around 1653, and deprived of his living, Tomkins, now 81, was in serious financial difficulties. In 1654 his son Nathaniel married Isabella Folliott, a wealthy widow, and Thomas went to live with them in Martin Hussingtree, some four miles from Worcester. He expressed his gratitude by composing his Galliard, The Lady Folliot's in her honour. Two years later he died and was buried in the churchyard of Martin Hussingtree on 9 June 1656.

Works[link]

Tomkins wrote madrigals, keyboard music, consort music, anthems, and liturgical music. Stylistically he was extremely conservative, even anachronistic: he seems to have completely ignored the rising Baroque practice around him, with its Italian-inspired idioms, and he also avoided writing in most of the popular forms of the time, such as the lute song, or ayre. His polyphonic language, even in the fourth decade of the 17th century, was frankly that of the Renaissance. Some of his madrigals are extremely expressive, with text-painting and chromaticism worthy of Italian madrigalists such as Marenzio or Luzzaschi.

He was also a prolific composer of verse anthems, writing more than any other English composer of the 17th century except for William Child. These pieces were highly regarded at the time, and are well-represented in contemporary manuscript collections. Fortunately for the survival of his music, his son Nathaniel edited most of it and published a huge collection of it (titled Musica Deo sacra et ecclesiae Anglicanae; or Music dedicated to the Honor and Service of God, and to the Use of Cathedral and other Churches of England) in 1668, after his death; much of it otherwise would have been lost during the Civil War.

References[link]

1. ^ Boden 2005, p. 7
2. ^ Too much I once lamented (1622)
3. ^ Boden 2005, p. 42
4. ^ Magdalen College Library, Oxford
5. ^ Boden 2005 p. 165
6. ^ Boden 2005, p. 127

Sources[link]

• Stephen D. Tuttle: Thomas Tomkins: Keyboard Music. Stainer & Bell, London 1973.
• Anthony Boden: Thomas Tomkins: The Last Elizabethan. Ashgate Publishing 2005. ISBN 0-7546-5118-5
• John Irving: The Instrumental Music of Thomas Tomkins, 1572-1656. Garland Publishing, New York 1989. ISBN 0-8240-2011-1
• Thomas Tomkins - Pièces pour Virginal, 1646-1654. Introduction de François Lesure. Fac-similé du ms. autographe de la Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, Rés. 1122. Minkoff, Geneva 1982.
• Article "Thomas Tomkins," in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie. 20 vol. London, Macmillan Publishers Ltd., 1980. ISBN 1-56159-174-2
• The Concise Edition of Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, 8th ed. Revised by Nicolas Slonimsky. New York, Schirmer Books, 1993. ISBN 0-02-872416-X

External links[link]

• The Thomas Tomkins Society
• Free scores by Thomas Tomkins in the Choral Public Domain Library (ChoralWiki)
• Free scores by Thomas Tomkins in the Werner Icking Music Archive (WIMA)
• Listen to free recordings of a Madrigals and a free recording of Latin Church Music from Umeå Akademiska Kör.

Alan Rickman
Alan Rickman at the premiere of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 in July 2011
Born	Alan Sidney Patrick Rickman (1946-02-21) 21 February 1946 (age 66) Hammersmith, London, England
Occupation	Actor (stage, screen)
Years active	1978–present
Partner	Rima Horton (1965–present)

Alan Sidney Patrick Rickman (born 21 February 1946) is an English actor of stage and screen. He is a renowned stage actor in modern and classical productions and a former member of the Royal Shakespeare Company. His breakout performance was as the Vicomte de Valmont in Les Liaisons Dangereuses, for which he was nominated for a Tony Award. Rickman is known for his film performances as Hans Gruber in Die Hard, Severus Snape in the Harry Potter film series, Éamon de Valera in Michael Collins, and Metatron in Dogma.

Rickman has also had a number of other notable film roles such as the Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Jamie in Truly, Madly, Deeply, P.L. O'Hara in An Awfully Big Adventure and Colonel Brandon in Ang Lee's 1995 film Sense and Sensibility. More recently, he played Judge Turpin in the film adaptation of Stephen Sondheim's musical of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.

