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The Percy Folio
The Percy Folio is a folio book of English ballads used by Thomas Percy to compile his ''Reliques of Ancient Poetry''. Although the manuscript itself was compiled in the 17th century, some of its material goes back well into the 12th century. It was the most important of the source documents used by Francis James Child for his 1883 collection ''The English and Scottish Popular Ballads. The manuscript Those who owned the manuscript before Percy did not treat it well; its owners had probably regarded its Middle English and border dialect as incomprehensible and worthless. When Percy first came across the manuscript, in the house of its former owner Sir Humphrey Pitt of Shifnal, pages were being used by his housemaids to start fires. Percy had the manuscript bound, and the bookbinder inflicted additional damage in trimming the edges of the sheets, losing first or last lines on many pages. Percy did not treat the manuscript particularly well himself; he wrote notes and comments in i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Book Size
The size of a book is generally measured by the height against the width of a leaf, or sometimes the height and width of its cover. A series of terms is commonly used by libraries and publishers for the general sizes of modern books, ranging from ''folio'' (the largest), to ''quarto'' (smaller) and ''octavo'' (still smaller). Historically, these terms referred to the format of the book, a technical term used by printers and bibliographers to indicate the size of a leaf in terms of the size of the original sheet. For example, a quarto (from Latin ''quartō'', ablative form of ''quartus'', fourth) historically was a book printed on sheets of paper folded in half twice, with the first fold at right angles to the second, to produce 4 leaves (or 8 pages), each leaf one fourth the size of the original sheet printed – note that a ''leaf'' refers to the single piece of paper, whereas a ''page'' is one side of a leaf. Because the actual format of many modern books cannot be determined fro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robin Hood And Guy Of Gisborne
Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne is Child Ballad 118, part of the Percy collection. It introduces and disposes of Guy of Gisborne who remains next to the Sheriff of Nottingham the chief villain of the Robin Hood legend. This ballad survives in a single seventeenth century copy but has always been recognized as much older in content, possibly older than Robin Hood and the Monk. A play with a similar plot survives in a copy dated to 1475. This ballad has been much admired, the ''Oxford Companion to English Literature'', 4th edition, describes it as the best of the Robin Hood ballads. But it is also the most often cited, along with Robin Hood and the Monk Robin Hood and the Monk is a Middle English ballad and one of the oldest surviving ballads of Robin Hood. Original work and later publications The work was preserved in Cambridge University manuscript Ff.5.48, albeit heavily damaged by wear. ..., for excessive brutality. Guy comes to Barnesdale to capture Robin Hood, but Robin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cotton Library
The Cotton or Cottonian library is a collection of manuscripts once owned by Sir Robert Bruce Cotton MP (1571–1631), an antiquarian and bibliophile. It later became the basis of what is now the British Library, which still holds the collection. After the Dissolution of the Monasteries, many priceless and ancient manuscripts that had belonged to the monastic libraries began to be disseminated among various owners, many of whom were unaware of the cultural value of the manuscripts. Cotton's skill lay in finding, purchasing and preserving these ancient documents. The leading scholars of the era, including Francis Bacon, Walter Raleigh, and James Ussher, came to use Sir Robert's library. Richard James acted as his librarian. The library is of special importance for having preserved the only copy of several works, such as happened with ''Beowulf'' and ''Sir Gawain and the Green Knight''. History Origins At the time of the Dissolution of the Monasteries, official state records and i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Pearl Poet
The "Gawain Poet" (), or less commonly the "Pearl Poet",Andrew, M. "Theories of Authorship" (1997) in Brewer (ed). ''A Companion to the Gawain-poet'', Boydell & Brewer, p.23 (''fl.'' late 14th century) is the name given to the author of ''Sir Gawain and the Green Knight'', an alliterative poem written in 14th-century Middle English. Its author appears also to have written the poems ''Pearl'', ''Patience'', and ''Cleanness''; some scholars suggest the author may also have composed '' Saint Erkenwald''. Save for the last (found in BL-MS ''Harley 2250''), all these works are known from a single surviving manuscript, the British Library holding ''Cotton Nero A.x''. This body of work includes some of the most highly-regarded poetry written in Middle English. The Gawain Poet is unidentified. Various scholars have suggested that the poem is attributable to a member of the landed Massey family of Cheshire, and in particular John Massey of Cotton. This is not widely accepted, however, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Exeter Book
The Exeter Book, also known as the Codex Exoniensis or Exeter Cathedral Library MS 3501, is a large codex of Old English poetry, believed to have been produced in the late tenth century AD. It is one of the four major manuscripts of Old English poetry, along with the Vercelli Book in Vercelli, Italy, the Nowell Codex in the British Library, and the Junius manuscript in the Bodleian Library in Oxford. The book was donated to what is now the Exeter Cathedral library by Leofric, the first bishop of Exeter, in 1072. It is believed originally to have contained 130 or 131 leaves, of which the first 7 or 8 have been replaced with other leaves; the original first 8 leaves are lost. The Exeter Book is the largest and perhaps oldest known manuscript of Old English literature, containing about a sixth of the Old English poetry that has come down to us. In 2016, UNESCO recognized the book as "the foundation volume of English literature, one of the world's principal cultural artefa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George MacDonald
George MacDonald (10 December 1824 – 18 September 1905) was a Scottish author, poet and Christian Congregational minister. He was a pioneering figure in the field of modern fantasy literature and the mentor of fellow writer Lewis Carroll. In addition to his fairy tales, MacDonald wrote several works of Christian theology, including several collections of sermons. His writings have been cited as a major literary influence by many notable authors including Lewis Carroll, W. H. Auden, David Lindsay, J. M. Barrie, Lord Dunsany, Elizabeth Yates, Oswald Chambers, Mark Twain, Hope Mirrlees, Robert E. Howard, L. Frank Baum, T. H. White, Richard Adams, Lloyd Alexander, Hilaire Belloc, G. K. Chesterton, Robert Hugh Benson, Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, Fulton Sheen, Flannery O'Connor, Louis Pasteur, Simone Weil, Charles Maurras, Jacques Maritain, George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, Ray Bradbury, C. H. Douglas, C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Walter de ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Novalis
Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg (2 May 1772 – 25 March 1801), pen name Novalis (), was a German polymath who was a writer, philosopher, poet, aristocrat and mystic. He is regarded as an idiosyncratic and influential figure of Jena Romanticism. Novalis was born into a minor aristocratic family in Electoral Saxony. He was the second of eleven children; his early household observed a strict Pietist faith. He studied law at the University of Jena, the University of Leipzig, and the University of Wittenberg. While at Jena, he published his first poem and befriended the playwright and fellow poet Friedrich Schiller. In Leipzig, he then met Friedrich Schlegel, becoming lifetime friends. Novalis completed his law degree in 1794 at the age of 22. He then worked as a legal assistant in Tennstedt immediately after graduating. There, he met Sophie von Kühn. The following year Novalis and Sophie became secretly engaged. Sophie became severely ill soon after the engagem ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gottfried August Bürger
Gottfried August Bürger (31 December 1747 – 8 June 1794) was a German poet. His ballads were very popular in Germany. His most noted ballad, '' Lenore'', found an audience beyond readers of the German language in an English and Russian adaptation and a French translation. Biography He was born in Molmerswende (now a part of Mansfeld), Principality of Halberstadt, where his father was the Lutheran pastor. He showed an early predilection for solitary and gloomy places and the making of verses, for which he had no other model than hymnals. At the age of twelve, Bürger was practically adopted by his maternal grandfather, Bauer, at Aschersleben, who sent him to the Pädagogium at Halle. He learned Latin with difficulty. In 1764, he gained admission into the University of Halle as a student of theology, which, however, he soon abandoned for the study of jurisprudence. There he fell under the influence of Christian Adolph Klotz (1738–1771), who directed Bürger's attention ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Reliques Of Ancient English Poetry
The ''Reliques of Ancient English Poetry'' (sometimes known as ''Reliques of Ancient Poetry'' or simply Percy's ''Reliques'') is a collection of ballads and popular songs collected by Bishop Thomas Percy and published in 1765. Sources The basis of the work was the manuscript which became known as the Percy Folio. Percy found the folio in the house of his friend Humphrey Pitt of Shifnal, a small market town of Shropshire. It was on the floor, and Pitt's maid had been using the leaves to light fires. Once rescued, Percy would use just forty-five of the ballads in the folio for his book, despite claiming the bulk of the collection came from this folio. Other sources were the Pepys Library of broadside ballads collected by Samuel Pepys and ''Collection of Old Ballads'' published in 1723, possibly by Ambrose Philips. Bishop Percy was encouraged to publish the work by his friends Samuel Johnson and the poet William Shenstone, who also found and contributed ballads. Percy did no ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robin Hood And Queen Katherine
"Robin Hood and Queen Katherine" is Child ballad 145. " Robin Hood's Chase", Child ballad 146, takes up after it. Synopsis Robin befriends Queen Katherine. When King Henry offers a large wager that his archers cannot be excelled, she summons Robin and his men, who come to London under assumed names. Robin's bowmen prevail and reveal their identities. Having promised not to be angry with the queen's archers, the king asks Robin to leave his band of outlaws and join the court (in the main variant), but Robin declines. Historical background The Queen Katherine of the title is not certainly identified, nor the spelling of the name certain. Up until as recently as the 18th century, people often spelled their own names differently at different times. So while the periods of time with which Robin Hood has normally been associated did not have any queens named Katherine, because the king is sometimes called Henry, she may be meant to be Catherine de Valois, the young French princess marrie ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robin Hood Rescuing Three Squires
Robin Hood Rescuing Three Squires or Robin Hood and the Widow's Three Sons is a traditional ballad about Robin Hood, listed as Child ballad 140 and Roud 70. Synopsis Robin meets an old woman lamenting that her sons will hang for poaching the king's deer. He persuades an old man to trade his ragged clothing for Robin's fine clothes, and in this disguise, offers to be the sheriff's hangman. He blows on his horn, and his men arrive. In some variants, they hang the sheriff instead of the three young men; in all, they all escape back to the greenwood. Influences Francis James Child believed this to be the source of Robin Hood Rescuing Will Stutly. Adaptations Howard Pyle retold this story in ''The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood'' with the hero as Little John; he used trickery to get the three young men away, and his bow broke, resulting in his own capture. Robin Hood, having just killed Guy of Gisbourne, disguises himself as Guy to carry out the rescue. See also *Robin Hood and the B ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Little John A Begging
Little John A Begging is Child ballad 142 and about Robin Hood. It exists in two variants, one fragmentary. Synopsis In one variant, Robin Hood sends Little John out, disguised as a beggar. In the fragmentary one, Little John apparently exchanges clothing with a beggar, as the surviving ballads opens with his complaint that they do not fit. In both variants, he meets up with beggars who realize that he is not one of their company. They fight, and Little John wins. The fragmented version breaks off there, but in the complete one, Little John discovers they were carrying a great deal of money and takes it. Adaptations Howard Pyle, in his ''The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood ''The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood of Great Renown in Nottinghamshire'' is an 1883 novel by the American illustrator and writer Howard Pyle. Pyle compiled the traditional Robin Hood ballads as a series of episodes of a coherent narrative. For ...'', transferred this adventure to Robin. External links' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
