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The Floure And The Leafe
''The Floure and the Leafe'' is an anonymous Middle English allegorical poem in 595 lines of rhyme royal, written around 1470. During the 17th, 18th, and most of the 19th century it was mistakenly believed to be the work of Geoffrey Chaucer, and was generally considered to be one of his finest poems. The name of the author is not known but the poem presents itself as the work of a woman, and some critics are inclined to take this at face value. The poet was certainly well-read, there being a number of echoes of earlier writers in the poem, including Geoffrey Chaucer, John Lydgate, John Gower, Andreas Capellanus, Guillaume de Lorris, Guillaume de Machaut, Jean Froissart, Eustache Deschamps, Christine de Pizan, and the authors of the "Lai du Trot" and the '' Kingis Quair''. Synopsis The young female narrator, unable to sleep, walks out to an oak-grove and finds an arbour, where a goldfinch is singing in a medlar tree. There is also a nightingale in a laurel: The nightingale w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Diana (mythology)
Diana is a goddess in Roman and Hellenistic religion, primarily considered a patroness of the countryside, hunters, crossroads, and the Moon. She is equated with the Greek goddess Artemis, and absorbed much of Artemis' mythology early in Roman history, including a birth on the island of Delos to parents Jupiter and Latona, and a twin brother, Apollo,''Larousse Desk Reference Encyclopedia'', The Book People, Haydock, 1995, p. 215. though she had an independent origin in Italy. Diana is considered a virgin goddess and protector of childbirth. Historically, Diana made up a triad with two other Roman deities: Egeria the water nymph, her servant and assistant midwife; and Virbius, the woodland god. Diana is revered in modern neopagan religions including Roman neopaganism, Stregheria, and Wicca. In the ancient, medieval, and modern periods, Diana has been considered a triple deity, merged with a goddess of the moon (Luna/Selene) and the underworld (usually Hecate).Gree ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Keats
John Keats (31 October 1795 – 23 February 1821) was an English poet of the second generation of Romantic poets, with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley. His poems had been in publication for less than four years when he died of tuberculosis at the age of 25. They were indifferently received in his lifetime, but his fame grew rapidly after his death. By the end of the century, he was placed in the canon of English literature, strongly influencing many writers of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood; the ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' of 1888 called one ode "one of the final masterpieces". Jorge Luis Borges named his first encounter with Keats an experience he felt all his life. Keats had a style "heavily loaded with sensualities", notably in the series of odes. Typically of the Romantics, he accentuated extreme emotion through natural imagery. Today his poems and letters remain among the most popular and analysed in English literature – in particular " Ode to a Nightingale", "Od ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Derek Brewer
Derek Stanley Brewer (13 July 1923 – 23 October 2008) was a Welsh medieval scholar, author and publisher. Life Born in Cardiff, Wales, the son of a clerk with General Electric, Brewer read English at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he was taught, among others, by C. S. Lewis. He served as infantry officer with the Worcestershire Regiment and with the Royal Fusiliers during World War II, from 1942 to 1945, then returned to Oxford. He took a Second. He was appointed lecturer at the University of Birmingham, where he remained until 1964, when he moved to Cambridge to take up the position of lecturer in English and then become fellow of Emmanuel College. From 1977 to 1990 he served his college as Master. Brewer was one of the most recognized Chaucer scholars of modern times—his ''Chaucer and His World'' (1978, reissued 2000) "could be said to have started a whole new genre in historical literary biography." [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The House Of Fame
''The House of Fame'' (''Hous of Fame'' in the original spelling) is a Middle English poem by Geoffrey Chaucer, probably written between 1374 and 1385, making it one of his earlier works. It was most likely written after ''The Book of the Duchess'', but its chronological relation to Chaucer's other early poems is uncertain. ''The House of Fame'' is over 2,005 lines long in three books and takes the form of a dream vision composed in octosyllabic couplets. Upon falling asleep the poet finds himself in a glass temple adorned with images of the famous and their deeds. With an eagle as a guide, he meditates on the nature of fame and the trustworthiness of recorded renown. This allows Chaucer to contemplate the role of the poet in reporting the lives of the famous and how much truth there is in what can be told. Synopsis The work begins with a poem in which Chaucer speculates on the nature and causes of dreams. He claims that he will tell his audience about his "wonderful" dream "i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thomas Campbell (poet)
Thomas Campbell (27 July 177715 June 1844) was a Scottish poet. He was a founder and the first President of the Clarence Club and a co-founder of the Literary Association of the Friends of Poland; he was also one of the initiators of a plan to found what became University College London. In 1799 he wrote "The Pleasures of Hope", a traditional 18th-century didactic poem in heroic couplets. He also produced several patriotic war songs—"Ye Mariners of England", "The Soldier's Dream", "Hohenlinden" and, in 1801, "The Battle of the Baltic", but was no less at home in delicate lyrics such as "At Love's Beginning". Early life Born on High Street, Glasgow in 1777, he was the youngest of the eleven children of Alexander Campbell (1710–1801), son of the 6th and last Laird of Kirnan, Argyll, descended from the MacIver-Campbells. His mother, Margaret (born 1736), was the daughter of John Campbell of Craignish and Mary, daughter of Robert Simpson, "a celebrated Royal Armourer". In abo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Hazlitt