Early life[link]

Rickman was born in South Hammersmith, London, to a working class family, the son of Margaret Doreen Rose (née Bartlett), a housewife, and Bernard Rickman, a factory worker.^[1] Rickman's mother was from Wales and a Methodist, and his father was of Irish Catholic background.^[2] He has one elder brother, David (b. 1944), a graphic designer, a younger brother, Michael (b. 1947), a tennis coach, and a younger sister, Sheila (b. 1949).^[2][3] Rickman attended Derwentwater Primary School, in Acton, a school that followed the Montessori method of education.^[4]

When he was eight, his father died, leaving his mother to bring up four children mostly alone. She married again, but divorced his stepfather after three years. "There was one love in her life," Rickman later said.^[2] Rickman excelled at calligraphy and watercolour painting, and from Derwentwater Junior School he won a scholarship to Latymer Upper School in London, where he started getting involved in drama. After leaving Latymer, Rickman attended Chelsea College of Art and Design and then the Royal College of Art. This education allowed him to work as a graphic designer for the radical newspaper the Notting Hill Herald,^[5] which he considered a more stable occupation than acting. "Drama school wasn't considered the sensible thing to do at 18," he said.

After graduation, Rickman and several friends opened a graphic design studio called Graphiti, but after three years of successful business, he decided that if he were to ever explore acting professionally, it was now or never. This led him to write a letter to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) requesting an audition^[6] and was awarded a place in RADA which he attended from 1972–74. While there, he studied Shakespeare's works and supported himself by working as a dresser for Sir Nigel Hawthorne and Sir Ralph Richardson,^[7] and left after winning several prizes, including the Emile Littler Prize, the Forbes Robertson Prize, and the Bancroft Gold Medal.

Rickman in December 2009

Career[link]

After graduating from RADA, Rickman worked extensively with various British repertory and experimental theatre groups on productions including The Seagull and Snoo Wilson's The Grass Widow at the Royal Court Theatre, and has appeared three times at the Edinburgh International Festival. In 1978, he played with the Court Drama Group, performing in several plays, most notably Romeo And Juliet and A View from the Bridge. While working with the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) he starred in, among other things, As You Like It.

In 1982, British television audiences came to know Alan Rickman as the Reverend Obadiah Slope in the BBC's adaptation of Barchester Towers known as The Barchester Chronicles. In 1985, Rickman was given the male lead, the Vicomte de Valmont, in the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of Christopher Hampton's Les Liaisons Dangereuses, directed by Howard Davies.^[8] When the show went to Broadway in 1987, Rickman earned both a Tony Award nomination^[9] and a Drama Desk Award nomination for his performance.^[10] In 1992, he was the "master of ceremonies" on Mike Oldfield's album Tubular Bells II where he read off a list of instruments on the album.

Rickman's career has been filled with a wide variety of roles. He has played romantic leads like Colonel Brandon in Sense and Sensibility, and Jamie in Truly, Madly, Deeply, as well as numerous villains in Hollywood big budget films: German terrorist Hans Gruber in Die Hard (1988), the Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991), and most recently Severus Snape, the potions master in the Harry Potter series (2001–2011). In 1995, Rickman turned down the role of Alec Trevelyan in the James Bond film GoldenEye.

His role in Die Hard earned him a spot on the AFI's 100 years...100 Heroes & Villains as the 46th best villain in film history. His performance as the Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves also made him known as one of the best actors to portray a villain in films.^[11][12] He has taken issue with being typecast as a "villain actor", citing the fact that he has not portrayed a stock villain character since the Sheriff of Nottingham in 1991.

During his long career Rickman has also played a number of comedic roles, sending up classically trained British actors who take on "lesser roles" as the character Sir Alexander Dane/Dr. Lazarus in the science fiction spoof Galaxy Quest, portraying the angel Metatron, the voice of God, in Dogma, appearing as Emma Thompson's foolish husband Harry in Love Actually, providing the voice of Marvin the Paranoid Android in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and the egotistical, Nobel Prize-winning father in Nobel Son.

