All Topics  
Gesta Romanorum

 

 
   Email Print
   Bookmark   Link
 

 

Gesta Romanorum
 
 
  Topics Gesta Romanorum Topic Home

Gesta Romanorum, a Latin
Latin

Latin is an Italic language, historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Military history of the Roman Empire, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe....
 collection of anecdotes and tales, was probably compiled about the end of the 13th century or the beginning of the 14th. It still possesses a two-fold literary interest, first as one of the most popular books of the time, and secondly as the source, directly or indirectly, of later literature, in Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer was an English author, poet, philosopher, Bureaucracy, Noble court and diplomat. Although he wrote many works, he is best remembered for his unfinished frame narrative The Canterbury Tales....
, John Gower
John Gower

John Gower was an English poet, a contemporary of William Langland and a personal friend of Geoffrey Chaucer. He is remembered primarily for three major works, the Mirroir de l'Omme, Vox Clamantis, and Confessio Amantis, three long poems written in French, Latin, and English respectively, which are united by common moral and po...
, Giovanni Boccaccio
Giovanni Boccaccio

Giovanni Boccaccio was an Italy author and poet, a friend and correspondent of Petrarch, an important Renaissance humanism and the author of a number of notable works including the Decameron, On Famous Women, and his poetry in the Italian vernacular....
, William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare was an English people poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's preeminent dramatist....
, and others.

Of its authorship nothing certain is known.






Discussion
Ask a question about 'Gesta Romanorum'
Start a new discussion about 'Gesta Romanorum'
Answer questions from other users
Full Discussion Forum



Encyclopedia


Gesta Romanorum, a Latin
Latin

Latin is an Italic language, historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Military history of the Roman Empire, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe....
 collection of anecdotes and tales, was probably compiled about the end of the 13th century or the beginning of the 14th. It still possesses a two-fold literary interest, first as one of the most popular books of the time, and secondly as the source, directly or indirectly, of later literature, in Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer was an English author, poet, philosopher, Bureaucracy, Noble court and diplomat. Although he wrote many works, he is best remembered for his unfinished frame narrative The Canterbury Tales....
, John Gower
John Gower

John Gower was an English poet, a contemporary of William Langland and a personal friend of Geoffrey Chaucer. He is remembered primarily for three major works, the Mirroir de l'Omme, Vox Clamantis, and Confessio Amantis, three long poems written in French, Latin, and English respectively, which are united by common moral and po...
, Giovanni Boccaccio
Giovanni Boccaccio

Giovanni Boccaccio was an Italy author and poet, a friend and correspondent of Petrarch, an important Renaissance humanism and the author of a number of notable works including the Decameron, On Famous Women, and his poetry in the Italian vernacular....
, William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare was an English people poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's preeminent dramatist....
, and others.

Of its authorship nothing certain is known. It is conjecture to associate it either with the name of Helinandus or with that of Petrus Berchorius (Pierre Bercheure). It is debated whether it took its rise in England, Germany or France.

Content


The work was evidently intended as a manual for preachers, and was probably written by one of the clerical profession. The name, Deeds of the Romans, is only partially appropriate to the collection in its present form, since, besides the titles from Greek and Latin history and legend, it comprises fragments of very various origin, oriental and European. The unifying element of the book is its moral purpose.

The style does not conform to educated standards of Latin writing, and the narrative ability of the compiler seems to vary with his source. However, the work contains a considerable variety of material. It includes, for example, the germ of the romance of Guy of Warwick
Guy of Warwick

Guy of Warwick is a legendary English hero of Romance popular in England and France from the 13th to the 17th century.The core of the legend is that Guy falls in love with the lady Felice, who is of much higher social standing....
; the story of Darius and his Three Sons, versified by Thomas Occleve
Thomas Occleve

Thomas Occleve , England poet, was born probably in 1368/9, for, writing in 1421/2 he says he was fifty-three years old .Like his more prolific and better known contemporary John Lydgate, he has an historical importance to English literature....
; part of Chaucer's Man of Lawes Tale
The Man of Law's Prologue and Tale

The Man of Law's Tale is the fifth of the Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, written around 1387. The Man of Law tells a Romance tale of a Christian princess named Custance who is betrothed to the Demographics of Syria Sultan on condition that he convert to Christianity....
; a tale of the emperor Theodosius, the same in its main features as that of Shakespeare's King Lear
King Lear

King Lear is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1603 and 1606, and is considered one of his greatest works....
; the story of the Three Black Crows; the Hermit and the Angel, well known from Parnell's version, and a story identical with the Fridolin of Schiller.

