. A short history of England's and America's literature, by Eva March Tappan. e awayfrom the old Anglo-Saxon metre and because he wrotein English. The Canterbury Tales begins : — Whan that Aprille with hise shoures soote The droghte of March hath perced to the roote, And bathed every veyne in swich licour Chaucers Of which vertu engendred is the flour; language. Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth Inspired hath in every holt and heeth The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y-ronne, And smale foweles maken melodye That slepen al the nyght with open eye,— So
. A short history of England's and America's literature, by Eva March Tappan. e awayfrom the old Anglo-Saxon metre and because he wrotein English. The Canterbury Tales begins : — Whan that Aprille with hise shoures soote The droghte of March hath perced to the roote, And bathed every veyne in swich licour Chaucers Of which vertu engendred is the flour; language. Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth Inspired hath in every holt and heeth The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y-ronne, And smale foweles maken melodye That slepen al the nyght with open eye,— So priketh hem Nature in hir corages, — Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages. This is written in the 5-beat line, which givesmore freedom than the4-beat line of is not em-ployed to mark the ac-cented syllables, but onlyto ornament the used manyFrench words and oftenretained the French end-ings ; but he used themso easily and so appropri-ately that they seemed tobecome a part of the lan-guage. Another serviceand an even greater one. ENGLANDS LITERATURE [14th Cent. he rendered to the English tongue. People in differentparts of England spoke in English, to be sure, but inwidely differing dialects. Chaucer wrote in what wasknown as the Midland dialect, and his work was so goodand so well liked that it had a powerful influence to fixthe language; that is, to make his writings and hisvocabulary models for the authors who succeeded him. Century XIV CHAUCERS CENTURY Sir John Mandeville. John Wyclif. William Langland. Geoffrey Chaucer. SUMMARY The weakening of the feudal system brought about thedawning of English thought. The causes of this weakeningwere: — 1. The lords, wishing to become crusaders, often acceptedmoney instead of work. 2. In the Hundred Years War the peasants discoveredtheir power. 3. The Black Death lessened the number of workers, andenabled men to find farm-work where they chose and to de-mand what wages they liked. 4. The
Size: 1186px × 2106px
Photo credit: © The Reading Room / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bo, bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, booksubjectenglishliterature
