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Cressida (butterfly)
Cressida (; also Criseida, Cresseid or Criseyde) is a character who appears in many Medieval and Renaissance retellings of the story of the Trojan War. She is a Trojan woman, the daughter of Calchas, a Greek seer. She falls in love with Troilus, the youngest son of King Priam, and pledges everlasting love, but when she is sent to the Greeks as part of a hostage exchange, she forms a liaison with the Greek warrior Diomedes. In later culture she becomes an archetype of a faithless lover. Character history The character's name is derived from that of Chryseis, a character who appears in the ''Iliad'' but has no connection with Troilus, Diomedes or Calchas. Indeed, the story of Troilus and Cressida does not appear in any Greek legends but was invented by the twelfth century French poet Benoît de Sainte-Maure in the '' Roman de Troie''. The woman in the love triangle is here called not Cressida but Briseida, a name derived from that of Briseis, a different character in the ''Iliad'' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Historia Destructionis Troiae
''Historia destructionis Troiae'' ("History of the destruction of Troy"), also called ''Historia Troiana'', is a Latin prose narrative written by Guido delle Colonne, a Sicilian author, in the early 13th century. Its main source was the Old French verse romance by Benoît de Sainte-Maure, ''Roman de Troie''. The author claims that the bulk of the work was written in 71 days, from September 15 to November 25 of an unspecified year, with the full text being completed some time in 1287. As a result of this hasty composition, the work is sloppy at points and prone toward anacoluthon.Griffin, ed., ppxi an In later centuries several translations of Guido's work appeared, in Catalan, Dutch, English, French, Polish, Czech, German and Italian: * ''Històries troianes'', translated to Catalan by Jaume Conesa, in 1367 * John Lydgate, ''Troy Book'', written in English around 1412-1420 * '' The gest hystoriale of the destruction of Troy'', in English alliterative meter * Jacques Milet, ''La ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Troilus And Cressida (opera)
''Troilus and Cressida'' is the first of the two operas by William Walton, and was premiered in 1954. The libretto was by Christopher Hassall, his own first opera libretto, based on Geoffrey Chaucer's poem ''Troilus and Criseyde''. Walton dedicated the score to his wife, Susana. Composition history The genesis of the opera dated back to the mid-1940s, after the success of Benjamin Britten's first great operatic success, ''Peter Grimes''. Walton intended to counter this work with an opera of his own, and Alice Wimborne, Walton's companion at the time, suggested the story of Troilus and Cressida as a subject. Wimborne had suggested Hassell as librettist, in spite of the fact that he had never written an opera libretto. During the course of composition, Walton and Hassell carried out an extensive correspondence. Walton edited passages by Hassell from the libretto that he deemed inappropriate, or in his own coined term, "Novelloismo". The opera took seven years to complete. Performa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Christopher Hassall
Christopher Vernon Hassall (24 March 1912 – 25 April 1963) was an English actor, dramatist, librettist, lyricist and poet, who found his greatest fame in a memorable musical partnership with the actor and composer Ivor Novello after working together in the same touring company. He was also a noted biographer of Rupert Brooke (1964, Faber and Faber) and Edward Marsh (1958, James Tait Black Memorial Prize 1959). Biography Hassall was born in London and educated at St Michael's College, Tenbury, Brighton College and Wadham College, Oxford. He was the son of the illustrator John Hassall and brother of Joan Hassall, who engraved the title page of his book of poetry, ''Devil's Dyke'', published in 1936. Hassall married the actress Eve Lynett, with whom he had a son and a daughter, the actress Imogen Hassall. Hassall was an experienced actor serving as Ivor Novello's understudy in a minor London drama when Novello invited him to provide the lyrics for a new musical. Their ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Walton
Sir William Turner Walton (29 March 19028 March 1983) was an English composer. During a sixty-year career, he wrote music in several classical genres and styles, from film scores to opera. His best-known works include ''Façade'', the cantata ''Belshazzar's Feast'', the Viola Concerto, the First Symphony, and the British coronation marches ''Crown Imperial'' and '' Orb and Sceptre''. Born in Oldham, Lancashire, the son of a musician, Walton was a chorister and then an undergraduate at Christ Church, Oxford. On leaving the university, he was taken up by the literary Sitwell siblings, who provided him with a home and a cultural education. His earliest work of note was a collaboration with Edith Sitwell, ''Façade'', which at first brought him notoriety as a modernist, but later became a popular ballet score. In middle age, Walton left Britain and set up home with his young wife Susana on the Italian island of Ischia. By this time, he had ceased to be regarded as a moderni ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Dryden
'' John Dryden (; – ) was an English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who in 1668 was appointed England's first Poet Laureate. He is seen as dominating the literary life of Restoration England to such a point that the period came to be known in literary circles as the Age of Dryden. Romanticist writer Sir Walter Scott called him "Glorious John". Early life Dryden was born in the village rectory of Aldwincle near Thrapston in Northamptonshire, where his maternal grandfather was the rector of All Saints. He was the eldest of fourteen children born to Erasmus Dryden and wife Mary Pickering, paternal grandson of Sir Erasmus Dryden, 1st Barone t (1553–1632), and wife Frances Wilkes, Puritan landowning gentry who supported the Puritan cause and Parliament. He was a second cousin once removed of Jonathan Swift. As a boy, Dryden lived in the nearby village of Titchmarsh, where it is likely that he received his first education. In 1644 he was sent to Westminst ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Troilus And Cressida
