• Dante Alighieri- Divine Literary Retribution

    Dante Alighieri was born in 1265 in Florence, Italy. At that time, Florence was not part of a princely kingdom, but run as a commune, or run by municipal councils. These harken back to their republican past and the members of the council call themselves consuls. Despite this, this was a time of great upheaval, and the Alighieri family was intimately involved in the internal turmoil. During this time, two rival factions were jockeying for power in Florence- the Guelphs and the Ghibellines. The Guelphs supported the Pope and the Ghibellines supported the Holy Roman Emperor. In this background, Dante grew up, a Guelph on his father’s side and a…

  • Arthur Miller

    Arthur Asher Miller, the American playwright, was born October 17, 1915 in New York City to Jewish immigrant parents. Their family was effected by the depression when the family’s garment business failed and Arthur found a number of odd jobs around the city in order to pay for his tuition to college. In 1934 Miller left New York to attend The University of Michigan where he wrote his first two plays that he received high accolades and awards for. Upon graduation, Miller returned to New York and became a freelance writer for a number of years. It wasn’t until 1944 that Miller released his first play, “The Man Who Had…

  • John Steinbeck

      John Steinbeck was born in California in February 1902 to flour mill manager John Steinbeck Sr and his wife, former school teacher Olive Hamilton from whom the young boy was to gain his love of books and writing. He was the third of four children, and the only son. His family were modestly well off, financially and the family lived in a substantial house in Salinas on Central Avenue. When John was a young teenager, the family suffered a temporary reversal of fortune when his father lost his job at the flour mill. He later started his own venture with a feed and grain store which also failed. During…

  • Mark Twain

    Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born in Florida, Missouri on November 30th, 1835. The sixth child of seven, only Sam and three of his siblings, Orion, Henry and Pamela were to survive childhood. Margaret died when Sam was three; Benjamin when Sam was six and Pleasant died aged six months, before Sam was born. His father, an attorney and judge, John Marshall Clemens, was from Virginia and his mother Jane from Kentucky. Sam was born as Haley’s comet passed close to the Earth. As an adult he stated he came in with the comet and would leave with it. When Sam was four, the family moved to the Port Town of…

  • The Cult of Courtly Love- Feminist Leap or Modern Myth

    The story goes that Eleanor of Aquitaine created the cult of courtly love after retreating to France with her sons. Eleanor was said to have observed her husband, Henry II of England, revamping English Common Law and applied what she learned to establish the Courts of Love at her court in Poitiers. Men would bring their suits or grievances against their lady loves and a panel of women, sometimes sixty strong, would decide a verdict. Eleanor’s daughter by her previous marriage, Marie of France, Countess of Champagne, commissioned Andreas Cappellanus to create a standard of behavior called amour courois. This was codified in his book De arte honeste amandi, or…