Tasso Vtas-scA, Torquato (b. March 11, 1544, Sorrento, Kingdom of Naples—d. April 25, 1595, Rome) Italian poet. The son of a poet and courtier, Tasso became a courtier of Duke Alfonso II d’Este at Ferrara. In a period of intense poetic activity he produced the pastoral drama L’Aminta (1581; performed 1573), a lyrical idealization of court life. In 1575 he completed his celebrated masterpiece on the First Crusade, Gerusalemme liberata (1581; Jerusalem Delivered), a heroic epic in ottava rima that blends historical events with imaginary romantic and idyllic episodes. He developed a persecution mania and from 1579 to 1586 was incarcerated in a hospital by order of the duke. Gerusalemme was translated and imitated in many European languages, and Tasso was the subject of literary legend for centuries. He is regarded as the greatest Ital¬ ian poet of the late Renaissance.
taste or taste perception Special sense for perceiving and distin¬ guishing the sweet, sour, bitter, or salty quality of a dissolved substance, mediated by taste buds on the tongue. More than 9,000 taste buds on the tongue are responsible for the chemoreception of taste. Some taste buds are also found on the roof of the mouth and throat. See illustration on fol¬ lowing page.
Tatar Vta-tor\ or Tartar Any member of the Turkic-speaking peoples who today live mainly in west-central Russia east to the Ural Mountains, in Kazakhstan, and in western Siberia. They first appeared as nomadic tribes in northeastern Mongolia in the 5th century. Some joined the armies of Genghis Khan. Especially identified with the Golden Horde, they were converted to Islam in the 14th century. The Golden Horde soon became independent Tatar khanates (see khan). Their economy was based on mixed farming and herding, which remain central to their economy. They developed craftsmanship in wood, ceramics, leather, cloth, and metal and have been well known as traders. Today there are about six million Tatars in all regions; they constitute about half the population of the Russian republic of Tatarstan. See also Tatar language.
Tatar Vta-tor\ language formerly Volga Tatar language Turkic language with some eight million speakers. Its speakers include less than half the population of Tatarstan in Russia, with the remainder scattered in enclaves across eastern European Russian, Siberia, and the Central Asian republics. Tatar, like the closely related Bashkir language, is characterized by a remarkable series of vowel shifts that distinguish it (at least in its most characteristic varieties) from all other Turkic languages. It has numerous dialect distinctions; the conventional division is between a central group that includes the Tatar of most of Tatarstan and the literary language based on Kazan speech, a western group, and an eastern group. Crimean Tatar, belonging to the southwestern group of Turkic languages, and Chulym Tatar, belonging to the northeastern group, are not closely related to Tatar.
Tatar Strait Vta-,tar\ Wide passage in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, connecting the Sea of Japan (East Sea) and the Sea of Okhotsk. Located between Sakhalin Island and Russia’s Far East mainland, it is generally shallow, with depths less than 700 ft (210 m). Ice impedes its ports for half the year.
Tate, (John Orley) Allen (b. Nov. 19, 1899, Winchester, Ky., U.S.—d. Feb. 9, 1979, Nashville, Tenn.) U.S. poet and novelist. While attending Vanderbilt University Tate helped found The Fugitive (1922- 25), a poetry magazine concentrating largely on the South, and contrib¬ uted to I’ll Take My Stand (1930), a Fugitive manifesto defending the region’s conservative agrarian society. From 1934 he taught at several institutions, including Princeton University and the University of Minne¬ sota, becoming a leading exponent of the New Criticism. He emphasized the writer’s need for tradition, which he found in Southern culture and later in Roman Catholicism, to which he converted in 1950. His best- known poem is “Ode to the Confederate Dead” (1926).
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Tate ► Taunton I 1877
A. Taste centres on the tongue's surface. Taste buds on the tip of the tongue are most sensitive to sweet tastes, those on the sides to sour, those at the back to bitter, and those on the tip and sides to salty. B. Close-up of a papilla showing location of the taste buds. C. Structure of a taste bud. Each is composed of narrow modified epithelial taste cells with specialized hairs (microvilli) that project into a pore open¬ ing onto the tongue's surface and of broader supporting cells. Impulses from the taste cells are carried by nerve pathways to the brain.
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Tate, Nahum (b. 1652, Dublin, Ire.—d. July 30, 1715, London, Eng.) Irish-English poet and playwright. After graduating from Trinity College, Dublin, Tate moved to London. Though he wrote plays of his own, he is best known for his adaptations of Elizabethan works, notably William Shakespeare’s King Lear , with a happy ending, which was performed well into the 19th century. He wrote the libretto for Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas (1689?) and collaborated with Nicholas Brady in A New Version of the Psalms of David (1696). The best of his own poems is “Panacea: A Poem upon Tea” (1700). He became England’s poet laureate in 1692.
Tate Gallery Art museum in London housing the national collection of British painting and sculpture and of modem British and European art since c. 1870. It is named after Sir Henry Tate (1819-1899), a sugar refiner and inventor of the sugar cube, who donated his collection of Victorian art to the nation in 1890. The Neoclassical building, designed by Sidney R. J. Smith, opened in 1897. Originally administered by the National Gallery,
the museum became completely independent only in 1954. In 1987 the Clore Gallery was built to house the principal collection of J.M.W. Turner’s works. In 1988 a branch was opened in Liverpool. The Tate Modern, a con¬ verted power plant housing the modem collections, opened in 2000.
Tathagata \t9-'ta-g9-to\ Epithet of the Buddha that he employed pri¬ marily when referring to himself. He also used it to refer to other bud- dhas who preceded him and who would follow. Tathagatha refers to one who has trod the path to full awakening and so reached the end of suf¬ fering and escaped samsara. The implication is that the path is open to all who would follow it. In later Mahayana Buddhism, Tathagata came to mean the essential buddha nature found in everyone.
Tati \ta-'te\, Jacques orig. Jacques Tatischeff (b. Oct. 9, 1908, Le Pecq, France—d. Nov. 5, 1982, Paris) French film actor and director. He became a popular music-hall entertainer in the 1930s with a pantomime act that caricatured athletes. After appearing in comedy shorts, he wrote, directed, and starred in a series of comic feature films— Jour de fete (1949), Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday (1953), Mon oncle (1958), Playtime (1968), Traffic (1971), and Parade (1974)—in which he became known for his inspired physical comedy and his accident-prone alter ego. Mon¬ sieur Hulot. In his films Tati forsakes traditional narrative in favour of vignettes that use sight gags, timing, mannerisms, and physical action to reveal the humour and texture of modem living.
Tatlin \'tat-lyin\, Vladimir (Yevgrafovich) (b. Dec. 16, 1885, Kharkov, Russian Empire—d. May 31, 1953, Moscow, U.S.S.R.) Ukrai¬ nian sculptor and painter. After a visit to Paris (1914), he became the leader of a group of Moscow artists who sought to apply engineering techniques to sculpture construction, a movement that developed into Constructivism. He pioneered the use of iron, glass, wood, and wire in nonrepresentational constructions. His Monument to the Third Interna¬ tional, commissioned by the Soviet government, was one of the first buildings conceived entirely in abstract terms and was intended to be, at more than 1,300 ft (400 m), the world’s tallest structure. A model was exhibited at the 1920 Soviet Congress, but the government disapproved of nonfigurative art and it was never built. After 1933 Tatlin worked largely as a stage designer.