United States or Mauritania ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The question as to Chaucer's own attitude towards the Wycliffite movement will be more conveniently touched upon below; but the tone is unmistakable of the references or allusions to Lollardry which he occasionally introduces into the mouth of his "Host," whose voice is that vox populi which the upper and middle classes so often arrogate to themselves.
In the course of this campaign Chaucer was taken prisoner; but he was released without much loss of time, as appears by a document bearing date March 1st, 1360, in which the king contributes the sum of 16 pounds for Chaucer's ransom.
He seems to have arrived at a clear recognition of the truth with which Goethe humorously comforted Eckermann in the shape of the proverbial saying, "Care has been taken that the trees shall not grow into the sky." Chaucer's, there is every reason to believe, was a contented faith, as far removed from self-torturing unrest as from childish credulity.
Across the river from Rochester lies Chatham, a city of forty thousand people and a famous naval and military station. The two cities are continuous and practically one. From here, without further stop, we followed the fine highway to Canterbury and entered the town by the west gate of Chaucer's Tales.
This it is to be a good story-teller. But of a different order is the change introduced by Chaucer into his original, where the old hermit who, of course, is Death himself is fleeing from Death. Chaucer's Old Man is SEEKING Death, but seeking him in vain like the Wandering Jew of the legend. This it is to be a poet.
Dryden's verdict on Chaucer's poetry is: "Here is God's plenty." V. His love of nature is noteworthy for that early age. Such lines as these manifest something more than a desire for rhetorical effect in speaking of nature's phenomena: "Now welcom somer, with thy sonne softe, That hast this wintres weders over-shake, And driven awey the longe nightes blake !"
Like Chaucer's merchant, He wolde the see were kept for any thing Betwixe Middelburgh and Orewelle. Side by side with George or Richard Cely he must often have strained his eyes from the quay, with the salt wind blowing out the feather in his cap, and breathed a thanksgiving to God when the ships hove in sight.
Of all the crew, this Ushant was most beloved by my glorious captain, Jack Chase, who one day pointed him out to me as the old man was slowly coming down the rigging from the fore-top. "There, White-Jacket! isn't that old Chaucer's shipman? "'A dagger hanging by a las hadde he, About his nekke, under his arm adown; The hote sommer hadde made his beard all brown.
Chaucer's wife's sister married the Duke of Lancaster himself; so he was allied with the royal family, if not by blood, at least by ambitious marriage connections. I know of no poet in the history of England who occupied so high a social position as did Chaucer, or who received so many honors. The poet of the people was the companion of kings and princes.
Indeed one lover of Chaucer sought to do so with both poor gifted Blake, whose descriptive text of his picture of the Canterbury Pilgrims Charles Lamb, with the loving exaggeration in which he was at times fond of indulging, pronounced the finest criticism on Chaucer's poem he had ever read.
Word Of The Day