IGNOU MEG - Block 1: unit 1-4: Chaucer
Topics covered -
Chaucer's time
Background
Names and Titles
Writing Period
The poetry of Chaucer and his contemporaries is best understood in the context of the transition in European society from declining feudalism to an emerging money control characterized by the rise of the middle classes. Because of the lucrative wool trade, agricultural land was being converted at many p1ace into pasture for rearing sheep. This required fewer farm-hands, giving rise to a gradual exodus of labor from country to town, from farming to the craft-guilds. Of course, such processes of social transformation do not take place abruptly: in the reign of Henry VIII, Thomas More continues to attack the 'enclosure' system, that is, the conversion of arable land into pasture.
Age of Chaucer 14th century:
1- 100 years war 1337-1453 in France and England (116 yrs)
War with France and Scotland brought honor to the English monarchy but drained the resources of the Crown. making the barons more powerful.
2- Black death 1348-49 bubonic plague 40-60% of England's population died
The war, which had brought prosperity to various classes in England because of the
rich booty and high wages for soldiers, suffered a severe check from the Black Death
(1348-49), a deadly form of the highly infectious bubonic plague carried across v
Europe by black rats. Because of insanitary conditions, it affected towns more than
villages, and the poor died everywhere like flies. until the late seventeenth century, when medical science improved and the black rat was driven out by the brown rat, which did not carry the disease.
3- Peasants revolt - 1381(May to November) Famine, social unrest
In 1381, more than half the people did not possess the privileges that had been guaranteed to every 'fireman' by the Magna Carta (1 2 15) in the reign of King John. The serf and the villein had the status of livestock in the master's household, although the above-mentioned factors had started to push them out of bondage to the comparative freedom of crafts in towns. In theory the laborers had an elected representative, the Reeve, supposedly to counterbalance the Steward or Bailiff. But as the wealth of the towns often drew away an absentee landlord, the Reeve as substitute became a feared enemy of the people, as in the portraits of Chaucer and Langland. The poor had to pay fines for. marriage or sending a son to school, and the inhuman heriot or mortuary tax exacted at the death-bed was responsible for much resentment. The immediate provocation for the revolt was the Poll Tax or head tax. The financial burden of the wars forced the government to ask Parliament to allow heavy taxes. But since such taxes usually affected the propertied classes which dominated Parliament, in 1380, taxes were levied on even the poorest. The sudden outbreak of rebellion under the leadership of Wat Tyler resulted in the peasants, accustomed to levies for French campaigns, attacking London, destroying property and putting the Archbishop of Canterbury on death.
During his time:
Corruption in church
Decline in Feudal System
Rise in national consciousness
heavy tax, war, anarchy
Chaucer divided society in 3 estates:
1 The Knight
2 The Ecclesiastes (church)
3 The working man(third estate)
King’s and Chaucer:
Edward III Chaucer was born
Richard II Chaucer lived
Henry IV Chaucer died
Background:
1343-1400, London, son of wine merchant, Wealthy family. Liberal education, Luxurious Courtly and well travelled life
Although not much is known of Chaucer's life, official records give us a good idea of his public career. He was born about 1343-44 to John and Agnes Chaucer in London. The name Chaucer (French 'Chaussier') suggests that they were a shoe-making family, but his immediate ancestors were prosperous wine-merchants with some standing at court.
After some fluctuation of fortune, in 1389, when Richard I1 asserted his position, Chaucer was appointed Clerk of the King's Works, in charge of the upkeep of the royal buildings. When he lost his Clerkship he again went through financial uncertainties until the new King Henry IV gave him an annuity of 40 marks. But the poet died soon after, in 1400.
A well travelled and well learned poet who was favoured by the government.
Names for Chaucer:
Father of middle age poetry, Luminous writer of verse poems, Greatest poet of the age, Morning star of renaissance, The well of English Undefiled, Father of English Literature and poetry.
Bad: Lack of high seriousness, not a poet of the people, Prince of Plagiarists.
Introduced Heroic Couplets in Eng Lit. First poet to be buried in Poets corner.
3 periods of Chaucer: [In details about the stories and about in unit 4, block 1 of Orientation…]
1- French(1370-800
-Translation of roman de la rosa
-Book of Duchess
-ABC- A prayer to virgin
2- Italian (1380-86)
-Influenced by Boccacio(majorly) and partly b Petrarch. Wrote 4 books:
The house of fame
The parliament of fowls
Troilus and Criseyde (Longest Complete poem)
The legend of good Women(first book on heroic couplet, Incomplete)
3- English(1387-1400)
Without rejecting the French and Italian elements, Chaucer enters his 'English' period with Troilus and Criseyde and The Canterbury Tales.
Chaucer’s Comic vision:
Subtle Irony: he sometimes directly ridicules social evils and vicious characters, Chaucer:? satire is rarely venomous. In fact, he is more of an ironist than a satirist, engaged in somewhat detached a 1 d amused observation of the gap between the ideal and the actual in human affairs, Irony As a mode is particularly appropriate to the transitional world in which Chaucer found himself
Because of the condition of orality, Middle English was not standardised, as modern English is, but an assortment of dialects. : Language: Late Middle English of the South East Midland type.
Block 1: unit 4and 5: Canterbury Tales: Prologue
It has been suggested that the general device of a series of tales within an enclosing narrative was borrowed by Chaucer from Boccaccio's Decameron. But the enclosing frame was only too common not only in medieval and classical Europe but in other parts of the world.
Rhyme scheme
blank verse or Pope's heroic couplets: the iambic pentameter consisting of five feet, each foot .made up of an unstressed (x) and a stressed syllable (/):
While in modern English the . the final e in words such as 'name,' 'veine,' and 'ende' is silent, in Chaucer's London, the situation was fluid. At times Chaucer retains the pronunciation of the final e ('Rome' can rhyme with 'to me') and at times he does not. The general rule is that the final e ought to be pronounced except where the next word the line begins with a vowel or an h. It will also be pronounced in the last word of a line and when a word ending in e in the singular is made plural (as in 'listes' or 'lokkes').
You can check out my YouTube videos on the same topic where I have explained everything in Hindi in detail. Links are below-
Block-1 Orientation For the Study of Poetry & The Medieval Poet Chaucer