History of English Literature
Lecture X
The fourteen c.: social changes, Geoffrey Chaucer and the revival
of English (literature)
The Ellesmere MS (early 15th c.) of the Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer presenting their
author of the pilgrims.
Ambrogie Lorenzetti (d. 1348), a fresco from the Allegory of Good and Bad Government, Siena,
Palazzo Publico, ca. 1328.
The middle classes are becoming more and more important.
The 14th is the century of Major social changes.
1. 14th century  social and political changes in Europe and England.
The three social classes affected, although it is only realizable with the benefit of hindsight:
a. Bellatores (knight, nobility, aristocracy):
- the war with France  the so-called Hundred Years' War (1337-1453)  seemingly upholding the
idea of chivalry (Edward the Black Prince, King Edward III's son as a popular chivalric hero);
-in reality  little by little the military role of knighthood wanes (e.g. most important English
victories achieved thanks to archers and mercenary armies, i.e. lower classes), the horrors of the
war;
-yet the war resulted in the consolidation of English identity against the French enemy
-slow transformation of the knightly ideal into the idea of a courtier.
-In Chaucer's Canterbury Tales:
a) supported by John of Gaunt Duke of Lancaster (the ups and downs)
b)possible ambivalence in the presentation of nobility by Chaucer
c) note the change between the Knight and the Squire (father and son) in the Prologue to The
Canterbury Tales. The son is much more interested in fashion and culture than his father.
A jousting scene. Chronicles by Jean Froissart, 2nd half of the 14th c.
The Battle of Crecy (1346)  notice the English archers with their long bows to the right. From the
Chronicles by Jean Froissart
After the hundred years' war the French and the English became sworn enemies. French slowly
starts to disappear from the upper classes.
b. Oratores (clergy and the Church):
- the Church in moral crisis: simony (buying offices and church positions), buying and selling
spiritual or Church benefits such as pardons, relics, etc., or preferments.
-Political influences upon the Church (Clement V, influenced by the French crown, moves to
Avignon; 1309-1378 popes in Avignon)
-the Western Schism (1378-1418, conflicted popes residing both in Avignon and in Rome, political
alliances, mutual papal interdicts);
-moral and existential problems stemming from the above;
-first attempts at reformatory movements in England (John Wycliff, d. 1384 and the Lollards,
negation of the Church hierarchy, fragments of the Bible translated into English).
-In Chaucer's Canterbury Tales:
a) note the scathing way in which the clergy is presented
b) Chaucer likely to sympathize with John Wycliff
Avignon, the Palace of the Popes. Below a hunting scene detail from the pope's private chamber.
The Canterbury pilgrims (notice the Monk in white robes, seriously ironized by Chaucer), an ironic
perspective n the life of monks and a 15th c. mock pilgrims badge in the shape of a vagina with a
walking stick and a rosary
c. Laboratores (peasants, artisans, city-dweller etc., but also the beginning of the meritocracy, like
Geoffrey Chaucer):
-the plague (the Black Death) of 1348 and returning every ten years -divine punishment and
massive depopulation in Europe and in England;
-depopulation led to labour shortages and thus to first large popular uprisings across Europe; the
Jacquerie (France, 1356), parliamentary and governmental crisis in England in late 1370s (the Good
Parliament), the Peasants' Revolt against nobility and the social system in England (1381).
-social unrest seen as directed against the order established by God.
-in Chaucer:
a) the laboratores as important characters and narrators in the Canterbury Tales
-Later, in 20th c. literary criticism: the idea of the carnivalesque (reversal of values and hierarchies),
Labourers in four seasons.
Froissart's Chronicles: Death of Wat Tyler