The Leadership Capabilities of Richard II and Aeneas

Introduction

This is a research paper on the leadership characteristic of two leaders Richard II and Aeneas. Both leaders depicts clearly  how the power for leadership can corrupt someone mind if one does not work according to the rule of law pertain that country. One of the characteristic is morality, in that they were both morally upright despite of the normal human errors which is characterized on each individual trait .In order to over come such un worthy they had a common character since they were surrounded by best advises and they were faithful to the people they were serving.

Shakespeare in his judgmental mind described Richard II as being a leader who rose to be powerful leader who led with a bride and was a hard mind leader who never cared for the people's plea. While too many, Aeneas is primarily known as the hero of Virgil's Aeneid, there are separate traditions in medieval literature which portray him as a traitor.

Chaucer's House of Fame and Legend of Good Women both focus on Aeneas's romantic betrayal of Dido, and the anonymous Laud Troy Book depicts Aeneas as a treacherous villain to the city and king of Troy. In all of these poems he enjoys deceiving those who trust him and constantly plots to advance himself at the expense or destruction of others. Yet it is this same treasonous Aeneas whom medieval England proudly constructs as one of its mythical ancestors, as the opening lines to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight show. Ultimately, the multiple constructions of Aeneas and the fact that late medieval England bases its own mythology on a tradition fractured by treason and betrayal can be linked to the larger cultural discourse of treason and origins in England during the reigns of Richard I

Unable to control her fury and grief after the brutal murder of her husband and the destruction of her city, she stops in the middle of the turmoil to make sure that Aeneas knows the utter depravity of his actions. He is a traitor, and he has sold his lord and father-in-law, his city, and his fellow citizens to the Greeks. He is the most treacherous villain in a story full of traitors.

How can this be the same Aeneas who is, perhaps, most famous today as the hero of Virgil's Aeneid? Virgil's Aeneas is an innocent victim in the fall of Troy, somehow managing to escape the sacked city while carrying his aged father on his back. He then survives a series of perilous journeys, including one literally to hell and back, and establishes a new empire, ultimately Rome, on foreign shores. The tag most commonly associated with Virgil's Aeneas is pious, and Aeneas becomes famous for putting his duty in front of his desires, most notably in his decision to leave Dido, queen of Carthage, after she has fallen in love with him. It is the heroic willpower and fidelity to his family, gods, and destiny for which Virgil's Aeneas is best known

What cements the characterization of Aeneas as a villainous traitor is his active participation in the sacking of the city. Not only does he "compass" the plan, putting his cognitive powers to use in a twisted way, he also materially enacts the treason. After hearing of Priam's plan to (finally) get rid of the traitors, Aeneas switches into high gear. He and Antenor promise here are Latinisms in the translation in both diction and word order but Surrey avoids aureation, the use of polysyllabic words new-coined from the Latin that was a feature of the contemporary high style.

Early translation of Virgil is intimately bound up with debates about English metre. A curiosity is the experimental version of Aeneid i-iv by Richard Stanyhurst (1547-1618) in English hexameters, published in 1582, proof, if any were needed, of the inappropriateness of this meter in English.

It begins:

"Now manhood and garboils I chant and martial horror'. Its hobbling meter and execrable diction were much mocked from the beginning. The first complete Aeneid in English (1573) is the version by Thomas Phaer (? 1510-60) and Thomas Twyne (1543-1613). They use the fourteener, the metre that George Chapman was later to use in translating Homer's Iliad [II.i.2.i]. They do not have the metrical variety of the mature Chapman and their version is rhythmically predictable, undignified, and flat. The influence of the Italian tradition is apparent in the choice of ottava rima by Sir John Harington (1560-1612) for his version of the sixth Book. Sir Richard Fanshawe (1608-66) used the Spenserian stanza for his version of Book IV, an odd choice, for, plain and prosaic in its language, the translation is not in the least Spenserian in style, with no archaisms or ornate diction.

Otherwise the most popular metre for nearly all versions in the 17th c. was the heroic couplet. The earliest complete couplet version of the Aeneid is by John Vicars (1580-1652). More popular was John Ogilby (1600-76), the first translator of the complete works. He produced two quite different versions, the first in 1649 and the second, a magnificent folio volume, in 1654, both volumes with notes and plates. But the first couplet versions of quality were composed by Sidney Godolphin (1610-43) in his translation of most of Aeneid iv, entitled 'The Passion of Dido for Aeneas' published in 1658, completed with additional lines by Edmund Waller (1606-87). Denham translated Aeneid ii-iv relatively crudely in the 1630s and published a much more polished version, The Destruction of Troy, in 1656; this was followed by part of Book IV in 1668. The death of Priam (doubtless recalling the death of Charles I) is translated with particular vigour and moral point."