According to Roman tradition, Lucretia, anglicized as Lucrece, was a noblewoman in ancient Rome. Sextus Tarquinius (Tarquin) raped her and her subsequent suicide precipitated a rebellion that overthrew the Roman monarchy and led to the transition of Roman government from a kingdom to a republic. After Tarquin raped Lucretia, flames of dissatisfaction were kindled over the tyrannical methods of Tarquin's father, Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, the last king of Rome. As a result, the prominent families instituted a republic, drove the extensive royal family of Tarquin from Rome, and successfully defended the republic against attempted Etruscan and Latin intervention.
Pyramus and Thisbe are a pair of ill-fated lovers whose story forms part of Ovid's Metamorphoses. The story has since been retold by many authors.
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.
Rhyme royal is a rhyming stanza form that was introduced to English poetry by Geoffrey Chaucer. The form enjoyed significant success in the fifteenth century and into the sixteenth century. It has had a more subdued but continuing influence on English verse in more recent centuries.
The General Prologue is the first part of The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer. It introduces the frame story, in which a group of pilgrims travelling to the shrine of Thomas Becket in Canterbury agree to take part in a storytelling competition, and describes the pilgrims themselves. The Prologue is arguably the most familiar section of The Canterbury Tales, depicting traffic between places, languages and cultures as well as introducing and describing the pilgrims who will narrate the tales.
Thomas Hoccleve or Occleve (1368/69–1426) was a key figure in 15th-century Middle English literature, significant for promoting Chaucer as "the father of English literature", and as a poet in his own right. His poetry, especially his longest work, the didactic work Regement of Princes, was extremely popular in the fifteenth century, but went largely ignored until the late twentieth century, when it was re-examined by scholars, particularly John Burrow. Today he is most well known for his Series, which includes the earliest autobiographical description of mental illness in English, and for his extensive scribal activity. Three holographs of his poetry have survived, and he also copied literary manuscripts by other writers. As a clerk of the Office of the Privy Seal, he wrote hundreds of documents in French and Latin.
"The Manciple's Tale" is part of Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales. It tends to appear near the end of most manuscripts of the poem, and the prologue to the final tale, "The Parson's Tale", makes it clear it was intended as the penultimate story in the collection. The Manciple, a purchasing agent for a law court, tells a fable about Phoebus Apollo and his pet crow, which is both an origin myth explaining the crow's black feathers and a moralistic injunction against gossip.
"The Physician's Tale" is one of The Canterbury Tales, written by Geoffrey Chaucer in the 14th century.
Nicholas Trivet was an English Anglo-Norman chronicler.
Confessio Amantis is a 33,000-line Middle English poem by John Gower, which uses the confession made by an ageing lover to the chaplain of Venus as a frame story for a collection of shorter narrative poems. According to its prologue, it was composed at the request of Richard II. It stands with the works of Chaucer, Langland, and the Pearl poet as one of the great works of late 14th-century English literature. The Index of Middle English Verse shows that in the era before the printing press it was one of the most-often copied manuscripts along with Canterbury Tales and Piers Plowman.
In Greek and Roman mythology, Corone is a young woman who attracted the attention of Poseidon, the god of the sea, and was saved by Athena, the goddess of wisdom. She was a princess and the daughter of Coronaeus. Her brief tale is recounted in the narrative poem Metamorphoses by the Roman poet Ovid. Several other myths surround the crow about its connection to Athena.
The Pattern of Painful Adventures (1576) is a prose novel. A later edition, printed in 1607 by Valentine Simmes and published by Nathaniel Butter, was a source for William Shakespeare's play Pericles, Prince of Tyre. There was at least one intermediate edition, around 1595.
Emaré is a Middle English Breton lai, a form of mediaeval romance poem, told in 1035 lines. The author of Emaré is unknown and it exists in only one manuscript, Cotton Caligula A. ii, which contains ten metrical narratives. Emaré seems to date from the late fourteenth century, possibly written in the North East Midlands. The iambic pattern is rather rough.
The Prologue and Tale of Beryn are spurious fifteenth century additions to Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. They are both written in Middle English.
Harley MS 7334, sometimes known as the Harley Manuscript, is a mediaeval manuscript of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales held in the Harleian Collection of the British Library.
The Trinity Gower D Scribe, often referred to simply as Scribe D, was a professional scribe and copyist of literary manuscripts active during the late fourteenth and early fifteenth century in London, England. Although his real name long remained unknown, Scribe D has been described as "so well known to students of late Middle English manuscripts that he hardly needs any introduction".
John Hurt Fisher was an American literary scholar, English professor, and medievalist, who specialized in the study of Geoffrey Chaucer and John Gower.
Russell A. Peck was an American medievalist, scholar of medieval literature, and author. At the time of his retirement in 2014, he was John Hall Deane Professor of English at the University of Rochester, where he began teaching in 1961.
