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Youxia
''Youxia'' () was a type of ancient Chinese warrior folk hero celebrated in classical Chinese poetry and fictional literature. It literally means "wandering vigilante", but is commonly translated as " knight-errant" or less commonly as "cavalier", "adventurer", "soldier of fortune" or "underworld stalwart". Background Of the two characters of the term, ''yóu'' (遊) literally means to "wander", "travel" or "move around", and ''xiá'' (俠) means someone with power who helps others in need. The term refers to the way these solitary men travelled the land using physical force or political influence to right the wrongs done to the common people by the powers that be, often judged by their personal codes of chivalry. ''Youxia'' do not come from any particular social class. Various historical documents, wuxia novels and folktales describe them as being princes, government officials, poets, musicians, physicians, professional soldiers, merchants, monks and even humble farmers and bu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Knight-errant
A knight-errant (or knight errant) is a figure of medieval chivalric romance literature. The adjective '' errant'' (meaning "wandering, roving") indicates how the knight-errant would wander the land in search of adventures to prove his chivalric virtues, either in knightly duels ('' pas d'armes'') or in some other pursuit of courtly love. Description The knight-errant is a character who has broken away from the world of his origin, in order to go off on his own to right wrongs or to test and assert his own chivalric ideals. In medieval Europe, knight-errantry existed in literature, though fictional works from this time often were presented as non-fiction. The template of the knight-errant were the heroes of the Round Table of the Arthurian cycle such as Gawain, Lancelot, and Percival. The quest ''par excellence'' in pursuit of which these knights wandered the lands is that of the Holy Grail, such as in ''Perceval, the Story of the Grail'' written by Chrétien de Troyes in the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Knight
A knight is a person granted an honorary title of a knighthood by a head of state (including the pope) or representative for service to the monarch, the church, or the country, especially in a military capacity. The concept of a knighthood may have been inspired by the ancient Greek '' hippeis'' (ἱππεῖς) and Roman ''equites''. In the Early Middle Ages in Western Christian Europe, knighthoods were conferred upon mounted warriors. During the High Middle Ages, a knighthood was considered a class of petty nobility. By the Late Middle Ages, the rank had become associated with the ideals of chivalry, a code of conduct for the perfect courtly Christian warrior. Often, a knight was a vassal who served as an elite fighter or a bodyguard for a lord, with payment in the form of land holdings. The lords trusted the knights, who were skilled in battle on horseback. In the Middle Ages, a knighthood was closely linked with horsemanship (and especially the joust) from its orig ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wuxia
( , literally "martial arts and chivalry") is a genre of Chinese literature, Chinese fiction concerning the adventures of martial artists in ancient China. Although is traditionally a form of historical fantasy literature, its popularity has caused it to be adapted for such diverse art forms as Chinese opera, manhua, television dramas, films, and video games. It forms part of popular culture in many Chinese-speaking communities around the world. According to Hong Kong film director, producer, and movie writer Ronny Yu, wuxia movies are not to be confused with Martial arts film, martial arts movies. The word "" is a compound composed of the elements (, literally "martial", "military", or "armed") and (, literally "chivalrous", "vigilante" or "hero"). A martial artist who follows the code of is often referred to as a (, literally "follower of ") or (, literally "wandering "). In some translations, the martial artist is referred to as a () or (), either of which can be i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vigilante
Vigilantism () is the act of preventing, investigating, and punishing perceived offenses and crimes without legal authority. A vigilante is a person who practices or partakes in vigilantism, or undertakes public safety and retributive justice without commission. Definition The term is borrowed from Italian , which means 'sentinel' or 'watcher', from Latin . According to political scientist Regina Bateson, vigilantism is "the extralegal prevention, investigation, or punishment of offenses." The definition has three components: # Extralegal: Vigilantism is done outside of the law (not necessarily in violation of the law) # Prevention, investigation, or punishment: Vigilantism requires specific actions, not just attitudes or beliefs # Offense: Vigilantism is a response to a perceived crime or violation of an authoritative norm Other scholars have defined "collective vigilantism" as "group violence to punish perceived offenses to a community." Les Johnston argues that vigilant ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Iamb (poetry)
An iamb ( ) or iambus is a metrical foot used in various types of poetry. Originally the term referred to one of the feet of the quantitative meter of classical Greek prosody: a short syllable followed by a long syllable (as in () "beautiful (f.)"). This terminology was adopted in the description of accentual-syllabic verse in English, where it refers to a foot comprising an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable (as in ''abóve''). Thus a Latin word like , because of its short-long rhythm, is considered by Latin scholars to be an iamb, but because it has a stress on the first syllable, in modern linguistics it is considered to be a trochee. Etymology R. S. P. Beekes has suggested that the ''iambos'' has a Pre-Greek origin. An old hypothesis is that the word is borrowed from Phrygian or Pelasgian, and literally means "Einschritt", i. e., "one-step", compare ''dithyramb'' and '' thriambus'', but H. S. Versnel rejects this etymology and suggests instead a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Luo Guanzhong
