The Period Before Chaucer 63345f

The Period Before Chaucer The Late Middle Ages or Late Medieval Period was the period of European history generally comprising the 14th and 15th centuries (c. 1301–1500). The Late Middle Ages followed the High Middle Ages and preceded the onset of the early modern era (and, in much of Europe, the Renaissance).

The poem is the third longest of Chaucer’s works, after The Canterbury Tales and Troilus and Criseyde and is possibly the first significant work in English to use the iambic pentameter or decasyllabic couplets which he later used throughout the Canterbury Tales. This form of the heroic couplet would become a significant part of English literature no doubt inspired by Chaucer. The prologue describes how Chaucer is reprimanded by the god of love and his queen, Alceste, for his works—such as Troilus and Criseyde—depicting women in a poor light. Criseyde is made to seem inconstant in love in that earlier work, and Alceste demands a poem of Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer, known as the Father of English literature, is widely considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages and was the first poet to be buried in Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey Born: 1343, London, United Kingdom Died: 25 October 1400, London, United Kingdom Period: Late Middle Ages The Nun's Priest's Tale is one of The Canterbury Tales by the Middle English poet Geoffrey Chaucer. Composed in the 1390s, the 626-line narrative poem is a beast fable and mock epic based on an incident in the Reynard cycle.

The Book of the Duchess, also known as The Deth of Blaunche is the earliest of Chaucer's major poems, preceded only by his short poem, "An ABC," and possibly by his translation of The Romaunt of the Rose.

15th Century Age of Humanism

From Chaucer to Spenser 1400-1599 The 15th century was a barren period in English literary history. It was nearly two hundred years after Chaucer's death before any poet came whose name can be written in the same line with his. He was followed at once by a number of imitators who caught the trick of his language and verse, but lacked the Thomas Hoccleve or Occleve was an English poet and clerk. He is seen as a key figure in 15th-century English literature.

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The Letter of Cupid Cupido unto whose commandment; Lespistre de Cupide

The poem The Letter of Cupid was written by Thomas Hoccleve (c. 1368 - c. 1426). Written in 1402, it is probably the earliest, precisely datable poem in the English language. The text is a loose adaptation of Christine de Pizan's Epistre au dieu d'Amours and has slightly more than half of the French text's length. The poem defends women against anti-female satire and attacks by men. For a more comprehensive assessment of the poem's content and attitude towards women, see Fenster & Carpenter-Erler (1990: 165-167). Genre/subjects: love, letter, men and women, feminism Dialect of original East-Midlands composition: Thomas Hoccleve worked as a civil servant in London. Quite a lot of details are know about Thomas Hoccleve's life. For background information on his life and dated poetry, see for instance Knapp (2009) or Furnivall (1892: vii-xxix). Date of original 1402 composition: The last two lines of the poem indicate the year of composition and are generally taken as authentic: "the yere of grace / Ioyful and Iocunde A thousand and foure houndred / and secounde." (The year of grace so joyful and jocund A thousand and four hundred and second.)

John Lydgate of Bury was a monk and poet, born in Lidgate, near Haverhill, Suffolk, England. Lydgate's poetic output is prodigious, amounting, at a conservative count, to about 145,000 lines. Hoccleve's writings and the regulation of language in late-medieval England-"Th'entents is al" - princely reading and political interpretation-voices of translation and the sources of the "Regiment"-- "Regiment" and the governing body-- the afterlife of the poem - Hoccleve manuscripts, readers and critics.

James I was considered to be an intellectual and did write several books. An interesting book on witchcraft came about after his return from Krondborg where his marriage to Anne took place. This book was the result of his attendance at the North Berwick Witch Trial. Apparently, several people were accused of using the black arts to create a storm hoping that it would sink the ship carrying James and Anne back to Scotland. He became quite troubled about this threat from witchcraft and wrote his book on demonology. As a result, hundreds of women were put to death for supposedly being witches.

At the heart of the century of rapid change lies the Puritan Revolt of 1640-60. The century together with the English Revolution was a time of intense ferment in all areas of life —religion, science, politics, domestic relations, culture. That ferment was reflected in the literature of the era, which also ed a heightened focus on and analysis of the self and the personal life. However, little of this seems in evidence in the elaborate frontispiece to Michael Drayton's long "chorographical" poem on the landscape, regions, and local history of Great Britain (1612), which appeared in the first years of the reign of the Stuart king James I (1603-1625). The great seventeenth-century heroic poem, Paradise Lost, father of empiricism.[6] His works argued for the possibility of scientific knowledge based only upon inductive and careful observation of events in nature. Most importantly, he argued this could be achieved by use of a sceptical and methodical approach whereby scientists aim to avoid misleading themselves. While his own practical ideas about such a method, the Baconian method, did not have a long lasting influence, the general idea of the importance and possibility of a sceptical methodology makes Bacon the

In his epigrams, elegies, and occasional poems here collected, Ben Johnson displays his directness of expression rare in English verse. In recent times, his work has been revived by poets and readers who find in it a clarity which sets it apart from his more fashionable contemporaries as his work is a model for a style at once polished and urbane.

