Hypermnestra  

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-'''''The Legend of Good Women''''' is a [[poem]] in the form of a [[dream vision]] by [[Geoffrey Chaucer]].+'''Hypermnestra''' in [[Greek mythology]], was the daughter of [[Danaus]]. Danaus was the twin brother of [[Aegyptus]] and son of [[Belus]]. He had fifty daughters, [[the Danaides]], and Aegyptus had fifty sons. Aegyptus commanded that his sons marry the Danaides and Danaus fled to [[Argos]], ruled by King [[Pelasgus]]. When Aegyptus and his sons arrived to take the Danaides, Danaus gave them to spare the Argives the pain of a battle. However, he instructed his daughters to kill their husbands on their wedding night.
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-The poem is the third longest of Chaucer’s works, after ''[[The Canterbury Tales]]'' and ''[[Troilus and Criseyde]]'' and is possibly the first significant work in [[English language|English]] to use the [[iambic pentameter]] or [[decasyllabic]] [[couplet]]s which he later used throughout the ''Canterbury Tales''. This form of the [[heroic couplet]] would become a significant part of [[English literature]] no doubt inspired by Chaucer.+
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-The prologue describes how Chaucer is reprimanded by the god of love and his queen, Alceste, for his works—such as ''Troilus and Criseyde''—depicting women in a poor light. Criseyde is made to seem inconstant in love in that earlier work, and Alceste demands a poem of Chaucer extolling the virtues of women and their good deeds. +
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-:For thy trespas, and understond hit here:+
-:Thou shalt, whyl that thou livest, yeer by yere,+
-:The moste party of thy tyme spende+
-:In making of a glorious Legende+
-:Of Gode Wommen, maidenes and wyves,+
-:That weren trewe in lovinge al hir lyves;+
-:And telle of false men that hem bitrayen,+
-:That al hir lyf ne doon nat but assayen+
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-The poet recounts ten stories of virtuous women in nine sections. The legends are: [[Cleopatra]], [[Thisbe]], [[Dido (Queen of Carthage)|Dido]], [[Hypsipyle]], [[Medea]], [[Lucrece]], [[Ariadne]], [[Philomela]], [[Phyllis]] and [[Hypermnestra]]. The work is a similar structure to the later [[The Monk's Prologue and Tale|Monk's Tale]] and like that tale, and many of his other works, seems to be unfinished. Chaucer's sources for the legends include: [[Virgil]]'s ''[[Aeneid]]'', [[Vincent of Beauvais]], [[Guido delle Colonne]]'s ''[[Historia destructionis Troiae]]'', [[Gaius Julius Hyginus]]' ''Fabula'' and [[Ovid]]'s ''[[Metamorphoses (poem)|Metamorphoses]]'' and ''[[Heroides]]''. +
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-The incomplete nature of the poem is suggested by [[Chaucer's Retraction]] from the ''Canterbury Tales'' which calls the work the ''xxv. Ladies''. Fifteen and nineteen are also numbers used to describe the work. In the prologue several women are mentioned—[[Esther]], [[Penelope]], [[Marcia Catonis]] (wife of [[Cato the younger]]), [[Lavinia]], [[Polyxena]] and [[Laodamia]]—whose stories are not recorded and the nineteen [[lady in waiting|ladies in waiting]] of Alceste mentioned in the prologue might suggest an unfulfilled structure.+
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-The command of queen Alceste is said, by [[John Lydgate]] in ''[[The Fall of Princes]]'', to be a poetic account of an actual request for a poem by [[Anne of Bohemia]] who came to England in [[1382]] to marry [[Richard II of England|Richard II]]. If true this would make Chaucer an early [[poet laureate]]. [[Joan of Kent]], Richard's mother, is also sometimes considered a model for Alceste. The supposed royal command is one suggested reason for the poem's unfinished state as Chaucer got bored with the task and gave up. Several passages hint at Chaucer's dissatisfaction:+
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-:But for I am agroted [stuffed] heer-biforn+
-:To wryte of hem that been in love forsworn,+
-:And eek to haste me in my legende,+
-:Which to performe god me grace sende,+
-:Therfor I passe shortly in this wyse;+
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-These lines, late in the poem, could simply be ''occupatio'' or [[paralipsis]], the [[rhetorical device]] common in Chaucer of bringing up a subject merely to say you will not mention it.+
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-Whether the poem's state is due to Chaucer becoming bored with it is uncertain, but it not now regarded among his best work, despite being popular when first written. One early fan is Chaucer's own character the [[The Man of Law's Prologue and Tale|Man of Law]] who praises Chaucer and the poem which he calls ''Seintes Legende of Cupide''. The work is rather inconsistent in tone, with tragedy mixed rather uncomfortably with comedy and the legends are all rather similar with little of the characterisation which is key to the ''Canterbury Tales''. Some scholars have conjectured that the work is deliberately poorly written and the work is actually a [[satire]] against women although this is not widely agreed with. Another idea is that it is a satire on the idea of taking stories of classical origin and twisting them to give them contemporary moral meanings. This would suggest that the poem is not only an early use of [[heroic couplet]]s but also one of the first [[mock-heroic]] works in English.+
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-The nature of the poem with its separate legends makes dating it difficult but it is clearly placed between ''Troilus'' and the ''Tales'' around [[1386]]/[[1388]]. Chaucer seems to have returned to the work a decade later to rewrite the prologue, but the latter text, which survives in only one manuscript, is generally considered inferior to the original.+
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-:A thousand tymes have I herd men telle,+
-:That ther is Ioye in heven, and peyne in helle;+
-:And I acorde wel that hit is so;+
-:But natheles, yit wot I wel also,+
-:That ther nis noon dwelling in this contree,+
-:That either hath in heven or helle y-be,+
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-[[Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson|Tennyson]] used the poem as theme for his own poem ''[[A Dream of Fair Women]]''.+
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Hypermnestra in Greek mythology, was the daughter of Danaus. Danaus was the twin brother of Aegyptus and son of Belus. He had fifty daughters, the Danaides, and Aegyptus had fifty sons. Aegyptus commanded that his sons marry the Danaides and Danaus fled to Argos, ruled by King Pelasgus. When Aegyptus and his sons arrived to take the Danaides, Danaus gave them to spare the Argives the pain of a battle. However, he instructed his daughters to kill their husbands on their wedding night.

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