Rickman at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival

Rickman has also received acclaim for two biographical pieces he did for HBO. He won a Golden Globe and an Emmy^[13] for his performance as Rasputin: Dark Servant of Destiny in 1996, and was also nominated for an Emmy for his work as Dr. Alfred Blalock in 2004's Something the Lord Made. He also starred in the independent film Snow Cake (with Sigourney Weaver and Carrie-Anne Moss) which had its debut at the Berlinale, and also Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (with Dustin Hoffman), directed by Tom Tykwer.

In 2007, Rickman appeared in the critically acclaimed Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street directed by Tim Burton, alongside Harry Potter co-stars Helena Bonham Carter and Timothy Spall; he played antagonist Judge Turpin. Rickman also appeared as Absolem the Caterpillar in Burton's 2010 film Alice in Wonderland.

Rickman has performed on stage in Noël Coward's romantic comedy Private Lives, which transferred to Broadway after its successful run in London at the Albery Theatre and ended in September 2002. Rickman had reunited with his Les Liaisons Dangereuses co-star Lindsay Duncan and director Howard Davies for this Tony Award-winning production.

His previous stage performance was as Mark Antony, opposite Helen Mirren as Cleopatra, in the Royal National Theatre's production of Antony and Cleopatra at the Olivier Theatre in London, which ran from 20 October to 3 December 1998. Before that, he performed in Yukio Ninagawa's Tango at the End of Winter in London's West End and the Riverside Studio production of Hamlet in 1991, directed by Robert Sturua.

Rickman had also directed The Winter Guest at London's Almeida Theatre in 1995 and the film version of the same play in 1996 starring Emma Thompson and her real life mother Phyllida Law. He also compiled (with Katharine Viner) and directed the play My Name Is Rachel Corrie in April 2005 at the Royal Court Theatre, London, and won the Theatre Goers' Choice Awards for Best Director. In May 2010, he finished directing Strindberg's play Creditors at the Brooklyn Academy of Music Harvey Theatre after its previous run at London's Donmar Warehouse in 2008.

In 2009 Rickman was given the James Joyce Award by University College Dublin’s Literary and Historical Society.^[14]

In October and November 2010, Rickman starred in the eponymous role in Henrik Ibsen's John Gabriel Borkman at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin alongside Lindsay Duncan and Fiona Shaw.^[15] The Irish Independent called Rickman's performance breathtaking.^[16] This production subsequently travelled to the Brooklyn Academy of Music for performances in January and February 2011.^[17]

In 2011, Rickman again appeared as Severus Snape in the final instalment in the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2. Kenneth Turan of The Los Angeles Times said Rickman "as always, makes the most lasting impression,"^[18] while Peter Travers of Rolling Stone called Rickman "sublime at giving us a glimpse at last into the secret nurturing heart that [...] Snape masks with a sneer."^[19] Media coverage characterized Rickman's performance as worthy of an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor nomination.^{[20][21][22][23][24][25]} He earned his first award nominations for his role as Snape at the 2011 Alliance of Women Film Journalists Awards, 2011 Saturn Awards, 2011 Scream Awards and 2011 St. Louis Gateway Film Critics Association Awards in the Best Supporting Actor category.^{[26][27][28][29]}

On 21 November 2011, Rickman opened in Seminar, a new play by Theresa Rebeck, at the John Golden Theatre on Broadway.^[30] Rickman, who left the production on April 1, won the Broadway.com Audience Choice Award for Favorite Actor in a Play^[31] and was nominated for a Drama League Award.^[32]

Rickman is to star with Colin Firth and Cameron Diaz in a remake of 1966's Gambit by the Coen brothers.^[33]

In the media[link]

Alan Rickman posing for a fan after a performance of John Gabriel Borkman in 2011

Rickman was chosen by Empire as one of the 100 Sexiest Stars in film history (No 34) in 1995 and ranked No 59 in Empire's "The Top 100 Movie Stars of All Time" list in October 1997. In 2009 and 2010 Rickman ranked once again as one of the 100 Sexiest Stars by Empire, both times Rickman was placed 8th out of the 50 actors chosen. Rickman became Vice-Chairman of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in 2003. He was voted No 19 in Empire magazine's Greatest Living Movie Stars over the age of 50 and was twice nominated for Broadway's Tony Award as Best Actor (Play): in 1987 for Les Liaisons Dangereuses, and in 2002 for a revival of Noel Coward's Private Lives. The Guardian named Rickman as an "honourable mention" in a list of the best actors never to have received an Academy Award nomination.^[34]

Two researchers, a linguist and a sound engineer, found "the perfect [male] voice" to be a combination of Rickman's and Jeremy Irons's voices based on a sample of 50 voices.^[35] Coincidentally, the two actors played brothers in the Die Hard series of films.

