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Literature influences society
Romantic concept of literature
Literature influences society
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The Love of Poetry and Story Fiction
Love is a powerful experience. As cupid's arrows rains down from the sky, "sometimes the heart sees what is invisible to the eye." (H. Jackson Brown, Jr.) We try to capture and forever hold that experience through the art of painting, recording, and writing, hoping that one day someone will retell the memory. In 1353, Giovanni Boccaccio, completed the Decameron, which consists "the fictional record of ten days: spent telling one hundred tales during one of the worst plagues ever to strike Europe." Boccaccio wrote these novellas trying to escape the black plague; although these stories do not depict his personal life, they are rather explicit about love in the 14th century. However, writing fiction wasn't the only way to express an individual's experience of love; Francis Petrarch, an Italian poet, writes his experiences of love through poetry in his Canzoniere. Both writers note their experiences about love; however, their view of love differ significantly from each other; Boccaccio views love as innocent, joyful, and patient, while Petrarch views love as fearful and destructive.
Boccaccio's tenth story, "Locking the Devil Up in Hell," depicts a young women who has been manipulated by pious men into doing sexual acts as her righteousness to please God has overwhelmed her wits. Boccaccio characterizes the women as naive as one can be, she is obsessed with pleasing God that she will listen to anyone who speaks on how."Oh, Father," replied the girl in all innocence, "if I really do have a Hell, let's do as you suggest just as soon as you are ready." Boccaccio suggests that the young women's situation has no intention of harming anyone as her goal is to fulfill the urge of putting the devil...
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... of my condition" says the husband.
Boccaccio's representation of love through Griselda's situation seems soft and gentle-like, she doesn't have the confidence to overpower her husband and so she must put up with the treatment."Griselda was secretly filled with despair. But she prepared herself to endure this final blow as stoically. . ." In the end of the story, the husband confesses that the acts of distrust were proof of how strong their love is, as the happy couple lives happily ever after.
Lastly, both Boccaccio's and Petrarch's perspective of love has major disagreements. Boccaccio's stories, suggests that love is innocent, joyful and patient, meanwhile, Petrarch's poems, encourages individual's fall in love because it will bring fear and destruction to one's life.
Works Cited
"H. Jackson Brown, Jr.." BrainyQuote.com. Xplore Inc, 2014. 31 January 2014.
When we think about the force that holds the world together and what makes humans different from animals, one answer comes to our minds - that humans can love. Love is a state of mind that cannot be defined easily but can be experienced by everyone. Love is very complicated. In fact it is so complicated that a person in love may be misunderstood to be acting in an extremely foolish manner by other people. The complexity of love is displayed in Rostand’s masterpiece drama Cyrano de Bergerac. This is accomplished by two characters that love the same woman and in the course neither one achieves love in utter perfection.
around the love of these two people, however Boccaccio's original is. quite different, he starts off by talking about the brothers, and he. instead of love, his story revolves around murder and treachery. This The major difference could be put down to the fact that the two pieces were written 4 centuries apart, Boccaccio being written in the 14th. and Keats's on the 18th.
Since we are kids we are taught the importance and meaning of love. Obviously, when we are kids we don’t realize such a big felling, until we grow up. I would say that love isn’t the feeling of intense hormonal urges; it is much more than that. It’s a real genuine feeling. The intense connection of true love cannot be broken because true love is unconditional and it has no boundaries. I have read many books about love, but in this case this book I would talk about is special because it makes us ask many questions about ourselves. Gabriel Garcia Marquez without writing it in the book Love in the Time of Cholera sets the question how long could we will be willing to wait for love? Since the first moment we open the book we can see it is going to be about love, so after reading some chapters we can ask ourselves about this question, and that obviously traps us. Love in the Time of Cholera is a novel that has a very strong meaning of love, some types of love presented in this books focuses on pure, and innocent, passionate, interested, divided love and among others, but the good thing about these kinds of love is that it gives the readers a teaching.
“If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worth reading or do things worth writing.” This maxim applies to the poet Dante Alighieri, writer of The Inferno in the 1300s, because it asserts the need to establish oneself as a contributor to society. Indeed, Dante’s work contributes much to Renaissance Italy as his work is the first of its scope and size to be written in the vernacular. Due to its readability and availability, The Inferno is a nationalistic symbol. With this widespread availability also comes a certain social responsibility; even though Dante’s audience would have been familiar with the religious dogma, he assumes the didactic role of illustrating his own version of Christian justice and emphasizes the need for a personal understanding of divine wisdom and contrapasso, the idea of the perfect punishment for the crime. Dante acts as both author and narrator, completing a physical and spiritual journey into the underworld with Virgil as his guide and mentor. The journey from darkness into light is an allegory full of symbolism, much like that of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, which shows a philosopher’s journey towards truth. Therefore, Dante would also agree with the maxim, “Wise men learn by others’ harms; fools scarcely by their own,” because on the road to gaining knowledge and spiritual enlightenment, characters who learn valuable lessons from the misfortunes of others strengthen their own paradigms. Nonetheless, the only true way to gain knowledge is to experience it first hand. Dante’s character finds truth by way of his own personal quest.
Can a simple emotion such as love be regarded as one of the greatest weapons to create or attain power? It’s a renowned fact that human beings are by nature designed to need, crave, and even require love as part of their survival mechanisms. It comes to no surprise that one of the first accounts of antique poetry maintains love and the craving for it as its main theme; thereby, reinforcing the deep importance that it upholds in the lives of many individuals. Sappho’s “Deathless Aphrodite” clearly epitomizes the suffering and bitterness that arises from an unrequited love. In Sappho’s case, which portrays the case of many, she constantly finds herself in loneliness and despair for though she tries repeatedly, she is only let down recurrently as no one reciprocates the love she gives. It is only the Greek goddess Aphrodite, who holds
Although love is interpreted as a wonderful thing it can also ruin someone's life, “Love is a trap. When is appears, we see only its light, not its shadows.” (Paulo Coelho) Love doesn’t fix people it breaks them asunder. It waits and waits for its next target to make a mistake and ruin everything they worked for. As seen in various works including; “The Raven” , Romeo and Juliet, and “The Gift of the Magi”. Romantic love is a force that inflicts pain upon those who believe in it or those who have been through it.
