A
man who has a dream about what people are and what they do, so he goes on a
pilgrimage to find the Holy Truth. He attacks the church because they were awful
and using religion to satisfy their own means. He meets allegorical figures on
the way. Literature was filled with pilgrimage. He meets 2 mortal sins disguised
as people.
1-
Covetousness =
Envy, wanting something that another person has to the extent of wishing, the
person would actually lose it.
2-
Gluttony
= eating too much.
Passus:
Piers writes in passus and that’s a short passage, it comes from Latin.
7
mortal sins
1-
Envy:
described earlier.
2-
Wrath:
Anger
3-
Gluttony:
described earlier.
4-
Lust:
the love of physical pleasure.
5-
Greed:
never being satisfied with what you have.
6-
Pride:
thinking that you are better than everyone else, because Christians believed
that people are on earth to better themselves.
7-
Sloth:
laziness.
Class
separation:
1-
Commoners:
anyone who was not of the noble birth
2-
Aristocrat:
people of Noble Birth
Geoffrey
Chaucer:
1-
At his time middle class emerged
2-
He was from it
3-
He married an aristocrat and moved up
4-
He became a page to the nobles
5-
He learned French, Latin and Italian
6-
His father wanted him to be more than that
7-
He was a soldier and was taken prisoner
8-
He did not write in Latin or French he wrote in Midland English [London]
1-
Realism
2-
Humor
3-
Satire
4-
Bawdy [making fun of body parts]
5-
Added words from other languages
6-
Made narration faster
7-
The plural verb ending [en] like hard, harden
8-
Made hath instead of has
9-
Wrote the greatest love poem “Trolius and Creiseyde”
-
1001 Arabian nights
-
Italian, Bocaccio’s “The Decameron”
1-
It had 7 lines in a
stanza
2-
There were 3 stanzas
3-
It was in iambic
pentameter
4-
Rhyme royal
“ababbcc”
The
Italian version had 8-lined stanza and the rhyme was “abababcc”
The
Spencerian stanza is “ababbcbcc” and it was Edmund Spencer’s rhyme,
in his
Fairy
Queen.
1-
Chaucer mentions physical appearance, which is called “physiognomy”
·
Broad forehead
: truthful
·
Full lips:
passionate nature
2-
There are 3 Caucers in the poem
·
Chaucer the speaker: loves all the characters he sees.
·
Chaucer the poet moralistic and criticizes all the characters, and uses
irony
·
Chaucer the civil servant cares a lot about the money these characters
make and how good their job is. [Secured or not]
3-
Nun’s Prioress: she’s too sentimental, she cries when she sees a
mouse. And she’s so concerned about how she behaves in a ladylike fashion,
it’s ridiculous because people dedicated to god should not be too nicely
dressed and interested in love and all.
4-
Knight: both Chaucer the speaker and the poet like the Knight. He’s
perfect and ideal “true, perfect, noble.”
5-
Clerk: neither poet nor civil servant liked clerk, because he was into
studying and philosophy and couldn’t make gold out of thin air. [e.g.] he
wasn’t rich
Estate
satire
“Mocking classes”
1-
Clergy/
religious
2-
Nobility /
fighting - women
3-
Peasantry/
food - women
The
middle class came later, they were merchants, they made money on trades.
There
was also the intellectually class.
Feudal
Society
is when the Church rules everything.
Women
in either [dependant on]
1-
Wife-
husband
2-
Widow –
parents/brothers
3-
Girl-
depends on parents
1-
Sanguine
– hot blodded [squire]
2-
Choleric –
hot tempered [Miller]
3-
Melancholic-
sad [Knight]
4-
Phlegmatic
– cold/boring [Man-of-Law]