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Occitan Literature
Occitan literature (referred to in older texts as Provençal literature) is a body of texts written in Occitan, mostly in the south of France. It was the first literature in a Romance language and inspired the rise of vernacular literature throughout medieval Europe. Occitan literature's Golden Age was in the 12th century, when a rich and complex body of lyrical poetry was produced by troubadours writing in Old Occitan, which still survives to this day. Although Catalan is considered by some a variety of Occitan, this article will not deal with Catalan literature, which started diverging from its Southern French counterpart in the late 13th century. Introduction Occitan literature started in the 11th century in several centres. It gradually spread from there, first over the greater portion (though not the whole) of southern France, into what is now the north of Italy and into Spain ( Catalonia, Galicia, Castile), and Portugal. In its rise Occitan literature stands complet ...
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Occitan Language
Occitan (; oc, occitan, link=no ), also known as ''lenga d'òc'' (; french: langue d'oc) by its native speakers, and sometimes also referred to as ''Provençal'', is a Romance language spoken in Southern France, Monaco, Italy's Occitan Valleys, as well as Spain's Val d'Aran; collectively, these regions are sometimes referred to as Occitània. It is also spoken in Calabria ( Southern Italy) in a linguistic enclave of Cosenza area (mostly Guardia Piemontese). Some include Catalan in Occitan, as the distance between this language and some Occitan dialects (such as the Gascon language) is similar to the distance between different Occitan dialects. Catalan was considered a dialect of Occitan until the end of the 19th century and still today remains its closest relative. Occitan is an official language of Catalonia, where a subdialect of Gascon known as Aranese is spoken in the Val d'Aran. Since September 2010, the Parliament of Catalonia has considered Aranese Occitan to ...
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Jester
A jester, court jester, fool or joker was a member of the household of a nobleman or a monarch employed to entertain guests during the medieval and Renaissance eras. Jesters were also itinerant performers who entertained common folk at fairs and town markets, and the discipline continues into the modern day, where jesters perform at historical-themed events. During the Middle Ages, jesters are often thought to have worn brightly colored clothes and eccentric hats in a motley pattern. Their modern counterparts usually mimic this costume. Jesters entertained with a wide variety of skills: principal among them were song, music, and storytelling, but many also employed acrobatics, juggling, telling jokes (such as puns, stereotypes, and imitation), and performing magic tricks. Much of the entertainment was performed in a comic style. Many jesters made contemporary jokes in word or song about people or events well known to their audiences. Etymology The modern use of the E ...
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Latin Poetry
The history of Latin poetry can be understood as the adaptation of Greek models. The verse comedies of Plautus, the earliest surviving examples of Latin literature, are estimated to have been composed around 205-184 BC. History Scholars conventionally date the start of Latin literature to the first performance of a play in verse by a Greek slave, Livius Andronicus, at Rome in 240 BC. Livius translated Greek New Comedy for Roman audiences, using meters that were basically those of Greek drama, modified to the needs of Latin. His successors Plautus ( 254 – 184 BC) and Terence ( 195/185 – 159? BC) further refined the borrowings from the Greek stage and the prosody of their verse is substantially the same as for classical Latin verse. Ennius (239 – 169 BC), virtually a contemporary of Livius, introduced the traditional meter of Greek epic, the dactylic hexameter, into Latin literature; he substituted it for the jerky Saturnian meter in which Livius had been compos ...
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Partimen
The ''partimen'' (; ca, partiment ; also known as ''partia'' or ''joc partit'') is a cognate form of the French jeu-parti (plural ''jeux-partis''). It is a genre of Occitan lyric poetry composed between two troubadours, a subgenre of the '' tenso'' or ''cobla'' exchange in which one poet presents a dilemma A dilemma ( grc-gre, δίλημμα "double proposition") is a problem offering two possibilities, neither of which is unambiguously acceptable or preferable. The possibilities are termed the ''horns'' of the dilemma, a clichéd usage, but dis ... in the form of a question and the two debate the answer, each taking up a different side. Of the nearly 200 surviving Occitan debate songs, 120 are ''partimens'' and 75 are open ''tensos''. The ''partimen'' was especially popular in poetic contests. See also Torneyamen. References Further reading * Alfred Jeanroy, ''Les origines de la poésie lyrique en France au Moyen-Age'' (Paris, 1899, 3/1925) *Alfred Jeanroy: ''La poés ...
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Crusade Of 1101
The Crusade of 1101 was a minor crusade of three separate movements, organized in 1100 and 1101 in the successful aftermath of the First Crusade. It is also called the Crusade of the Faint-Hearted due to the number of participants who joined this crusade after having turned back from the First Crusade. Calls for reinforcements from the newly established Kingdom of Jerusalem, and Pope Paschal II, successor to Pope Urban II (who died before learning of the outcome of the crusade that he had called), urged a new expedition. He especially urged those who had taken the crusade vow but had never departed, and those who had turned back while on the march. Some of these people were already scorned at home and faced enormous pressure to return to the east; Adela of Blois, wife of Stephen, Count of Blois, who had fled from the siege of Antioch in 1098, was so ashamed of her husband that she would not permit him to stay at home. Lombards As in the first crusade, the pilgrims and sold ...
