Gave freedom to serfs
Parson
Feudalism based upon this concept
Dubbing
Ballad meter
Knight
Magna Carta
Holy, true to vows
Hierarchy
Ceremony to
receive one’s
knighthood
4 beats
Honor, truth, chivalry
Exemplum
Brief moral story
Vernacular
Language spoken
by the commoners
Merchant, wife of bath, lawyer
City class
Squire, yeoman
Feudal class
William the Conqueror
King Harold
First Norman king of Britain
Last Anglo-Saxon king of Britain
Friar
Ellison
Took shrift only from the wealthy
Slurring of syllables
to preserve meter
Pilgrimage
Journey to a religious
shrine to gain blessing
Oxford Scholar
Books rather than $
Damsel, crone, temptress
Female roles of
medieval literature
Cathedral
Holy blissful martyr
Father of English poetry
Signifies visual presence with God
Thomas Becket
Geoffrey Chaucer
Iambic Pentameter
5 beats, unstressed, stressed
King Henry II
“Who will rid me of this
meddlesome priest?”
Prologue
Introduces frame story
Loyalty to one’s lord
Battle at Hastings
Fealty
1066
Black plague
Fleas on rats, ingest bacteria
Relic
Pardoner sold them, holy objects
Air, earth, fire, water
Humors
Skipper
Made prisoners walk the plank
Heroic couplet
Lines of iambic pentameter
that rhyme
Crusades
Opened England to a more
advanced civilization
Yeoman
Green coat, peacock feathers
“Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”
Knight’s feelings about the witch
romance
poor, old, and ugly
What women want
power over men
Gap-toothed, had 5 husbands
Wife of Bath
4 tales per pilgrim
Host’s plan
“counterfeit”
Nun
Grounded in astronomy
Doctor
Aspect of chivalry
Courtly love
Religion vs. temptation
Challenge made by the
Green Knight
Gawain’s test
Beheading game
French influence
Middle English
Prepared blancmange
Cook
Wrote poems, played his
flute, sang to ladies
Squire
English Channel
Significant travel route for
Norman invasion