|
Il Canzoniere
''Il Canzoniere'' (; en, Song Book), also known as the ''Rime Sparse'' ( en, Scattered Rhymes), but originally titled ' ( en, Fragments of common things, that is ''Fragments composed in vernacular''), is a collection of poems by the Italian humanist, poet, and writer Petrarch. Though the majority of Petrarch's output was in Latin, the ''Canzoniere'' was written in the vernacular, a language of trade, despite Petrarch's view that Italian was less adequate for expression. Of its 366 poems, the vast majority are in sonnet form (317), though the sequence contains a number of canzoni (29), sestine (9), madrigals (4), and ballate (7). Its central theme is the poet's love for Laura, a woman Petrarch allegedly met on April 6, 1327, in the Church of Sainte Claire in Avignon. Though disputed, the inscription in his copy of Virgil records this information. Petrarch's meticulous dating of his manuscripts has allowed scholars to deduce that the poems were written over a period of forty ye ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paradox
A paradox is a logically self-contradictory statement or a statement that runs contrary to one's expectation. It is a statement that, despite apparently valid reasoning from true premises, leads to a seemingly self-contradictory or a logically unacceptable conclusion. A paradox usually involves contradictory-yet-interrelated elements that exist simultaneously and persist over time. They result in "persistent contradiction between interdependent elements" leading to a lasting "unity of opposites". In logic, many paradoxes exist that are known to be invalid arguments, yet are nevertheless valuable in promoting critical thinking, while other paradoxes have revealed errors in definitions that were assumed to be rigorous, and have caused axioms of mathematics and logic to be re-examined. One example is Russell's paradox, which questions whether a "list of all lists that do not contain themselves" would include itself, and showed that attempts to found set theory on the identification ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rhyme Royal
Rhyme royal (or rime royal) is a rhyming stanza form that was introduced to English poetry by Geoffrey Chaucer. The form enjoyed significant success in the fifteenth century and into the sixteenth century. It has had a more subdued but continuing influence on English verse in more recent centuries. Form The rhyme royal stanza consists of seven lines, usually in iambic pentameter. The rhyme scheme is ABABBCC. In practice, the stanza can be constructed either as a tercet and two couplets (ABA BB CC) or a quatrain and a tercet (ABAB BCC). This allows for variety, especially when the form is used for longer narrative poems. Thanks to the form's spaciousness compared to quatrains, and the sense of conclusion offered by the couplet of new rhyme in the sixth and seventh lines, it is thought to have a cyclical, reflective quality. History Introduction and success Chaucer first used the rhyme royal stanza in his long poems ''Troilus and Criseyde'' and the ''Parlement of Foules'', wr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer (; – 25 October 1400) was an English poet, author, and civil servant best known for '' The Canterbury Tales''. He has been called the "father of English literature", or, alternatively, the "father of English poetry". He was the first writer to be buried in what has since come to be called Poets' Corner, in Westminster Abbey. Chaucer also gained fame as a philosopher and astronomer, composing the scientific ''A Treatise on the Astrolabe'' for his 10-year-old son Lewis. He maintained a career in the civil service as a bureaucrat, courtier, diplomat, and member of parliament. Among Chaucer's many other works are ''The Book of the Duchess'', ''The House of Fame'', ''The Legend of Good Women'', and ''Troilus and Criseyde''. He is seen as crucial in legitimising the literary use of Middle English when the dominant literary languages in England were still Anglo-Norman French and Latin. Chaucer's contemporary Thomas Hoccleve hailed him as "the firste fyndere of ou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dante
Dante Alighieri (; – 14 September 1321), probably baptized Durante di Alighiero degli Alighieri and often referred to as Dante (, ), was an Italian poet, writer and philosopher. His ''Divine Comedy'', originally called (modern Italian: ''Commedia'') and later christened by Giovanni Boccaccio, is widely considered one of the most important poems of the Middle Ages and the greatest literary work in the Italian language. Dante is known for establishing the use of the vernacular in literature at a time when most poetry was written in Latin, which was accessible only to the most educated readers. His ''De vulgari eloquentia'' (''On Eloquence in the Vernacular'') was one of the first scholarly defenses of the vernacular. His use of the Florentine dialect for works such as '' The New Life'' (1295) and ''Divine Comedy'' helped establish the modern-day standardized Italian language. His work set a precedent that important Italian writers such as Petrarch and Boccaccio would later ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Canso (song)
The ''canso'' or ''canson'' or ''canzo'' () was a song style used by the troubadours. It was, by far, the most common genre used, especially by early troubadours, and only in the second half of the 13th century was its dominance challenged by a growing number of poets writing ''coblas esparsas''. The ''canso'' became, in Old French, the ''grand chant'' and, in Italian, the ''canzone''. Structure A ''canso'' usually consists of three parts. The first stanza is the ''exordium'', where the composer explains his purpose. The main body of the song occurs in the following stanzas, and usually draw out a variety of relationships with the ''exordium''; formally, aside from the ''envoi''(''s''), which are not always present, a ''canso'' is made of stanzas all having the same sequence of verses, in the sense that each verse has the same number of metrical syllables. This makes it possible to use the same melody for every stanza. The sequence can be extremely simple, as in ''Can vei la ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Provençal Dialect
