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The elegiac couplet is a poetic form used by Greek lyric poets for a variety of themes usually of smaller scale than the epic. Roman poets, particularly Catullus, Propertius, Tibullus, and Ovid, adopted the same form in Latin many years later. As with the English heroic couplet, each pair of lines usually makes sense on its own, while forming part of a larger work.
Titus Maccius Plautus was a Roman playwright of the Old Latin period. His comedies are the earliest Latin literary works to have survived in their entirety. He wrote Palliata comoedia, the genre devised by Livius Andronicus, the innovator of Latin literature. The word Plautine refers to both Plautus's own works and works similar to or influenced by his.
Publius Terentius Afer, better known in English as Terence, was a playwright during the Roman Republic. He was the author of six comedies based on Greek originals by Menander or Apollodorus of Carystus. Terence's plays were originally staged around 166–160 BC.
Amphitryon, in Greek mythology, was a son of Alcaeus, king of Tiryns in Argolis. His mother was named either Astydameia, the daughter of Pelops and Hippodamia, or Laonome, daughter of Guneus, or else Hipponome, daughter of Menoeceus. Amphitryon was the brother of Anaxo, and Perimede, wife of Licymnius. He was a husband of Alcmene, Electryon's daughter, and stepfather of the Greek hero Heracles.
Eustache Deschamps was a French poet, byname Morel, in French "Nightshade".
The Punic language, also called Phoenicio-Punic or Carthaginian, is an extinct variety of the Phoenician language, a Canaanite language of the Northwest Semitic branch of the Semitic languages. An offshoot of the Phoenician language of coastal West Asia, it was principally spoken on the Mediterranean coast of Northwest Africa, the Iberian Peninsula and several Mediterranean islands, such as Malta, Sicily, and Sardinia by the Punic people, or western Phoenicians, throughout classical antiquity, from the 8th century BC to the 6th century AD.
Aulularia is a Latin play by the early Roman playwright Titus Maccius Plautus. The title literally means The Little Pot, but some translators provide The Pot of Gold, and the plot revolves around a literal pot of gold which the miserly protagonist, Euclio, guards zealously. The play's ending does not survive, though there are indications of how the plot is resolved in later summaries and a few fragments of dialogue.
The architectural form of theatre in Rome has been linked to later, more well-known examples from the 1st century BC to the 3rd Century AD. The theatre of ancient Rome referred to a period of time in which theatrical practice and performance took place in Rome. The tradition has been linked back even further to the 4th century BC, following the state’s transition from monarchy to republic. Theatre during this era is generally separated into genres of tragedy and comedy, which are represented by a particular style of architecture and stage play, and conveyed to an audience purely as a form of entertainment and control. When it came to the audience, Romans favored entertainment and performance over tragedy and drama, displaying a more modern form of theatre that is still used in contemporary times.
Casina is a Latin comedy or farce by the early Roman playwright Titus Maccius Plautus. Set in ancient Athens, the play describes how an Athenian gentleman and his son are both in love with the same slave-girl, Casina. The old man tries to conduct a secret affair with Casina by having her marry his farm-manager; but his plan is foiled by his wife, who dresses her son's armour-bearer up as the bride and sends him into the bridal chamber in place of Casina.
Gualterus Anglicus was an Anglo-Norman poet and scribe who produced a seminal version of Aesop's Fables around the year 1175.
De tribus puellis or The Three Girls is an anonymous medieval Latin poem, a narrative elegiac comedy written probably in France during the twelfth or early thirteenth century. The metre and theme (love) are modelled so thoroughly on Ovid that it is erroneously ascribed to him in the two fifteenth-century manuscripts in which it is preserved.
Elegiac comedy was a genre of medieval Latin literature—or drama—represented by about twenty texts written in the 12th and 13th centuries in the liberal arts schools of west central France. Though commonly identified in manuscripts as comoedia, modern scholars often reject their status as comedy. Unlike Classical comedy, they were written in elegiac couplets. Denying their true comedic nature, Edmond Faral called them Latin fabliaux, after the later Old French fabliaux, and Ian Thomson labelled them Latin comic tales. Other scholars have invented terms like verse tales, rhymed monologues, epic comedies, and Horatian comedies to describe them. The Latin "comedies", the dramatic nature of which varies greatly, may have been the direct ancestors of the fabliaux but more likely merely share similarities. Other interpretations have concluded that they are primitive romances, student juvenilia, didactic poems, or merely collections of elegies on related themes.