Rickman has also been featured in several musical works – most notably in a song composed by the English songwriter Adam Leonard entitled "Not Alan Rickman".^[36] Moreover, the actor played a "Master of Ceremonies" part in announcing the various instruments in Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells II on the track The Bell.^[37] Rickman was one of the many artists who recited Shakespearian sonnets on the 2002 album When Love Speaks,^[38] and is also featured prominently in a music video by the band Texas entitled "In Demand",^[39] which premiered on Europe MTV in August 2000. In the video, lead singer Sharleen Spiteri danced the tango with Rickman: the clip was nominated for Best British Video at the Brit Awards.

Personal life[link]

In 1965, at the age of 19, Rickman met his partner Rima Horton, a Labour party councillor on Kensington and Chelsea London Borough Council 1986-2006.^{[40][41][42][43]} They began living together in 1977.^[41]

Filmography[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Alan Rickman

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Alan Rickman

• Alan Rickman at the Internet Movie Database
• Alan Rickman at the Internet Broadway Database
• Alan Rickman at AllRovi
• Alan Rickman at Emmys.com

William Faulkner
1954 photo by Carl Van Vechten
Born	William Cuthbert Falkner (1897-09-25)September 25, 1897 New Albany, Mississippi, USA
Died	July 6, 1962(1962-07-06) (aged 64) Byhalia, Mississippi
Language	English
Nationality	American
Period	1919–1962
Notable work(s)	The Sound and the Fury As I Lay Dying Light in August Absalom, Absalom! A Rose for Emily
Notable award(s)	Nobel Prize in Literature 1949 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 1955, 1963
Spouse(s)	Estelle Oldham (1929–1962)
Influences Herman Melville, Sherwood Anderson, The Bible, Honoré de Balzac, Mark Twain, Emily Bronte, William Shakespeare
Influenced Cormac McCarthy, Ernest Hemingway, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Jim Harrison, Toni Morrison, Ken Kesey, Flannery O' Connor, Don Delillo, Harper Lee, Mario Vargas Llosa
Signature

William Cuthbert Faulkner (born Falkner, September 25, 1897 – July 6, 1962) was an American writer and Nobel Prize laureate from Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner worked in a variety of media; he wrote novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essays and screenplays during his career. He is primarily known and acclaimed for his novels and short stories, many of which are set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, a setting Faulkner created based on Lafayette County, where he spent most of his childhood, and Holly Springs/Marshall County^[1].

Faulkner is one of the most important writers of the Southern literature of the United States, along with Mark Twain, Robert Penn Warren, Flannery O'Connor, Truman Capote, Eudora Welty, Thomas Wolfe, Harper Lee and Tennessee Williams. Though his work was published as early as 1919, and largely during the 1920s and 1930s, Faulkner was relatively unknown until receiving the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature.^[2] Two of his works, A Fable (1954) and his last novel The Reivers (1962) won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.^[3]

In 1998, the Modern Library ranked his 1929 novel The Sound and the Fury sixth on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century; also on the list were 1930's As I Lay Dying and Light in August (1932).

Biography[link]

William Cuthbert Faulkner was born in New Albany, Mississippi, the first of four sons to Murry Cuthbert Falkner (August 17, 1870 – August 7, 1932) and Maud Butler (November 27, 1871 – October 19, 1960).^[4] He had three younger brothers: Murry Charles "Jack" Faulkner (June 26, 1899 – December 24, 1975), author John Faulkner (September 24, 1901 – March 28, 1963) and Dean Swift Faulkner (August 15, 1907 – November 10, 1935).

