英国文学复习资料(小五）.docVIP

Lecture Two Geoffrey Chaucer(1340 ~1400) 1. Life Story 2. Literary career 3. The Canterbury Tales 4. Evaluation 1. Life Story Chaucer entered the service of King Edward III in 1367. For the next 10 years diplomatic errands took him some 9 times to the European Continent, which proved to be very important to him. Besides these diplomatic missions, Chaucer had other public employment. He was once made Controller of Customs in 1374, and elected Member of Parliament (MP) for Kent. With these positions, he still experienced some years of poverty and once wrote “Complaint to His Empty Purse”. He died in 1400 and was the first writer to be buried in the Poet’s Corner of Westminster Abbey. 2. Literary Career 1st period: 1360-1372, chiefly influenced by the French poetry and his chief literary creation was nothing but the translation from French “The Raumaunt of the Rose（玫瑰传奇）”. Chaucer was the first to introduce into English verse the octosyllabic couplet(八音节双韵). 2nd period: (1372-1385~6) under the influence of Italian literature. His visits to Genoa, Pisa and Florence in 1372, followed by his visits to Milan in 1378 were of particular importance to his literary creation: the books by Dante (“The Divine Comedy”), Petrach (“Rime Sparse”歌集) Boccaccio (The Decameron), their ideal of humanism provides a new motive to Chaucer’s future literary creation. Adaptation from the Italian as “Troylus and Criseyde”. 3rd period: the last remaining 15 years in his life, the writing of The Canterbury Tales, his masterpiece. Chaucer had reached full maturity in his literary creation, free from any dominant foreign influence. He has his own choice of subject, his own grasp of character and his own diction and plot. 3. The Canterbury Tales Outline The whole poem is a collection of tales strung together with a simple plan. On a spring evening, the poet drops himself at the Tabard Inn. Here he meets 29 other pilgrims ready for a journey of 60 miles on horseback to Canterbury. At