The Heroes of Romances (Masterplots, Revised Second Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux
- First Published: 1688
- Type of Work: Fiction
- Type of Plot: Satire
- Time of Work: 1660’s
- Setting: Hades
- Principal Characters: Pluto, Minos, Rhadamanthus, Diogenes, Cyrus, Horatius Cocles, Clelia, Joan of Arc
- Genres: Short fiction, Satire
- Subjects: Authors or writers, Social life, Writing, Books, Novelists, Seventeenth century, Wit or humor, Reading, Corruption, Underworld or Hades
- Locales: Hades
The Story:
Pluto received the dead after they had been judged by Minos and Rhadamanthus. Minos expressed his surprise that recent arrivals from Europe were speaking in an extremely artificial and sentimental manner. Pluto attributed this odd style to the pernicious effect of the excessive gallantry in seventeenth century French works written by popular novelists and poets such as Madeleine de Scudéry, Marin Le Roy de Gomberville, La Calprenède, and Jean Chapelain. He assured the incredulous Minos that French writers had transformed famous military heroes and heroines such as...
[The entire page is 1842 words long]
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