Chaucer

Chaucer Social Background Towards the end of 6th century Christianity began to spread and Saint Agustine established a monastery at Canterbury; it brought written documents. The culture of this period was a fusion of two alien components: one, the language, the other the moral values of Rome.The Norman period starts in 1066 when the Normans invaded England with the battle of Hastings. The Normans imposed the French language and until the 14th century in England were spoken three languages: French among the nobility, Latin among the clergy and the English among the common people. Chaucer Chaucer was born into a middle class family. His father was a wine merchant in London. He was an important diplomat and he worked for the king beacuse he followed Edward III's son to war in France where he was taken prisoner and ransomed by the king himself. His journerys briught him also to Italy where he maybe read Dante, Boccaccio and Petrarca. Main Work His poems are usually divided into 3 period: French, Italian, English. In the last one period Chaucer's language gradually became standard English, thus becoming the basis of Modern English.Chaucer is the inventor of the narrative, but in his creation it is other people who tell the tales, giving rise to narrative tension between the voice of narrator (Chaucer) and the voices of the narrators within the general narrative (the pilgrims). Canterbury Tales Structure The general prolugue starts describing spring, the good season for pilgrimages. The poem introduces a group of pilgrims going on a pilgrimage to Thomas Becket's shrine in Canterbury. Chaucer himself was invited to join the company (so he became an even more believable eyewitness). Canterbury is the simbol of celestial city itself, the end of the life, and the jurnery of the pilgrims becomes the allegory of the course of human life. The pilgrims would have a returned (to London, the terrestral city) from meditation and illumination towards reality. Characters Among the characters the pilgrims can be divided into 3 main groups: a first group connected with the declining feudal wold, a second group associated with religious life and a third group including townspeople.This is because in that period the upper classes did not like to mix with other people and preferred to go on pilgrimages on their own, while poor people did not have the money to afford the journey. Opposing with the rules of the correct procedure in literature, he placed the Knight as the first personage in the description of his characters. Chaucer was precise and tied about psychological study of the single characters. Allegory and Realism The pilgrimages is also a key metaphor for life from the religious share. We are all pilgrims on the way to the heavenly city, and every journery reflects the basic pattern of existence. Narrator The poetry uses the narrative technique of a “tale within a tale”; Chaucer himself tells us directly what he sees and what he thinks about, so th