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François De Belleforest
François de Belleforest (1530 – 1 January 1583) was a prolific French author, poet and translator of the Renaissance. He was born in Samatan (actual department of Gers), into a poor family, and his father (a soldier) was killed when he was seven. He spent some time in the court of Marguerite of Navarre, traveled to Toulouse and Bordeaux (where he met George Buchanan), and then to Paris where he came into contact with members of the young literary generation, including Pierre de Ronsard, Jean Antoine de Baïf, Jean Dorat, Remy Belleau, Antoine Du Verdier and Odet de Turnèbe. In 1568 he became historiographer to the king. He died in Paris. Belleforest wrote on cosmography, morals, literature and history, and he translated the works of Matteo Bandello, Boccaccio, Antonio de Guevara, Lodovico Guicciardini, Polydore Vergil, Saint Cyprian, Sebastian Münster, Achilles Tatius, Cicero and Demosthenes into French. He is also the author of the first French pastoral novel, ''La Py ...
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Giovanni Boccaccio
Giovanni Boccaccio (, , ; 16 June 1313 – 21 December 1375) was an Italian writer, poet, correspondent of Petrarch, and an important Renaissance humanist. Born in the town of Certaldo, he became so well known as a writer that he was sometimes simply known as "the Certaldese" and one of the most important figures in the European literary panorama of the fourteenth century. Some scholars (including Vittore Branca) define him as the greatest European prose writer of his time, a versatile writer who amalgamated different literary trends and genres, making them converge in original works, thanks to a creative activity exercised under the banner of experimentalism. His most notable works are ''The Decameron'', a collection of short stories which in the following centuries was a determining element for the Italian literary tradition, especially after Pietro Bembo elevated the Boccaccian style to a model of Italian prose in the sixteenth century, and ''On Famous Women''. He wrot ...
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Pierre Boaistuau
Pierre Boaistuau, also known as Pierre Launay or Sieur de Launay (c. 1517, Nantes – 1566, Paris), was a French Renaissance humanist writer, author of a number of popularizing compilations and discourses on various subjects. Beside his many popular titles as a writer, Boaistuau was also an editor, translator and compiler. He holds a very special place in literary developments in the middle and second half of the sixteenth century as the importer of two influential genres in France, the 'histoire tragique' and the 'histoire prodigieuse'. He was also the first editor of Marguerite of Navarre's collection of nouvelles that is known today as ''Heptameron''. Life Boaistuau was born in Nantes and later studied civil and canon law in the universities of Poitiers, Valence (where he was a student of the eminent jurist Jean de Coras), and Avignon (where he studied under the guidance of Emilio Ferretti). During his student years, he worked as the secretary of the French ambassador to the Ea ...
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Histoires Tragiques
Histoires tragiques ('tragic stories') were a genre of French fiction in 16th-17th centuries, a Baroque rendering of Boccaccio's type of short stories, concentrating on the dark side of human nature. The progenitor of this kind of a story was Pierre Boaistuau with his translation of Matteo Bandello's ''Novelli'' published in French as ''Histoires tragiques'' (1559). Boaistuau selected from Bandello six most dark and gorey stories and changed them for his means. He was followed by François de Belleforest who adapted 12 more stories for the new edition in 1570. Those dark mood stories were imitated by writers like Jacques Yver (''Le Printemps d’Yver'', 1572), Vérité Habanc (''Nouvelles Histoires tant tragiques que comiques'', 1585), Bénigne Poissenot (''Nouvelles Histoires Tragiques'', 1586), Alexandre Sylvain (''Epitomes de cent histoires tragicques'', 1581), and Bruneau de Rivedoux (''Histoire véritable de certains voyages périlleux et hasardeux sur la mer'', 1599). Franç ...
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François Hotman
François Hotman (23 August 1524 – 12 February 1590) was a French Protestant lawyer and writer, associated with the legal humanists and with the monarchomaques, who struggled against absolute monarchy. His first name is often written 'Francis' in English. His surname is Latinized by himself as Hotomanus, by others as Hotomannus and Hottomannus. He has been called "one of the first modern revolutionaries".Kelley, donald R. ''François Hotman. A revolutionary's ordeal'' (1973), cited in Billington, James H. (1980) ''Fire in the Minds of Men'', Basic Books (New York), p. 18, Biography He was born in Paris, the eldest son of Pierre Hotman (1485–1554), Seigneur de Villers-St-Paul, jure uxoris and Paule de Marle, heiress of the Seigneurie de Vaugien and Villers-St-Paul. His grandfather Lambert Hotman, a Silesian burgher, emigrating from Emmerich, (in the Duchy of Cleves), had left his native country to go to France with Engelbert, Count of Nevers. His father Pierre was a ...
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Jorge De Montemayor
( es, Jorge de Montemayor) (1520? – 26 February 1561) was a Portuguese novelist and poet, who wrote almost exclusively in Spanish. His most famous work is a pastoral prose romance, the ''Diana'' (1559). Biography He was born at Montemor-o-Velho (near Coimbra), whence he derived his name, the Spanish form of which is Montemayor. He seems to have studied music in his youth, and to have gone to Spain in 1543 as chorister in the suite of the Portuguese Infanta Maria, first wife of Philip II. In 1552 he went back to Portugal in the suite of the Infanta Juana, wife of João Manuel, Prince of Portugal, and on the death of this prince in 1554 returned to Spain. He is said to have served in the army, to have accompanied Philip II to England in 1555, and to have travelled in Italy and the Low Countries; but it is certain that his poetical works were published at Antwerp in 1554, and again in 1558. His reputation is based on a prose work, the '' Diana'', a pastoral romance publis ...