Luo Ben (c. 1330–1400, or c.1280–1360), better known by his courtesy name Guanzhong (Mandarin pronunciation: ), was a Chinese novelist who lived during the Ming dynasty. He is also known by his pseudonym Huhai Sanren (). Luo Guanzhong is credited with writing '' Romance of the Three Kingdoms'', one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature. Identity The location and date of Luo Guanzhong's birth are controversial. One possibility was that he was from Taiyuan, and lived in the late Yuan dynasty and early Ming dynasty by the record of his contemporary, the playwright Jia Zhongming (賈仲明), who said that he had met him in 1364. Another possibility was that he was born in Dongyuan, the province of Shandong, in about 1280 – 1360. Literary historians suggest other possibilities for his home, also including Hangzhou and Jiangnan. According to Meng Fanren (孟繁仁), Luo Guanzhong can be identified in the pedigree of the Luo family, and Taiyuan is m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Outlaws Of The Marsh
''Water Margin'' (), also called ''Outlaws of the Marsh'' or ''All Men Are Brothers'', is a Chinese novel from the Ming dynasty that is one of the preeminent Classic Chinese Novels. Attributed to Shi Nai'an, ''Water Margin'' was one of the earliest Chinese novels written in vernacular Mandarin Chinese. The story, which is set in the Northern Song dynasty (around 1120), tells of how a group of 108 outlaws gathers at Mount Liang (or ''Liangshan'' Marsh) to rebel against the government. Later they are granted amnesty and enlisted by the government to resist the nomadic conquest of the Liao dynasty and other rebels. While the book's authorship is traditionally attributed to Shi Nai'an (1296–1372), the first external reference to the novel only appeared in 1524 during the Jiajing reign of the Ming dynasty, sparking a long-lasting academic debate on when it was actually written and which historical events the author had witnessed that inspired him to write the book. The novel ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jia Dao
Jia Dao () (779–843), courtesy name Langxian (), was a Chinese Buddhist monk and poet active during the Tang dynasty. Biography Jia Dao was born near modern Beijing; after a period as a Buddhist monk, he went to Chang'an. He became one of Han Yu's disciples, but failed the ''jinshi'' exam several times. He wrote both discursive '' gushi'' and lyric '' jintishi''. His works were criticised as "thin" by Su Shi, and some other commentators have considered them limited and artificial. According to Dr. James J.Y. Liu (1926–1986), a professor of Chinese and comparative literature, Jia's poem ''The Swordsman'' () "seems...to sum up the spirit of knight errantry in four lines."Liu, James J.Y. ''The Chinese Knight Errant''. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1967 () "The Swordsman" reads in Liu's translation as follows: A metric translation of the original Chinese poem with one iamb per Chinese characterTian Min, 2020Medium article./ref> reads as follows: The original Chine ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tang Dynasty
The Tang dynasty (, ; zh, c=唐朝), or the Tang Empire, was an Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 618 to 907, with an Wu Zhou, interregnum between 690 and 705. It was preceded by the Sui dynasty and followed by the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period. Historians generally regard the Tang as a high point in Chinese civilisation, and a Golden age (metaphor), golden age of cosmopolitan culture. Tang territory, acquired through the military campaigns of its early rulers, rivalled that of the Han dynasty. The House of Li, Li family founded the dynasty after taking advantage of a period of Sui decline and precipitating their final collapse, in turn inaugurating a period of progress and stability in the first half of the dynasty's rule. The dynasty was formally interrupted during 690–705 when Empress Wu Zetian seized the throne, proclaiming the Wu Zhou dynasty and becoming the only legitimate Chinese empress regnant. The An Lushan rebellion (755 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Futuwwa
Futuwwa (Arabic: فتوة, "young-manliness") was a conception of adolescent moral behavior around which myriad institutions of Medieval confraternity developed. With characteristics similar to chivalry and virtue, these communal associations of Arab men gained significant influence as stable social units that exerted religious, military, and political influence in much of the Islamic world. History and development Origins In its most literal sense, Futuwwa described the quality of being young. It was not until the eighth century C.E. that the word came to represent something like a moral code.Goshgarian, Rachel. "Beyond the social and the spiritual: Redefining the urban confraternities of late medieval Anatolia." PhD diss., Harvard University, 2008. Proquest (AAT 3295918). The evolution of the word, from adjective to moral framework, was driven by a melding of and Islamicization of Persian and Arab traditions. The spread of Islam was accompanied by the spread of a definition of t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bogatyr
A bogatyr (, ; , ) or vityaz (, ; , ) is a stock character in medieval Bylina, East Slavic legends, akin to a Western European knight-errant. Bogatyrs appear mainly in Kievan Rus', Rus' epic poems—Bylina, ''bylinas''. Historically, they came into existence during the reign of Vladimir the Great (Grand Prince of Kiev from 978 to 1015) as part of his elite warriors (''druzhina''), akin to Knights of the Round table, Knights of the Round Table. Tradition describes bogatyrs as warriors of immense strength, courage and bravery, rarely using magic while fighting enemies in order to maintain the "loosely based on historical fact" aspect of bylinas. They are characterized as having resounding voices, with patriotic and religious pursuits, defending Rus' from foreign enemies (especially nomadic Turkic peoples, Turkic steppe-peoples or Finno-Ugric tribes in the period prior to the Mongol invasions) and their religion. Etymology The word ''bogatyr'' is not of Slavic origin. It derives f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