De vetula is a long 13th-century elegiac comedy written in Latin. It is pseudepigraphically signed "Ovidius", and in its time was attributed to the classical Latin poet Ovid. It consists of three books of hexameters, and was quoted by Roger Bacon. In its slight plot, the aging Ovid is duped by a go-between, and renounces love affairs. Its interest to modern readers lies in the discursive padding of the story.
Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance: a play, opera, mime, ballet, etc., performed in a theatre, or on radio or television. Considered as a genre of poetry in general, the dramatic mode has been contrasted with the epic and the lyrical modes ever since Aristotle's Poetics —the earliest work of dramatic theory.
Asinaria is a comic play written in Latin by the Roman playwright Titus Maccius Plautus. In the play an Athenian gentleman, Demaenetus, tells his slave Libanus that he knows his son Argyrippus is having an affair with the prostitute Philaenium next door, and he asks him to try to find some money to pay for the affair. When by chance a stranger comes bringing money owed for some donkeys sold by Saurea, the steward of Demaenetus's wife, Libanus's fellow-slave Leonida pretends to be Saurea, and the two slaves trick the stranger into giving them the money. Argyrippus is given the money on condition that his father is to be allowed to enjoy the first night with the prostitute. But a jealous rival, Diabolus, snitches on Demaenetus to his wife Artemona, who storms to the brothel and prevents her husband from enjoying the girl as well.
Latin prosody is the study of Latin poetry and its laws of meter. The following article provides an overview of those laws as practised by Latin poets in the late Roman Republic and early Roman Empire, with verses by Catullus, Horace, Virgil and Ovid as models. Except for the early Saturnian poetry, which may have been accentual, Latin poets borrowed all their verse forms from the Greeks, despite significant differences between the two languages.
William of Blois was a French medieval poet and dramatist. He wrote at least one poetical work, which has not survived, as well as some dramas. Two other works that survive are credited to him, but it is not clear if he was actually the author. He also was an abbot of a monastery in Calabria in southern Italy, after being an unsuccessful candidate for the Bishopric of Catania in Italy.
Geta, a twelfth-century elegiac comedy by Vitalis of Blois, is a loose adaptation of Plautus’ play, Amphitryon. Both tell the story of how Jupiter, transforming himself to look like Amphitryon, sleeps with Amphitryon’s wife, Alcmena. But in Geta, Amphitryon is not a Greek military leader but a philosopher, and Hercules, the child who is born from the union of the god and Alcmena, is not even mentioned. In both stories, Amphitryon’s servant, who is sent on ahead to his master’s estate to announce Amphitryon’s homecoming to Alcmena, is turned away by Mercury, who is disguised as that very servant, and who convinces him that he (Mercury) is the real servant; but in Geta, this trickery is aided by sophistical arguments, which serve to ridicule sophists in general who style themselves philosophers.
Commedia erudita are Italian comedies written for the enjoyment of scholars in the sixteenth century. They were meant to mimic and emulate the works of Terence and Plautus.
Vitalis of Blois was a 12th-century cleric and Latin dramatist. He wrote two elegiac comedies, Geta and Aulularia, both adaptations of Plautus. The internal evidence of his plays shows him to have been highly educated. His writing can be dated to 1150–1160 at the earliest. The earliest manuscripts date from later in the century. His surname appears in the Latin sources as Blexus, Blesis or Blesensis, indicating an association with Blois. References to Plato in his work suggest a connection with the school of Chartres, where Plato was much admired at the time.
References
- ↑ "Babio, courtly lover to his step-daughter, cuckolded & castrated – purple motes". 2021-06-06. Retrieved 2024-04-27.
- ↑ Brennan, Malcolm M. (1970). "A Play from the Twelfth Century". South Atlantic Bulletin. 35 (2): 28–34. doi:10.2307/3197005. ISSN 0038-2868. JSTOR 3197005.