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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 particular ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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. 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 use a Confessio Amantis#Language, linguistic argument to conclude that "Gower’s formative years were spent partly in Kent and partly in Suffolk". Southern and Nicolas conclude that the Gower family of Kent and Suffolk cannot be related to the Yorkshire ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Royal Barge
A royal barge is a vessel that is used by a monarch for ceremonial processions, and (historically) for routine transport, usually on a river or inland waterway. It may also be known as a state barge, and may be used on occasion by other members of a royal family, heads of state, or particular VIPs. Traditionally royal barges were used by European monarchies such as United Kingdom, France, Belgium, and Sweden, and Southeast Asian monarchies such as Siam, Burma, Brunei, Riau and Cambodia. In more recent years, royal barges have only been used in the United Kingdom, Sweden and Thailand. Belgium In the 19th century, when a head of state visited a port city, it was traditional to invite them aboard a royal barge. This was why the Belgian government decided, on the recommendation of the King Leopold I, to have the Lecarpentier shipyards in Antwerp build a royal barge. Launched on 12 July 1835, ''Canot Royal'' carried the royal couple for the first time from Brussels to Antwerp vi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Epigraph (literature)
In literature, an epigraph is a phrase, quotation, or poem that is set at the beginning of a document, monograph or section or chapter thereof. The epigraph may serve as a preface to the work; as a summary; as a counter-example; or as a link from the work to a wider literary canon, with the purpose of either inviting comparison or enlisting a conventional context. A book may have an overall epigraph that is part of the front matter, one for each chapter, or both. Examples * As the epigraph to '' The Sum of All Fears'', Tom Clancy quotes Winston Churchill in the context of thermonuclear war: "Why, you may take the most gallant sailor, the most intrepid airman or the most audacious soldier, put them at a table together – what do you get? The sum of their fears." * Sir Walter Scott frequently used epigraphs in his historical novels, including throughout his Waverley novels. * The long quotation from Dante's '' Inferno'' that prefaces T. S. Eliot's " The Love Song of J. Alfr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Loanword
A loanword (also a loan word, loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language (the recipient or target language), through the process of borrowing. Borrowing is a metaphorical term that is well established in the linguistic field despite its acknowledged descriptive flaws: nothing is taken away from the donor language and there is no expectation of returning anything (i.e., the loanword). Loanwords may be contrasted with calques, in which a word is borrowed into the recipient language by being directly translated from the donor language rather than being adopted in (an approximation of) its original form. They must also be distinguished from cognates, which are words in two or more related languages that are similar because they share an etymological origin in the ancestral language, rather than because one borrowed the word from the other. Examples and related terms A loanword is distinguished from a calque (or ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Brabourne
Brabourne is a village and civil parish in the Ashford district of Kent, England. The village centre is east of Ashford town centre. Geography The village originated around the village church and this area is now usually referred to as East Brabourne. The original village has been outgrown by Brabourne Lees Brabourne Lees is a village in the civil parish of Brabourne, within the Ashford borough of Kent Kent is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Essex across the Thames Estuary to the ..., a development on former common land, closer to the A20 and M20 roads. The western part of the parish is a rural area with scattered farms. Church left, St Mary the Virgin's Church The parish church is dedicated to St Mary the Blessed Virgin; there is also a Zion Strict Baptist Chapel in Brabourne Lees. The church of St. Mary is a building of stone, in the Norman and Early English styles, and has a tower which was re ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kentwell Hall
Kentwell Hall is a stately home in Long Melford, Suffolk, England. It includes the hall, outbuildings, a rare-breeds farm and gardens. Most of the current building facade dates from the mid-16th century, but the origins of Kentwell are much earlier, with references in the Domesday Book of 1086. Kentwell has been the background location for numerous film and television productions, and, since 1979, has annually been the scene of Tudor and other period historical re-enactments, with weddings and other events. It also hosts ''Scaresville'', an annual Hallowe'en event which won national awards in 2009 and 2018. History Early history The earliest recorded reference to Kentwell is in the Domesday Book of 1086, which states that the manor of Kentwell (along with six others) formed part of the property of Frodo, brother of Abbot Baldwin, of the Abbey of St. Edmund's. At that time, the manor was called by its old English name of Kanewella. The record in the Domesday Book survey, tran ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Octosyllabic
