Abbo of Saint-Germain
(9th c.)A strange war correspondent, Abbo, a monk of the monastery of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, described the siege of Paris by the Vikings in 885–886. Having come from the west (Neustria) ...
Adone
(1623).Marino's most ambitious work, a vast epic without feats of arms, in twenty cantos of ottava rima. Reacting against the classicizing epic of Torquato Tasso and the moral preoccupations ...
Africa
Petrarch's Latin epic in classical hexa-meters which he began in 1338–41 but never completed, books 4 and 9 still showing many lacunae. Only the thirty-four lines of the lament of ...
agitprop
Formed from the title of the Department of Agitation and Propaganda founded in 1920 in Soviet Russia, Agit-prop was intended to control the ideological thinking of the masses. Agit-prop trains toured ...
Alessandro Tassoni
(1565–1635)Italian poet, philosopher, historian, politician, and member of several learned Academies. He joined the entourage of Cardinal Ascanio Sforza in Rome (1597) and later became a court ...
Alexandre Soumet
(1788–1845).French poet and dramatist of the Restoration and July Monarchy. He remains of interest on account of a late work, La Divine Épopée (1841), which occupies a significant place in the ...
Alphonse de Lamartine
(1790–1869)French poet and politician. His poetry, from the Méditations poétiques (Poetic Meditations) of 1820, established him as a leading figure in the French Romantic movement; he also produced ...
Andrea Baiardi
(before ?1459–1511).Soldier and poet, Baiardi spent much of his life in Parma, but was for a while resident in Paris in the service of Louis XII. Author of a ...
Anna Seward
(1747–1809) British poet and authorElegy on Captain Cook (1780) PoetryMonody on Major André (1781) MiscellaneousLouisa (1784) PoetryLlangollen Vale, with Other Poems (1796) PoetryOriginal Sonnets on ...
Annaeus Lucanus, Marcus
Lucan (ad 39–65),was born at Corduba (mod. Córdoba), 3 November ad 39. His father, M. Annaeus Mela, was a Roman knight and brother of L. Annaeus Seneca (2). Mela ...
Ansaldo Cebà
(1565–1623).Poet and literary critic who studied in Padua but lived mostly in his native Genoa. His conservative intellectual outlook was typical of the poorer Genoese nobility, but conflicted with ...
anti-hero
A central character in a narrative or drama who lacks the admirable qualities of fortitude, courage, honesty, and decency that are usually possessed by traditional heroes. Examples include Alex in A ...
Antonio Caraccio
(1630–?1702)was a member of the Accademia degli Investiganti in Naples, and a prolific poet who joined the Accademia dell'Arcadia in 1690. His Impero vendicato, published first in 1679 in ...
Antonio Cornazano
(also Cornazzano; born c.1430 in Piacenza, Italy, died December 1484 in Ferrara), Italian dancing master, theorist, humanist, and statesman. Cornazano came from one of Piacenza's leading noble ...
antonomasia
[an‐ton‐ŏ‐may‐ziă]A figure of speech that replaces a proper name with an epithet (the Bard for Shakespeare), official address (His Holiness for a pope), or other indirect description; or one that ...
Apollonius of Rhodes
Apollonios Rhodios lived in Alexandria in the third and second centuries b.c.e. and eventually became head of the great library there. He wrote the story of the voyage of the Argonauts and the Golden ...
apostrophe
(from Greek, ‘to turn away’),a figure of speech in which the writer rhetorically addresses a dead or absent person or abstraction.
Ascanio Grandi
(1567–1647)is best known for his epic poems, I fasti grandi and Il Tancredi, published in 1635 and 1636.[Paul Diffley]
Basinio da Parma
(1425–57),Italian neo-Latin poet. He was educated under Vittorino da Feltre and Theodore Gaza, and after a period in the court of Ferrara moved in 1451 to Rimini, where he ...
beast fable
The commonest type of fable, in which animals and birds speak and behave like human beings in a short tale usually illustrating some moral point. The fables attributed to Aesop (6th century bce) and ...