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French Language
French ( or ) is a Romance language of the Indo-European family. It descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire, as did all Romance languages. French evolved from Gallo-Romance, the Latin spoken in Gaul, and more specifically in Northern Gaul. Its closest relatives are the other langues d'oïl—languages historically spoken in northern France and in southern Belgium, which French ( Francien) largely supplanted. French was also influenced by native Celtic languages of Northern Roman Gaul like Gallia Belgica and by the ( Germanic) Frankish language of the post-Roman Frankish invaders. Today, owing to France's past overseas expansion, there are numerous French-based creole languages, most notably Haitian Creole. A French-speaking person or nation may be referred to as Francophone in both English and French. French is an official language in 29 countries across multiple continents, most of which are members of the ''Organisation internationale de la Francophonie'' ...
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Demosthenes
Demosthenes (; el, Δημοσθένης, translit=Dēmosthénēs; ; 384 – 12 October 322 BC) was a Greek statesman and orator in ancient Athens. His orations constitute a significant expression of contemporary Athenian intellectual prowess and provide insight into the politics and culture of ancient Greece during the 4th century BC. Demosthenes learned rhetoric by studying the speeches of previous great orators. He delivered his first judicial speeches at the age of 20, in which he successfully argued that he should gain from his guardians what was left of his inheritance. For a time, Demosthenes made his living as a professional speechwriter ( logographer) and a lawyer, writing speeches for use in private legal suits. Demosthenes grew interested in politics during his time as a logographer, and in 354 BC he gave his first public political speeches. He went on to devote his most productive years to opposing Macedon's expansion. He idealized his city and stro ...
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Cicero
Marcus Tullius Cicero ( ; ; 3 January 106 BC – 7 December 43 BC) was a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, philosopher, and academic skeptic, who tried to uphold optimate principles during the political crises that led to the establishment of the Roman Empire. His extensive writings include treatises on rhetoric, philosophy and politics, and he is considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists. He came from a wealthy municipal family of the Roman equestrian order, and served as consul in 63 BC. His influence on the Latin language was immense. He wrote more than three-quarters of extant Latin literature that is known to have existed in his lifetime, and it has been said that subsequent prose was either a reaction against or a return to his style, not only in Latin but in European languages up to the 19th century. Cicero introduced into Latin the arguments of the chief schools of Hellenistic philosophy and created a Latin philosophical vocabulary ...
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Achilles Tatius
Achilles Tatius (Greek: Ἀχιλλεὺς Τάτιος, ''Achilleus Tatios'') of Alexandria was a Roman-era Greek writer of the 2nd century AD whose fame is attached to his only surviving work, the ancient Greek novel, or ''romance'', '' The Adventures of Leucippe and Clitophon''. Life and minor works Eustathius of Thessalonica (in his commentary on Homer's ''Odyssey'' 14.350), the ''Suda'', Photius, in his '' Bibliotheca'' (cod. 87), and the manuscript tradition all affirm he lived and wrote in Alexandria. The papyrus, and linguistic evidence demonstrate he flourished early in the 2nd century AD. Suda preserves a tradition that "He became at last a Christian and a bishop." There are literary parallels between Leucippe and Clitophon and the Christian Acts of Andrew, a roughly contemporary composition. The ''Suda'' also ascribes to the author a work on the sphere (in Greek ), a fragment of which, professing to be an introduction to the ''Phaenomena'' of Aratus, may st ...
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Sebastian Münster
Sebastian Münster (20 January 1488 – 26 May 1552) was a German cartographer and cosmographer. He also was a Christian Hebraist scholar who taught as a professor at the University of Basel. His well-known work, the highly accurate world map, '' Cosmographia'', sold well and went through 24 editions. Its influence was widely spread by a production of woodcuts created of it by a variety of artists. Life He was born in Ingelheim, near Mainz, the son of Andreas Münster. His parents and other ancestors were farmers. In 1505, he entered the Franciscan order. Four years later, he entered a monastery where he became a student of Konrad Pelikan for five years. Münster completed his studies at the University of Tübingen in 1518. His graduate adviser was Johannes Stöffler.He left the Franciscans for the Lutheran Church in order to accept an appointment at the Reformed Church-dominated University of Basel in 1529. He had long harboured an interest in Lutheranism, and during the German ...
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Cyprian
Cyprian (; la, Thaschus Caecilius Cyprianus; 210 – 14 September 258 AD''The Liturgy of the Hours according to the Roman Rite: Vol. IV.'' New York: Catholic Book Publishing Company, 1975. p. 1406.) was a bishop of Carthage and an early Christian writer of Berber descent, many of whose Latin works are extant. He is recognized as a saint in the Western and Eastern churches. He was born around the beginning of the 3rd century in North Africa, perhaps at Carthage, where he received a classical education. Soon after converting to Christianity, he became a bishop in 249. A controversial figure during his lifetime, his strong pastoral skills, firm conduct during the Novatianist heresy and outbreak of the Plague of Cyprian (named after him due to his description of it), and eventual martyrdom at Carthage established his reputation and proved his sanctity in the eyes of the Church. His skillful Latin rhetoric led to his being considered the pre-eminent Latin writer of Western Chr ...
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