GRISELDA: I am doing well. I am sure you know that Gualtieri felt he had to test me to see if I was worthy of being his wife. I am just glad I was able to keep my word because I had sworn to him that I would “always try to please him and never be upset by anything he said or did” (1636). I am glad Gualtieri does not feel as frightened of a long term commitment as he did before.
The aims of Boccaccio in his original 1370 version of 'Lisabetta' are far different from those of Keats who wrote 'Isabella' 500 years later. Keats has carefully analysed the original story, and selected various aspects that he thinks are important to develop into his 63-stanza poem, and has also omitted information that he sees as not important and not relevant to the core plot. The foremost topic that Keats' elaborates is the love affair between Lorenzo and Isabella. He tries to evoke many more emotions from the reader than Boccaccio does, as he believes that this is an important aspect of the story that needs to be developed. In Boccaccios story, the love between the two grows rapidly - almost instantly.
The priest then devises a plan along with his lover to satisfy their sexual desire. The tale begins: “How a chic woman in that city,/ who was well mannered and quite pretty,/ had summoned the priest and made it known/ her husband would be out of town/ that day at market, honestly,/ and told him just when she'd be free.” (9-14) This meeting between the wife and the priest shows the ecclesiastical institute of marriage and how sinful women were by provoking the men. (Murray 204) Though adultery was more worse when committed by a woman than a man, and this is because they were more inclined to lust and sexual excess than men. (Richards 36) Though adultery was tolerated at times, women still had to hide their schemes just in case. Once the husband arrives back home, the priest shakes with fear so forcefully. (61) However, the priest is more afraid of the husband than he is of God. This is because adultery due to desire of sexual pleasure was considered more of a venial sin than a mortal one, it did not break his relationship with God. (Payer 118) Even after the husband is now aware of the priest's presence, the wife and priest still wish to satisfy their desires, so they come up with a bet: “'I'll bet', the priest says, 'and won't lose'/ 'What will you bet?' he asks. 'A goose,'/ the priest says, 'I leave it to you.'” (119-121) He figures out
Some may say love is just an emotion while others may say it is a living and breathing creature. Songs and poems have been written about love for hundreds and thousands of years. Love has been around since the beginning of time, whether someone believes in the Big Bang or Adam and Eve. Without love, there wouldn’t be a world like it is known today. But with love, comes pain with it. Both William Shakespeare and Max Martin know and knew this. Both ingenious poets wrote love songs of pain and suffering as well as blossoming, newfound love. The eccentric ideal is both writers were born centuries apart. How could both know that love and pain work hand in hand when they were born 407 years apart? Love must never change then. Love survives and stays its original self through the hundreds and thousands of years it has been thriving. Though centuries apart, William Shakespeare and Max Martin share the same view on love whether i...
In the Middle Ages, when The Canterbury Tales was written, society became captivated by love and the thought of courtly and debonair love was the governing part of all relationships and commanded how love should be conducted. These principles changed literature completely and created a new genre dedicated to brave, valorous knights embarking on noble quests with the intention of some reward, whether that be their life, lover, or any other want. The Canterbury Tales, written in the 14th century by Geoffrey Chaucer, accurately portrays and depicts this type of genre. Containing a collection of stories within the main novel, only one of those stories, entitled “The Wife of Bath’s Tale”, truly outlines the 14th century community beliefs on courtly love.
In this essay I would like to emphasize different ideas of how love is understood and discussed in literature. This topic has been immortal. One can notice that throughout the whole history writers have always been returning to this subject no matter what century people lived in or what their nationality was.
Despite the prejudice of society not allowing Carlo Guercio to live as freely as a homosexual as he would wish, his goodness triumphs as he is able to care for those he loves. When his love, Francesco, dies, Guercio's kind and loving nature comes through as he buries him with his mouse and goes to his mother to tell her of her son's death. He is kind enough to spare her from the truth about the brutality of her son's death, saying that "he died with a smile on his lips". Despite losing his loved one, Guercio's strong character and goodness allow him to go on and love again. This time the object of his affection is Captain Corelli, for whom he eventually sacrifices his life.
Love has been expressed since the beginning of time; since Adam and Eve. Each culture expresses its love in its own special way. Though out history, though, it’s aspect has always been the same. Love has been a major characteristic of literature also. One of the most famous works in literary history is, Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare. This story deals with the love of a man and a woman who’s families have been sworn enemies. There love surpassed the hatred in which the families endured for generations. In the end they both ended up killing their selves, for one could not live without the other. This story is a perfect example of true love.
...erent ways. For Pablo Neruda love should be from the heart. Every stanza of the poem represents an individual scene of a relationship where love emotions take all place in the heart. The theme is basically telling people what true and real love is. But for William Shakespeare love is the disease that can change to the death. It can’t be cured, and he has gone frantically crazy and grown increasingly restless. When the hero fell in love his thoughts and speech are like a madman’s. At the beginning he thought that he can be cured but the doctor left the hero because he didn’t follow the instructions. For the Shakespearean hero, “dark lady” was a beautiful and radiant but she was actually “as black as hell and as dark as night”. Both of the poets used literary devices to describe their feelings, their emotions, and also, they used words which made the mood of the poems.