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CHAUCER'S CONTRIBUTION TO LITERATURE
1. "The Canterbury Tales" sums up all types of stories that existed in the Middle Ages: the Knight tells a romance; the Nun, a story of a saint; the Miller, a fable (a funny story); the Priest, a fable (a moral tale), etc. Some of these stories were known only in Norman-French before Chaucer, Chaucer also used the writings of his near contemporaries as well as the works of writers of ancient times and distant lands.
2. But the most important thing about Chaucer is that he managed to show all ranks of society, all types of people that lived during his time, and through these people he shows a true picture of the life of the 14-th century.
a) It was very common to criticize the Church and churchmen, but Chaucer gives a true and impartial portrayal. Most of his churchmen are not religious at all. For instance, the Prior cares above all for good food and wine and hunting; he wants to live and enjoy himself, and the author sees nothing wicked or sinful in it. There is the Pardoner who deceives people by selling "pardons" by permission of the Pope and is well paid for it; in this character there is much biting criticism of the Church. At the same time Chaucer shows us the poor priest. He knew churchmen of this type: they protested against social inequality in general (Langland was one of them), and hated the rich and ignorant bishops.
b) Long before Malory, Chaucer saw signs of the end of feudalism. During Chaucer's time there appeared in England men of a new type, who had features of the bourgeoisie of me following epoch. They had no feudal prejudices, and cared for money alone Hauser understood quite clearly that men like the Miller and the Merchant would conquer the future. Yet he regretted that the chivalrous ideals of feudalism were retreating into the past. Chaucer shows us the Knight and the Squire, father and son, –'men of different epochs and ethics. The Knight is an honest champion of his medieval ideals, and needs practically nothing for himself, the Squire prefers luxury and safety to the dangers his father had been through; he is a courtier in the true sense of the word.
c) The Ploughman, an honest worker, good and true", and his brother, the Poor Priest, were the only characters who escaped Chaucer's satire. They came from peasant stock. Yet, when the uprising of 1381 broke out. Chaucer saw in the mass of peasants "a people undiscreet"; he called them so because he did not trust them.
Chaucer was the creator of a new literary language. He chose in write in the popular tongue, though the aristocracy at the time read and spoke French; even the burgesses up to the year 1362 had to deliver their speeches in Parliament in French.
A single language emerges from a number of dialects only when the people who speak these dialects have become one nation. The necessity for one common language for the English people during the Hundred Years' War was a sign that they were becoming one nation. Chaucer shared in this national feeling. He wrote in the London dialect, for it enabled him to define the typical features of his characters to satirize feudal literature and to add hum our to many an old story. His use of the many jokes popular in his time makes his poetry very lively. Chaucer made up new words which have remained in the language to this day: such as "daisy", the name of a flower, which meant "day's eye" (light); "coal-black", and "snow-white". It is to be remembered that with Chaucer's poetry the popular tongue became literary English.
Chaucer was the true founder of English literature, and when the great English poet Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909) called him "our father Chaucer", he did him full justice.
4. Chaucer was by learning a man of the Middle Ages, but his attitude towards mankind was so broad-minded that his work is timeless. Chaucer did not teach his readers what is good or bad by moralizing; he was not a preacher. He merely called attention to the people around him; he drew his characters from life: he saw men as belonging to certain ranks of society. Chaucer described the individual features of his characters "according to profession and degree", so they instantly became typical of their class. When assembled, they form one people, the English people.
Chaucer is the earliest English poet who may still be read for pleasure today.
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