Manuscripts


Owing to the loose structure of the book, it was easy for a transcriber to insert any additional story into his own copy, and consequently the manuscripts of the Gesta Romanorum exhibit considerable variety. Hermann Oesterley recognizes an English group of manuscripts (written always in Latin), a German group (sometimes in Latin and sometimes in German), and a group which is represented by the vulgate or common printed text.

Editions and translations

The earliest editions are those of Nicolaus Ketelaer and Gerardus de Leempt at Utrecht, of Arnold Ter Hoenen at Cologne, and of Ulrich Zell
Ulrich Zell

Ulrich Zell was the first Printer of Cologne. He was born at Hanau-on-the-Main, date unknown; he died about 1503.He learned the art of printing before 1462 in the printing establishment of Johann Fust and Johann Sch?ffer, and seems, shortly after the catastrophe of 1462, to have gone to Cologne, whose university gave promise of a market fo...
 at Cologne; but the exact date is in all three cases uncertain.

An English translation, probably based directly on the manuscript Harl. 5369, was published by Wynkyn de Worde
Wynkyn de Worde

Wynkyn de Worde was a printer and publisher known for his work with William Caxton, and is recognized as the first to popularize the products of the printing press....
 about 1510-1515, the only copy of which now known to exist is preserved in the library of St John's College, Cambridge
St John's College, Cambridge

St John's College, an institution known formally as The Master, Fellows and Scholars of the College of St John the Evangelist in the University of Cambridge is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge founded by Lady Margaret Beaufort in 1511....
. In 1577 the London printer Richard Robinson published a revised edition of Wynkyn de Worde, as Certain Selected Histories for Christian Recreations, and the book proved highly popular.

Between 1648 and 1703 at least eight impressions were issued. In 1703 appeared the first vol. of a translation by BP, probably Bartholomew Pratt, from the Latin edition of 1514. A translation by the Rev. Charles Swan
Charles Swan

Charles Swan was a reluctant buccaneer, killed 1690.Captain Swan was forced into piracy by his crew in the 1680s, and proceeded to write letters to the owners of his ship Cygnet in London, begging them to intercede with James II of England for his pardon - even as he looted his way up and down the coast of South America....
, first published in 2 vols in 1824, forms part of Bohn's antiquarian library, and was re-edited by Wynnard Hooper in 1877 (see also the latter's edition in 1894).

The German translation was first printed at Augsburg, 1489. A French version, under the title of Le Violier des histoires romaines moralisez, appeared in the early part of the 16th century, and went through a number of editions; it has been reprinted by Pierre-Gustave Brunet (Paris, 1858).

Critical editions of the Latin text have been produced by Adelbert von Keller (Stuttgart, 1842) and Hermann Oesterley (Berlin, 1872). See also

  • Warton
    Joseph Warton

    Joseph Warton was an English academic and literary critic.He was born in Dunsfold, Surrey, England, but his family soon moved to Hampshire, where his father, the Reverend Thomas Warton, became vicar of Basingstoke....
    , "On the Gesta Romanorum", dissertation iii., prefixed to the History of English Poetry
  • Douce
    Francis Douce

    Francis Douce , antiquary, born in London, was for some time employed at the British Museum. He published Illustrations of Shakespeare , and a dissertation on The Dance of Death ....
    , Illustrations of Shakespeare, vol. ii.
  • Frederic Madden
    Frederic Madden

    Sir Frederic Madden , was an England palaeography.The son of an officer of Ireland extraction, he was born at Portsmouth, England. From his childhood he displayed a flair for linguistic and antiquarian studies....
    , Introduction to the Roxburghe Club edition of The Old English Versions of the Gesta Romanorum (1838).


See also

  • Matter of Rome
    Matter of Rome

    According to the Middle Ages poetry Jean Bodel, the Matter of Rome was the literature cycle made up of Greek mythology and Roman mythology, together with episodes from the history of classical antiquity, focusing on military heroes like Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar....


External links