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The tumulus tale of Troilus and his lover Cressida has left readers intrigued in renditions written by both Geoffrey Chaucer and William Shakespeare due to their subversive nature of the authors’ chosen generic forms. Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde challenges the expectations and limitations of the narrative of the chivalric romance. Shakespeare took the story and turned Troilus and Cressida into one of his famous “problem plays” by challenging his audience’s expectations of the tragic genre. I endeavor to draw attention to the ways in which both Chaucer and Shakespeare use the conventions of the chivalric romance and tragedy to play with the imbalances in the central relationship of Troilus and Criseyde/Cressida in the story. These imbalances are the source of experimentation in both texts that allows Chaucer to imbue tragedy in the chivalric romance and allow Shakespeare to undermine tragedy itself.

Tato práce se zabývá primárními rytířskými ságami, staroseverskými pře- klady evropské rytířské epiky, a jejich vlivem na další žánry ság, sekundární rytířské ságy a pozdní fantastické ságy. Naším cílem bylo zkoumat změny v prezentaci vybraných postav (hrdina, vládce a hrdinova žena) v závislosti na přechodu společnosti od rodové k systému s feudálními rysy. P·vodní staroseverská tradice je v práci zastoupena ságami rodovými. První kapitola popisuje hlavní problémy rozdělení zkoumaných žánr·. Druhá kapitola před- stavuje detailní analýzu formy a obsahu popis· postav v každém z žánr·. Poslední část přidává aspekt změn struktury společnosti, především ve spo- jitosti se snahou Hákona Hákonarsona zavést užší feudální vazby. Tento pře- chod skutečně ovlivnil očekávání publika. Zjistili jsme, že hlavní změna, kte- rou primární rytířské ságy znamenaly v rámci ságové literatury, bylo, že se cíleně pokoušely změnit společenské konvence a praxi. Pozdější žánry si už nenárokovaly morální závaznost. Přejaly sice kvality zavedené překlady ry- tířské epiky, ovšem dodržovaly také tradiční formu popisu postav. Klíčová slova: rytířské ságy, lživé ságy, rodové ságy, staroseverský, dvorský

This study investigates the representation of Saracens in Boiardo's Inamoramento de Orlando and Ariosto's Orlando furioso, a subject that has attracted growing scholarly interest in recent years. Chapter I assesses the degree of realism in Boiardo's and Ariosto's portrayal of Islam and Islamic culture and locates the two poems in their historical context. Bringing to light unpublished archival material and other little-known historical sources, I argue that Boiardo and Ariosto drew inspiration from contemporary courtly culture which was characterised by openness towards the figure of the foreign prince. Chapter II explores Boiardo's engagement with earlier chivalric literature. It examines Boiardo's use of names and characters from earlier texts and evaluates the Saracens' contribution to the ideology that underpins the poem. It is shown that Saracens play an important role in promoting the ‘Arthurian’ chivalric ideals. Chapters III and IV analyse Ariosto's indebtedness to and departures from his predecessor, suggesting that there is a much greater continuity between the two Orlandos than is allowed by Cavallo and other scholars who are anxious to stress Ariosto's 'conservatism'. While chapter III is devoted to a wide-ranging analysis of the Saracen world in Ariosto, chapter IV deals with a topic that has recently generated much heated debate, namely the climactic confrontation between Rodomonte and Ruggiero and the ending of the Orlando furioso and how it should be understood, and I propose a new interpretation of the final canto by highlighting the concept of honour, a fundamental value for both Boiardo and Ariosto as well as for their early readers and for many chivalric authors alike. In my view, Rodomonte is the true winner of the duel. The significance of his 'moral' victory is examined in the study's final conclusion, where it is argued that it undermines Ariosto’s encomiastic project.

- Hyperbole, Imagination and Tradition in Luigi Pulci's Morgante The epic Morgante, compiled at the end of the 15th century by the poet Luigi Pulci, stands at the turn of two historical eras. It is a meeting point of the Middle Ages and Renaissance with their literary influences and ideas. Also, it reflects the change in the development stages of the genre: from the period when the heroic narrative was declaimed by minstrels (joglars) on squares, this subject matter was gradually introduced into royal courts, where it was influenced by a more elevated culture. The main elements of this epic include the adoption of several literary traditions, the comic in many of its forms, and religion, all of which is underlined with the special imagination of the author together with allusions to his own life situation. Luigi Pulci adopted not only the tradition of the heroic matter full of typical medieval patterns (topoi) very popular in Italy at that time, but also the comic-realistic literary tradition of Tuscany, which provides his narrative with a different tone in many ways, and thus incorporates Morgante in a literary field different from the one which its predecessors were part of. Orlando is the most significant of these; it is a text that was used by Pulci as a direct inspiration for his work and most...

