Nahuatl
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Troilus and Cressida is a tragedy by Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1602. The play (also described as one of Shakespeare's problem plays) is not a conventional tragedy, since its protagonist (Troilus) does not die. The play ends instead on a very bleak note with the death of the noble Trojan Hector and destruction of the love between Troilus and Cressida. Venus and Adonis is classical myth during the Renaissance. Heer Ranjha is one of the four popular tragic romances of the Punjab.
Popocatépetl and Iztaccíhuatl refers to a number of mythical and folkloric explanations of the origins of the volcanoes Popocatépetl ("the Smoking Mountain") and Iztaccíhuatl ("white woman" in Nahuatl, sometimes called the Mujer Dormida "sleeping woman" in Spanish) which overlook the Valley of Mexico.
Layla and Majnun is a classical Arabian love story. It is based on the real story of a young man called Qays ibn al-Mulawwah from the northern Arabian Peninsula, in the Umayyad era during the 7th century. There were two Arabic versions of the story at the time. In one version, he spent his youth together with Layla, tending their flocks. In the other version, upon seeing Layla he fell passionately in love with her. In both versions, however, he went mad when her father prevented him from marrying her; for that reason he came to be called Majnun Layla, which means "Driven mad by Layla". To him were attributed a variety of incredibly passionate romantic Arabic poems, considered among the foremost examples of the Udhari school.
The Butterfly Lovers is a Chinese legend about the tragic romance between two lovers, Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai. The legend is sometimes regarded as the Chinese equivalent to Romeo and Juliet.
Fight and Love with a Terracotta Warrior is a Chinese novel about the forbidden love between a general and a girl chosen to be taken to a land now known as Japan, Meng Tianfang and Han Dong-Er. After their relationship was discovered, both were condemned to death, one to be burned and the other to be made a terracotta and burned alive. Dong-Er secretly gives an elixir of immortality to Tianfang and sacrifices herself. Two thousand years later, Tianfang is released from his imprisonment in the terracotta by Zhu Lili, the reincarnation of Dong-Er.
Other classic star-crossed lovers include Devdas and Paro (Parvati) in Devdas, Paris of Troy and Helen of Sparta in The Iliad, Oedipus and Jocasta in Oedipus the King, Mark Antony and Cleopatra during the time of the Roman Empire, Khosrow and Shirin during the time of Sassanid Persia, Heloise and Peter Abelard during the Middle Ages, and Emperor Jahangir and Anarkali, and Cyrano and Roxane in Cyrano de Bergerac and Hagbard and Signy.
Modern examples
In soap opera, modern examples of star-crossed lovers have included couples such as Cliff Warner and Nina Cortlandt, JR Chandler and Babe Carey and Bianca Montgomery and Maggie Stone from All My Children, etc.
Prime time has had various star-crossed lovers labeled as notable and "unforgettable" love stories. IGN considers Buffy Summers and Angel from Buffy the Vampire Slayer to be one of the genre's most tragic and notable star-crossed pairings. Cole Turner and Phoebe Halliwell from Charmed, Michael and Nikita from La Femme Nikita, Kara Thrace and Lee Adama from Battlestar Galactica, Clark Kent and Lana Lang from Smallville, and Lucas Scott and Peyton Sawyer from One Tree Hill are other star-crossed couples from the genre.
With film or within modern novels and books, such star-crossed couples as Jack Dawson and Rose DeWitt Bukater from Titanic, Landon Carter and Jamie Sullivan from "A Walk to Remember", Anakin Skywalker and Padmé Amidala from the Star Wars saga, Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist from Brokeback Mountain, and Jake and Neytiri from Avatar have been included.
Anime and cartoons have had their star-crossed couples as well. Gennosuke Kouga and Oboro Iga from Basilisk is one example, along with Brotherhood member Lance Alvers ("Avalanche") and X-Man Kitty Pryde ("Shadowcat") from X-Men: Evolution.
Role-playing video games have particularly featured star-crossed couples. Cloud Strife and Aerith Gainsborough from Final Fantasy VII have been called video games' greatest, as well as its most tragic, star-crossed love story. The couple is one of the most well-known video game couples in the history of video gaming. Zero and Iris from Mega Man X4 are a well-known example of a star-crossed video game couple.
In The Hunger Games, Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark are often called "The Star Crossed Lovers from District 12" because of their romance while in the Hunger Games, where only one can live.
In 2008, a web-based reality soap opera was created based on the concept of being star-crossed. In Starcrossed, Fox News astrologer Greg Tufaro takes a couple in crisis and separates them for one cycle of the moon. Each is then set up with individuals who are a better match astrologically. The show puts the question "Is love written in the stars?" to the test with the couple deciding on the 28th day of their separation whether they will stay together or remain apart.
See also
