Introduction
In this essay we present our research about the legend of William Tell and the conclusions of our research. In short the question we asked ourselves is: does the legend of William Tell contain truth or lies? Does it consist of facts or fiction?
Before we tell the legend, we will describe the general historical context. After that, we will try to make a distinction between the facts and fiction in the legend. Finally, we want to show the impact William Tell had on the Swiss society.
General historical context
In the period until the Middle ages Switzerland was conquered by different dynasties and kingdoms. In the early Middle ages it belonged to the Austrian Habsburger dynasty. The Habsburg emperor allocated reeves in Switzerland. The local population was absolutely not content with these events. And it is in this time that the legend of William Tell has its origins. The forest cantons, Uri and Schwyz, wrote a letter of freedom to the emperor. They gained such a freedom. In 1273 Rudolf I of Habsburg had become the emperor. He granted his son the county of Zwaben which included those regions. The freedom disappeared definitely. This occurrence led to a rebellion. After the death of Rudolf I, three cantons, Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden founded the Swiss Confederation on 1 august 1291. And all the reeves were driven away from Switzerland. At the battle of Mortgarten the Swiss defeated the Habsburger army and in this way the Swiss independence was established.
The legend
The legend of William Tell dates back to 1307. William was originally from Bürgen, but he was a resident in the canton Uri. William Tell was an excellent crossbowman. In his time there was a reeve of the Habsburger emperor in Uri named Gessler. As...
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... For example, Rossini made an opera of Tell. Also different films were based on the legend of Tell.
William Tell still going strong
Although there is much discussion about his actual existence, still 60% of the Swiss people believe that William Tell was a real, existing person .
Conclusion
The legend of Tell consists mostly of fiction, though we cannot deny that it must contain some facts. In the introduction, we asked whether the legend of William Tell contained truth or lies. Our answer must be that it contains neither truth nor lies only. It is a combination of both. Probably a great deal has been made up, but there must have been some truth in the legend. That many Swiss people in former times regarded the story as true, is clear. That many Swiss people nowadays still regard Tell as an existing person, shows the great impact he had on the Swiss society.
Works Cited: http://members.ll.net/ken/hunter3.html Ozment, Steven. The Burgermeister's Daughter: Scandal in a Sixteenth –Century German Town. New York: Harper Perennial, 1996. Print.
In the Tell-Tale Heart the story speak about a murder. The narrator telling the story
Throughout literature, relationships can often be found between the author of a story and the story that he writes. In Geoffrey Chaucer's frame story, Canterbury Tales, many of the characters make this idea evident with the tales that they tell. A distinct relationship can be made between the character of the Pardoner and the tale that he tells.
In conclusion, although Froissart Chronicles is written based on the historical events that occurred during the Hundred Years’ War period, the reports of these events can be erroneous and inaccurate, which is a main characteristic of medieval historical writing. Hence, historians must view
In his Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer assembles a band of pilgrims who, at the behest of their host, engage in a story-telling contest along their route. The stories told along the way serve a number of purposes, among them to entertain, to instruct, and to enlighten. In addition to the intrinsic value of the tales taken individually, the tales in their telling reveal much about the tellers. The pitting of tales one against another provides a third level of complexity, revealing the interpersonal dynamics of the societal microcosm comprising the diverse group of pilgrims.
In “The Tell-Tale Heart” we learn that the unknown narrator has been accused of being mad and this disturbs him.
