Sobre Geoffrey Chaucer

UNIVERSIDADE DO ESTADO DA BAHIA – UNEB

DEPARTAMENTO DE CIÊNCIAS HUMANAS – CAMPUS VI/CAETITÉ

COMPONENTE CURRICULAR: ASPECTOS HISTÓRICOS E CULTURAIS EM LI

PROFª: SIGRID ROCHELE GUSMÃO PARANHOS MAGALHÃES

GEOFFREY CHAUCER

The spoken forms of a language are always more fluid and changeable than the written forms. In those days, when few people knew how to read or write, the Old English and Norman French tongues spoken by the people gradually mixed to form what is called Middle English, a language much closer in both structure and vocabulary to Modern English than Anglo-Saxon. Like Anglo-Saxon, though, Middle English was not a single tongue but a group of regional dialects more or less resembling one another. One dialect, the East Midland dialect spoken in London and at the king′s court, was to prevail over all the others, partly because it was in that dialect that the first genius of English literature wrote. His name was Geoffrey Chaucer.

Chaucer was born in London of middle-class parents and was brought up in the house of powerful nobleman. As a young man he fought with the English army in France during the 100 Years′ War and later became a diplomat in the service of the king. He was able to travel widely in Italy and France, where he learned much from the sophisticated medieval literatures of those countries. Borrowing plots and techniques from his Italian and French masters, Chaucer virtually created English as a literary language and founded the English literary tradition.

His masterpiece, a collection of stories called The Canterbury Tales, presents us not only with a group of stories of all types but also with a group of characters who are very real, from their carefully described clothing to their alternating moods of humour, seriousness, and quarrelsomeness. The tales are told by a group of people representing nearly every walk of life in medieval England - a knight, a merchant, a student, a miller, various clergymen, a ploughman, and many others. They are making a pilgrimage from London to Becket′s shrine at Canterbury, and they decide to entertain themselves by telling stories along the way. The pilgrims engage a tavern-keeper to be host of the party and to judge who tells the best story; the winner is to receive a free dinner paid for by the rest. One of the delights of The Canterbury Tales is that Chaucer assigns to most of the pilgrims a tale that illustrates their characters. Furthermore, between the tales the pilgrims make jokes at one another′s expense and comment upon one another′s foibles. The result is not just a collection of narratives but a dramatic interplay of personalities.

Canterbury Tales.

RIEDINGER, Edward Anthony. A brief View of British Literature. Waldyr Lima Editora