''Troilus and Cressida'' ( or ) is a play by William Shakespeare, probably written in 1602. At Troy during the Trojan War, Troilus and Cressida begin a love affair. Cressida is forced to leave Troy to join her father in the Greek camp. Meanwhile, the Greeks endeavour to lessen the pride of Achilles. The tone alternates between bawdy comedy and tragic gloom. Readers and theatre-goers have frequently found it difficult to understand how they are meant to respond to the characters. Frederick S. Boas has labelled it one of Shakespeare's problem plays. In recent years it has "stimulated exceptionally lively critical debate". Characters The Trojans * Priam, King of Troy * Priam's children: Cassandra (a prophetess), Hector, Troilus, Paris, Deiphobus, Helenus, and Margarelon (bastard) * Andromache, Hector's wife * Aeneas, a commander and leader * Antenor, another commander * Calchas, a Trojan priest who is taking part with the Greeks * Cressida, Calchas's daughter * Alexander, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the " Bard of Avon" (or simply "the Bard"). His extant works, including collaborations, consist of some 39 plays, 154 sonnets, three long narrative poems, and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. He remains arguably the most influential writer in the English language, and his works continue to be studied and reinterpreted. Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Sometime between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Testament Of Cresseid
''The Testament of Cresseid'' is a narrative poem of 616 lines in Middle Scots, written by the 15th-century Scottish makar Robert Henryson. It is his best known poem. It imagines a tragic fate for Cressida in the medieval story of ''Troilus and Criseyde'' which was left untold in Geoffrey Chaucer's version. Henryson's cogent psychological drama, in which he consciously resists and confronts the routine depiction of Cressida (Cresseid) as simply 'false', is one of the features that has given the poem enduring interest for modern readers and it is one of the most admired works of northern renaissance literature. A modern English translation by Seamus Heaney, which also included seven of Henryson's fables from ''The Morall Fabillis'', was published in 2009. Narrative outline Diomedes, an Achaean hero with whom Cresseid begins a romantic relationship after being separated from and subsequently losing romantic interest in Troilus, banishes Cresseid from his company thereby leav ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robert Henryson
Robert Henryson (Middle Scots: Robert Henrysoun) was a poet who flourished in Scotland in the period c. 1460–1500. Counted among the Scots ''makars'', he lived in the royal burgh of Dunfermline and is a distinctive voice in the Northern Renaissance at a time when the culture was on a cusp between medieval and renaissance sensibilities. Little is known of his life, but evidence suggests that he was a teacher who had training in law and the humanities, that he had a connection with Dunfermline Abbey and that he may also have been associated for a period with Glasgow University. His poetry was composed in Middle Scots at a time when this was the state language. His writing consists mainly of narrative works. His surviving body of work amounts to almost 5000 lines. Works Henryson's surviving canon consists of three long poems and around twelve miscellaneous short works in various genres. The longest poem is his '' Morall Fabillis,'' a tight, intricately structured set of thi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kingdom Of Scotland
The Kingdom of Scotland (; , ) was a sovereign state in northwest Europe traditionally said to have been founded in 843. Its territories expanded and shrank, but it came to occupy the northern third of the island of Great Britain, sharing a land border to the south with England. It suffered many invasions by the English, but under Robert the Bruce it fought a successful War of Independence and remained an independent state throughout the late Middle Ages. Following the annexation of the Hebrides and the Northern Isles from Norway in 1266 and 1472 respectively, and the final capture of the Royal Burgh of Berwick by England in 1482, the territory of the Kingdom of Scotland corresponded to that of modern-day Scotland, bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the southwest. In 1603, James VI of Scotland became King of England, joining Scotland with England in a personal union. In 1707, during the reign ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Troilus And Criseyde
''Troilus and Criseyde'' () is an epic poem by Geoffrey Chaucer which re-tells in Middle English the tragic story of the lovers Troilus and Criseyde set against a backdrop of war during the siege of Troy. It was written in '' rime royale'' and probably completed during the mid-1380s. Many Chaucer scholars regard it as the poet's finest work. As a finished long poem it is more self-contained than the better known but ultimately unfinished ''The Canterbury Tales''. This poem is often considered the source of the phrase: "all good things must come to an end" (3.615). Although Troilus is a character from Ancient Greek literature, the expanded story of him as a lover was of Medieval origin. The first known version is from Benoît de Sainte-Maure's poem ''Roman de Troie'', but Chaucer's principal source appears to have been Boccaccio, who re-wrote the tale in his ''Il Filostrato''. Chaucer attributes the story to a "Lollius" (whom he also mentions in ''The House of Fame''), although ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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