western literature week16

	Walter "Walt" Whitman was an American poet, essayist, and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse. His work was very controversial in its time, particularly his poetry collection Leaves of Grass, which was described as obscene for its overt sexuality.
	The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the President of the United States, located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C. It has been the residence of every U.S. president since John Adams in 1800. The term White House is often used as a synecdoche to refer to actions of the president and his advisers, as in "The White House announced that...".
	Reconciliation, in Christian theology, is an element of salvation that refers to the results of atonement. Reconciliation is the end of the estrangement, caused by original sin, between God and humanity. John Calvin describes reconciliation as the peace between humanity and God that results from the expiation of religious sin and the propitiation of God's wrath.
	A generation is "all of the people born and living at about the same time, regarded collectively." It can also be described as, "the average period, generally considered to be about thirty years, during which children are born and grow up, become adults, and begin to have children of their own."
	The Tower of Babel is a Near Eastern etiological myth that is recorded in the Jewish Tanakh's first book (Genesis); it is meant to explain the origin of different languages. According to the story, a united humanity of the generations following the Great Flood, speaking a single language and migrating eastward, came to the land of Shinar. There they agreed to build a city and a tower "tall enough to reach heaven"; seeing this, God, viewing such behavior as rude and disrespectful, confounded their speech so that they could no longer understand each other and scattered them around the world.
	In the Abrahamic religions, Noah was the tenth and last of the pre-flood Patriarchs. The story of Noah's Ark is told in the Bible's Genesis flood narrative. The biblical account is followed by the story of the Curse of Canaan. Besides the Book of Genesis, Noah is also mentioned in the First book of Chronicles, and the books of Tobit, Wisdom, Sirach, Isaiah, Ezekiel, 2 Esdras, 4 Maccabees; and in the New Testament in the Gospel of Matthew, the Gospel of Luke, the Epistle to the Hebrews, 1st Peter and 2nd Peter. Noah was the subject of much elaboration in the literature of later Abrahamic religions, including the Quran .
	A scarecrow or hay-man is a decoy or mannequin in the shape of a human. It is usually dressed in old clothes and placed in open fields to discourage birds such as crows or sparrows from disturbing and feeding on recently cast seed and growing crops.
	A raven is one of several larger-bodied species of the genus Corvus. These species do not form a single taxonomic group within the genus. There is no consistent distinction between "crows" and "ravens", and these appellations have been assigned to different species chiefly on the basis of their size, crows generally being smaller than ravens. In Europe, the word "crow" is used to refer to the carrion crow or the hooded crow, while in North America it is used for the American crow, fish crow, or the northwestern crow.
	Alms or almsgiving involves giving to others as an act of virtue, either materially or in the sense of providing capabilities (e.g. education) for free. It exists in a number of religions and regions.
	Joseph is a masculine given name originating from Hebrew, recorded in the Hebrew Bible, as יוֹסֵף, Standard Hebrew Yossef, Tiberian Hebrew and Aramaic Yôsēp̄. The name can be translated from Hebrew יוסף יהוה yosef YHWH as signifying "Yahweh will/shall increase/add".The name appears already in the book of Genesis Joseph is Jacob's eleventh son and Rachel's first son, and known in the Jewish Bible as Yossef ben-Yaakov.
	The Western canon is the body of books, music, and art that scholars generally accept as the most important and influential in shaping Western culture. It includes works of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, drama, music, art, sculpture, and architecture generally perceived as being of major artistic merit and representing the high culture of Europe and North America. Philosopher John Searle suggests that the Western canon can be roughly defined as "a certain Western intellectual tradition that goes from, say, Socrates to Wittgenstein in philosophy, and from Homer to James Joyce in literature".
	Pachelbel's Canon is the name commonly given to a canon by the German Baroque composer Johann Pachelbel in his Canon and Gigue for 3 violins and basso continuo, sometimes referred to as Canon and Gigue in D or simply Canon in D. Neither the date nor the circumstances of its composition are known (suggested dates range from 1680 to 1706), and the oldest surviving manuscript copy of the piece dates from the 19th century.