<p>The purpose of this study is to investigate the distribution of medieval ballads as semiotics of intertextuality in modern Swedish literature, here represented by August Strindberg, Erik Axel Karlfeldt, Kerstin Ekman and Katarina Frostenson. They are famous authors from different epochs, ranging from the period called “the modern breakthrough” in the 1880s until the postmodernism of the present time. My aim is to expose their attraction to medieval balladry, and their different ways of using form, language and style from this old poetry in poems, prose and plays, explicit as well as implicit.</p>

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The purpose of this study is to investigate the distribution of medieval ballads as semiotics of intertextuality in modern Swedish literature, here represented by August Strindberg, Erik Axel Karlfeldt, Kerstin Ekman and Katarina Frostenson. They are famous authors from different epochs, ranging from the period called “the modern breakthrough” in the 1880s until the postmodernism of the present time. My aim is to expose their attraction to medieval balladry, and their different ways of using form, language and style from this old poetry in poems, prose and plays, explicit as well as implicit.

Du Roland furieux de l’Arioste (1516-1532) au Songe de Kepler (1634), cette thèse propose une étude des récits de voyages aériens dans la fiction narrative de la Renaissance (romans, poèmes épiques, satires) ainsi que des discours théoriques abordant la question du vol et de l’élévation (démonologie, cosmographie, astronomie, discours sur la possibilité du vol humain ou le vol des oiseaux, etc.). Trois principaux objets sont mis en valeur : les voyages célestes écrits dans la lignée de récits comme le Songe de Scipion de Cicéron ou l’Icaroménippe de Lucien de Samosate ; les voyages aériens de la fiction chevaleresque ; le motif du transport diabolique. L’étude montre ainsi l’importance prise par l’imaginaire du vol à la Renaissance, à la croisée de la fiction et des discours savants, et dessine une « pré-histoire » des fictions d’envol avant les récits de Godwin (The Man in the Moone, 1638) et de Cyrano de Bergerac (Etats et Empires de la Lune et du Soleil, 1657 et 1662). Au cœur de cette rêverie se loge tout à la fois le désir de prendre la mesure du monde et les inquiétudes suscitées par ce même désir. / From Ariosto’s Orlando furioso (1516-1532) to Kepler’s Somnium (1634), this thesis offers a study of aerial and celestial voyages in Renaissance narrative fiction (romances, epic poems, satires) as well as of learned treatises related to the question of flying (demonology, cosmography, astronomy, learned discourses on human and bird flight, etc.). It focuses on three main subjects: cosmic voyages in the tradition of Cicero’s Dream of Scipio or Lucian of Samosata’s Icaromenippus; aerial voyages in chivalric romance; diabolical transvection (eg. fly to the sabbath). It thus shows the extent to which flight captured the Renaissance imagination, at the cross-roads between fiction and learned discourse, and it traces a « pre-history » of fictional flying before Godwin’s Man in the Moone (1638) or Cyrano de Bergerac’s Etats et Empires de la Lune et du Soleil (1657 and 1662). At the heart of this fantasy lies a desire to measure the world from above – together with the anxieties produced by the same desire.

The aim of this thesis is to introduce the popular puppet theatre called Opera dei Pupi, which was developed mainly in Sicily in the second half of the 19th century. The first part desrcibes literary influences that nourished this tradition, from which puppeteers derived topics for their repertoire. These stories were primarily about the French king Charlemagne and his knights and were called paladins. I am trying to map the form of an adaptation of this topic for Opera dei Pupi needs and the way of connection with oral tradition. Furthermore I am going to mention the secondary repertoire of the theatre for example farce. Next chapter focuses on a formal side of the Opera dei Pupi including puppeteer's personality, his work and activities, structure of the theatre itself, characteristics of puppets and handling them. Furthermore this section also describes a specific concept of everyday's performances "to be continued" and how were these performaces organized in practice. The analytical part focuses on a process of putting plot on a scene, which includes both improvisation and fixed rules approach. The principal theme of this part is the so-called copione, which are the puppeteer's own handwritten notes, on which the show was based. This section also includes numerous excerpts not only from copione but also...