Provençal (, , ; french: provençal , ; oc, provençau or ) is a Romance language, either considered as a variety of Occitan or a separate language, spoken by people in Provence and parts of Drôme. Historically, the term Provençal has been used to refer to the whole of the Occitan language, but today it is considered more technically appropriate to refer only to the variety of Occitan spoken in Provence. However it can still be found being used to refer to Occitan as a whole, ''e.g.'' Merriam-Webster states that it can be used to refer to general Occitan, though this is going out of use. Provençal is also the customary name given to the older version of the Occitan language used by the troubadours of medieval literature, when Old French or the ' was limited to the northern areas of France. Thus the ISO 639-3 code for Old Occitan is ro In 2007, all the ISO 639-3 codes for Occitan dialects, including rvfor Provençal, were retired and merged into ciOccitan. The old cod ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chivalry
Chivalry, or the chivalric code, is an informal and varying code of conduct developed in Europe between 1170 and 1220. It was associated with the medieval Christianity, Christian institution of knighthood; knights' and gentlemen's behaviours were governed by chivalrous social codes. The ideals of chivalry were popularized in medieval literature, particularly the literary cycles known as the Matter of France, relating to the legendary companions of Charlemagne and his men-at-arms, the paladins, and the Matter of Britain, informed by Geoffrey of Monmouth's ''Historia Regum Britanniae'', written in the 1130s, which popularized the legend of King Arthur and his knights of the Round Table. All of these were taken as historically accurate until the beginnings of modern scholarship in the 19th century. The code of chivalry that developed in medieval Europe had its roots in earlier centuries. It arose in the Carolingian Empire from the idealisation of the cavalryman—involving mili ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Troubadour
A troubadour (, ; oc, trobador ) was a composer and performer of Old Occitan lyric poetry during the High Middle Ages (1100–1350). Since the word ''troubadour'' is etymologically masculine, a female troubadour is usually called a ''trobairitz''. The troubadour school or tradition began in the late 11th century in Occitania, but it subsequently spread to the Italian and Iberian Peninsulas. Under the influence of the troubadours, related movements sprang up throughout Europe: the Minnesang in Germany, ''trovadorismo'' in Galicia and Portugal, and that of the trouvères in northern France. Dante Alighieri in his ''De vulgari eloquentia'' defined the troubadour lyric as ''fictio rethorica musicaque poita'': rhetorical, musical, and poetical fiction. After the "classical" period around the turn of the 13th century and a mid-century resurgence, the art of the troubadours declined in the 14th century and around the time of the Black Death (1348) it died out. The texts of troubadou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Giacomo Da Lentini
Giacomo da Lentini, also known as Jacopo da Lentini or with the appellative Il Notaro, was an Italian poet of the 13th century. He was a senior poet of the Sicilian School and was a notary at the court of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II. Giacomo is credited with the invention of the sonnet. His poetry was originally written in literary Sicilian, though it only survives in Tuscan. Although some scholars believe that da Lentini's Italian poetry about courtly love was an adaptation of the Provençal poetry of the troubadours, William Baer argues that the first eight lines of the earliest Sicilian sonnets, rhymed ABABABAB, are identical to the eight-line Sicilian folksong stanza known as the ''Strambotto''. Therefore, da Lentini, or whoever else invented the form, added two tercets to the ''Strambotto'' in order to create the 14-line Sicilian sonnet. As with other poets of the time, he corresponded often with fellow poets, circulating poems in manuscript and commenting on ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sicilian School
The Sicilian School was a small community of Sicilian and mainland Italian poets gathered around Frederick II, most of them belonging to his imperial court. Headed by Giacomo da Lentini, they produced more than 300 poems of courtly love between 1230 and 1266, the experiment being continued after Frederick's death by his son, Manfred. Origins These poets drew inspiration from the troubadour poetry of Occitania written in langue d'oc, which applied the feudal code of honor to the relation between a man (acting as the vassal) and a woman (acting as king or superior). This is a reversal of the traditional role of women, traditionally dependent on men, and marks a new awareness in medieval society: the decadence of feudalism with the increasing power of the middle class, causes a shift in the reading public, the epic (traditionally devoted to great military pursuits) gradually giving way to the lyric (generally focused on love). In the lower Middle Ages more and more women were r ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aeneid
The ''Aeneid'' ( ; la, Aenē̆is or ) is a Latin Epic poetry, epic poem, written by Virgil between 29 and 19 BC, that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Troy, Trojan who fled the Trojan_War#Sack_of_Troy, fall of Troy and travelled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of the Ancient Rome, Romans. It comprises 9,896 lines in dactylic hexameter. The first six of the poem's twelve books tell the story of Aeneas' wanderings from Troy to Italy, and the poem's second half tells of the Trojans' ultimately victorious war upon the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins, under whose name Aeneas and his Trojan followers are destined to be subsumed. The hero Aeneas was already known to Greco-Roman legend and myth, having been a character in the ''Iliad''. Virgil took the disconnected tales of Aeneas' wanderings, his vague association with the foundation of Ancient Rome, Rome and his description as a personage of no fixed characteristics other than a scrupulous ''pietas'', and fashioned th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
.jpg "Click for more on -> Dante")
.jpg "Click for more on -> Troubadour")
