“Yet Dafydd's humour does not obscure, any more than Chaucer's does, the underlying seriousness of his poetry. Behind his poems of requited and unrequited love, whether idyllic or idealizing, whether streaked by savage jealousy or a profound feeling of betrayal reminiscent of Troilus and Criseyde, there runs a sense of the cruel impermanence of the world.”

—  Dafydd ap Gwilym

Patrick Sims-Williams, in Boris Ford (ed.) Medieval Literature: The European Inheritance (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1983) p. 302.
Criticism

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Yet Dafydd's humour does not obscure, any more than Chaucer's does, the underlying seriousness of his poetry. Behind hi…" by Dafydd ap Gwilym?
Dafydd ap Gwilym photo
Dafydd ap Gwilym16
Welsh poet 1320–1380

Related quotes

Alessandro Del Piero photo

“Del Piero is known for his sense of humour. He once joked that if Lippi does not convoke him to the World Cup in Germany, he would "run him over with his car and sink his damn boat."”

Alessandro Del Piero (1974) Italian former professional footballer

Tiscali.it http://sport.tiscali.it/articoli/06/01/20/del_piero_fiorello.html <br class="br">Attributed

“The writer serves his daemon and his subject. And the democracy that does not know that the daemon and the subject must be served is not, in any ideal sense of the word, a democracy at all.”

Lionel Trilling book The Liberal Imagination

The Function of the Little Magazine
The Liberal Imagination (1950)
Context: The writer must define his audience by its abilities, by its perfections, so far as he is gifted to conceive them. He does well, if he cannot see his right audience within immediate reach of his voice, to direct his words to his spiritual ancestors, or to posterity, or even, if need be, to a coterie. The writer serves his daemon and his subject. And the democracy that does not know that the daemon and the subject must be served is not, in any ideal sense of the word, a democracy at all.

“Our critique of capitalism is precisely that value production turns everything, whether meat or poetry, into commodity, and that it's no use asking for more love poems and less hamburgers.”

Gilles Dauvé (1947) French writer

"Letter on Animal Liberation" (1999)

“The universe does not care whether man unlocks its secrets or leaves them closed. Water does not care whether man bathes in it or drowns in it; whether it waters his fields or washes them away. If man masters its laws and utilizes his knowledge, water becomes a force in his favor. But enemy or servant, water does not care.”

Mark Clifton book They'd Rather Be Right

Source: They'd Rather Be Right (1954), p. 48.

Gabriel García Márquez photo

“jealousy knows more than truth does.”

Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) Colombian writer

Samuel Taylor Coleridge photo

“I take unceasing delight in Chaucer. His manly cheerfulness is especially delicious to me in my old age. How exquisitely tender he is, and yet how perfectly free from the least touch of sickly melancholy or morbid drooping! The sympathy of the poet with the subjects of his poetry is particularly remarkable in Shakspeare and Chaucer; but what the first effects by a strong act of imagination and mental metamorphosis, the last does without any effort, merely by the inborn kindly joyousness of his nature. How well we seem to know Chaucer! How absolutely nothing do we know of Shakspeare!”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher

15 March 1834
Table Talk (1821–1834)

Susan Neiman photo

“Far less import than your belief of whether god exists is what you think your belief entails. Does it direct your behaviour by rules and commandments that are set out before you or does it require you to think them through yourself? Does it require you to try to make sense of the world, or does it give up on sense itself? And I think these are the crucial distinctions. Not whether you add belief in a god to them.”

Susan Neiman (1955) American academic

Beyond Belief conference (November 2006)

Albert Barnes photo

“Great talents are not, before God, a substitute for love for Himself; the possession of a profound intellect does not free any man from the obligations resting on the heart for purity and holiness; a reputation for attainments in science does not settle the question whether he is righteous before his Maker; refined manners are not, in the sight of God, a substitute for the graces of the Spirit; God does not justify man on the ground of human learning; attainments in chemistry, anatomy, geology, botany, astronomy, or skill in sculpture and painting, — these do not prepare a man to die.”

Albert Barnes (1798–1870) American theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 114.

David Levithan photo

“You like someone who can’t like you back because unrequited love can be survived in a way that once-requited love cannot.”

David Levithan book Will Grayson, Will Grayson

Source: Will Grayson, Will Grayson

Bonar Law photo

“Whatever steps you may feel compelled to take, whether they are constitutional, or whether in the long run they are unconstitutional, you have the whole Unionist Party, under my leadership, behind you.”

Bonar Law (1858–1923) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Message sent to Belfast (12 July, 1913).

Related topics