Faulkner was born and raised in, and heavily influenced by, his home state of Mississippi, as well as by the history and culture of the American South altogether. Soon after Faulkner's first birthday, his family moved to Ripley, Mississippi from New Albany. Here, Murry worked as the treasurer for the family's Gulf & Chicago Railroad Company, a business Murry had been drawn to from an early age. Murry had hoped to inherit the railroad from his father, John Wesley Thompson Falkner. However, John had little confidence in Murry's ability to run a business and sold the railroad for $75,000. Following the sale of the railroad business, Murry became disappointed and planned a new start for his family by moving to Texas and becoming a rancher. Maud, however, disagreed with this proposition, and it was decided that they would move to Oxford, Mississippi, where Murry's father owned several businesses, making it easy for Murry to find work.^[5] Thus, only four days prior to William's fifth birthday, the Falkner family settled in Oxford on September 21, 1902,^[4][6] where he resided on and off for the remainder of his life.

His family, particularly his mother Maud, his maternal grandmother Lelia Butler, and Caroline Barr (the black woman who raised him from infancy) crucially influenced the development of Faulkner’s artistic imagination. Both his mother and grandmother were great readers and also painters and photographers, educating him in visual language. While Murry enjoyed the outdoors and taught his sons to hunt, track, and fish, Maud valued education and took pleasure in reading and going to church. She taught her sons to read before sending them to public school and exposed them to classics such as Charles Dickens and Grimms' Fairy Tales.^[7] Faulkner's life-long education by Callie Barr is central to his novels' preoccupations with the politics of sexuality and race.^[8]

As a schoolchild, Faulkner had much success early on. He excelled in the first grade, skipped the second, and continued doing well through the third and fourth grades. However, beginning somewhere in the fourth and fifth grades of his schooling, Faulkner became a much more quiet and withdrawn child. ^[9] He began to play hooky occasionally and became somewhat indifferent to his schoolwork, even though he began to study the history of Mississippi on his own time in the seventh grade. The decline of his performance in school continued and Faulkner wound up repeating the eleventh, and then final grade, and never graduating high school.^[10]

Faulkner also spent much of his boyhood listening to stories told to him by his elders. These included war stories shared by the old men of Oxford and stories told by Mammy Callie of the Civil War, slavery, the Ku Klux Klan, and the Falkner family. Faulkner's grandfather would also tell him of the exploits of William's great-grandfather, after whom he was named, William Clark Falkner, who was a successful businessman, writer, and a Civil War hero. Telling stories about William Clark Falkner, whom the family called "Old Colonel," had already become something of a family pastime when Faulkner was a boy.^[11] According to one of Faulkner's biographers, by the time William was born, his great-grandfather had "been enshrined long since as a household deity."^[12]

In adolescence, Faulkner began writing poetry almost exclusively. He did not write his first novel until 1925. His literary influences are deep and wide. He once stated that he modeled his early writing on the Romantic era in late 18th century and early 19th century England.^[4] He attended the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss) in Oxford, and was a member of Sigma Alpha Epsilon social fraternity. He enrolled at Ole Miss in 1919, and attended three semesters before dropping out in November 1920.^[13] William was able to attend classes at the university due to his father having a job there as a business manager. He skipped classes often and received a "D" grade in English. However, some of his poems were published in campus journals.^[14][15]

When he was seventeen, Faulkner met Philip Stone, who would become an important early influence on his writing. Stone was then four years his senior and came from one of Oxford's older families. He was passionate about literature and had already earned bachelor's degrees from Yale and the University of Mississippi. Stone read and was impressed by some of Faulkner's early poetry and was one of the first to discover Faulkner's talent and artistic potential. Stone became a literary mentor to the young Faulkner, introducing him to writers such as James Joyce, who would come to have an influence on Faulkner's own writing. In his early twenties, Faulkner would give poems and short stories he had written to Stone, in hopes of them being published. Stone would in turn send these to publishers, but they were uniformly rejected.^[16]

The younger Faulkner was greatly influenced by the history of his family and the region in which he lived. Mississippi marked his sense of humor, his sense of the tragic position of Black and White Americans, his characterization of Southern characters, and his timeless themes, including fiercely intelligent people dwelling behind the façades of good old boys and simpletons. Unable to join the United States Army due to his height (he was 5' 5½"), Faulkner enlisted in the British Royal Flying Corps, later training at RFC bases in Canada and Britain, yet never experienced wartime action during the First World War.^[4][6]

