Geoffrey Chaucer was an English poet, author, and civil servant best known for The Canterbury Tales. He has been called the "father of English literature", or, alternatively, the "father of English poetry". He was the first writer to be buried in what has since come to be called Poets' Corner, in Westminster Abbey. Chaucer also gained fame as a philosopher and astronomer, composing the scientific A Treatise on the Astrolabe for his 10-year-old son, Lewis. He maintained a career in the civil service as a bureaucrat, courtier, diplomat, and member of parliament.
Pandarus or Pandar is a Trojan aristocrat who appears in stories about the Trojan War.
The 120 Days of Sodom, or the School of Libertinage is an unfinished novel by the French writer and nobleman Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade, written in 1785 and published in 1904 after its manuscript was rediscovered. It describes the activities of four wealthy libertine Frenchmen who spend four months seeking the ultimate sexual gratification through orgies, sealing themselves in an inaccessible castle in the heart of the Black Forest with 12 accomplices, 20 designated victims and 10 servants. Four aging prostitutes relate stories of their most memorable clients whose sexual practices involved 600 "passions" including coprophilia, necrophilia, bestiality, incest, rape, and child sexual abuse. The stories inspire the libertines to engage in acts of increasing violence leading to the torture and murder of their victims, most of whom are adolescents and young women.
John Gower was an English poet, a contemporary of William Langland and the Pearl Poet, and a personal friend of Geoffrey Chaucer. He is remembered primarily for three major works—the Mirour de l'Omme, Vox Clamantis, and Confessio Amantis—three long poems written in French, Latin, and English respectively, which are united by common moral and political themes.
Cressida is a character who appears in many Medieval and Renaissance retellings of the story of the Trojan War. She is a Trojan woman, the daughter of Calchas, a Greek seer. She falls in love with Troilus, the youngest son of King Priam, and pledges everlasting love, but when she is sent to the Greeks as part of a hostage exchange, she forms a liaison with the Greek warrior Diomedes. In later culture she becomes an archetype of a faithless lover.
Troilus and Criseyde is an epic poem by Geoffrey Chaucer which re-tells in Middle English the tragic story of the lovers Troilus and Criseyde set against a backdrop of war during the siege of Troy. It was written in rime royale and probably completed during the mid-1380s. Many Chaucer scholars regard it as the poet's finest work. As a finished long poem, it is more self-contained than the better known but ultimately unfinished The Canterbury Tales. This poem is often considered the source of the phrase: "all good things must come to an end" (3.615).
Troilus is a legendary character associated with the story of the Trojan War. The first surviving reference to him is in Homer's Iliad, composed in the late 8th century BC.
"Il Filostrato" is a poem by the Italian writer Giovanni Boccaccio, and the inspiration for Geoffrey Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde and, through Chaucer, the Shakespeare play Troilus and Cressida. It is itself loosely based on Le Roman de Troie, by 12th-century poet Benoît de Sainte-Maure.
Troilus and Cressida is the first of the two operas by William Walton, and was premiered in 1954. The libretto was by Christopher Hassall, his own first opera libretto, based on Geoffrey Chaucer's poem Troilus and Criseyde. Walton dedicated the score to his wife, Susana.
Le Roman de Troie by Benoît de Sainte-Maure, probably written between 1155 and 1160, is a 30,000-line epic poem, a medieval retelling of the theme of the Trojan War. It inspired a body of literature in the genre called the roman antique, loosely assembled by the poet Jean Bodel as the Matter of Rome. The Trojan subject itself, for which de Sainte-Maure provided an impetus, is referred to as the Matter of Troy.
Dulcarnon or dulcarnoun is a term used in the Middle English poem Troilus and Criseyde by Geoffrey Chaucer, in a line given to Criseyde: "at dulcarnoun, right at my wittes ende". It became proverbial. The etymology is from an Arabic phrase dhū-al-qarnayn meaning "two-horned", and the term was in use in medieval Latin.
The Sadeian Woman and the Ideology of Pornography is the American title of a 1978 non-fiction book by Angela Carter, an English writer who primarily wrote fiction novels. British publication was delayed until 1979, when the book appeared as The Sadeian Woman: An Exercise in Cultural History.
Literary nominalism is a paradigm of thought that is interested in the interconnections between certain aspects of nominalist philosophy and theology and works of literature.
Troy Book is a Middle English poem by John Lydgate relating the history of Troy from its foundation through to the end of the Trojan War. It is in five books, comprising 30,117 lines in ten-syllable couplets. The poem's major source is Guido delle Colonne's Historia destructionis Troiae.
The Tragedy of Troilus and Cressida, often shortened to Troilus and Cressida ), is a play by William Shakespeare, probably written in 1602.
Marion Turner is the J. R. R. Tolkien Professor of English Literature and Language at the University of Oxford and an academic authority on Geoffrey Chaucer. She has authored several books, including Chaucer: A European Life, which was shortlisted in 2020 for the Wolfson History Prize, and was a finalist in the PROSE Awards, and for which she was awarded the 2020 Rose Mary Crawshay Prize.
Cannibalism is depicted in literary and other imaginative works across history. Homer's Odyssey, Beowulf, Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus, Flaubert's Salammbo, and Melville's Moby Dick are prominent examples.
Pandrasus is the fictional king of Greece and father of Innogen in Geoffrey of Monmouth's pseudo-history Historia Regum Britanniae.
"Let sleeping dogs lie" is an English proverb known at least since the 14th century. This saying suggests that when an old problem is no longer causing anyone trouble, it might be better left undiscussed: "Possibly he cohabited with Miss Bloggs, but don't mention it in front of his wife, let the sleeping dogs lie", and dormant controversies should not be restarted even if they were never resolved. This intent is similar to the meanings of sayings like "Don't rock the boat", "Never trouble trouble till trouble troubles you".
Like in literature, incest is an important yet controversial thematic element and plot device in films, anime and manga, television, and video games.
