Geoffrey Chaucer

• Chaucer's life - p. 22

• French influence

• Translation of a French verse romance (The Romaunt of the

Rose, possibly written in 1360)

• The book of the duchess and The Romaunt of the Rose:

dream-vision poetry - chivalric ideal, tension (disparity
between high ideals and human frailty), complex
psychological dimension (focus on the unconscious), human
diversity.

• Two impulses in Chaucer's works: a debt to a received

tradition (established form and viewpoint of the world) and a
sense of new feelings, new ways of thinking about life, new
voices.

• Canterbury tales (p. 24): vivid exploration of the

personalities of the speakers.

• A diversity of literary genres: Canterbury tales is a frame

narrative.
“The framing device for the collection of stories is a
pilgrimage to the shrine of Thomas Becket in Canterbury,
Kent. The 30 pilgrims who undertake the journey gather at
the Tabard Inn in Southwark, across the Thames from
London. They agree to engage in a storytelling. Most of the
pilgrims are introduced by vivid brief sketches in the
‘General Prologue’” (source: britannica.com)
• A picture of the diverse range of people who lived in
England: a colorful cross-section of the main English social
classes (lords, priest, laborers, urban and professional people)
united by a religious purpose; a range of different and
competing voices.

• A comic and a tolerant tone: human weakness is inevitable.

• The wife of bath (p. 26) – far more space to the

representation of women in a different depiction compared to
the way women used to be represented in most literary texts
of Middle English Literature, such as in chivalric romances.

• However, there is an ideological sleight-of-hand in laughing

at “absurdity” (intolerance towards difference).

• The importance of hierarchy (p. 27).

• No real sense of unrest in England.