II. AGE OF CHAUCER. A.D. 1350-1400. BEGINNING OF ENGLISH THOUGHT AS EXPRESSED IN "PIERS THE PLOWMAN" AND IN WYCLIFFE'S WORKS. ESTABLISHMENT OF ENGLISH AS A CLASSICAL LANGUAGE BY CHAUCER AND GOWER. CHARACTERISTICS OF THE AGE OF CHAUCER, WITH HISTORICAL, SCIENTIFIC, AND ART NOTES. A.D. 1350-1400. EDWARD III., -1377. English Sovereigns (Plantagenets) RICHARD II., 1377-1399. HENRY IV., 1399 BEGINNING OF ENGLISH THOUGHT AS EXPRESSED IN “PIERS THE PLOWMAN" AND IN WYCLIFFE's Works. Continuation of the Hundred Years' War with France Chivalry at its Rise of Eng ABOUT the middle of the fourteenth century Englishmen began to think. Heavy taxation, incurred by the Hundred Years' War, (1377-1453). terrible pestilences, and theological disputes. turned men's attention to social and religious questions, and aroused in them that antipathy for all secular and ecclesiastical oppression height." which has distinguished the English nation in modern history. The universities were thronged with students; attentive audiences listened to the preaching of Wycliffe, whose lish commerce. followers, it has been estimated, included onethird of the population; doctrines and dogmas were disputed; a democratic element arose among the people; and the reign of Richard II. was a turning-point between arbitrary power and constitutional liberty. These agitations soon found a voice in literature; and in the remarkable poem of "Piers the Plowman" and the works of Wycliffe the people's thoughts were expressed and expanded in the people's language. Cloth manuwool. factured from Promulgation of the decree should be ad that the laws ministered in English instead of French, "Piers the Plowman."-The great social and 1362. Four pestilences, known as the Black Death, swept Introduction of French fashions after the religious movement of the fourteenth century revived the poetical genius of England, which had been, for the most part, dormant since the Norman Conquest, and led to the first expansion in English literature. The earliest manifestation of this awakening was given in the "Vision of Piers the Plowman," the first original English poem of any length whose argument is not founded directly on the Scriptures. It is an allegorical poem of about fifteen thousand verses, and appeared in its earliest form about 1362. Satirizing the social and religious abuses of the time, it acquired great popularity among the lower classes and among those deKing John of siring Church reform. The rude followers of Wat Tyler read it eagerly, and its Protestant principles exerted almost as great an influence as the preaching of Wycliffe. Composed in a rude English dialect, and in the Saxon alliterative versification, the "Vision" affords a specimen of English poetry just as it passed into the hands of Chaucer and Gower. In the closing years of the fourteenth century two poems in imitation of the "Vision," entitled the "Crede of Piers the Plowman" and the "Compleynte of Piers the Plowman," by an unknown author, appeared. capture of France. Insurrection of Wat Tyler, 1381. Political struggles between the Dukes of Lancaster, York, and Gloucester. Chaucer belonged to the Lancastrian party. John Wycliffe (1324-1384).—While the "Vision" reflected the English thought of the common people in the fourteenth century, Wycliffe represented its highest intellectual power. He was the first theological disputant of England; the earliest reformer-the "Morning-star of the Reformation." Wycliffe was educated at Oxford, where his great talents procured for him. the mastership of Baliol College. In 1376 he began to preach against the corruptions of the times, and from that period to his death his life Coal becomes an article of trade between London, 1381. Newcastle and Sumptuary against the ex was a continued struggle for social and religious reform. Though several times arraigned before ecclesiastical councils to answer charges made against him, he was exempt from persecution— probably on account of the secret protection of John of Gaunt—and ended his life quietly in his parsonage at Lutterworth. His sermons and pamphlets awakened a new line of thought; but it was by his translation of the Bible (1380)the first ever effected by one person, and, except Sir John Mandeville's book of travels (1356), the first English prose work since the Conquest -that he accomplished the greatest good for his country. By it the English were provided with a literature of the highest style, their language became more fixed, and the fountainhead of all religious truth and doctrine was rendered accessible to all classes. Marsh justly Rise of the styles it "the liber vere aureus, the golden book, of Old English philology.' laws enacted travagance of food and dress. House of Com mons. ESTABLISHMENT OF ENGLISH AS A CLASSICAL LANGUAGE BY CHAUCER AND GOWER. While the "Vision" and the polemical writings of Wycliffe were being read all over England there appeared two writers whose works were in a great measure the complement of the former-portraying the cheerful, festive life of the wealthy and courtly classes, rather than that of the oppressed and hard-working peasants; furnishing recreation and amusement for the refined and cultivated, rather than sympathy and enlightenment to the down-trodden and ignorant. These writers were Geoffrey Chaucer and John Gower. Both were of the higher ranks of society. Both employed English in their works -the former exclusively, the latter partially: English, not rude and provincial, like that of Froissart in attaché to the Court of Queen England, as an Philippa. Translation into English prose of Higchronicon," by John of Trevi den's "Poly sa, 1387. |