Chaucer and Canterbury Tales
PERIOD 6
History
• Feudal England
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William the conqueror t England the continental social, economic, and political
system called feudalism
Land was divided among noble overlords, or barons.
In 1215 a group of those barons forced the unpopular King John to agree to a Great
Charter, or the Magna Carta.
Lesser lords, called Knights, pledged their wealth and services to the overlords, who,
in return, provided use of land.
War and Plague
14th century was a dark time in British history.
English and French fought over lands in France.
Hundred years war drained England financially.
England Developed national identity.
Black Death swept throgh Europe
Feudal system crashed but towns and cities continued to grow.
Power shift from aristocracy to urban middle class.
History
 Vikings and Normans
 By the middle of the 9th Century, most of England had fallen to German tribes,
Danes, and Norseman
 Alfred “the Great” the Saxon King of Wessex, eventually captured much of
England, and his family regained it in the proceeding years.
 King Edward died in 1066, and then William Duke of Normandy laid claim to
the English throne
 William emerged as the first king England after defeating the Anglo-Saxons at
the Battle of Hastings.
Religion
 A community's tallest buildings reveal its dominant
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values.
Canterbury is where the first cathedral was built
between 1070 and 1180 to celebrate the glory of god.
Pope Gregory I sent missionaries to convert AngloSaxons to Christianity.
With Christianity came the glimmerings of
education and culture.
English monks built libraries and schools within
their monasteries where they emphasized the
importance of the written word.
 Anglo-Saxon monks copied manuscripts by hand which
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is what survives today.
Bede composed his history in Latin, and Alfred the
great encouraged Old English.
Religious devotion is shown through pilgrimages and
the most sacred pilgrims is to the Canterbury
Cathedral.
Because few people could read they used stained-glass
windows, popular entertainment to teach religion.
English drama began with enactments of biblical
stories.
Mystery plays-they were performed by Guilds (mystery
meant trade or craft)
Morality plays-plays representing good, evil, and abstract
qualities which target moral lessons.
Chaucer Biography
 Chaucer was born in 1342 and died in 1400.
 Geoffrey Chaucer was called the father of English.
 He had a great understanding of how people spoke
and acted.
 He fought in the Hundred Years War in France in
1359.
 He was a court official in his mid 20’s.
Chaucer Biography
 He wrote in what is now called middle English.
 He created over 17,000 lines of poetry and his poems
are still being read six centuries later.
 From his constant traveling, he became comfortable
and familiar with the culture and writing with many
different countries.
 He was the first writer to use English in a literary
work because everything was composed in French or
Latin before him.