William Hazlitt (10 April 177818 September 1830) was an English essayist, drama and literary critic, painter, social commentator, and philosopher. He is now considered one of the greatest critics and essayists in the history of the English language, placed in the company of Samuel Johnson and George Orwell. He is also acknowledged as the finest art critic of his age. Despite his high standing among historians of literature and art, his work is currently little read and mostly out of print. During his lifetime he befriended many people who are now part of the 19th-century literary canon, including Charles and Mary Lamb, Stendhal, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, and John Keats.Grayling, pp. 209–10. Life and works Background The family of Hazlitt's father were Irish Protestants who moved from the county of Antrim to Tipperary in the early 18th century. Also named William Hazlitt, Hazlitt's father attended the University of Glasgow (where he was taught by Adam ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Roscoe
William Roscoe (8 March 175330 June 1831) was an English banker, lawyer, and briefly a Member of Parliament. He is best known as one of England's first abolitionists, and as the author of the poem for children ''The Butterfly's Ball, and the Grasshopper's Feast''. In his day he was also respected as a historian and art collector, as well as a botanist and miscellaneous writer. Early life He was born in Liverpool, where his father, a market gardener, kept a public house called the Bowling Green at Mount Pleasant. Roscoe left school at the age of twelve, having learned all that his schoolmaster could teach. He assisted his father in the work of the garden, but spent his leisure time on reading and study. Later, he wrote: :This mode of life gave health and vigour to my body, and amusement and instruction to my mind; and to this day I well remember the delicious sleep which succeeded my labours, from which I was again called at an early hour. If I were now asked whom I consider t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope (21 May 1688 O.S. – 30 May 1744) was an English poet, translator, and satirist of the Enlightenment era who is considered one of the most prominent English poets of the early 18th century. An exponent of Augustan literature, Pope is best known for his satirical and discursive poetry including '' The Rape of the Lock'', '' The Dunciad'', and ''An Essay on Criticism,'' and for his translation of Homer. After Shakespeare, Pope is the second-most quoted author in ''The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations'', some of his verses having entered common parlance (e.g. " damning with faint praise" or " to err is human; to forgive, divine"). Life Alexander Pope was born in London on 21 May 1688 during the year of the Glorious Revolution. His father (Alexander Pope, 1646–1717) was a successful linen merchant in the Strand, London. His mother, Edith (1643–1733), was the daughter of William Turner, Esquire, of York. Both parents were Catholics. His mother's sister was ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Provence
Provence (, , , , ; oc, Provença or ''Prouvènço'' , ) is a geographical region and historical province of southeastern France, which extends from the left bank of the lower Rhône to the west to the Italian border to the east; it is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the south. It largely corresponds with the modern administrative region of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur and includes the departments of Var, Bouches-du-Rhône, Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, as well as parts of Alpes-Maritimes and Vaucluse.''Le Petit Robert, Dictionnaire Universel des Noms Propres'' (1988). The largest city of the region and its modern-day capital is Marseille. The Romans made the region the first Roman province beyond the Alps and called it ''Provincia Romana'', which evolved into the present name. Until 1481 it was ruled by the Counts of Provence from their capital in Aix-en-Provence, then became a province of the Kings of France. While it has been part of France for more than 500 years, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fables, Ancient And Modern
''Fables, Ancient and Modern'' is a collection of translations of classical and medieval poetry by John Dryden interspersed with some of his own works. Published in March 1700, it was his last and one of his greatest works. Dryden died two months later.The Preface to the Fables - Page v volume of miscellanies entitled Fables, consisting chiefly of translations from Chaucer, Ovid, and Boccaccio, with a poetical epistle to his cousin, John Dryden, and the second Ode on St Cecilia's Day, better known as Alexanders Feast. It is dedicated in a prose epistle to the Duke of Ormond, and contains a verse dedication of Palamon and Arcite to the Duchess of Ormond. Background After the deposition of his patron James II in 1688, Dryden turned to translation to provide himself with a steady income. Dryden’s education at the Westminster School had provided him with an excellent grounding in translation, which was a conventional exercise at the time. ''Fables, Ancient and Modern'' contains ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Dryden
'' John Dryden (; – ) was an English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who in 1668 was appointed England's first Poet Laureate. He is seen as dominating the literary life of Restoration England to such a point that the period came to be known in literary circles as the Age of Dryden. Romanticist writer Sir Walter Scott called him "Glorious John". Early life Dryden was born in the village rectory of Aldwincle near Thrapston in Northamptonshire, where his maternal grandfather was the rector of All Saints. He was the eldest of fourteen children born to Erasmus Dryden and wife Mary Pickering, paternal grandson of Sir Erasmus Dryden, 1st Barone t (1553–1632), and wife Frances Wilkes, Puritan landowning gentry who supported the Puritan cause and Parliament. He was a second cousin once removed of Jonathan Swift. As a boy, Dryden lived in the nearby village of Titchmarsh, where it is likely that he received his first education. In 1644 he was sent to Westm ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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