Romance of the Rose.—A poetical allegory, begun by Guillaume de Lorris in the latter part of the thirteenth century, and continued by Jean Meung in the first half of the fourteenth century. The poet dreams that Dame Idleness conducts him to the Palace of Pleasure, where he meets many adventures among the attendant maidens, Youth, Joy, Courtesy, and others, by whom he is conducted to a bed of roses. He singles out one, when an arrow from Love’s bow stretches him fainting on the ground. Fear, Slander, and Jealousy are afterward introduced.
Romeo.—In Shakespeare’s tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, a son of Montague, in love with Juliet, the daughter of Capulet, who was the head of a noble house of Verona, in feudal enmity with the house of Montague.
Romeo and Juliet.—A tragedy by William Shakespeare. Romeo, a son of Montague, in love with Juliet, the daughter of Capulet; but between the houses of Montague and Capulet there existed a deadly feud. As the families were irreconcilable, Juliet took a sleeping draught, that she might get away from her parents and elope with Romeo. Romeo, thinking her to be dead, killed himself; and when Juliet awoke and found her lover dead, she also killed herself.
Romola (rom´ō-lä).—A novel of Italian life and character by George Eliot. Romola is a marvelously able story of the revival of the taste and beauty and freedom of Hellenic manners and letters, under Lorenzo de’ Medici and the scholars of his court, side by side with the revival of Roman virtue, and more than the ancient austerity and piety, under the great Dominican Savonarola. This period of history is one which of all others may well have engrossing interest for George Eliot. Treasures of learning and discipline, amassed for mankind ages before, for ages stored and hidden away, see again the sun, are recognized and put to use. What use they will be put to, with what new and fruitful effects on the state and the citizen, with what momentary and with what lasting consequences, this she strives to discover; this she follows through the public history of Italy during the modern invasion of Charles VIII., and the events which succeed his invasion, and through the private fortunes of her admirably chosen group of characters, some of them drawn from life, all of them true to nature.
Rosetta (rō-zet´tä) Stone.—Found at Rosetta in the delta of the Nile, contains equivalent inscriptions in hieroglyphics in demotic and in Greek letters. The meaning of the Greek text being known, the hieroglyphics could be translated.
Rowena (rō-ē´nä).—A Saxon princess, ward of Cedric of Rotherwood, in Sir Walter Scott’s romance of Ivanhoe.
Rumpelstilzchen.—Old German Tales. According to Grimm, this name is a compound, but the spirit represented is one familiar to all German children. The original story tells of him as a dwarf who spun straw into gold for a certain miller’s daughter.
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Sacripant (sak´ri-pant), King.—(1) King of Circassia, and a lover of Angelica, in Bojordo and Ariosto. (2) A personage in Tassoni’s mock heroic poem, Rape of the Bucket, represented as false, brave, noisy and hectoring.
Sagas (sä´gas).—Title of the ancient traditions which form the substance of the history and mythology of the Scandinavian races. The language in which they are written is supposed to be the old Icelandic. In the Edda there are numerous sagas. As our Bible contains the history of the Jews, religious songs, moral proverbs, and religious stories, so the Edda contains the history of Norway, religious songs, a book of proverbs, and numerous stories. The original Edda was compiled and edited by Sæmund Sigfusson, an Icelandic priest and scald, in the eleventh century. It contains twenty-eight parts or books, all of which are in verse. Two hundred years later Snorri Sturleson, of Iceland, abridged, rearranged, and reduced to prose the Edda, and his work was called The Younger Edda. In this we find the famous story called by the Germans the Nibelungenlied. Besides the sagas contained in the Eddas, there are numerous others, and the whole saga literature makes over two hundred volumes. Among them are the Völsunga Saga, which is a collection of lays about the early Teutonic heroes. The Saga of St. Olaf is the history of this Norwegian king. Frithjof’s Saga contains the life and adventures of Frithjof of Iceland. Snorri Sturleson, at the close of the twelfth century, made the second great collection of chronicles in verse, called the Heimskringla Saga. This is a most valuable record of the laws, customs and manners of the ancient Scandinavians.