14th century England' Chaucer: introduction

1
14th century England. Chaucer introduction
2
Middle England Values

• Gentilesse/Gentil
• Refinement and courtesy resulting from good
  breeding
• A function of social class to a certain extent
• gentil is related to the modern term gentleman
• Trouthe/Trewe
• 1. fidelity, loyalty 2. pledge, promise
• cf. modern English, to "pledge one's troth,"
  meaning to agree to marry
• It is more than simply the idea of truthfulness
  or trueness to one's word.
• Courtly love and knightly behavior

3
Courtly Love (wrap up)

• Modeled on the feudal relationship between a
  knight and his liege lord
• Idealized sort of relationship (could not exist
  within the context of "real life" medieval
  marriages)
• The audience for romance was perfectly aware that
  these romances were fictions
• Capellanus's "Art of Courtly Love a satire
  mocking the conventions of courtly love

4
The Black Death historical consequences

• People died without last rites and without having
  a chance to confess their sins.
• There were not enough workers left to work the
  land
• It has been estimated that 40 of England's
  priests died in the epidemic.
• The Church authority was questioned
• The Peasants' Revolt of 1381 was one result of
  the social tension caused by the adjustments
  needed after the epidemic.

5
Chaucer (1343-1400) Social background

• Born in a well-to-do bourgeois family in London,
  1343.
• Commoners who were advancing in wealth and social
  prestige
• Excluded from the aristocracy by birth, and from
  the country gentry by their city occupations
• They were somewhere in between the beginning of
  the English middle class.

6
Chaucer Career Path

• Teenage a page in the household of Prince Lionel
  (son of King Edward III)
• His 1st great patron was John of Gaunt (5th son
  of the king) the most powerful nobleman in
  England.
• Received offices, grants of money, and other
  privileges for his services from successive
  kings, Edward III, Richard II and Henry IV.
• Sent on diplomatic missions to Flanders, France
  and Italy
• Became a public man but of modest importance

7
Formal and informal education

• His development summed up as comprised in three
  stages, French, Italian and English.
• Embedded the first translation of a Petrarch
  sonnet into English.
• Other models were Boccaccio and Dante. The
  influence was not directly exercised through
  Italy, but via the French.
• His latest stories have no direct originals and
  in their humour and freedom anticipate the
  typically English temper.

8
Stages in Literary Development

• Translated incompletely the Roman de la Rose and
  Wrote some short poems before 1360
• The Book of the Duchess is a dream vision and an
  elegy at once.
• Translated the Consolation of Philosophy of
  Boethius, which influenced him profoundly
• The House of Fame first typically Chaucerian
  work
• After 1370 the Italian influence on Chaucers
  work became major in his poetry The Parliament
  of Fowls, Troilus and Criseyde.

9
The Canterbury Tales Background

• One of the landmarks of English literature.
• Had a continuous history of publication.
• Chaucer did not complete the entire Canterbury
  Tales as designed.
• Tales structured so that each pilgrim would tell
  four tales (only completed twenty-four tales).
• Dramatic illusion of the tellers within a
  framework of tales double fiction
• Include romantic adventures, fabliaux,
  hagiographies, bestiaries, religious allegories,
  a sermon

10
Glossary 1 Fabliau

• Short, humorous and typically bawdy poem.
• Abounded as elements of poetry in France of the
  12th and 13th centuries.
• Appeared in English some 100 years later.
• Deals for the most part with domestic comedy full
  of sexual innuendo of the merchant and middle
  classes.
• Some of the motifs are from oriental sources.
• Involve a lovers' triangle, trickery designed to
  gain favours from a desired woman most likely
  married or otherwise unavailable (too young
  etc.).
• Trickery designed to delude an ageing or
  otherwise undesirable husband to clear the way
  for a lover.

11
Glossary 2 Hagiography

• The study of saints.
• Refers literally to writings on the subject of
  holy persons biographies of ecclesiastical and
  secular leaders.
• Focus on the lives of men and women canonized by
  the Christian Church
• Other religions such as Buddhism and Islam create
  and maintain hagiographical texts concerning
  saints and other individuals believed to be
  imbued with the sacred.
• The related term hagiology refers to the study of
  saints collectively, without focusing on the life
  of an individual saint.
• The term "hagiography" has also come to be used
  as a pejorative reference to the works of
  contemporary biographers and historians whom
  critics perceive to be uncritical and even
  "reverential" in their writing.

12
Glossary 3 Bestiary

• A compendium of beasts
• Made popular in the Middle Ages in illustrated
  volumes that described various animals, birds and
  even rocks.
• The natural history and illustration of each
  beast were usually accompanied by a moral lesson.
  
• This reflected the belief that the world itself
  was literally the Word of God, and that every
  living thing had its own special meaning (the
  pelican, which was believed to tear open its
  breast to bring its young to life with its own
  blood, was a living representation of Jesus).
• Also a reference to the symbolic language of
  animals in Western Christian art and literature.
• Particularly popular in England and France around
  the 12th century and were mainly compilations of
  earlier texts.

13
Next Time Assignment

• The General Prologue
• What was the purpose of a medieval pilgrimage?
• Who is the "holy blisful martyr" ?
• Why is he of interest to the pilgrims?
• How many pilgrims are there?
• How is this helpful to Chaucer in his ambition to
  show his art as a poet?
• Which pilgrims represent new classes?
• Which figures are painted in a positive or in a
  negative light?
• What seems to be Chaucer's attitude toward the
  Church?
• What is the role of Chaucer the pilgrim within
  this group?