Chapter 3, The Age of Chaucer.ppt

1、Chapter Three The Age of Chaucer the Fourteenth Century,（four class hours）,The first two hours,.The Historical Events: war and disease were prevalent throughout the Middle Ages but never more destructive than during the 14th century. There were:,1.the Hundred Years War (13361436) produced an awakeni

2、ng of national consciousness in England: the English kings no longer regarded themselves as the vassals to the French kings. Instead they were independent kings having the same social status as the French king and having rights to the French throne.,2. In 1348 the first and most harmful epidemic of

3、the black death swept Europe, wiping out a quarter to one third of the population. The results of this calamity were high prices, a scarcity of labour and a sudden expansion of the possibility of social mobility that caused considerable discontents.,3.The peasant uprising of 1381:,its cause: 1) feud

4、al lords heavy exploitation and Oppression of the peasants; 2) the church had become the target of popular resentment because it was among the greatest of the oppressive landowners and because of the wealth, worldliness, and venality of many of the higher clergy.,One main result of the calamities:,T

5、hese calamities and upheavals nevertheless produced rising expectations, the principal beneficiaries of which were the increasingly wealthy and influential urban middle class. Thriving cities like London ran their own affairs under politically mayors and aldermen. (Norton P 8) Thus by the late fourt

6、eenth century, the original social composition of nobility, the church and serfs and peasants could not remain the same any more. A persons social status in the society was determined now not only birth but also by some other forces such as personal ability, profession, wealth and so on. A large and

7、 prosperous middle class was beginning to play increasingly important roles in church and state, blurring the traditional class boundaries, and it was into this middle class that Chaucer was born.,II. Major authors of the century:,John Wycliff, the Gawain author, William Langland and Geoffrey Chauce

8、r So the latter three writers appearance in the later part of 14th century is no coincidence, but has something to do with the social, political, economical and cultural factors. They responded to the age of crisis and changes.,John Wycliff, and William Langland and their representative works,a. the

9、 contribution of John Wycliff b. the contribution of William Langland: 1). the definition of allegory; 2). The theme of Piers Plowman: i: it is the history of Christianity as it unfolds both in the world of the Old Testament and New Testament and in the life and heart of an individual fourteenth-cen

10、tury Christian; ii: the way to salvation; iii. a comprehensive revelation of the time,2. Chaucer and his The Canterbury Tales,Chaucers life, a true presentation of his time A page boy, serving the 100-year war and was a captured by France, serving in King Edwards personal household, diplomatic missi

11、ons to Spain (1366), France (1368) and Italy (1372), after that a controller of customs on wool, sheepskins etc for the port of London and various other administrative work,His literary activity:,His longest complete poem Troilus and Criseide, one of the greatest love poems in the world literature w

12、as adapted for Boccaccios The Love-Stricken. It tells how the Trojan Prince loved and lost Criseide to Greek warrior Diomede. Even if he had never written The Canterbury Tales, this poem would have placed him among the major English poets. Chaucer also wrote religious and moral works, chiefly transl

13、ations, both in prose and poetry.,Thus long before Chaucer conceived of The Canterbury Tales, his works were many faceted: they include poetry and prose; divine and human love; French, Latin and Italian influences; secular and religious influence; comedy and philosophy. Moreover , different elements

14、 are likely to mix in the same work making it difficult to extract from the surface simple, direct and certain meanings. This Chaucerian complexity owes much to Chaucers wide range of learning and his exposure to the new continent literary currents, but maybe more to his special social position as a

15、 member of a new class of civil servants.,His The Canterbury Tales a general introduction to the story the significance of the work (1) the characters represent a wide range of ranks and occupations, different from any other work the history had seen, e.g Boccaccios Decameron. Thus it presents to th

16、e reader a comprehensive picture of the time in which the author lived;,(2) the significance of the structure: showing his originality: the prologue, the tales by the pilgrims, and the links. Thus the poet maintains two fictions simultaneously: that of the individual story and that of the pilgrims w

17、hom he has made to tell the tales. He develops the second fiction first through the prologue, second through the linksthe interactions between the palmers, their commentary on the tales and especially the commentary from the host; third through the tale each pilgrim tells because the story would rev

18、eal much about the story teller himself or herself. 3) Chaucers contribution to the English language.,III. The after class assignment:,the students should at least read the first two stanzas of the selected part of The Canterbury Tales in the textbook, think about No 4 of the significance of The Can

19、terbury Tales, that is humor in the work and get ready for discussion in the next lecture.,The next two hours continue to discuss The Canterbury Tales,The selected part of The Canterbury Tales: Because the shortness of the class time the teacher could not spend too much time on the specific understa

20、nding of sentences. Students are required to solve the problems of language and in class the teachers focus will be on helping the students find out the ideas in the two stanzas. Questions for understanding:,1) the first stanza: What do the first 11 lines tell you? Or what picture of the nature does

21、 the poet draw? (the nature here appears benevolent or inimical?) How does the narrator join the pilgrimage? Who in the prologue does the poet introduce first?,2) the stanza about the Nun: Note the humour in drawing the image of the nun. Where does humour come from? What impression do you have on he

22、r? (showy, affected, worldly, hypocritical, irreverent, corrupted ),3) some other main techniques used in the poem: (1)humour mainly comes from ironyverbal irony: the difference between what is said and what is meant; (2)a narrator close to other pilgrims to produce the objective sense, that is real

23、istic sense,(3)rhythmic pattern: heroic couplets, iambic pentameter lines rhymed in pairs Before discussing the topic, we can discuss first the research topic left about rhythm, foot, meter and rhyme:,rhythm: broadly and briefly speaking rhythm is a regular repeated pattern of movement or sound. In

24、poetry, two main factors contribute to the pormation of rhythm are the recurrence of stresses and pauses. That is the regular repeated appearance of stressed syllables and unstressed syllables and pauses. In order to understand it better, students can read P31 The Prologue of Chaucers The Canterbury Tales, P. 92, Shakespeares Sonnet 18, P. 326, Robert Burns, A Red, Red Rose, P. 330, William Blakes The Lamb. Analyzing the strong and weak syllables in them and finding out the regular intervals can offer a better understanding.,b.foot