In 1918, upon enlisting in the RFC, Faulkner himself made the change to his surname from the original "Falkner." However, according to one story, a careless typesetter simply made an error. When the misprint appeared on the title page of his first book, Faulkner was asked whether he wanted a change. He supposedly replied, "Either way suits me."^[17] Although Faulkner is heavily identified with Mississippi, he was residing in New Orleans, Louisiana in 1925 when he wrote his first novel, Soldiers' Pay,^[4] after being directly influenced by Sherwood Anderson to attempt fiction writing. Anderson also assisted in the publication of Soldier's Pay and of Mosquitoes, Faulkner's second novel, by recommending them both to his own publisher.^[18] The miniature house at 624 Pirate's Alley, just around the corner from St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans is now the premises of Faulkner House Books, where it also serves as the headquarters of the Pirate's Alley Faulkner Society. ^[19]

During the summer of 1927, Faulkner wrote his first novel set in his fictional Yoknapatawpha County, entitled Flags in the Dust. This novel drew heavily on the traditions and history of the South, in which Faulkner had been engrossed in his youth. He was very proud of his novel upon its completion and he believed it to be a significant improvement from his previous two novels. However, when submitted for publication, it was rejected by the publishers Boni & Liveright. This came as a huge shock to Faulkner, but he eventually allowed his literary agent, Ben Wasson to significantly edit the text and the novel was finally published in 1928 as Sartoris.^[20][21]

In the fall of 1928, when Faulkner was thirty years old, he began working on The Sound and the Fury. He started by writing three short stories about a group of children with the last name Compson, but Faulkner soon began to feel that the characters he had created would be better suited for a full-length novel. Perhaps as a result of his disappointment in the initial rejection of Flags in the Dust, Faulkner had now become indifferent to his publishers and wrote this novel in a much more experimental style. In describing his writing process for this work, Faulkner would later say, "One day I seemed to shut the door between me and all publisher’s addresses and book lists. I said to myself, Now I can write."^[22] After its completion, Faulkner this time insisted that Ben Wasson not do any editing or add any punctuation for clarity.^[23]

In 1929 Faulkner married Estelle Oldham. Estelle brought with her two children from her previous marriage to Cornell Franklin and Faulkner intended to support his new family as a writer. Beginning in 1930, Faulkner sent out some of his short stories to various national magazines. Several of his stories were published and this brought him enough income to buy a house in Oxford for his family to live in, which he named "Rowan Oak."^[24]

By 1932, however, Faulkner was in a much less secure financial position. He had asked his agent, Ben Wasson to sell the serialization rights for his newly completed novel, Light in August, to a magazine for $5,000, but no magazine accepted the offer. Then, MGM Studios offered Faulkner work as a screenwriter in Hollywood. While Faulkner was not a fan of film, he needed the money, and so he accepted the job offer and arrived in Culver City California in May of 1932. There he worked with director Howard Hawks, with whom he got along well, as they both enjoyed drinking and hunting. Faulkner would continue to find work as a screenwriter for years to come throughout the 1930s and 1940s.^[25][26]

Faulkner served as Writer-in-Residence at the University of Virginia at Charlottesville from February to June 1957 and again in 1958.^[27] He suffered serious injuries in a horse-riding accident in 1959, and died from a myocardial infarction, aged 64, on July 6, 1962, at Wright's Sanitorium in Byhalia, Mississippi.^[4][6] He is buried along with his family in St. Peter's Cemetery in Oxford, along with a family friend with the mysterious initials E.T.^[28]

William Faulkner's Underwood Universal Portable typewriter in his office at Rowan Oak, which is now maintained by the University of Mississippi in Oxford as a museum

Personal life[link]

