1. Geoffrey Chaucer c

2. Contributions Father of English Poetry
Made English Language respectable by writing in Middle English

3. Early Life Born into the middle class Father was a wine merchant
Page to an eminent family

4. Career Had a career in government
Was often sent to Europe as the King’s Ambassador
Served under three kings
Edward III
Richard II
Henry IV
Captured and held for ransom during the Hundred Years’ War

5. Career Awarded pensions for services to the crown
Appointed justice of the peace in the county of Kent
Became a member of Parliament

6. Writing Career Supported by wealthy patrons 1369 First important poem
“The Book of Duchess”
Written in memory of his patron’s wife
She died from the plague

7. Allegory
A form of extended metaphor, in which objects, persons, and actions in a narrative, are equated with the meanings that lie outside the narrative itself.
The underlying meaning has moral, social, religious, or political significance, and characters are often personifications of abstract ideas as charity, greed, or envy.
Thus an allegory is a story with two meanings, a literal meaning and a symbolic meaning.

8. Allegorical Poems “House of Fame” “Parliament of Fowls”
Troilus and Criseyde”
Influenced by the poems of Dante and Petrarch
Influenced by the stories of Giovanni Boccacio

9. The Canterbury Tales Modeled after Boccacio’s collection of tales
The Decameron
Both use a framing device
Characters tell tales within the frame
Both include tales based on similar old plots

10. The Decameron Frame
The Decameron frame is a group of people who have fled the plague-ridden city of Florence
They tell stories to while away the time while they are in the country

11. The Canterbury Tales Frame
The frame is a group of pilgrims on their way to worship at the shrine of Thomas a Becket
Each pilgrim was to tell four stories
Two on the way there
Two on the way back

12. The Canterbury Tales Began writing The Canterbury Tales in 1387
Goal was to have 30 pilgrims tell 4 tales each
Total of 120 tales
He did not complete the task
Completed 22 tales
Began 2 others

13. The Canterbury Tales
Considered one of the greatest works in the English Language
Even though it is incomplete
This ranks Chaucer with Milton and Shakespeare as the three literary giants of the English Language

14. The Canterbury Tales Written in iambic pentatmeter Rhyming couplets
More evident in the original Middle English
Couplets are not end-stopped
Prevents lines from being sing-song

15. The Three Estates Gives us a snapshot into the middle ages
Introduces the three estates
Men were classed according to what they did
Those who pray
Church
Those who fight
Feudal
Those who work
Merchant Class

16. The Prologue
Chaucer’s way of condemning or finding favor with members from each of these groups
Establishes the framework of the tales

17. Setting
Pilgrims are on their way to worship at the shrine of St. Thomas a Becket
Becket was the Archbishop of Canterbury who was killed by Henry IV’s knights

18. Why Go on a Pilgrimage?
People went on pilgrimages as a pastime for three reasons:
To improve their chances of salvation
To gain the healing touch supposedly found in the relics of the saints
To atone for their sins

19. Setting The pilgrimage takes place in the spring
Archetypally a time of renewal
The pilgrims are leaving from the Tabard Inn in Southwark
55 miles from Southwark to Canterbury

20. Premise for the Tales Poet-Pilgrim narrator is believed to be Chaucer
It is the host who suggests the challenge for the tales to pass the time to and from Canterbury
The prize is a dinner for the winner paid for by all the losers

21. Characterization
The process by which the writer reveals the personality of a character
Two types of characterization:
Direct
Indirect

22. Direct Characterization
The author tells the reader directly what the character is like
Describes how a character looks
Presents the characters words and actions
Reveals the character’s private thoughts and feelings

23. Indirect Characterization
Shows how the character reacts to others
Shows how other people respond to the character
Shows what other people think about the character

24. Types of Characters
Static: character does not change much in the course of a story
Dynamic: character changes in some important way as a result of the story’s action

25. Types of Characters
Flat: character only has one or two personality traits.
They are one-dimensional
They can be summed up in a single phrase
Round: character is multi-dimensional
They are complex, solid, and multifaceted, like real people