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Ordericus Vitalis
Orderic Vitalis ( la, Ordericus Vitalis; 16 February 1075 – ) was an English chronicler and Benedictine monk who wrote one of the great contemporary chronicles of 11th- and 12th-century Normandy and Anglo-Norman England. Modern historians view him as a reliable source. Background Orderic was born on 16 February 1075 in Atcham, Shropshire, England, the eldest son of a French priest, Odelerius of Orléans, who had entered the service of Roger de Montgomery, 1st Earl of Shrewsbury, and had received from his patron a chapel there. By the late 11th century, clerical marriage was still not uncommon in western Christendom. Orderic was one of the few monks who were of mixed parentage as his mother was of English heritage. When Orderic was five, his parents sent him to an English monk, Siward by name, who kept a school in the Abbey of SS Peter and Paul at Shrewsbury. At the age of ten, Orderic was entrusted as an oblate to the Abbey of Saint-Evroul in the Duchy of Normandy, w ...
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Saracens
upright 1.5, Late 15th-century German woodcut depicting Saracens Saracen ( ) was a term used in the early centuries, both in Greek and Latin writings, to refer to the people who lived in and near what was designated by the Romans as Arabia Petraea and Arabia Deserta. The term's meaning evolved during its history of usage. During the Early Middle Ages, the term came to be associated with the tribes of Arabia. The oldest known source mentioning "Saracens" in relation to Islam dates back to the 7th century, in the Greek-language Christian tract ''Doctrina Jacobi''. Among other major events, the tract discusses the Muslim conquest of the Levant, which occurred after the rise of the Rashidun Caliphate following the death of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. The Roman-Catholic church and European Christian leaders used the term during the Middle Ages to refer to Muslims—usually Arabs, Turks, and Iranians. By the 12th century, "Saracen" had become synonymous with "Muslim" in M ...
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William IX Of Aquitaine
William IX ( oc, Guilhèm de Peitieus; ''Guilhem de Poitou'' french: Guillaume de Poitiers) (22 October 1071 – 10 February 1126), called the Troubadour, was the Duke of Aquitaine and Gascony and Count of Poitou (as William VII) between 1086 and his death. He was also one of the leaders of the Crusade of 1101. Though his political and military achievements have a certain historical importance, he is best known as the earliest troubadour—a vernacular lyric poet in the Occitan language—whose work survives. Ducal career William was the son of William VIII of Aquitaine by his third wife, Hildegarde of Burgundy. His birth was a cause of great celebration at the Aquitanian court, but the Church at first considered him illegitimate because of his father's earlier divorces and his parents' consanguinity. This obliged his father to make a pilgrimage to Rome soon after his birth to seek Papal approval of his third marriage and the young William's legitimacy. Early career, 1088&nda ...
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Las, Qu'i Non Sun Sparvir, Astur
Oh, to be a sparrow-hawk, a goshawk!     I'd fly to my love,     Touch her 'la sintil'' embrace her,     Kiss her lips so soft,Sweeten and soothe our pain 'dulur'' ''Las, qu'i non sun sparvir, astur'' (), which translates "Oh, to be a sparrow-hawk, a goshawk!", is the incipit of an anonymous Old Occitan '' cobla'' (single stanza poem). It was found in the margins of an eleventh-century manuscript in the British Library. Possibly it was added late in that century, certainly by a German scribe. It was first published in 1984, and has been translated into French and English. In the poem the lover expresses erotic desire and the longing for fulfillment through his wish to be a sparrow hawk or, which was more prized, a goshawk so that he could fly to her. In the Middle Ages, the value of a sparrow hawk was proportional to its resemblance to the goshawk in size, strength and beauty. The symbolism of the male ...
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Cançó De Santa Fe
The ''Cançó'' (or ''Cançon'') ''de Santa Fe'' (, ; french: Chanson de Sainte Foi d'Agen, en, Song of Saint Fides), a hagiographical poem about Saint Faith, is an early surviving written work in Old Occitan and has been proposed to be the earliest work in Old Catalan. It is 593 octosyllabic lines long, divided into between 45 and 55 monorhyming ''laisses''. It was written between 1054 and 1076, during the reign of Ramon Berenguer I, Count of Barcelona, by an anonymous poet. The place of its composition is controversial. It may have been written in the region around Narbonne. On the other hand, it may belong to the Roussillon, either to the monastery of Sant Miquel de Cuixà, where relics pertaining to Saint Faith are to be found, or that of Sant Martí del Canigó. In Roussillon in the eleventh century, the name Faith (''Fides'') was relatively common. Other suggested regions include Provence, Cerdagne, and Quercy. The language or dialect of the poem is also debated, sinc ...
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Consolation Of Philosophy
''On the Consolation of Philosophy'' ('' la, De consolatione philosophiae'')'','' often titled as ''The Consolation of Philosophy'' or simply the ''Consolation,'' is a philosophical work by the Roman statesman Boethius. Written in 523 while he was imprisoned by King Theodoric, it is often described as the last great Western work of the Classical Period. Boethius's ''Consolation'' heavily influenced the philosophy of late antiquity, as well as Medieval and early Renaissance Christianity.Dante placed Boethius the "last of the Romans and first of the Scholastics" among the doctors in his Paradise (see ''The Divine Comedy'') (see also below). Description ''On the Consolation of Philosophy'' was written in AD 523 during a one-year imprisonment Boethius served while awaiting trial—and eventual execution—for the alleged crime of treason under the Ostrogothic King Theodoric the Great. Boethius was at the very heights of power in Rome, holding the prestigious office of ''magister of ...
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