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Sonnets
A sonnet is a poetic form that originated in the poetry composed at the Court of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II in the Sicilian city of Palermo. The 13th-century poet and notary Giacomo da Lentini is credited with the sonnet's invention, and the Sicilian School of poets who surrounded him then spread the form to the mainland. The earliest sonnets, however, no longer survive in the original Sicilian language, but only after being translated into Tuscan dialect. The term "sonnet" is derived from the Italian word ''sonetto'' (lit. "little song", derived from the Latin word ''sonus'', meaning a sound). By the 13th century it signified a poem of fourteen lines that followed a strict rhyme scheme and structure. According to Christopher Blum, during the Renaissance, the sonnet became the "choice mode of expressing romantic love". During that period, too, the form was taken up in many other European language areas and eventually any subject was considered acceptable for writers o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Baer (writer)
William Baer (born December 29, 1948) is an American writer, editor, translator, and academic. He has been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Fulbright (Portugal), and a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal .... Early life and education William Baer was born in Geneva, New York, in 1948. He was raised in The Bronx, New York City, and Wayne, New Jersey. After graduating from Rutgers University with a B.A. in English, he received an M.A. in English from New York University. He completed his doctoral dissertation in English at the University of South Carolina under the direction of James Dickey, before attending the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars where he earned an M.A. in Creative Writing, wor ... [...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] |
Poetic Form
Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings in addition to, or in place of, a prosaic ostensible meaning. A poem is a literary composition, written by a poet, using this principle. Poetry has a long and varied history, evolving differentially across the globe. It dates back at least to prehistoric times with hunting poetry in Africa and to panegyric and elegiac court poetry of the empires of the Nile, Niger, and Volta River valleys. Some of the earliest written poetry in Africa occurs among the Pyramid Texts written during the 25th century BCE. The earliest surviving Western Asian epic poetry, the ''Epic of Gilgamesh'', was written in Sumerian. Early poems in the Eurasian continent evolved from folk songs such as the Chinese ''Shijing'', as well as religious hymns (the Sanskrit ''R ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Volta (literature)
In poetry, the volta, or turn, is a rhetorical shift or dramatic change in thought and/or emotion. Turns are seen in all types of written poetry. Terminology The turn in poetry has gone by many names. In "The Poem in Countermotion", the final chapter of ''How Does a Poem Mean?'', John Ciardi calls the turn a "fulcrum". In ''The Poet's Art'', M.L. Rosenthal employs two different terms for different kinds of turns: "gentle ''modulations'', or at the furthest extreme, wrenching turns of emphasis or focus or emotional pitch (''torques'')". Hank Lazer primarily refers to the turn as a "swerve", asking, "Is there a describable lyricism of swerving? For those poems for which the swerve, the turn, the sudden change in direction are integral, can we begin to articulate a precise appreciation? Is there a describable and individualistic lyricism of swerving?" What Leslie Ullman calls the "center" of a poem largely is the poem's turn. Importance Author and historian Paul Fussell calls ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Petrarch
Francesco Petrarca (; 20 July 1304 – 18/19 July 1374), commonly anglicized as Petrarch (), was a scholar and poet of early Renaissance Italy, and one of the earliest humanists. Petrarch's rediscovery of Cicero's letters is often credited with initiating the 14th-century Italian Renaissance and the founding of Renaissance humanism. In the 16th century, Pietro Bembo created the model for the modern Italian language based on Petrarch's works, as well as those of Giovanni Boccaccio, and, to a lesser extent, Dante Alighieri. Petrarch was later endorsed as a model for Italian style by the Accademia della Crusca. Petrarch's sonnets were admired and imitated throughout Europe during the Renaissance and became a model for lyrical poetry. He is also known for being the first to develop the concept of the " Dark Ages".Renaissance or Prenaissan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Guido Cavalcanti
Guido Cavalcanti (between 1250 and 1259 – August 1300) was an Italian poet. He was also a friend and intellectual influence on Dante Alighieri. Historical background Cavalcanti was born in Florence at a time when the comune was beginning its economic, political, intellectual and artistic ascendancy as one of the leading cities of the Renaissance. The disunited Italian peninsula was dominated by a political particularism that pitted city-states against one another, often with this factionalism contributing to the fractious and sometimes violent political environments of each ''comune''. The domination of medieval religious interpretations of reality, morality and society were challenged by a rise of a new urban culture across Europe that gradually supplanted rural, local, ecclesiastical and feudal ways of thinking. There was an accompanying return to study, and to interpretation and emulation of the classics, known as a revival of antiquity. New secular and humanistic views lai ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Petrarch Canzoniere
