TASK DEFINITION: In this task you will be given a text passage from a trivia quiz. You should choose the category this question belongs to from these categories: History, Science, Social Science, Fine Arts, Literature. You can only choose one category, so if in doubt, please choose the closest match.
PROBLEM: The Idler and The Rambler were two periodicals written by this man, and he popularized the term "Metaphysical Poets" in his series of biographies Lives of the Poets. The title prince travels with his mentor Imlac out of Happy Valley in search of true happiness in this author's prose work, Rasselas, while his greatest accomplishment was an epic of over 115,000 entries, the standard of its type until the creation of the Oxford English version. Author of an 18th-century Dictionary of the English Language, FTP name this British writer whose own biography was written by his one-time companion James Boswell.

SOLUTION: Literature

PROBLEM: Several of his early works, including such operas as Cleonice, Demofoonte, and Artaserse, were written with librettist Pietro Metastasio. He had begun composing an opera based on the Song of Roland, but the discovery that Niccolo Piccini was given the same libretto to work on sparked a rivalry in the Parisian press and motivated him to compose Armide. Collaboration with the librettist Calzabigi resulted in the composition of the ballets Semiramide and Don Juan, as well as an opera featuring the "Dance of the Blessed Spirits" and another in whose preface he declared his intent to "restrict music to its true office of serving poetry. " FTP, identify this German classical composer of "reform" operas such as Alceste and Orfeo et Euridice.

SOLUTION: Fine Arts

PROBLEM: Particles of dielectric materials may be separated in a fractionation method that uses a nonuniform one of these. Band-bending occurs because it varies linearly in a depletion layer. Symmetric top molecules undergo line-splitting in their microwave spectrum due to the application of one of these. Modulators for active Q-switching lasers rely on an effect in which crystals lacking inversion symmetry become birefringent in linear proportion to the magnitude of one of these. Its flux through a surface is proportional to enclosed charge, and its curl is equal to the negative time partial of the magnetic field. Its magnitude is proportional to one-over-r for a line charge, and it is proportional to one over r squared for a point charge. For 10 points, name this vector field given in units of volts per meter.

SOLUTION:
Science