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Griselda (anglicised to Grizzel, Grissel, Grissela and similar forms) is a figure in European folklore noted for her patience and obedience.
In the most famous version of the Griselda tale, written by Giovanni Boccaccio c. 1350, [1] [2] [3] Griselda marries Gualtieri, the Marquis of Saluzzo, who tests her by declaring that their two children—a son and a daughter—must both be put to death. Griselda gives both of them up without protest, but Gualtieri does not actually kill the children, instead sending them away to Bologna to be raised. In a final test, Gualtieri publicly renounces Griselda, claiming he had been granted papal dispensation to divorce her and marry a better woman; Griselda goes to live with her father. Some years later, Gualtieri announces he is to remarry and recalls Griselda as a servant to prepare the wedding celebrations. He introduces her to a twelve-year-old girl he claims is to be his bride but who is really their daughter; Griselda wishes them well. At this, Gualtieri reveals their grown children to her and Griselda is restored to her place as wife and mother. [4]
Griselda appears in tales by Petrarch [5] (died 1374, Historia Griseldis published 100 years later) and by Chaucer ( The Clerk's Tale in The Canterbury Tales , late 1300s). She is also cited in Christine de Pizan's The Book of the City of Ladies. [6] Patient Griselda is a tale by Charles Perrault (1691). [7] [8] John Phillip's play The Commodye of Pacient and Meeke Grissill (also known as The Plaie of Grissill) dates from 1565. Henry Chettle, Thomas Dekker and William Haughton collaborated on another dramatic version, Patient Grissel , first performed in 1599. There are operas named Griselda by Antonio Maria Bononcini ( Griselda , 1718), Alessandro Scarlatti ( La Griselda , 1721), Giovanni Bononcini ( Griselda , 1722), and Antonio Vivaldi ( Griselda , 1735). Also Jules Massenet's Grisélidis (1901) was inspired by the tale of Griselda.
William Shakespeare's play The Winter's Tale (1623) features many elements of the Griselda story. [9] Anthony Trollope's high Victorian novel Miss Mackenzie (1865) is based on the Griselda theme. The Modern Griselda is a novel by Maria Edgeworth from 1804. Patient Griselda is one of a group of historical or legendary dinner-party guests in Caryl Churchill's 1982 play Top Girls . "Patient Griselda" is a 2015 short story by Steven Anthony George in the anthology Twice Upon A Time: Fairytale, Folklore, & Myth. Reimagined & Remastered, where the tale is retold as a late twentieth century horror story.
The tale of Griselda was re-imagined by Margaret Atwood in her short story "Impatient Griselda," which was published in The New York Times Magazine on July 12, 2020. [10]
Boccaccio's story of Griselda is depicted in a set of three Sienese panel paintings dating from around 1490 which hang in the National Gallery in London. They are the work of an unnamed Italian artist known as the Master of the Story of Griselda. [11]
The Canterbury Tales is a collection of twenty-four stories that runs to over 17,000 lines written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer between 1387 and 1400. It is widely regarded as Chaucer's magnum opus. The tales are presented as part of a story-telling contest by a group of pilgrims as they travel together from London to Canterbury to visit the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral. The prize for this contest is a free meal at the Tabard Inn at Southwark on their return.
Giovanni Boccaccio was an Italian writer, poet, correspondent of Petrarch, and an important Renaissance humanist. Born in the town of Certaldo, he became so well known as a writer that he was sometimes simply known as "the Certaldese" and one of the most important figures in the European literary panorama of the fourteenth century. Some scholars define him as the greatest European prose writer of his time, a versatile writer who amalgamated different literary trends and genres, making them converge in original works, thanks to a creative activity exercised under the banner of experimentalism.
This article contains summaries and commentaries of the 100 stories within Giovanni Boccaccio's The Decameron.
The Book of the City of Ladies, or Le Livre de la Cité des Dames, is a book written by Christine de Pizan believed to have been finished by 1405. Perhaps Pizan's most famous literary work, it is her second work of lengthy prose. Pizan uses the vernacular French language to compose the book, but she often uses Latin-style syntax and conventions within her French prose. The book serves as her formal response to Jean de Meun's popular Roman de la Rose. Pizan combats Meun's statements about women by creating an allegorical city of ladies. She defends women by collecting a wide array of famous women throughout history. These women are "housed" in the City of Ladies, which is actually the book. As Pizan builds her city, she uses each famous woman as a building block for not only the walls and houses of the city, but also as building blocks for her thesis. Each woman introduced to the city adds to Pizan's argument towards women as valued participants in society. She also advocates in favour of education for women.
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 14th century.
"The Merchant's Tale" is one of Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. In it Chaucer subtly mocks antifeminist literature like that of Theophrastus ("Theofraste"). The tale also shows the influence of Boccaccio, Deschamps' Le Miroir de Mariage, Roman de la Rose by Guillaume de Lorris, Andreas Capellanus, Statius, and Cato. The tale is found in Persia in the Bahar Danush, in which the husband climbs a date tree instead of a pear tree. It could have arrived in Europe through the One Thousand and One Nights, or perhaps the version in book VI of the Masnavi by Rumi. Though several of the tales are sexually explicit by modern standards, this one is especially so. Larry Benson remarks:
The central episode of the Merchant's Tale is like a fabliau, though of a very unusual sort: It is cast in the high style, and some of the scenes are among Chaucer's most elaborate displays of rhetorical art.
