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Ballade 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'', writt ...
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Rhyme
A rhyme is a repetition of similar sounds (usually, the exact same phonemes) in the final stressed syllables and any following syllables of two or more words. Most often, this kind of perfect rhyming is consciously used for a musical or aesthetic effect in the final position of lines within poems or songs. More broadly, a rhyme may also variously refer to other types of similar sounds near the ends of two or more words. Furthermore, the word ''rhyme'' has come to be sometimes used as a shorthand term for any brief poem, such as a nursery rhyme or Balliol rhyme. Etymology The word derives from Old French ''rime'' or ''ryme'', which might be derived from Old Frankish ''rīm'', a Germanic term meaning "series, sequence" attested in Old English (Old English ''rīm'' meaning "enumeration, series, numeral") and Old High German ''rīm'', ultimately cognate to Old Irish ''rím'', Greek ' ''arithmos'' "number". Alternatively, the Old French words may derive from Latin ''rhythmus'', from ...
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French Literature
French literature () generally speaking, is literature written in the French language, particularly by citizens of France; it may also refer to literature written by people living in France who speak traditional languages of France other than French. Literature written in the French language, by citizens of other nations such as Belgium, Switzerland, Canada, Senegal, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, etc. is referred to as Francophone literature. France itself ranks first on the list of Nobel Prizes in literature by country. For centuries, French literature has been an object of national pride for French people, and it has been one of the most influential components of the literature of Europe. One of the first known examples of French literature is the Song of Roland, the first major work in a series of poems known as, " chansons de geste". The French language is a Romance language derived from Latin and heavily influenced principally by Celtic and Frankish. Beginning in the 11th ...
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George Ashby (poet)
George Ashby (c. 1390–1475) was an English civil servant and poet. Life He was born about 1390, and was from Warwickshire. He was clerk of the signet, first to Henry VI from the beginning of his reign, and afterwards to Margaret of Anjou, in whose service he evidently travelled abroad. Margaret named him steward of Warwick in 1446. In 1459 he was in Parliament, as member for the borough of Warwick.Griffiths p. 785. Between the summer and 28 September 1462, Ashby started a term in the Fleet Prison to which he was probably confined by the Yorkist conquerors of Henry VI, who was deposed in 1461. Prior to that, the poet would seem to have directed some part of the education of the young Edward of Westminster, Prince of Wales, Henry VI's son. He appears to have owned an estate named 'Breakspeares' in Harefield, Middlesex. Ashby died on 20 February 1475, and was buried at Harefield. His son John was also a signet clerk under Henry VI and died in 1496. A grandson George was cl ...
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John Capgrave
John Capgrave (21 April 1393 – 12 August 1464) was an English historian, hagiographer and scholastic theologian, remembered chiefly for ''Nova Legenda Angliae'' (New Reading from England). This was the first comprehensive collection of lives of the English saints. Schooling Capgrave was born in Bishop's Lynn, now King's Lynn, Norfolk: "My cuntre is Northfolke, of the town of Lynne" (''Life of St Katharine'', p. 16). His parents are unknown but he may have been the nephew of a namesake who obtained a doctorate of theology at Oxford in 1390 and was also an Augustinian friar. Capgrave the younger joined the order at Lynn in about 1410 and was ordained in 1416 or 1417. He then studied theology at the order's school in London. By 1421, he was a lector, qualified to teach at all but one of the order's levels of schooling. He was then sent by the prior-general for further studies in Cambridge, where he delivered his examinatory sermon in Latin in 1422. He later wrote an English v ...
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Thomas Hoccleve
Thomas Hoccleve or Occleve (1368 or 1369–1426) was an English poet and clerk, who became a key figure in 15th-century Middle English literature. His ''Regement of Princes or De Regimine Principum'' is a homily on virtues and vices, written for Henry V of England shortly before his accession. Biography Hoccleve was born in 1368, as he states when writing in 1421 (''Dialogue, 1.246'') that he has seen "fifty wyntir and three". Nothing is known of his family, but they probably came from the village of Hockliffe in Bedfordshire. In November 1420, Hoccleve's fellow Privy Seal clerk John Bailey returned land and tenements in Hockliffe to him, which suggests that Hoccleve may indeed have had family ties there. What is known of his life comes mainly from his works and from administrative records. He obtained a clerkship in the Office of the Privy Seal at the age of about twenty. This would require him to know both French and Latin. Hoccleve retained the post on and off for about 35 y ...
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The Fall Of Princes
''The Fall of Princes'' is a long poem by English poet John Lydgate. It is based on Giovanni Boccaccio's work '' De Casibus Virorum Illustrium'', which Lydgate knew in a French translation by Laurent de Premierfait, entitled ''Des Cas des nobles hommes et femmes''. Lydgate's poem was written in the years 1431-38. It is composed of nine books and some 36 thousand lines. It is made up of rhyme royal stanzas: Out of her swoone when she did abbraide, Knowing no mean but death in her distrèsse, To her brothèr full piteously she said, "Cause of my sorrowe, roote of my heavinesse, That whilom were the sourse of my gladnèsse, When both our joyes by wille were so disposed, Under one key our hearts to be enclosed.— The poem tells about lives and tragic deaths of many historical and legendary persons. A sixteenth-century poem ''The Mirror for Magistrates'' by various authors is a sequel to ''The Fall of Princes''. References External links * scans of the version edited by Dr. H ...
