英国文学课3--the third section--Chaucer

III. Close reading of the part “General Prologue”
• 2. Summary: see textbook • 3. Analysis of some parts of it:
IV. Popular Ballads:
• 1. Definition: • Ballads are anonymous narrative songs that have been preserved by oral transmission.
• The iambic pentameter couplet came to be called "heroic" because by the middle of the seventeenth century it was regarded as the proper form for dealing with "heroic" subjects--deeds of high accomplishment and matters of public interest and admiration--"proper" because it appeared to fit fairly unobtrusively the prose rhythms of the English language (long considered to be basically iambic) and because the fivestress line seemed most often to provide dignity and distance without intruding too much formality
The heroic couplet
• a couplet of rhyming iambic pentameters often forming a distinct rhetorical as well as metrical unit.
• The origin of the form in English poetry is unknown, but Geoffrey Chaucer in the 14th century was the first to make extensive use of it. The heroic couplet became the principal metre used in drama about the mid-17th century, and the form was perfected by John Dryden and Alexander Pope.
III. Close reading of the part “General Prologue”
• 1. Its significance: • a. the most important part of the whole poem • b. it is a whole gallery of vivid characters from all walks of life • C. it is a splendid masterpiece of realistic portrayal, the first of its kind in the history of English literature
• 4. Close reading:
•
“Get Up and Bar the Door”
Ballads
• 3. Robin Hood Ballads
• Robin Hood Ballads: • the ballads which reflect Robin Hood ’s feats. • Robin Hood： • is a Saxon by birth, an outlaw, a robber but he robbed only the rich and never molested the poor and the needy. •
II. Introduction of
The Canterbury Tales
• written in the years between 1387 -1400
• contains 24stories
• in the work, Chaucer created a strikingly brilliant and picturesque panorama of his time and his country, and it’s a comprehensive picture of the social reality of the poet ’s day.
•
Popular ballads are songs and ballads which were widespread among the populace of England and Scotland and created and preserved by the people.
• 2. Types: • • • • • Historical Legendary Fantastical Lyrical Humorous
Unit 3 Geoffrey Chaucer
（1340-1400）
I. Geoffrey Chaucer:
-- “the Father of English Poetry”
• •
1. Life: - born in a rich wine-merchant’s family with a high social position
• A typical couplet line is ten syllables long, with alternating unstressed and stressed syllables. The pattern of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one is callediambic; because there are normally five stresses in each line, the meter is calledpentameter. Each couplet-that is, each set of two lines--is "sealed" by an end-rhyme, with the sound repetition usually involving only the final stressed syllable.
• •
• 1372- 1386: • The House of Fame • • The Legend of Good women
• 1386- 1400: • The Canterbury Tales
• 3. Chaucer’s achievements: • a. Chaucer chose the metrical form ( 韵脚韵律 诗) which laid the foundation of the English tonico-syllabic verse（重音音节格律诗）. • b. Chaucer greatly contributed to the founding of the English literary language. He was a great master of the English language and in his hand the London dialect of his day was crystallized （明确）into an effective weapon for satire and humor and for poetry.
•
• •
- studied at Oxford and Cambridge
- in 1357 served as a count page - in 1357 in English army fighting in France
• - in 1367 entered the service of King Edward III and became an ambassador, and his visiting of European countries esp. Italy brought him with the new tendency of the Renaissance in Italian literature.
• The heroic couplet was employed in the poem with true ease and charm for the first time in the history of English literature. • Chaucer displays his humor and irony as he condemns the vicious characters and the culpable deeds.
• It contains rather keen social criticism and explores the moral degradation of the members of religious profession and consuming passion for money in the feudal – bourgeois society of Chaucer’s day.
• - died on the 25th of Oct. 1400 and was the first to be buried in the Poet’s Corner of Westminster Abbey.