The power to change is man’s greatest struggles, since a strong influence that lead them to where they are now. It is also the price and journey that both Montresor in Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Tell Tale Heart” and the narrator of the “The Cask of Amontillado”, another of poe’s story. In both story the narrators, both indicate that they want to get rid of an addiction they had that is driving them to madness, and in order to do so they, must do it at any cost. Both narrator clearly plan on their instincts and carefully plans out methods in which leads them to their satisfaction. These stories contain many similarities and differences in the use of tone, irony and symbolism, of the protagonist. Through these characters and their actions,
Many people who have read “The Tell Tale Heart,” argue whether or not the narrator is sane or insane. Throughout this paper I have mentioned the main reasons for the narrator being sane. The narrator experienced guilt, he also was very wary executing the plan, and the intelligence level of his plan to murder the old
In the late eighteenth century arose in literature a period of social, political and religious confusion, the Romantic Movement, a movement that emphasized the emotional and the personal in reaction to classical values of order and objectivity. English poets like William Blake or Percy Bysshe Shelley seen themselves with the capacity of not only write about usual life, but also of man’s ultimate fate in an uncertain world. Furthermore, they all declared their belief in the natural goodness of man and his future. Mary Shelley is a good example, since she questioned the redemption through the union of the human consciousness with the supernatural. Even though this movement was well known, none of the British writers in fact acknowledged belonging to it; “.”1 But the main theme of assignment is the narrative voice in this Romantic works. The narrator is the person chosen by the author to tell the story to the readers. Traditionally, the person who narrated the tale was the author. But this was changing; the concept of unreliable narrator was starting to get used to provide the story with an atmosphere of suspense.
Tell Tale Heart is a short horror story by E.A. Poe that is told from the first person perspective and describes the murder of an old man. The main character plots the crime because he (supposing the narrator is male) is irritated by the old man’s “evil eye”. The narrator kills the old man in his sleep, dismembers the body and hides the corpse parts under the floorboards. The main character is not suspected until he confesses the murder to the police believing everyone can hear the beating of the dead man’s heart from under the floor. Tell-Tale Heart is not a confession but an apology. The murderer tries to prove that the hideous crime, no mater how irrational it might seem to the readers, was planned and carried out in the calculated and premeditated manner. The narrator tries to convince the readers that he was conscious of his motives, actions, and intentions. What is more, he stresses that there was no trace of permanent or temporary mental disorder, let alone insanity. However, the choice of the point of view, tone and mood of the Tell-Tale Heart allow Poe to create the opposite effect and convince the readers that the story is an account of a madman. The psychological effect of the first-person narrative, the tone and symbolism let Poe enhance the gruesome effect of the story. The point of view chosen by Poe also makes readers feel as if the insane narrator addresses every reader personally. A vide range of stylistic devices is employed to make the story frightening from the very beginning.
Kosinski ’s suicide in 1991 at age fifty-eight shocked the outside world, but didn’t surprise many of his friends. Ever since Kosinski had come to the U.S in 1957, he had become known for his spectrum of sociopathic behavior ranging from mere megalomania to brutal sexual coercion, fraud, and plagiarism. Kosinski was a pathological liar and a control freak. Some say he couldn’t help his lying because any Jew who lived through the Holocaust had to lie to live. It was in Nazi, Poland that Kosinski became an expert storyteller. (JK; pg. 97)
Through the first person narrator, Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" illustrates how man's imagination is capable of being so vivid that it profoundly affects people's lives. The manifestation of the narrator's imagination unconsciously plants seeds in his mind, and those seeds grow into an unmanageable situation for which there is no room for reason and which culminates in murder. The narrator takes care of an old man with whom the relationship is unclear, although the narrator's comment of "For his gold I had no desire" (Poe 34) lends itself to the fact that the old man may be a family member whose death would monetarily benefit the narrator. Moreover, the narrator also intimates a caring relationship when he says, "I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult" (34). The narrator's obsession with the old man's eye culminates in his own undoing as he is engulfed with internal conflict and his own transformation from confidence to guilt.
This essay looks at the heroic code that is exemplified by Beowulf, as seen in his battles with Grendel, his fight with Grendel’s mother, in his relationship with Hygelac. In the second part, the essay then examines how Beowulf moves away from this heroic code in his final battle with the dragon. In the conclusion, the essay shows that Beowulf makes choices that hark back to his past courage and foreshadow his own bravery and death. This shows that his choice of the heroic life has implications not only for himself, but for his kingdom as well.
The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer is a piece of work that resembles both a historical and sociological introduction the late middle ages. Chaucer’s ability to interpret basic human nature from different viewpoints is exemplified in the characters he created. I have selected two stories, The Prioress Tale and The Knights Tale, within the Canterbury Tales that manifest the strengths and weaknesses of human character. Than I will compare Chaucer’s pilgrims to figures portrayed by Dante in the Divine Comedy.
Poe, Edgar Allan. "The Tell-Tale Heart." Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. Ed. X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. 7th ed. New York: Longman, 1999. 33-37.