The Facts on File Companion to British Poetry Before 1600

Clerk would willingly teach others, the overall portrait implies he is more concerned with theory than appli- cation. Riding alo ...

sparwe [sparrow]” (l. 626), and claims to have numer- ous concubines. He, too, is a cheat, and will release offenders from their ...

group, the contest springing from nowhere, with even the tale-telling order left to chance (the Pilgrims drew straws). Indeed, t ...

from the scheming abbot of St. Mary’s York, Sir Rich- ard returns home to gather the money to repay Robin. He sets off a year la ...

inhabitants of the house are rich or poor, but neither the wife nor the husband says a word. The gentlemen eat the puddings, the ...

“GRAVE MARKED WITH OGHAM, A” (“GRAVE MARKED WITH OGAM, A”) ANONYMOUS (12th century) The anonymous poem now called “A Grave Marke ...

until cured by a woman’s love. The injured knight jour- neys to a remote land where an old king is married to a lovely woman who ...

C D 213 HAGIOGRAPHY Derived from the Greek hagio (saint, holy one), hagiography is literally writing about saints. More specifi ...

education of the “lewd” [common] person. The poem successively focuses on each of the Ten Command- ments, the SEVEN DEADLY SINS, ...

Roman Emperor Charles V. Anne and Henry were secretly married in January 1533. When Henry’s hopes for an annulment did not mater ...

and realism), The TESTAMENT OF CRESSEID (a response to GEOFFREY CHAUCER’s work on the same subject), and Orpheus and Eurydice (a ...

in English. (Terza rima usually consists of tercets in iambic pentameter.) However, when her husband died in 1601, Mary retired ...

god into throwing his mace at Leander, which he regrets and calls back. Leander arrives cold and naked at Hero’s door, where he ...

JOHN LYDGATE. Hoccleve claimed to have known GEOF- FREY CHAUCER personally, which is plausible consider- ing the older poet reti ...

Book 1 of The House of Fame opens with a proem discussing dreams and dream theory; this leads into an invocation to the god of s ...

HUNDRED YEARS’ WAR (1337–1453) This misleadingly named episode in history featured violent struggle that drew families, empires, ...

C D 222 IAMBIC PENTAMETER The most common meter of English poetry, iambic pentameter is an unrhymed line containing fi ve iambs ...

FURTHER READING Lindley, David. Thomas Campion. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1986. Susan L. Anderson IDEAS MIRROUR (OVERVIEW) MICHAEL DR ...

Sense; / In right or wrong they call her Conscience” (ll. 9–11). In extending the conceit around his unnamed (at least in this s ...

long been considered one of the fi nest poems in any genre that deals with the heartbreak of lost love. Sonnet 61 is written in ...