Patient Grissel is a play by Thomas Dekker, Henry Chettle, and William Haughton, first printed in 1603. It is mentioned in Henslowe's diary in the entry for December 1599.
"The Reeve's Tale" is the third story told in Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales. The reeve, named Oswald in the text, is the manager of a large estate who reaped incredible profits for his master and himself. He is described in the Tales as skinny and bad-tempered and old; his hair is closely cropped reflecting his social status as a serf. His sword is rusty while he rides a fine gray horse called Scot. The Reeve is a skilled carpenter, a profession mocked in the previous "Miller's Tale". Oswald responds with a tale that mocks the Miller's profession.
The Clerk's Tale is one of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, told by the Clerk of Oxford, a student of what would nowadays be considered philosophy or theology. He tells the tale of Griselda, a young woman whose husband tests her loyalty in a series of cruel torments that recall the biblical Book of Job.
"The Shipman's Tale" is one of The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer.
De casibus virorum illustrium is a work of 56 biographies in Latin prose composed by the Florentine poet Giovanni Boccaccio of Certaldo in the form of moral stories of the falls of famous people, similar to his work of 106 biographies De Mulieribus Claris.
Griselda is an opera seria in three acts by the Italian composer Alessandro Scarlatti, the last of Scarlatti’s operas to survive completely today. The libretto is by Apostolo Zeno, with revisions by an anonymous author. Zeno wrote his work in 1701 and it had already been set by Pollarolo and Antonio Maria Bononcini. It is based on the story of Patient Griselda from Boccaccio's tenth day of The Decameron. Scarlatti's opera was first performed at the Teatro Capranica, Rome, in January 1721 with an all-male cast.
The Decameron, subtitled Prince Galehaut and sometimes nicknamed l'Umana commedia, is a collection of short stories by the 14th-century Italian author Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–1375). The book is structured as a frame story containing 100 tales told by a group of seven young women and three young men; they shelter in a secluded villa just outside Florence in order to escape the Black Death, which was afflicting the city. Boccaccio probably conceived of the Decameron after the epidemic of 1348, and completed it by 1353. The various tales of love in The Decameron range from the erotic to the tragic. Tales of wit, practical jokes, and life lessons contribute to the mosaic. In addition to its literary value and widespread influence, it provides a document of life at the time. Written in the vernacular of the Florentine language, it is considered a masterpiece of early Italian prose.
Griselda is an opera in three acts composed by Antonio Maria Bononcini. The opera uses a slightly revised version of the 1701 Italian libretto by Apostolo Zeno that was based on Giovanni Boccaccio's The Decameron. The opera was dedicated to Prince Maximilian Karl von Löwenstein, the Austrian governor of Milan, who died during the opera's world première on 26 December 1718 at the Teatro Regio Ducale in Milan. Nevertheless, Bononcini's opera was well received and enjoyed several revivals during the eighteenth century.
Griselda is a dramma per musica in three acts that was composed by Giovanni Bononcini. The opera uses a revised version of the 1701 Italian libretto by Apostolo Zeno that was based on Giovanni Boccaccio's The Decameron. The Italian poet Paolo Antonio Rolli was hired to revise the text. Bononcini's opera premiered in London at the King’s Theatre on 22 February 1722. From the opera, an aria "Per la gloria d'adorarvi" is nowadays a famous and popular concert piece, with opera singers such as Oleg Ryabets, or Ramon Vargas.
Histoires ou contes du temps passé, avec des moralités or Contes de ma mère l'Oye is a collection of literary fairy tales written by Charles Perrault, published in Paris in 1697. The work became popular because it was written at a time when fairy tales were fashionable amongst aristocrats in Parisian literary salons. Perrault wrote the work when he retired from court as secretary to Jean-Baptiste Colbert, minister to Louis XIV of France. Colbert's death may have forced Perrault's retirement, at which point he turned to writing. Scholars have debated as to the origin of his tales and whether they are original literary fairy tales modified from commonly known stories, or based on stories written by earlier medieval writers such as Boccaccio.
Contact between Geoffrey Chaucer and the Italian humanists Petrarch or Boccaccio has been proposed by scholars for centuries. More recent scholarship tends to discount these earlier speculations because of lack of evidence. As Leonard Koff remarks, the story of their meeting is "a 'tydying' worthy of Chaucer himself".
John Phillip (fl.1561) was an English poet and dramatist of the Elizabethan era.
Italian: Novelle licenziose di vergini vogliose, lit. 'Licentious Tales of Lusty Virgins', is a 1973 Italian decamerotic comedy film lensed and directed for the most part by Joe D'Amato. The story and screenplay were written by D'Amato and producer Diego Spataro.