As a teenager in Oxford, Faulkner dated Estelle Oldham, the popular daughter of Major Lemuel and Lida Oldham, and believed he would some day marry her.^[29] However, Estelle dated other boys during their romance, and one of them, Cornell Franklin, ended up proposing marriage to her before Faulkner did, in 1918. Estelle's parents insisted she marry Cornell, as he was an Ole Miss law graduate, had recently been commissioned as a major in the Hawaiian Territorial Forces, and came from a respectable family with which they were old friends.^[30] Estelle's marriage to Franklin fell apart ten years later, and she was divorced in April 1929.^[31] Faulkner married Estelle in June 1929 at College Hill Presbyterian Church just outside of Oxford, Mississippi.^[32] They honeymooned on the Mississippi Gulf Coast at Pascagoula, then returned to Oxford, first living with relatives while they searched for a home of their own to purchase. In 1930 Faulkner purchased the antebellum home Rowan Oak, known at that time as "The Shegog Place" from Irish planter Robert Shegog.^[33] He and his daughter, Jill, lived at Rowan Oak until after her mother's death. The property was sold to the University of Mississippi in 1972. The house and furnishings are maintained much as they were in Faulkner's day. Faulkner's scribblings are still preserved on the wall there, including the day-by-day outline covering an entire week that he wrote out on the walls of his small study to help him keep track of the plot twists in the novel A Fable.

The quality and quantity of Faulkner's literary output were achieved despite a lifelong drinking problem. Since he rarely drank while writing, instead preferring to binge after a project's completion, it is generally agreed that his alcohol use was an escape from the pressures of everyday life and unrelated to his creativity.^[34] Whatever the source of his addiction, it undoubtedly weakened his health.

Faulkner is known to have had several extramarital affairs. One was with Howard Hawks's secretary and script girl, Meta Carpenter.^[35] Another, from 1949–53, was with a young writer, Joan Williams, who made her relationship with Faulkner the subject of her 1971 novel, The Wintering.^[36]

When Faulkner visited Stockholm in December 1950 to receive the Nobel Prize, he met Else Jonsson (1912–1996) and they had an affair that lasted until the end of 1953. Else was the widow of journalist Thorsten Jonsson (1910–1950), reporter for Dagens Nyheter in New York 1943–1946, who had interviewed Faulkner in 1946 and introduced his works to the Swedish readers. At the banquet in 1950 where they met, publisher Tor Bonnier referred to Else as widow of the man responsible for Faulkner being awarded the prize.^[37]

Writing[link]

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

From the early 1920s to the outbreak of World War II, when Faulkner left for California, he published 13 novels and numerous short stories. This body of work formed the basis of his reputation and led to him being awarded the Nobel Prize at age 52. This prodigious output, mainly driven by an obscure writer's need for money, includes his most celebrated novels such as The Sound and the Fury (1929), As I Lay Dying (1930), Light in August (1932), and Absalom, Absalom! (1936). Faulkner was also a prolific writer of short stories.

His first short story collection, These 13 (1931), includes many of his most acclaimed (and most frequently anthologized) stories, including "A Rose for Emily", "Red Leaves", "That Evening Sun", and "Dry September". Faulkner set many of his short stories and novels in Yoknapatawpha County^[38]—based on, and nearly geographically identical to, Lafayette County, of which his hometown of Oxford, Mississippi is the county seat. Yoknapatawpha was Faulkner's "postage stamp", and the bulk of work that it represents is widely considered by critics to amount to one of the most monumental fictional creations in the history of literature. Three novels, The Hamlet, The Town and The Mansion, known collectively as the Snopes Trilogy, document the town of Jefferson and its environs, as an extended family headed by Flem Snopes insinuates itself into the lives and psyches of the general populace.^{[citation needed]}

Faulkner was known^{[by whom?]} for his experimental style with meticulous attention to diction and cadence. In contrast to the minimalist understatement of his contemporary Ernest Hemingway, Faulkner made frequent use of "stream of consciousness" in his writing, and wrote often highly emotional, subtle, cerebral, complex, and sometimes Gothic or grotesque stories of a wide variety of characters including former slaves or descendants of slaves, poor white, agrarian, or working-class Southerners, and Southern aristocrats.

In an interview with The Paris Review in 1956, Faulkner remarked, "Let the writer take up surgery or bricklaying if he is interested in technique. There is no mechanical way to get the writing done, no shortcut. The young writer would be a fool to follow a theory. Teach yourself by your own mistakes; people learn only by error. The good artist believes that nobody is good enough to give him advice. He has supreme vanity. No matter how much he admires the old writer, he wants to beat him." Another esteemed Southern writer, Flannery O'Connor, stated that "the presence alone of Faulkner in our midst makes a great difference in what the writer can and cannot permit himself to do. Nobody wants his mule and wagon stalled on the same track the Dixie Limited is roaring down." ^[39]

Faulkner wrote two volumes of poetry which were published in small printings, The Marble Faun (1924)^[40] and A Green Bough (1933), and a collection of crime-fiction short stories, Knight's Gambit (1949).

