Key terminology

William Langland (1332?—1400?). One such poor priest was the poet William Langland. His parents were poor but free peasants. He denounced the rich churchmen and said that everybody was obliged to work. His name is remembered for a poem he wrote, The Visions of William Concerning Piers the Ploughman or simply Piers Plowman.

The poem Piers Plowman is a dream allegory. Vice and Virtue are spoken of as if they were human beings. Truth is a young maiden, Greed is an old witch. The author suddenly darts from allegory to real history. The poem was exceedingly popular in the Middle Ages. It was one of the last written in alliterative verse.

The content is as follows. On a fine May day, the poet William went to Malvern Hills. After a time he fell asleep in the open. Piers the Ploughman is a peasant who appears in the dream of the poet. Piers tells him about the hard life of the people. It is the peasants alone who work and keep the monks and the lords in comfort, and the monks think they do quite enough by praying for the peasants.

Langland's attacks against the evils of the Church are the most outspoken of his time. The poem helped the people to concentrate their minds on the necessity to fight for their rights. Before the Peasants' Revolt of 1381, the poem was used to formulate proclamations which easily spread among the people.

Geoffrey Chaucer (1340?—1400)

The greatest writer of the 14th century was Geoffrey Chaucer. He was born in London soon after the Hundred Years’ War broke out. Chaucer was the son of a London wine merchant who had connections with the court and hoped for a courtier’s career for his son, and at seventeen Geoffrey became a page to a lady at the court of Edward III. In turn a soldier, a courtier, a diplomat, a government official, and a Member of Parliament, he had plenty of opportunity to observe the ways of his contemporaries.

As a writer, Chaucer was extremely prolific. In his early short lyrics and longer works such as The Book of Duchess, we see the influence of the French poetry of his day (the first period of Chaucer’s creative activity). Later his writing reflected the influence of the Italian masters Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. To the second period belong the following poems: The House of Fame, a didactic poem; The Parliament of Fouls (wild birds) an allegorical poem satirising Parliament; Troilus and Cressida considered to be the predecessor of the psychological novel in England; and The Legend of Good Women, a dream-poem.

The third period of Chaucer’s creative work begins in 1384 when he started writing his masterpiece The Canterbury Tales. The Canterbury Tales is a series of stories written in verse. The framework which serves to connect them is a pilgrimage to Canterbury. The finest and the most original part of the poem is the Prologue, in which the various characters are introduced with great skill and humour. The work sums up all types of stories that existed in the Middle Ages: the Knight tells a romance; the Nun - a story of a saint; a Miller - a fabliau; the Priest – a fable, etc.

allegory	a figure of speech in which abstract ideas and principles are described in terms of characters, figures and events
fable	a short tale to teach a moral lesson, often with animals as characters
fabliau	a medieval verse tale characterized by comic treatment of themes drawn from life
prologue	a preface or introduction to a literary work
romance	a long medieval narrative in prose or verse that tells of adventures and heroic exploits of chivalric heroes

Ex.1. Answer the questions:

1) When did the Medieval period in English literature start and end?

2) What are the genres of the Medieval English literature?

3) What was finest verse romance in the Medieval period?

4) What poem is William Langland famous for?

5) How many periods is Chaucer’s creative activity divided into?

6) What stories does “Canterbury Tales” comprise?

Ex. 2. Match pairs of antonyms. 1. predecessor a. not enough 2. fouls b. virtue 3. fable c. frightened 4. plenty d. contemporary 5. vice e. fabliau 6. brave f. domestic birds

Ex.3. Join the words to make phrases. 1. to show an attitude a. for sth 2. cunning b. towards sth 3. to keep smb c. with virtues 4. to concentrate d. wizard 6. to be endowed f. in comfort 5. to be remembered e. on sth

Дата добавления: 2017-01-14