The Facts on File Companion to British Poetry Before 1600

cynical, and even gruesome; a few have suggested that the faithless lady has murdered her lover. However, other scholars have de ...

C D 447 UBI SUNT Ubi sunt was a common poetic motif employed in the Middle Ages. The term derives from the Latin phrase Ubi sunt ...

C D 448 VENUS AND ADONIS WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE (ca. 1592) The lengthy narrative poem Venus and Adonis begins with the goddess’s su ...

rehabilitated. Indeed, it is now seen as a valuable glimpse into Shakespeare’s early development as a poet. Traditional critical ...

VIRELAI (VIRELAY) The virelai is a fi xed verse form established by the 14th century in French poetry, and often set to music. T ...

There is some debate as to how much infl uence the Franciscan and Dominican orders had on the origins of lyrics to Mary. Some sc ...

Whitehead, Christiania. “Middle English Religious Lyr- ics.” In A Companion to the Middle English Lyric, edited by Thomas G. Dun ...

Structurally, the poem is a Tuscan STRAMBOTTO (eight lines, rhyming abababcc), the brevity of which form greatly appealed to Wya ...

C D 454 WACE (1115–1183) Most of what is known about Wace is drawn from information supplied in his poems. He was born on the is ...

(1296–1328 and 1332–57) and applies it to the time in which he was writing. The past serves to explain the present. WILLIAM WALL ...

was “displesans” [distressing], so he would not relate it. The dramatic effect of this rhetorical device is suc- cessful: The au ...

He tells of the sorrow he has to endure due to his soli- tary state, though he keeps his sad thoughts inside. Lines 19–29a give ...

Prins, A. A. “The Wanderer and The Seafarer.” Neophilologus 48 (1964): 237–251. Torben R. Gebhardt “WAR-BAND’S RETURN, THE” TALI ...

(perhaps appendicitis). He was succeeded by his brother Richard, duke of Gloucester, who took the throne as Richard III. Richard ...

been suggested as a possibility, partly on the basis of the poem’s fi nal references to imprisonment. It is com- posed in TAIL-R ...

1550s) adapted the llatai (animal messenger) poem to her own purpose—the animal carries not a love letter but rather a message t ...

The poem relies on both translation and EXEGESIS: The unnamed avenger of the Old Testament is refi g- ured as the blood-bespatte ...

in her days being “unquiet,” or disturbed, and her nights allowing her no “rest” (l. 10). Tension and tur- moil in days and nigh ...

of offering a poem with three quatrains and fi nal COU- PLET, he retains the ITALIAN (PETRARCHAN) SONNET model that SIR THOMAS W ...

psalms were praised and imitated; during MARY I’s reign, they were adapted by Protestant exiles; afterward, they were developed ...