From the 11th to 14th centuries, medieval Europe was home to a class of poet-musicians known as troubadours. They started out in Occitania in the 11th century before spreading across much of the...
A Cambridge academic found a rare 15th-century manuscript in Scotland, revealing the oldest medieval stand-up comedy. Apparently, they had jokes and laughter back then too! Not even Chat GPT knows...
For the ancient Vikings, poetry was a way to tell the stories of their gods, their religion, their heroes and villains. Works that have survived centuries are told with such eloquence; it would only...
Born in Florence in the late thirteenth century, Dante Alighieri would grow up to become one of the most famed and well-read authors of the Italian Middle Ages. The scope of his political and...
A Cambridge researcher has rewritten the history of the origins of song. A singular text has revealed modern poetry began hundreds of years earlier than was previously believed. A 2nd to 3rd century...
Sitting alone in her quiet gardens, reciting verses of poetry and waiting for the end to come. This is how Princess Zeb-un-Nisa spent the final years of her life. Zeb-un-Nisa means “jewel among women...
The total of the poetic, mythological and sapiential heritage of the ancient and early medieval Scandinavian tradition is contained in the texts canonically collected under the title of Edda . Within...
The ancient Sumerian poet Enheduanna has a unique claim to fame: she was the first author in the world known by name. While there were previous instances of poems and stories written down, Enheduanna...
Mythologies, philosophies and religions around the world are bolted together with stories, poems and songs offering moral messages which we hope our children will to aspire to live by. So often,...
By Van Bryan/ Classical Wisdom Besides being born on the island of Lesbos around 630 BC, and this date is often disputed, surprisingly little is known about the life of the beloved poet Sappho. The...
Think of Scotland’s Highlands and islands and you probably think hills, glens, tartan, shortbread, bagpipes, caber-tossing, whisky, haggis, stags in the mist, grandiose aristocrats, bearded ghillies...
The Panchatantra (which means the ‘Five Principles’ in Sanskrit) is a collection of interwoven short stories from India. The tales in the Panchatantra are told in both prose and poetry, and consist...
It is not always easy to read the stories of real people from the artifacts they left behind. This is especially true if they lived 5,000 years ago. However, the story of a remarkable woman from that...
Iceland’s strong love of literature is a source of amazement to many people. In an era of declining book sales around the world, this small North Atlantic island continues to publish and sell more...
Solon the Athenian was a great philosopher and one of the seven sages of ancient Greece. However, he’s mainly remembered for being the legislator who laid the foundation for Athenian democracy with...
Teofilo Folengo was a prominent 16 th century poet who wrote fantastic works that influenced later writers, including Francois Rabelais, author of Gargantua and Pantagruel. Two Italian doctors...
The sexual proclivities of ancient Greece is almost as mythologized as their legendary heroes. In fact, the entire Greek pantheon of gods is renowned for its hedonistic sexual antics and exploits...
The Kalevala, a poem based on Finnish folklore and mythology, is regarded as the national epic of Finland. As such, the 28 of February has been set aside in Finland as a day to commemorate this piece...
Clodia Metelli lived in the first century BC, a time when the Roman Republic was controlled by a handful of affluent families, whose quarrels would soon lead to civil war and the rise of an empire...
'Bridegroom, dear to my heart; goodly is your beauty, honeysweet; lion, dear to my heart'. These are the passionate words of a lover to a king, from more than 4,000 years ago, in the oldest known...
The Iliad and the Odyssey, two of the oldest narratives to withstand time. Accredited to Homer, these poetic verses have preserved memories from an era gone by, an age of heroes. Although, it beckons...