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John Lydgate
John Lydgate of Bury (c. 1370 – c. 1451) was an English monk and poet, born in Lidgate, near Haverhill, Suffolk, England. Lydgate's poetic output is prodigious, amounting, at a conservative count, to about 145,000 lines. He explored and established every major Chaucerian genre, except such as were manifestly unsuited to his profession, like the ''fabliau''. In the ''Troy Book'' (30,117 lines), an amplified translation of the Trojan history of the thirteenth-century Latin writer Guido delle Colonne, commissioned by Prince Henry (later Henry V), he moved deliberately beyond Chaucer's '' Knight's Tale'' and his ''Troilus'', to provide a full-scale epic. The '' Siege of Thebes'' (4716 lines) is a shorter excursion in the same field of chivalric epic. Chaucer's ''The Monk's Tale'', a brief catalog of the vicissitudes of Fortune, gives a hint of what is to come in Lydgate's massive ''Fall of Princes'' (36,365 lines), which is also derived, though not directly, from Boccaccio's ' ...
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The Kingis Quair
''The Kingis Quair'' ("The King's Book") is a fifteenth-century poem attributed to James I of Scotland. It is semi-autobiographical in nature, describing the King's capture by the England, English in 1406 on his way to France and his subsequent imprisonment by Henry IV of England and his successors, Henry V of England, Henry V and Henry VI of England, Henry VI. Summary The poem begins with the narrator who, alone and unable to sleep, begins to read Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, Boethius' ''Consolation of Philosophy''. At first, he reads in the hope that it will help him get back to sleep, but he quickly becomes interested in the text and its treatment of Boethius' own experience of misfortune. At last, he begins to think about his own youthful experience, and how he came to a life of misery. On hearing the Matins bell, he rises and begins to write a poem describing his fate. He begins with a sea voyage taken when he was twelve years of age, when he was captured and impriso ...
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James I Of Scotland
James I (late July 139421 February 1437) was King of Scots from 1406 until his assassination in 1437. The youngest of three sons, he was born in Dunfermline Abbey to King Robert III and Annabella Drummond. His older brother David, Duke of Rothesay, died under suspicious circumstances during detention by their uncle, Robert, Duke of Albany. James' other brother, Robert, died young. Fears surrounding James's safety grew through the winter of 1405/6 and plans were made to send him to France. In February 1406, James was forced to take refuge in the castle of the Bass Rock in the Firth of Forth after his escort was attacked by supporters of Archibald, 4th Earl of Douglas. He remained at the castle until mid-March, when he boarded a vessel bound for France. On 22nd March, English pirates captured the ship and delivered the prince to Henry IV of England. The ailing Robert III died on 4 April and the 11-year-old James, now the uncrowned King of Scots, would not regain his freedom fo ...
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Middle English
Middle English (abbreviated to ME) is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old English period. Scholarly opinion varies, but the ''Oxford English Dictionary'' specifies the period when Middle English was spoken as being from 1150 to 1500. This stage of the development of the English language roughly followed the High to the Late Middle Ages. Middle English saw significant changes to its vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, and orthography. Writing conventions during the Middle English period varied widely. Examples of writing from this period that have survived show extensive regional variation. The more standardized Old English language became fragmented, localized, and was, for the most part, being improvised. By the end of the period (about 1470) and aided by the invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg in 14 ...
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Confessio Amantis
''Confessio Amantis'' ("The Lover's Confession") is a 33,000-line Middle English poem by John Gower, which uses the confession made by an ageing lover to the chaplain of Venus as a frame story for a collection of shorter narrative poems. According to its prologue, it was composed at the request of Richard II. It stands with the works of Chaucer, Langland, and the Pearl poet as one of the great works of late 14th-century English literature. The Index of Middle English Verse shows that in the era before the printing press it was one of the most-often copied manuscripts (59 copies) along with ''Canterbury Tales'' (72 copies) and ''Piers Plowman'' (63 copies). In genre it is usually considered a poem of consolation, a medieval form inspired by Boethius' ''Consolation of Philosophy'' and typified by works such as ''Pearl''. Despite this, it is more usually studied alongside other tale collections with similar structures, such as the ''Decameron'' of Boccaccio, and particularly Chau ...
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John Gower
John Gower (; c. 1330 – October 1408) was an English poet, a contemporary of William Langland and the Pearl Poet, and a personal friend of Geoffrey 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 wa .... He is remembered primarily for three major works, the '' Mirour de l'Omme'', ''Vox Clamantis'', and ''Confessio Amantis'', three long poems written in French, Latin, and English respectively, which are united by common moral and political themes. Life Few details are known of Gower's early life. He was probably born into a family which held properties in Kent and Kentwell Hall, Suffolk.Lee, Sidney (1890). "wikisource:Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Gower, John, Gower, John". In ''Dictionary of National Biography''. 22. London. pp. 299-304. Stanley and Smith u ...
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