The octosyllable or octosyllabic verse is a line of verse with eight syllables. It is equivalent to tetrameter verse in trochees in languages with a stress accent. Its first occurrence is in a 10th-century Old French saint's legend, the '' Vie de Saint Leger''; another early use is in the early 12th-century Anglo-Norman '' Voyage de saint Brendan''. It is often used in French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese poetry. While commonly used in couplets, typical stanzas using octosyllables are: décima, some quatrains, redondilla. In Spanish verse, an octosyllable is a line that has its seventh syllable stressed, on the principle that this would normally be the penultimate syllable of a word (''Lengua Castellana y Literatura'', ed. Grazalema Santillana. El Verso y su Medida, p. 46). If the final word of a line does not fit this pattern, the line could have eight or seven or nine syllables (as normally counted), thus – :1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / Gra/NA/da :1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pentameter
Pentameter (, 'measuring five ( feet)') is a term describing the meter of a poem. A poem is said to be written in a particular pentameter when the lines of the poem have the length of five metrical feet. A metrical foot is, in classical poetry, a combination of two or more short or long syllables in a specific order; although this "does not provide an entirely reliable standard of measurement" in heavily accented Germanic languages such as English. In these languages it is defined as a combination of one stressed and one or two unstressed syllables in a specific order. In English verse, pentameter has been the most common meter used ever since the 1500s; early examples include some of Geoffrey Chaucer's work in the 1300s. The most common foot is the iamb, resulting in iambic pentameter. Most English sonnets are written in iambic pentameter. It is also the meter used by Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 23 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Legend Of Good Women
''The Legend of Good Women'' is a poem in the form of a dream vision by Geoffrey Chaucer during the fourteenth century. The poem is the third longest of Chaucer's works, after ''The Canterbury Tales'' and ''Troilus and Criseyde'', and is possibly the first significant work in English to use the iambic pentameter or decasyllabic couplets which he later used throughout ''The Canterbury Tales''. This form of the heroic couplet would become a significant part of English literature possibly inspired by Chaucer. Summary Prologue The prologue describes how Chaucer is reprimanded by the god of love and his queen, Alceste, for his works—such as ''Troilus and Criseyde''—depicting women in a poor light. Criseyde is made to seem inconstant in love in that earlier work, and Alceste demands a poem of Chaucer extolling the virtues of women and their good deeds. The incomplete nature of the poem is suggested by Chaucer's Retraction from ''The Canterbury Tales'' which calls ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vernacular
Vernacular is the ordinary, informal, spoken language, spoken form of language, particularly when perceptual dialectology, perceived as having lower social status or less Prestige (sociolinguistics), prestige than standard language, which is more codification (linguistics), codified, institutionally promoted, literary language, literary, or formal. More narrowly, a particular language variety that does not hold a widespread high-status perception, and sometimes even carries social stigma, is also called a vernacular, vernacular dialect, nonstandard dialect, etc. and is typically its speakers' native language, native variety. Regardless of any such stigma, all nonstandard dialects are full-fledged varieties of language with their own consistent grammatical structure, phonology, sound system, body of vocabulary, etc. Overview Like any native language variety, a vernacular has an internally coherent system of grammar. It may be associated with a particular set of vocabulary, and sp ... [...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 Cressida, Criseyde set against a backdrop of war during the siege of Troy. It was written in ''rhyme royal, 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 Giovanni Boccaccio, Boccaccio, who re-wrote the tale in his ''Il Filostrato''. Chaucer attributes the story to a "Lollius" (whom he also me ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Latin
Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area around Rome, Italy. Through the expansion of the Roman Republic, it became the dominant language in the Italian Peninsula and subsequently throughout the Roman Empire. It has greatly influenced many languages, Latin influence in English, including English, having contributed List of Latin words with English derivatives, many words to the English lexicon, particularly after the Christianity in Anglo-Saxon England, Christianization of the Anglo-Saxons and the Norman Conquest. Latin Root (linguistics), roots appear frequently in the technical vocabulary used by fields such as theology, List of Latin and Greek words commonly used in systematic names, the sciences, List of medical roots, suffixes and prefixes, medicine, and List of Latin legal terms ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