Frontispiece of "Sylva Sylvarum", Bacon's work on Natural History. In the top, a Sun with the name of God written in Hebraic characters within, surrounded by angels, sending light rays to the Earth. The frontispiece to Sir Francis Bacon's Instauratio magna (Great Instauration) of 1620 depicts a ship sailing through two classical columns into an open sea; it symbolizes moving beyond the limits of classical (i.e., ancient Greek) scholarship into a realm of potential unlimited natural knowledge.

René Descartes was a French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist. Dubbed the father of modern western philosophy, much of subsequent Western philosophy is a response to his writings, Benjamin "Ben" Jonson was which are studied closely to this day.

an English playwright, poet, actor, and Born: 31 March 1596, Descartes, Indre-et-Loire, literary critic of the 17th century, [email protected] whose artistry exerted a lasting Died: 11 February 1650, Stockholm, Sweden impact upon English poetry and stage comedy. He popularised the comedy of humours. Born: 11 June 1572, Westminster, United Kingdom Died: 6 August 1637, Westminster, United Kingdom

The Return of Romanticism

The Bible in

The Victorian period formally begins in 1837 (the year Victoria became Queen) and ends in 1901 (the year of her death). As a matter of expediency, these dates are sometimes modified slightly. 1830 is usually considered the end of the Romantic period in Britain, and English Literature thus makes a convenient starting date for Victorianism. Similarly, since Queen Victoria’s death occurred so soon in the beginning of a new

Biblical literature, four bodies of written works: the Old Testament writings according to the Hebrew canon; intertestamental works, including the Old Testament Apocrypha; the New Testament writings; and the New Testament Apocrypha. The literature of the Bible, encoming the Old and New Testaments and various noncanonical works, has played a special role in the history and culture of the Western world and has itself become the subject of intensive critical study. This field of scholarship, including exegesis (critical interpretation) and hermeneutics (the science of interpretive principles), has assumed an important place in the theologies of Judaism and Christianity.

In Memoriam A.H.H., a tribute to Tennyson’s beloved friend Arthur Henry Hallam, was a defining poem of the Victorian period. Dr Stephanie Forward explores Tennyson’s composition process, and considers how the poem was received during Tennyson’s lifetime and into the 20th century. The Age of Reason presents common deistic arguments; for example, it highlights what Paine saw as corruption of the Christian Church and criticizes its efforts to acquire political power. Paine advocates reason in the place of revelation, leading him to reject miracles and to view the Bible as "an ordinary piece of literature rather than as a divinely inspired text". It promotes natural religion and argues for the existence In addition to the revival of ancient The great intellectual movement of of a creator-God. literature, the humanist movement also

Renaissance Italy was humanism. The encouraged a revival of ancient humanists believed that the Greek and philosophy. The medieval universities had Latin classics contained both all the been dominated philosophically by lessons one needed to lead a moral and Aristotle, but the humanists insisted on effective life and the best models for a the importance of other ancient powerful Latin style. They developed a philosophers as well--the Stoics, the new, rigorous kind of classical Epicureans, the Skeptics, and most of all, scholarship, with which they corrected the Platonists. The revival of Christian and tried to understand the works of the Platonism was the most important Greeks and Romans, which seemed so philosophical and theological movement vital to them. of the later fifteenth century.

Costanzo Felici, Historia de coniuratione Catilinae (History of the Catilinarian Conspiracy) n the High Renaissance, Rome was the center of the literary movement known as "Ciceronianism" that aimed to standardize Latin diction by modelling all prose on the writings of Cicero. The leaders of the movement hoped thereby to make Latin usage more precise and elegant; they also hoped to establish a kind of linguistic orthodoxy maintained by the authority of Rome.

The Victorian Period The Age of Reason

Marsilio Ficino, Epistulae (Letters)

Antonio da Rho, O.F.M., Tres Dialogi in Lactantium One of the issues on which some humanist intellectuals parted ways with traditional scholasticism was the nature of theology. Most scholastics believed that theology was a science, to be learned and taught by qualified professionals trained in logic and familiar with the recognized authorities. A vocal minority of humanists, such as Lorenzo Valla and Erasmus, challenged this claim, arguing that "the philosophy of Christ," i.e. the message of Christianity, could be learned by any educated person who studied the Bible with piety.