Francesco Petrarca (; 20 July 1304 – 18/19 July 1374), commonly anglicized as Petrarch (), was a scholar and poet of early Renaissance Italy, and one of the earliest humanists. Petrarch's rediscovery of Cicero's letters is often credited with initiating the 14th-century Italian Renaissance and the founding of Renaissance humanism. In the 16th century, Pietro Bembo created the model for the modern Italian language based on Petrarch's works, as well as those of Giovanni Boccaccio, and, to a lesser extent, Dante Alighieri. Petrarch was later endorsed as a model for Italian style by the Accademia della Crusca. Petrarch's sonnets were admired and imitated throughout Europe during the Renaissance and became a model for lyrical poetry. He is also known for being the first to develop the concept of the " Dark Ages".Renaissance or Prenaissance ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Qasida
The qaṣīda (also spelled ''qaṣīdah''; is originally an Arabic word , plural ''qaṣā’id'', ; that was passed to some other languages such as fa, قصیده or , ''chakameh'', and tr, kaside) is an ancient Arabic word and form of writing poetry, often translated as ode, passed to other cultures after the Arab Muslim expansion. The word ''qasidah'' is still used in its original birthplace, Arabia, and in all Arab countries. Well known ''qasā'id'' include the Seven Mu'allaqat and Qasida Burda ("Poem of the Mantle") by Imam al-Busiri and Ibn Arabi's classic collection "The Interpreter of Desires". The classic form of qasida maintains a single elaborate metre throughout the poem, and every line rhymes on the same sound.Akiko Motoyoshi Sumi, ''Description in Classical Arabic Poetry: ''Waṣf'', Ekphrasis, and Interarts Theory'', Brill Studies in Middle Eastern literatures, 25 (Leiden: Brill, 2004), p. 1. It typically runs from fifteen to eighty lines, and sometimes more th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dante Alighieri
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] |
Tuscany
Tuscany ( ; it, Toscana ) is a Regions of Italy, region in central Italy with an area of about and a population of about 3.8 million inhabitants. The regional capital is Florence (''Firenze''). Tuscany is known for its landscapes, history, artistic legacy, and its influence on high culture. It is regarded as the birthplace of the Italian Renaissance and of the foundations of the Italian language. The prestige established by the Tuscan dialect's use in literature by Dante Alighieri, Petrarch, Giovanni Boccaccio, Niccolò Machiavelli and Francesco Guicciardini led to its subsequent elaboration as the language of culture throughout Italy. It has been home to many figures influential in the history of art and science, and contains well-known museums such as the Uffizi and the Palazzo Pitti. Tuscany is also known for its wines, including Chianti, Vino Nobile di Montepulciano, Morellino di Scansano, Brunello di Montalcino and white Vernaccia di San Gimignano. Having a strong linguisti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Guittone D'Arezzo
Guittone d'Arezzo (Arezzo, 1235 – 1294) was a Tuscan poet and the founder of the Tuscan School. He was an acclaimed secular love poet before his conversion in the 1260s, when he became a religious poet joining the Order of the Blessed Virgin Mary. In 1256, he was exiled from Arezzo due to his Guelf sympathies. Biography Son of Viva di Michele and chamberlain of his area, he travelled often for business. He was a passionate supporter of the Guelfs, and had a wife and three children who he would later abandon in 1256 after a spiritual crisis. He joined the Order of the Blessed Virgin Mary, a relatively exclusive group permitting members on the basis of financial background, showing Guittone's aristocratic familial origin and wealth. The group's primary goal was to favor and promote the peace between the Guelf and Ghibelline factions. Following his religious awakening, the tone and subject of Guittone's poems shifted. He started to sign his works as Fra Guittone, and in the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Zajal
Zajal () is a traditional form of oral strophic poetry declaimed in a colloquial dialect. While there is little evidence of the exact origins of the zajal, the earliest recorded zajal poet was the poet Ibn Quzman of al-Andalus who lived from 1078 to 1160. It is generally conceded that the early ancestors of Levantine dialectical poetry were the Andalusian ''zajal'' and '' muwashshaḥah'', brought to Egypt and the eastern Mediterranean by Moors fleeing Spain in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. An early master of Egyptian zajal was the fourteenth century ''zajjāl'' Abu ʿAbd Allāh al-Ghubārī. Zajal's origins may be ancient but it can be traced back to at least the 12th century. Today it is most alive in the Levant (especially in Lebanon ( see below), Palestine, Syria, and in Jordan where professional zajal practitioners can attain high levels of recognition and popularity) as well as the Maghreb, particularly Morocco and Algeria. Zajal is semi-improvised and semi-sung ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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