Introduction to The Canterbury Tales

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Introduction to The Canterbury Tales

• Accelerated/Honors 12

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Medieval Period

• 1066-1485
• The Norman Conquest of England
• Stand-still in English literature

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Medieval Hierarchy

• Feudal system
• Nobility barons, knights
• Freemen emerging middle class (merchants,
  guildsmen)
• Peasants or serfs

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Medieval Hierarchy (cont)

• Clergy
• The Roman Catholic Church
• (people shared a common faith)
• Pope, archbishops, bishops,
• priests, nuns, and monks.

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(No Transcript)
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Saint Thomas à Becket

• Archbishop of Canterbury
• Feud with Henry II
• Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?
• Miracles that led to a great pilgrimage to
  Canterbury

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Geoffrey Chaucer

• C. 1343-1400
• Known as the father of English literature
• Middle class
• Vassal to the king
• Started a re-birth of English literature

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Geoffrey Chaucer

• Born in the reign of Edward III
• his work has a quality of universality that is
  only matched and exceeded by Shakespeare
• Chose to write in the Mercian dialect (not French
  of the court or Latin of the university
  church). This dialect became the English dialect
  spoken today.
• Father was a successful wine merchant (the middle
  class was new)

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Geoffrey Chaucer

• Born a commoner, but through his intellect and
  astute judgments of human character, he moved
  freely among the aristocracy, so he knew the
  world from many aspects.
• He became a court page at 12 and read romances to
  the ladies at court married a lady-in-waiting to
  the queen
• Took part in at least two military campaigns
• Court poet of the later Middle Ages in Western
  Europe

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Geoffrey Chaucer

• He traveled widely, was a substantial citizen,
  well-educated, widely read.
• He was a diplomat in Italy. Met or read
  forerunners of the Italian Renaissance (Dante,
  Petrach, Boccaccio) and spoke French, Italian,
  Latin fluently.
• He held many public offices throughout his
  public life he came into contact with most of the
  important men of London as well as with many of
  the great men of the continent

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Geoffrey Chaucer

• His work did not reach people through printed
  books but was recited and circulated in
  manuscript copies
• He was the first poet buried in Westminster Abbey
  One of the best known parts of Westminster
  Abbey, Poets' Corner can be found in the South
  Transept. It was not originally designated as the
  burial place of writers, playwrights and poets
  the first poet to be buried here, Geoffrey
  Chaucer, was laid to rest in Westminster Abbey
  because he had been Clerk of Works to the palace
  of Westminster, not because he had written the
  Canterbury Tales (westminster-abbey.org)

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Literary Devices

• Frame tale
• Narrative technique whereby a main story is
  composed, at least in part, for the purpose of
  organizing a set of shorter stories, each of
  which is a story within a story.

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Romance

• Stories of adventure about knights and chivalry
• Courtly love
• Celebrates the love of a knight, usually for a
  married woman. Thus, it is often adulterous and
  secretive.
• Knights are so madly in love with these women
  that it consumes their thoughts.
• Knights try to do many great deeds in hopes of
  winning their love.

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Fabliaux

• Audience middle class men
• Risqué tales that usually satirize women and
  clergy
• Lots of obscenity people act like animals as
  opposed to chivalric romance
• jealous husband who loses sexual possession of
  his wife
• wife who outsmarts her husband
• corrupt members of the church

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Heroic Couplet

• Pioneered by Chaucer
• Poems constructed from a sequence of rhyming
  pairs of iambic pentameter lines

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The General Prologue

• Middle English
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vQE0MtENfOMU