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.
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.
Robert Henryson was a poet who flourished in Scotland in the period c. 1460–1500. Counted among the Scots makars, he lived in the royal burgh of Dunfermline and is a distinctive voice in the Northern Renaissance at a time when the culture was on a cusp between medieval and renaissance sensibilities. Little is known of his life, but evidence suggests that he was a teacher who had training in law and the humanities, that he had a connection with Dunfermline Abbey and that he may also have been associated for a period with Glasgow University. His poetry was composed in Middle Scots at a time when this was the state language. His writing consists mainly of narrative works. His surviving body of work amounts to almost 5000 lines.
Narrative poetry is a form of poetry that tells a story, often using the voices of both a narrator and characters; the entire story is usually written in metered verse. Narrative poems do not need to rhyme. The poems that make up this genre may be short or long, and the story it relates to may be complex. It is normally dramatic, with various characters. Narrative poems include all epic poetry, and the various types of "lay", most ballads, and some idylls, as well as many poems not falling into a distinct type.
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 Chryses, a Trojan priest. 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).
Sir Francis Kynaston or Kinaston (1587–1642) was an English lawyer, courtier, poet and politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1621 to 1622. He is noted for his translation of Geoffrey Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde into Latin verse. He also made a Latin translation of Henryson's The Testament of Cresseid.
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 BCE.
A makar is a term from Scottish literature for a poet or bard, often thought of as a royal court poet.
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.
"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.
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.
Chaucer's influence on 15th-century Scottish literature began towards the beginning of the century with King James I of Scotland. This first phase of Scottish "Chaucerianism" was followed by a second phase, comprising the works of Robert Henryson, William Dunbar, and Gavin Douglas. At this point, England has recognised Scotland as an independent state following the end of the Wars of Scottish Independence in 1357. Because of Scottish history and the English’s recent involvement in that history, all of these writers are familiar with the works of Geoffrey Chaucer.
The Morall Fabillis of Esope the Phrygian is a work of Northern Renaissance literature composed in Middle Scots by the fifteenth century Scottish makar, Robert Henryson. It is a cycle of thirteen connected narrative poems based on fables from the European tradition. The drama of the cycle exploits a set of complex moral dilemmas through the figure of animals representing a full range of human psychology. As the work progresses, the stories and situations become increasingly dark.
"Robene and Makyne" is a short poem by the 15th-century Scottish makar Robert Henryson. It is an early written example of Scottish pastourelle, derived from the ballad stanza form.
Matthew Purdie McDiarmid was a Scottish literary scholar, essayist, campaigning academic and poet. He was a founding member of the Association for Scottish Literary Studies (1970) and the first president of the Robert Henryson Society which he also helped to found in 1993.
"The Taill of the Uponlandis Mous and the Burges Mous", also known as "The Twa Mice," is a Middle Scots adaptation of Aesop's Fable The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse by the Scottish poet Robert Henryson. Written around the 1480s, it is the second poem in Henryson's collection called The Morall Fabillis of Esope the Phrygian.
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 Paddock and the Mouse" is a poem by the 15th-century Scottish poet Robert Henryson and part of his collection of moral fables known as the Morall Fabillis of Esope the Phrygian. It is written in Middle Scots. As with the other tales in the collection, appended to it is a moralitas which elaborates on the moral that the fable is supposed to contain.
Troilus and Cressida is a play by William Shakespeare, probably written in 1602.