Criticism[link]

Faulkner's work has been examined by many different critics from a wide variety of critical perspectives. The New Critics became very interested in Faulkner's work, with Cleanth Brooks writing The Yoknapatawpha County and Michael Millgate writing The Achievement of William Faulkner. Since then, critics have looked at Faulkner's work using other approaches, such as feminist and psychoanalytic methods.^[41][42] Faulkner's works have been placed within the literary traditions of modernism and the Southern Renaissance.^[43]

Awards[link]

Faulkner won the 1949 Nobel Prize for Literature for "his powerful and artistically unique contribution to the modern American novel."^[44] It was awarded at the following year's banquet along with the 1950 Prize to Bertrand Russell.^[45] Faulkner detested the fame and glory that resulted from his recognition. His aversion was so great that his 17-year-old daughter learned of the Nobel Prize only when she was called to the principal’s office during the school day.^[46] He donated part of his Nobel money "to establish a fund to support and encourage new fiction writers", eventually resulting in the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, and donated another part to a local Oxford bank, establishing a scholarship fund to help educate African-American teachers at Rust College in nearby Holly Springs, Mississippi.

Faulkner won two Pulitzer Prizes for what are considered "minor" novels: his 1954 novel A Fable, which took the Pulitzer in 1955, and the 1962 novel, The Reivers, which was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer in 1963.^[3] He also won the U.S. National Book Award twice, for Collected Stories in 1951^[47] and A Fable in 1955.^[48] In 1946 he was one of three finalists for the first Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Award and placed second to Rhea Galati.^[49]

The United States Postal Service issued a 22-cent postage stamp in his honor on August 3, 1987.^[50]

Bibliography[link]

Audio recordings[link]

• 'Ole Miss 1949 Nobel Prize acceptance speech and excerpts from As I Lay Dying, The Old Man and A Fable, plus readings by Debra Winger ("A Rose for Emily", "Barn Burning"), Keith Carradine ("Spotted Horses") and Arliss Howard ("That Evening Sun", "Wash"). Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award.
• William Faulkner Reads: The Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech, Selections from As I Lay Dying, A Fable, The Old Man. Caedmon/Harper Audio, 1992. Cassette. ISBN 1-55994-572-9
• William Faulkner Reads from His Work. Arcady Series, MGM E3617 ARC, 1957. Faulkner reads from The Sound and The Fury (side one) and Light in August (side two). Produced by Jean Stein, who also did the liner notes with Edward Cole. Cover photograph by Robert Capa (Magnum).
• From 1957–1958, William Faulkner was the University of Virginia's Writer in Residence (the first). There are audio recordings of his time at the University of Virginia, and they have now been made available online at Faulkner at Virginia

See also[link]

Literature portal

• Faux Faulkner contest

References[link]

Citations

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: William Faulkner

• William Faulkner on the Web
• Teaching Faulkner
• William Faulkner at the Mississippi Writers Page
• Jean Stein vanden Heuvel (Spring 1956). "William Faulkner, The Art of Fiction No. 12". The Paris Review. http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4954/the-art-of-fiction-no-12-william-faulkner. 
• Nobel Prize in Literature Acceptance Speech (text and audio)
• William Faulkner: Literature Giant
• Faulkner and Love: The Women Who Shaped His Art, A Biography on his two "mothers", his wife, and their Jim Crow world.
• (Audio) William Faulkner reads the 1949 Nobel Prize acceptance speech and excerpts from As I Lay Dying, The Old Man and A Fable.
• William Faulkner biography, quotes, multimedia, & teacher resources
• Faulkner Link to Plantation Diary Discovered, the diary of Francis Terry Leak and their connection to the work of William Faulkner
• Hisao Tanaka, "Two American Dreamers in Faulkner's Fiction" Hiroshima Interdisciplinary Studies in the Humanities, Vol.2 page.28-37