Literary Periods and Forms: From Mythology to Baroque
Comparative Analysis of Literary Elements
Comparative analysis: title, structure, genre, period, style, characters, conflicts, themes, references, symbols, resources, style, location, space, and time.
Nyx: Goddess of the Night
Nyx: In Greek mythology, Nyx was the primordial goddess of the night, also called Nicte. In Roman texts, the Greek name translates as Nox.
Greek Mythology
Greek mythology is the set of myths and legends belonging to the ancient Greeks who sought to understand their gods and heroes, the nature of the world, and the origins and meaning of their own cult and ritual practices. They were part of the religion of ancient Greece.
The River Styx (Acheron)
The river Styx or Acheron. Acheron translates as ‘river of tragedy’. In Greek mythology, Charon carried the souls of the recently dead to Hades. It is said that the water all but sank Charon’s boat, who agreed to transport the departed souls in exchange for mites or coins of ash placed in the dead’s eye as payment.
Feudalism in Western Europe
Feudalism refers to the social, political, and economic system based on fiefs that dominated Western Europe. It involved cultivated land properties mainly worked by servants, part of whose output was delivered as a ‘census’ to the master of the land, in most cases a small noble nominally loyal to a king.
The Middle Ages
The Middle Ages, Medieval period, or Middle Ages is the historical period of Western civilization between the 5th and 15th centuries. Its onset is conventionally placed in 476 with the fall of the Roman Empire and its end in 1492 with the discovery of America.
The Romance
Romance is a poem typical of the Spanish, Iberian, and Latin American literary tradition, using a composite metric with the combination of the same name. Romance is a poem typical of the oral tradition, and became popular in the fifteenth century, as collected in the first written collections called ballads. The romances are generally narrative poems of a great variety of themes, according to the popular taste of the moment and each place. They were interpreted by reciting, chanting, or singing, with interspersed recitation.
The Bard
A bard was an entertainer in medieval Europe, equipped to play musical instruments, sing, and tell stories and legends.
Types of Bards
They were of three classes:
- Free and independent, with the life of bohemians who did not live anywhere and they could be found where there were parties.
- Others were part of the area and were later court jesters of comedy from the Golden Age.
- Others were hired by some major troubadours, traveling with them, being messengers, preceding or accompanying them on visits to the king’s court.
The Renaissance
The Renaissance is the name given to a broad cultural movement that arose in Western Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries. Its main exponents are in the field of art, although there was a renewal in the sciences, both natural and human. The Renaissance is the result of the dissemination of ideas of humanism, which led to a new conception of man and the world.
The Baroque Period
The Baroque was a period of history in Western culture that produced works in the field of literature, sculpture, painting, architecture, dance, and music, ranging from the year 1600 until about 1750. It is usually placed between the Renaissance and Neo-Classicism, at a time when the Catholic Church in Europe had to react against many cultural revolutionary movements, producing a new science and religion within Catholicism itself, dissident from the dominant Protestant Reformation.
The Sonnet
The sonnet is a poetic form consisting of fourteen lines of eleven syllables. The verses are arranged in four stanzas: two quatrains (stanzas of 4 verses) and two triplets (stanzas of 3 verses). Although the distribution of the content of the sonnet is not accurate, we can say that the first quatrain introduces the theme of the sonnet, and the second amplifies or develops it. The first trio reflects on the central idea, or expresses some feeling linked to the issue of the quartets. The final trio, the most emotional, concludes with a serious reflection or deep feeling, in both cases triggered by the above verses. Thus, the classical sonnet presents an introduction, a middle, and a conclusion in the final trio, which somehow makes sense of the rest of the poem.
Typical poem of the Renaissance: the minstrels sang it romance.
The morning of St. John, June 24, summer solstice beliefs: magic properties, dive into rivers or seas or gather around the fire.